follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
ingredient to a full Settlement or the Obligations to Allegiance founded thereupon For if a Nations Settlement be not full under New Powers till all the former lineal Heirs be Extinct or cease making their claims from Forreign Dominions I know not how many Ages may sometimes be necessary to fill the Settlement and it will be very hard if submission thereto for want of such a ground of plenitude should be Treason and all Sanguinary Commotions against it Pious and Loyal till the claim of all the Succeeding Heirs Lineal shall surcease for ever Or if you will allow a term for Prescription against all after claims then you must allow that a Settlement attaining to Prescription may exclude a Native Right or that a Native Right ceases by such a Tract of Continuance If it excludes Right only then you are no more to comport with it than with present Settlements exclusive if the Right ceases I pray shew me by what equity mere time can destroy a right in me Anno. 93. which was whole and within Memory Anno. 92. especially since the Regestries of Lines Royal usually endure as just Records that will out-live the longest ocular Testimonies and personal Memories whatsoever For the reason why Prescription passes Title is when there is no Authentick Evidence or memorial to the contrary And I will further note that the same Laws of Nations which admit prescriptions as a form of Title do not therefore assert the Title really right in the original means of procuring it but only externally Legal for want of better Evidence Prescription in it self being the weakest form of Title that must give place to all others if verified in foro and its ground or reason is only a supposed Composition Real I say supposed only not Asserted And those very Laws of Nations do not always suppose those Compositions every way right but only Legally Authoritative and Settling and do indeed allow such present Settlements within memory to be as Legal and Valid as those which being out of record and beyond memory can but be supposed Legal and this with more reason because men can better judge of what is present than of what is past into a Tohu an Age in which all things are forgotten Dyscher You are very long and I am almost tired considering the Zeal that is in me Eucher I have kept you so long under the Fatigue because what I ever thought has lately appeared in your Prints that the total ground of the Schism between us lies in this point of Right For you all say that Allegiance follows a thorow Settlement but a thorow Settlement is founded in the Right of him that Reigneth So that if admit the wrong then immediately all our Prayers for him are Immoral Polluted and Abominable as conteining Imprecations against the right and justice of him that is wronged and giving God Praise for the Advancement of the Usurper which we blasphemously attribute to God Whence there follows a necessity that all good Bishops Priests and People renounce Communion in these Liturgies and with all that use them and that if hereupon they be deprived by the Usurpers of all the Publick Advantages of their Ministry they must keep up holy Ministrations among themselves for so the Rule is set and agreed for with most prodigious Zeal and no less Accuracy and Learning by your admirable Author of Christian Communion But I wonder this great Man did not see how Tottering and Casual the visible State of Religion then must be upon every turn of the secular State and the various Competitions for the Sovereingty For how is it possible that Godly Pastors and their Flocks can be all unanimously certain at all times whore the real Right and Justice lies when matters of Fact and Law are so remote from their Cognisance Nor will your evasion of doubtful Cases which you allow much to heal the matter For in all such cases some will assert an indubitable Right others a dubitable one and that on both sides at the same time And thus your indubitable Men must fall into a state of Schism or Separation from each other upon their contrariant confidences in the Right of the opposite Claimers And your dubitable men must either be neuter to all Communion or choose a Communion with one or other of the indubitables at all adventure which to do with a doubting mind is a Sin and Snare And so it is in our present case Some says 't is indubitable that K. James is King de jure and that K. William is not King at all others say as indubitably that K. James is not King at all but K. William is King de jure others own K. William to be King only de facto and K. James de jure others that are indubitably for his being de facto doubt his being de jure King And a great number through ignorance confide or doubt more or less in all these points which they cannot reach Now since Practice must follow Principles and rules of Conscience how shall we settle all these under one Religious Communion on that Authors Maxims There is no possible way but by following the direction of the Convocation Book in Obeying the thorow Settlement of the King de facto made by publick Submission or continuance the form of which being a point of Law not Religion must be determined and defined by the Supremest Domestick Judgment we have in Civils which Certainly is that of Parliament after whose Decisions we need no further Torment our selves in vain about Antecendent questions but consider the Right we have as well as Duty to Live quiet under Publick Formal and Judicial Settlements which we are to take as Gods Ordinance for the time being By which Rule we shall secure our selves from both Extreams either of owning forcible Entry for Legal Title or proper Settlements or of Asserting all Change of Government to be Invalid and unobliging as Contrary to the Law of God who we know changeth Times and Seasons and all the Kingdoms of the Earth and Dissolves and Resettles all the States of Men under proper Laws of Constitions according to the Just and Unsearchable Counsels of his Will And now I will only apply your Rules of Communion to our Case and so dismiss this Theorie If this present Settlement be full and the Judgment of the Nation herein against your Right then all your Prayers and Execrations against the present State are Irreligious Immoral Polluted and Abominable and under an ipso facto Anathema upon which all Christians must abhor your Communion even without any Ecclesiastical Sentence as being self-condemned and cut off And if all these Dangers and Snares await us upon every Civil Change upon Mens Private Cross Opinions about Right and Plenitude of Settlement Christian Religion Ecclesiastical Union could not have continued a Twelve-Month under the Changes of the Empire from Nero to Vespasian but must have Expired before it had been Exposed to the World And I desire
think it the best way to put an end to them as soon as can be But you cast out that Right that only can restore our Peace and when you have conjured up most horrid confusions plead for their continuance I know not what could be done more by an Advocate for the Prince of Darkness As for what you say concerning Bishop Overals's Convocation Book I am sorry that a pretender to so much modesty should be guilty of such an impudent Assertion when that matter hath been fully cleared by so many learned and judicious Pens T. B. 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher This is a very paronymous Caress indeed but such as convinces me no more than your Arguments But I know who has taught me to give place unto wrath while I encounter your Reasons First then Is it not a Question profoundly wise whether all Men did ever think themselves bound to approve Extra-lineal interruptions For did you ever know all men in the same Opinion that they ought to approve any one State of things But this is not your only Lapse of Sense It is not the Interruptions and Convulsions of State that I would have you approve for no good man can approve Interruptions in setled Government as such But I require you only to submit to such National Settlements as close up our Confusions and so far only to approve them as they are Ends of Strife and War it there appear no other Good in them As wise also is your second Question Did they not still as opportunity served assist Right I pray who are these They but your All men just before mentioned as the Antecedent to this Relative But did all men as opportunity served assist Right How then came there any to be in the Wrong Or how came all men together to want an opportunity to do Right Or how came there in any Disorders and such a general Expence of Blood and Treasure to very ill purposes But what think you of those that enforced these fatal Expences Were they of the All men or no Or did they act aright in breaking down the Settlements of the Nation in order to what you call Restitution of Right For my part I would not vindicate an Inheritance by the slaughters of poor harmless people in the prostration of their Civil Settlement to gain the most absolute Empire in the whole World For I think no one mans mear personal interest in any external priviledge is worth one innocent mans life whatsoever your or other Martial Opinions may be in these Matters But if you justifie those Sanguinary Commotions and Barbarities against the Publick Settlements heretofore for the reduction of the Heirs Lineal and can tell us that we can have no Peace in our present State I hope henceforth your Party will not say that I enrage the present Powers against them since you openly proclaim an irreconcilable War against the Established Constitution and blow the Trumpet for your own destruction if the Government were not gentle and compassionate to your very Ravings But whereas you charge us for having conjured up Confusions and pleading for the continuance of them I shall reply that all the Evil that hath been done against our Constitutions from the time that King James began to vacate our Laws and to embroil us in discords in order to an Arbitrary and Popish Government until the day of the new Settlement under their present Majesties contributed to our Confusions and every Party to those Evils of what Character soever must account to God for it who will admit no Plea for those Evil Actions or Confusions But on the Day in which the Prince became King our Confusions ended in an orderly peaceable and were it not for your unquietness an entirely happy Settlement for the continuance of which we plead against those unsupportable Confusions to which your bitterness would reduce us And now as ill luck would have it we are fallen in on Bishop Overal's Convocation who can have no ease neither because of our Confusions But now I pray what have I said of that Monument they have left behind them No more than this And Bishop Overal 's Convocation Book comes up to it To what Why to this that a full Settlement under Extra-lineal Kings must be submitted to both by the Clergy and the People And doth it not come up full to this in their First Book and 28th Chapter and Canon Where it assigns this Obedience to the full Settlement even of ambitious Princes and Rebels procuring that thro' Settlement by wicked means And in the 27th Canon of the same Book it is resolved If any man therefore shall affirm that any person born a Subject and affirming by all the Arguments that Wit or Learning could devise that God had called him to murther the King do facto under which he lived yea tho' he should have first procured himself to be proclaimed or anointed King as Adonijah did c. he doth greatly err Now a King de facto with this Synod is one that is in by full and legal Forms of Settlement as by Submission or Continuance Lib. 1. Cap. 30 tho' attaining thereto by unjust means And such Submission to such thro' Settlement is what alone I quoted this Book for and whatsoever fate other mens Theories hereupon have incurred sure I am I have not declined the least from the Sense of that Synod who in those passages had an undoubted aspect on our several Revolutions and actual Settlements under those Extra-lineals whom the Lawyers have styled Kings de facto by a Distinction from those that are de jure whose terms herein the Convocation used Otherwise their Determinations herein could be of no use to ratifie any Settlements past nor to direct us in time to come how to end our Confusions or when to be at peace Dyscher At last you very gravely give us your Opinion that in the late Oath of Allegiance the word Successors was added after Heirs on this very self same Ground that tho' Heirs by the Ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extra-ordinary This it is for men to give their Opinions without Book and without any other consideration than to pervert the State of the Case Had you given your self the small Trouble to read over the Oath you could not for shame have put this interpretation upon it for the express words of it are Lawful Successors which follow the word Heirs by way of Limitation or Restraint to shew that none shall succeed but the Legal Heir And thus Sir the words of the Oath instead of admitting plainly and peremptorily exclude your extra-ordinary Successors and extra-lineal Kings Thus your new invention hath added a fresh absurdity instead of being a remedy to those many others which your Party run into upon Discourses of this Matter And tho' you mince the matter yet you might have been so bold to say the Oath requires Allegiance to unlawful Successors as what you