Deliverance having forgotten that Compassion which I deeply have for all Royal Tragedies would be apt to make a jest of this and reply upon you that they have been served well enough in the first place before the Prince and Princess of Orange who are well enough served too and all as they deserve But I shall only observe your inconsiderateness of discourse in bringing in King James into the Catalogue of his own Heirs after his Cession upon which I said the Succession was not violently broken but altered by the consent of the next Heirs And this I think I may still defend without breach of modesty even tho' I should allow the proceedings of the Convention to have been violations of his Right For a violent Expulsion of a Possessor may consist with the true Succession of the next Reversioners But admitting the Cession or Abdication for real what need was there to solicit his further consent to our Establishments And for your Prince of Wales beside the doubt of the Nation concerning his Descent the late Queen brought him into a Cession before the Cession and Abdication of the King nor were there any Claims entred for him before the Convention and so he might be legally neglected for want of Claimer I know this has been charged on the Prince and the Convention for not admitting the Discussion of that Descent But I think no Law could oblige them to move it ex officio when he was absent and no Promoter appeared on his behalf But further to enquire into the Equity hereof if King James at the Prince's demand had called a Parliament that had been one of the Principal Articles to have been judicially determined by the Parliament between them But King James not calling a Parliament nor allowing the Convention power of Judgment herein there was no reason such a Question should be admitted there which if determined against King James and his Prince of Wales should not have concluded them but if given against the Princess of Orange should have confined and excluded her As to your politick stroke upon the Princess of Denmark I shall reflect no more than this that if she will permit you to the Conduct of her Counsels she is like to thrive mightily by it For you will advise her either to present flight or sedition only to make way for I know not what or how many new Princes of another Venter whose real Descent no one should ever know but the Men of the Mysteries Perhaps your Agents have laid the Seeds of Discontent between the two Princely Ladies already in order to form your other Projects but I hope that God that has hitherto preserved them in their natural Rights against all the Arts of those who would have illegitimated or intercepted their Sucession will still preserve her Royal Highness from the Snares you lay for her And since you have blurted out the Secret to the Publick she and the whole Kingdom have reason to take close notice of it Dyscher When we object the immoralities of these proceedings you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That the internal immorality of all Actions must be carefully distinguished from the Civil Consequences of them A Son say you by fraudulent Arts gets judgment in Law and seizes his Fathers Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this mans immorality is damnable Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so while they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law But if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an Evil Act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawful Acts then their being Officers of Law will rather increase than diminish their Guilt T. B's 2d Lett. p. 23. Eucher Now all this I allow too whether done judicially or in forms of Law or no. But if it be done in private and not in Legal Forms it is nothing to our purpose or my objection But if the Judges sit in Judgment between the Father and the Son and very wickedly cast the Father in his Cause yet it being done in form of Law the Judgment will pass into such Execution as will be taken for formally legal tho' the Judgment be morally unjust and contract an heinous Guilt on the Conscience of the Judge So that still the Subject People are innocent in admitting the Acts of the Convention as Legal tho' really before God they had been Unrighteous Judges Yet because you herein sharpen a Dart against the King and Queen tho' I never intended my Objection to such a Reflection the Case you set is not parallel to ours For the Convention sate not in Judgment between the Father and Son and Daughter the Father not being subject in Law nor submitting his Cause to them but when the Father had left his Royal Estate the Prince calls them together to settle the forsaken State of the Kingdom which they did as it now stands And as this Judgment was in Form Legal and Authoritative so you cannot prove it immoral or injurious For as the Estates were not concerned to enquire into the temper of Spirit in the Contest between the Father and the Children toward each other which was not of Civil Cognizance so they debated only the Civil Purposes of King James's Actions and how the state of this Land might be legally and securely fixed after his Desertion in which they acted as Legal Judges and no otherwise What was done before or out of Convention by any of the Members and the inner motions and aims of particular mens minds there sitting during these agitations these are extrajudicial and so not chargeable on the whole Court as a Council of State as being no parts of their formal Determinations Dyscher So for your Robbers and Pirates a man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it But if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawful if you say they acquire a just Right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually joyn with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher This it seems is your reply to what I said * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And is not this a pretty Refutation of that Assertion to say that all that assert assist and share in Wrong are Rogues The reason of my instance was that such Pirates and Tyrants often seize on such as they have no Right of Dominion over and may perhaps threaten to torture or destroy them except they submit and contract
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
to suffer this only till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered If this be so why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their Power to mend when they please Let them unanimosly as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self and without any great pains trouble or danger T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19 20. Eucher But I thought I had long before strangled the life and force of this Objection having abundantly proved our Submission to this National Settlement faultless And so a breach of National Contract is no fair way to a recovery for an opportunity only of doing a thing legally can put us into a fair capacity of recovering the ordinary Course which is not as you â—ancy the business of a moment but an expectation of years and proper Conjunctures at the hands of God whose leisure we are to wait for without our own too violent anticipations Thus the Nation behaved it self thro-out all the Reigns of Henry IV V. and VI. whom you would have challenged for Rebels in lingring too long in the restitution of the Right Line But whereas you propose to us an universal unanimity in reversing this Constitution I will dare undertake the Affair for you sub poena Capitis when you can find me out an effectual Expedient of making us all unanimous Otherwise what shall the unanimous do that are the far less numbers unarmed and in no publick Capacity of acting for the Kingdom against those settled and formed Powers that can easily squeeze all our little unanimities to pieces Shall there be no end of strife No yielding to legal forms of Determination And when there is but little hope or â—wisting the Sand-rope can your thing do it self and that with little trouble pains or danger And yet if King James Abdicated by a real Cession as the Nation judged and I have proved your project would violate not only this extraordinary Settlement but your ordinary Rule also by which in the moment of Cession it devolves on the next Heir Lineal and the Course cannot turn retrograde without the Consent of all the Heirs in being or their proper Curators for them Dyscher But I see you relapse again and become a zealous Advocate for your extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by Extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Vsurpations and Confusions be what they will still men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like Acts. Nor do I think such a State doth acquit men from the Obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind And if any such things as are necessary for the maintenance of human Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should now be done or enacred and hereafter be confirmed by King James I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher Since I am bound to follow the way you lead me the first thing I am to observe is your mistake or perâ—â—â—â—ion of my words about the submission of Heirs Lineal by which you say I subtilly mean their confirmation of the Statutes of Extra-lineal Kings which is no part or glance of my meaning and no man carefully heeding the Order of my words could think it to be so For I mention their submission to somewhat mentioned before those Statutes And I truly meant the long and frequent submissions of the Heirs Lineal as Subjects â—o Kings Extra-lineal actually Regnant particularly under the Lancastrian Reigns And even your Edward the IVth Father Duke of York swore Allegiance to King Henry the VIth and kept it till new â—â—aâ—ses of Rupture arose between them So that it is a very impertinent importunity to clamâ—â—r aâ—or◠〈◊〉 subsequent confirmations which I â—ever â—â—â—tioned And instead of subtil it had beer too silly in me to have called a Confirmation of an invalid Act a submission to that feeble thing which is thereby enlivened And yet by your leave all After-confirmations do not suppose always an antecedent Nullity in the Act confirmed for they sometimes secure sometimes continue and sometimes double an antecedent validity which all the Statutes under Extralineals had in themselves for the time being before there could be room for those subsequent Ratifications and the perpetuity of their Virtue stands not in those Ratifications but in the Non-repeal of them And yet however had it been otherwise by parity of Reason all our Acts obliged the Subject now during this present Reign and we are thereby acquitted in our present submission whatsoever nullities it may fall under in your next Revolution But there is a Famous Act viz. the 11th of Henry the VIIth Chap. 1. made in an Extra-lineal Reign that declares it for Law and Equity that Subjects pay their Allegiance to the King for the time being and indemnifies them herein against after punishments This Law was never since confirmed censured or repealed by any succeeding Prince or Parliament and yet stands firm in the Body of our Statutes to all Civil Effects and Judgments which pass ever since according to the importance and tenour thereof And you your self grant me enough for the time being that the Estates may sit in Parliament under Extra-lineal Kings to do and enact things necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind and are not acquitted from an obligation to do so thro' the disorder in the Succession and such Acts in this Reign when hereafter confirmed by King James you will not condemn Sir your humble Servant But can you tell how such Acts could or can pass in such Parliaments without an Oath of Allegiance taken to such Extra-lineal Kings by all the Members I doubt this will put you out of your good humour again and that is a great pity because you are so seldom in it But however these honest Acts must be valid for the time being upon us till King James returns or else the Obligation of the present State to preserve the Society or promote the real Good of Mankind by them will be but of little Virtue or Use Dyscher But pray Sir upon such extraordinary interruptions did all men ever think themselves bound to approve them Did not they still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or very ill purpose while no Peace or Ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men
doubt of the Lineal Right will you require them to swear Allegiance to a doubted Title If not then what allowances do you concede under these doubted Lancastrian Reigns Or what Judgment pass you on the Allegiance then always given For so there must have been none sworn at all But if you will require a Nation to swear to a doubted Title does that Oath import an assertion of Right or no If it does then you will require a Nation to affirm that upon Oath of which confessedly they are not certain and that is one degree of Perjury If such Oath does not implicitly at least assert Right then it is no acknowledgment of Right nor founded on the presumption of it which yet however you all contend for to render our present Allegiance in this point perjurious But it is hardly possible to suppose a whole Nation in doubt when there are Competitions For the Competitors and their Complices or Parties use absolutely to assert their Right without any doubt or pretence of doubting and then they that doubt tho' the generality must either suspend or go over upon uncertain Trust whereby they may exclude the Right unawares But if you will make allowances in doubtful Cases then what think you of the Questions arising upon King James's Desertion Did they afford any possible occasion or ground for disputation and scrutiny If so then it ministred doubts to be discussed and the Case was dubitable But 't is a vanity for you to say that it gave no possibility of disputation for they that disputed it thought otherwise and between their and your Opinions doubts must arise herein among the multitude to whom therefore your great allowances are to be made in their present Allegiance But to deal plainly with you I think no Man or Nation is to swear upon what is to them dubitable as what is honestly rightful may be but what is visibly formally and judicially Legal cannot be as coming home to the Senses of the Subject by publick ways of notice and operation and therefore all suspences and personal doubts must herein concede to such judicial Determinations to put an End to all those Miseries with which you unjustly charge us and maliciously threaten us Dyscher As for the Cession you mention you would do well to prove it a little better before you thus run away with it for granted You know we deny it and have given our Reasons for it to which I know no Answer returned unless it be Goals Fines and Pillories and threatnings to help it with Hemp. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 22. Eucher I think upon recollection you may find very full proof of the Cession already made but at your demand I will offer you another which tho' not better in it self yet will be better for you because it is of your own approbation Dyscher I pray what is that Eucher Do you not excuse the Desertion from being a Cession because he went away to save his Life Dyscher Yes I do See T. B's 2d Lett. p. 15. Eucher Did you not tell me at our last Conference * Sol. Ab. p. 22. that Abiathar at Solomons command went of to Anathoth to save his Life thereby And yet that his Priesthood determined by his own voluntary Cession herein Dyscher I have indeed owned * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 36. that it was a manifest Cession on Abiathar's part and I think it was well proved but then Abiathar did not oppose a claim as King James does Eucher If you mean a verbal owning the Right of the High-Priesthood 't is a hard matter to judge what Abiathar might say hereupon at Anathoth Yet admitting his silence under Solomon's Sentence and his Recession to Anathoth to be a real Cession from his Office in Law this being once effectually past and after claim could not have nulled this Cession any more than he * Vindic. of Depr Bish p. 70. that quitted his See by leaving the Omophorion could null that Act of Resignation by a verbal Protestation to the contrary For such Cession being a positive Act consists in quitting an Office thereby vacant and when that is filled with another Officer 't is too late for the Cedent or Deserter to renew a Claim and say his Desertion was no Cession which is nothing else but a vain Protestation against manifest fact which is perfectly King James's Case Dyscher He had need of a Case-hardned Face that will undertake to defend what you say that * Sol. Ab. p. 5. the Hereditary Succession was not violently broken but altered by the Consent of the next Heirs Sir it was broken with a witness for there were four before your Idol and now there are six and will you say there was no violence when our Native Prince was close confined in his own Kingdom But now you will needs persuade us that this was done with consent Now you would have done well to have produced the consent of King James and the Prince of Wales who ought to be served in the first place And then as for the two Princesses whom certainly you mean by those whom you fasly call the next Heirs they may dispose of their own as they please but they ought not cannot give away anothers Right Only as to the Princess Ann of Denmark if she have given up her Right it will concern her for her safety to make it as publick as she can but if she have not given it away it then perhaps may concern her to make as much haste after her Father as may be and to carry her Son with her out of Herod 's Clutches for if her Sister should die 't is ten to one it comes too late T. B's 2d Lett. p. 22. Eucher I thought when you and I began Conferences on this Subject we should have only talked of Casuistical Points in order to the information and conduct of our Consciences and not have deviated into such an Unchristian and Seditious Railings And it grieves me on your behalf to the very bottom of my Soul to experience so much disingenuous bitterness in a man of your Character But since you are so unhappy as to know no bounds of moderation I must touch your miscarriages a little lightly After the Cession of King James I said the Succession was not violently broken And in answer to this you mentioned the Dutch Guards assigned by the Prince to attend King James before his Cession And this you falsly call a close confinement for had it been such how had he so easie liberty of going off But whatever this was it was before the Cession and then what is this to the after proceedings of the Convention of which alone I was speaking as not violent Then you as improperly require the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales who must be served first as antecedent in the Course of Descent Now I must tell you that there are among us some who thro' joy of our
a perpetual Servitude by Oath or other forms of engagement which they under such Exigences may lawfully yield to And proportionably the Estates of any Nation may be thus pressed by an irresistible Prince and thereupon lawfully submit to that injurious Demand of such Prince Nay if any Prince and the fiduciary Council of any Nation concert to oppress the Subject People by an unjust demand of Submission they being not only in Fact but Legal Constition uncapable to resist may for the same reason contract Submission or Legal Allegiance when their former Lord hath left them without order to shift for themselves and acts not within his Sphere as heretofore For herein you do not injure him but save your self which he has no right in such cases to deny you And this at least is the Case of all those who have taken the Oath of New Allegiance without doing any thing else in the Revolution tho' the Prince and our Convention had really done King James and us wrong For we could neither in Right nor Fact oppose it for our Representatives and the Lords having determined upon the Nation we were inhabil to censure their Judgement and consequently to oppose or subvert what we had no Authority to condemn Dyscher Much such another instance is * Sol. Ab. p. 6 7. your Lord of a Mannor Let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lords Tenants conspire against their lawful Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him Sir you may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your honesty for it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher I observe two grand defects in this Reply One that 't is not supposably legal that all the Tenants in the Mannor can by Legal Forms of Judgment dispossess a Lawful and possess a wrong Person into the Lordship of a Mannor because these Tenants are not Judges in Law And any other violent and illegal Forms of Expulsion and Admission quadrate not with our Case But Secondly 'T is a very silly supposition and never any where exemplified in Fact that all the Tenants under a state of National Government should violently out a true and put in a wrong Landlord vi armis and swear and pay the wrong Possessor all the Duties of the Homage accustomed when the Lord that is in by Law will bring the strength of the Country to reduce them And Thirdly You cannot duly apply this to our present Case of Allegiance For all King James's Subjects did not concur to out him either violently or judicially nor consequently to bring in the Stranger which is the form in which you state the Case of Rebellious Tenants Otherwise however my parallel holds good that if a great many of the Tenants conspire with a Stranger and bribe the Judges to a corrupt Judgment against the old true Landlord who being thereby ejected the Stranger comes in by forms of Law I say still the rest innocent Tenants tho' conscious of the Wrong may swear Homage and Fealty to the New de facto Landlord And so here put the Case as you would have it at the worst that never so great a part of King James's Subjects had with the Prince of Orange actually conspired against him and made him fly and thereupon a National Court assembling to sit upon the Tenure of his Estate had been corrupted to give wrong Judgment against him for the Prince yet the form of Process being legal the innocent Subjects may or must take him for their Royal Landlord that is in by Forms of Law and swear him the customary Homage and Fealty But for the justice of that Judgment I have fully advocated already and so in this place shall have no need to make repetition Dyscher But let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset You say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge King William with subjection to King James c. But does a Nephew or a Son in Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher Since I must bear the penance of answering your loose and impertinent Questions so often inculcated know you then that as to the point of Duty a Nephew owes an Uncle and a Son in Law owes his Father in Law Reverence on the account of those Relations if the Superior Relation loses not his Title to that Reverence by ill usage For if an Uncle shall misuse a Nephew or a Father in Law the Son in Law without Cause and will not fairly adjust or refer their differences upon demand the Nephew and Son in Law owe no respect at all for that such Uncle and Father in Law is worse than a stranger and a most unnatural Enemy And therefore the Nephew and Son in Law having not derived their Being Maintenance nor Education from the Uncle and Father in Law and being under no present dependence on them are free to vindicate their Gauses against such Uncle and Father in Law by those ways of defence that they are legally capable of either by Law Arbitration or War As for injustice you know I am no Advocate for it and therefore your Interrogation hereupon with your Reflection upon his Majesty is as invidious toward me as injurious towards his Majesty as I have before abundantly shewed Dyscher The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. she is in Duty bound to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and that with a more plenary consent if she judges her Husbands Cause to be just in it self But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is thus bound to follow her Husband thro' thick and thin let her have a care how she becomes partner in his sins But doth the Duty of a Wife take away the Relation of a Child They may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent But yet the great end of these Relations is to strengthen and support and not to destroy each other Besides your Reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there
Opinion must concede in order to Publick Peace So that here your imprudent Zeal on false Notions of Loyalty hurries you into Principles absolutely Seditious and Destructive to the Legal Constitution of all Governments and particularly that which the Kings of England have themselves established Dyscher Well to put an End to this Disquisition upon our own Laws what have you to say for the Legality or fulness of your Settlement from the Usages or customary Practice of Nations Eucher I hope you do not require me to corrade a vast heap of Historical Instances National Decrees and Determinations of Civilians hereupon This would be to repeat whole Libraries to an evidence of one particular Custom But your own reading will inform you that under the pressing exigences of Anarchy and Ruin the Superiors or Agents of all People have ever authentically contracted a change of Government and Governours as to them then appeared necessary to the Common Preservation Dyscher 'T is so indeed upon Conquests which some have pretended here to the shame reproach and forfeiture of their Country as well as in contradiction to common Sense the pretences of your King and the Sense of your Parliament But where there are no Conquests 't is not so easie to adduce such Custom of Nations Eucher That the Nation was not conquered is most evident yet that King William in the Military Course grew stronger than King James who disbanded all his Forces and stooped to the prevailing Prince is as evident nor was this any False Doctrine in the sense of the Nation But to assert that hereby alone the Right of the Crown accrued to King William even without the consequent Admission and Contract of the Nation had he pleased to have taken it on the meer Right of the Sword is what is indeed contrary to all Law and Reason For the meer force or victory of the Sword gives no Right or Authority even over a vanquished People till they federally resign to the Conqueror and then much less doth it so in a Nation not conquered But to omit the Laws of pure Conquests there are instances enough of Abdications Cessions and Desertions as many I believe and more than of simple and proper Victories to set out the sense of all Nations by For upon all such the places quitted admitted such consequent Settlements as the straits they were cast into would permit as is manifest in the leaving of Garrisons Holds or Countries And the truth is there is the same reason upon all proper Conquests and other Surrendries that legitimates the admission of a Change viz. the necessity of preserving the Publick Body from ruins and devastations Dyscher I do not remember indeed any ininstance to the contrary in the practices of Nations for they perhaps have been and are as bad as we ready to for shift themselves upon any pinch but generally careless of and perfidious to their unfortunate Princes Interests But what Reason can you shew for it in our Case which is so very plain and obvious that we were at liberty to have preserved our Sovereign and our selves together and if so how can this Settlement be admitted for legal or be reputed full against the so just Claims of our real Sovereign Eucher Here again you transgress the proper limits of a private Judgment when you take upon you to say that we i. e. our Convention could have secured King James in his Throne and this Nation in its Rights and Properties But in the main point where you stick viz. the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales you are very unreasonable For shall he who at last put all his Subjects into confusion by his leaving the Government hinder us from settling till he give us his Consent Or must the Consent of a Infant be waited who if he ever was or yet is is in the custody and disposal of an Enemy King who would settle him and us too with a witness if he had but a lucky Wind and a fair Opportunity It is possible that an offended Prince may meditate revenge on a People that will not yield up all to the insatiable claims of boundless Prerogative And Desertion would be the cheapest surest and severest way of revenge if they must never settle again till he please to authorize them and this truly would be the strangest of all Prerogatives There are also that say that King James's Priests counselled and his Queen engaged him to go off on this very account that we might fall into such Plagues thro' our Divisions and unsettled Looseness as should enable him to return with an absolute plenitude of Arbitrary Power But not to depend on uncertain fames with their oblique constructions what can the legal language of that Cession speak to his Loyal People but this I have disbanded my Army and will not contest it with the Sword I shift for my self and must leave you to shift for your selves and settlement as you can Since I yield to my fears and necessities so may you If even a Natural Parent to save his own life leaves his Son to the mercy of his Enemies the Son may contract Peace and subjection to that his Fathers Enemy for his own preservation nor can the meer Natural Relation and Interest of the Father in the Son vacate moral Obligation of such Contract till that power of his Enemy over his Son be otherwise legally dissolved by the Laws of War Redemption or otherwise So that tho' we should allow you that all King James's Enemies sinned in procuring this new Settlement upon us all yet his most Loyal Subjects may most innocently submit from the reason of the thing and the virtual Concession hereunto in the voice of his Desertion which must be supposed as made to his faithful Adherents tho' not to his Enemies So that should he ever return again he could not in any justice punish the meer submission to this new Settlement in those who contributed nothing to it And you that refuse it refuse that liberty which his Desertion legally gave you by all Civil Interpretations All which put together should be of great might with you to admit the present submission as Legal Nor ought his resumed Contests to be taken as Legal or just bars to the contrary For if there were such a Virtual and Legal Concession in his Desertion the Estates of his People taking the benefit of it have provided for us a Settlement upon that Concession which being passed and confirmed the supposed revocation of that Concession by a new War or Inauthoritative Declarations is null void and unobliging And so here was tho' not a Verbal yet a Legal Censent of King James which is as much as you your selves can in reason require to the justifying our present Submission and to the plenitude of our present Settlement Dyscher * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. These are pretty tricks to catch Dotterils But above all your most amazing pretence for your Cause
the Learned Casuist to Suit his Principles if he can with the Conditions and Capacities of Human Life and after Good endeavours this way he will find that these Civil Questions are not of Private Determination But if there be such Dreadful Dangers of Immoral Devotions on such Contested Rights of Government they Naturally ly on them who in Civil matters Oppose their Private Conceptions and Practices to Publick and Judicial Constitutions which is a Course in its own Nature formally Seditious and for that cause Un-Christian and may too truly and sadly Corrupt their Communion and Defile their Devotions who will not know the ways of Peace Dyscher You will needs suppose that if it be the Life of King James then it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Prince of this Crown But why may not both do it For because the Lawful King is Living and Claiming therefore the Commandments of God require of all his Subjects that they Pay him their Dutiful and Loyal Obedience They ought by all means to Support him in his Throne or Restore him to it as his Condition requires T. B. 2d Let. p. 20. Eucher In the Murther of a Parent King by his Son and Heir * Sol. Ab. p. 8. I proved that the sin did not Incapacitate the Parricide but that our Constitutions admit him to the Crown which you not being able to deny I conclude that Breach of Gods Commandments Nulls not a Title procured thereby And then you Assign the cause hereof that the Parent and all his Rights are Extinct by his Death but King James's Life and Contestation Diversifies his Case Then I rejoyn that it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Princes of this Crown but the Life and Contention of King James And is not this an Accurate and an undeniable Observation For if Breach of Gods Commandments either alone creates or with other Causes concurs to a Civil Incapacity then such Breach doth either partially or solely obstruct such capacity And if so the Murther of a Royal Father must be some Bar to the Succession of the Parricide But if it be none at all in that Case why should a less Sin against God Preclude a Title in another Case in Conjunction with another Cause which yet your selves will not dare deny to be alone Enclusive of King Williams Title Here then I will sift you upon this Point Would the continued being and Claim of King James Incapacitate King William of the Royal Title if King William had never broken any Commandment of God or No If you say Yea then the Breach of Gods Commandments Contributes nothing to King Williams Incapacity which alone ariseth by it self from the Life and Claim of King James it being Naturally impossible for two Men to be Total and Separate Proprietors of the same Right at one time a truth not at all belonging to Ethic's or Divinity If you say No then you yield that King William may be Entitled to King James's his Throne without breaking Gods Commandments even during the permanency of King James his Life and Right And han't you hereby well amended the matter But such are the results of affected Sophistries especially when they are Impertinent also Now that yours are so will be hence Manifest For our Question last was whether no Settlements procured by Breach of Gods Commandments must be Submitted to and particularly such as follow the Extinction of the former Proprietors Tenure and Title through such ill means And now you Answer me that Gods Commandments do Incapacitate King William of King James's Crown because King James's Title is not Extinct but Lives with him Which if it had been true I should also have denied King William a capacity to the Title not from the Moral Law but from Natural and Legal Impossibility And therefore I suppose King James's Tenure first Extinct when I say * Sol. Ab. p. 8. But if His Tenure be Extinct as it hath been Publickly judged by this Nation our Oath to him Ceases tho' be contend never so much for the Recovery And there I take it for necessary that the Judgment of the Nation must overballance all your contrary private Opinions as to all our publick Duties and Obligations Now when your words are disinvolved they amount to no more than this that the Law of God forbids one Man to seize on another Mans Permanent Right and Title in which as it is nothing to the Rhombus so you have no adversary But this is not your second or single Failure but here appears a third point of Ignorance for our Question was not what Gods Comments do forbid but whether the doing what God forbids in order to the procuring formal Titles and Tenures in Law by the real or Judicial Extinction of another Mans Tenures does Create a Civil Incapacity or Nullity in the Tenure so acquired This is what I deny and I defie you to Prove The instance of a Royal Heir upon the Murther of his Father is an unmovable Argument for me for tho' the Laws of God forbid him to procure the Crown that way yet if he violates those Duties the Laws of God do not null the Tenure acquired by forbidden Wickedness The Law of God forbad David to Usurp Vriah's wife while the Hittite's Title in her continued with his Life and the King might actually keep her but by no Legal form of Tenure The same Law of God forbad the King to Murther Vriah with the Sword of the Children of Ammon in order to a Matrimonial Tenure of his wife Yet when that wickedness was compleated the Title of the King in Bathsheba was Legal and valid even by the Judgment and Ratification of God himself Nay when Ahab had slain Naboth by Judicial Condemnation for falsly imputed Blasphemy the form of Title by which he after enjoyed Naboths Vine yard was Legal by Judicial Forfeiture tho' it were Morally unjust in the sight of God for had there been a Civil Nullity therein it had been necessary for him to have compassed Naboths Death by Capital Sentence in order to a Civil Title which Jezebel procured for him this way to avoid the Odium of open and formal Un-entitled Usurpation So that had your Loud Obloquies against their Majesties morals been never so true Yet King James's Tenure being Extinct doth not preclude a Civil Title in their present Majesties which we are now to abide by and defend by the greatest Suffrage of Gods Laws Reason and the Laws of Nations at which expression I have heard that your Friend T. B. winds up his Mouth and * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 26. thanks God he hath not so Learned Jesus Christ And it is like to be true for he seems to have Learn'd but little of him at least in his Doctrine Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly of heart and ye shall find rest to your Souls Dyscher To the Objection that Allegiance seemeth to imply
and the Sovereign too and can you say that he violated not our Laws in his way to the Crown Eucher The Prince of Orange being no Subject of England the process of his Expedition was in him no violation of Duty by him owing to our Laws which is the only form of Guilt that could have attainted his Right If then he cannot be charged with the breach of Civil Duties incumbent on him he is not incapacitated of Rights by any passages in that Expedition But moreover he came to preserve our Laws and Forms Liberties and Religion when they were all in a fervent Course of subversion And therefore tho' during his Marches the Execution of the Laws for the time being was interrupted in particular Cases and Military Officers were by him constituted in the Countries thro' which he passed all this was necessary as methods of Medicine for the time to recover the diseased state of the Patient to the Antient vigour of its Laws and soundness of Constitution But when King James left the languishing Nation unhealed the Prince left all to be legally Cured and firmly setled to the great Council of the Land that so no Man might have a Colour for Complaint that he affected our Conquest Vassalage or Suppression in our Civil Rights by any Arbitrary Power For which great Service they found out a fair way without Violence to any ones Right to gratify and honour him with the Crown or rather to secure all we had by such a Constitution If then the Prince of Orange was no Subject nor Enemy to the Nation but Friend and Patron to us and our Laws how can he be charged with an injurious violation of them And her present Majesty tho' more obliged to her Husband than her Father by the ties of Nature being a Native of England and so the King 's Subject in this Land never appeared here to disturb her Father or break her Native Allegiance But when her Father had fled out of the Kingdom from before her Husband as not daring to abide a Parliamentary discussion of their Causes and the Estates of the Nation determined to settle her Highness with her Husband in this Sovereignty she being thereupon sent to comes over and accepts that Settlement which the Nation thought so just and necessary and to which as such the Princess Ann conceded without any Remonstrance So that neither can her present Majesty be charged with any breach of our Constitutions herein which might obstruct her Civil Title of being Queen de Jure upon the Cession of her Father and her next Place in the Succession Which is I think so fair a Plea for the Recognition de Jure that if it cannot annihilate all prejudices to the contrary in all Persons yet is a just Reason to inhibit Contradictions in private Men who have very little Authority to Censure Publick Counsels and Determinations But tho' we have thus defended the Title de Jure yet as I said before we were not obliged to Swear it Nor did I ever hear of any Courts that loaded the Oath with such an Assertion of Right when their directive Judgments were required thereupon Dyscher This last is a lucky Hit I am glad you have awakened my Memory of some of your former Passages upon Interpretations of Courts for which you ought to be a little chastised For you say * Sol. Ab. pag. 10. That if they took not the Oath as the Parliament intended they took it as directed by their Majesties Judges What did their Majesties Judges direct the Oath to be taken otherwise than as the Parliament intended I desire that may be made out Did they do it judicially in Court I think that will not be so much as pretended If it be I desire to know when where and how If you say that a Judge did only discourse it privately that is no more than if any private Man had said so But to take off the pretence of this Salvo the Judges are not nor do pretend to be the Imposers And the Imposers King William and Queen Mary and both Houses of Parliament have declared what their Sense of the Oath is viz. that King William and Queen Mary are King and Queen de Jure M. S. Reflex Eucher This is no fairer in one respect than it is convincing in any For you repeat me as if I had asserted some general Sense of the Judges given to the Nation plainly contrary to the Sense of the Parliament according to which Judicial contrary Sense all Conformists had Sworn and so require me to make this out But my Senses are not so easy to be imposed on in my own Sentiments My Discourse therefore was * Sol. Ab. pag. 9 10. of the Senses of some particular Courts given or admitted to particular Persons upon occasional Consultations And I alledge that these Persons who were allowed an innocent Sense to Swear to did not prevaricate with the State tho' the Courts perhaps had really misinterpreted the Law But so far am I from the positive Charge of any Court herewith that I profess I neither know nor believe any Court to have incurred such a failure tho' this I have heard some of them burthened with by some of your greatest Woâ—â—hies And upon supposition of Truth in that impuâ—â—tion I yet assumed the Cause of the Swearers notwithstanding such supposed Error in such Courts according to whose Interpretation of the Oath if they Swore they could not be perjured or prevaricate For tho' the Judges of those Courts be not the Legislative yet are they Ministerial and Executive Imposers Judges and Interpreters for the Legislative to particular Persons on all emergent Questions in Law and what they herein do is valid to all Civil Constructions and Effects and to be taken as their Majesties own legal determinations of whom you too unwarily as well as untruly say that they and the Parliament have declared the Assertion or sense de Jure to be in the Oath for tho' that be the recognized Sense of their Title yet it is not their declared Sense of the Oath Which being cleared I need no Succour from the private Opinions of any Judges out of Court of which I made no mention which can indeed have no judicial obligations tho' by your Favour they may be of great weight to the satisfaction or Ease of a doubting Conscience towards its Conformity with the Laws Dyscher Indeed if the real Sense of the Imposer could be avoided and what Sense others please imposed the Oath might be taken in a thousand several Senses and not one come up with the Sense and design of the Imposers which in this Case always is the security of the Government Besides a thousand other Mischiefs would follow vacating all Oaths and destructive to all Governments and Human Society For if Oaths may be thus eluded Promises and Contracts would soon follow their Fortune as being less Sacred Now Sir you would do well to answer these and
have said for while there is one in being and claiming to whom the Right really belongs what can your extra-ordinary Successors be but Tyrants and Vsurpers T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20 21. Eucher This I confess is an amazing Circumvention if my Memory hath in truth beguiled me And 't is a challenge enough to shock a greater confidence than mine To prove this therefore we must recur to the Form Enacted by the Statute Anno Tertio Jacobi Regis c. Also I do swear from my heart that notwithstanding any Sentence of Excommunication or Deprivation made or granted or to be made or granted by the Pope or his Successors or by any Authority derived or pretended to be derived from him or his See against the said King his Heirs or Successors or any absolution of the said Subjects from their obedience I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and him and them will defend to the utmost of my Power against all attempts whatsoever that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by Reason and Colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or otherwise and will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known unto his Majesty his Heirs and Successors all Treasons and Traiterous Conspiracies which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any of them These are all the times the words Heirs and Successors are mentioned in the Oath and in these here is no Character of Lawful set at all So that here you fall under the same fault you charge upon me of not reading the Oath and another added in a bold interpolation thereof at all adventure or if you have read it 't is the greatest of all prevarications consciously to misrender it but whether it were the one or the other it is the most frontless and unparallel'd impudence to down-face an obvious Truth with notorious Falshood And yet have a little patience to see what you had gained by this remark if it had been true You had said * Sol. Ab. p. 3. That the Oath of Allegiance binds to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors and I taking it for granted that you interjected the word lawful not as a part but an interpretation of the Oath denied it not but without any cavil candidly admitted it but because I formed an Inference from that Oath that you like not you interpolate the Text of the Oath by foisting in the word lawful that hence you might draw a pretence that Lawful Successors limitedly denote the Lineal Heirs But neither would this have held For had the word lawful been found in the Oath my Argument had still been good * Sol. Ab. p. 5. That in the late Oath of Allegiance after the words Heirs the words Lawful Successors were added on this very self same ground that tho' Heirs by the ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extraordinary Nay this legality of such extra-lineals had been more fully acknowledged had the word Lawful been inserted than now it is For now if a man would be perverse and were there no other Reason upon other Bottoms he might argue that this Oath simply setting all Successors without any express Qualification of Lawful to exclude unlawful requires Allegiance to all Actual Successors indiscriminately without any reserved respect to any legality or illegality But whether we suppose the Quality of Lawful as intended by the Sense or no the addition of Successors after Heirs denotes that their may be Successors to whom our Allegiance is by Oath secured that are not Heirs in the strict sense of Lineal Descent or else after Heirs no word of that Importance ought to have been added But as I was at first candid in the Concession of the Legality so will I here give you the reason of that Candor Having then observed that all Duties respect Laws and that what is not Legal can have no Legal Obligation and withal that the Oath obliges to the Successors of the very same Legal Sovereignty established here it appeared to me that he that comes into any other form of Sovereignty over us hath no right to our Allegiance by virtue of that Oath or the old standing Laws whatsoever Title thereto he may acquire by virtue of New Laws and Constitutions But if he assumes a Sovereignty that is in no wise Legal 't is Tyranny in Form and Nature and while it is barely such the man is an Enemy and no Allegiance can be due to him Now the Legal Forms by which Extra lineal Kings are invested with the English Sovereignty stand in Admission and Recognition of our Estates when insuparable Exigencies or just Causes incapacitate the Heirs Lineal to reign over us or us to be reigned over by them of which Obstacles in a state of Anarchy the Estates are our Supreamest and Final Judges Dyscher But what have you to say to an Impartial Reflection which I shall here offer you from another hand viz. that you maintain * See Sol. Ab. p. 6. That by our Oath to King James we are bound to pay Allegiance to King William which seems so strange a Paradox that the defending of it must serve only to let the World see that there are no Words nor Oaths possible to be framed for which men may not find Distinctions and Salvo's to turn them which way they think fit even directly opposite to what they were at first intended MS. Reflect Eucher Truly Brother this looks rather like whining under an Argument than an Answer to it for men seldom make a moan under any Objection they can solve Yet is your Reflecters Complaint herein as little sincere as manly For I said not that our Oath to King James alone obliges our Allegiance to King William as you from him represent me but that * Sol. Ab. p. 4. to p. 6. putting all together that I had said my concluding Opinion was that our Old oath of Allegiance supposing it still in force to the King his Heirs and Successors binds us to pay Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary as the present actual recognized Successors to King James upon extinction though not of his Life yet of his Sovereignty And this you can never disprove except you either shew that in that Oath the word Successors so distinctly set after Heirs three times in the same Paragraph was purposely set to exclude all Extra-lineal Kings for the time being whereby all the Statutes and former ties of Allegiance actually owned under the past Extra-lineals will be repealed by this Enacted Oath and all Judgments ever since past accordingly vacated or else that King William and Queen Mary are not actual Successors to King James in this Sovereignty by the same or as legal forms of Constitutions as other Extra-lineals were before them by a National Admission and Recognition tho' somewhat more than Extralineal Forms may be challenged to
Queen Mary upon her Fathers Abdication Now when you or your Prompters perform either of these Exploits then use your invective Powers even unto hoarsness but till then 't will not be prudent at the same time to be censorious rude and insincere too But I will not discourage you from going on I pray proceed in your Charge Dyscher When you had asserted that Extra-lineal Successors may in extra-ordinary Cases be Legal * Sol. Ab. p. 5. I pressed you to shew how he can be Legal that thrusts out the Legal King or Legal Successor And you strained a point to make him so But let us see your fine Art of proving Right Wrong and Wrong Right Your Discourse of Kings thrusting out Kings is a direct thrusting out Right and encouraging and justifying Ambitious Persons in embroyling the World in perpetual Wars and Confusions But I shall not expose it as it deserves because it is nothing to the purpose of a plain known Right and no Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Sir I think my self obliged to scrape a Leg once or twice to you for your eminent tenderness in exposing my designs in inverting the Characters of Right and Wrong But I pray what fouler exposition had you behind the Veil than this that I thrust out Right and animate men to embroil the World in Blood and Ruins If your Razor be tender yet you have a pretty close Hand which yet I am willing to bear considering that your Cause is in ipsâ acie novaculae But if I may expound your word Expose in your true sense it will signifie Answer and then on my Conscience you were in the Right of it For to answer it as it deserves is either to confute or confess it but you are not ingenious enough to do one and less ingenuous than to do the other But perhaps it was an inconsiderable piece of Impiety Let us see then what was this Draconick Incendiary Mormo of mine Why this verily * Sol. Ab. p. 5. One King by a Legal War may thrust out him that till he was thrust out was Legal King of his own People For the first offending Prince loses not his Sovereignty to the offended meerly by the offence till actually thrust out by the offended This I think is the general Law of the Trumpet and allowed for valid among all Nations But if you doubt let us refer the point to the French King whom You cannot suspect of Unfaithfulness to You or Your Cause But if the War be altogether Legal upon Offences that will warrant all the process of it till the Offender leaves his Dominions in the hands of the injured Conqueror a Just Change may follow here without justifying Illegal Wars and Rapins of unprovoked and injurious Powers Which tho' it be a Truth most clearly innocent yet a calumny was necessary to keep up the Ball and use a Talent But let this be I pray Sir how shew you that this is nothing to our purpose Dyscher If you would make a fair answer here you ought to give a direct Answer to this Question If a Person having really no Right doth disclaim any Right to a thing and by publick Declarations doth profess that he makes no Pretentions to it nor hath any Design to disturb another in his Right I say if this Person shall by ill Arts seize it doth this notwithstanding all his Protestations and Declarations to the contrary even against all Right and Reason create him a Right whether he will or no c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Here I confess you have taken a secure way to enclose my Answer to your side And as you have set the Question in learned light I answer to your Hearts content that such a Person shall hereby have no Right either with or against his will And to all such Questions I had given you a round and comprehensive Answer before to the same purpose tho' it so often escapes your notice belike for its inconsiderableness Yet it being a right Answer you shall have it in both Ears whether you will or no. And it was such * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or Right of War yet if he doth so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself upon the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practices of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determin for us in such Exigences as is manifest in the long Contentions and many Turns between the Houses of York and Lancaster and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things And again * Sol. Ab. p. 6. Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission So that taking Right for a Title founded in real Justice no man really can have Right in the sight of God by a meer unjust Act or Acquisition And yet tho' the preparations to acquire new Kingdoms or Dominions be unjust if that very constituent Act which transfers the Possession does at the same time infringe no mans present and permanent Right such possession becomes Rightful But all this is nothing to the purpose For our Question is only of who or what is formally legal not what is in real honesty morally Rightful For all Possession which a man obtains by legal forms of Process either in War or Peace is formally and apparently Legal to all Civil Purposes and Constitutions tho' the Cause obtaining be far from being really and morally right And a man by legal Judgment may de facto be put into possession of what another man hath a real Right to so that the possessor shall have the Legal Form of Title in what is really anothers Due And in all such Cases all Affairs belonging to such Estate follow the Legal Tenure of the Possessor who is therefore in Law taken as bonae fidei possessor And even antecedently to Judgement quiet possession in a private Estate tho' slipt into by cunning Frauds and Artifices against which there is no Civil Law is taken by the Law for formally Legal till the Occupant loses it either by Art or Judgment Now all independent Persons and Princes that are subject to no Judicial Tribunal contend by War not Law and what they settle themselves in by the forms consequent upon War they have such a formal Title to as the Laws of War and Revolutions yield them and no other tho' whether Cause is just and consequently thereupon whose Possession is honestly rightful none can effectually judge but God amidst so many pretensions And in such Turns the Subject People must or may lawfully yield to the formal Titles or Fates of War since they are not authoritative Judges on the Causes or Rights of