in Concubinate and after to the Children of Eufame Ross his Legitimate Children who are to this day in their Issue by this limitation by authority of an Act of Parliament in Scotland barr'd from the Crown and we hope ever will be by the continuance of the Line of our most Gracious King Note that though a subsequent Marriage by the Civil Law which is the Law of Scotland in such cases doth Legitimate the Children born before Marriage of a Concubine yet it is with this exception that they shall not be Legitimated to the prejudice of Children born afterwards in Marriage and before the Marriage of the Concubine Besides the reason of the Civil Law in Legitimating the Children upon a subsequent Marriage is this viz. a presumption that they were begotten affectu maritali which presumption fails where the man proceeds to Marry another woman and abandons or neglects his Concubine But I desire these Gentlemen that are so unwilling to be safe in their Religion which I believe is most dear unto them That if any Law should exceed the declared measures of the Legislative Authority though in such case they may have leave to doubt of the lawfulness of such a Law yet if it be not against any express Law of God they will upon a little consideration determine it lawful if it be necessary to the Commonweal for that nothing can be the concerns of men united in any Polity but may be governed and ordered by the Laws of their Legislature for publick good for by the reason of all Political societies there is a submission made of all Rights especially of the common rights of that Community to the government of its own Laws But all this and a hundred times as much will not satisfie some Gentlemen of the lawfulness of our Government and the extent of the Legislative power of Parliaments since they have entertained a Notion that Monarchy is jure divino unalterable in its descent by any Law of man for that it is subject to none That all Kings are alike absolute That their Will is a Law to all their Subjects That Parliaments and the States of the Realm in their Conventions can be no more than the Monarchs Ministers acting under and by his appointment which he may exauctorate and turn out of office when he pleaseth For there can be say they under the Sun no obliging Authority but that of Kings to whom God hath given a plenitude of power and what is derived from them That this divine absoluteness may govern and exercise Royal Power immensely and that it is not subject to nor to be abated or restrained by any humane inventions or contrivances of men however necessary and convenient Kings have thought them in former Ages by such methods and such Offices and Officers of which number the States of the Realm may be or not be as Kings shall please as they shall by their absolute Will order or appoint Our Parliaments say they are Rebellious and an Vsurpation upon the unbounded power of Kings which belongs to every King as such Jure ordinario and by Divine institution That a mixt Monarchy as ours is is an Anarchy and that we are at present without a Government at least such as we ought to have and which God hath appointed and ordained for us That we by adhering to the present Government are Rebels to God Almighty and the Kings unlimited Power and Authority under him which no humane Constitution no not the Will and Pleasure of Kings themselves can limit or restrain for that jura ordinaria divina non recipiunt modum That the Legislative Power is solely in the King and that the business of a Parliament if they would think of being onely what they ought to be is onely to declare on the behalf of themselves and the People that send them for that purpose certainly the obedience that is due from them to such Laws as the King shall make and that they may be laid aside wholly when he pleaseth And after all this what matter 's it with them what we say our Government is hath been or where the Legislative Authority of the Nation is placed or how used But I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they come to these Notions upon what reason they are grounded How a Government established by God and Nature for all Mankind should remain a secret to all the wise good just and peaceable men of all Ages That Kings should not before this have understood their Authority when no pretences are omitted for increase of Power and enlargement of Empire I desire them to consider that this secret was not discovered to the World before the last Age and was a forerunner of our late unnatural War and is now again revived by the republishing of Sir Robert Filmer's Books since the Discovery of the Popish Plot. I wish they would consider that the reasons ought to be as clear and evident as Demonstration that will warrant them to discost from the sense of all Mankind in a matter of such weight and moment That to mistake with confidence and overweening in this matter will be an unpardonable affront to the common sence of Mankind and the greatest Violation of the Laws of modesty I desire that they would consider and rate the mischiefs that will certainly ensue upon this opinion and whether a probable reason can therefore support it That they would throughly weigh ponder and examine the reasons of these bold and new Dogmata For their enquiries ought to be in proportion diligent and strict as the matter is of moment and if they are not their errour and mistake will be very culpable and the sin of the errour aggravated to the measure of the mischief which it produceth and occasioneth Where is the Charter of Kings from God Almighty to be read or found For nothing but the declared Will of God can warrant us to destroy our Government or to give up the Rights and Liberties of our people If they are lawful I am sure it is villany to betray them since all Political Societies are framed that all may assist the common Rights of all I cannot imagine they can pretend an umbrage from the holy Scriptures for such unheard-of Opinions The Jews indeed had a Government and Laws of Gods framing and appointment and a King of their own chusing and such a King as they desired by Gods permission they had But their form of Government ought with less reason to be the rule of all kingly Governours because it was a Government chosen by themselves then the Laws of the Jews ought to be the Laws of all Nations which they are not though made and enacted by God himself Christ would not make himself a Judge in a private Right submitted to him He determined the right of the Roman Empire by the possession of Soveraign Authority and such as the whole world had made it his Disciples were obliged to acknowledge it by their obedience and
and doth virtually renounce the Government may not be left out of the Succession This is the true state of the Question and the Question thus stated gives its own solution And who except those of the Conspiracy do not so state it and allow it As to his Question Whence the Parliament derives their Power let him know that the Parliament derive their Power and Authority from the same Original the King derives His The King hath not His Power from them nor they theirs from the King They both derive their Authority from the Consent of the People in the first Constitution of the Government either tacit or express or by their express or tacit Consent in the insensible and little or great and more remarkable alterations that the Government hath suffered in the course of Time The King can make the Parliaments Power no greater than it is nor they His. Though true it is he may put an unlimited Trust reposed in Him into Stated Laws and Govern by Counsels established into Laws which is not to alter or lessen His Power but to make it more Safe and Wise and impeccable in the exercise of it He may ascertain the indefinitness of his Power that it may not be abus'd And that King doth best provide for a happy and wise Administration of his Government who leaves the fewest things to fortuitous resolves who reduceth his Prerogative to the measures of Common Right and makes the Kingdom secure and safe by leaving the Succession less Capacity and Scope to do mischief It is mostly incumbent upon his Sacred Majesty to secure the Government committed to his Care and keep it upright and steady upon its own Basis and to preserve all things in a due and Legal Course To watch to prevent all machinations against it and such as would destroy and subvert it and by his executive power of the Laws obtain to us the ends of Government that we may live quiet and peaceable Lives in all Godliness and Honesty For the sake of this High Trust and the Dignity of this Office his Person is most Sacred and Inviolable The King and his great Council providing for the establishment and security of the Government in their proceedings are not tyed up to forms of Judicial proceedings but are to act upon such inducements and in such methods whereby the Wisest men govern their affairs in which they are at perfect Liberty and not under the restraint of Laws They cannot do unjustly whatever methods or means they use that are prudentially and morally necessary to this End This power can be no more wanting in Governments than we can be without Government That which establisheth the one which is the Law of God declared in the Make and Frame of Humane Nature affirms and allows the other By the Authority of this Law of God so declared and promulgated as I have told you do Kings Reign and Senators or Princes Decree Justice By virtue of this Law and in Obedience to it is this Bill fram'd against which this Considerer declaims like a speaking Brute From this Law of God the said Bill when it passeth into a Law will have its Approbation Sanction and Establishment But against this Bill with his accustomed Truth Candor and Modesty he doth object That if such an Authority shall belong to the Parliament as to disable one successor upon such inducements as are sufficiently known a Parliament some time or other may be corrupted by a King and by mercenariness comply with him to sell the Succession of the Crown to a Foreigner We all well enough know that this Bill is designed to keep out the Tyranny of France or at least the French Tyranny But for this I leave the King to reckon with him and the Pensioners of the late long Parliament The Gentleman continues to add the story of Ahab contriving to possess himself of Naboth's Vineyard by causing him to be falsly accused of Blaspheming God and the King by which if true by the Jewish Laws Ahab had been Justly entitled to it as a Royal Escheat But if he had not been as stupid as a Block he had not mentioned this story which is a president and an adjudg'd case against himself who but a Line before had so vilely Blasphemed so great a King a far greater King than Ahab though the Parliament divide some Authority with the King in the Government But what were the Constitutions of the Jewish Monarchy this Writer of Considerations I am sure knows no more than his Foot-boy But let him know that the Romish Religion is a Blaspheming God and to bring the Kings Life in danger is worse than to Blaspheme him See what wise Work this Considerer makes when forsooth he would argue That the Duke of York cannot be shut out of the Succession no more than Ahab could take Naboth's Vineyard from him The man of Weighty Considerations tells us in the next Paragraph That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right and therefore the Duke must not lose his contrary to his Will and all Justice by a prevailing Faction of his Inferiours Who ever told him That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right Did not God purpose the Birth-right to Jacob before the Brothers were born and before they had done Good or Evil Could God be angry with him for agreeing and executing his own Purpose and Decree Did not Isaac and Rebekah both know and understand the Oracle and in Obedience to it Jacob was effectively Blessed by his Father Isaac's confirming the Blessing first gotten by surprize and by the Solemnity of that Blessing his Father Isaac transferred the right of the Promise made to Abraham to be fulfilled in the Line of Jacob Indeed the place he quotes in Heb. 12.17 is this Let no Whoremonger or Prophane Person be amongst you like Esau that would prefer a Sensual pleasure before the great things that were promised by our Lord to them that obey him Wherein the mention of Esau's Story is only to illustrate and set off what they fell short of the Grace of God and the designs of his Holy Institution Indeed if he could prove to us that his Royal Highness being the younger Brother had any such thing transmitted to him in his Generation as the Jews called the Segulah by which they mean some peculiarity which did appropriate the Right of the Promises made to Abraham which Jacob had and Esau wanted they say If he had any Divine mark upon him besides the Contingency of his Birth that design'd him mark'd him for a King besides Roman Zeal there would be some Consequence in his Discourse and this would be the best Argument that he hath yet us'd though the King would be little beholden to him for it But where God doth not interpose by express Revelation Humane Affairs Concerns and Interests of all sorts must be Governed and Ruled by the Laws Orders and Decrees of the respective Governments I would not have been
Reipublicae Sponsiones If we do not form our actions in agreeableness thereto and comport with them in our judgments we do not onely disobey the Authority of Laws but are also false Traytors to the Government by violating our publick Faith And now O ye people foolish and unwise ye stupid and perverse generation will you still persevere to call that which is lawful nay necessary nay commendable and heroical to which we are urged by necessity to which we are obliged by the virtues of Religion to God Loyalty to our King the Faith that we owe to the Community A doing Evil that Good may come thereof Your own Condemnation must be just if you be detruded amongst the number of stupid Sots reckoned amongst those that have lost their Reason extinguished their Faculties suppressed their virtue and have no other use of their Reason left them but what is to betray them to greater Evils as a just punishment for their former abusing it You perversely and absurdly mis-apply words without sense To the purpose that you may give countenance to your impieties your utter neglect of Gods true Religion the safety of your Prince and the publick peace and become Traytors to God your King and Countrey without any sense or remorse I have but one Observation to make and one word of my self and I shall conclude The Observation is this Scarce any Government hath been intestinely destroyed but its destruction was from it self which could never have hapned if the great men had not been guilty of connivance at and sufferance of Evils that might have been timely prevented And for that after the long continued stupidity of the upper and lower vulgus which are moved by nothing but what they feel they have grown impatient of the smart of those Evils they could not or would not foresee To this Histories do give ample testimony as they do also testifie that Concussions in Governments and Convulsions in State proceed mostly from Flatterers incroachments of power attempts upon the Government and decay of Faith and Trust in our Governours and secondly from Factious Demagogues But these never appear until the Flatterers and Projectors upon Government have first played their tricks they wait as Owls for the twi-light and Woodcocks for the winter they are onely useful as revulsive remedies against the Evils of the other but are without all manner of Grace where the Government is uprightly and duely Administred And thirdly and principally from the frailty of Humane Virtue When some of better place for the preservation of the Ancient Government and Gods true Religion amongst us will not endure to forego or loose some accommodations or advantages of life which they may be well without and perhaps do not deserve how can it be expected that the generality of Mankind should suffer Martyrdoms in meer Loyalty that is be contented to become miserable and and calamitous and have no other payment for their miseries and Calamities they suffer but that their Prince receives therein an imaginary pleasure and a false satisfaction When all is said men will never govern themselves by the Doctrine of the severe Casuists But their virtue of Loyalty will bear the same proportion as their other virtues do to the Canon of Morality The best service that can be done to any Government is to keep it true to its own Constitution good and tolerarable to the People To this all wise and good men should in their several places apply themselves with Heroical zeal a busie care manly and firm resolutions and thereby prevent if possible those Evils that Mankind will not endure and sustain If all that were dis-interested from any Faction would interpose with wise applications to such purposes Governments would not be so easily dissolv'd and Nations rendred miserable or ruin'd If all that are illightned and truly honest would thus dutifully behave themselves at all times to their King and Countrey both Demagogues and Flatterers would soon be ashamed confounded and forsaken both by Prince and People and Governments be of everlasting continuance But that no man may wonder at my boldness and the freedom I have used in these Discourses I have only this true account to give of my self That Loyalty and Religion and the Prosperity and Peace of my Countrey have therein entirely conducted my thoughts and guided my hand I have therein affirmed nothing but what is publickly known for truth and which the Cause I defend requires to be said It is the Cause of our Government Religion and Nation that I advocate The Cause is pleaded in its proper Court before God and the King Angels and Men no other forum can take Cognizance of the Cause To this the Writers of the other side hath invited us by appealing thereto with their Reasons I am free from any just imputation of malice and contumely against the person who is most concerned in the right disputed I have consulted therein his true Interest which cannot be divided from the Peace and Happiness of Three Kingdoms Justice her self will acquit me from having done any thing amiss and I cannot suffer in the Censures of honest and reasonable men In these Considerations I am encircled as in a brazen wall safe and secure for as for the fears of Rage and Injustice they shall never affect me The POSTSCRIPT SIR I Now render you my hearty thanks for your free advice you gave me concerning the publishing of the Argument for the Bishops Right of Judging in Capital Causes in Parliament and for asserting their civil Honours and Rights in the Government Because it hath given me an occasion both of vindicating the most of the Inferiour Clergy from those Imputations which you have remembred to me and are commonly discoursed to their disadvantage whereby they have lost their Esteem with the People and also of rectifying the mistakes of some for their number is not great who have given too much cause therein of publick complaints You disswade me from giving any assistance to the Rights of the present Bishops for that the Clergy out of whom the Bishops must be made have entertained Principles that are destructive to the Government They affirm you say That it is in the Power of a Prince by Divine Right to govern as he pleaseth that the power of the Laws is solely in him that he may if he please use the consent of Parliaments to assist the reason of his Laws when he shall give any but it is great condescention in Kings to give a reason for what they do and a diminution to their most unaccountable Prerogative You say That they are for a Popish Successor and no Parliament and do as much as in them lies give up our Ancient Government and the Protestant Religion the true Christian Faith to the absolute will of a Popish Successor giving him a Divine Right to extirpate Gods true Religion established amongst us by Law and to evacuate our Government by his absolute pleasure Our Government by a
when it is made apparent that these mistakes are made serviceable to the Popish Plot and the means which the Popish party prosecute to compass and bring about the ruine of our Church But that nothing may be wanting that lies in my poor power for pulling their Foot out of the Snare I shall more distinctly consider them First I shall desire them to consider what our Government is and where the true knowledge of it is to be found And where can it be found but in our Statute-Books the Commentaries of our Law the Histories of our Government and of the Kingdom Search them if you be at leisure if you are not consult those that have read them and whose business and employment it is to understand them and you cannot fail to be informed That the King hath no power to make Laws that both Houses of Parliament must joyn with the King in making a Law It can with no more reason be concluded that the King hath the Legislative Power because his Assent makes the Bills in Parliament Laws than it can because the third Unit added to two makes a Triad that the other two do not go to the making of that number When a matter 's moved from the King in Parliament to pass into a Law the Commons consent last The Letters Patents of Ed. 3. for making the Eldest Son of a King in Succession Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal Sir E. Cook 8. R. was confirmed as they must have been otherwise they would have been void by the House of Commons And yet we will not say that the House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cornwal And yet upon no better reason than this some men will talk as if they believed themselves that the Legislative power is in the King when no King of England yet ever pretended to it but by their process of Law have punished such officious and mischievous Knaves They also will tell you that the Laws are the measures of our Allegiance and the Kings Prerogative and declare the terms of Obedience and Government That a Legislative authority is necessary to every Government and therefore we ought not to want it and therefore Parliaments in which our Government hath placed the making of Laws cannot be long discontinued nor their Conventions rendred illusory and in vain which is all one as to want them That to Govern by Laws implieth that great fundamental Law that new Laws shall be made upon new emergencies and for avoiding unsufferable mischiefs to the State By the Statutes of 4 Ed. 3. c. 14. 36 Ed. 3. c. 10. it is provided that Parliaments be holden once every year The Statute of this King required a Parliament every three years which being an affirmatory Law doth not derogate from those of Ed the 3. But if the King doth not call a Parliament once in a year he neglects these Laws and if he delays calling a Parliament three years he neglects the other Law of his own time too And for that he is by the Law intrusted with the calling of Parliaments he is at liberty to call them within the times appointed And that Laws ought to be made for Redress of mischiefs that may ensue appears by the Statute of provisors 25 E. 3 cap. 23. In which we have these words Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the mischiefs Dammage which happeneth to this Realm be ought and is bound of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the mischief and damage which thereof cometh which that King agreed to by his Royal Assent thereto given I dare be bold to say that never any Bill in Parliament was lost and wanted the Royal Assent that was promoted by the general desires of the people If Popery therefore which is the greatest mischief that ever threatned this Kingdom can be kept out by a Law we ought to have such a Law and nothing can hinder such a Law to be past for that purpose but want of an universal desire to have it I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they will answer it to our Saviour at the last day if they suffer his true Religion and the professors of it to be destroyed and persecuted when nothing but their desires of a thing lawful to be had and of right due was requisite to prevent it Their sufferings will be just and righteous from God if their sin occasioneth it and very uncomfortable to themselves The extent of the Legislative Authority is nowhere to be understood but by our Acts of Parliament in which it hath been exercised and used and by such Acts that declare the extent of its power By the 13 Eliz. cap. 1. it is made Treason during that Queens Life and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels afterwards To hold maintain affirm that the Queen by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the descent limitation inheritance and Government thereof And this authority was exercised by Entailing the Crown in Parliament in the times of Richard the 2d Henry the 4th Henry the 6th Edward the 4th Richard the 3d Henry the 7th thrice in the time of Henry 8th and upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of England and Spain were Entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low-Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament Those that are truly Loyal to our present Soveraign have reason to recognize with high satisfaction that such a power of altering and limiting the descent of the Crown is duly lodged in the King and States of the Realm For under the Authority of an Act of Parliament of the Kingdom of Scotland we derive our selves to the happiness of his Government and He his Title to the Crown of Scotland which drew to him the Imperial Crown of England For Robert Stewart first King of Scotland of that Family lived in concubinate with Elizabeth Mure and by her had three Sons John Robert and Alexander afterwards he Married Eufame Daughter to the Earl of Ross and after was Crowned King of Scotland He had by her Walter Earl of Athol and David Earl of Straherne When Eufame his wife died he Married Elizabeth Mure. After that by one Act of Parliament he made his natural Children first Noble that is to say John Earl of Carrick Robert Earl of Menteith and Alexander Earl of Buchquhane And shortly after by another Parliament he limited the Crown in Tail Successively to John Robert and Alexander his Children by Elizabeth Mure
submissions which is the sum of the Apostles Doctrine in this matter The Christian Religion instituted no form of Governments but enjoyns us to be obedient to those we have not onely by express command in the case but by its general Rules of a most refined improved and extensive morality But though I said the Scriptures have not prescribed or directed any universal Form of Governments yet the Scripture hath declared the falshood of this new Hypothesis of Kingly Government to be Jure Divino or by Divine Right For St. Peter 1 Peter 2.13 and 14 stiles Kings as well as the Governours under him the ordinance of man which cannot have any other sence but that men make them and give them their powers By St. Paul the power of Governments indeed is called Gods Ordinance Romans 13.2 but that is for this reason because in general God approves of Governments as necessary to the well-being of Mankind for the improvement of humane nature for the punishing of Vice encouragement and security of Virtue without them it being impossible to live honestly and in peace And he hath made them the under-Ministers of his providence and care over Mankind and expects of them that they should promote his true Honour and worship in the world which will be always accompanied with the exercise of all civil virtues These two different places must be so understood that they may be both true and by no other interpretation can they be reconciled and made consistent It is impossible that any thing can be of mans appointment which is of Gods Ordination there can be no such thing as a Co-legislative power of Men with their Maker Government therefore is from God as he hath made Governments necessary in the general order of things but the specification thereof is from men The best definition that can be made of Government is in the words of both the Apostles put together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such Governments which men make God approves and requires our obedience to them upon all those reasons which make Governments necessary The natural and easie consequence and result of these Scriptures is this which I desire those Gentlemen to observe That whatsoever is not lawfully established by men no Law of God not the Christian Law doth oblige us to obey The Christian Religion doth equally condemn in the reason of its Institutions Usurpation and Contumacy Where the Apostle admonish us that if we be free we should not become Servants he hath by virtue of that Admonition made it commendable not to suffer the encroachments of Power over us Most certainly therefore as the Christian Religion doth not prejudice the Soveraign Rights of Princes such as they are in the several Forms and Models of Monarchical Governments non eripit terrestria qui regna dat coelestia as Sedulius so doth it not enlarge them when by the Gospel God made us free from his own positive Laws to the Jews sure he did not intend thereby de Jure to render us Slaves to the Arbitrary pleasure of men No man intends by any thing in the Scripture that all Mankind is obliged to any one Form of Government and therefore all men are left to their own It hath not therefore altered the terms of Government and Obedience that every Nation hath established for themselves but hath confirmed and strictly obliged the observance of them To Obedience to Government we are obliged by as many ties as there are Christian Virtues and he must disown his Christianity that departs from his due Allegiance And since our Saviour is declared King of Kings and Lord of Lords all Christian Kings are to govern in imitation of his mercy and goodness and in subserviency to the interest of his Religion and Kingdom Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis cuncta supercilio moventis Whence then is this absolute Authority of Kings if it come neither from God nor man Give me leave now to inform you that these opinions render you all Traytors guilty of Treason of State perduellionis rei obnoxious to be punished as Traitors by an Authority lodg'd in Parliament in the Constitution of the Government You your selves must needs condemn your selves to have forfeited all your own who hold such Principles that tend to destroy every mans Right by resolving all things into the absolute pleasure of a Monarch in which you mostly disserve the King and are contrary to his Majesties late Declaration The men of these Principles the less of the Government they are intrusted with the better for the less they have to give up and betray I confess if I could believe that this Doctrine was become Orthodox among them and the prevailing opinion of the Clergie I should conclude us to be the most unhappy people under the Sun This is an Hypothesis indeed that will bring on new Heavens and a new Earth but such wherein no Peace or Righteousness can ever dwell But I deem all such as are Defenders and Promoters of it do deserve a civil Excommunication more smarting than their Ecclesiastical and to be condemned to live upon and onely feed themselves with their thin and crude Speculations To be excluded from any share of that Government that they professedly in their Principles betray To be punished as seditious persons and most mischievous Schismaticks far more intolerable in this matter than the scrupulous Brotherhood for their boglings at an indifferent and insignificant Ceremony For that to the ruine of our Religion and destruction of the publick Peace they divide from that Polity to which by drawing here their first breath they made Faith and to which the condition of their birth doth oblige them they falsifie that which Arrian in his Epictetus calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than which nothing is more sacred and inviolable By creating themselves a new Allegiance and obtruding it upon their fellow-Citizens and Members of the same Kingdom they set up a Kingdom within a Kingdom more dangerous and mischievous than the Papal Imperium in Imperio which certainly will be introduced if this Modern and monstrously-extravagant opinion can prevail by a general Credence It is criminal and no less dangerous to the being of any Polity to restrain the Legislative Authority and to entertain Principles that disable it to provide remedy against the greatest mischiefs that can happen to any Community No Government can support it self without an unlimited power in providing for the happiness of the people No Civil establishment but is controulable and alterable to the publick weal. Whatever is not of divine Institution ought to yield and submit to this power and Authority The Succession to the Crown is of a civil nature not established by any Divine Right Several Kingdoms have several Laws of Succession some are Elective others Hereditary under several Limitations All humane Constitutions are made cum sensu humanae imbecillitatis under reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and emergencies
Consequence whereof is that he very impertinent or else the Duke of York is now Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal and that he is within the Statute of 25 Ed. 3. This Argument of his he leaves to be further illustrated and pursued by the Church-men and Civilians But lest they should fail this Epistoler for I now am well assured that this question and cause is to be managed by the Sword by Massacres and the French Plot and not by Writing I have adventured and will proceed to illustrate his Arguments and pursue them into their Consequences leave the Epistoler of Quality to be pursued with laughter for he deserves no worse if it be true that he professeth that he is a Protestant and Lover of the Government Now he will he saith as best sorting with his profession and with a discourse of the nature drive proofs from the Authority of the Common and Statute-Law of England From whence it follows That the Common-Law and Statute-Laws of England are proper to be consulted with for declaring the Laws of God and the Laws of Nature which they never yet pretended to do And Secondly it follows from thence that this Epistoler no more understands the Common and Statute-Laws of England and what places they are to have in the Conduct of our manners and guidance of our Consciences than he doth as appears by what he hath said before what is the Law of God or Nature He lays it down as most evident That all the humane Acts and Powers in the World cannot hinder the Discent of the Crown upon the next Heir of the Blood because though they may hinder the Possession and Enjoyment of it This is a Dowry which the great King of Kings hath reserved to his own immidiate Donation and hath placed above the reach of a mortal Arm and mankind can no more hinder or intercept it than it can the Influences of the Stars or the Heavens upon the Sublunary world or beat down the Moon The Consequence of this is that the man is Lunatick and of insane memory and hath forgot and denies what in the same breath he affirms Eor he agrees humane Power may hinder the possession and enjoyment and yet it is no more possible to hinder the Descent than to stop the Influences of Heaven and to pull down the Moon Secondly It follows that that which is done is impossibe to be done Thirdly that there is no Right at all by Descent nor can be any Descent of the Crown for that it is reserved as he says to Gods immediate Donation And we never yet heard of any immediate Gift or Donation thereof from God And if the Duke will stay until that be done we most solemnly declare we will accept him for our King and he shall be a King to intents and purposes as he terms it we will be kinder and juster to him than his Freinds of the same perswasion with the Epistoler who will give him the Name and Style and would Abridge him as they pretend of the Power and Authority of a King He says further That when the Duke is King that the Legiance and Fidelity of the Subject is due to him by the immutable Law of Nature from whence it clearly follows that he must stay until that time come That when he is a Loyal and Foyal King we are to be Loyal and Foyal Liege-men and Subjects For Calvin's Case which he cites by the general Opinions of all considerable Lawyers is Apocryphal where it makes Allegiance absolute and more extensive than the Legal Power of Kings But here he subjoyns such loathsom Pedantry that I cannot but remark it He subjoyns to his mention of Calvin's Case that Aristotle Nature's Amanuensis as he calls him agrees with that Case in that he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Seneca's Natura commenta est Regem But for my promise sake I will make no further Observations upon him than by bare repeating of it to expose it That the King and his Successors are Kings by Nature he proves For that the Statute Laws do frequently stile the King our Natural Liege-Lord And for further proof tells us that in Indictments it is set forth that the Treason is commited contra debitum Fidei Ligeantiae quod naturaliter de jure impendere debet And the King in Indictments is sometimes styled Natural Lord. Whence it follows that we are born under Allegiance that no man that is born under any form of Government can deny Faith unto it though he never expresly swore Allegiance That the King of France is not our Natural Lord neither doth the Oath of Allegiance bind us to that Form of Government if introduced because the King was born to no such Kingship Nor is our King a Natural Lord to any Forreigners that come hither and the Form of the Indictment against Forreigners as the Lawyers know must be in another Form And further it followes That in all changes of Government the word natural is to be adjoyned to Allegiance in all Indictments of Treason committed against the Government in its several changes that it may suffer And this all the Lawyers with one voice pronounce He sums up all that he hath said before thus No humane Power can hinder the Descent of the Crown upon the Right Heir the Descent makes the King Allegiance is due to the King by the Law of Nature The Law of Nature cannot be abrogated by humane Power That Common-Law is more worthy than Statute-Law and the Law of Nature more worthy than both But upon better consideration of the whole matter it follows with better Consequence That Nature hath made no Laws about Property nor about Governments otherwise all Laws of Right and Property and all Governments would have been the same for what she makes are Universal as the Nature of man Besides that if he knew where she became a Legislatrix or if this Gentleman could direct us to a veiw of her Pandects we ought to acoord all our Laws to them Secondly That Common-Law is not to be preferred before Statute-Law For the Judges who declare the Common-Law are not wiser than Parliaments and the Common-Law appears so bad a Rule that it requires oftentimes amendment Thirdly It follows that no Legislation is Lawful for that which is to be preferred is best and that which is best is to be a Law for ever Fourthly That no Allegiance is due to any Prince but whom the Law appoints and as the Law appoints That he that is not King to him no Allegiance is due That humane Power is competent enough to alter as well as make any humane Constitution That which by humane Authority was made and made also descendible for all Crowns are not descendible can be altered by the same Authority in its Discent The greater part of this ensuing Discourse is the remembrance of the Tragedies that have been acted upon the English Nation by our Kings For we have not only suffered
themselves and some there are so false and unjust as to suggest That the Argument for the Bishops Right was written to set off the Postscipt with some advantage and that the Author design'd to gain from the Argument a more pardonable liberty of inveighing against the Church-men in the Postscript If this had been the conceit of men of the Popish Faction only and not also of many Gentlemen whom I principally designed to serve and in them the Church of England thereby I should not have thought it worthy my notice For every man understands it is their business and design to divide the Church-men from the Interest of the Church to set the Church against her self To rob the sheep of their shepherds and the pastors of their flocks They know and true it is that no good and useful Constitution can ever be destroyed but by it self i. e. by ceasing to be so And that the people will never part from any thing wherein they find their benefit and advantage except they can deprave our Church they can never hope to destroy her They have corrupted some of our Church-men with Principles that subvert our Government and betray the Rights of our People They have debauched the Manners of our Church-men and lessened their Authority and Esteem with the people The Order is enslav'd by Collation of Preferments upon less worthy men Qui beneficium accepit libertatem vendidit They have raised a bitter zeal against that Separation that they themselves have contriv'd fomented and promoted And it is brought to pass that those are accounted Church-Fanaticks though Conformists that cannot contentedly see and endure the near approaches of ruine both of Church and State These are their fear and their hate The Sons of Anak the Giants of the Land that they they imagine so insuperable that they are for making themselves a Captain and returning back into Egypt Against these they exercise the keenness of their Wit and to supply themselves with matter of Raillery against them they lick up the Vomit of the Popish Priests and whatever is malitiously said by them against the first Reformers is daily repeated by our young Clerks out of the Pulpit with advantages of immodesty and indiscretion for the disservice and dishonour of their Order with the impudent Lies that the Papists have forg'd against Luther Beza and Calvin and other renowned instruments in the Reformation they disparage the Reformation of great service this to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion These young men like Dotterels Apes and Parrots who have no more understanding than those Animals are perpetually repeating any thing though never so destructive to Church and State that is suggested by any Popish Mercenary Writer if he hath but the cunning to bestow an idle Complement upon the Church or calls Rogue and Villain seemingly or in pretence for their sake especially if he can furnish to their young invention any Topicks of Raillery against an imaginary Presbytery and against Parliaments an essential part of our Government and the security of our Liberty A very fair capacity and recommendation this as they imagine to Preferment These are the Men I confess for whose sake I writ the Postscript And if it can conduce any thing either to reform them from their Errors or else to make them of no regard with the People That they be not hereafter taken to speak the sense of the Church of England and we ty'd down to certain ruine by her pretended Authority And especially that she may not hereafter suffer under the scandal of such forward and precocious youths I say if I can obtain by my endeavours any of these effects in any degree I reckon I have performed an agreeable service to the King and Kingdom We have a sort of young men that have left nothing behind them in the University but the taint of a bad example and brought no more Learning with them thence than what serves to make them more assured and more remarkable Coxcombs who will undertake to discourse continually of the Interest of Religion of which they have no manner of sense and of the Constitution of our Government of which they are utterly ignorant These take our degenerate Gentlemen to be the great Supporters of our Religion and Government whose Loyalty consists principally in Rounds of Brimmers and Huzzahs who have not so much leisure from their repeated Excesses and Debauches as to consider that they are not the wiser for their Cups In these Loyal Debauches too many of the young Clergy do most scandalously assist for the service of the Church and for maintaining the honour of their Order This if the Superiour Clergy do not in time redress they will betray our Religion and ruine the Government both in Church and State These degenerate Levites are magnifying perpetually the Priviledges of their Tribe extolling their Order yet in terms that disgrace it but by their Lives they vilifie it The most degenerate off-springs of Noble Families are the greatest Braggadocio's of their Discent Those boast most of their Ancestors who dishonour them by their Relation The Jews did not boast more of their Temple the Templum Domini the Templum Domini at that time when they had filled up the measure of their iniquity and the destruction both of their Temple and Nation was at the door their Temple had not one stone left upon another and they carried into Captivity than these Gentlemen do of the Church of England when Popery is like to be let in upon her by their wicked follies and indiscretions Popery I say which by some Doctrines undermines the very foundation and by others unroofs the Edifice and defaces the Walls of Christian Faith and leaves nothing thereof but Altar-stones for their Idolatrous Sacrifices what ever the fates will be that they are pulling down upon the Nation The Apostolicalness of their Order will not secure it if they do not fill up the duty of their Office no more than the Templum Domini did priviledge the Jewish Church and Nation from destruction A Temple without a Numen and an Undedicated Church are things common and profane They may remember there are Churches of Christ that do make a shift without their Order and Religion need not perish though the Order fail but may subsist much easier than Nations under Change of Governments which yet generally last longer than any one form Nothing can subsist longer or at least to any good purpose than it answers the ends of its Institution and if it do not it is much better that it should not continue than that it should subsist Grotius in his Book De Jure Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra assigns these Reasons for the Discontinuance of Episcopacy in some Churches viz. Longa atque inveterata jam plane Officii Episcopalis depravatio Nomen Eminentia Episcopalis eorum culpâ quibus obtigerat omnem sui reverentiam perdiderat in odium venerat plebis Non debent saith he
that to make Experiments and try Conclusions upon There is little reason to charge the Guilt of the unexpiable Murder of our late Excellent King for which at this day we are doing most severe penances upon Presbytery which was not thought of here in England till the War was begun The heats that produced that unhappy War were from other Causes and Reasons as every body may know But when that War was once begun as no War can be managed by fore-established Rules and Measures it did not stand within the reasons and first designs thereof but was prosecuted and managed by such means and measures as were necessary and possible This will always happen more especially in a Civil War wherein though both parties share in the Causes yet the Guilt to be sure belongs to the Rebels side The Parliament in the Course of the War in their distress prayed Aid of the Scotch Nation who was shortly before entered into the Covenant They refused them any Assistance except they would enter into that Covenant which they had passed upon their own people By this accident that part of the Nation that was engaged in that unnatural War of the Parliaments side were imposed upon by the Scotch Presbytery But after the Covenant was thus imposed they still retained the English Loyalty filled the Town with Protestations and Remonstrances against the Kings feared Murther declared out of their Pulpits against the Actors of that detestable Tragedy were continually contriving to restore our present King to the Government of his Kingdoms and of their instrumentality in his Restoration the King himself is very sensible I wish the Church too were made sensible of the extinction of that prejudice the Scotch Covenant created against her for though God be thanked she hath survived almost all of those deluded Covenanters yet the apprehension of the danger or the remembrance of the evil at least will return with the mention of that name and render it very displeasing I wish I say that prejudice was removed by their frank Declaration of their good liking of her Order in general and by their humble desires to be spared in the matters whereof they yet remain in doubt by the indulgence of the Church That we may not incur the danger of loosing our Religion and Government by the scandal that is given to the Church-men at the old remembrance of what hath been done here by some that were of the Presbyterian Name For this matter of Offence they of the Popish Faction do with mighty advantage to their Villainous design cultivate and improve They stigmatize all that oppose the Popish Plot with the Name of Presbyterians and thereby would denote them Enemies of our Church-Order By this means they have brought many too many Eminent men of our Church to at least a dead Neutrality as if things were come to this pass that they must perish either by that or the Popish Faction and had nothing left them to do but to chuse which way our Church shall be destroyed A cold comfort this would be that whatever way they should take they must assist to the destruction of their Order Upon this rock we are like to be split this makes our deliverance to stick in the birth and upon this hinge the fate of our Religion and Nation will turn Lord what a prodigious thing is this that is come to pass in our age Religion it self must be the devoted thing to the rage and folly of the Priests of that Religion Let them in the Name of God consider what iniquity it is to declame against the faults of others and not endure to hear of their own Crimes To hate one-another for those very proceedings that their own faults occasion where the fault is in both sides the fault is in neither so as they may justly accuse one another and yet they will both fall under a most severe Condemnation to be sure in the next world if they do not both miss their aims and be confounded with guilt and disappointment in this I wish it were considered that scarce any Nation ever yet perished that was so blinded in her own concerns that she had not discerning men enough to have preserved her from the destroying Evil if many good and wise men did not perswade themselves it was better to suffer it than to endeavour to prevent it and from the fears of one Party and the dislike they have conceived against the other determine with themselves to stand Neuters whilst they want Resolution to oppose the dangers that one side threatens and think the disorders of the discontents incorrigible It was a wise Law of Solon That if the Common-wealth at any time should be divided into Factions that the Neuters should be noted with infamy by which every man was obliged to take a side or Party and all the virtuous peaceable and modest were engaged to appear openly in the concernments of the Government he concluded assuredly that by this means Peace would be more easily restored and terms of an accommodation more readily invented and entertained the Factious Knaves of both sides turned out of Office their Evil Designs disappointed and the ruine of the Nation by the Extremities of wicked men prevented For the worst men are most forward in Factions and the greatest beautefeus most honoured by their respective contending Parties before the wise and good interpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Causes of the Differences would be better understood be rendred clear and conspicuous when the honest men such as can have no interest but the publick good whose Authority is more prevalent with the people than the clearest Reason do declare them and those that are mis-led and abused into Extreams would then unite and conspire against those who gave the first occasion to the Divisions and promote them As did the Factions of the Colonnois and the Vrsins who having discovered that Pope Alexander the Sixth set them still at discord and variance amongst themselves so by their Calamities and Falls to encrease the strength and power of his Son Borgia they fell to agreement among themselves and made head against him their common Enemy If all that are true Protestants and true lovers of our Government would declare themselves on the behalf of our Religion and Government in such terms as befit honest men and as the Exigency of our present state shall require we shall find the numbers of Addressers reduced to the Dukes Pensioners Creatures The number of Phanaticks made so few that the Papists would again become the Fautors and Defenders of Fanaticism as they were about ten years since lest the numbers of Fanaticks should not be big enough to make a Scare-crow for the Church of England or the Schism not considerable enough to disgrace her All discerning men see that the late Addresses have been obtain'd by application That the design therein was to make Voices for the discontinuance of Parliaments and for a Popish Succession If the people
King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all Ages accounted Treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25 Edw. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the Government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for Ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yeild to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usuage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stripped of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain for that they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater Revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy Charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church-men and make them at least very indifferent in their Concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought if they could perish by themselves to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country To be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the Antient Christians These their deserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable than their fault that deserved that name and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their Preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared Opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Scheme of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first Design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants they have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their Design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by Force or Argument which have hitherto wanted success and such attempts always attended with dishonour and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our Follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title-page and the Publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Panick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is difficult to tell how that late unhappy War began or how it came to issue so Tragically in the Death of the late King though we know how it ended viz. The Nation recovered within twelve years after the most deplorable Death of that excellent King into a renowned Loyalty and in spight of a great Armed Power never before foil'd ever victorious then kept on foot for the Interest of a very few men restored our present King may his Reign be long and happy to the Government of his Kingdoms without the least assistance of any of the Cavalier-party and oblig'd a wary General in the head of a factious and republican Army to Loyalty Nay within that time also
believe it I am sure not much longer than they are reading it I will not grudge my pains in furnishing a short Demonstration of the Popish Plot since it is of such importance to the saving of these men and the whole Nation which possibly may fix their minds notwithstanding so vain they be into a belief of it which I have made short that it may be the better remembred which I do in kindness to them since it was lately and may be so again shortly a criminal matter to bring the truth of it into question and they are by all honest men reckoned as Plotters themselves who doubt it The Plot has been declared by the Kings Proclamation and four Parliaments one of them consisting of Pensioners and Dependents on the Court which for eighteen years together were giving Demonstrations of their Loyalty to their Prince almost forgetting the publick Weal A solemn National Fast has been Indicted by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority of the Kingdom for averting the mischiefs thereby designed and solemnly Celebrated by the whole Nation in which certainly they did not mock God and deride his Providence Many unparallel'd Villanies have been committed for the stifling concealing and suppressing the discovery of it which however wicked the Papistical Sect of base false and degenerate Christians are we cannot without breach of Charity towards them think they would commit cheaply and without cause and to no purpose They have murdered a Minister of Justice because he had the knowledge of it and left nothing undone that they thought necessary to Assasinate another for strenuously opposing it They have attempted upon the Lives of our Witnesses By perjuries and forgeries they have endeavoured to charge them with the most infamous crimes to destroy them in their Lives and Reputations too in a form of Justice They have attempted by fears and rewards upon the integrity of all our Witnesses to draw them to retract their Testimony against the Plot for which some of their Agents have been judicially censured One Gentleman to the Pillory Fin'd 1000 l. and Condemned to a years imprisonment so evident and notorious was his offence and by the Court thought so heinous that it provoked the passion of the Court and they seemed to exceed the ordinary Rules of Justice for that they judged the Case to be of an exorbitant and transcendent nature The Plot of the Meal-Tub is a sublimated piece of wickedness the last accomplishment of villany it hath out-done all former and Will never be out-done in after-Ages The Papists by the Discovery of the first Plot became less hopeful in a Massacre and of effecting their purpose by force They dare not now kill the King for that the World would not now believe it to be done by Mr. Claypole and his feigned accomplices which must have born the blame from the Papists and he and they long since Executed as Traitors if that part of the Plot against the Kings Life had not been prevented by being detected I say the first design of the Plot being rendered less feasible by the discovery They keep the King alive with care as well for their avoiding the rage of the Nation as to lessen the credit of the Plot But contrive to destroy as many as they thought fit to be Massacred in form of a legal process and to charge them with a design of raising Rebellion against the King They had made a List of a great number of considerable persons whom they intended to charge principal Nobles and worthy Gentlemen about the Town had prepared witnesses to swear the charge against them and would certainly with more ease after the first Conviction and Execution have sworn all that they had a mind to destroy into the same guilt And thus all the truly Religious the Noble Good and Virtuous of our Nation that had courage enough to own assert and defend the true Christianity and our Government must to the eternal dishonour of our Nation and Religion have suffered the execrable death of Traitors We have reason to think them humane when they onely designed a Gun-powder Treason or a Massacre Our abhorrence of this usage dischargeth in us all reluctancy to Martyrdom Let them bring us to the Stake as Martyrs then we shall bear our Testimony to the truth of the best Religion and our Lives will not be cheaply lost but by this means we must be forced to dishonour this Religion by our deaths By a Massacre or a Gun-powder Plot the vileness cruelty and treachery of that Apostate Church had been declared to all the World and that false Religion as well as the professors of it had been rendered detestable for which end a good man would scarce refuse to dye But by this means they would have forced us to personate their own proper Crimes and Villanies and dishonour our own peaceable and holy Religion A man of Honour prefers his Honour to his Life and would redeem it by his Death But by this means we were though innocent to lose our Lives by dishonour and to fasten a stain upon our Memories by our death The Priests their impudent Lyes at their deaths in denying the matters of the Plot of which they were upon clear evidence Convicted and Sentenced must have past for truths and all our worthy men dying with protestations of their innocence must to the everlasting infamy of our Religion and Nation been accounted false and impious at their last breath There is no reason to be assign'd of the patience of God or Man towards such miscreants but that they may have time to add one impiety to another until an easie vengeance triumphs over them And though this last mentioned Plot is cleared beyond all exception their Faces are hardned and they are not yet ashamed but they have since contrived and suborned Witnesses to swear the very Discovery of the first Plot to be a false contrivance of a Plot against the Papists To this purpose they suborned a Son by perjury to commit parricide against his Father this the greatest Sin against Earth the other the greatest affront against Heaven What a Religion is this that must be thus supported Nay as if they did not fear or care to loose the favour of their most indulgent Prince which they have possest since he used Papists in making his escape at Worcester they have contrived these two last Plots with such Art as to bring them under his Majesties Observation and represented them as things fit for his encouragement Sure if they were not urged with the fears of a real guilt and a restless Conscience of the Plot they would never have adventured thus to have interested the honor of the King and to tempt him to abandon them to the publick Justice of the Nation which begins to grow impatient by the delays of it against this Hellish Plot. For we have had four Parliaments dissolved since the Discovery of it one a darling to the Crown The bringing into question the
patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a divine Original according to the Prophesies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross The Christians acquired a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer Violence and Cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. after his Religion is exalted into Dignity and Honour and civil Authority If the Senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make Laws for extirpating the Christian Faith What is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession to the Crown is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe Transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into Fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his Dreams are Dreams of phrensie There are some things so false that they cannot be disproved as some things are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This Proposition hath no colour to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor is there any thing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall adde that this Doctrine is the Doctrine of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any Age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergie of England in the Case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergie renownedly Learned and Prudent By the Providence of God and the Piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honours It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious That we cannot have new Laws for the preservation of our Religion but must lose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunities which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers Can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws one Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy But I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good-natured Gentlemen of the Clergy It is thus they perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Vnlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their natural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call their fellow-Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and Dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best supported with Truth and Justice This new Doctrine is not true and whosoever entertains a belief of it is not onely barely mistaken but will be led by the mistake into the most mischievous impious and sacrilegious injustice and treachery It is very agreeable to a good man to embrace a proposition with an easie belief that offers the least seeming probability of a security against the miseries of War by all means to be avoided But this Doctrine of the Divinity of Kings is most dangerous to the Peace of Kingdoms for it is pregnant with Wars Besides that it will give bad Princes which sometime hereafter may be Born into the World for such there have been now and then power to
Hypothesis especially for that it was Re-printed and is magnified by the Factors for the Popish Plot. And first I will draw it out shortly in all its strength and make it more argumentative than he hath left it for he hath left his willing Readers to find out the Argument and to make the Conclusion Adam saith he was the Father of Mankind that to him as Father belonged an Absolute dominion over all his descendents that all Men being so born are born under subjection to such an Authority This Authority so reserved upon us by God and the condition of our birth and the manner of coming into the World is to be submitted to in the person of the present King who by becoming King is for that reason vested with this Absolute Authority This power and the duty of our subjection to it results from our being Born and coming into the World after the manner of men This power of Kings is grounded by him meerly upon this natural resultance and not from any positive and express Revelation from God for such neither we nor he yet ever heard of We will now then consider what there is of weight in this fictitious Reason of Government in which the World is so lately illuminated by this Speculator what force there is in it to unravel all Models of Government that are framed in the World to confound Kingdoms and Nations and to give Warranty to the bringing upon us all the miseries that are designed by the Papists for us which we are to be prepared to suffer with most conscientiuos patience from the comforts and supports of this insolent and vain pretence I appeal to the Reader of him whether in thus stating his Doctrine I have not made it more Argumentative and concluding to his purpose than he left it I will take this method of remonstrating the futility of his Hypothesis By considering what a Father is and what his Duty towards and Power over his Children in which it will be found that nothing of Empire belongs to him as Father that no more belonged to Adam over his Children than did to any of his Children over their own That the Authority of Parents over their Children continues together with Soveraign power and is not at all abated by it and that it cannot be the same because it continues entire with it That there is no footsteps in the Records of the Old Testament to verifie his Hypothesis that we could not have wanted some Declarations about it from God if true it being a matter so necessary for us to know That no claims were made that we know of to any such authority in the earliest times when the Right was unprejudiced and must have been best understood and could not have been forgotten as now it is utterly Besides that it was never used The first Histories Recorded in the Bible make every Child of the common Ancestor alike independent and absolute and so it would for ever have continued And to this day we should have been in the state of Nature and not United in any Government and so no King yet in the world notwithstanding the Paternal Authority That his Instances of exercising Soveraign power by the Fathers of Families are not concluding and to his purpose That admitting Adam had while he lived been Universal Monarch yet if there be no other reason and Foundation of Monarchy in the World but this of Sir Robert Filmer Adams right Heir not being known and if he were might perhaps be an Ideot or Lunatick some Cobler or Botcher under a Stall or mean Person unfit to govern we can have no rightful King in the World for certain it is that there is nothing in the World so personal as Relations and the duties and Rights that do result from them For they are neither assignable to nor can be exercised or exacted by and between any persons but the Relatives themselves So that this power of Sir R. F. hath no foundation of reason in the nature of things was in Fact never exercised and is now utterly fallen to the ground and all Government with it A more puzled vain sensless and unlearned Paradox was never yet offer'd to the world nor a thing more mischievous ever received For first the absolute Power of a Prince over his Subjects is not at all connatural to the dutiful Care of a Father over his Children It was the good pleasure of God that this part of the immense world should be planted with men endowed with a Capacity to admire his Power Wisdom and Goodness and therefore to render him praise and worship He design'd that we should be happy in our own enjoyments and promote the happiness of each other which is not to be performed but by a mind serene beneficent and loving He provided that the disseminations of Love should run parallel and be under alike necessity with the propagation of our kind For the planting Love in our Nature he instituted Marriage for Procreation that we might owe our Being to the state of the greatest and most agreeable friendship and tenderest affection That for many years we should be educated by a pure single and undesigning love of our Parents and the friendship of that conjugal State should be maintained by and principally exercised in their common care of their Issue Every Act of Love of either of the Parents to the Child being the best instance of love to the other of them an endearment of a reciprocal love and a provocation to the like love and care of the Child And for this love the Children naturally pay a return of an affectionate honour to their Parents and by that honour which we so naturally render our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Earthly gods we are initiated trained up and instructed devoutly to worship our heavenly Father God did likewise ordain and so it was that all Mankind should derive from one stock be made of one blood and every Man every Mans Brother of the same Family and cognation By this it was provided by the Father of us all that we should be born into the World under the tenderest care for our preservation and improvement of our Nature be powerfully enclined to love and beneficence whereby we may be pleased with our selves and at Peace and Amity with our whole kind and disposed to celebrate the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of our almighty Creator with most affectionate Praises That the Generations of Mankind might certainly proceed God planted in our Natures powerful and irresistible instincts to procreation which the Jews call a Precept tho after this no Precept seem'd necessary for encrease and multiply they make a Command But we follow our own propensions and have no conscience of obedience to a Law when we observe and follow them which are so strong pleasurable and entertaining that if God had not planted a restraint of Modesty in our Natures and a sense of decency we should over-do the business and degrade our selves
that purpose is as much belonging to them and incumbent upon them as upon the Protoplast The duty is so personal consisting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it cannot be transferred or permitted absolutely to any other person by the Parents nor can any man challenge a right to it or discharge the Father from it or require the same affection submission and reverence that is due from a Child to his Father To expect relative duties without Relation is most unnatural it is as impossible as incongruous We may as well love and hate rejoyce and grieve without the proper object and incitements of those passions The fundamental Rule of all morality is that of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say by the State and Condition in which we stand the relations and respects under which we are considered our duties are determined measured and adjusted upon which see Simplicius his Excellent Discourse wherein many things are said agreeable to our purpose This moral Aphorism is as certain as any proposition in Euclid as the Doctrine of proportional Triangles and received as such by all the Masters of Moral Philosophy There is no other foundation of our duty to God or Man or towards our selves This Rule whatever it is must declare it Whatever is measured and allowed by this Rule is commonly called which is comprehensive of all that is honest just and fit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The application of this Rule is called by St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which when a man observes he is perfectly moral A man may as well pay his debts by giving away his Money be grateful to his benefactor by being beneficent to strangers as perform that duty he owes his Father to any but he that is so It is as impossible to separate the shadow from the Substance as to make that subsist by it self which grows by resultance from the state and condition of the person or that without that state of the person from which it doth arise it should ever accrew 3ly Admitting Adam had a Soveraign Authority over all his descendents which must grow if there was any such thing from some positive institution and not from his paternity yet the natural Authority and Duty of Parents towards their Children continues entire together with Soveraign Power and is not at all abated by it and therefore cannot be the same No Soveraign Power can extort the Children from their Fathers Authority and Care This is a duty in Nature before Governments They cannot belong to the Government before they are filii praecepti and capable of the Conscience of a Law It is a duty in Parents to educate their Children and a right they have in consequence to govern them that cannot be taken from them It is the Parents duty to form their Consciences They are appointed by God the great Ministers of his Providence and Grace to the Children That they perform this Office he hath tyed them to it by the sweetest constraints and almost violences of Nature by an irresistable love and tyes of Endearment that cannot be broken This declares their Right of Authority over their Children against any interposings of Soveraign Authority to its prejudice let or hinderance Thomas Aquinas positively determines that it is not lawful for Christian Kings to baptize the Children of the Jews against the will of their Parents for that saith he it is against the course of natural justice 4ly Thereis no footsteps in the Records of the old world to verifie this Hypothesis That such Authority was so much as pretended to used or exercised by Adam but we find instances against it in the short History before the Flood Cain received no sentence from Adam his Prince and Soveraign Judge but from God himself or rather from his Shecinah or some visible Representation of his presence Thence he obtained some degree of impunity and his life protected No mention here at all of Adam his taking the Tribunal or Cains arraignment or of any pardon or indulgence granted by King Adam Lamech that had killed a man by mischance did not alledge his case at his Father Adams Court and the matter of extenuation of the Man-killing we hear of no pardon of Course to be allowed when the circumstances of fact had been first judicially considered How could a thing of such importance be omitted in the story of the old World though so short It was of more concernment than to know that Tubal Cain was the first Smith and Jubal the first man that made a Musical instrument to know the original nature and reason of Government Besides we find all the grand-Children of Noah becoming Princes of Countries and the Sons and grand-Sons of Esau alike Dukes and Princes that is at least absolute Fathers of their own Families and ruling over such as were their slaves and dependants And the 12 Sons of Jacob are all called Patriarchs When Nimrod plaid the Tyrant we find nothing said for his justification upon any Patriarchal right But if we consult the Traditions of the Jews they will inform us of another original of Government and that is this They say that God gave several Precepts to Adam and his Sons and Noah and his Sons and one amongst the rest that they should erect Governments which his Sons could not have performed without Rebellion against their King-Father if Adam had been so as Sir Robert Filmer first dreamt Also besides that of making Governments there was a Precept given them of honouring their Parents Selden de jure Naturae secundum Hebraeos fol. 792. And therefore the Precept of honouring Parents is a distinct duty from that of obedience to Governments By this Precept they had Authority in general to establish Governments amongst themselves in the specification of which they were left to their own liberty and discretion and therefore were not obliged to any single form of Government It must be understood that the Precept which required the Sons of Adam and Noah to establish Governments required also every mans Submission to their Orders Laws and Decrees when established Lastly We will consider of the instances he gives of the Exercise of Soveraign Power by Fathers of Families which are as impertinent to his purpose as his Doctrine is groundless and precarious But they are these Abraham's War and Judahs Judgment upon Thamar As to the first of Abraham's making War We say we cannot allow that making War doth argue any Soveraign Authority It is sufficient that he who makes it is under none to make a vindicative War lawful For an injured Person may in the State of Nature vindicate wrongs by an Authority derived from God and Nature to a just satisfaction Because there is no competent Judicature to appeal to for right and redress But see how unhappy the Gentleman is This very instance of his production is clearly against him For if Soveraign Power had been Patriarchal Abraham had been guilty of Treason in making War without a Commission
discourse managed with almost irresistable reason candour temper and Address be matter of exasperation and they turn again and are more hardned in their obstinacies and become more confirmed in their separating way nothing but their own thoughts and the consideration in what a desperate condition they have brought the Reformed Religion by their Separation will reclaim them But it is expected that Governments should be wise that they manage and controul the Follies and Weaknesses of those committed to their care that they may do the least mischief to themselves and others and by prudent and practicable methods amend and reform them The most froward weiward and stubborn Children give their Parents the most care and opportunities of exercising the most tender love for them though they can take no complacency in their awkerdness The Church of England is concerned to retain all her Children in her Family to shut out none by abdication that their numbers be not few and she be ashamed when she speaks with her Enemy in the Gate Not to provoke any of them to wrath lest they forsake her and turn against her when distresses shall come upon her She hath reason at this time sure to make her Discipline easie and to learn of the Church of Rome to be more comprehensive Their Doctrine of comprehension is so large that it destroys the Religion to increase the number of Professors but I mean no more than that positive and alterable institutions may give place to the peace security and preservation of Religion it self to whose service they were first fram'd and design'd It hath been heretofore of old it hath been said Mores Leges in potestatem pertraxerunt suam Plato formed an Idea to himself of a Common-wealth without respect to the manners of men but he writ another which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say accommodated and fitted to the manners of the people and such as they would bear Origen in his Book against Celsus applies to Moses the Answer of a famous Law-giver who asked 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. whether those Laws he had given to his Citizens were the best the answer was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. not simply the best but the best they would bear And we all know what God permitted to the Jews in the matter of Divorce for the hardness of their Hearts When all is said People must be governed as they can But in the mean time it is pity any of our zeal and indignation should be mispent when we have use for it all against the Church of Rome the source whence all our Divisions spring To which we owe the first Separations that were made in our Church which appears by undeniable Records published by Dr. Stillingfleet in his Book called the Vnreasonableness of Separation How they have propagated multiplied exasperated and promoted our Divisions to tell you would make a Volume besides no Protestant is now to know it I have only this further to observe that the Church of Rome at first only designed by the Arts of dividing us and breaking us into several Communions to disgrace the Reformation to make our spiritual Governours Pastors and Teachers lose their Authority with the People To deprave our Religion with licentious opiniastre and absurd dogmatizing to load our departure from that Church with the mischief of innumerable Schisms and to make us reconcilable to the Tyranny and Impostures of that Church from the vain opinions and licentiousness of the Sectaries who have been seduced managed inflamed and made wild by their imposturous Arts and Deceits This I believe was only at first designed by the Priests but now they apparently design by the Dissenters to destroy the Church or by the Church to destroy the Dissenters that they more easily come to rights with her They imagine the Dissenters are very numerous and that the Nation is fallen into two great parts that the Dissenters numbers are vast But God be thanked they neither make our Grand Jury-men nor the common Halls of the City of London for chusing the Lord-Mayors or Sheriffs And I challenge any man to give me a List of all the Names of Dissenters that were of the House of Commons in our two last Parliaments I am sure they will not make a Number but they reckon the Numbers of Dissenters by the care they have taken to increase it They used great art to continue the Separation when His Majesty was restored Since Laws have been made to raise the Animosities of Dissenters but scarce ever executed for repressing them If for any reason of State the Laws here and there and for a spurt have been exacted secret comforts and supports have been given to their Preachers of greatest Authority with them And when they have seem'd to preach with the courage and zeal of Confessors to their Auditors they have not only been assured of indempnity but have received rewards How prosperously did the work of Separation go on by these Councils of our Achitophels by these means they concluded it would be heightned that it would admit of no terms of an accommodation How insolent were their Harangues more taking with their deluded Auditors while they apprehended them acted with an invincible zeal of Religion What Animations did their People receive to defy the Church and her Authority when their Preachers despised Fines and Imprisonment to their seeming out of pure zeal against her Order It is well known several of them were in Pension and no men have been better received by the D. than J. J. J. O. E. B. and W. P. c. Ringleaders of the Separation Besides that Popish Priests have been taken and executed for preaching in Field-meetings in Scotland They have raised there a sort of Enthusiasts more wild and mischievous than any we had amongst us in the times of licentiousness They have had notwithstanding great Lords that have patronized them who were always well received in their applications in their favour at St. James's and several of their Preachers who were not Priests have received Exhibition and Pensions for their encouragement It was necessary that the Fanaticism planted in Scotland should be very loathsome to make that Nation abate any of their zeal for the Protestant Religion or to neglect their fears and apprehensions of Popery or to make the least step towards it Awake you drowsie Sleepers open your eyes the Sun is risen there is light enough to fill your sight if you would look up and were willing to see Could any thing be conceived more apt to bring the Church of England into contempt and scorn with those of the Separation than to have Laws made in her favour penal Laws which are thought to be of her procurement and not executed Vain and ineffective anger is always returned with contumely scorn and hatred Cupide conculcatur nimis ante metitum And so it hath succeeded in this case nothing hath been more passable than the basest scurrility upon the
Words which he useth but doth not understand of what Import and value they are in this place for the Rights of Property are of positive and civil Appointment and Institution No man can have or is entitled to any thing but what and as the Law allots it to him They design what is Right what Wrong and what is Injury and Theft and the Law of God both in the Reason and Nature of man as well as by express Revelation forbids it Nec natura potest justum secernere iniquo Men make Governments and God Commands us to obey them yea God Commands us in our Nature to form our selves into Governments For that Mankind cannot tolerably subsist without them What is greatly convenient and promotes the happiness of men therefore seems to be Commanded and thereby a positive and affirmative Law of God in Nature is declared What is or would be greatly mischievous to mankind if generally permitted is therefore understood by us prohibited The Mischief declares the thing forbidden and is the indication of a Negative Precept or prohibitory Law The pleasure and satisfaction of mind that men take in being beneficent and agreeable to and deserving well of their own kind The remorses shame fear and regret that men necessarily suffer from the sense of their own actions when they are offensive unequal and unreasonable are the Sanctions of the Laws of Nature and are truly the Rewards and Punishments of God in Nature So that Anarchy which is the most intolerable state of Mankind a state of War and Violence unreasonable Passion and unbounded Appetite seems to be the most forbidden thing by God in Nature But Government because it makes men equal and reasonable just and peaceable kind and beneficent or finds them so encourageth them to be so and protects them in being so seems to be the most principal Institution and Appointment of God in Nature for that it is recommended to us by all that which conduces to our happiness And thus and for this reason are Kings and Governours said to have their Authority from God and therefore Government is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 13.2 Gods Ordinance But the forms of Governments the Persons of the Governours the Order of Succession their respective Powers and Ministries are of Mans appointment and agreeable hereunto Government is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Humane Creature 1 Peter 2.13 24. to which the Apostle enjoyns us to be Obedient for the Lords sake and in Conscience of our Duty to God Agreeable hereto is that Noble Tradition amongst the Jews of the seven Precepts given by God to the Sons of Noah that is to all Mankind for from him we all secondarily derive in which the great Titles of the Law of Nature are declared and to which all the Nations of the World were obliged one of which is De Judiciis The words of the Precept which is the Seventh are no more signifying that the Law of Nature or the Will of God in Nature doth command us to live in Politys and under Governments This Law was given or declared to all Mankind when they were in a State of Nature before Governments were constituted and by that Law of Nature obliged to form themselves into Societies to enter into mutual Obligations to stand to and abide the common measures of Law and to assist and submit to the Sentences and Decrees of common Judicatures These were the first Oaths of Allegiance that were taken in the world but when a single person was entrusted with the executive power of Laws they swore this Allegiance to him For in all regular Governments as it is in this of ours the King commands nothing but according to the Prescript and Formula's of Law And the whole business of Government as between those that are to be Governed is making Laws and executing them in a due Administration of Justice As Corollaries to what is said I shall add first That Mercenary Guards are very unnatural to Governments as they seem upon the foregoing Reasons to be instituted and appointed by God in Nature which receive conformation from the Tradition and Doctrine of the Jews the best instructed Nation in the world in the Mind of God for that the whole body and power of the Government or Polity are bound to see the Law and Results of their common Judicatures obey'd and are amply sufficient for that purpose So that the head of the Polity by the posse populi being most powerfully instructed to execute the Laws Mercenary Guards seem intended and designed by those that imploy them to execute matters illegal and extrajudicial or at best they make a very hard case upon the people that they must support a great charge and pay a great price for jealousies and fears Secondly That by the natural obligation of the ancient Oath of Allegiance every Member of the Polity is bound to resist and subdue all extrajudicial Forces riotous and routous Assemblies But the nature of Government and its true original hath been prejudiced by an unhappy mistake that hath long since invaded the World men that understand nothing but Words and Grammar-Divines that without contemplating Gods Attributes or the nature of man or the reasonableness of moral Precepts have undertaken to declare the sense of Scriptures and infer that the Soveraign Power is not of Humane Institution but of Divine Appointment because they find it there written that by him Kings Reign imagining that when the Scripture saith God commands or doth this that God commanded it by express Words or doth it by an immediate position of the thing done Whereas in Nature his Commands are nothing but the natural Light God hath bestowed upon Mankind Likewise God's doing a thing is only the course of natural and second Causes to which because God gives the Direction or Motion he doth both and is said to do all that is done Besides all the Precepts that God gives us that are agreeable to the Law of Nature must be understood as Nature and Reason doth direct Videtur Lex Dei idem dictans quod natura ita accipi quomodo ipsa natura accipiendum monstrat nisi addatur aliquid Expressius Grotius Comment fol. 121. The Laws of God that confirm the Laws of men innovate nothing but a new obligation to observe them but only as commanded and intended by those that made them All humane Constitutions and Governments must be subservient and obsequious to their own intentions Omnes res conditoe famulantur vitoe humanoe Every Form of Government is of our creation and not Gods and must comply with the safety of the People in all that it can without its own dissolution and was never intended unalterable or at least inflexible but was intended and made under reservations reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and rare contingencies in humane Affairs And the Law of God that comes in confirmation and establishment of humane Institutions and Laws binds only according to their natures and
and Heir to the Duke of York Edward the Fifth succeeded by vertue of the same Act of Entail Richard the Third having got the Crown he was confirmed King by Act of Parliament which likewise Entail'd the Crown which was done upon two reasons pretended First for that by reason of a precontract of Edward the Fourth Edward the Fifth his eldest Son and all his other Children were declared Bastards Secondly for that the Son of the Duke of Clarence second Brother to Edward the Fourth had no right because the Duke was attainted of Treason by a Parliament of Edward the Fourth The Act of Parliament for Bastardizing the Children of Edward the Fourth was in force until repealed in the time of Henry the Seventh after his Marriage with Elizabeth the Daughter of Edward the Fourth Henry the Seventh comes in by no legal Title First because Edw. 4th his Daughter was then living Secondly his own Mother was then living In his first Parliament the Crown was Entail'd upon him and the Heirs of his body And observable it is that after the death of Elizabeth his Queen Daughter and Heir to Ed. 4th there is no notice taken of any right which was pretended to by Hen. 8. during his Fathir's life as being Son and Heir of his Mother who had the legal Right to the Crown by an ordinary right of Succession Henry the Eighth Succeeded who did as all his Laws speak derive his Title to the Crown by the Fathers side and not by the Mothers In his Reign the Crown was Entail'd thrice by Act of Parliament Confirm'd by the general Oaths both of the Spiritualty and the Lasty and it was made High Treason to refuse such Oaths and several Attainders were in his time by particular Acts of parliament of several persons who opposed such limitations of the Crown and the authority of the Laws that made them But the great Law of the three was made in the 35th year of his Reign Cap. 1. whereby power was given him to give and dispose by his Letters Patents or by Will the Imperial Crown of the Realm to remain and come after his death for want of lawful Heirs of Prince Edward the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth to such person or persons in remainder or reversion as should please his Highness In which Act there was a Clause that made it high Treason to speak or write against that Act or to go about to annul or repeal it Besides there is another Proviso in that Act That if the Lady Mary should not keep such conditions which the King should declare by his Letters Patents or last Will the Imperial Crown should come to the Lady Elizabeth And if the Lady Elizabeth should not observe the same then the Crown was to go to such person as the King by his Letters Patents or last Will should limit and appoint By virtue of which limitation in the Act of Parliament afore-mentioned Edward the Sixth succeeded to the Crown and after him Queen Mary in whose Reign in an Act of Parliament for Conformation of the Articles of Marriage between her and Philip of Spain the Crown was again Entail'd but she dying without Issue the Lady Elizabeth became Queen who had been declared a Bastard as well as her Sister Mary in the life of their Father and therefore succeeded to the Crown by force of the Entail made in the 35 H. 8. Cap. 1. Pursuant to these Presidents in fact in the 13. year of the Reign of Q. Eliz. an Act of Parliament was made declaratory of the power of Parliament in the limitation of the Succession which made it highly penal to deny the Authority of an Act of Parliament for the limitation of the Crown Several persons in her time were proceeded against upon that Act and had the Judgement of Traytor and as Traitors executed for being contrary to that Law This Queen dying King James succeeded who was as the Statute of Recognition made in Parliament the first year of his Reign declares lineally rightfully descended of the most excellent Lady Margaret eldest Daughter of the most renowned Henry the 7th and the high and Noble Princess Queen Elizabeth his Wife eldest Daughter of King Edward the 4th the said Lady Margaret being eldest Sister of King Henry the 8th Father of the High and mighty Princes of famous memory Elizabeth late Queen of England It is further observable that upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of Emgland and Spain were entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament and the Pope's Bull. And by that Act of Parliament for confirming the Articles of Marriage Philip was created King and did exercise Soveraign Authority and particularly in making Laws together with the Queen the Stile of the Soveraign Assent to Bills in Parliament in their time being Le Roy la Roigne les veulent And likewise for that it was agreed by the States of both Kingdomes and the Low Countries it is therefore probable that it was the Universal opinion of the great men of that Age That Kings and Soveraign Princes by and with the consent of their States had a power to alter and bind the Succession of the Crown FINIS