jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him 1. Jacob. and also that all our Books of Law besides the Fundamental Constitution of the Land do make the Regal Power Hereditary and not Elective and such an Elected Usurpers Laws can no further oblige the Subjects of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary mulct must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I Pryn's That the Parliament and Kingdom are the Sovereign power a piece Printed by Order of the house of Commons Confess in another of his Treatises that he Printed will have all such Acts made by Consent of Vsurping Kings bind the right Heirs of the Crown that Reign by a just Title That all such Acts oblige them is utterly false for one of them is commonly for their Exclusion but that some are admitted to bind is as really True but that is rather upon a Political account of their being serviceable to the Publick and the Country's Good And is it not now an unaccountable boldness that the very same Cases of Usurpers upon the Crown that this Indefatigable piece of Faction publish't against the Father they fought and Murder'd should be retrieved against the Son whom the kind Heavens ev'n by Miracle so lately restor'd But at last allowing those palpable falsehoods they so much Labour for falsehoods so gross that they can be felt to be matter of Fact contradict the true sense of all Chronicle with a Seditious Supposition to be secur'd of Truth give all the Laws of the Land the Lye raze Rolls and Records the better to rise a Rebellion and grant the Kings of England have been all Elected all almost from that Union of the Heptarchy in the Saxon to that of our three Kingdoms in the Scot and sure no Soul living can conclude with them in afairer Concession than in granting the very Postulate they require yet since they then in the End of K. James tho but so lately had settled the Succession and made it Hereditary can with men of Common sense the Presidents of its having been formerly Elective prevail for an utter Subversion of such a Settlement Popery was once in England by Law Establish't and must it therefore again be Establish't by Law Certainly all succeeding Reformation must null and abolish that from which they Reform and a Repealing Act will hardly be made Declaratory of the very Statute it Repeals if these be but their best Arguments the same you see will reason us back into the very Religion of Rome we have seen several Rebellions and some even of late to have lain the Land in Blood and can such sad Sufferance be made to Prescribe for our Misery warrant some such as Bloody to succeed but since all this suppos'd suggestion must vanish like to soft Air since the Succession has been settled for so many several ages to rake every musty Record only for a sad Review of some Time of Confusion is certainly but an Impious Industry to Confound the work of the very God of Order We may as well be discontented at the Frame of his World he so well digested and plead for Prescription the Primitive Chaos CHAP. II. Remarks upon Plato Redivivus THE best Animadversion that I can make on his whole first days Discourse is that it wants none that it's Impertinence has superseded reproof and the fulsome flattering Dialogue as unsit for a serious Answer as a Farce for a Refutation out of a Sermon The great acquaintance these pretending Platonicks would be thought to have with that Sect of Philosophers did not oblige them to be so morosely reserv'd as to know none other and they may remember an Ephesian Sophy I believe as Learned too in his Politicks that was never so much tickl'd as when he saw the dull Animal mumbling of the cross-grain'd unpalatable Thistle the disputing against the Laws of the Land and the Light of Reason they 'l find as uneasie as absurd and the latter as Impious and Profane and which deserves to be assimulated to a more serious sort of Obstinacy that of so many Sauls kicking against the Pricks but the Pleasant and Ridiculous Disputants put in for another pretty Quality of that insensible Brute the length of their sordid and stupid Flattery outdoes their Original Beast and the sad Sophister would force one Smile more to see three of the same sort of Creatures for a whole day clawing one another Certainly whatever they fancy the Dialogues of Plato whatever the Favourers of his Principles can suggest surely they were never fill'd with such Fustian But that good old Philosopher did as plainly cloath his Disputes as well as himself in an honest homely Drugget of Athens Tho I confess they tell us of his rich Bed and his affectation of State which a Soul so sublime could not but Contemn while these Sectaries are such refin'd Academicks so much polish't with Travel and the breeding of the Times That all the Fops of France the Dons of Spain his Adulano of Italy seem melted down into one Mass of Impertinence they can't pass by the thin Apartments of a Page without a Congee Bon-Grace and a formal Salutation upon one anothers Excellencies the Doctor claws the Patient with his Lenitives Frications Emollients of Praise and Adulation and the Patient who in the literal sence must be said to suffer with such a Doctor if not in Body Natural I am sure in the Politick as in Cordial Affection and Common Civility he is obliged returns him the reputation of his Book De Corde for the tickling the very Auricula's of his Heart for Praise must certainly be Pleasant for an Aesculapius that sets up for a Matchiavel confutes Solomon and the Bible as he says for saying the Heart is unsearchable tho but Vid. Argument to the Book an Ordinary Divine without the Criticks Tremellius or a Munster would say that in the Text there is nothing meant but the mind But Cor hominis must not be Inscrutabile now only because the Doctor has handl'd its fibres and thus this Triumvirate of Fulsomness and Faction treat one another with their Fustian and Foppery through the whole piece I seldom care to lard our English with the least scrap of Latin but because 't is the property of such pedantick Scriblers who still most affect what is most ridiculous Foppery and Folly I 'll only give them an Argument out of the Mathematicks fora Demonstration of their agreeable Faction and Foolishness and for his Cor hominis as it relates to this Doctors Pharmacentria let him take one of Euclid's Postulates that has a greater reference to their mighty Three In English thus and if they will have Lattin Quae conveniunt uno Tertio conveniunt inter sâ— 'tis in the Margin Those that agree in one Third must needs agree among themselves The Venetian
a plain puny Doeg and all this at a time the Government stood firm upon its Foundations and the best of Basis its Fundamental Law to what an height of exalted Insolence was the very Soul of Sedition then aspired to to suffer such a Serpent to see the Light that hist at the sight of a Soveraign and spit its Venom in the very Face of Majesty And whatever Recommendation this virulent Republican gives us of the Venetian Justice he would find sufficient severity sublim'd Cruelty instead of Law distributed to such daring Offenders as should offer at a Monarchy there tho but a mixt and of which they seem to have some necessitated resemblance in their constant creating of a Duke as if there were yet some remains of Royalty left which they could not extirpate and like Nature it self whom all the Art of Man can never expel the Libeller would not be long then without an Halter the Jealous State would soon send Vid. Resiquiae Wotton Foscarino 's case him the sight of his Sin and Sentence together and that by the Hands of his Hangman and some little Gondula to Ferry him to the deep No Magna Charta no Petition of Right no privilege of a Tryal of Peers or even a Plea allowed to the Prisoner and whom with a Praevious Sentence too they many times dispatch assoon as seiz'd And shall a Monarchy here founded upon Kingly Government has been the usage of the Land beyon'd History it self the Common Law is but Common usage Plowd Comment p. 195 Le Commen Ley n'est que Commen use its Fundamental Law and that for fifteen hundred years be invaded with impunity by the Pen of every virulent Villain each Factious Fellow that can but handle the Feather of a Goose I confess when they were arriv'd here to their Acme of Transcendent Villany when Vice had fixt her Pillars here and that in an Ocean too but of Blood when they had washt their Hands even in Insuperable Wickedness and shed that of their Prince when by a Barbarous Rebellion they had subverted the best of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth 2. part of the Inst fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England then they might well be so bold as to write their Panegyricks upon their own Usurpation when they were to be paid for it by the Powers instead of Punshment Then they might tell us as indeed they did that the greatest of Crimes was the committing of High Treason against the Majesty of the People That the Romans gave us good Presidents for Rebellion Mâ—rc Pol. Num. 107. in the turning out of their Tarquins and the Government together that Caesar Usurpt upon the power of the People Marius and Sylla on the Jurisdiction of the Senate Pisistratus turned Tyrant at Athens and Agathocles in Sicily that Cosmus was the first Founder of a Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Dukedom and a fatal Foe to Florence that Castruccio made himself the Lord of all Luca and oppressed the Liberty of all the Freeborn Subjects of the Land that all our Kings from him they called the Conqueror to the Scottish Tyrant were but the same sort of Usurpers upon the power of the People All this with much more Execrable Treason was Printed Publish'd and Posted through the Kingdom with Approbation of Parliament and which we shall in its proper place represent in its own blackness black as Hell it self the seat of such Seditious Souls full of Anarchy and Confusion But why we should now have so lately left us such daring desparadoes to retrieve to us the same Doctrine to tell Plato us that Affairs of State must be managed by a Parliamentary that is in their own Phraseology a meer popular Power could proceed certainly from nothing but the deepest the most dangerous Corruption of the Times from the desperate Condition of a Goverment ready to be undermined by Treachery Plot and Machination brought so low that it did not dare to defend it self and its boldest Assertors so far frightened into a dishonest and imprudent sort of Diffidence as to distrust the strength of their own Cause and that was evident too from the sad servile Complyance of some fearful Souls otherwise well affected that seemed to give up their Government like a Game lost that had rather sink then swim against the Tyde But for a more direct Answer to this Proposition we shall shew that Affairs of State must be managed by our Monarch that matter of Fact has prov'd it by Prescription that it is our Kings Prerogative by the Lands Law and his unquestionable Right by the force of Reason For the first 't is evident from History that for above 600. years near a thousand before the Conquest we had Kings that had an Absolute and Soveraign sway over their Subjects as appears from the Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. most Antient Writer of our British History it is apparent that all our Monarchs Britains Saxons and Danes exercis'd unlimited Jurisdiction without having their Affairs Govern'd by any estabisht Council much less a Parliament and that to be prov'd beyond Contradiction from the several Authors that Lived Wrote and were Eye These were Nennius a Monk of Bangor who liv'd An. 620. Bede a Saxon who wrot in their Heptarchy dy'd in the 733. Asserius Menev. who writ the Acts of King Alfred Colemannus Ang. who liv'd in the time of the Danes and Harold the first Vortiger the British King on his own Head call'd in the Saxon without his Subjects consent Egbert an absolute Monarch of the Saxons over all the Isle Canutus as absolute among the Danes call'd only his Convention of Nobles at Oxford about 1017. Witnesses of the manner and Constitution of their Government and then sure must be suppos'd to understand that to which they were Subjected from those good Authorities can be easily gather'd that the power of Peace and War was always in the Prince that they were Govern'd by him Arbitrarily and at his Will that he call'd what Councils of whom when and where he pleased so far from being Limited that the most popular Parliamentarians would be loth his present Majesty should prescribe to such an Absoluteness and which nothing but the kind Concessions of some of his Predecessors to their Clamourous Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears
against whose more dangerous Sedition there was lately made special Provision by a particular ‖ Act for Regulating Corporations where they particularly swear they abhor the Trayterous Proposition of raising Arms by His Majesties Authority against His Person Oath Lastly to conclude the Confutation of this sad silly sort of Sophistry this Seditious Nonsense 't is shrowdly to be suspected that from the same sort of Sophisters fallacious Inferences was first insinuated that prejudicial Opinion I call it so because it looks like a Doctrine of some concerned party That Societies were not punishable in the next World for the Villanies they had committed in this That is the Members were not to suffer there for what they had acted in Relation to such a BODY here this Religious Absurdity has been Publisht by some Seditious Pens from the Press I wish I could say not imposed upon Loyal ones too both from that and the Pulpit for Errors especially when coloured with the bait of Interest tho first hatcht by the Brooders of all bad Principles till well examined may delude the very best I know it may be returned with some seeming Reason that Crimes committed here as a Member of a body politick can't well in Justice be laid to the Charge of any particular Person hereafter for upon the dissolution of the natural one the Relation to such a Community ceasing the Guilt and Crime contracted should dye too But the Judge of Heaven has declared he won't be mockt tho they thought those of the Land might How contentedly would some of the Regicides have given up the Ghost could they have pleaded to the Almighty their Innocence of the Royal Blood from the shedding it in Parliament But tho National Sins may require reasonably the sufferings of a Nation and no more than what for this very Sin our own has since suffered therefore to suggest the single Individual the singular Sinner shall escape with Impunity hereafter because not punisht here or that because several of them suffered here for that Martyrs Blood and the Treasons of an Vniversal Body seem'd to be punisht in as general Conflagration that therefore the Criminals have superseded their sufferings in Hell and may now dare Heaven for my part seems an Opinion as ridiculous as the Popish Purgatory and their being saved by a fantastick Fire 'T is almost an Irreligious excuse for all manner of Crimes and Immoralities the Constitutions Circumstances of Men being so various that I dare avow scarce any Villany but may be committed by Communities or the Politick Relation of the private Person to some publick Society In short such Law and such Divinity would make the worst of Rebels that is incorporated ones fear Hell no more than they would the Hangman and baffle the Devil as well as the Gibbet And I may well here so warmly condemn these sort of damnable Doctrines when they were so hotly maintained by the rankest of our Rebels and Republicans and this very Daemon this Devil of Sedition can only countenance his Rebellious Positions with the making use of His Majesties Authority for the Ratification of his Proposals that is the Destruction of his own Person For 't is a great Truth I wish I could not say an experimented one that the granting them these Regalia would not only be an Act to bereave him of his Crown and Dignity but would pass his very Person into the Donative a yielding up of his last Breath the making himself his own Executioner as well as a Betrayer of his Trust This Project is only the pernicious Principle improved the late Rebels falsely assumed His Authority for the Fighting against His Person but the prevailing upon him for these Destructive Grants would make Him truly Fight against Himself In all the Reigns of the three following Henries their Soveraign's Supremacy was still asserted and that over Parliaments too tho one of them was but an Usurper on the Crown and then I am sure as great an one upon their Privileges and tho themselves had placed the First in the Throne themselves also acknowledged * 1 H. 4. the Regality of the Crown of England to be Subject to none but God To the ‖ 2 H. 5. Cap. 6. Second they acknowledged that to Him only belonged the Management of Foreign Affairs with Foreign Princes To the †32. H. 6. 13. Plowden 334. Third that he could constitute County Palatines and grant any Regal Rights per Letters Patents And these were Matters and Affairs themselves then declared they could not pretend to tho this Gentleman would now have them or their Counsel manage all In Edward the Fourth and the Fifth's time 't was always received Law then made and should I hope hold still that State Affairs were to be manag'd by the Prince for it was then allowed for * 22. Ed. 4. Law That if all the Common People of England should break a League by agreement with any Foreign Nation it shall still be reputed firm and unviolated if without his consent And in his very ‖ 1 Edw. 5. fol. 2. Sons that Succeeded resolved by all the Judges and Serjeants that he was the only Person in the Kingdom that could do no wrong which sufficiently declares him above all them that could and then who so fit for all absolute Power in all publick Administrations than whom the very Law presumes always to do Right and whom Reason tells us must be most impartially concerned for the publick good having no dependance upon any Superiors from whom an Apprehension of Fear or hopes of Favour might prevail upon to degenerate into that servile and sordid Complyance to prefer his own private Interest before the publick good Whatever Presumption the Law had of it then I am sure they have a Prince that justifies the Supposition now and then the most ungrateful Paradox and against Sense it self for our Seditious Souls to suggest and insinuate his Real Intentions for their Good to be nothing but Design and Plot upon them for Ill. An ORDER of Council with such Sycophants is turned into a trick of Court And their Kings Proclamations are obeyed only because they cannot conveniently resist as if the whole Board was packt only to please a designing Prince But base Villains your selves know that his aims have ever been for the publick Peace and Prosperity even at the same time your dangerous disorders have made it almost inconsistant with his own safety and security You see your Soveraign Sit and Act in a Sphere and that only He where Favour cannot charm or Fear frown into Compliance And who can be supposed then besides him less prejudic'd or more concerned for your good Would you have your Gentlemen of the Shop and Yard take their Measures of the State too We have experimented already that those made the very Government a Trade also and by those your very Properties and Lives too would be bought and sold we too lately saw some Symptoms of that state
Murmering since there has been none alter'd or destroy'd but what has been by Inquiry of the Kings Quo Warranto or their own Act of Resignation yet sure if the Common Law did not favour the King in this Case Common Equity would since those Priveleges were but the very Grant of his own Ancestors But if we must consider nothing but Mr. Sidney's Original Power and Right and all that lodg'd in his good People of England it may be their Birth-right too to Rebel they may and must Murder their Monarch and that by their own Maxims when they think him not fit to Govern or Live I have heard it often said that the Members in Parliament represent the people and for that Reason are call'd their Representatives but if this Original Power which is delegated to them upon such a Representation must Subject their Soveraign as Mr. S. will have it to â—hese his Judges of the particular Cases â—rising upon such a Subjection then â—hey must e'en represent their King too and every Session of Parliament that he Summons is but an unhappy Solemnity whom himself Assemblies for his own deposition if such positions should obtain 't is those that indeed would make the Monarch fearful of Parliaments and not those idle Suggestions of Mr. ‖ posts p. 92. Hunt that the Weekly Pamphlets were endeavouring to make him forego them and it was this very opinion that promoted the last War which he would not have so much as mention'd Lastly if this Original Power of the People be delegated to their Representatives this People that did so Communicate it can at their pleasure * Quia qui mandatam Jurisdictionem suscepit proprium nil habet sed ejus qui mandavit Jurisdictione utitur Zouch Elem. pars 5. § 4. recall it â—nd exercise it themselves for that is esâ—ential to the Nature of a Communicated Power for upon supposition of the peoples having such a Power it would be of the same Nature that their Kings is for Power of Supremacy wherever it be lodg'd is still the same and you see that the Power which the King has is often Commission'd to the Judges in his several Courts of Justice and yet I cannot see how his Majesty by Virtue of such a ‖ Quamvis more majorum Jurisdictio transfertur meruÌ„ Imperium quod Lege datur non transit D. 1. 21. 1. Commissionating of his Servants does Exclude himself from the Administration of those Laws that he has only allow'd others to Administer or from a recalling of that power to himself which he has only delegated to another for 't is a certain Maxim in reason that whatsoever Supream does empower others with his Authority does still retain more than he does impart tho I know 't is a Resolution in our * Coke 4. Inst c. 7. p. 71. Law Books that if any one would render himself to the Judgment of the King it would be of none effect because say they all his power Judicial is Committed to others and yet even they themselves will allow in many Cases their lies an Appeal to the King But what ever was the Sense of my Lord Coke in this point who has none of the fewest Faults and failings tho hiâ— Voluminous Tracts are the greatest easâ— and Ornament of the Law his resolution here is not so agreeable to Commoâ— Equity and Reason therefore I say it reason it must follow That Mr. Sid. people having but delegated their Power to the Parliament still retain a power of concurring with preventing or revoking of that power they have given but in charge to their Representatives and if so then they can call them to an Account for the ill exercise of that power they have intrusted them with set up some High Court of Justice again for upon this very principle the last was erected not only for the Tryal of their King but for hanging up every Representative that has abus'd them as they are always ready to think in the excercise of that Original power with which he was by his Electors intrusted these sad Consequences which necessarily flow from this lewd Maxim would make their house of Commons very thin and they would find but few Candidates so ready to spend their Fortunes in Boâ—ough Beer only for the Representing of â—hose that might hang them when they came home upon the least misrepresentation of their proceedings and these sad suggestions of the sorrowful Case of such precarious representatives are infallible Consequences from the very words of our Republican even in those very Arguments that he uses for the subjection Tryal p. 23. of his King for if his King as â— man must be Subject to the Judgment oâ— his People that make him a King sure he cannot be so Impudently Immodesâ— but he must allow his Members of Parliament that are much more made bâ— them by Continual Election and the very breath of their Mouth to be as mucâ— accountable to their Makers for if â—â— should recur in this Case as he has no other refuge to the Peoples having excluded themselves from this Originaâ— Power once in themselves by conferring it on their Representatives theâ— farewel to the very Foundation of thaâ— Babel they would Build and Establish then they fall even in the fate â—â— their aspiring Fore-fathers fall by the confusion of their own Tongues anâ— like the rearers of that proud Pile thaâ— would have reacht at Heaven and the Almighty as these at his Anointed anâ— the Crown For certainly by the same Reason that they cannot Judge and Punish thosâ— whom they have Commission'd to represent them because they have delegateâ— and transferr'd to them their Originâ—â— power by the same Argument and that a fortiori have they excluded â—hemselves from their natural Power of â—eing Judges of their King because they â—ave conferr'd upon him the SVPREAM Neither can they help themselves here with their Imaginary and imply'd Conditions upon which Mr. Sidney says our Soveraign must be supposed to have first accepted his Crown For there never was any Representatives yet elected but as many Conditions and Obligations â—re implyed and supposed and by the same Reason must be required and exacted such as the serving their Electors faithfully the representing of their just grievances the promoting the Interest and profit of the place they serve for and if Mr. Sidneys good People must be Judges of the Violation of any of these Trusts as they must by the Maxims of their own making then the Representatives and the poor Parliament fare as bad and fall in the common fate of their King into the fearful Sentence of Mr. Sidney's own Words That Performance will be exacted and revenge taken by those they have betrayed And for to show them that my Conclusions are grounded upon matter of Fact as well as Sense and Reason and not like their lewd Arguments upon nothing but some Factious Notions and Seditious Opinions I desire them to consider whether they
the fourth of this Edward was made more for this King's Satisfaction than the desires of the People and that from the sequel you 'll see they were not then clamoring for frequency of Parliaments when they were to pay for it too and have their Treasure exhausted with their Blood in frequent Wars He had drawn the Scots upon his back who in the War like their Old Parents the Picts were always ready to invade us at home when ever we attempted any thing abroad He had before him France in the Front to whom he was ready to give Battle And he perhaps presuming his Subjects might be loth to be convened for subsidies so often as such Exigencies must require might prudently get them to oblige him for such an Annual Convention which they must the better bear with when the result of their own Act and none of the stretch of his Prerogative 'T is true the 36. of his Reign is more expressive of the Reasons for which they should be called i. e. for the redressing of Mischiefs and Grievances but 't is evident that piece of popularity was more for the tickling their Hearts and then they might be soon brought to turn out their Purses and those he wanted then too tho in peace having begun to beautifie and enlarge his Castle of Windsor his best Delight as well as the place of his Birth And his soothed Subjects seconded it with such singular kindness that about that time such a three years subsidy was granted as they resolved should be no president for the * 36. Ed. 3. cap. 11. time to come and these Suggestions I submit to the light of any others Reason for the Politicks of that Old State can't be expected to be clear in History since even in Matters of Fact in many things 't is dark And such sort of Suggestions seem to sound and salve the Case much better than that forced Solution upon the very Letter of the Law their if need be or if there be Occasion For I am satisfied the Design of those Statutes was to determine their King tho' I doubt of their Force and that those Conditional Expressions must be Relative to their Antecedent Words more or oftner and so must be meant only of their being called inclusively more frequently within the Term. To leave now this learned Lunatick this distemper'd Body of Law and consider him under another Denomination that of a Divine and zealously discussing with a Rage unbecoming the calmness he professes as well as the Character of such a Profession the Damnable Doctrine as he would plainly prove it of the King 's Divine Right for he makes it the most * page 60 69 70 86 87 88 89. Mischievous Opinion the most Schismatical the Destroyer of every Man 's Right the Betrayer of the Government Monstrous Extravagant Papal Opinion Treacherous Impious Sacrilegious Destructive of Peace Pregnant with Wars produced our own Civil one and what is worse Plague and Famine and a Crucifying of Christ afresh A Black charge indeed for a poor Criminal that at first sight seems so White and Innocent He should have made it a Trojan Horse too for once for he has made the Belly of it big enough to hold an Army of Men or a Legion of Devils If this be the Judges manner of Trying his King 's Right he would have made a worse Chief Justice for deciding the Subjects I have heard of some Sycophants that have prov'd Wolves in Sheeps cloathing but here the Cautionary Text is turned inside out too and somewhat of the Lamb drest all in the grisly Garment of the Wolf And 't is like they had their Dogs ready to worry it too before they would discover the cheat I am sure if they won't allow this Doctrine to be Religious 't is so far from being Romish that it is utterly inconsistent with their Religion for the Doctrine of their Church attributes all the Divinity that it can to the Pope that presides in it makes him not only Infallible but supream over Kings and Princes and sure they may allow that those Romanists are as much concerned for the Popes Supremacy as Mr. Hunt for the Peoples for His Holiness has the help of Saint Peter to prove his Divine Right from his Succession to his Person and See tho he can't from His * His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pet. 2. 13. Text. When whatever they would gather from that Apostle the Lawyers Popelings have nothing left to shew for theirs unless the very Charter and Grant of their King yet tho this Doctrine be as far from Rome as they think the Romanist from Heaven tho their Writers with Hunts own Brutish Rage have run it down tho it be so directly destructive of the Papal power still has this preposterous piece of paradox made it Popish and treated it almost in the same Language the †Fox Vol. 3. p. 515. zealous Prelate did their Romish Church and ‖ Vid. Dissenters sayings all the dangerous Dissenters do our own Wolves Thieves Enemies of Christ Brood of Antichrist Babylonish Beast Devilish Drab sink of Sodom Seat of Satan It is a pretty way of Confutation indeed in the very beginning of an Argument to beg the Question He takes it for granted from the Text of Saint Peter that Kings are but an Ordinance of man and then stoutly concludes that it is impossible that any that is of Man's appointment can ever be of God's Ordination to be presumptively baffled recommend me to such a Disputant And with that supposititious Triumph does as some think a Jesuit's Book de Jure Magistratuum enter the List full of Victory even before the Battle and this perverted Text in one of his Editions is turned into the Laurel and Lemma to Crown the forehead of that Impudent piece This is made the Goliah of those Philistins who not with their bulk alone but with the very Letter of the Bible and the Book of Life can defie the Living God for such a Construction upon Saint Peter by common sense can never be put for place this power of Ordaining Kings once in the Power of SVBJECTS and all the World can never hinder THEM from being too the SVPREAM POWER Was not this very Text actually turn'd up for the Supream Authority of the Parliament of England and was that too meant by St. Peter when in the very next Line he calls the King Supream Seditious Dolts do not make the Bible contradict it self tho your Books do does not this very Text take almost an expressive care to prevent even with providence such a silly construction and give a signal Signification where this Supremacy resides viz. in the King But to give these well read Rebels rope enough and let them stretch their Treasonable Positions as they ought their Necks I 'll plead for them and in that which can be their only Reply viz. That this Supremacy must be understood only to be in these Kings after they are