natural when a party acts in a joynt wickedness and cruelty and after grow into difference the less able party will ever dislike what the other go thorow with to act and pretend to a greater Justice and Moderation when it is acted by others and out of their Power but more of this in the following Object It is known that before they were put out and imprisoned by the Army the Commons voted the King's Concessions in the Treaty to be so far satisfactory as that they would have proceeded on them towards a full agreement See Mr. Prin's large Speech in the house to that end And if they had not suddenly been secluded and imprisoned they had agreed with the King Answ This was when they had no other Interest left them but that of the King 's which they had laid by and trampled upon perpetually till now they must lose all unless they held by that How endless and insatiate were they in exercising their own greatness upon the King's weakness the People perpetually defrauded of the Accommodation by them thirsted after Never any thing satisfactory though they had all and playing with this their own fortune and most delectable greatness too long at length as all new excessive things are incident to change the accidents by him mentioned fell in amongst themselves and they were voting conclusions with the King just the instant before they brake Some secluded some made Prisoners some to avoid worse fled out of the Land It is the mis-fortune and condition of Tyrants to be subject to their own Power and Slaves to it An Army especially that servs but to Subjects against their Soveraign will though humble and obedient at first as all such things are grow insolent as to equals treat conditions and have other Interests It is like a hand-Wolf that though he will be played with for a time yet his Keepers and Masters are Subject to be torn in pieces by him upon the change of his humour Such was this their Army a hand-Wolf too long played with till it grew to know its own strength and to consider that all Rights were alike against the King and amongst the People And then for the Nature of the Agreement with the King It was that for some time he should have been without his Power and all agreements with a King that vest him not in his Power are nothing at all in consideration to a King for a future restoring or for security against the present Power they are things that cannot be and any intervening time would have raised new accidents from so great an impending cause the greatest in the World beyond and above all conditions and not being can have no assurance of future being I call to mind a Passage in a Book called A Plea for Parliaments supposed to be written by Sir Walter Rawley that it was moved in Parliament in Queen Maryes time that if she should dy leaving Issue King Philip the Father and now Matrimonial King should hold the Kingdom till the Issue came of Age to govern and strong bonds should be given for the Surrender And a certain Lord none of the wisest saith the story who had sate silent during the whole Debate at last boulted out this Question Who should sue those bonds against the King They were all presently surprized and so it fell not a word more of it As much as to say An absolute Power in possession is above all Condition Object One thing I shall call him back to that is saying That Multitudes who are now firm and loyall to the present Power supposing it to be set over us by God and therefore would abhor the like practices against them do yet detest that Fact that intervened and made way to it Answ I would desire to be satisfied how Mr. Baxter can reconcile his Divinity This Power set over us by God therefore not to act against it The King's Power either not in his sense set over us by God or else why did he act against it If he say to reform it then why not this Are all things so satisfactory to him in this as needs no Reformation The other Power of the King 's peradventure in his sense was not set over us by God But how this is I would desire him to distinguish and when and where he would make a stop to man's acting I should be very glad that the World were satisfied with it that Supream Power should be unquestionable I would trust God and Man and humane casual events with my share out of it because I see pretended Reformations never countervail the mischief of Rebellions But in the mean time I desire him to distinguish betwixt these two Interests why he is indulgent to this now and so much an Actor and Engineer imploying his Divinity Learning and Passion against the old Let me still hold him to this his own ground Set over us by God Whether he means of God's general Providence as the great Governour of the World and so assigning Governours subordinate or else that he means it in special to this out of his fancy or favour to it I would have him distinguish and I am prepared for him with a further inquiry But in the mean time because I know not my future opportunities I shall further trouble him I suppose he will not otherwise call or account it Set over us by God then as all other wicked things come to pass as this did through the blood and death of the King which intervening cause he denotes detestable Now what obligation extraordinary and which the former Government did not this throws upon man is my Inquiry Where shall man's Wisdom act or rest This done by man and why may not man undo his own Work Is there a Fate upon him in one Action more than in another if Reason doth nor state a difference Is his Divinity otherwise intelligible to him than by his Reason Does he act freely in some things and not in all Are some things of God and not all things If he will say the being of Kings and Supream Governours should oblige an unquestionable Obedience let him answer then for destroying the former Is a less Attribute due to a rightful King than to his Destroyer His intended Reformation by a War intended no less than destroying his Power to resist Besides it will be very hard for him even in his own sense to determine betwixt a true King driven or kept out and a King in Fact and by Usurpation and King-killing which should draw to it the Right and Obligation of Conscience and likewise hard for him to resolve when the new is so settled the other in being though out of possessing as to make Obedience entire Therefore surely it were best God were left out who in these our miserable times hath been made a Stale and a Colour for all the cruelties men have committed Certainly Divinity in understanding the Will of God admits of some distinction betwixt things done
deceived and abused to serve to others ends Object That they openly professed to manage their War for King and Parliament not against his Person and Authority but against Delinquents that were fled from Justice and against evil Councellers Answ Mr. Baxter would make their War just That it was professed and engaged to be managed for King and Parliament Certainly they did no more in this then all Subjects ever did that made War against their King that is to disstinguish the King's interest from the cause of the War A less pretension cannot be for a Rebellion Rebellion in the nature of it is so much a Monster as it seeks the best cover and never has the face to pretend against the King The fallaciousnesse of this he himself evinced in his following by saying or at least concluding That a subdued King is never fit again to rule over the People that subdued him We need no other evidence now then the things themselves so as we are to argue à posteriori from the ends and issues back to their causes that is that all War taken up by Subjects upon any pretence whatsoever or by whatsoever caution or limitation evermore in the nature of it intends the destroying of King and Kingdom Object That the two Nations of England and Scotland did in the midst of the Wars swear in the Solemn League and Covenant to be true to the King Answ Still this was but the same thing to strengthen the confederacy when at any time there should be a fainting or scrupling by the People a new engagement or profession to publick ends and to common preservation whereof the King was the Head would give new life to it And this was all the use that ever was made of that Covenant It never served the King at all but to beat him down and destroy him And all bringing the people into a body by Covenant is unlawful because Government meerly consists in having no contracts of the people acting of themselves And likewise the Covenant was not absolute as a Kings preservation should be but had a loose in it that made it nothing It was with a so far as consists with Religion Laws and Liberties The King's life and his Rights were not absolutely covenanted O God forbid there should not be an exception as to Religion Laws and Liberties and this a destroying power would be interpreter of So as this Covenant was like Nebuchadnezzar's Image the upper parts of Gold and Silver the lower parts of Iron and baser stuff but the truth is when men Covenant things contradictory as to fight against the King and to be true to him they cannot be expected to perform better for truth is of that Nature that though men abuse it ever so much yet it is unalterable Effects are certain to their causes and own their true Parents Object The Committees Commanders Ministers and People thorowout the Land professed openly to go only upon such tearms as managing but a defensive War against the King's miscariages but an offensive against delinquent Subjects Answ There is no such thing in Nature as a defensive War against a King by Subjects as I shall more clearly demonstrate in due place But in this Mr. Baxter grants as far as is possible to make it defensive necessary and of meer necessity on the King's part It was offensive against delinquent Subjects as much as to say it was a War on the Parliaments part to the destruction of the King's Subjects and the King must be unconcern'd in it sit by and be idle with-draw all protection and become immediately out of possession For such is the Nature and being of a King when an armed power is acting and the King sedentary and not resisting In a Kingdom a War cannot be against any party and not against the King for it deprives the King of his governing power Consider but what the Nature of a War taken up by the People is for his Senate signifies nothing he shall find the whole is but King and People First when it once becomes powerful it gains from its very unlawfulnesse a liberty to be governed by none for in unlawful actions they are all equals No obligation can arise but where there is a primary justice to fix it to and we see in this every thing that prevails never disputes right and the reason is because the whole is unlawful And I present this to Mr. Baxter's reason as it is visible to his observation to shew him that such a kind of War can be wicked but cannot find a Justice to govern it and his first of rebelling with caution and condition was a meer fiction His next is a Narrative only Object In that it was known that the Army was quite altered not only by a new modelling but by an intestine Jesuitical corrupting of multitudes of Souldiers before this odious Fact could be done And it was known that the corrupted part of the Army though the fewer did so excel the rest in Industry and Activity that thereby they hindred their Opposition And it is known that the Jesuited party that afterwards so many of them turned Levellers did draw unto them the Anabaptists Libertines and other Sects upon a Conjunction of Interests and by many sly pretences especially tying all together by the predicated Liberty for all Religions And yet after this the World knows they were fain before they could accomplish it to master the City of London to master the Parliament to imprison and cast out the Members and to retain but a few that were partly of their mind and partly seduced or over-awed by them to joyn with them in the work Answ It is incident alwayes that when a King's Power is dissolved all Wickedness and all manner of Factions and Divisions do grow up in the place of it for want of that Power to retain them and their own guilt still driving them on and being all equals in wickedness these are so natural Causes as I wonder any one can dispute them They ly all in the first Cause of taking away the King's Power all the rest results out of it And they themselvs had proceeded so far as to all Deprivations of the King and all manner of Imputations and Proscriptions as guilty of all the evill of the War setling him in the condition of a Traytor being King kept him in custody after they had bought him of the Scots and not enduring him to terms till the last when it was too late I grant his party would not have had the King bin killed A poor reserve when he is made incapable of any other condition If the People did but know what it were to subdue their King and deprive him of his Power they would never dispute terms of disposing him It is the same thing as killing it stays but the acting And this servs to all he says of this kind And let me insert this though I consent wholly to his Narrative that it is very ordinary and
to God's Glory and the worst of Man's Actions though all alike under the common Providence of God But a little further I desire his Patience to go along with me A King killed to day and the Regicide by his party becomes King in Fact and in Power to morrow then to morrow he obeys him with all Attributes of God's greatness Will Power Goodness and if him another on the next day then him too and so on still It is known that after it began in Nero how many Emperors came upon the stage of the World in a short space killing and dispatching the present gave being to the latter Now where will he define or place his Providence or bound Man's acting Certainly if at all in the first place for many reasons as the first loose or progression to Wickedness is the true cause of all the following and because there is a natural stay in the first which loosed the like is not found in the following The truth is it is a foolish thing to ty up Man's reason more in one thing than in another for if he argues things greater or higher to him he argues still but to his reason In the next he goes higher and like a Stone falling the nearer the Center the greater its force so he as he proceeds farther grows fiercer about the King 's being judged to death by his People and he extenuates the Fact by the formality of it I should wrong him not to give it him in his own words Object I must needs add that every wise man sees that the case it self much differs from the Papists If the Body of a Common-wealth or those that have part in the Legislative Power and so in the Supremacy should unwillingly be engaged in a War with the Prince and after many years blood and desolations judicially take away his life as guilty of all this Blood and not to be trusted any more with Government And all this do not as private men but as the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to Laws undoubtedly this case doth very much differ from the Powder-Plot or Papists murdering of Kings and teaching that it is lawfull for a private hand to do it if he be but an Heretick or but deposed yea or excommunicated by the Pope Answ Mine thorow-out will give a larger consideration upon the whole But to his particulars as they pass from him First he saith have part in the Legislative Power and so in the Supremacy wherein he confounds them both together and makes it but one and the same To have part in the Legislative Power as to the altering of Laws or any other thing wherein it is exercised implies a right in the People as to those things and in the Nature of it a Negative Right That is that it could not be done without their consents and this Negative Right gives them not a farther Right Object His next is and judicially take away his life Answ The King 's own words at that hard time with him when they sate over him as his Judges are most worthy as from himself to be remembred He told them how far his case was their King from being judged by them when as all judicature was derived from him to them And certainly this alone of the King 's carryes Argument enough in it against all judging or condemning of King's or Supreams for no Power can create a Power against it self and nothing in nature can go higher than its first Cause A Power derived out of the King cannot be understood to be against the King He goes on to criminate the King whether his sense or supposition I know not Object As guilty of all that Blood Answ The King's unhappiness was to be made guilty because he was not able to defend himself And so shall every Prince be that is overcome by his Subjects they must be guilty to be destroyed Tyrants Wickedness do but prepare a guilt for the cruelties they mean to act It was the Kings own saying That he had not one foot of Land in his own Kingdom but what his Army stood upon It was not possible to be a more necessitated War than the King 's for all the World knows it was destiny upon him never persons so obdurate as to take no conditions never could find any Medium betwixt destroying their Soveraign and their own desperateness And the King's Interest wholly defensive not only for himself but for his Kingdoms and that made him say upon his death which seals all truths that he dyed his Kingdom 's and his People's Martyr It were easy to go upon demonstrative proofs in this but it would involve the whole Cause which we are to take in its parts Object And not any more to be trusted with Government Answ This is the reason in the Eye of the Law which sees to the end in the first act that all attempts to bring a King under any Power of his People are the same as to destroy him And this was resolved in the Case of the Earl of Essex he would seize upon the Court Camden's Annals p. 547 548. take the Queen into his Power not otherwise harm her remove from her evil Counsellors but honour her Person Now this was all adjudged high Treason in every circumstance of it because all depriving of a Soveraign Prince of his Power is the same as to destroy him Essex himself said before his death that the Queen and he both could not live and others the most eminent of his party acknowledged that though it were not their design to destroy the Queen yet it would have been the necessity of their proceeding if they had prevailed so as the effects of Rebellion Mr. Baxteâ— makes his Arguments Before I put an end to these Papers I shall resume again his words No more to be trusted with Government to make inquiry into the Rights of Kings and their Original to find their first Cause and to judge of their extent and terminations But at present to his next Object And all this they do that is take away the King's life not as private men but the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to Laws Answ Mr. Baxter's Objective words without any proving brings every thing to a question as this hath two very great falshoods and high presumptions in it The one a Soveraignty in the Parliament the other a lawfulness of killing the King For the first which is made the conveyance to the latter to erect so high a wickedness upon a Parliamentary Supremacy to make them an expedient to kill their King is no more true than that there were two Kings in England two Suns in the Firmament of Government two Centers in a Circle two Infinites or any Impossibility that can be imagined But I shall have occasion to treat the Argument of the King 's sole Soveraignty in divers passages onely at present to it the Parliament is but a borrowed light all derived out
as madness it self yet I think that God would take it ill that we should mock him to set up a King to Govern and then to reserve a Power to destroy him against his Word and meaning for the very power of Governing invests him with all these rights of protection vertually all these Attributes fall to him by his actual governing It is a principle in nature that Supremacy attracts all right to it and all perfection to be King and not perfect is impossible And this I will say at last of the King himself which I think his very enemies and destroyers cannot deny that never any Prince fell by his people that had fewer faults and more vertues Now at last my exception to Mr. Baxter is that he personates the Protestants so as to destroy them and their Religion There is no other way of keeping the guilt and imputation of that horrid accursed act from the Religion but by a total condemnation of it We say and justly that it was an act that transcends all that ever was worse and more infernal and execrable then any thing else the Pope or man can do Now Mr. Baxter out of his particular makes it the Protestant interest that it be not so evil as the wickedness under the Religion of Papists and so puts it upon the Protestants account of whatsoever nature it be and makes it their interest to extenuate the evil of it which is a meer involving them and their cause into it and the most unjust in the World for Is a Religion to answer for what wickedness men do in it I mean being of it or professing it But thus he loves to hale all Interests after him to follow his sense Let him himself be in love with it extenuate it find Jesuitical abstracted quintessential notions to dissolve all Allegiance upon Terms let him take it to himself and not make it more general then his own party Having done with this sad subject we will see him in his next whither he will lead us Object It is a grievous Case that the Senate or Body of a Nation should think themselvs necessitated to defend themselvs and the Church and State against their Prince or any that act by his Commands it will strongly tempt them to think that the end is to be preferred before the means and it ceaseth to be a means which is against or destructive to the end Answ The poor unfortunate King that could never by any possible compliance and means begg off his own and his Kingdoms ruine of them was wont to tell them when they used the great Argument of necessity for all violent actions that they were necessities of their own making Because their ends were exorbitant and such as the Laws would not bear they must proportion the means which drew on the necessities Now to his preferring the end before the means a principle he is fallen upon and the most dangerous one of the World for by this he may decline all Truth and Justice to go the next way over to his ends and yet a very strong one that the end is that for which the means is there is no use or consideration of the means but to the end By this ground he hath laid flat all Honesty Truth Goodness whatsoever for it may be it doth not suit to the end And hence it was that their ends being Reformation as they call our Deformation and Destruction it could not be done by a lesse means I do but mind him of this his party having made so much use of it The truth is if men would ty themselvs to the Justice of the means they could never attain to unjust ends Object It is essentiall to governing Power to be for common good Answ No doubt but it is as appears by their destroying the Government and we never had any good since But without taking this advantage I will give him a further Answer from the nature of Government and every other thing we call good that is good in the generality not exact good in every action of it Object It is no Authority which is used against common good Answ Then there is no Authority in the World for there is no Authority or Magistracy but at some time or other is used against it He multiplies forward still Object It would tempt them also to think that God never gave Power to any against himself or above his Laws or against the end of Government Answ He should prove here that God gave them a Right of destroying both the King and the Government for that is the Case For he confesseth the War raised by themselvs against delinquent Subjects But to answer to this as he intends it God doth some times give evil Governours and doth he not likewise give them Power God himself fore-spake in Saul and then concluded the People in these words then that is when they were oppressed by their King 1 Sam. 8.18 Grotius de jure Belli 81. shall they cry out that is to say seek help of God Quia scilicet humana remedia nulla extarent Grotius exposition of it call to God for help that is there was no means of resistance to be used on their part His next Object A Senate or the Body of a Nation will be apt to think themselvs fit to discern when the Publick safety is dangerously assaulted and will hardly be brought to trust any one to be the finall Judge of their necessity as thinking such a publick necessity proves it self and needs no Judge but sense and reason to discern it Answ Suppose there had been no Parliament this Argument would have served for the Body of the People to rise up and take away the King's Power as not fit to judge of the necessity or to be trusted with the Publick safety It was the King's Act to call a Parliament and 't was his and our ruine that he put himself upon it Having hitherto kept equal pace with him in these his severall distinct heads give me leave in general to censure of them that is that in them he hath sown the seeds of all the Rebellions in the World Let them be taken as truths abstractedly without their alloy or composition as so the very Elements would destroy us no Government can stand Do we not as often as we err in any thing employ the means against the end and shall we as often fall out with our selvs These abstracted Considerations cannot consist with the being of Man which is not certain in any thing but subject to error and as often as ever a King errs so often by his Argument the means is against the end and loseth the essence of a governing Power So as by Mr. Baxter's Learning there can never want matter for Rebellion In the next he raiseth his Parliament as an out-work to affront and batter Monarchy in these words Object And if they also think that the fundamentall Constitution of the Government doth make the Senate
the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick and that it is Treason against the Common-wealth and as Politicians say against the Majestas realis to rise against them Answ Mr. Baxter hath of this in several places the Parliament's Supremacy it is his Goliath I shall answer generally to it at once Now the Arguments may be many I will make it but a Passage not a serious Debate and give but hints of truths that may be enlarged The first is that I am sure though I was not of that time that Kings were when Parliaments were not and then must be granted absolute the other not in being We cannot suppose here in England any time of Government without Kings and the Kings themselvs thought it best to convene the People to draw thereby aids of the Publick by publick consent and likewise to have all Counsels and all Grievances in common to be common in helps and means which is strongest and peradventure to ballance the Loâ—ds by this popular Power Whatsoever the ends were in it or the use to be made of it or accidents that grew out of it it shews it was a Creature mearly of the King's Will and creating and therefore cannot be intended but to act under him and to his help as the end of its Being So being called by the King in this sense they bear in them the Peoples Rights whatsoever was left in the People to be disposed of by their own consent Their Power therefore must hold proportion with that that is only in the quality of the People as to complain of Grievances and petition Redresses to give their private to the Publick and to consent to alter Fundamentals as there shall be cause all which are the natural Rights of the People and common consent is required to them Now this does not reach at all to Mr. Baxter's sense of sharing with the King in Supremacy and Power and right of governing nothing at all of it All Parliament rights have their station below governing it is by accident when they meddle with the Government as about the causes that require their help And all great and outward relations and inward may be Objects of this great Body of the People as their help is required but this with that caution as the King puts them on and takes them off So jealous a thing is Soveraignty it self And it is a nice distinction to make them Judges of the necessity and not to judge of the cause of the necessity and therefore involve themselvs sometimes in it too far and the retreats have been difficult No doubt this must needs be a strange great considerable Power in the consequence of it that which all the rest moves by and is the matter or means of the Government But this does not alter the Nature of it It is a most noble Constitution because it begets treatment betwixt Prince and People and there is a correspondency betwixt the giving of the one and the retribution of the other but when either make too much use of their Power it destroys the order and the inconvenience is so intolerable to the Nation as they are brought again to it and must correspond Now nothing preservs so much as when things keep to their Natures The good of Parliaments does consist within their own rights and not to enter into the King's for then it breaks the Parliament or the Parliament breaks the Government To return to the nature of the Objection of co-ordinate Power of Parliaments The Parliament is a Creation that comes out of the King's Will and Power nothing of Power to beget it self and therefore cannot be understood to serve to another end against that which was its cause and which it self had absolute Being without it Never to this day they have Power to their own Being but at the King's Will a meer Entity first in the King's Will before it can have any in them so as they are meerly Creatures having their Creation from another's Will and so to determine them after they are in being which shews the most absolute depending on another Power that possibly can be Hence rationally and consequently of this it must be that the end is of the Agent and Author and not to be their own end that did not nor could not move to their own Being so as meerly it follows A Parliament is the King's business because it flows out of his Will And some Acts have been made by consent of Kings for certainty of Parliaments but have not bound Kings for we see they have been discontinued many years together So certain it is that Regal Right cannot be restrained Now the King 's good and the People's are so necessarily conjoyned as it cannot be supposed they can serve the King but it must conserve the Kingdom and all the People And hence flows all publick considerations and conclusions the whole Interest of the Nation resolves it self into it and all the Powers submit to it because all parties are in it by convention or representation and the King can make lawful whatsoever they can consent to But without the King they are a meer inanimate Body and can act nothing they are as the Womb or Matrix the King is the generative Masculine part that gives life and production and actuates and forms their conceptions And the difference not rightly conceived begets the mistake confounding their Power with that of ordinary standing Courts which act by the King's Power invested in them which he cannot with-draw or deny to and this of Parliaments which is extraordinary and by the King's consent And then too their work is about the generality not to do with the ordinary proceedings of Law proper to other Courts but only the abuse of them The Author of the History of Independency affirms pag. 35. History of Independency 35. that the judicial Power of the House of Lords is by the King 's special Authority his Argument upon it is The King makes them Admiministrators and interpreters of his Laws but he never trusts any but himself with the Power of pardoning and dispensing with the rigour of the Law in Criminal cases And though the Lord Keeper is Speaker of the Lord's House of course yet he is no Member of the Lord's House virtute Officii The Judges are not Members but Assistants only so that no man in the House of Peers as he is simply a Peer is trusted by the King either by dispensation of Law or Equity When a Peer of Parliament or any man else is tryed before the Lords in Parliament criminally he cannot be tried by his Peers only because in acts of Judicature there must be a Judge Superior who must have his Inferiors ministerial to him Therefore in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford as in all other Trials upon Life and Death in the Lord's House the King grants his Commission to a Lord High Steward to sit as Judge and the rest of the Lords are but in
the nature of Jurors so that it is the King's Commission that authorizeth and distinguisheth them When a Writ of Error issueth out of the Chancery to the House of Peerâ— they derive their Authority meerly from that Writ For the three Reasons aforesaid the House of Peers is no Court of Judicature at all without the King 's special Authority granted to them either by his Writ or his Commission As for the House of Commons they never pretended to any Power of Judicature and have not so much Authority as to administer an Oath Thus far his But the Argument is not at all pertinent as to the House of Lords whom they have expelled and all Form of Parliament or Callings but in the People their ground is onely upon a House of Commons as the People's Representatives Nevertheless we take the whole and give truly the Nature of a Parliament for the perfectest way of rejecting Falshood is by delineating the true Form It is not imaginable for a King to govern without the assistance and assent of the Peers for Government cannot stand alone for as they are ever a party where any King is the Question is only of the Commons Prin's plea for Lords pag. 182. which is an Adjunct and therefore the Searchers into Antiquity take upon them to antedate them and derive them but as an Accident to the Government in England But to take it in the whole it being a truly poised Government and mixed Interest hath left so great a share in the People as servs to treat their King 's with and be at all times able to gain conditions And God forbid any Power should deny to the People's good it can be no end of Government and therefore he is not single or alone but hath common consent in the great Interests of the Nation changing or making Laws or making impositions He must have common consent to this and this draws all the rest to it since hardly any thing can move but by these two Interests and this is the ballance of the Government to make it hang equal betwixt Prince and People And the evils and mischief that sometimes redounds is from the abuse of it not from the Nature of it being the best composition of Government in the World and the People freer under it than in any Common-wealth Government which they call free Government the Reason is a Secret till looked into Physically that is this best of all to be seen in our late long odious Parliament there all the People's Liberties were swallowed up the People uncreatured as it were no defensive all in the Parliament when as in the King and Parliament the People have a direct party and a defensive as there shall be cause against any deprivation of their Rights There are some Signals of Kingly absolute Right which need but naming as the King 's Adviseray to Bills which he will not pass which was ever effectual as to a total condemnation So as here was no Power out of the King all reduced to him in his last Power of denying and likewise of pardoning And this needs not plead any right for it but right of Nature in reason of Government else without such a Power the King might be reduced to nothing And a King never falls or loseth his Power but he is lost in himself too He does not retain Kingly Government but on condition to perish with it And therefore all Laws are styled of Grace and petitioned for because the People till they are passed the Royal assent have but a Right in Reason to them not in Law only from the Supream Law of Salus Populi which is the comprehensive of all Laws The common mistake is because the King cannot do such and such things without the Parliament Ergo The Parliament governs the King Now as to this Many may be said to govern me so as to restrain me that I cannot go beyond my own Power and yet this no active governing Power over another this is the easiest thing to conception that can come into imagination Is there not where any Right is which we call property a power of denying And this is all the absolute Parliamentary power considered dividedly from the King and this vast inconsequence containing all the means almost to be King unless the King would break throw it which is the hardest task any King can go about yet nothing of the Nature of governing power no agency or efficiency in it by it self but only a meer Negative Because I am engaged in this consideration I will resort back to the state of the Question of a Parliament to be the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Republick The Answer is direct that the King is the sole Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick as King he is only trusted and there cannot be two such judging powers for then there can be no determination when they stand in competition Therefore all the Powers in the Kingdom act subordinately to the King and not against or athwart the King's Power for that were for a Being to destroy it self The distinction lies in this that they have nothing to do with the King's Power but the People's Rights which they dispose of by the King's consent and not absolutely at all out of themselvs In this they may oppose the King's desire that is they have a Negative Power not to be compelled or the People to be put out of possession without them But where the disagreement is they are to acquiesce and so nothing comes of it and the King fails of his end this is the height of their power Their Bills which they are free to make contain in them Grievances to be reformed which implies complaint and consent whatsoever the King cannot do by his quality singly as King he doth by consent of the People and that is the Character of a Parliament the People for it directly represents the Universality the People and hath directly and truly no power but what is nationally and naturally the People's so as look upon that you find this and no difference at all in it hence consenting and denying giving aiding being natural properties of Rights are left to them as the People in them And this though great as to all the means of governing it doth not come near it so vast a difference is betwixt being free in mine own and having Power over anothers as no reason needs to be given of it Nevertheless the King as the common Interest is not to be supposed deficient of the Publick means that were unnatural therefore as to Government it self all means are lawful nor any thing so concerning to the People as to keep the temperament for when they destroy that they lose the means to their own good I might leave it here in its causes but I shall say something by way of President Queen Elizabeth the greatest Courter of her People and yet the best Governour would lose nothing of her
Prerogative she did every thing with her Parliament as with Subjects they knew their own business and she would keep them to it and abundantly the better for their obedience for every thing is good or evil as it is governed Not a Fast or Humiliation day or Preaching His Plea for the Lords p. 409. as learned Mr. Prin hath given the recital of it that they could set up for themselves but she would check it and bring them to Humiliation for it So dangerous a wise Prince sees it popular liberty but to begin to creep out They had essayes upon her about Marriage she would not admit the pressure upon her nor suffer them to be Judg in it Then after that of her Successor that went nearer to her Camden's An aâ—s Elizb a pinching thought and in this the repulse of them was harder because apparently did depend upon it the safety or danger of the Kingdoms after her yet in this she was resolved 't was too precious to her to part with it to them kept it to the last hour of her life when she could live no longer then she declared a Successor imprisoned their Members that promoted it laid absolute peremptory command upon the House against it Pryn's Plea for the Lords p. 410 411. at other times imprisoned their Members and would usually tell them when they exceeded that it was in Her to give them being and to dissolve their being and to assent and dissent to any thing done in Parliament This from the best and wisest of Princes well knowing that it is not possible for a Prince to be just to the People without true obedience from the people King James his time by some Passages then in the Parliaments will shew us the difference betwixt Regal Right and Parliamentary Right Parliament 5 James Dr. Rawley's result from Sir Francis Bacon p. 38 39. the Earl of Salisburyes words to a Committee of the House That matter of War or Peace was Arcanum Imperii and must be kept within the vail nevertheless that sometimes Parliaments have been made acquainted with matter of War and Peace in a generality but it was upon one of these two motives when the King and Councel conceived that either it was material to have some declaration of the zeal and affection of the people or else when the King needed to demand monies and aids for the charge of the War The Earl of Northampton at the same time another of the Council of State that both by Philosophy and Civil Law Ordinatio belli et pacis est absoluti Imperii He further reasoned That the composition of the House of Common was meerly Democratical and intended to have a private and local Wisedome as to the places that sent them and not fit to examine secrets of State which depend upon variety of circumstances and although there be divers Gentlemen in the mixture of the House that are of good capacity and insight in matters of State yet that was the accident of the person not the intention of the place and things are to be taken in the institution not in the practice The Parliament of the 18th of King James was a Parliament of contest and dispute and held out long by an able King and a severe People It was an effectual Parliament as to the granting of Subsidies and reforming abuses yet in the end thrown off The evills that it had to work upon were the evils of Peace and making danger of Religion a Monster and looking at it through the glass of their own Passions would dictate extreams to the King about it and the Spanish match formidable and the Kings unkindnesses from Parliaments had put him upon petty helps as livelihoods Monopolies about those bred no breach but was matter served them to work upon and wholly put to them and the persons offenders in it exposed and the King himself a chief actor to suppress it And to pull down the Chancellor Bacon for Bribery was their work yet at last it had not a legal end of a Parliament but dissolved by Proclamation and Crimination The King enforced to this for this King never acted to publick offence by his Passion but meerly his necessity Therefore I shall resort back and take some remarks and passages of the proceedings along with me to find where the stone of it was After the matter of the punishments were over the great and high considerations as for diversion of the Match with Spain and declaring war against that King for the Palatinate and new devised pressures upon Papists and pressing executions of Laws upon them so as they involve all the Kings Interest into their hands under the notion that it was the Kingdomes Interest The King hearing of this and it beating thorow his sides betakes himself to high resolution and to prevent the prejudice of receiving it formally from them writes thus to the Speaker These are to command You to make known in Our Name unto the House that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with any thing concerning Our Government or deep matters of State and namely not to deal with Our dearest Son's Match with the Daughter of Spain and also not to meddle with any mans particulars which have their due motion in Our ordinary Courts of Justice And whereas we hear they have sent a Messenger to Sir Edwin Sandis to know the reasons of his late restraint You shall in Our Name resolve them That it was not for any misdemeanor of his in Parliament But to put them out of doubt of any question of that nature that may arise among them hereafter You shall resolve them in Our Name That we think Our selves very free and able to punish any mans misdemeanors in Parliament as well during their Sitting as after Their Answer by way of Petition to the King first Palliating over and with the manner and inducements to go upon such things they have these words In the discourse whereof we did not assume to our selves any power to determine of any part thereof nor intrude upon the Sacred bounds of your Royall Authority to whom and to whom only we acknowledg it doth belong to Resolve of Peace and War and of the Marriage of the most Noble Prince your Son but as your most loyal and humble Subjects and Servants representing the whole Commons of your Kingdome who have a large interest in the happy and prosperous Estate of your Majesty and your Royal Posterity and of the flourishing Estate of Our Church and Common-wealth did resolve out of our cares and fears truly and plainly to demonstrate these things to your Majesty which we were not assured could otherwise come so safely and clearly to your knowledg and that being done to lay the same down at your Majesties feet without expectation of any other answer of your Majesty touching these higher points then what at your good pleasure and in your own time should be held fit Now if we do but
People or any party out of the King to resist his power for then he should govern no longer than the governed party were disposed to obey and so no Government at all nor is it possible in the reason of Government to put a power upon the governing Power and yet that to govern So as no Argument can be made for resisting because it is against Government it self But saith Mr. Baxter Then what assurance of Laws all at the King 's Will. Now the precise consideration upon this is that the very Nature of the Government and the King's Interest in it binds him to the good of it The Law saith Nulli magis tueri Rempublicam creditum est quà m Regi no person so believed to intend the good of the Common-Wealth as the King his sole Interest makes it so all others as Subject◠have private Interests in them and so have private respects which commonly consists not with the publick the King is the only publick Person of the Kingdom who hath no reason or consideration of his being but as King without that or beyond that nothing his whole being placed in it the publick is his private and this very reason in Nature of Government making the Government the same with the King is the full absolute cause of the certainty and good of it and is as much as is for any thing in Nature or any Being in the World since nothing can be more assured than Self-Interest for the good of it And therefore Kingly Government is the most certain Government because there can be no end out of it all contained in it the good of the Government is the King 's good without any difference Whereas in all other Forms of Government the Persons that govern have particular ends as private persons and this is truly the Nature of it never any reason can be for the abuse of Government by a King It may be abuse upon the King's Government but never out of any just end of it So as it is the foulest mistake that can be to suppose a King's Interest divided from the People's and that he must be held in chains for the People's good and certainty of Government when as the People directly lose all their good if the King want freedom of Will and Power to act The People's consistency is meerly in the King's power without that it were nothing presently the Government grows seditious and factious and moving in parts when the Regal Power cannot retain it And hence it is that those Persons that pretend for Liberty and Power over Kings are cause of Murders and Massacres of the People Nevertheless if it be objected that there are evils and abuses under a King's Government yet not so considerable especially here with us in England where hardly can be any great grievance the form of the Government being so equal as to make War for them Government hath many hard things come into it and extream difficulties and the evils of it are out of the People themselves stubbornly acting against the King and repugning to the means of Government and of Persons doing wickedly and great Ones oppressing and having their ends by wicked means Nor is it possible almost in any Government to have it so that the ordinary People can be able to find Remedy against the Oppressions of great Ones such as are wicked and turn even the Government it self into the means of it and the King is the party most extreamly wronged in it for all reflects upon the King and yet it cannot be helped but in degrees as things are subject to their accidents and so far only the good of Government goes and never to an absoluteness Now the manner is that where the universality meets in Parliament all is represented and they complain and supply the King's wants and this is the great means to redress And if some hard condition in the Government cannot be got mended at present yet extreams do never long endure but return to the nature of the Government they cannot hold out so as we see all excesses in Government are causes still of falling back and reverting to its right temper and commonly causes of pulling away something of the former with it as ever all violating of the grand Charters and Liberties are cause of binding them up and taking greater advantage of the King A King can never affect to govern ill but they may affect to have Power for Power is not simply good or evil but in the use of it and to have treasure and the People in Parliament not complying Kings are inforced to break out into extraordinaries and it cannot be helped for it is not to be supposed a failer of the means of Government all must dy and perish before it King James in the Parliament the 18th of his Reign tells them that in ten years he had not made use of them and had he not bin all peace he could not have lived so When the War began the contest was about nothing but that they would not trust the King and were resolved to bring him below them being an inexorable party and cruelty growing out of Religion is of all other the greatest Cruelty But the Laws and Rights were just the same as in all times formerly no alteration as to the great Interest of Regal right and the People's Rights which shews it is not alterable that which no time had wrought upon and all accidents had in all those ages and times come into it of so durable matter is the Government as no fear ever can be in it as to necessitate Arms of the People to vindicate it The People themselvs are the only destroyers of it Nevertheless though a King may seem all Power yet naturally and necessarily all Government involvs it self into the consent of the People and all Power comes out of them so as we are to see where the Interest of it lyes not meerly in the King's Will who is tied to more necessities than any other so foolish it is to think that though they have the Power of governing they have not the natural restraints and necessities of Government upon them We are at last to consider the infinite mischsef of a Civil War and the strange danger the People run into the greatest and most devouring Gulf that is in nature a body destroying its self and ripping out its own Bowels for it is all-acted within the body it self and the People know not whether they shall ever return to their Government again but live under perpetual Usurpation and Rebellion which utterly destroys a People to fall and live under the King's destroyers for Usurpation is all wickedness and all misery and all force and cannot be amended so long as it stands in resistance so as if possible the People's Interest is to get out of it and come under their Government And it is so far a King of England's cause that hath no military Power in governing as he will never inforce the
given me the Kingdomes of the Earth And Daniel most full the Pattent of the King as extensive to all Creatures and Powers under him Dan. 1. ver 37 38. The God of Heaven hath given thee a Kingdom Power and Strength and Glory and in all places where the Children of men dwell the Beasts of the field and the Fowls of the Heaven has he given into thy hand and hath made thee Ruler over them all An Illustration of Gods dominion over all Creatures and acting by Kings his immediate Vice-gerents to the end of the 5th chapter of Daniel being nothing else then Gods clayming his Title over Kings as derivative from God and accountable to him Now all this is from the great end in nature that Kings being to rule the people which is Gods proper Office and Attribute all Power and all Dominion and all Providence being his they represent God and are his Image and Effigies in Ruling and Governing and this makes their dependance to be meerly of God and not accountable to any Power under God The nature of it is shewed in that of Saul as being the first King to the Jews and being the institutive of it comprehends the nature of it The person was meerly of Gods choice not left to the people nor any power left in them much less over the King In that day shall they cry unto the Lord sayes the Text That is 1 Sam. 8.18 no power to be against the Kings Power but an appeal only to an higher Power that is to God himself his Author and Founder they might complain of him that was set over them but had not any Authority of their own over him And this makes it in its nature to be the greatest trust in the World because there is no remedy against it contrary to Mr. Baxter's sense abusing the Term making Trust subject The reason of this absolute subjection of the People to Government lyes in the nature of it that no medium can be found betwixt power of Governing and liberty in the people as not Governed to be subject only to the good of Government is no Government at all or to be subject at all therefore of meer force from its nature it leaves nothing in the wills of the people so as no such mean or half being of it can be by any constitution provision or Policy whatsoever when it comes to Govern all those things though part of the Government yet come under the governing Power Now for the Originals of Ruling Powers ordinarily amongst men as to the persons ruling in such a Line and Succession we shall find it to be still from a first Power before it came to Governing Power the one introductive of the other for Power is its matter and nature for we see all Government is Power and the Power will govern Therefore equivocally the terms and names are used sometimes calling it the Government and sometimes the Power so as it is the same and signifies the same thing inseperables in nature Government and Power no remove can be in it for where the Power is there the Government will go along with it Hence it is that there is never any discontinuance in governing Power over the people In the most confused tumultuous War and distraction that ever was yet there is power still somewhere or other that contains the peoples liberty and subjects them so as there is not one moment or minute of time in the World where society and community of man is that there is any vacuum of Power to be over them and although powers devest one another yet the Series of governing Power is still continued and in all such removes of the Powers yet the Power never falls but is kept alwayes up and is in some still and is as inseperable from the People as the matter and the Form which never are asunder For that which we call Power out of the People it is not the people but a Power acting upon the People and in such a circumstance of it if it become too powerful for the Government then it becomes the Government it self Now having shewed thus the nature of it it destroyes all those imaginary Theaters that they would erect and build popular liberty upon and popular right over Kings They would fancy governing Power to be of the wills of the people and the people the Author so impossible an assertion as I only leave it upon what I have stated and how contradictory it is to nature in all consideration of it so as still the people is but the subject matter of Government never the Author of it nor does Government ever come below the people in the cause of it but must derive out of its own cause which is power to be above the people and so in all end and acting of it All this is still to explode that Monstrous conceit of the peoples instituting the Government or more Monstrous consequence of it the people as the first cause of it to dispose of it and destroy it It is observable in Government that Laws and Liberties come afterward to the people after power of the Government it self In the Norman Conquest all lay flatted some time under it till afterward as the Reporters of those times tell us that the party of the Conqueror or their Posterity did revive the English Liberties first the Conqueror's absolute will served them to expel and dispossess the Natives and after they were glad of establishments in Government to assure their own condition and what they had gained So as hereby we see Governments the farther they go on from their beginnings the more they take in of composition to their first single Nature so as still the Originals of Government are most absolute Hence it is manifest that Power is their Fountain and first cause as such is their Natures and the People's Freedom still is under Government and when Government is most confused then is their Freedom least so as still Power is over them and are alwayes subject to it let the Form of it be what it will To consider it in common Reason and Understanding the King took his Being from the People's Trust in Mr. Baxter's sense therfore the People are to dispose of him This were for the People not to be governed for then the Right were in the People and the King betrayed to govern under another Authority to make it accomptable Therefore this supposeth a Monster in nature and it would evermore make Government destructive to it self for then it doth not govern for where the end and ultimate of Power is there the Government is I shall insert something that is legal in this pertinent to the Case of the King of England how he comes to be King Sir Edward Coke that was a man popular enough in his third part of his Institutes pag. 7. saith That there is no such thing of the Kingly Being in England as an Inter-Regnum nor any Act confers to the making
King and Parliament and all their Vows and Protestations but as so many charms only to destroy the King because by other means they could not delude the people and now he confesses it concludes and consents to the reason of it that an exasperated King is never to be trusted again with his power over those that subdued him by this he destroyes his Covenant his Cause and the whole onely that served then and this now To drive this further because Mr. Baxter declares himself so in it as he can have no retreat out of it First fight their King subdue him be Victorious upon him make him Captive then kill him according to the Kings own sense and saying when he was in that condition That there were but few steps betwixt the Prisons and the Graves of Princes Now Mr. Baxter makes it his very Argument for the death of the King and so involves his whole Cause and Party in it has destroyed all difference and distinction and makes the death of the King natural and consequential to the first of warring upon him We see here how naturally falshoods betray themselves out of their own Arguments I shall not pass by the insolency and impropriety of his saying Conquered the King If Mr. Baxter were skilled in the Laws of England which is out of his Element he would know that there can be no such thing as a Conquest of Subjects over their King it is desertion or Treason not Conquest If he consult but nature it will tell him that that which is the proper strength existency and being of any thing cannot be said to conquer it no more then any thing can be said to conquer it self the being ceases to be if the essentiall do but divide from it Cook 3. Inst p. 12. Nay the voice and reason of our Laws would never call them Enemies but Traytors Enemies implyes a kind of equalls He sayes Object It was the Judgment of the Parliament upon the division Answ Upon their division their dividing from the King their Judgment was nothing but as private persons or wicked enemies all Subordination depends so upon its first Cause as dividing from that the beeing ceases to be In the next you shall observe Mr. Baxter over-rule Scripture to his own sense as he hath dealt in Politicks Object And that those that did resist the Higher Powers set over them by God are guilty of the damnation of resisters Answ This of Higher Powers here in Mr. Baxters meaning is of those that raised the War against the King that they were the Higher Powers not to be resisted Now I have not met with a greater violation of Scripture then this to make it a meer contrary to its self and destructive to the end it serves to not only indirectly but oppositely This Scripture proceeds from the Spirit of God directly for preservation of Kings and Mr. Baxter applyes it to the Kings destroyers makeing them the meer object of it in the act of destroying the King I have driven it thus home to fix it upon observation what a strange degree of falsifying and abusing Scripture in it and the horridness of the example and consequence of falsifying grounds and rules by which truths should be measured and creating false conceptions which are seeds of all wicked actions Now to clear out this more fully and directly past exception there is not one word or syllable in Scripture Doctrinally of any Power or Authorities since God Governed by his Prophets but still generally the intendment is of Kings and no other Form of Government owned in Scripture or ever intended that being only natural all Power consisting in unity of Power and evermore the Powers are intended as part of the Kings Power for there is no fraction in Government supposing it a Government so as all Power is ever but the Power of the chief Power So many signalls upon Kings and Guards for their fence and safety because if the head fail all the parts and dependency of the people must needs dissolve And here I shall take up again his words no more to be trusted with Government A Speech of great scorn and contempt upon Kings to make them the people's Servants and at their dispose to turn off when they will and to destroy and deriving no higher then out of the Peoples trust their beeing still but a depending beeing nothing being higher in nature then its first Cause and upon this basis they plant their Engine for pulling down debasing Kings and casting them into their Graves It is good therefore to see the relation that Kings have For so much as we see immediate of God in it which is not ordinarily in the things of the World but limited to the chosen people and when he appeared by his Prophets then most manifestly the Kings or at least the first Kings which shews the nature of it and right of it in all was from God leaving out the people at all in it to have any share in it All this legible in Saul David Solomon and in the removes of Kings by Gods special denunciation and sending by his Prophets The people the Executioners in some cases and circumstances so as there is no footstep or mark from God of the Peoples title over Kings or their making them or giveing them their power This in God special and appearing proves in all shews the nature of it for that which we see was done and of God and freely done and at first when no accident had been so as it was a meer promulgation out of nature and proper to the nature of it must needs be held certain to it and most reasonable to conceive of it Corresponding to these are the Texts Rom. 13.1 There is no Power but of God the Powers that be are ordained of God this referring to Kings for the words are after For Princes are not to be feared for good works but for evill and he is the Minister of God Power as Power is properly of God who is the Power â— Chr. 1.9 11. Thou hast made me a King over a People That thou mayest Judg the People over whom I have made thee King â— Sam. 16. â—er 1. I have provided me a King still pointing out his End and his Author The Texts are many more and clear it beyond all doubt or objection of man that Kings as Kings are Gods Creatures and derive not lower then from God himself as immediate to him Now because this was of the Jews a peculiar people to God we will see what evidence the Scripture yields in case of Heathen Kings Nebuchadnezzar an Heathen and Idolater was owned by God as his Servant Jer. 25.9 Nebuchadnezzar my servant Isa 45.1 And thus said the Lord to Cyrus his annointed Which is the highest emblem of Soveraignty annointing attributed to Cyrus as King that is that he had it vertually as King Ezr. 1.2 And Cyrus King of Persia The Lord God of Heaven hath