and with the mouth is confession made unto salvation If a man deny Christ with his mouth the faith of the heart will not serve his turn Sixthly Christ denounceth damnation to all those who for saving of their lives do deny their Religion and promiseth eternal life to all those who do seale the truth of their Christian faith with their blood against the commands of heathenish Magistrates Who soever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it Christ doth not promise eternal life for violation of true Religion Lastly no Christian Soveraign or Common-wealth did ever assume any such authority to themselves Never any subjects did acknowledge any such power in their Soveraigns Never any Writer of Politicks either waking or dreaming did ever phansie such an unlimitted power and authority in Princes as this which he ascribeth to them not onely to make but to justifie all doctrines all laws all religions all actions of their Subjects by their commands as if God Almighty had reserved onely Soveraign Princes under his own Jurisdiction and quitted all the rest of mankind to Kings and Common-wealths In vain ye worship me teaching for doctrine the commandments of men that is to say making true religion to consist in obedience to the commands of men If Princes were heavenly Angels free from all ignorance and passions such an unlimited power might better become them But being mortal men it is dangerous least Phaeton-like by their violence or unskilfulnesse they put the whole Empire into a flame It were too too much to make their unlawful commands to justifie their Subjects If the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch He who imposeth unlawful commands and he who obeyeth them do both subject themselves to the judgements of God But if true religion do consist in active obedience to their commands it justifieth both their Subjects and themselves True religion can prejudice no man He taketh upon him to refute the distinction of obedience into active and passive As if a sin against the law of nature could be expiated by arbitrary punishments imposed by men Thus it happeneth to men who confute that which they do not understand Passive obedience is not for the expiation of any fault but for the maintenance of innocence When God commands one thing and the soveraign Prince another we cannot obey them both actively therefore we chuse to obey God rather than men and yet are willing for the preservation of peace to suffer from man rather than to resist If he understood this distinction well it hath all those advantages which he fancieth to himself in his new platform of government without any of those inconveniences which do attend it And whereas he intimateth that our not obeying our Soveraign actively is a sin against the law of nature meaning by the violation of our promised obedience it is nothing but a grosse mistake no Subjects ever did nor ever could make any such pact to obey the commands of their Soveraign actively contrary to the law of God or nature This reason drawn from universal practise was so obvious that he could not misse to make it an objection The greatest objection is that of the practice when men ask where and when such power has by Subjects been acknowledged A shrewd objection indeed which required a more solid answer then to say That though in all places of the World men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand it could not thence be inferred that so it ought to be As if there were no more difficulty in founding and regulating a Common-wealth then in distinguishing between a loose sand and a firm rock or as if all Societies of men of different tempers of different humours of different manners and of different interests must of necessity be all ordered after one and the same manner If all parts of the World after so long experience do practise the contrary to that which he fancieth he must give me leave to suspect that his own grounds are the quick-sands and that his new Common-wealth is but a Castle founded in the aire That a Soveraign Prince within his own dominions is custos utriusque tabulae the keeper of both the Tables of the Law to see that God be duely served and justice duely administred between man and man and to punish such as transgresse in either kind with civil punishment That he hath an Architectonical power to see that each of his Suctjects do their duties in their several callings Ecclesiasticks as well as Seculars That the care and charge of seeing that no doctrine be taught his Subjects but such as may consist with the general peace and the authority to prohibit seditious practices and opinions do reside in him That a Soveraign Prince oweth no account of his actions to any mortal man That the Kings of England in particular have been justly declared by Act of Parliament Supreme Governours in their own kingdoms in all causes over all persons as well Ecclesiastical as Civil is not denyed nor so much as questioned by me Otherwise a kingdom or a Common-wealth should be destitute of necessary means for its own preservation To all this I do readily assent all this I have vindicated upon surer grounds than those desperate and destructive principles which he supposeth But I do utterly deny that true religion doth consist in obedience to Soveraign Magistrates or that all their injunctions ought to be obeyed not onely passively but actively or that he is infallible in his laws and commands or that his Soveraign authority doth justifie the active obedience of his Subjects to his unlawful commands Suppose a King should command his Judges to set Naboth on high among the people and to set two sons of Belial before him to bear witnesse against him saying Thou didst blaspheme God and the King and then carry him out and stone him that he may dye The regal authority could neither justifie such an unlawful command in the King nor obedience in the Judges Suppose a King should set up a golden Image as Nebucadnezar did and command all his Subjects to adore it his command could not excuse his Subjects from idolatry much lesse change idolatry into true religion His answer to the words of Peter and John do signifie nothing The High Priest and his Councel commanded the Apostles not to teach in the name of Jesus Here was sufficient humane authority yet say the Apostles Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye The question was not what were the commands that was clear enough what God commanded and what man commanded but who was to be obeyed which could admit no debate He asketh What has the Bishop to doe with what God sayes to me when I read the Scriptures more than I have to do with what God sayes to him when he reads them
Naboths vineyard There is neither necessity nor Common-wealth in the case The Lacedemonian thefts were warranted by a general law not only consented to universally but sworn unto And if it had been otherwise the value was so small and the advantage apprehended to be so great to the Common-wealth that no honest Subject would contradict it Right and Title may be transferred by Law and there can be no wrong where consent is explicate and universal such consent taketh away all errour But if the consent be onely implicite to the making or admitting of just laws and unjust laws be obtruded in the place of just the Subject suffers justly by his own Act but he or they that were trusted sinne And if he be a Soveraign oweth an account to God if subordinate both to God and man But he justifieth the taking away of mens estates either in part or in whole without president Law or president necessity or subsequent satisfaction And maintaineth that not only the Subject is bound to submit but that the Soveraign is just in doing it I cannot passe by his good affection to the Nobility of Europe In these parts of Europe it hath been taken for a right of certain persons to have place in the highest Councel of State by inheritance but good councel comes not by inheritance And the politicks is an harder study than Geometry I think he mistakes the Councel of State for the Parliament And who more fit to concur in the choice of Laws than they who are most concerned in the Laws than they who must contribute most if there be occasion to the maintenance of the Laws No art is hereditary more than politicks A Musitian doth not beget a Musitian Yet we see the fathers eminence in any Art begets a propension in his posterity to the same And where two or three successive generations do happily insist in the steps one of another they raise an Art to great perfection I do easily acknowledge that Politicks are an harder study than Geometry and the practise more than the Theorye gained more by experience than by study Therefore our Parliaments did prudently permit the eldest sons of Barons to be present at their consultations to fit them by degrees for that person which they must one day sustein But he had a mind to shew the States men his teeth as he had done to all other professions There are many other errours and mistakes in his Politicks as this That Soveraignty cannot be divided or that there cannot be a mixed form of government which is a meer mistaking of the question For though it be sometimes stiled a mixed monarchy because it doth partake of all the advantages of Aristocracy and Democracy without partaking of their inconveniences yet to speak properly it is more aptly called a temperated or moderated Soveraignty rather than divided or mixed Neither did any English Monarch communicate any essential of Soveraignty to any Subject or Subjects whatsoever All civil power legislative judiciary military was ever exercised in the name of the King and by his authority The three Estates of the Kingdom assembled in Parliament were but suppliants to the King to have such or such Laws enacted What is it then that hath occasioned this mistake though the King hath not granted away any part of his Soveraign power yet he hath restrained himself by his Coronation-oath and by his great Charters from the exercise of some part of it in some cases without such and such requisite conditions except where the evident necessity of the Common-wealth is a dispensation from Heaven for the contrary So he hath restrained himself in the exercise of his legislative power that he will governe his Subjects by no new Laws other than such as they should assent unto It is not then any legislative power which the two Houses of Parliament have either exclusively without the King or inclusively with the King but a receptive or rather a preparative power sine qua non without which no new laws ought to be imposed upon them and as no new laws so no new taxes or imposition which are granted in England by a Statute Law But this it is evident how much his discourse of three souls animating one body is wide from the purpose and his supposition of setting up a supremacy against the Soveraignty Canons against Laws and a ghostly authority against the civil weigheth lesse than nothing seeing we acknowledge That the civil Soveraign hath an Archirectonicall power to see that all Subjects within his dominions do their duties in their several callings for the safety and tranquility of their Common-wealth and to punish those that are exorbitant with the civil sword as well those who derive their habitual power immediatly from Christ as those who derive it from the Soveraign himself Then the constitution of our English policy was not to be blamed the exercise of the power of the keys by authority from Christ was not to be blamed but T. H. deserveth to be blamed who presumeth to censure before he understand Another of his whimsies is That no law can be unjust by a good law I mean not a just law for no law can be unjust c. It is in the Laws of the Common-wealth as in the laws of gaming Whatsoever the Gamsters all agree on is injustice to none of them An opinion absurd in it self and contradictory to his own ground There may be laws tending to the contumely of God to Atheisme to denial of Gods providence to Idolatry all which he confesseth to be crimes of high treason against God There may be Laws against the Law of nature which he acknowledgeth to be the divine Law eternally immutable which God hath made known to all men by his eternal word born in themselves that is to say natural reason But this question whether any law can be unjust hath been debated more fully between him and me in my answer to his Animadversions The true ground of this and many other of his mistakes is this That he fancieth no reality of any natural justice or honesty nor any relation to the Law of God or nature but only to the Laws of the Common-wealth So from one absurdity being admitted many others are apt to follow His Oeconomicks are no better than his Politicks He teacheth parents that they cannot be injurious to their children so long as they are in their power Yes too many wayes both by omission and commission He teacheth mothers that they may cast away their infants or expose them at their own discretion lawfully He teacheth parents indifferently that where they are free from all subjection they may take away the life 's of their children or kill them and this justly What horrid doctrines are these It may be he will tell us that he speaketh only of the state of meer nature but he doth not for he speaketh expressely of Common-wealths and paralleth Fathers with Kings and Lords to
unlesse he have authority given him by him whom Christ hath constituted his Lieutenant First I answer his question with a question What if the Bishop have such authority and he hath not He cannot deny but the Bishop had such authority when he had not And yet he doubted not even then to interpret the Scriptures contrary both to the Bishop and to Christs Lieutenant Secondly I answer That by his own confession there is a great difference between him and me in this particular Our Saviour hath promised this infallability in those things which are necessary to salvation to the Apostles until the day of judgement that is to say to the Apostles and to Pastors to be consecrated by them by imposition of hands Therefore the Soveraign Magistrate as he is a Christian is obliged to interpret the holy Scriptures when there is question about the mysteries of faith by Ecclesiastical persons rightly ordained Unlesse he have such ordination by imposition of hands I am better qualified then he is for the interpretation of Scripture by his own confession But he supposeth that a Bishop or a Synod of Bishops should be set up for our civil Soveraign A likely thing indeed Suppose the skie fall then we shall have Larks But to gratifie him let us suppose it What then Then that which I object against him he could object in the same words against me So he might if I should be so fond as to say that true religion did consist in obedience to that single Bishop or that Synod of bishops as he saith that it doth consist in obedience to the Soveraign Prince He deceiveth himself and mistaketh us if he think that we hold any such ridiculous opinions If he could shew that Bishops do challenge an infallability to themselves by divine right and which is more than infallability a power to authorise all their commands for true religion he said something to the purpose He telleth us that he remembers there have been books written to entitle the Bishops to a divine right underived from the Civil Soveraign Very likely if the law of nature do make a divine right Perhaps a locomotive faculty or a liberty of respiration which all other men do challenge as well as Bishops But he meaneth no religion Why not They have their holy orders by succession from the Apostles not from their civil Soveraigns They have the power of the keys by the concession of Christ Whose sins yet remit they are remitted whose sins ye retain they are retained None can give that to another which they have not themselves Where did Christ give the power of the keys to the civil Magistrate I was far enough from thinking of Odes when I writ my defence of liberty That which he calleth my Ode was written about a thousand years before I was born I cited it onely to shew the sense of the primitive Christians concerning obedience to the unlawful commands of Soveraign Princes that we ought to obey God rather than them And to that it is full Iussum est Caesaris ore Gallieni Princeps quod colit ut colamus omnes Aeternum colo principem dierum Factorem dominumque Gallieni This put him into such a fit of versifying that he could not forbear to make a Parode such as it is wherein out of pure zeal if it were worth taking notice of he retaineth the errours of the presse And so confounding Regal Supremacy with a kind of omnipotence and the external Regiment of the Church with the power of the keys and jurisdiction in the inner court of conscience and forraign usurpations with the ancient rights and liberties of the English Church and a stipendiary School-master who hath neither title nor right but the meer pleasure of the master of the family with Bishops who are the successors of the Apostles in that part of their office which is of ordinary and perpetual necessity and the Kings proper councel in Ecclesiastical affairs He concludeth his Animadversion with this fair intimation to Doctor Hamond and me That if we had gone upon these his principles when we did write in defence of the Church of England against the imputation of Scisme quitting our own pretenses of jurisdiction and jus divinum we had not been so shrewdly handled as we have been by an English Papist I hope neither the Church of England nor any genuine son of the English Church hath complained to him that the Church hath suffered any disadvantage by our pains nor our adversaries in that cause boasted to him of any advantage they have gained I do rather believe that it is but his own imagination without ever reading either party Why should he interrupt his sadder meditations with reading such trifles But for his principles as he calleth them I thank him I will have nothing to do with them except it be to shew him how destructive they are both to Church and Common-wealth But this I believe in earnest that if we had gone upon his principles we should not have made our selves the object of our adversaries pity but well of their scorn In his conclusion or in his postscript chuse whether you will call it first he setteth down his censure of my defence with the same ingenuity and judgement that he hath shewed hitherto that is none at all which I esteem no more than a deaf nut Let the book justifie it self And to the manner of writing he bites first and whines doth an injury and complains The Reader will find no railing in my Treatise nor any of those faults which he objecteth I rather fear that he will censure it as too complying with such an adversary But he had not then given me so much occasion as he hath done since to make him lose that pleasure in reading which he took in writing In the next place he presenteth to the Readers view a large muster of terms and phrases such as are used in the Schools which he calleth nonsense and the language of the kingdom of darknesse that is all the confutation which he vouchsafeth them He hath served them up oft enough before to the Readers loathing Let him take it for a warning wheresoever he reneweth his complaint I shall make bold to renew my story of old Harpaste who complained that the room was dark when the poor Beldam wanted her sight There is more true judgement and solid reason in any one of the worst of those phrases which he derides then there is in one of his whole Sections Thirdly he cavilleth against a saying of mine which he repeateth thus He hath said that his opinion is demonstrable in reason though he be not able to comprehend how it consisteth together with Gods eternal prescience and though it exceed his weak capacity yet he ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest Whence he concludeth after this manner So to him that truth is manifest and demonstrable by reason which is beyond his capacity Let the Reader see what an