in his right wits can maintain such an Assertion The words immediately after make it as clear as the Sun that the Apostle speaks only of a lawful Power for he gives us in them a Definition of Magistrates and thereby explains to us who are the Persons thus authoriz'd and upon what account we are to yield Obedience lest we should be apt to mistake and ground extravagant Notions upon his Discourse The Magistrates says he are not a Terror to good Works but to evil Wilt thou then not be afraid of the Power Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same For he is the Minister of God to thee for good He beareth not the Sword in vain for he is the Minister of God a Revenger to execute Wrath upon him that doth Evil. What honest Man would not willingly submit to such a Magistracy as is here described And that not only to avoid Wâ—ath and for fear of Punishment but for Conscience sake Without Magistrates and some Form or other of Civil Government no Commonwealth no Humane Society can subsist there were no-living in the World But whatever Power enables a Man or whatsoever Magistrate takes upon him to act contrary to what St. Paul makes the Duty of those that are in Authority neither is that Power nor that Magistrate ordain'd of God And consequently to such a Magistracy no Subjection is commanded nor is any due nor are the People forbidden to resist such Authority for in so doing they do not resist the Power nor the Magistracy as they are here excellently well described but they resist a Robber a Tyrant an Enemy who if he may notwithstanding in some sense be called a Magistrate upon this account only because he has Power in his hands which perhaps God may have invested him with for our punishment by the same reason the Devil may be called a Magistrate This is most certain that there can be but one true Definition of one and the same thing So that if St. Paul in this place define what a Magistrate is which he certainly does and that accurately well He cannot possibly define a Tyrant the most contrary thing imaginable in the same words Hence I infer that he commands us to submit to such Magistrates only as he himself defines and describes and not to Tyrants which are quite other things For this Cause you pay Tribute also He gives a Reason together with a Command Hence St. Chrysostome Why do we pay Tribute to Princes says he Do we not thereby reward them for the care they take of our Safety We should not have paid them any Tribute if we had not been convinc'd That it was good for us to live under a Government So that I must here repeat what I have said already That since Subjection is not absolutely enjoined but upon a particular Reason that reason must be the rule of our Subjection where that reason holds we are Rebels if we submit not where it holds not we are Cowards and Slaves if we do But say you the English are far from being Freemen for they are wicked and flagitious I will not reckon up here the Vices of the French tho they live under a Kingly Government neither will I excuse my own Countrey-men too far but this I may safely say Whatever Vices they have they have learnt them under a Kingly Government as the Israelites learnt a great deal of Wickedness in Egypt And as they when they were brought into the Wilderness and lived under the immediate Government of God himself could hardly reform just so 't is with us But there are good hopes of many amongst us that I may not here celebrate those men amongst us that are eminent for their Piety and Virtue and Love of the Truth of which sort I persuade my self we have as great a number as where you think there are most such But they have laid a heavy yoke upon the English Nation What if they have upon those of them that endeavoured to lay a heavy yoke upon all the rest Upon those that have deserved to be put under the hatches As for the rest I question not but they are very well content to be at the Expence of maintaining their own Liberty the Publick Treasury being exhausted by the Civil Wars Now he betakes himself to the Fabulous Rabbins again He asserts frequently that Kings are bound by no Laws and yet he proves That a cording to the sense of the Rabbins a King may be guilty of Treason by suffering an Invasion upon the Rights of his Crown So Kings are bound by Laws and they are not bound by them they may be Criminals and yet they may not be so This man contradicts himself so perpetually that Contradiction and he seem to be of kiâ— to one another You say that God himself put many Kingdoms under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzâ—r King of Babylon I confess he did so for a time Jer 27. 7 but do you make appear if you can that he put the English Nation into a condition of Slavery to Charles Stuart for a minute I confess he suffered them to be enslaved by him for some time but I never yet heard that himself appointed it so to be Or if you will have it so that God shall be said to put a Nation under Slavery when a Tyrant prevails why may he not as well be said to deliver them from his Tyranny when the People prevail and get the upper hand Shall his Tyranny be said to be of God and not our Liberty There is no evil in the City that the Lord hath not done Amos 3. So that Famine Pestilence Sedition War all of them are of God and is it therefore unlawful for a People afflicted with any of these Plagues to endeavour to get rid of them Certainly they would do their utmost tho they know them to be sent by God unless himself miraculously from Heaven should command the contrary And why may they not by the same reason rid themselves of a Tyrant if they are stonger than he Why should we suppose his weakness to be appointed by God for the ruin and destruction of the Commonwealth rather than the Power and Strength of all the People for the good of the State 〈◊〉 be it from all Commonwealths from all Societies of free-born men to maintain not only such pernicious but such stupid and senseless Principles Principles that subvert all Civil Society that to gratitie a few Tyrants level all Mankind with Brutes and by setting Princes out of the reach of humane Laws give them an equal power over both I pass by those foolish Dilemma's that you now make which that you might take occasion to propose you feign some or other to assert that that superlative power of Princes is derived from the people though for my own part I do not at all doubt but that all the power that any Magistrates have is so Hence Cicero in his Orat. pro Flacco Our wise
his own Court What you mean by the Members of the Court I would gladly know You enumerate the Calamities that the Romans underwent by changing their Kingdom into a Commowealth In which I have already shown how grosly you give your self the lye What was it you said when you wrote against the Jesuit You demonstrated That in an Aristocracy or a popular State there câ—uld but he Seditiâ—â—s and Tumults whereas under a Tyrant nothing was to be lâ—ked for but certain Ruin and Destruction And dare you now say you vain corrupt Mortal That thâ—se Seditions were Punishments inflicted upon them fâ—r Banâ—shing their Kings to wit because King Charles gave you a hundred Jacobussâ—s afterward Therefore the Romans shall be punished for Banishing their Kings But they that kill'd Julius Caesar did not prosper afterwards I confess if I would have had any Tyrant spared it should have been him For altho he introduced a Monarchical Government into a 〈◊〉 State by force of Arms yet perhaps himself deserved a Kingdom best and yet I conceive that none of those that killed him can be said to have been punished for so doing any more than Caius Anthonius 〈…〉 's Colleague for destroying Cataline who when he was afterward condemn'd for other Crimes says Cicero in his Oration Pro Flacco Cataline's Sepulchâ—… was adâ—rn'd with Flowers For they that fa voured Cataline then rejoyced They gave out then that what Cataline did was just to encrease the Peoples hatred against those that had cut him off These are Artifices which wicked Men make use of to deter the best of Men from punishing Tyrants and slagitious Persons I might as easily say the quite contrary and instance in them that have killed Tyrants and prospered afterwards if any certain inference might be drawn in such â—…ases from the Events of things You object further That the English did not put their Hereditary King to Death in like manner as Tyrants use to be slain but as Robbers and Traytors are executed In the first place I do not nor can any wise Man understand what a Crowns being Hereditary should contribute to a King's Crimes being unpunishable What you ascribe to the Barbarous Cruelty of the English proceeded rather for their Clemency and Moderation and as such deserves Commendation who tho the beinâ— a Tyrant is a Crime that comprehends all sorts of Enormities such as Robberies Treasons and Rebellions against the whole Nation yet were contented to inflict no greater punishment upon him for being so than they used of course to do upon any Common Highway-man or ordinary Traytor You hope some such Men as Harmodius and Thrasibulus will rise up amongst us and make Expiation for the King's Death by shedding thâ—ir Blood that were the Authors of it But you will run â—…d with despair and be detested by all good Men and put an end to that wretched Life of yours by hâ—nging your self before you see Men like Hâ—…dius avenging the Blood of a Tyrant upon such 〈◊〉 hâ—ve done no other than what they did themselves That you will come to such an end is most proâ—â—ble nor can any other be expected of so great a Rogue but the other thing is an utter impossibility You mention thirty Tyrants that rebelled in Callienus's time And what if it fall out that one Tyrant happens to oppose another must therefore all they that resist Tyrants be accounted such themselves You cannot persuade Men into such a belief you Slave of a Knight nor your Author Trebellius Pollio the most inconsiderable of all Historians that have writ If any of the Emperors were declared Enemies by the Senate you say it was done by Faction but could not have been by Law You put us in mind what it was that made Emperours at first It was Faction and Violence and to speak plainer it was the Madness of Anthony that made Generals at first Rebel against the Senate and the People of Rome there was no Law no Right for their so doing Galba you say was punished for his Insurection against Nero. Tell us likewise how â—â—spasian was punished for taking up Arms against Vitellius There was as much difference you say betwixt Charles and Nero as betwixt those English â—…chers and the Roman Senators of thâ—â— Age. Desâ—icâ—ble Villain by whom it is Scandalous to be commended and a Praise to be Evil spoken of But a few Periods before discoursing of this very thing you said That the Roman Senate under the Emperors was in effect but an Assembly of Slaves in Robes And here you say That very Senate was an Assembly of Kings which if it be allowed then are Kings according to your own Opinion but Slaves with Robes on Kings are blessed that have such a Fellow as you to write in their praise than whom no Man is more a Rascal no Beast more void of Sense unless this one thing may be said to be peculiar to you that none ever brayed so learnedly You make the Parliament of England more like to Nero than to the Roman Senate This itch of yours of making silly Similitudes enforces me to rectify you whether I will or no And I will let you see how like King Charles was to Nero. Nero you say commanded his own Mother to be run through with a Sword But Charles murdered both his Prince and his Father and that by Poyson For to omit other evidences he that would not suffer a Duke that was accused for it to come to his Tryal must needs have been guilty of it himself Nero slew many thousands of Christians but Charles slew many more There were those says Suetonius that praised Nero after he was dead that long'd to have had him again That hung Garlands of Flowers upon his Sepulchre and gave out that they would never prosper that had been his Enemies And some there are transported with the like Phrensy that wish for King Charles again and extol him to the highest degree imaginable of whom you a Knight of the Halter are a Ringleader The English Soldiers more Savage than their own Mastiffs erectâ—d a new and unheard-of Court of Justice Observe this ingenious Symbol or adage of Salmasius which he has now repeated six times over More Savage than their own Mastiffs Take notice Orators and School-Masters pluck if you are wise this Elegant Flower which Salmasius is so very fond of Commit this Flourish of a Man that is so much a Master of words to your Desks for safe Custody lest it be lost Has your rage made you forget words to that degree that like a Cuckcow you must needs say the same thing over and over again What strange thing has befallen you The Poet tells us That Spleen and Rage turn'd Hecuba into a Dog and it has turn'd you the Lord of St. Lupus into a Cuckow Now you come out with fresh Contradictions You had said before page 113. That Princes were not bound by any Laws neither Câ—ercive nor Directory that they were bound by no Law
and it may with far greater ease be taken from one than from many And to invest any mortal creature with a power over themselves on any other terms than upon Trust were extreme madness nor is it credible that any people since the Creation of the world who had freedom of will were ever so miserably silly as either to depart with the power for ever and to all purposes or to revoke it from those whom they had entrusted with it but upon most urgent and weighty reasons If dissentions if Civil Wars are occasioned thereby there cannot any Right accrue from thence to the King to retain that power by force of arms which the people challenge from him as their own Whence it follows that what you say and we do not deny That Governors are not lightly to be changed is true with respect to the peoples Prudence not the King 's Right but that therefore they ought never to be changed upon no occasion whatsoever that does not follow by no means nor have you hitherto alledged any thing nor made appear any Right of Kings to the contrary but that all the people concurring they may lawfully be deposed when unfit for Government provided it may be done as it has been often done in your own Countrey of France without any Tumults or Civil Wars Since therefore the Safety of the People and not that of a Tyrant is the Supreme Law and consequently ought to be alledged on the peoples behalf against a Tyrant and not for him against them you that go about to pervert so sacred and so glorious a Law with your fallacies and juglings you who would have this Supreme Law and which of all others is most beneficial to mankind to serve only for the Impunity of Tyrants let me fell you since you call us Englishmen so often Inspired and Enthusiasts and Prophets let me I say be so far a Prophet as to tell you That the Vengeance of God and man hangs over your head for so horrid a Crime altho your subjecting all mankind to Tyranny as far as in you lies which in effect is no better than condemning them to be devoured by wild beasts is in it self part of its own Vengeance and whithersoever you flye and wheresoever you wander will first or last pursue you with its Furies and overtake you and cause you to rave worse than you do now I come now to your second Argument which is not unlike the first If the people may resume their Liberty there would be no difference you say betwixt a Popular State and a Kingdom but that in a Kingdom one man rules and in a Popular State many And what if that were true would the State have any prejudice by it But you your self tell us of other differences that would be notwithstanding to wit of Time and Succession for in popular States the Magistrates are generally chosen yearly whereas Kings if they behave themselves well are perpetual and in most Kingdoms there is a Succession in the same Family But let them differ from one another or not differ I regard not those petty things In this they agree That when the Publick Good requires it the people may without doing injury to any resume that power for the Publick Saftety which they committed to another for that end and purpose But by the Royal Law by the Romans so called which is mentioned in the Institutes the people of Rome granted all their Power and Authority to the Prince They did so by compulsion the Emperor being willing to ratifie their Tyranny by the Authority of a Law but of this we have spoken before and their own Lawyers commenting upon this place in the Institutes confess as much So that we make no question but the people may revoke what they were forced to grant and granted against their wills But most rational it is to suppose that the people of Rome transferred no other power to the Prince than they had before granted to their own Magistrates and that was a power to govern according to Law and a revocable not an absurd tyrannical power Hence it was that the Emperors assumed the Consular Dignity and that of the Tribunes of the people but after Julius Caesar not one of them pretended to the Dictatorship In the Circus Maximus they used to adore the people as I have said already out of Tacitus and Claudian But as heretofore many private persons have sold themselves into slavery so a whole Nation may Thou Gaol-bird of a Knight thou day-spirit thou everlasting scandal to thy Native-Countrey The most despicable Slaves in the world ought to abhor and spit upon such a Factor for Slavery such a publick Pander as thou art Certainly if people had so enslaved themselves to Kings then might Kings turn them over to other Masters or fell them for money and yet we know that Kings cannot so much as alienate the Demesnes of the Crown And shall he that has but the Crown and the Revenues that belong to it as an Usufructuary and those given him by the people can he be said to have as it were purchased the people and made them his Propriety Tho you were bored through both ears and went bare-foot you would not be so vile and despicable so much more contemptible than all Slaves as the broaching such a scandalous Doctrine as this makes you But go on and punish your self for your Rogueries as now you do tho against your will You frame a long Discourse of the Law of War which is nothing to the purpose in this place For neither did Charles conquer us and for his Ancestors if it were never so much granted that they did yet have they often renounced their Title as Conquerors And certain it is That we were never so conquered but that as we swore Allegiance to them so they swore to maintain our Laws and govern by them Which Laws when Charles had notoriously violated taken in what capacity you will as one who had formerly been a Conqueror or was now a perjured King we subdued him by force he himself having begun with us first And according to your own opinion Whatever is acquired by War becomes his property that acquired it So that how full soever you are of words how impertinent soever a babler whatever you prate how great a noise soever you make what Quotations soever out of the Rabbins tho you make your self never so hoarse to the end of this Chapter assure your self That nothing of it makes for the King he being now conquered but all for us who by God's assistance are Conquerors CHAP. VII TO avoid two very great inconveniences and considering your own weight very weighty ones indeed you denied in the foregoing Chapter That the Peoples Power was superior to that of the King for if that should be granted Kings must provide themselves of some other name because the people would indeed be King and some divisions in your System of Politicks would be confounded
Government Sir Thomas Smith a Country-man of ours in Edward the Sixth's days a good Lawyer and a Statesman one whom you your self will not call a Parricide in the beginning of a Book which he wrote of the Common-wealth of England asserts the same thing and not of our Government only but of almost all others in the world and that out of Aristotle and he says it is not possible that any Government should otherwise subsist But as if you thought it a crime to say any thing and not unsay it again you repeat your former thread-bare Contradictions You say There neither is nor ever was any Nation that did not understand by the very name of a King a person whose authority is inferior to God alone and who is accountable to no other And yet a little after you confess that the name of a King was formerly given to such Powers and Magistrates as had not a full and absolute right of themselves but had a dependance upon the people as the Suffetes among the Carthaginians the Hebrew Judges the Kings of the Lacedemonians and of Arragon Are you not very consistent with your self Then you reckon up five several sorts of Monarchies out of Aristotle in one of which only that Right obtain'd which you say is common to all Kings Concerning which I have said already more than once that neither doth Aristotle give an instance of any such Monarchy nor was there ever any such in being the other four he clearly demonstrates that they were bounded by Establisht Laws and the King's Power subject to those Laws The first of which four was that of the Lacedemonians which in his opinion did of all others best deserve the name of a Kingdom The second was such as obtain'd among Barbarians which was lasting because regulated by Laws and because the people willingly submitted to it whereas by the same Author's opinion in his third Book what King so ever retains the Soveraignty against the people's will is no longer to be accounted a King but a downright Tyrant all which is true likewise of his third sort of Kings which he calls Aesymnete who were chosen by the people and most commonly for a certain time only and for some particular purposes such as the Roman Dictators were The fourth sort he makes of such as reigned in the Heroical days upon whom for their extraordinary merits the people of their own accord conferr'd the Government but yet bounded by Laws nor could these retain the Soveraignty against the will of the people nor do these four sorts of Kingly Governments differ he says from Tyranny in any thing else but only in that these Governments are with the good liking of the people and That against their will The fifth sort of Kingly Government which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or absolute Monarchy in which the Supreme Power resides in the King's person which you pretend to be the right of all Kings is utterly condemn'd by the Philosopher as neither for the good of Mankind nor consonant to Justice or Nature unless some people should be content to live under such a Government and withal confer it upon such as excel all others in vertue These things any man may read in the third Book of his Politicks But you I believe that once in your life you might appear witty and florid pleased your self with making a comparison betwixt these five sorts of Kingly Government and the five Zones of the World betwixt the two extremes of Kingly power there are three more temperate Species interposed as there lie three Zones betwixt the Torrid and the Frigid Pretty Rogue what ingenious comparisons he always makes us May you be for ever banished whither you your self condemn an absolute Kingdom to be to wit to the frigid Zone which when you are there will be doubly cold to what it was before In the mean while we shall expect that new fashioned sphere which you describe from you our modern Archimedes in which there shall be two extreme Zones one Torrid and the other Frigid and three temperate ones lying betwixt The Kings of the Lacedaemonians you say might lawfully be Imprisoned but it was not lawful to put them to Death Why not Because the Ministers of Justice and some Foreign Soldiers being surprised at the Novelty of the thing thought it not lawful to lead Agis to his Execution though condem'd to die And the people of Lacedemon were displeased at his death not because condemn'd to die though a King but because he was a good man and popular and had been circumvented by a faction of the great ones Says Plutarch Agis was the first King that was put to death by the Ephori in which words he does not pretend to tell us what lawfully might be done but what actually was done For to imagin that such as may lawfully accuse a King and imprison him may not also lawfully put him to death is a childish conceit At last you betake your self to give an account of the Right of English Kings There never was you say but one King in England This you say because you had said before that unless a King be sole in the Government we cannot be a King Which if it be true some of them who I had thought had been Kings of England were not really so for to omit many of our Saxon Kings who had 〈◊〉 their Sons or their Brothers Partners with them in the Government it is known that King Henry the Second of the Norman Race reign'd together with his Son Let them show say you a President of any Kingdom under the Government of a single person who has not an absolute power though in some Kingdoms more remiss in others more intense Do you show any Power that 's absolute and yet remiss you Ass is not that power that 's absolute the Supreme Power of all How can it then be both supreme and remiss Whatsoever Kings you shall acknowledg to be invested with a remiss or a less power those I will easily make appear to have no absolute power and consequently to be inferior to a People free by nature who is both its own Law given and can make the Regal Power more or less intense or remiss that is greater or less Whether the whole Island of Britain was anciently Governed by Kings or no is uncertain It 's most likely that the form of their Government changed according to the Exigencies of the times Whence Tacitus says The Britains anciently were under Kings now the great man amongst them divide them into Parties and Factions When the Romans left them they were about forty years without Kings they were not always therefore under a Kingly Government as you say they were but when they were so that the Kingdom was Hereditary I positively deny which that it was not is evident both from the Series of their Kings and their way of Creating them for the consent of the people is asked in express words When the
King has taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oath the Archbishop stepping to 〈◊〉 side of the Stage erected for that purpose asks the people four several times in these words Do you consent to have this man to be your King Just as if he spoke to them in the Roman Stile Vultis Jubetis hunc Regnare Is it your pleasure do you appoint this man to Reign Which would be needless if the Kingdom were by the Law hereditary But with Kings Usurpation passes very frequently for Law and Right You go about to ground Charles's Right to the Crown who was so often conquered himself upon the Right of Conquest William surnamed the Conqueror â—orsooth subdued us But they who are not strangers to our History know full well that the Strength of the English Nation was not so broken in that one Fight at Hastings but that they might easily have renewed the War But they chose rather to accept of a King than to be under a Conqueror and a Tyrant They swear therefore to William to be his Liege-men and he swears to them at the Altar to carry to them as a good King ought to do in all respects When he broke his word and the English betook themselves again to their Arms being diffident of his strength he renewed his Oath upon the Holy Evangelists to observe the Ancient Laws of England And therefore if after that he miserably oppressed the English as you say he did he did it not by Right of Conquest but by Right of Perjury Besides it is certain that many ages ago the Conquerors and Conquered coalesced into one and the same people So that that Right of Conquest if any such ever were must needs have been antiquated long ago His own words at his death which I give you out of a French Manuscript written at Cane put all out of doubt I appoint no man says he to inherit the Kingdom of England By which words both his pretended Right of Conquest and the Hereditary Right were disclaim'd at his death and buried together with him I see now that you have gotten a place at Court as I foretold you would you are made the King's Chief Treasurer and Steward of his Court-Craft And what follows you seem to write ex Officio as by virtue of your Office Magnificent Sir If any preceding Kings being thereunto compelled by Factions of Great Men or Seditions amongst the Common People have receded in some measure from their Right that cannot prejudice the Successor but that he is at liberty to resume it You say well if therefore at any time our Ancestors have through neglect lost any thing that was their Right why should that prejudice us their Posterity If they would promise for themselves to become Slaves they could make no such promise for us who shall always retain the same Right of delivering our selves out of Slavery that they had of enslaving themselves to any whomsoever You wonder how it comes to pass that a King of Great Britain must now-adays be looked upon as one of the Magistrates of the Kingdom only whereas in all other Kingly Governments in Christendom Kings are invested with a Free and Absolute Authority For the Scots I remit you to Buchanan For France your own Native Countrey to which you seem to be a stranger to Hottoman's Franco Gallia and Girardus a French Historian for the rest to other Authors of whom none that I know of were Independents Out of whom you might have learned a quite other lesson concerning the Right of Kings than what you teach Not being able to prove that a Tyrannical Power belongs to the Kings of England by Right of Conquest you try now to do it by Right of Perjury Kings profess themselves to Reign By the Grace of God What if they had professed themselves to be gods I believe if they had you might easily have been brought to become one of their Priests So the Archbishops of Canterbury pretended to Archbishop it by Divine Providence Are you such a fool as to deny the Pope's being a King in the Church that you may make the King greater than a Pope in the State But in the Statutes of the Realm the King is called our Lord. You are become of a sudden a wonderful Nomenclator of our Statutes But you know not that many are called Lords and Masters who are not really so You know not how unreasonable a thing it is to judge of Truth and Right by Titles of Honour not to say of Flattery Make the same Inference if you will from the Parliament's being called the King's Parliament for it is called the King's Bridle too or a Bridle to the King and therefore the King is no more Lord or Master of his Parliament than a Horse is of his Bridle But why not the King's Parliament since the King summons them I 'le tell you why because the Consuls used to indict a Meeting of the Senate yet were they not Lords over that Council When the King therefore summons or calls together a Parliament he does it by vertue and in discharge of that Office which he has received from the people that he may advise with them about the weighty affairs of the Kingdom not his own particular Affairs Or when at any time the Parliament debated of the King 's own Affairs if any could properly be called his own they were always the last things they did and it was in their choice when to debate of them and whether at all or no and depended not upon the King's Pleasure And they whom it concerns to know this know very well That Parliaments anciently whether summoned or not might by Law meet twice a Year But the Laws are called too The King's Laws These are flattering ascriptions a King of England can of himself make no Law For he was not constituted to make Laws but to see those Laws kept which the People made And you your self here confess That Parliaments Meet to make Laws Wherefore the Law is also called the Law of the Land and the Peoples Law Whence King Ethelstane in the Preface to his Laws speaking to all the People I have granted you every thing says he by your own Law And in the form of the Oath which the Kings of England used to take before they were made Kings The People stipulate with them thus Will you grant those Just Laws which the People shall chuse The King Answers I will And you are infinitely mistaken in saying That When there is no Parliament sitting the King Governs the whole state of the Kingdom to all intents and purposes by a Regal Power For he can determine nothing of any moment with respect to either Peace or War nor can he put any stop to the Proceedings of the Courts of Justice And the Judges therefore Swear That they will do nothing Judicially but according to Law tho the King by Word or Mâ—…te or Letters under his own Seal should command the contrary Hence it is that the King is often
Dâ—…s Commanders of Armies that were to command the Forces of the several Counties not for the Honour of the Crown only but for the good of the Realm And they were chosen `by the General Council and in the several Counties at publick Assemblies of the Inhabitants as Sheriffs ought to be chosen Whence it is evident That the Foâ—… of the Kingdom and the Commanders of those Forces were anciently and ought to be still not at the King's Command but at the people's and that this most reasonable and just Law obtained in this Kingdom of ours no less than heretofore it did in the Commonwealth of the Romans Concerning which it will not be amiss to hear what Cicera says Philip. 〈◊〉 All the â—egions all the Forces of the Commonwealth wheresoever they are are the people of Rome's nor are those â—egions that deserted the Consul Antonins said to have been Antonin's but the Commonwealths â—egions This very Law of St. Edward together with the rest did William the Conqueror at the desire and instance of the people confirm by Oath and added over and above cap. 56. That all Cities Boroughs Castles should be so watched every night as the Sheriffs the Aldermen and other Magistrates should think meet for the safety of the Kingdom And in the 6th Law Castles Boroughs and Cities were first built for the Defence of the people and therefore ought to be maintained free and entire by all ways and means What then Shall Towns and Places of Strength in times of Peace be guarded against Thieves and Robbers by common Councils of the several Places and shall they not be defended in dangerous times of War against both Domestick and Foreign Hostility by the common Council of the whole Nation If this be not granted there can be no Freedom no Integrity no Reason in the guarding of them nor shall we obtain any of those ends for which the Law it self tells us that Towns and Fortresses were at first founded Indeed our Ancestors were willing to put any thing into the King's power rather than their Arms and the Garisons of their Towns conceiving that to be neither better nor worse than betraying their Liberty to the Fury and Exorbitancy of their Princes Of which there are so very many instances in our Histories and those so generally known that it would be superfluous to mention any of them here But the King owes protection to his Subjects and how can be protect them unless he have Men and Arms at Command But say I he had all this for the good of the Kingdom as has been said not for the destruction of his people and the ruin of the Kingdom Which in King Henry the 3d's time one Leonard a Learned man in those days in an Assembly of Bishops told Rustandus the Pope's Nuncio and the King's Procurator in these words All Churches are the Pope's as all Temporal things are said to be the King 's for Defence and Protection not his in Propriety and Ownership as we say they are his to Deâ—end not to Destroy The aforementioned Law of St. Edward is to the same purpose and what does this import more than a Trust Does this look like Absolute Power Such a kind of Power a Commander of an Army always has that is a Delegated Power and yet both at home and abroad he is never the less able to defend the people that chuse him Our Parliaments would anciently have contended with our Kings about their Liberty and the Laws of St. Edward to very little purpose and ' â—would have been an unequal match betwixt the Kings and them if they had been of opinion that that the Power of the Sword belonged to him alone for how unjust Laws soever their Kings would have imposed upon them their Charter tho never so great would have been a weak Defence against Force But say you What would the Parliament be the better for the Militia since without the King's Assent they cannot raise the least Earthing from the people towards the maintaining it Take you no thought for that For in the first place you go upon a false supposition That Parliaments cannot impose Taxes without the King's Assent upon the people that send them and whose concerns they undertake In the next place you that are so officious an enquirer into other mens matters cannot but have heard That the people of their own accord by bringing in their Plate to be melted down raised a great Sum of Money towards the carrying on of this War against the King Then you mention the largeness of our King's Revenue You mention over and over again Five Hundred and Forty Thousands That these of our Kings that have been eminent for their Bounty and Liberality have used to give Large Boons out of their own Partimony This you were glad to hear 't was by this Charm that those Traytors to their Countrey allured you as Bâ—… the Prophet was enticed of old to curse the people of God and exclaim against the Judicial Dispensations of his Providence You Fool what was that unjust and violent King the better for such abundance of Wealth What are you the better for it Who have been no partaker of any part of it that I can hear of how great hopes soever you may have conceiv'd of being vastly enriched by it but only of a Hundred pieces of Gold in a Purse wrought with beads Take that reward of thine Iniquity Balaam which thou hast loved and enjoy it You go on to play the Fool The setting up of a Standard is a Prerogative that belongs to the King only How so Why because Virgil tells us in his Aeneis That Turnus set up a Standard on the top of the Tower at Laurentum for an Ensign of War And do not you know Grammarian that every General of an Army does the same thing But says Aristotle The King must always be provided of a Military Power that he may be able to defend the Laws and therefore the King must be stronger than the whole body of the people This man makes Consequences just as Oâ—nus does Ropes in Hell which are of no use but to be eaten by Asses For a number of Soldiers given to the King by the people is one thing and the sole power of the Militia is quite another thing the latter Aristotle does not allow that Kings ought to be masters of and that in this very place which you have quoted He ought says he to have so many armed men about him as to make him stronger than any one man than many men got together but he must not be stronger than all the people Polit. lib. 3. cap. 4. Else instead of protecting them it would be in his power to subject both People and Laws to himself For this is the difference betwixt a King and a Tyrant A King by consent of the Senate and People has about him so many Armed men as to enable him to resist Enemies and suppress Seditions A Tyrant against the
Will both of Senate and People gets as great a number as he can either of Enemies or profligate Subjects to side with him against the Senate and the People The Parliament therefore allowed the King as they did whatever he had besides the setting up of a Standard not to wage War against his own people but to defend them against such as the Parliament should declare Enemies to the State If he acted otherwise himself was to be accounted an Enemy since according to the very Law of St. Edward or according to a more sacred Law than that the Law of Nature it self he lost the name of a King and was no longer such Whence Cicero in his Philip. He forfeits his Command in the Army and Interest in the Government that employs them against the State Neither could the King compel those that held of him by Knight-Service to serve him in any other War than such as was made by consent of Parliament which is evident by many Statutes So for Customs and other Subsidies for the maintenance of the Navy the King could not exact them without an Act of Parliament as was resolved about twelve years ago by the ablest of our Lawyers when the King's Authority was at the height And long before them Fortescue an Eminent Lawyer and Chancellor to King Henry the 6th The King of England says he can neither alter the Laws nor exact Subsidies without the people's consent nor can any Testimonies be brought from Antiquity to prove the Kingdom of England to have been merely Regal The King says Bracton has a Jurisdiction over all his Subjects that is in his Courts of Justice where Justice is administred in the King's name indeed but according to our own Laws All are subject to the King that is every particular man is and so Bracton explains himself in the places that I have cited What follows is but turning the same stone over and over again at which sport I believe you are able to tire Sisiphus himself and is sufficiently answered by what has been said already For the rest if our Parliaments have sometimes complimented good Kings with submissive expressions tho neither favouring of Flattery nor Slavery those are not to be accounted due to Tyrants nor ought to prejudice the peoples Right good manners and civility do not infringe Liberty Whereas you cite out of Sir Edw. Coke and others That the Kingdom of England is an Absolute Kingdom that is said with respect to any Foreign Prince or the Emperor because as Cambden says It is not under the Patronage of the Emperor but both of them affirm that the Government of England resides not in the King alone but in a Body Politick Whence Fortescue in his Book de laud. leg Angl. cap. 9. The King of England says he governs his people not by a merely Regal but a Political power for the English are govern'd by Laws of their own making Foreign Authors were not ignorant of this Hence Philip de Comines a Grave Author in the Fifth Book of his Commentaries Of all the Kingdoms of the earth says he that I have any knowledge of there is none in my opinion where the Government is more moderate where the King has less power of hurting his people than in England Finally 'T is ridiculous say you for them to affirm that Kingdoms were ancienter than Kings which is as much as if they should say that there was Light before the Sun was created But with your good leave Sir we do not say that Kingdoms but that the people were before Kings In the mean time who can be more ridiculous than you who deny there was Light before the Sun had a being You pretend to a curiosity in other mens matters and have forgot the very first things that were taught you You wonder how they that have seen the King upon his Throne at a Session of Parliament sub aureo serico Coelo under a golden and silken Heaven under a Canopy of State should so much as make a question whether the Majesty resided in him or in the Parliament They are certainly hard of belief whom so lucid an Argument coming down from Heaven cannot convince Which Golden Heaven you like a Stoick have so devoutly and seriously gaz'd upon that you seem to have forgot what kind of Heaven Moses and Aristotle describe to us for you deny that there was any Light in Moses his Heaven before the Sun and in Aristotle's you make three temperate Zones How many Zones you observed in that Golden and Silken Heaven of the King 's I know not but I know you got one Zone a Purse well tempered with a Hundred Golden Stars by your Astronomy CHAP. X. SInce this whole Controversie whether concerning the Right of Kings in general or that of the King of England in particular is rendred difficult and intricate rather by the obstinacy of parties than by the nature of the thing it self I hope they that prefer Truth before the Interest of a Faction will be satisfied with what I have alledged out of the Law of God the Law of Nations and the Municipal Laws of my own Countrey That a King of England may be brought to Tryal and put to Death As for those whose minds are either blinded with Superstition or so dazeled with the Splendor and Grandure of a Court that Magnanimity and true Liberty do not appear so glorious to them as they are in themselves it will be in vain to contend with them either by Reason and Arguments or Examples But you Salmasius seem very absurd as in every other part of your Book so particularly in this who tho you â—ail perpetually at the Independents and revile them with all the terms of Reproach imaginable yet assert to the highest degree that can be the Independâ—ncy of the King whom you defend and will not allow him to owe his Soveraignty to the people but to his Descent And whereas in the beginning of your Book you complain'd that he was put to plead for his Life here yâ—u complain That he perish'd without being heard to spâ—… for himself But if you have a mind to look into the History of his Trial which is very faithfully publish'd in French it may be you 'l be of another opinion Whereas he had liberty given him for some day together to say what he could for himself he made use of it not to clear himself of the Crimes 〈◊〉 to his Charge but to disprove the Authority oâ— his Judges and the Judicature that he was called before And whenever a Criminal is either mute or says nothing to the purpose there is no Injustice in condemning him without hearing him if his Crimes are notorious and publickly known If you say that Charles dyed as he lived I agree with you If you say that he died piously holily and at ease you may remember that his Grandmother Mary Queen of Scots and infamous Woman dyed on a Scaffold with as much outward appearance of
Piety Sanctity and Constancy as he did and lest you should ascribe too much to that presence of mind which some common Malefactors have so great a measure of at their death many times despair and a hardned heart puts on as it were a Vizor of Courage and Stupidity of Quiet and Tranquility of mind Sometimes the worst of men desire to appear good undaunted innocent and now and then Religious not only in their life but at their death and in suffering death for their villanies use to act the last part of their hypocrisie and cheats with all the show imaginable and like bad Poets or Stage-players are very Ambitious of being clapp'd at the end of the Play Now you say you are come to enquire who they chiesly were that gave Sentence against the King Whereas it ought first to be enquired into how you a Foreigner and a French Vagabond came to have any thing to do to raise a question about our Affairs to which you are so much a stranger And what Reward induced you to it But we know enough of that and who satisfied your curiosity in these matters of ours even those Fugitives and Traytors to their Countrey that could easily hire such a vain Fellow as you to speak ill of us Then an account in writing of the state of our affairs was put into your hands by some hair-brain'd half-Protestant half-Papist Chaplain or other or by some sneaking Courtier and you were put to Translate it into Latin out of that you took these Narratives which if you please we 'll examine a little Not the hundred thousandth part of the people consented to this sentence of Condemnation What were the rest of the people then that suffered so great a thing to be transacted against their will Were they stocks and stones were they mere Trunks of men only or 〈◊〉 Images of Britans as Virgil describes to have been â—…ught in â—…ry Purpurea intexti tollunt aulea Britanni And Brittains interwove held up the Purple hangings For you describe no true Britains but Painted ones or rather Needle-wrought Men instead of them Since therefore it is a thing so incredible that a warlike Nation should be subdued by so few and those of the dregs of the People which is the first thing that occurs in your Narrative that appears in the very Nature of the thing it self to be most false The Bishops were turn'd out of the House of Lords by the Parliament it self The more deplorable is your Madness for are you not yet sensible that you Rave to complain of their being turn'd out of the Parliament whom you your self in a large Book endeavour to prove that they ought to be turn'd out of the Church One of the States of Parliament to wit the House of Lords consisting of Dukes Earls and Viscounts was removed And deservedly were they removed for they were not deputed to sit there by any Town or County but represented themselves only they had no Right over the People but as if they had been ordained for that very purpose used frequently to oppose their Rights and Liberties They were created by the King they were his Companions his Servants and as it were Shadows of him He being removed it was necessary they should be reduced to the same Level with the Body of the People from amongst whom they took their rise One part of the Parliament and that the worst of all ought not to have assum'd that Power of judging and condemning the King But I have told you already that the House of Commons was not only the chief part of our Parliament while we had Kings but was a perfect and entire Parliament of it self without the Temporal Lords much more without the Bishops But The whole House of Commons themselves were not admitted to have to do with the Tryal of the King To wit that part of them was not admitted that openly revolted to him in their Minds and Councels whom tho they stil'd him their King yet they had so often acted against as an Enemy The Parliament of England and the Deputies sent from the Parliament of Scotland on the 13th of January 1645. wrote to the King in Answer to a Letter of his by which he desired a deceitful Truce and that he might Treat with them at London that they could not admit him into that City till he had made Satisfaction to the State for the Civil War that he had raised in the three Kingdoms and for the Deaths of so many of his Subjects slain by his Order and till he had agreed to a true and firm Peace upon such Terms as the Parliaments of both Kingdoms had offered him so often already and should offer him again He on the other hand either refused to hear or by ambiguous Answers eluded their just and equal Proposals tho most humbly presented to him seven times over The Parliament at last after so many years patience lest the King should over-turn the State by his Wiles and Delays when in Prison which he could not subdue in the Field and lest the vanquish'd Enemy pleased with our Divisions should recover himself and triumph unexpectedly over his Conquerors vote that for the future they would have no regard to him that they would send him no more Proposals nor receive any from him After which vote there were found even some Members of Parliament who out of the hatred they bore that invincible Army whose Glory they envied and which they would have had disbanded and sent home with disgrace after they had deserved so well of their Nation and out of a servile Compliance with some Seditious Ministers finding their opportunity when many whom they knew to be otherwise minded than themselves having been sent by the House it self to suppress the Presbyterians who began already to be Turbulent were absent in the several Counties with a strange Levity not to say perfidiousness Vote that that inveterate Enemy of the State who had nothing of a King but the Name without giving any Satisfaction or Security should be brought back to London and restored to his Dignity and Government as if he had deserved well of the Nation by what he had done So that they preferr'd the King before their Religion their Liberty and that very celebrated Covenant of theirs What did they do in the mean time who were sound themselves and saw such pernicious Councils on foot Ought they therefore to have been wanting to the Nation and not provide for its safety because the Infection had spread it self even in their own House But who secluded those ill affected Members The English Army you say so that it was not an Army of Foreigners but of most Valiant and Faithful Honest Natives whose Officers for the most part were Members of Parliament and whom those good secluded Members would have secluded their Country and banished into Ireland while in the mean time the Scots whose Alliance begin to be doubtful had very considerable Forces in four of
is no longer yours but the King 's indeed who bought it at the price of a hundred Jacobusses a great Sum for a poor King to disburse I know very well what I say and 't is well enough known who brought the Gold and the Purse wrought with Beads We know who saw you reach out greedy fists under pretence of embracing the King's Chaplain who brought the Present but indeed to embrace the Present it self and by accepting it to exhaust almost all the King's Treasury But now the man comes himself the Door creaks the Actor comes upon the Stage In silence now and with attention wait That yee may learn what th' Eunuch has to prate Terent. For whatever the matter 's with him he blusters more than ordinary A horrible message had lately struck our Ears but our minds more with a heinous wound concerning a Parricide committed in England in the Person of a King by a wicked Conspiracy of Sacrilegious men Indeed that horrible Message must either have had a much longer Sword than that which Peter drew or those Ears must have been of a wonderful length that it could wound at such a distance for it could not so much as in the least offend any Ears but those of an Ass For what harm is it to you that are Foreigners are any of you hurt by it if we amongst our selves put our own Enemies our own Traytors to death be they Commoners Noble men or Kings Do you Salmasius let alone what does not concern you for I have a horrible Message to bring of you too which I 'm mistaken if it strike not a more heinous wound into the Ears of all Grammarians and Criticks provided they have any Learning and Delicacy in them To wit your crowding so many Barbarous Expressions together in one period in the person of Aristarchus a Grammarian and that so great a Critick as you hired at the King's charge to write a Defence of the King his Father should not only set so fulsome a Preface before it much like those Lamentable Ditties that used to be sung at Funerals and which can move compassion in none but a Cox-comb but in the very first sentence should provoke your Readers to laughter with so many Barbarisms all at once Persona Regir you cry Where do you find any such Latin Or are you telling us some tale or other of a Perkin Warchick who taking upon him the Person of a King has forsooth committed some horrible Parricide in England Which expression though dropping carelesly from your Pen has more truth in it than you are aware of For a Tyrant is but like a King upon a tage a man in a Vizor and acting the part of a Kâ—ng in a Play he is not really a King But as for thesâ— Gallicisms that are so frequent in your Book I wâ—…t lash you for them my self for I am not at leisure but shall deliver you over to your fellow Grammarians to be laught to scorn and whipt by them What follows is much more heinous that what was decreed by our Supreme Magistrates to be done to the King should be said by you to have been done by a wicked Conspiracy of Sacrilegious persons Have you the impudence you Rogue to talk at this rate of the Acts and Decrees of the chief Magistrates of a Nation that lately was a most Potent Kingdom and is now a more Potent Commonwealth Whose proceedings no Ring ever took upon him by word of mouth or otherwise to vilifie and set at nought The Illustrious States of Holland therefore the Genuine Off spring of those Deliverers of their Country have deservedly by their Edict condemn'd to utter darkness this Defence of Tyrants so pernicious to the Liberty of all Nations the Author of which every free State ought to forbid their Country or to banish out of it and that State particularly that feeds with a Stipend so ungrateful and so savage an Enemy to their Commonwealth whose very Fundamentals and the causes of their becoming a free State this Fellow endeavours to undermine as well as ours and at one and the same time to subvert both and loads with Calumnies the most worthy Asserters of Liberty there under our Names Consider with your selves ye most Illustrious States of the United Netherlands who it was that put this Asserter of Kingly Power upon setting Pen to Paper who it was that but lately began to play Rex in your Country what Counsels were taken what endeavours used and what disturbances ensued thereupon in Holland and to what pass things might have been brought by this time how Slavery and a new Master were ready prepar'd for you and how near expiring that Liberty of yours asserted and vindicated by so many years War and Toil would have been e're now if it had not taken breath again by the timely death of a certain rash young Gentleman But our Author begins to strut again and to feign wonderful Tragedies Whomsoever this dreadful news reacht to wit the news of Salmasius his Parricidial Barbarisms all of a sudden as if they had been struck with lightning their hair stood an end and their tongues clove to the roof of their mouth Which let Natural Philosophers take notice of for this secret in nature was never discovered before that lightning makes mens hair stand an end But who knows not that little effeminate minds are apt to be amaz'd at the news of any extiaordinary great Action and that then they show themselves to be what they really were before no better than so many Stocks Some could not refrain from tears some little Women at Court I suppose or if there be any more effeminate than they of whose number Salmasius himself being one is by a new Metamorphosis become a Fountain near akin to his Name Salmacis and with his counterfeit flood of tears prepared over night endeavours to emasculate generous minds I advise therefore and wish them to have a care Infamis ne quem malè fortibus undis Salmacis Enervet Ne si vir cum venerit exeat indè Semivir tactis subitò mollescat in undis Abstain as Manhood you esteem From Salmacis pernicious Stream If but one moment there you stay Too dear you 'l for your Bathing pay Depart nor Man nor Woman but a Sight Disgracing both a loath'd Hermaphrodite They that had more courage which yet the expresses in miserable bald Latin as if he could not so much as speak of men of courage and Magnanimity in proper words were set on fire with indignation to that degree that they could hardly contain themselves Those furious Hectors we value not of a rush We have been accustomed to rout such Bullies in the Field with a true sober courage a courage becoming men that can contain themselves and are in their right Wits There were none that did not curse the Authors of so Horrible a Villany But yet you say their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths and if you mean this
meddle with except when you make Soloecisms is Grammar still VVhosoever therefore he be though from among the Drâ—gs of that common People that you are so keen upon for as for those men of Eminency amongst us whose great Actions evidenced to all men their Nobility and Vertue and Conduct I won't disgrace them so much as to compare you to them or them to you but whosoever I say among the Drâ—gs of that common People has but suck'd in this Principle That he was not born for his Prince but for God and his Countrey he deserves the reputation of a Learned and an Honest and a VVise man more and is of greater use in the world than your self For such a one is Learned without Letters you have Letters but no Learning That understand so many Languages turn over so many Volumes and yet are but a sheep when all is done CHAP. II. THE Argument that Salmasius toward the conclusion of his First Chapter urg'd as 〈◊〉 ble to wit that it was really so because all men unanimously agreed in it That very Argument than which as he appli'd it there is nothing more false I that am now about to discourse of the Right of Kings may turn upon himself with a great deal of truth For whereas he defines a King if that may be said to be defin'd which he makes infinite to be a Person in whom the Supream Power of the Kingdom resides who is answerable to God alone who may do whatsoever pleaseth him who is bound by no Law I will undertake to demonstrate not by mine but by his own Reasons and Authorities that there never was a Nation or People of any account for to ransack all the unciviliz'd Parts of the World were to no purpose that ever allow'd this to be their King 's Right or put such exorbitant Power into his hand as that he should not be bound by any Law that be might do what he would that he should judge all but be judged of 〈◊〉 Nor caâ—… my self that there ever was any one Person besides Salmasius of so slavish a Spirit as to assert the outragious Enormities of Tyrants to be the â—eights of Kings Those amongst us that were the greatest Royalists always abhorr'd this fordid Opinion and Salmasius himself as appears by some other Writings of his before he was brib'd was quite of another mind Insomuch that what he here gives out does not look like the Dictates of a free Subject under a free Government much less in so famous a Common-wealth as that of Holland and the most eminent University there but seems to have been penn'd by some despicable slave that lay rotting in a Prison or a Dungeon If whatever a King has a mind to do the Right of Kings will bear him out in which was a Lesson that the bloody Tyrant Antoninus Caracalla though his Step-mother Julia preach'd it to him and endeavour'd to iâ—ure him to the practice of it by making him commit incest with her self yet could hardly suck in Then there neither is nor ever was that King that deserv'd the name of a Tyrant They may safely violate all the Laws of God and Man their very being Kings keeps them innocent What Crime was ever any of them guilty of they did but make use of their own Right upon their own Vassals No King can commit such horrible Cruelties and Outrages as will not be within this Right of Kings So that there 's no Pretence left for any Complaints or Expostulations with any of them And dare you assert That this Right of Kings as you call it is grounded upon the Law of Nations or rather upon that of Nature you Brute Beast for you deserve not the name of a Man that are so cruel and unjust towards all those of your own kind that endeavour as much as in you lies so to bear down and villify the whole Race of Mankind that were made after the Image of God as to assert and maintain that those cruel and unmerciful Taskmasters that through the superstitious whimsies 〈◊〉 sloth or treachery of some persons get into the Chair are provided and appointed by nature her self that mild and gentle Mother of us all to be the Governours of those Nations they enslave By which Pestilent Doctrine of yours having rendred them more fierce and untractable you not only enable them to make havock of and trample under foot their miserable subjects but endeavour to arm them for that very purpose with the Law of Nature the Right of Kings and the very Constitutions of Government than which nothing can be more impious or ridiculous By my consent as Dionysius formerly of a Tyrant became a School-master so you of a Grammarian should become a Tyrant not that you may have that Regal License of doing other people harm but a fair opportunity of perishing miserably your self That as Tiberius complain'd when he had confin'd himself to the Island Capreae you may be reduced into such a condition as to be sensible that you perish daily But let us look a little more narrowly into this right of Kings that you talk of This was the sense of the Eastern and of the VVestern part of the world I shall not answer you with what Aristotle and Cicero who are both as credible Authors as any we have tell us viz. That the people of Asia easily submit to slavery but the Syrians and the Jews are even born to it from the womb I confess there are but few and those men of great wisdom and courage that are either desirous of Liberty or capable of using it The greatest part of the world chuse to live under Masters but yet they would have them just ones As for such as are unjust and tyrannical neither was God ever so much an enemy to Mankind as to enjoyn a necessity of submitting to them nor was there ever any people so destitute of all sense and sunk into such a depth of despair and to impose so cruel a Law upon themselves and their posterity First you produce the words of King Solomon in his Ecclesiastes And we are as willing to appeal to the Scripture as you As for Solomon's authority we 'l consider that hereafter when perhaps we shall be better able to understand it First let us hear God himself speak Deut. 17. 14. VVhen thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee and shalt say I will set a King over me like as the Nations that are round about me Which passage I could wish all men would seriously consider for hence it appears by the testimony of God himself First that all Nations are at liberty to erect what form of Government they will amongst themselves and to change it when and into what they will This God affirms in express terms concerning the Hebrew Nation and it does not appear but that other Nations are as to this respect in the same condition Another remark that this place yields us is That a
such a Case ought to do and ceas'd to be a King Suppose he should have refused to go out of the Temple and lay down the Government and live alone and had resolved to assert that Kingly Right of not being subject to any Law do you think the Priests and the People of the Jews would have suffered the Temple to be â—…d the Laws violated and live themselves in danger of the Infection It seems there are Laws against a 〈◊〉 King but none against a Tyrant Can any Man possibly be â—o mad and foolish as to fancy that the Laws should â—o far provide for the Peoples Health as tho some noisome Distemper should seize upon the King himself yet to prevent the Infection 's reaching them and make no Provision for the Security of their Lives and Estates and the very being of the whole State against the Tyranny of a cruel unjust Prince which is incomparably the greater mischief of the two But say you there can be no president shown of any one King that has been arâ—aigned in a Court of Justice and 〈…〉 to dye Sichardus answers that well enough â—is all one says he as if one should argue on this manner The Emperor of Germany never was 〈◊〉 to appear before one of the Prince-Electors therefore if the Prince Elector Palatine should Impeach 〈…〉 he were not bound to plead to it tho it appears by the Golden Bull that Charles the 〈◊〉 subjected himself and his Successors to that cognizance and Jurisdiction But no wonder if Kings were indulged in their Ambition and their Exorbitances passed by when the 〈…〉 corrupt and depraved that even private 〈◊〉 if they had either Money or Interest might 〈◊〉 the Law the guilty 〈…〉 of never so high 〈…〉 That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that you speak of that 〈…〉 upon any other and acâ—… Earth which you say is pecuâ—… of Sovereign Princes Aristotle 〈…〉 Book of his 〈◊〉 Câ— 10. calls a most Tyrannical Form of Government and not in the least to be endured by a 〈◊〉 People And that Kings are not liable to be questioned for their Actions you prove by the 〈◊〉 of a very Worthy Author that Barbaâ—… Tyrant Mark 〈◊〉 one of those that subverted 〈◊〉 Commonwealth of Râ—me And yet he himself when he undertook an Expedition against the 〈◊〉 summon'd Herod before him to answer to a Chaâ—ge of Murder and would have punished him 〈◊〉 that Herod brib'd him So that Anthony's â—…ing this Prerogative Royal and your Defence of King Charles come both out of one and the same Spring And 't is very reasonable say you that it should be so for Kings derive their Authority from God alone What Kings are those I pray that do so For I deny that there ever were any such Kings in the World that derived their Authority from God alone Saul the first King of Israel had never reign'd but that the People desired a King even against the Will of God and tho he was proclaimed King once at Mizpah yet after that he lived a private Life and look'd to his Fathers Cattel till he was created so the second time by the People at Gilgal And what think ye of David Tho he had been anointed once by God was he not anointed the second time in Hebron by the Tribe of Judah and after that by all the People of Israel and that after a mutual Covenant betwixt him and them 2 Sam. 5. 1 Chron. 11. Now a Covenant lays an Obligation upon Kings and restrains them within Bounds Solomon you say succeeded him in the throne of the Lord and was acceptable to all men 1 Chron. 29. So that 't is something to be well-pleasing in the Eyes of the People Jehoiadah the Priest made Joash King but first he made him and the People enter into a Covenant to one another 2 Kings 11. I confess that these Kings and all that reign'd of David's Posterity were appointed to the Kingdom both by God and the People but of all other Kings of what Country soever I affirm that they are made so by the People only nor can you make it appear that they are appointed by God any otherwise than as all other things great and small are said to be appointed by him because nothing comes to pass without his Providence So that I allow the Throne of David was in a peculiar manner call'd The throne of the Lord whereas the Thrones of other Princes are no otherwise God's than all other things in the World are his which if you would you might have learnt out of the same Chapter Ver. 11 12. Thine O Lord is the greatness c. for all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is thine Both riches and honour come of thee and thou reignest over all And this is so often repeated not to puff up Kings but to put them in mind tho they think themselves Gods that yet there is a God above them to whom they owe whatever they are and have And thus we easily understand what the Poets and the Essenes among the Jews mean when they tell us That 't is by God that Kings reign and that they are of Jupiter for so all of us are of God we are all his Off-spring So that this universal Right of Almighty God's and the Interest that he has in Princes and their Thrones and all that belongs to them does not at all derogate from the Peoples Right but that notwithstanding all this all other Kings not particularly and by name appointed by God owe their Soveraignty to the People only and consequently are accountable to them for the management of it The truth of which Doctrine tho the Common People are apt to flatter their Kings yet they themselves acknowledge whether good ones as Sarpedon in Homer is described to have been or bad ones as those Tyrants in Hâ—race 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Glaucus in Lycia we 're ador'd like Gods What makes 'twixt us and others so great odds He resolves the Question himself Because says he we excel others in Heroical Virtues Let us fight manfully then says he lest our Country-men tax us with Sloth and Cowardize In which words he intimates to us both that Kings derive their Grandeur from the People and that for their Conduct and Behaviour in War they are accountable to them Bad Kings indeed tho to cast some Terror into Peoples minds and beget a Reverence of themselves they declare to the World that God only is the Author of Kingly Government in their Hearts and Minds they reverence no other Deity but that of Fortune according to that passage in Horace Te Dacus asper te profugi Schythae Regumque matres barbarorum Purpurei metuunt Tyranni Injurioso ne pede proruas Stantem columnam neu populus frequens Ad arma cessantes ad arma Concitet imperiumque frangat All barb'rous People and their Princes too All Purple Tyrants honour you The very wandring Scythians do Support the Pillar
endeavoured to suppress and obscure was then brought to light by the furious passion or to speak more mildly by the ignorant indiscrâ—â—t zeal of one of them After you have displaâ—'d Ambrose his ignorance you show your own or rather vent a Heresie in affirming point blank That under the old Testament there was no such thing as forgiveness of sins upon the account of Christ's sufferings since David confess'd his transgression saying Against thee only have I sinned P. 68. 'T is the Orthodox tenet that there never was any remission of sins but by the blood of the Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world I know not whose Disciple you are that set up for a broacher of new Heresies but certain I am that that great Divine's Disciple whom you are so angry with did not mistake himself when he said that any one of David's Subjects might have said against thee only have I sinned as properly and with as much right as David himself Then you quote St. Augustine and produce a company of Hipponensian Divines What you alledg out of St. Austin makes not at all against us We confess that as the Prophet Daniel has it it 's God that changeth times sets up one Kingdom and pulls down another we only desire to have it allow'd us that he makes use of men as his Instruments If God alone gave a Kingdom to King Charles God alone has taken it from him again and given it to the Parliament and to the People If therefore our Allegiance was due to King Charles because God had given him a Kingdom for the same reason it is now due to the present Magistracy For your self confess that God has given our Magistra es such power as he useth to give to wicked Princes for the punishment of the Nation And the consequence of this will be that according to your own opinion our present Magistrates being rais'd and appointed by God cannot lawfully be deposed by any but God himself Thus you overthrow the opinion you pretend to maintain which is a thing very frequent with 〈◊〉 Your Apology for the King carries it's deaths-wound in it You have attained to such a prodigious degree of Madness and Stupidity as to prove it unlawful upon any account whatsoever to lift up ones finger against Magistrates and with the very next breath to affirm that it 's the duty of their Sujects to rise up in Rebellion against them You tell us that St. Jerom calls Ismael that slew Gedalia a Parricide or Traytor And it is very true that he was so For Gedalia was Deputy Governour of Judaea a good man and slain by Ismael without any cause The same Author in his Comment upon the Book of Ecclesiastes says that Solomon's command to keep the King's Commandment is the same with St. Paul's Doctrine upon the same subject And deserves commendation for having made a more moderate Construction of that Text than most of his Contemporaries You say you will forbear enquiring into the Sentiments of Learned Men that lived since St. Augustine's time but to shew that you had rather dispence with a lie than not quote any Author that you think makes for you in the very next period but one you produce the Authorities of Isidore Gregory and Otho Spanish and Dutch Authors that liv'd in the most barbarous and ignorant ages of all whose Authorities if you knew how much we despise you would not have told a lye to have quoted them But would you know the reason why he dares not come so low as to the present times Why he does as it were hide himself and disapear when he comes towards our own times The reason is Because he knows full well that as many Eminent Divines as there are of the Reformed Church so many Adversaries he would have to encounter Let him take up the Cudgels if he thinks fit he will quickly find himself run down with innumerable Authorities out of Luther Zuinglius Calvin Bucer Martyr Paraeus and the rest I could oppose you with Testimonies out of Divines that have flourished even in Leyden Though that famous University and Renowned Commonwealth which has been as it were a Sanctuary for Liberty those Fountains and Streams of all Polite Learning have not yet been able to wash away that slavish rust that sticks to you and infuse a little humanity into you Finding your self destitute of any assistance or help from Orthodox Protestant Divines you have the impudence to betake your self to the Sorbonists whose Colledge you know is devoted to the Romish Religion and consequently but of very weak authority amongst Protestants We are willing to deliver so wicked an assertor of Tyranny as you to be drown'd in the Sorbon as being asham'd to own so despicable a slave as you show your self to be by maintaining that the whole body of a Nation is not equal in power to the most slothful degenerate Prince that may be You labour in vain to lay that upon the Pope which all free Nations and all Orthodox Divines own and assert But the Pope and his Clergy when they were in a low condition and but of small account in the world were the first Authors of this pernicious absurd Doctrine of yours and when by preaching such Doctrine they had gotten power into their own hands they became the worst of Tyrants themselves Yet they engaged all Princes to themselves by the closest tye imaginable perswading the world that was now besotted with their Superstition that it was unlawful to Depose Princes though never so bad unless the Pope dispensed with their Allegiance to them by absolving them from their Oaths But you avoid Orthodox Writers and endeavour to burden the truth with prejudice and calumny by making the Pope the first assertor of what is a known and common received opinion amongst them which if you did not do it cunningly you would make your self appear to be neither Papist nor Protestant but a kind of a Mongrel Idumean Herodian For as they of old adored one most inhumane bloody Tyrant for the Mâ—ssias so you would have the world fall down and worship all You boast that you have confirm'd your opinion by the Testimonies of the Fathers that flourished in the four first Centuries whose Writings only are Evangelical and according to the truth of the Christian Religion This man is past all shame how many things did they preach how many things have they published which Christ and his Apostles never taught How many things are there in their Writings in which all Protestant Divines differ from them But what is that opinion that you have confirm'd by their Authorities Why that evil Princes are appointed by God Allow that as all other pernicious and destructive things are What then why that therefore they have no Judge but God alone that they are above all humane Laws that there is no Law written or unwritten no Law of Nature nor of God to call them to account before their own
forsaken God And we do not find that Azarias his Son prosecuted those that had cut off his Father You quote a great many frivolous passages out of the Rabbins to prove that the Kings of the Jews were Superior to the Sanhedrim You do not consider Zedekia's own words Jerem. 38. The King is not he that can do any thing against you So that this was the Princes own stile Thus he confessed himself Inferior to the great Council of the Realm Perhaps say you he meant that he durst not deny them any thing for fear of Sedition But what does your perhaps signify whose most positive asserting any thing is not worth a Louse For nothing in Nature can be more Fickle and Inconstant than you are How oft have you appear'd in this Discourse inconsistent with your self unsaying with one Breath what you had said with another Here again you make Comparisons betwixt King Charles and some of the good Kings of Judah You speak contemptibly of David as if he were not worthy to come in Competition with him Consider David say you an Adulterer a Murderer King Charles was guilty of no such Crimes Solomon his Son who was accounted wise c. Who can with Patience hear this filthy rascally Fool speak so irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety Dare you compare King David with King Charles a most Religious King and Prophet with a Superstitious Prince and who was but a Novice in the Christian Religion a most prudent wise Prince with a weak one a Valiant Prince with a Cowardly one finally a most just Prince with a most unjust one Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and Sobriety who is known to have committed all manner of Leudness in company with his Confident the Duke of Buckingham It were to no purpose to enquire into the private Actions of his Life who publickly at Plays would Embrace and Kiss the Ladies lasciviously and handle Virgins and Matrons Breasts not to mention the rest I advise you therefore you Counterfeit Plutarch to abstain from such like Parallels lest I be forced to publish those things concerning King Charles which I am willing to conceal Hitherto we have entertain'd our selves with what the People of the Jews have acted or attempted against Tyrants and by what Right they did it in those times when God himself did immediately as it were by his Voice from Heaven govern their Commonwealth The Ages that succeeded do not afford us any Authority as from themselves but confirm us in our Opinion by their imitating the Actions of their Fore-fathers For after the Babylonish Captivity when God did not give any new command concerning the Crown tho the Royal Line was not extinct we find the People returning to the old Mosaical Form of Government again They were one while Tributaries to Antiochus King of Syria yet when he injoyn'd them things that were contrary to the Law of God they resisted him and his Deputies under the Conduct of their Priests the Maccabees and by force regain'd their former Liberty After that whoever was accounted most worthy of it had the Principality conferr'd upon him Till at last Hircanus the Son of Simon the Brother of Judah the Maccabee having spoiled David's Sepulchre entertain'd foreign Soldiers and began to Invest the Priesthood with a kind of Regal Power After whose time his Son Aristobulus was the first that assum'd the Crown he was a Tyrant indeed and yet the People stirred not against him which is no great Wonder for he reigned but one year And he himself being overtaken with a grievous Disease and repenting of his own Cruelty and Wickedness desired nothing more than to dye and had his wish His Brother Alexander succeeded him and against him you say the People raised no Insurrection tho he were a Tyrant too And this lie might have gone down with us if Josepbus's History had not been extant We should then have had no memory of those times but what your Josippus would afford us out of whom you transcribe a few senseless and useless Apothegms of the Pharisees The History is thus Alexander Administred the Publick Affairs ill both in War and Peace and tho he kept in pay great numbers of Pisidians and Cilicians yet could he not protect himself from the Rage of the People but whilest he was Sacrificing they fell upon him and had almost smother'd him with Boughs of Palm-trees and Citron-trees afterward the whole Nation made War upon him six years during which time when many thousands of the Jews had been slain and he himself being at length desirous of Peace demanded of them what they would have him do to satisfy them they told him nothing could do that but his Blood nay that they should hardly pardon him after his Death This History you perâ—… was not for your purpose and so you put it 〈◊〉 with a few â—harisaical Sentences when it had been much better either to have let it quite alone 〈◊〉 to have given a true Relation of it but you trust to â—ies more than to the Truth of your Cause Even 〈◊〉 eight hundred Pharisees whom he commanded to be crucisied were of their number that had taken up Arms against him And they with the rest of the People had solemnly protested That if they could subdue the Kings Forces and get his Person into their Power they would put him to Death After the Death of Alexander his Wife Alexandra took the Government upon her as Athalia had formerly done not according to Law for you have confessed that the Laws of the Jews admitted not a Female to wear the Crown but she got it partly by force for she maintain'd an Army of Foreigners and partly by favour for she had brought over the Pharisees to her Interest which sort of Men were of the greaten Authority with the People Them she had made her own by putting the Power into their hands and retaining to her self only the Name 〈◊〉 as the Scotch Presbyterians lately allowed Chaâ—… the Name of King but upon Condition that 〈◊〉 would let them be King in effect After the 〈◊〉 of Alexandra Hyrcanus and Aristobulus her Sons contended for the Sovereignty Aristobulus was 〈◊〉 industrious and having a greater Party forced his Elder Brother out of the Kingdom A while after when Pompey passed through Syria in his return from the Mithridatick War the Jews supposing they had now an opportunity of regaining their Liberty by referring their Cause to him dispatcht an Embassy to him in their own Names they renounce both the Brothers complain that they had enslaved them Pompey deposed Aristobulus leaves the Priesthood and such a Principality as the Laws allowed to Hyrcanus the Elder From that time forward he was called High Priest and Ethnarcha After these times in the Reign of Archelaus the Son of Herod the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fifty Ambassadors to Augustus Caesar accused 〈◊〉 that was dead and Archelaus his Son that then Reigned they deposed him as
slaughters were made on both sides You may remember Damasus and Vrsicinus who were Contemporaries with Ambrose It would be too long to relate the Tumultuary Insurrections of the Inhabitants of Constantinople Antiach and Alexandria especially those under the Conduct and Management of Cyrillus whom you extol as a Preacher up of Obedience when the Monks in that fight within the City had almost slain Orestes Theodosius's Deputy Now who can sufficiently wonder at your Impudence or Carelessness and Neglect Till St. Austin's time say you and lower down than the age that he lived in there is not any mention extant in History of any private person of any Commander or of any number of Conspirators that have put their Prince to death or taken up Arms against him I have named to you out of known and approved Histories both private persons and Magistrates that with their own hands have slain not only bad but very good Princes Whole Armies of Christians many Bishops amongst them that have fought against their own Emperors You produce some of the Fathers that with a great flourish of words persuade or boast of Obedience to Princes And I on the other side produce both those same Fathers and others besides them that by their actions have declined Obedience to their Princes even in lawful things have defended themselves with a Military Force against them others that have opposed forcibly and wounded their Deputies others that being Competitors for Bishopricks have maintained Civil Wars against one another As if it were lawful for Christians to wage War with Christians for a Bishoprick and Citizens with Citizens but unlawful to fight against a Tyrant in defence of our Liberty of our Wives and Children and of our Lives themselves Who would own such Fathers as these You produce St. Austin who you say asserts that the Power of a Master over his Servants and a Prince over his Subjects is one and the same thing But I answer If St. Austin assert any such thing he asserts what neither our Saviour nor any of his Apostles ever asserted tho for the confirmation of that assertion than which nothing can be more false he pretends to rely wholly upon their Authority The three or four last Pages of this Fourth Chapter are stuffed with meer Lies or things carelessly and loosely put together that are little to the purpose And that every one that reads them will discover by what has been said already For what concerns the Pope against whom you declaim so loudly I am content you should bawl at him till you are hoarse But whereas you endeavour to persuade the ignorant That all that called themselves Christians yielded an entire obedience to Princes whether good or bad till the Papal Power grew to that height that it was acknowledged superior to that of the Civil Magistrate and till he took upon him to absolve Subjects from their Allegiance I have sufficiently proved by many Examples before and since the age that St. Augustin lived in that nothing can be more false Neither does that seem to have much more truth in it which you say in the last place viz. That Pope Zachary absolved the French-men from their Oath of Allegiance to their King For Francis Hottoman who was both a French-man and a Lawyer and a very Learned man in the 13th Chapter of his Francogallia denies that either Chilperic was deposed or the Kingdom translated to Pepin by the Pope's Authority and he proves out of very Ancient Chronicles of that Nation That the whole affair was transacted in the great Council of the Kingdom according to the Original Censtitution of that Government Which being once done the French Histories and Pope Zachary himself deny that there was any necessity of absolving his Subjects from their Allegiance For not only Hottoman but Guicciard a very eminent Historian of that Nation informs us That the Ancient Records of the Kingdom of France testifie That the Subjects of that Nation upon the first institution of Kingship amongst them reserved a power to themselves both of Chusing their Princes and of Deposing them again if they thought fit And that the Oath of Allegiance which they took was upon this express condition to wit That the King should likewise perform what at his Coronation he swore to do So that if Kings by mis-governing the people committed to their charge first broke their own Oath to their Subjects there needs no Pope to dispense with the people's Oaths the Kings themselves by their own perfidiousness having absolved their Subjects And finally Pope Zachary himself in a Letter of his to the French which you your self quote renounces and ascribes to the people that Authority which you say he assumes to himself For if a Prince be accountable to the People being beholden to them for his Royalty if the people since they make Kings have the same Right to depose them as the very words of that Pope are it is not likely that the French men would by any Oath depart in the least from that Ancient Right or ever tye up their own hands so as not to have the same Right that their Ancestors always had to depose bad Princes as well as to honour and obey good ones nor is it likely that they thought themselves obliged to yield that Obedience to Tyrants which they swore to yield only to good Princes A people obliged to Obedience by such an Oath is discharged of that obligation when a Lawful Prince becomes a Tyrant or gives himself over to Sloth and Veluptuousness the rule of Justice the very Law of Nature dispenseth with such a people's Allegiance So that even by the Pope's own opinion the people were under no obligation to yield Obedience to Chilperic and consequently had no need of a Dispensation CHAP. V. THO I am of opinion Salmasius and always was That the Law of God does exactly agree with the Law of Nature so that having shown what the Law of God is with respect to Princes and what the practice has been of the people of God both Jews and Christians I have at the same time and by the same Discourse made to appear what is most agreeable to the Law of Nature yet because you pretend to confute us most powerfully by the Law of Nature I will be content to admit that to be necessary which before I had thought would be superfluous that in this Chapter I may demonstrate That nothing is more suitable to the Law of Nature than that Punishment be inflicted upon Tyrants Which if I do not evince I will then agree with you that likewise by the Law of God they are exempt I do not purpose to frame a long Discourse of Nature in general and the original of Civil Societies that Argument has been largely handled by many Learned men both Greek and Latin but I shall endeavour to be as short as may be and my design is not so much to confute you my self who would willingly have spared this
make it evident that you take a liberty to publish palpable down-right lies You begin with the Egyptians and indeed who does not see that you play the Gipsy your self throughout Amongst them say you there is no mention extant of any King that was ever slain by the People in a Popular Insurrection no War made upon any of their Kings by their Subjects no attempt made to depose any of them What think you then of Osiris who perhaps was the first King that the Egyptians ever had Was not he slain by his Brother Typhon and five and twenty other Conspirators And did not a great part of the Body of the People side with them and fight a Battel with Isis and Orus the late King's Wife and Son I pass by Sesostris whom his Brother had well-nigh put to Death and Chemmis and Cephrenes against whom the People were deservedly enraged and because they could not do it while they were alive they threatned to tear them in pieces after they were dead Do you think that a People that durst lay violent hands upon good Kings had any restraint upon them either by the Light of Nature or Religion from putting bad ones to Death Could they that threatened to pull the dead Bodies of their Princes out of their Graves when they ceased to do mischief tho by the Custom of their own Country the Corps of the meanest Person was sacred and inviolable abstain from inflicting Punishment upon them in their Life-time when they were acting all their Villanies if they had been able and that upon some Maxim of the Law of Nature I know you would not stick to answer me in the Affirmative how absurd soever it be but that you may not offer at it I 'll pull out your Tongue Know then that some Ages before Cephrene s time one Ammosis was King of Egypt and was as great a Tyrant as who has been the greatest him the People bore with This you are glad to hear this is what you would be at But hear what follows my honest tell-truth I shall speak out of Diodorus They bore with him for some while because he was too string for them But when Actisanes King of Ethiopia made War upon him they took that oppotunity to revolt so that being deforced he was easily subdued and Egypt became an Accession to the Kingdom of Ethiopia You see the â—…tians as soon as they could took up Arms against a Tyrant they joyned Forces with a Foreign saince to depose their own King and disinherit his Posterity they chosâ— to live under a moderate and good Prince as Actisanes was tho a Foreigner rather than under a Tyrant of their own The same People with a very unanimous Consent took up Arms against Apries another Tyrant who relied upon Foreign Aids that he had hired to assist him Under the Conduct of Amasis their General they Conquered and afterward Strangled him and placed Amasis in the Throne And observe this Circumstance in the History Amasis kept the 〈◊〉 aptive King a good while in the Palace and treated him well At last when the People comâ—â—…d that he nourished his own and their Enemy he put him into their hands who put him to Death in the manner I have mentioned There things are related by Heroditus and Diodorus Where are you now Do you think that any Tyrant would not chuse a Hatchet rather than an Halter Asâ—… say you when the Egyptians were brought 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Persians they continued faithful to 〈◊〉 which is most false they never were faithful to 〈◊〉 For in the fourth year after Cambyses had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thâ—m they rebelled Afterward when 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tamed them within a short time after 〈◊〉 râ—volted from his Son Artaxerxes and set up one 〈◊〉 to be their King After whose Death they rebell'd again and made one Tachus King and made War upon Artaxerxes Mnemon Neither were they better Subjects to their own Princes for they deposed Tachus and confer'd the Government upon his Son Nectanebus till at last Artaxerxes Ochus brought them the second time into Subjection to the Persian Empire When they were under the Macedonian Empire they declared by their Actions that Tyrants ought to be under some restraint They threw down the Statutes and Images of Ptolomaeus Physco and would have killed himself but that the Mercenary Army that he Commanded was too strong for them His Son Alexander was forced to leave his Country by the meer Violence of the People who were incensed against him for killing his Mother And the People of Alexandria dragged his Son Alexander out of the Palace whose Insolent Behaviour gave just Offence and killed him in the Theatre And the same People deposed Ptolomaeus Auletes for his many Crimes Now since it is impossible that any Learned Man should be ignorant of these things that are so generally known and since it is an inexcusable fault in Salmasius to be ignorant of them whose profession it is to teach them others and whose very asserting things of this Nature ought to carry in its self an Argument of Credibility it is certainly a very scandalous thing either that so Ignorant Unlearned a Blockhead should to the Scandal of all Learning profess himself and be accounted a Learned Man and obtain Salaries from Princes and States or that so impudent and notorious a Lyar should not be branded with some particular Mark of Infamy and for ever banished from the Society of learned and honest Men. Having searched among the Egyptians for Examples let us now consider the Ethiopians their Neighbours They adore their Kings whom they suppose God to have appointed over them almost as if they were a sort of gods themselves And yet whenever the Priests condemn any of them they kill themselves And on that manner says Diodorus they punish all their Criminals they put them not to death but send a Minister of Justice to command them to kill themselves In the next place you mention the Assyrians the Medes and the Persians who of all others were most observant of their Princes And you affirm contrary to all Historians that have wrote any thing concerning those Nations That the Regal Power there had an unbounded Liberty annexed to it of doing what the King listed In the first place the Prophet Daniel tells us how the Babylonians expelled Nebuchadnezzar out of human Society and made him graze with the Beasts when his pride grew to be insufferable The Laws of those Countries were not entituled the Laws of their Kings but the Laws of the Medes and Persians which Laws were irrevocable and the Kings themselves were bound by them Insomuch that Darius the Mede tho he earnestly desired to have delivered Daniel from the hands of the Princes yet could not effect it Those Nations say you thought it no sufficient pretence to reject a Prince because he abused the Right which was inherent in him as he was Sovereign But in the very writing of these words you are so stupid
as that with the same breath that you commend the Obedience and Submissiveness of those Nations of your own accord you make mention of Sardanapalus'r being deprived of his Crown by Arbaces Neither was it he alone that accomplished that Enterprise for he had the assistance of the Priests who of all others were best versed in the Law and of the people and it was wholly upon this account that he deposed him because he abused his authority and power not by giving himself over to cruelty but to luxury and effeminacy Run over the Histories of Herodotus Ctâ—sias Diodorus and you will find things quite contrary to what you assert here you will find that those Kingdoms were destroyed for the most part by subjects and not by foreigners that the Assyrians were brought down by the Medes who then were their subjects and the Medes by the Persians who at that time were like wise subject to them Your self confess that Cyrus rebell'd and that at the same time in divers parts of the Empire little upstart Governments were formed by those that shook off the Medes But does this agree with what you said before does this prove the obedience of the Medes and Persians to their Princes and that Jus Regium which you had asserted to have been universally received amongst those Nations What Potion can cure this brainsâ—… frenzy of yours You say It appears by Herodotus how absolute the Persian Kings were Cambyses being desirous to marry his Sister consulted with the Judges who were the Interpreters of the Laws to whose Judgment all difficult matters were to be referred What answer had he from them They told him They knew no Law which permitted a Brother to marry his Sister but another Law they knew that the Kings of Persia might do what they listed Now to this I answer if the Kings of Persia were really so absolute what need was there of any other to interpret the Laws besides the King himself Those superfluous unnecessary Judges would have had their abode and residence in any other place rather than in the Palace where they were altogether useless Agâ—in if those Kings might do what ever they would it is not credible that so ambitious a Prince as Cambyses was should be so ignorant of that grand Prerogative as to consult with the Judges whether what he desired were according to Law What was the matter then either they designed to humour the King as you say they did or they were afraid to cross his inclination which is the account that Herodotus gives of it and so told him of such a Law as they knew would please him and in plain terms made a fool of him which is no new thing with Judges and Lawyers now a days But say you Artabanus a Persian told Themistocles that there was no better Law in Persia than that by which it was Enacted That Kings were to be honoured and adored An excellent Law that was without doubt which commanded subjects to adore their Princes but the Primitive Fathers have long ago damned it and Artabanus was a proper person to commend such a Law who was the very man that a little while after slew Xerxes with his own hand You quote Regicides to assert Royalty I am afraid you have some design upon Kings In the next place you quote the Poet Claudian to prove how obedient the Persians were But I appeal to their Histories and Annals which are full of the Revolts of the Persians the Medes the Bactrians and Babylonians and give us frequent instances of the Murders of their Princes The next person whose authority you cite is Otanes the Persian who likewise killed Smerdis then King of Persia to whom out of the hatred which he bore to a Kingly Government he reckons up the impieties and injurious actions of Kings their violation of all Laws their putting men to death without a legal conviction their rapes and adulteries and all this you will have called the right of Kings and slander Samuel again as a teacher of such Doctrine You quote Homer who says that Kings derive their authority from Jupiter to which I have already given an answer For King Philip of Macedon whose asserting the right of Kings you make use of I 'le believe Charles his description of it as soon as his Then you quote some Sentences out of a fragment of Diogenes a Pythagorean but you do not tell us what sort of a King he speaks of Observe therefore how he begins that Discourse for whatever follows must be understood to have relation to it Let him be King says he that of all others is most just and so he is that acts most according to Law for no man can be King that is not just and without Laws there can be no Justice This is directly opposite to that Regal right of yours And Ecphantas whom you likewise quote is of the same opinion Whosoever takes upon him to be a King ought to be naturally most pure and clear from all imputation And a little after Him says he we call a King that governs well and he only is properly so So that such a King as you speak of according to the Philosophy of the Pythagoreans is no King at all Hear now what Plato says in his eighth Epistle Let Kings says he be liable to be called to account for what they do Let the Laws controul not only the people but Kings themselves if they do any thing not warranted by Law I 'le mention what Aristotle says in the Third Book of his Politicks It is neither for the Publick Good nor is it just says he where all men are by nature alike and equal that any one should be Lord and Master over all the rest neither where there are no Laws nor is it for the Publick Good or Just that one man should be a Law to the rest nor is it so where there are Laws nor that any one tho a good man thould be Lord over other good mâ—n nor a bad man over bad men And in the Fifth Book says he That King whom the people refuse to be govern'd by is no longer a King but a Tyrant Hear what Xenophon says in Hiero People are so far from revenging the Deaths of Tyrants that they confer great Honour upon him that Kills one and erect Statues in their Temples to the Honour of Tyrannicides Of this I can produce an 〈◊〉 witness Marcus Tullius in his Oration pro Milone The Grecians says he ascribe Divine Worship to such as kill Tyrants What things of this nature have 〈◊〉 my self seen at Athens and in other Cities of Greece How many Religious Observances have been inâ—…ted in honour of such men How many Hymns They are consecrated to Immortality and Adoration and their Memory endeavoured to be perpetuated And â—…ly Polybius an Historian of great Authority and Gravity in the Sixth Book of his 〈◊〉 says thus When Princes began to in 〈◊〉 their own Lusts and sensual Appetites then â—…doms
even against Kings themselves if they act contrary to Law Aristotle likewise in the third Book of his Politicks Of all Kingdoms says he that are govern'd by Laws that of the Lacedemonians seems to be most truly and properly so And he says all forms of Kingly Governments are according to setled and establisht Laws but one which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Absolute Monarchy which he does not mention ever to have obtain'd in any Nation So that Aristotle thought such a Kingdom as that of the Lacedemonians was to be and deserve the name of a Kingdom more properly than any other and consequently that a King tho subordinate to his own people was nevertheless actually a King properly so called Now since so many and so great Authors assert that a Kingly Government both in name and thing may very well subsist even where the people tho they do not ordinarily exercise the Suâ—… Power yet have it actually residing in them and exercise it upon occasion Be not you of so mean a soul as to fear the down-fall of Grammer and the 〈◊〉 of the signification of words to that deâ—… as to betray the Liberty of Mankind and the State rather than your Glossary should not hold water And know for the future that words must be conformable to things not things to words By this means you 'l have more wit and not run on in infinitum which now you 're afraid of It was to no purpose then for Seneca you say to describe those three forms of Government as he has done Let Seneca do a thing to no purpose so we enjoy our Liberty And if I mistake us not we are other sort of men than to be enslav'd by Seneca's flowers And yet Seneca though he says that the Soveraign Power in a Kingly Government resides in a single person says withal that the power is the people's and by them committed to the King for the welfare of the whole not for their ruin and destruction and that the people has not given him a propriety in it but the use of it Kings at this rate you say do not reign by God but by the people As if God did not so over-rule the people that they set up such Kings as it pleases God Since Justinian himself openly acknowledgeth that the Roman Emperours derived their Authority from that Royal Law whereby the people granted to them and vested in them all their own power and authority But how oft shall we repeat these things over and over again Then you take upon you to intermeddle with the Constitution of our Government in which you are no ways concerned who are both a stranger and a foreigner but it shows your sawciness and want of good manners Come then let us hear your Soloecisms like a busie Coxcomb as you are You tell us but 't is in false Latin that what those Desperadoes say is only to deceive the people You Rascal was it for this that you a Renegado Grammarian were so forward to intermeddle with the affairs of our Government that you might introduce your Soloecisms and Barbarisms amongst us But say how have we deceiv'd the people The form of Government which they have set up is not Popular but Military This is what that herd of Fugitives and Vagabonds hired you to write So that I shall not trouble my self to answer you who bleat what you know nothing of but I 'le answer them that hired you Who excluded the Lords from Parliament was it the people Yea it was the people and in so doing they threw an intollerable yoke of Slavery from off their necks Those very Soldiers who you say did it were not foreigners but our own Country-men and a great part of the people and they did it with the consent and at the desire of almost all the rest of the people and not without the authority of the Parliament neither Was it the people that cut off part of the House of Commons forcing some away c. Yes I say it was the people For whatever the better and sounder part of the Senate did in which the true power of the people resided why may not the people be said to have done it What if the greater part of the Senate should chuse to be slaves or to expose the Government to sale ought not the lesser number to interpose and endeavour to retain their Liberty if it be in their power But the Officers of the Army and their Soldiers did it And we are beholden to those Officers for not being wanting to the State but repelling the Tumultary violence of the Citizens and Mechanicks of London who like that Rabble that appear'd for Clodius had but a little before beset the very Parliament House Do you therefore call the right of the Parliament to whom it properly and originally belongs to take care of the Liberty of the people both in Peace and War a Military power But 't is no wonder that those Traytors that have dictated these passages to you should talk at that rate so that profligate faction of Anthony and his adherents used to call the Senate of Rome when they armed themselves against the enemies of their Country The Camp of Pompey And now I 'm glad to understand that they of your party envy Cromwell that most valiant General of our Army his undertaking that Expedition in Ireland so acceptable to Almighty God surrounded with a joyful crowd of his Friends and prosecuted with the well-wishes of the people and the prayers of all good men For I question not but at the news of his many Victories there they are by this time bursten with spleen I pass by many of your impertinencies concerning the Roman Soldiers What follows is most notoriously false The power of the people say you ceases where there is a King By what Law or Right is that Since it is known that almost all Kings of what Nations soever received their Authority from the people upon certain conditions which if the King do not perform I wish you would inform us why that Power which was but a Trust should not return to the people as well from a King as from a Consul or any other Magistrate For when you tell us that 't is necessary for the Publick Safety you do but trifle with us for the safety of the Publick is equally concerned whether it be from a King or from a Senate or from a Triumvirate that the power wherewith they were entrusted revert to the people upon their abuse of it and yet you your self grant that it may so revert from all sorts of Magistrates a King only excepted Certainly if no people in their right wits ever committed the Government either to a King or other Magistrates for any other purpose than for the common good of them all there can be no reason why to prevent the utter ruin of them all they may not as well take it back again from a King as from other Governors nay
the first of which inconveniences would thwart with your Dictionary and the latter overthrow your Politicks To these I have given such an answer as shows That tho our own Safety and Liberty were the principal things I aimed the preservation of yet withal I had some consideration of salving your Dictionary and your Politicks Now say you I will prove by other arguments That a King cannot be judged by his own Subjects of which Arguments this shall be the greatest and most convincing That a King has no Peer in his Kingdom What can a King have no Peer in his Kingdom What then is the meaning of those Twelve Ancient Peers of the Kings of France Are they Fables and Trifles Are they called so in vain and in mock only Have a care how you affront those Principal men of that Kingdom Who if they are not the King's Peers as they are called I am afraid your Dictionary which is the only thing you are concerned for will be found more faulty in France than in England But go to let 's hear your demonstration that a King has no Peer in his own Kingdom Because say you the people of Rome when they had banish'd their King appointed not one but two Consuls and the reason was That if one of them should transgress the Laws his Collegue might be a check to him There could hardly have been devised any thing more silly How came it to pass then that but one of the Cousuls had the bundles of Rods carried before him and not both if two were appointed that each might have a Power over the other And what if both had conspired against the Commonwealth Would not the Case then be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 same that it would have been if one Con 〈◊〉 had been appointed without a Colleague 〈◊〉 we know very well that both Consuls and all 〈◊〉 Magistrates were bound to obey the Senate â—…ever the Senate and the People saw that the Interest of the Commonwealth so required We have a famous instance of that in the Decemviri who tho they were invested with the Power of Consuls and were the chief Magistrates yet the Authority of the Senate reduced them all tho they struggled to retain their Government Nay we read that some Consuls before they were out of office have been declared enemies and Arms been taken up against them for in those days no man looked upon him as a Consul who acted as an Enemy So War was waged against Antony tho a Consul by Authority of the Senate in which being worsted he would have been put to death but that Octavius affecting the Empire sided with him to subvert the Commonwealth Now whereas you say That it is a property peculiar to Kingly Majesty that the power resides in a single person that 's but a loose expression like the rest of what you say and is contradicted by your self a little after For the Hebrew Judges you say ruled as long as they lived and there was but one of them at a time The Scripture also calls them Kings and yet they more accountable to the great Councel Thus we see That an itch of Vain-glory in being thought to have said all that can be said makes you hardly say any thing but contradictions Then I ask what kind of Government that was in the Roman Empire when sometimes Two sometimes Three Emperors reign'd all at once Do you reckon them to have been Emperors that is Kings or was it an Aristocracy or a Triumvirate Or will you deny that the Roman Empire under Antoninus and Verus under Dioclesian and Maximian under Constantine and Licinius was still but one entire Empire If these Princes were not Kings your Three forms of Government will hardly hold if they were then it is not an essential Property of a Kingly Government to reside in a single person If one of these offend say you then may the other refer the matter to the Senate or the People where he may be accused and condemned And does not the Senate and the People then judg when the matter is so referred to them So that if you will give any credit to your self there needs not one Collegue to judg another Such a miserable Advocate as you if you were not so wretched a fellow as you are would deserve compassion you lye every way so open to blows that if one were minded for sports-sake to make a Pass at any part of you he could hardly miss let him aim where he would 'T is ridiculous say you to imagine That a King will ever appoint Judges to condemn himself But I can tell you of an Emperor that was no ridiculous person but an Excellent Prince and that was Trajan who when he delivered a Dagger to a certain Roman Magistrate as the custom was that being the badge of his Office frequently thus admonished him Take this Sword and use it for me if I do as I ought if otherwise against me for Miscarriages in the Supreme Magistrate are less excusable This Dion and Aurelius Victor say of him You see here that a worthy Emperor appointed one to judge himself tho he did not make him his equal Tiberius perhaps might have said as much out of Vanity and Hypocrisie but 't is almost a crime to imagine that so good and virtuous a Prince as Trajan did not really speak as he thought and according to what he apprehended right and just How much more reasonable was it that tho he were superior to the Senate in power and might if he would have refused to yield them any obedience yet he actually did obey them as by vertue of his office he ought to do and acknowledged 〈◊〉 Right in the Government to be superior to his 〈◊〉 For so Pliny tells us in his Panegyrick The Senate both desired and commanded you to be Consul a fourth time you may know by the Obedience you pay them that this is no word of Flattery but of Power And a little after This is the design you aim at to restore our lost Liberty And Trajan was not of that mind alone the Senate thought so too and were of opinion That their Authority was indeed Supreme For they that could Command their Emperor might Judge him So the Emperor Marcus Aurelius when Cassius Governor of Syria endeavoured to get the Empire from him referred himself either to the Senate or the people of Rome and declared himself ready to lay down the Government if they would have it so Now how should a man determine of the Right of Kings better and more truly than out of the very mouths of the best of Kings Indeed every good King accounts either the Senate or the People not only equal but superior to himself by the Law of Nature But a Tyrant being by nature inferior to all men every one that is stronger than he ought to be accounted not only his equal but superior For as heretofore nature taught men from Force and Violence to betake themselves to Laws so
wherever the Laws are set at naught the same dictate of nature must necessarily prompt us to betake our selves to Force again To be of this opinion says Cicero pro Sestio is a sign of Wisdom to put it in practice argues Courage and Resolution to do both is the effect of Vertue in its perfection Let this stand then as a setled Maxim of the Law of Nature never to be shaken by any Artifices of Flatterers That the Senate or the people are superior to Kings be they good or bad Which is but what you your self do in effect confess when you tell us That the Authority of Kings was derived from the people For that power which they transferred to Princes doth yet naturally or as I may say virtually reside in themselves notwithstanding for so natural causes that produce any effect by a certain eminency of operation do always retain more of their own vertue and energy than they impart nor do they by communicating to others exhaust themselves You see the closer we keep to Nature the more evidently does the peoples power appear to be above that of the Prince And this is likewise certain That the people do not freely and of choice settle the Government in their King absolutely so as to give him a Propriety in it nor by Nature can do so but only for the Publick Safety and Liberty which when the King ceaseth to take care of then the people in effect have given him nothing at all For Nature says the people gave it him to a particular end and purpose which end if neither Nature nor the People can attain the peoples Gift becomes no more valid than any other void Covenant or Agreement These Reasons prove very fully That the People are Superior to the King and so your greatest and most 〈◊〉 Argument That a King cannot be judged by his 〈◊〉 because he has no Peer in his Kingdom nor any Superior falls to the ground For you take that for granted which we by no means allow In a popular State say you the Magistrates being appointed by the people may likewise be punished for their Crimes by the people In an Aâ—…cracy the Senators may be punished by their Collegues But 't is a 〈◊〉 thing to proceed criminally against a King in his own Kingdom and make him plead for his life What can you conclude from hence but that they who set up Kings over them are the most miserable and most silly people in the world But I paay what 's the reason why the people may not punish a King that becomes a Malefactor as well as they may popular Magistrates and Senators in an Aristocracy Do you think that all they that live under a Kingly Government were so strangely in love with Slavery as when they might be free to chuse Vassalage and to put themselves all and entirely under the dominion of one man who often happens to be an ill man and often a fool so as whatever cause might be to leave themselves no 〈◊〉 in no relief from the Laws nor the dictates of Nature against the Tyranny of a most outragious Master when such a one happens Why do they then tender conditions to their Kings when they first enter upon their Government and prescribe Laws for them to govern by Do they do this to be trampled upon the more and be the more laughed to scorn Can it â—e imagined that a whole people would ever so 〈◊〉 themselves depart from their own interest to that degree be so wanting to themselves as to place all their hopes in one man and he very often the most vain person of them all To what end do they require an Oath of their Kings Not to act any 〈◊〉 contrary to Law We must suppose them to do this that poor creatures they may learn to their â—…rrow That Kings only may commit Perjury with impunity This is what your own wicked Conclusions hold forth If a King that is elected promise any thing to his people upon Oath which if he would not have swâ—rn to perhaps they would not have chose him yet if he refuse to perform that promise he falls not under the peoples censure Nay tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election That he will administer Justice to them according to the Laws of the Kingdom and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet if he break this oath 't is God and not man that must require it of him I have transcribed these lines not for their Elegance for they are barbarously expressed nor because I think there needs any answer to them for they answer themselves they explode and damn themselves by their notorious falshood and loathsomness but I did it to recommend you to Kings for your great Merits that among so many places as there are at Court they may put you into some Preferment or Office that may be fit for you some are Princes Secretaries some their Cup-bearers some Masters of the Revels I think you had best be Master of the Perjuries to some of them You sha'nt be Master of the Ceremonies you are too much a Clown for that but their Treachery and Perfidiousness shall be under your care But that men may see that you are both a Fool and a Knave to the highest degree let us consider these last assertions of yours a little more narrowly A King say you tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election that he will govern according to Law and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and he himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet can he not be deposed or punished by them Why not a King I pray as well as popular Magistrates Because in a popular State the People do not transfer all their Power to the Magistrates And do they in the Case that you have put vest it all in the King when they place him in the Government upon those terms expresly to hold it no longer than he useth it well So that it is evident that a King sworn to observe the Laws if he transgress them may be punished and deposed as well as popular Magistrates So that you can make no more use of that invincible Argument of the Peoples tranferring all their Right and Power into the Prince you your self have battered it down with your own Engines Hear now another most powerful and invincible Argument of his why Subjects cannot judge their Kings because he is bound by no Law being himself the sole Lawgiver Which having been proved already to be most false this great reason comes to nothing as well as the former But the reason why Princes have but seldom been proceeded against for personal and private Crimes as Whoredom and Adultery and the like is not because they could not justly be punished even for such but lest the People should receive more prejudice through disturbances that
might be occasioned by the King's Death and the change of Affairs than they would be profited by the punishment of one Man or two But when they begin to be universally injurious and insufferable it has always been the Opinion of all Nations that then being Tyrants it is lawful to put them to Death any how condemn'd or uncondemn'd Hence Cicero in his Second Phillippick says thus of those that kill'd Caesar They were the first that ran through with their Swords not a Man who affected to be King but who was actually setled in the Government which as it was a worthy and godlike Action so it 's set before us for our imitation How unlike are you to him Murder Adultery Injuries are not regal and publick but private and personal Crimes Well said Parasite you have obliged all Pimps and Prosâ—igates in Courts by this Expression How ingeniously do you act both the Parasite and the Pimp with the same breath A King that is an Adulterer or a Murderer may yet govern well and consequently ought not to be put to Death because together with his Life he must lose his Kingdom and it was never yet allowed by God's Laws or Man's that for one and the same Crime a Man was to be punished twice Infamous foul-mouth Wretch By the same reason the Magistrates in a popular State or in an Aristocracy ought never to be put to Death for fear of double Punishment no Judge no Senator must dye for they must lose their Magistracy too as well as their Lives As you have endeavoured to take all Power out of the Peoples hands and vest it in the King so you would all Majesty too A delegated translatitious Majesty we allow but that Majesty does chiefly and primarily reside in him you can no more prove than you can that Power and Authority does A King you say cannot commit Treason against his People but a People may against their King And yet a King is what he is for the People only not the People for him Hence I infer that the whole Body of the People or the greater part of them must needs have greater Power than the King This you deny and begin to cast up accounts He is of greater Power than any one than any two than any 〈◊〉 than any ten than any hundred than any thousand than any ten thousand be it so He is of more Power than half the People I will not deny that neither Add now half of the other half will be not have more Power than all thâ—se Not at all Go on why do you take away the Board Do you not understand Progression in Arithmetick He begins to reckon after another manner Has not the King and the Nobility together more Power No Mr Changeling I deny that too If by the Nobility whom you stile Optimates you mean the Peers only for it may happen that amongst the whole number of them there may not be one Man deserving that Appellation for it often falls out that there are better and wiser Men than they amongst the Commons whom in Conjunction with the greater or the better part of the People I should not scruple to call by the Name of and take them for all the People But if the King is not Superior in Power to all the People together he is then a King but of single Persons he is not the King of the whole Body of the People You say well no more he is unless they are content he should be so Now balance your accounts and you will find that by miscasting you have lost your Principal The English say that the Right of Majesty originally and principally resides in the People which Principle would introduce a Confusion of all States What of an Aristocracy and Democracy But let that pass What if it would overthrow a Gynaecocracy too i. e. a Government of one or more Women under which State or Form of Government they say you are in danger of being beaten at home would not the English do you a kindness in that you sheepish Fellow you But there 's no hope of that For 't is most justly so ordered since you would subject all Mankind to Tyranny abroad that you your self should live in a scandalous most unmanlike Slavery at home We must tell you you say what we mean by the word People There are a great many other things which you stand more in need of being told For of things that more immediately concern you you seem altogether ignorant and never to have learnt any thing but Words and Letters nor to be capable of any thing else But this you think you know that by the word People we mean the Common People only exclusive of the Nobility because we have put down the House of Lords And yet that very thing shows that under the word People we comprehend all our Natives of what Order and Degree soever in that we have setled one Supreme Senate only in which the Nobility also as a part of the People not in their own Right as they did before but Representing those Burroughs or Counties for which they may be chose may give their Votes Then you inveigh against the Common People as being Blind and Brutish Ignorant of the Art of Governing you say there 's nothing more Empty more Vain more Inconstant more Uncertain than they All which is very true of your self and it 's true likewise of the Rabble but not of the middle sort amongst whom the most prudent Men and most skilful in Affairs are generally found others are most commonly diverted either by Luxury and Plenty or by Want and Poverty from Virtue and the Study of Laws and Government There are many ways you say by which Kings come to the Crown so as not to he beholden to the People at all for it and especially those that inherit a Kingdom But those Nations most certainly be Slaves and born to Slavery that acknowledge any one to be their Lord and Master so absolutely as that they are his inheritance and come to him by descent without any Consent of their own they deserve not the Appellation of Subjects nor of Freemen nor can they be justly reputed such nor are they to be accounted as a Civil Society but must be looked on as the Possessions and Estate of their Lord and his Family For I see no difference as to the Right of Ownership betwixt them and Slaves and Beasts Secondly They that come to the Crown by Conquest cannot acknowledge themselves to have receiv'd from the People the Power they usurp We are not now discoursing of a Conqueror but of a Conquered King what a Conqueror may lawfully do we 'll discourse elsewhere do you keep to your Subject But whereas you ascribe to Kings that Ancient Right that Masters of Families have over their Housholds and take an example from thence of their absolute Power I have shown already over and over that there is no likeness at all betwixt them And
Aristotle whom you name so often if you had read him would have taught you as much in the beginning of his Politicks where he says they judge amiss that think there is but little difference betwixt a King and a Master of a Family For that there is not a numerical but a specifical Difference betwixt a Kingdom and a Family For when Villages grew to be Towns and Cities that Regal Domestick Right vanished by degrees and was no more owned Hence Diodorus in his first Book says That anciently Kingdoms were transmitted not to the former King's Sons but to those that had best deserved of the People And Justine Originally says he the Government of Nations and of Countries was by Kings who were exalted to that height of Majesty not by popular Ambition but for their Moderation which commended them to good Men. Whence it is manifest that in the very beginning of Nations that Fatherly and Hereditary Government gave way to vertue and the peoples right Which is the most natural reason and cause and was the true rise of Kingly Government For at first men entred into Societies not that any one might insult over all the rest but that in case any should injure other there might be Laws and Judges to protect them from wrong or at least to punish the wrong doers When men were at first dispers'd and scattered asunder some wise and eloquent man perswaded them to enter into Civil Societies that he himself say you might exercise Dominion over them when so united Perhaps you meant this of Nimrod who is said to have been the first Tyrant Or else it proceeds from your own malice only and certainly it cannot have been true of those great and generous spirited men but is a fiction of your own not warranted by any authority that I ever heard of For all ancient Writers tell us that those first Instituters of Communities of men had a regard to the good and safety of Mankind only and not to any private advantages of their own or to make themselves great or powerful One thing I cannot pass by which I suppose you intended for an Emblem to set off the rest of this Chapter If a Consul say you had been to be accused before his Magistracy expired there must have been a Dictator created for that purpose though you had said before that for that very reason there were two of them Just so your Positions always agree with one another and almost every Page declares how weak and frivolous whatever you say or write upon any subject is Under the ancient English-Saxon Kings you say the people were never called to Parliaments If any of our own Country-men had asserted such a thing I could easily have convinced him that he was in an error But I am not so much concerned at your mistaking our affairs because y' are a Foreigner This in effect is all you say of the Right of Kings in general Many other things I omit for you use many digressions and put things down that either have no ground at all or are nothing to the purpose and my design is not to vye with you in impertinence CHAP. VIII IF you had published your own opinion Salmasius concerning the Right of Kings in general without affronting any persons in particular yet notwithstanding this alteration of affairs in England as long as you did but use your own liberty in writing what your self thought fit no English man could have had any cause to have been displeased with you nor would you have made good the opinion you maintain ever a whit the less For if it be a positive command both of Moses and of Christ himself That all men whatsoever whether Spaniards French Italians Germans English or Scotch should be subject to their Princes be they good or bad which you asserted Page 127. to what purpose was it for you who are a foreigner and unknown to us to be tampering with our Laws and to read us Lectures out of them as out of your own Papers and Miscellanies which be they how they will you have taught us already in a great many words that they ought to give way to the Laws of God But now it is apparent that you have undertaken the defence of this Royal Cause not so much out of your own inclination as partly because you were hired and that at a good round price too considering how things are with him that set you on work and partly 't is like out of expectation of some greater reward hereafter to publish a scandalous Libel against the English who are injurious to none of their Neighbours and meddle with their own matters only If there were no such thing as that in the case is it credible that any man should be so impudent or so mad as though he be a stranger and at a great distance from us yet of his own accord to intermeddle with our affairs and side with a party What the Devil is it to you what the English do amongst themselves What would you have Pragmatical Puppy what would ye be at Have you no concerns of your own at home I wish you had the same concerns that that famous Olus your fellow busie-bosie body in the Epigram had and perhaps so you have you deserve them I 'm sure Or did that Hotspur your Wife who encouraged you to write what you have done for out-law'd Charles his sake promise you some profitable Professors place in England and God knows what Gratifications at Charles his Return But assure your selves my Mistress and my Master that England admits neither of Wolfes nor Owners of Wolfes So that it 's no wonder you spit so much venom at our English Mastiffs It were better for you to return to those Illustrious Titles of yours in France first to that hunger-starved Lordship of yours at St. Lou and in the next place to the Sacred Consistory of the most Christian King Being a Counsellor to the Prince you are at too great a distance from your own Country But I see full well that she neither desires you nor your Counsel nor did it appear she did when you were there a few years ago and began to lick a Cardinal's Trencher she 's in the right by my troth and can very willingly suffer such a little fellow as you that are but one half of a man to run up and down with your Mistress of a Wife and Desks full of Trifles and Fooleries till you light some where or other upon a Stipend large enough for a Knight of the Grammar or an Illustrious Critick on Horseback if any Prince or State has a mind to hire a Vagabond Doctor that is to be sold at a good round Price But here 's one that will bid for you whether you 're a Merchantable Commodity or not and what you are worth we shall see by and by You say The Parricides assert that the Government of England is not meerly Kingly but that it is a mixt
most solemn Oath And by so doing he not only extinguish'd his Right of Conquest if he ever had any over us but subjected himself to be judged according to the Tenor of this very Law And his Son Henry swore to the observance of King Edward's Laws and of this amongst the rest and upon these only terms it was that he was chosen King whilst his Elder Brother Robert was alive The same Oath was taken by all succeeding Kings before they were Crowned Hence our Ancient and Famous Lawyer Bracton in his first Book Chap. 8. There is no King in the case says he where Will rules 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Law does not take place And in his Third Book Chap. 9. A King is a King so long as he Rules well he becomes a Tyrant when he oppresses the People committed to his Charge And in the same Chapter The King ought to use the Power of Law and Right as God's Minister and Vice-gerent the Power of wrong is the Devils and not Gods when the King turns aside to do Injustice he is the Minister of the Devil The very same words almost another Ancient Lawyer has who was the Author of the Book called Fleta both of them remembred that truly Royal Law of King Edward that Fundamental Maxim in our Law which I have formerly mentioned by which nothing is to be accounted a Law that is contrary to the Laws of God or of Reason no more than a Tyrant can be said to be a King or a Minister of the Devil a Minister of God Since therefore the Law is chiefly right Reason if we are bound to obey a King and a Minister of God by the very same Reason and the very same Law we ought to resist a Tyrant and a Minister of the Devil And because Controversies arise oftner about Names than Things the same Authors tell us that a King of England tho he have not lost the Name of a King yet is as liable to be judged and ought so to be as any of the Common People Bracton Book 1. Chap. 8. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. No Man ought to be greater than the King in the Administration of Justice but he himself ought to be as little as the least in receiving Justice si peccat if he offend Others read it si petat Since our Kings therefore are liable to be judged whether by the Name of Tyrants or of Kings it must not be difficult to assign their Legal Judges Nor will it be amiss to consult the same Authors upon that point Bracton Book 1. Chap. 16. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. The King has his Superiors in the Government The Law by which he is made King and his Court to wit the Earls and the Barons Comites Earls are as much as to say Companions and he that has a Companion has a Master and therefore if the King will be without a Bridle that is not govern by Law they ought to bridle him That the Commons are comprehended in the word Barons has been shown already nay and in the Books of our Ancient Laws they are frequently said to have been called Peers of Parliament and especially in the Modus tenendi c. There shall be chosen says that Book out of all the Peers of the Realm Five and twenty Persons of whom five shall be Knight five Citizens and five Burgâ—ssâ—s and two Knights of a County have a greater Vote in granting and rejecting than the greatest Earl in England And it is but reasonable they should for they Vote for a whole County c. the Earls for themselves only And who can but perceive that those Patent Earls whom you call Earls made by Writ since we have now none that hold their Earldoms by Tenure are very unfit Persons to try the King who conferr'd their Honours upon them Since therefore by our Law as appears by that old Book call'd The Mirror the King has his Peers who in Parliament have Cognizance of wrongs done by the King to any of his People and since it is notoriously known that the meanest Man in the Kingdom may even in inferior Courts have the benefit of the Law against the King himself in Case of any Injury or Wrong sustained how much more Consonant to Justice how much more necessary is it that in case the King oppress all his People there should be such as have Authority not only to restrain him and keep him within Bounds but to Judge and Punish him For that Government must needs be very ill and most ridiculously constituted in which remedy is provided in case of little Injuries done by the Prince to private Persons and no Remedy no Redress for greater no care taken for the safety of the whole no Provision made to the contrary but that the King may without any Law ruin all his Subjects when at the same time he cannot by Law so much as hurt any one of them And since I have shown that it is neither good manners nor expedient that the Lords should be the Kings Judges it follows that the Power of Judicature in that case does wholly and by very good Right belong to the Commons who are both Peers of the Realm and Barons and have the Power and Authority of all the People committed to them For since as we find it expresly in our written Law which I have already cited the Commons together with the King make a good Parliament without either Lords or Bishops because before either Lords or Bishops had a being Kings held Parliaments with their Commons only by the very same reason the Commons apart must have the Sovereign Power without the King and a Power of Judging the King himself because before there ever was a King they in the Name of the whole Body of the Nation held Councils and Parliaments had the Power of Judicature made Laws and made the Kings themselves not to Lord it over the People but to Administer their publick Affairs Whom if the King instead of so doing shall endeavour to injure and oppress our Law pronounces him from time forward not so much as to retain the Name of a King to be no such thing as a King and if he be no King what need we trouble our selves to find out Peers for him For being then by all good Men adjudged to be a Tyrant there are none but who are Peers good enough for him and proper enough to pronounce Sentence of Death upon him judicially These things being so I think I have sufficiently proved what I undertook by many Authorities and written Laws to wit that since the Commons have Authority by very good Right to try the King and since they have actually tried him and put him to Death for the mischief he had done both in Church and State and without all hope of amendment they have done nothing therein but what was just and regular for the Interest of the State in discharging of their Trust becoming their Dignity and according to the Laws of
the Land And I cannot upon this occasion but congratulate my self with the Honour of having had such Ancestors who founded this Government with no less prudence and in as much Liberty as the most worthy of the Ancient Romans or Grecians ever sounded any of theirs and they must needs if they have any knowledg of our Affairs rejoyce over their Posterity who when they were almost reduced to Slavery yet with so much Wisdom and Courage 〈◊〉 and asserted the State which they so wisely sounded upon so much Liberty from the unruly Government of a King CHAP. IX I Think by this time 't is sufficiently evident that Kings of England may be judged even by the Laws of England and that they have their proper Judges which was the thing to be proved What do you do farther for whereas you repeat many things that you have said before I do not intend to repeat the answers that I have given them 'T is an easie thing to demonstrate even from the nature of the things for which Parliaments are summon'd that the King is above the Parliament The Parliament you say is wont to be assembled upon weighty affairs such as wherein the safety of the Kingdom and of the people is concerned If therefore the King call Parliaments together not for his own concerns but those of the Nation nor to settle those neither but by their own consent at their own discretion what is he more than a Minister and as it were an agent for the people since without their Suffrages that are chosen by the people he cannot Eâ—… the least thing whatsoever either with relation to himself or any body else Which proves likewise that 't is the King's duty to call Parliaments whenever the people desire it since the peoples and not the King 's concerns are to be treated of that Assembly and to be ordered as they see cause For although the King's assent be required for fashion sake which in lesser matters that concerned the welfare of private persons only he might refuse and use that form the King will advise yet in those greater affairs that concern'd the publick safety and liberty of the people in general he had no Negative voice for it would have been against his Coronation Oath to deny his assent in such cases which was as binding to him as any Law could be and against the chief article of Magna Charta Cap. 29. We will not deny to any man nor will we delay to render to every man Right and Justice Shall it not be in the King's power to deny Justice and shall it be in his power to deny the Enacting of Just Laws Could he not deny Justice to any particular person and could he to all his people Could he not do it in inferior Courts and could he in the Supreme Court of all Or can any King be so arrogant as to pretend to know what 's just and profitable better than the whole body of the people Especially since he is created and chosen for this very end and purpose to do Justice to all as Braction says Lib. 3. Cap. 9. that is to do Justice according to such Laws as the people agree upon Hence is what we find in our Records 7 H 4. Rott Parl. num 59. The King has no Prerogative that derogates from Justice and Equity And formerly when Kings have refused to confirm Acts of Parliament to wit Magna Charta and some others our Ancestors have brought them to it by force of Arms. And yet our Lawyers never were of opinion that those Laws were less valid or less binding since the King was forced to assent to no more than what he ought in Justice to have assented to voluntarily and without constraint Whilest you go about to prove that Kings of other Nations have been as much under the power of their Senates or Counsels as our Kings were you do not argue us into Slavery but them into Liberty In which you do but that over again that you have from the very beginning of your Discourse and which some silly Leguleians now and then do to argue unawares against their own Clients But you say VVe confess that the King where-ever he be yet is supposed still to be present in his Parliament by vertue of his power insomuch that whatever is transacted there is supposed to be done by the King himself and then as if you had got some petty bribe or small morsel and tickled with the remembrance of your Purse of Gold We take say you what they give us and take a Halter then for I 'm sure you deserve it But we do not give it for granted which is the thing you thought would follow from thence That therefore that Court acts only by vertue of a Delegated Power from the King For when we say that the Regal Power be it what it will cannot be absent from the Parliament do we thereby acknowledg that Power to be Supreme does not the King's Authority seem rather to be transferred to the Parliament and as being the lesser of the two to be comprised in the greater Certainly if the Parliament may resâ—ind the King's Acts whether he will or no and revoke Priviledges granted by him to whomsoever they be granted If they may set bounds to his Prerogative as they see cause if they may regulate his yearly Revenue and the Expences of his Court his Retinue and generally all the concerns of his Houshold If they may remove his most intimate Friends and Counsellors and as it were pluck them out of his bosom and bring them to condign punishment Finally if any Subject may by Law appeal from the King to the Parliament all which things that they may lawfully be done and have been frequently practised both our Histories and Records and the most eminent of our Lawyers assure us I suppose no man in his right wits will deny the Authority of the Parliament to be superiour to that of the King For even in an Interregnum the Authority of the Parliament is in being and than which nothing is more common in our Histories they have often made a free Choice of a Successor without any regard to an Hereditary descent In short the Parliament is the Supreme Councel of the Nation constituted and appointed by a most free people and armed with ample power and authority for this end and purpose viz. to consult together upon the most weighty affairs of the Kingdom the King was created to put their Laws in execution Which thing after the Parliament themselves had declared in a publick Edict for such is the Justice of their Proceedings that of their own accord they have been willing to give an account of their actions to other Nations is it not prodigious that such a pitiful fellow as you are a man of no authority of no credit of no estate in the world a meer Burgundian 〈◊〉 should have the imprudence to accuse the Parliament of England asserting by a publick Instrument their
own and their Countries Right of a detestable and â—â—rrid Imposture Your Country may be aâ—…amed you Rascall to have brought forth a little inconsiderable fellow of such profligate impudence But perhaps you have somewhat to tell us that may be for our good Go on we 'l hear you VVhat Laws say you can a Parliament Enact in which the Bishops are 〈◊〉 present Did you then ye madman expell the Order of Bishops out of the Church to introduce them into the State O wicked wretch who ought to be delivered over to Satan whom the Church ought to forbid her Communion as being a Hypocrite and an Atheist and no Civil Society of men to acknowledg as a member being a publick enemy and a Plague-sore to the common liberty of Mankind who where the Gospel fails you endeavour to prove out of Aristetle Halicarnassaeus and then from some Popish Authorities of the most corrupt ages that the King of England is the head of the Church of England to the end that you may as far as in you lies bring in the Bishops again his Intimates and Table-Companions grown so of late to rob and Tyrannize in the Church of God whom God himself hath deposed and degraded whose very Order you had heretofore asserted in Print that it ought to be rooted out of the world as destructive of and pernicious to the Christian Religion What Apostate did ever so shamefully and wickedly desert as this man has done I do not say his own which indeed never was any but the Christian Doctrine which he had formerly asserted The Bishops being put down who under the King and by his permission held Plea of Ecclesiastical Causes upon whom say you will that Jurisdiction devolve O Villain have some regard at least to your own Conscience Remember before it be too late if at least this admonition of mine come not too late remember that this mocking the Holy Spirit of God is an inexpiable crime and will not be left unpunisht Stop at last and set bounds to your fury lest the wrath of God lay hold upon you suddenly for endeavouring to deliver the flock of God his Anointed ones that are not to be touched to Enemies and cruel Tyrants to be crusht and trampled on again from whom himself by a high and stretched out arm had so lately delivered them and from whom you your self maintained that they ought to be delivered I know not whether for any good of theirs or in order to the hardning of your own heart and to further your own damnation If the Bishops have no right to Lord it over the Church certainly much less have Kings whatever the Laws of men may be to the contrary For they that know any thing of the Gospel know thus much that the Government of the Church is altogether Divine and Spiritual and no Civil Constitution Whereas you say That in Secular Affairs the Kings of England have always had the Sovereign Power Our Laws do abundantly declare that to be false Our Courts of Justice are erected and suppressed not by the King's Authority but that of the Parliament and yet in any of them the meanest Subject might go to Law with the Ring nor is it a rare thing for the Judges to give Judgment against him which if the King should endeavour to obstruct by any Prohibition Mandate or Letters the Judges were bound by Law and by their Oaths not to obey him but to reject such Inhibitions as null and void in Law the King could not imprison any man or seize his Estate as forfeited he could not punish any man not summoned to appear in Court where not the King but the ordinary Judges gave Sentence which they frequently did as I have said against the King Hence our Bractan lib. 3. cap. 9. The Regal Power says he is according to Law he has no power to do any wrong nor can the King do any thing but what the Law warrants Those Lawyers that you have consulted men that have lately fled their Countrey may tell you another tale and acquaint you with some Statutes not very Ancient neither but made in King Edward 4th's King Henry 6th's and King Edward 6th's days but they did not consider That what power soever those Statutes gave the King was conferred upon him by Authority of Parliament so that he was beholding to them for it and the same power that conferr'd it might at pleasure resume it How comes it to pass that so acute a disputant as you should suffer your self to be imposed upon to that degree as to make use of that very Argument to prove the King's Power to be Absolute and Supreme than which nothing proves more clearly That it is subordinate to that of the Parliament Our Records of the greatest Authority with us declare That our Kings owe all their Power not to any Right of Inheritance of Conquest or Succession but to the people So in the Parliament Rolls of King Hen. 4. numb 108. we read That the Kingly Office and Power was granted by the Commons to King Henry the 4th and before him to his Predecessor King Richard the 2d just as Kings use to grant Commissioners places and Lieutenantships to their Deputies by Edicts and Patents Thus the House of Commons ordered expresly to be entred upon record That they had granted to King Richard to use the same good Liberty that the Kings of England before him had used Which because that King abused to the subversion of the Laws and contrary to his Oath at his Coronation the same persons that granted him that power took it back again and deposed him The same men as appears by the same Record declared in open Parliament That having confidence in the Prudence and Moderation of King Henry the 4th they will and enact That he enjoy the same Royal Authority that his Ancestors enjoyed Which if it had been any other than in the nature of a Trust as this was either those Houses of Parliament were foolish and vain to give what was none of their own or those Kings that were willing to receive as from them what was already theirs were too injurious both to themselves and their Posterity neither of which is likely A third part of the Regal Power say you is conversant about the Mâ—litia this the Kings of England have used to order and govern without Fellow or Competitor This is as false as all the rest that you have taken upon the credit of Fugitives For in the first place both our own Histories and those of Foreigners that have been any whit exact in the relation of our Affairs declare That the making of Peace and War always did belong to the Parliament And the Laws of St. Edward which our Kings were bound to swear that they would maintain make this appear beyond all exception in the Chapter De Heretochus viz. That there were certain Officers appointed in every Province and County throughout the Kingdom that were called Heretochs in Latin
he thought was to be imputed wholly to the Presbyterians now that he considers the same thing from first to last he thinks the Independents were the sole Actors of it But even now he told us The Presbyterians took up Arms against the King that by them he was beaten taken captive and put in prison Now he says this whole Doctrine of Rebellion is the Independents Principle O! the faithfulness of this man's Narrative How consistent he is with himself What need is there of a Counter narrative to this of his that cuts its own throat But if any man should question whether you are an honest man or a Knave let him read these following lines of yours It is time to explain whence and at what time this Sect of Enemies to Kingship first began VVhy truly these rare Puritans began in Queen Elizabeths time to crawl out of Hell and disturb not only the Church but the State likewise for they are no less plagues to the latter than to the former Now your very speech bewrays you to be a right Balaam for where you designed to spit out the most bitter poyson you could there unwittingly and against your will you have pronounc'd a blessing For it 's notoriously known all over England that if any endeavoured to follow the example of those Churches whether in France or Germany which they accounted best Reformed and to exercise the publick Worship of God in a more pure manner which our Bishops had almost universally corrupted with their Ceremonies and Superstitions or if any seemed either in point of Religion or Morality to be better than others such â—…sons were by the Favourers of Episcopacy termed â—…ans These are they whose Principles you say are so opposite to Kingship Nor are they the only persons most of the Reformed Religion that have not sucked in the rest of their principles yet seem to have approved of those that strike at Kingly Government So that â—hile you inveigh bitterly against the Independents and endeavour to separate them from Christ's flock with the same breath you praise them and those Principles which almost every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Independents here you confess they have been approved of by most of the Reformed Religion Nay you are arrived to that degree of impudence impiety and apostacy that though formerly you maintained that Bishops ought to be extirpated out of the Church Root and Branch as so many pests and limbs of Antichrist here you say the King ought to protect them for the saving of his Coronation-Oath You cannot show your self a more infamous Villain than you have done already but by abjuring the Protestant Reformed Religion to which you are a scandal Whereas you tax us with giving a Toleration of all Sects and Heresies you ought not to find fault with us for that since the Church bears with such a prosâ—igate wretch as you your self such a vain fellow such a lyar such a Mercenary Slanderer such an Apostate one who has the impudence to affirm That the best and most pious of Christians and even most of those who profess the Reformed Religion are crept out of Hell because they differ in opinion from you I had best pass by the Calumnies that fill up the rest of this Chapter and those prodigious tenents that you ascribe to the Independents to render them odious for neither do they at-all concern the cause you have in hand and they are such for the most part as deserve to be laugh'd at and despised rather than receive a serious Answer CHAP. XI YOu seem to begin this Eleventh Chapter Salmasius though with no modesty yet with some sense of your weakness and trifling in this Discourse For whereas you proposed to your self to enquire in this place by what authority sentence was given against the King You add immediately which no body expected from you that 't is in vain to make any such enquiry to wit because the quality of the persons that did it leaves hardly any room for such a question And therefore as you have been found guilty of a great deal of Impupence and Sauciness in the undertaking of this Cause so since you seem here conscious of your own impertinence I shall give you the shorter answer To your question then by what authority the House of Commons either condemn'd the King themselves or delegated that power to others I answer they did it by vertue of the Supreme authority on earth How they come to have the Supreme Power you may learn by what I have said already when I refuted your Impertinencies upon that Subject If you believed your self that you could ever say enough upon any Subject you would not be so tedious in repeating the same things so many times over And the House of Commons might delegate their Judicial Power by the same reason by which you say the King may delegate his who received all he had from the people Hence in that Solemn League and Covenant that you object to us the Parliaments of England and Scotland solemnly protest and engage to each other to punish the Traytors in such manner as the Supreme Judicial Authority in both Nations or such as should have a Delegate power from them should think fit Here you hear the Parliaments of both Nations protest with one voice that they may Delegate their Judicial Power which they call the Supreme so that you move a vain and frivolous Controversie about Delegating this power But say you there were added to those Judges that were made choice of out of the House of Commons some Officers of the Army and that never was known that Soldiers had any right to try a Subject for his life I 'le silence you in a very few words You may remember that we are not now discoursing of a Subject but of an Enemy whom if a General of an Army after he has taken him Prisoner resolves to dispatch would he be thought to proceed otherwise than according to custom and Martial Law if he himself with some of his Officers should sit upon him and try and cendemn him An enemy to a State made a Prisouer of War cannot be lookt upon to be so much as a Member much less a King in that State This is declar'd by that Sacred Law of St. Edward which denies that a bad King is a King at all or ought to be called so Whereas you say it was not the whole but a part of the House of Comâ—â—ons that try'd and condemned the King I give you this answer The number of them who gave their Votes for putting the King to death was far greater than is necessary according to the custom of our Parliaments to transact the greatest Affairs of the Kingdom in the absence of the rest who since they were absent through their own fault for to revolt to the common enemy in their hearts is the worst sort of absence their absence ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to the
and teach such a Doctor as you That the word Tyrant for all your concern is barely to have some understanding of words may be applied to one who is neither a Traytor nor a Murtherer But the Laws of England do not make it Treason in the King to stir up Sedition against himself or the people Nor do they say That the Parliament can be guilty of Treason by deposing a bad King nor that any Parliament ever was so tho they have often done it but our Laws plainly and clearly declare that a King may violate diminish nay and wholly lose his Royalty For that expression in the Law of St. Edward of losing the name of a King signifies neither more nor less than being deprived of the Kingly Office and Dignity which befel Chilperic King of France whose example for illustration-sake is taken notice of in the Law it self There is not a Lawyer amongst us that can deny but that the highest Treason may be committed against the Kingdom as well as against the King I appeal to Glanvile himself whom you cite If any man attempt to put the King to death or raise Sedition in the Realm it is High Treason So that attempt of some Papists to blow up the Parliament-House and the Lords and Commons there with Gunpowder was by King James himself and both Houses of Parliament declared to be High Treason not against the King only but against the Parliament and the whole Kingdom 'T would be to no purpose to quote more of our Statutes to prove so clear a Truth which yet I could easily do For the thing it self is ridiculous and absurd to imagine That High Treason may be committed against the King and not against the people for whose good nay and by whose leave as I may say the King is what he is So that you babble over so many Statutes of ours to no purpose you toil and wallow in our Ancient Law-Books to no purpose for the Laws themselves stand or fall by Authority of Parliament who always had power to confirm or repeal them and the Parliament is the sole Judge of what is Rebellion what High Treason Iaesa Majestas and what not Majesty never was vested to that degree in the Person of the King as not to be more conspicuous and more August in Parliament as I have often shown But who can endure to hear such a senseless Fellow such a French Mountebank as you declare what our Laws are And you English Fugitives so many Bishops Doctors Lawyers who pretend that all Learning and Ingenuous Literature is fled out of England with your selves was there not one of you that could defend the King's Cause and your own and that in good Latin too to be submitted to the judgment of other Nations but that this brain-sick beggarly Frenchman must be hired to undertake the Defence of a poor indigent King surrounded with so many Infant-Priests and Doctors This very thing I assure you will be a great imputation to you amongst Foreigners and you will be thought deservedly to have lost that Cause that you were so far from being able to defend by Force of Arms as that you cannot so much as write in behalf of it But now I come to you again good-man goose-cap who scribble so finely if at least you are come to your self again for I find you here towards the latter end of your Book in a deep sleep and dreaming of some voluntary Death or other that 's nothing to the purpose Then you deny that 't is possible for a King in his right wits to embroil his people in Seditions to betray his own Forces to be slaughtered by Enemies and raise Factions against himself All which things having been done by many Kings and particularly by Charles the late King of England you will no longer doubt I hope especially being addicted to Stoicism but that all Tyrants as well as profligate Villains are downright mad Hear what Horace says Whoever through a senseless Stupidity or any other cause whatsoever hath his Understanding so blinded as not to discern truth the Stoicks account of him as of a mad-man And such are whole Nations such are Kings and Princes such are all Man kind except those very few that are Wise So that if you would clear King Charles from the Imputation of acting like a Mad-man you must first vindicate his integrity and show that he never acted like an ill man But a King you say cannot commit Treason against his own Subjects and Vassals In the first place since we are as free as any People under Heaven we will not be impos'd upon by any Barbarous Custom of any other Nation whatsoever In the second place Suppose we had been the King's Vassals that Relation would not have obliged us to endure a Tyrant to Reign and Lord it over us All Subjection to Magistrates as our own Laws declare is circumscribed and confined within the bounds of Honesty and the Publick Good Read Leg. Hen. 1. Cap. 55. The Obligation betwixt a Lord and his Tenants is mutual and remains so long as the Lord protects his Tenant this all our Lawyers tells us but if the Lord be too severe and cruel to his Tenant and do him some heinous Injury The whole Relation betwixt them and whatever Obligation the Tenant is under by having done Homage to his Lord is utterly dissolv'd and extinguish'd These are the very words of Bracton and Fleta So that in some Case the Law it self warrants even a Slave or a Vassal to oppose his Lord and allows the Slave to kill him if he vanquish him in Battle If a City or a whole Nation may not lawfully take the Course with a Tyrant the Condition of Freemen will be worse than that of Slaves Then you go about to excuse King Charles's shedding of Innocent Blood partly by Murders committed by other Kings and partly by some Instances of Men put to Death by them lawfully For the matter of the Irish Massacre you refer the Reader to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and I refer you to Eiconoclastes The Town of Rochel being taken and the Towns-men betray'd assistance shown but not afforded them you will not have laid at Charlos's door nor have I any thing to say whether he was faulty in that business or not he did mischief enough at home we need not enquire into what Misdemeanors he was guilty of abroad But you in the mean time would make all the Protestant Churches that have at any time defended themselves by force of Arms against Princes who were profess'd Enemies of their Religion to have been guilty of Rebellion Let them consider how much it concerns them for the maintaining their Ecclesiastical Discipline and asserting their own Integrity not to pass by so great an Indignity offered them by a Person bred up by and amongst themselves That which troubles us most is that the English likewise were betray'd in that Expedition He who had design'd long ago to convert
and hope for them in vain under the Rule of a King They who are of opinion that these things cannot be compass'd but under a King and a Lord it cannot well be expressed how mean how base I do not say how unworthy thoughts they have of themselves for in effect what do they other than confess that they themselves are lazy weak senseless silly Persons and fram'd for Slavery both in Body and Mind And indeed all manner of Slavery is scandalous and disgraceful to a freeborn ingenious Person but for you after you have recovered your lost Liberty by God's Assistance and your own Arms after the performance of so many valiant Exploits and the making so remarkable an Example of a most Potent King to desire to return again into a Condition of Bondage and Slavery will not only be scandalous and disgraceful but an impious and wicked thing and equal to that of the Israelites who for desiring to return to the Egyptian Slavery were so severely punish'd for that sordid slavish Temper of mind and so many of them destroy'd by that God who had been their Deliverer But what say you now who would perswade us to become Slaves The King say you had a Power of pardoning such as were guilty of Treason and other Crimes which evinces sufficiently that the King himself was under no Law The King might indeed pardon Treason not against the Kingdom but against himself and so may any body else pardon wrongs done to themselves and he might perhaps pardon some other Offences tho not always but does that follow because in some Cases he had the Right of saving a Malefactor's life that therefore he must have a Right to destroy all good Men If the King be impleaded in an inferior Court he is not obliged to Answer but by his Attorney Does it therefore follow that when he is summon'd by all his Subjects to appear in Parliament he may chuse whether he will appear or no and refuse to Answer in Person You say That we endeavour to justify what we have done by the Hollander ' s Example and upon this occasion fearing the loss of that Stipend with which the Hollanders seed such a Murraine and Pest as you are if by reviling the English you should consequentially reflect upon them that maintain you you endeavour to demonstrate how unlike their Actions and ours are The Comparison that you make betwixt them I resolve to omit tho many things in it are most false and other things flattery all over which yet you thought your self obliged to put down to deserve your Pension For the English think they need not alledge the Examples of Foreigners for their Justification They have Municipal Laws of their own by which they have acted Laws with relation to the matter in hand the best in the World They have the Examples of their Ancestors Great and Gallant Men for their imitation who never gave way to the Exorbitant Power of Princes and who have put many of them to Death when their Government became insupportable They were born free they stand in need of no other Nation they can make what Laws they please for their own good Government One Law in particular they have a great Veneration for and a very Ancient one it is enacted by Nature it self That all Humane Laws all Civil Right and Government must have a respect to the safety and welfare of good Men and not be subject to the Lusts of Princes From hence to the end of your Book I find nothing but Rubbish and Trifles pick'd out of the former Chapters of which you have here raised so great a heap that I cannot imagine what other design you could have in it than to presage the ruin of your whole Fabrick At last after an infinite deal of tittle tatle you make an end calling God to witness that you undertook the defence of this Cause not only because you were desired so to do but because your own Conscience told you that you could not possibly undertake the Defence of a better Is it fit for you to intermedâ—le with our matters with which you have nothing to do because you were desired when we our selves did not desire you to reproach with contumelious and opprobrious language and in a Printed Book the Supreme Magistracy of the English Nation when according to the authority and power that they are entrusted with they do but their duty within their own Jurisdiction and all this without the least injury or provocation from them for they did not so much as know that there was such a man in the world as you And I pray by whom were you desired By your Wife I suppose who they say exercises a Kingly Right and Jurisdiction over you and whenever she has a mind to it as Fulvia is made to speak in that obscene Epigram that you collected some Centoes out of Pag. 320. cries Either write or let 's fight That made you write perhaps lest the â—ignal should be given Or were you asked by Charles the Younger and that proâ—ligate Gang of Vâ—gabond Courtiers and like a second Balaam call'd upon by another Balak to restore a desperate Cause by ill writing that was lost by ill fighting That may be but there 's this difference for he was a wise understanding man and rid upon an Ass that could speak to curse the People of God Thou art a very talkative Ass they self and rid by a Woman and being surrounded with the healed heads of the Bishops that heretofore thou hadst wounded thou seem'st to represent that Beast in the Revelation But they say that a little after you had written this Book you repented of what you had done 'T is well if it be so and to make your repentance publick I think the best course that you can take will be for this long Book that you have writ to take a Halter and make one long Letter of your self So Judas Iscariot repented to whom you are like and that young Charles knew which made him send you the Purse Judas his Badg for he had heard before and found afterward by experience that you were an Apostate and a Devil Judas betray'd Christ himself and you betray his Church you have taught heretofore that Bishops were Antichristian and you are now revolted to their party You now undertake the Defence of their Cause whom formerly you damn'd to the pit of Hell Christ delivered all men from Bondage and you endeavour to enslave all mankind Never question since you have been such a Villain to God himself his Church and all mankind in general but that the same fate attends you that befel your equal out of despair rather than repentance to be weary of your life and hang your self and burst asunder as he did and to send before-hand that faithless and treacherous Conscience of yours that railing Conscience at good and holy men to that place of torment that 's parpared for you And now I think through God's
are in most Courts 2 Sam. 12. Thou hast done this thing in secret Besides what if the Senate should neglect to punish private persons would any infer that therefore they ought not to be punish'd at all But the reason why David was not proceeded against as a malefactor is not much in the dark He had condemn'd himself in the 5th verse The man that hath done this thing shall surely die To which the Prophet presently replies Thou art the man So that in the Prophet's judgment as well as his own he was worthy of death but God by his Soveraign Right over all things and of his great mercy to David absolves him from the guilt of his Sin and the sentence of death which he had pronounc'd against himself verse 13th The Lord hath put away thy sin thou shalt not die The next thing you do is to rail at some bloody Advocate or other and you take a deal of pains to refute the conclusion of his Discourse Let him look to that I 'le endeavour to be as short as I can in what I 'ue undertaken to go through with But some things I must not pass by without taking notice of as first and formost your notorious contradictions for in the 30th Page you say The Israelites do not deprecate an unjust rapacious Tyrannical King one as bad as the worst of Kings are And yet page 42 you are very smart upon your Advocate for maintaining that the Israelites asked for a Tyrant Would they have leaped out of the Frying-pan into the fire say you and grâ—an under the cruelty of the worst of Tyrants rather than live under bad Judges especially being us'd to such a form of Government First you said the Hebrews would rather live under Tyrants than Judges here you say they would rather live under Judges than Tyrants and that they desir'd nothing less than a Tyrant So that your Advocate may answer you out of your own Book For according to your Principles 't is every King's right to be a Tyrant What you say next is very true The Supreme Power was then in the people which appears by their own rejecting their Judges and making choice of a Kingly Government Remember this when I shall have occasion to make use of it You say that God gave the children of Israel a King as a thing good and profitable for them and deny that he gave them one in his anger as a punishment for their sin But that will receive an easie answer for to what purpose should they cry to God because of the King that they had chosen if it were not because a Kingly Government is an evil thing not in it self but because it most commonly does as Samuel forewarns the people that theirs would degenerate into Pride and Tyranny if y' are not yet satisfied hark what you say your self acknowledg your own hand and blush 't is your Apparatus ad Primatum God gave them a King in his anger say you being offended at their sin in rejecting him from ruling over them and so the Christian Church as a punishment for it's forsaking the pure Worship of God has been subjected to the more than Kingly Government of one mortal head So that if your own comparison holds either God gave the Children of Israel a King as an evil thing and as a punishment or he has set up the Pope for the good of the Church Was there ever any thing more and light mad than this man is Who would trust him in the smallest matters that in things of so great concern says and unsays without any consideration in the world You tell us in your 29th Page That by the constitution of all Nations Kings are bound by no Law That this had been the judgment both of the Eastern and Western part of the VVorld And yet pag. 43. you say That all the Kings of the East ruled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to Law nay that the very Kings of Egypt in all matters whatsoever whether great or small were tied to Laws Though in the beginning of this Chapter you had undertook to demonstrate that Kings are bound by no Laws that they give Laws to others but have none prescribed to themselves For my part I 've no reason to be angry with ye for either y' are mad or of our side You do not defend the King's cause but arguë against him and play the fool with him Or if y' are in earnest that Epigram of Catullus Tantò pessimus omnium Poeta Quantò tu optimus omnium Patronus The worst of Poets I my self declare By how much you the best of Patrons are That Epigram I say may be turn'd and very properly applied to you for there never was so good a Poet as you are a bad Patron Unless that stupidity that you complain your Advocate is immers'd over head and ears in has blinded the eyes of your own understanding too I 'le make ye now sensible that y' are become a very brute your self For now you come and confess that the Kings of all Nations have Laws prescribed to them But then you say again They are not so under the power of them as to be liable to censure or punishment of death if they break them Which yet you have proved neither from Scripture nor from any good Authour Observe then in short to prescribe Municipal Laws to such as are not bound by them is silly and ridiculous and to punish all others but leave some one man at liberty to commit all sort of Impieties without fear of punishment is most unjust the Law being general and not making any exception neither of which can be suppos'd to hold place in the Constitutions of any wise Law-maker much less in those of God's own making But that all may perceive how unable you are to prove out of the writings of the Jews what you undertook in this Chapter to make appear by 'em you confess of your own accord That there are some Rabbins who affirm that their fore fathers ought not to have had any other King than God himself and that he set other Kings over them for their punishment And of those men's opinion I declare my self to be It is not fitting nor decent that any man should be a King that does not far excel all his Subjects But where men are Equals as in all Governments very many are they ought to have an equal interest in the Government and hold it by turns But that all Men should be Slaves to one that is their Equal or as it happens most commonly far inferior to 'em and very often a Fool who can so much as entertain such a thought without Indignation Nor does it make for the Honour of a Kingly Government that our Saviour was of the posterity of some Kings more than it does for the commendation of the worst of Kings that he was the Offspring of some of them too The Messias is a King We acknowledg him so to be and
rejoyce that he is so pray that his Kingdom may come for he is worthy Nor is there any other either equal or next to him And yet a Kingly Government being put into the hands of unworthy and undeserving persons as most commonly it is may well be thought to have done more harm than good to Mankind Nor does it follow for all this that all Kings as such are Tyrants But suppose it did as for argument sake I 'le allow it does least you should think I 'm too hard with ye Make you the best use of it you can Then say you God himself may properly be said to be the King of Tyrants nay himself the worst of all Tyrants If the first of these conclusions does not follow another does which may be drawn from most parts of your Book viz. That you perpetually contradict not only the Scriptures but your own self For in the very last fore-going Period you had affirmed that God was the King of all things having himself created them Now he created Tyrants and Devils and consequently by your own reason is the King of such The 2'd of these Conclusions we detest and wish that blasphemous Mouth of yours were stopt up with which you affirm God to be the worst of Tyrants If he be as you often say he is the King and Lord of such Nor do you much advantage your Cause by telling us that Moses was a King and had the absolute and supream power of a King For we could be content that any other were so that could refer our matters to God as Moses did and consult with him about our affairs Exod. 18. v. 19. But neither did Moses notwithstanding his great familiatity with God ever assume a Liberty of doing what he would himself What says he of himself The people come unto me to enquire of God They came not then to receive Moses his own Dictates and Commands Then says Jethro ver 19. Be thou for the people to God-ward that thou mayst bring their causes unto God And Moses himself says Deut. 4. v 5. I have taught you statutes and judgments even as the Lord my God commanded me Hence it is that he is said to have been faithful in all the hause of God Numb 12 v. 7. So that the Lord Jehovah himself was the people's King and Moses no other than as it were an Interpreter or a Messenger betwixt him and them Nor can you without In piety and Sacriledg transfer this absolute supream Power and Authority from God to a man not having any Warrant from the word of God so to do which Moses used only as a Deputy or Substitute to God under whose Eye and in whose presence himself and the people always were But now for an aggravation of your wickedness though here you make Moses to have exercis'd an absolute and unlimitted Power in your apparat ad primat Page 230. You say that he together with the seventy elders ruled the people and that himself was the chief of the people but not their Master If Moses therefore were a King as certainly he was and the best of Kings and had a Supream and Legal Power as you say he had and yet neither was the people's Master nor Govern'd them alone then according to you Kings though indued with the Supream Power are not by Vertue of that Sovereign and Kingly Right of theirs Lords over the people nor ought to Govern them alone much less according to their own Will and Pleasure After all this you have the Impudence to feign a command from God to that people to set up a King over them as soon as they should be possessed of the holy land Deut. 17. For you craftily leave out the former words and shalt say I will set a King over me c. And now call to mind what you said before Page 42d and what I said I should have occasion to make use of viz. That the power was then in the people and that they were entirely free What follows argues you either Mad or irreligious take whether you lift God say you having so long before appointed a Kingly Government as best and most proper for that people what shall we say to Samuel's opposing it and God's own acting as if himself were against it How do these things agree He finds himself caught and observe now with how great malice against the Prophet and impiety against God he endeavours to disentangle himself We must consider says he That Samuel's own Sons then Judged the people and the people rejected them because of their corruption now Samuel was loth his Sons should be lay'd aside and God to gratify the Prophet intimated to him as if himself were not very well pleased with it Speak out ye wretch and never mince the matter You mean God dealt deceitfully with Samuel and he with the people It is not your Advocate but your self that are Frantick and Distracted who cast off all reverence to God Almighty so you may but seem to Honour the King Would Samuel prefer the Interest of his Sons and their Ambition and their Covetousness before the general good of all the people when they asked a thing that would be good and profitable for them Can we think that he would impose upon them by cunning and subtilty and make them believe things that were not Or if we should suppose all this true of Samuel would God himself countenance and gratify him in it would he dissemble with the people So that either that was not the right of Kings which Samuel taught the people or else that right by the Testimony both of God and the Prophet was an evil thing was burdensom injurious unprofitable and chargeable to the Common-wealth Or Lastly which must not be admitted God and the Prophet â—eceiv'd the People God frequently protests that he was extreamly displeas'd with them for asking a King v. 7th They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them As if it were a kind of Idolatry to ask a King that would even suffer himself to be ador'd and assume almost Divine Honour to himself And certainly they that subject themselves to a worldly Master and set him above all Laws come but a little short of chusing a strange God And a strange one it commonly is brutish and void of all sense and reason So 1st of Sam. Chap. 10th v. 19th And ye have this day rejected your God who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulation and ye have said unto him Nay but set a king over us c. and Chap 12th v. 12th Ye said unto me Nay but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king and v. the 17th See that your wickedness is great that ye have done in the sight the Lord in asking you a king And Hosea speaks contemptibly of the King Chap. 13. v. 10th 11th I will be thy king where is any other
at all Now you say That you will discourse by and by of the difference betwixt some Kings and others in point of Powâ—r some having had more some less You say You will prove that Kings cannot be judged nor câ—ndemn'd by their own Subjects by a most solid Argument but you do it by a very silly one and 't is this You say There was no other difference than that betwixt the Judges and the Kings of the Jews and yet the reason why the Jews required to have Kings over them was because they were weary of their Judges and hated their Government Do you think that because they might Judge and Condemn their Judges if they misbehaved themselves in the Government they therefore hated and were weary of them and would be under Kings whom they should have no Power to restrain and keep within Bounds tho they should break through all Laws Who but you ever argued so childishly So that they desired a King for some other reason than that they might have a Master over them whose Power should be superior to that of the Law which reason what it was it is not to our present purpose to make a Conjecture Whatever it was both God and his Prophets tells us it was no piece of prudence in the People to desire a King And now you fall foul upon your Rabbins and are very angry with them for saying That a King might be judged and condemned to undergo Stripes out of whose Writings you said before you had proved that the Kings of the Jews could not be judged Wherein you confess that you told a lye when you said you had proved any such thing out of their Writings Nay you come at last to forget the Subject you were upon of writing in the King's Defence and raise little impertinent Controversies about Solomon's Stales and how may Stalls he had for his Horses Then of a Jocky you become a Ballad-singer again or rather as I said before a raving distracted Cuckoo You complain That in these latter Ages Discipline has been more remiss and the Rule less observed and kept up to to wit because one Tyrant is not permitted without a â—heck from the Law to let loose the Roms of all Discipline and corrupt all Mens manners This Doctrine you say the Brownists introduced amongst those of the â—eform'd Religion so that Luther Calvin Zumâ—lius Bucer and all the most Celebrated Orthodox Divines are Brownists in your Opinion The English have the less reason to take your Reproaches ill because they hear you belching out the same Slanders against the most eminent Doctors of the Church and in effect against the whole Reformed Church it self CHAP. VI. AFter having discours'd upon the Law of God and of Nature and handled both so untowardly that you have got nothing by the bargain but a deserved reproach of Ignorance and Knavery I cannot apprehend what you can have farther to alledg in defence of your Royal Cause but meer trifles I for my part hope I have given satisfaction already to all good and learned men and shall have done this Noble cause Right should I break off here yet lest I should seem to any to decline your variety of arguing and ingenuity rather than your immoderate impertinence and tittle-tattle I 'le follow you where ever you have a mind to go but with such brevity as shall make it appear that after having perform'd whatever the necessary defence of the Cause required if not what the dignity of it merited I now do but comply with some mens expectation if not their curiosity Now say you I shall alledg other and greater arguments What greater arguments than what the Law of God and Nature afforded Help Lucina The mountain Salmasius is in labour It is not for nothing that he has got a she-husband Mortals expect some extraordinary birth If he that is and is called a King might be accused before any other power that power must of necessity be greater than that of the King and if so then must that power be indeed the Kingly power and ought to have the name of it For a Kingly power is thus defined to wit the Supreme power in the State residing in a single person and which has no superior O ridiculous birth a Mouse crept out of the Mountain Help Grammarians one of your number is in danger of perishing The Law of God and of Nature are safe but Salmasius his Dictionary is undone What if I should answer you thus That words ought to give place to things that we having taken away Kingly Government it self do not think our selves concerned about its name and definition let others look to that who are in love with Kings We are contented with the enjoyment of our Liberty such an answer would be good enough for you But to let you see that I deal fairly with you throughout I will answer you not only from my own but from the opinion of very wise and good men who have thought that the name and power of a King are very consistent with a power in the people and the Law superior to that of the King himself In the first place Lycurgus a man very eminent for his wisdom designing as Plato says to secure a Kingly Government as well as it was possible could find no better expedient to preserve it than by making the power of the Senate and of the Ephori that is the power of the people superior to it Theseus in Euripedes King of Athens was of the same opinion for he to his great honour restored the people to their liberty and advanced the power of the people above that of the King and yet left the Regal Power in that City to his Posterity Whence Euripedes in his Play called the Suppliants introduceh him speaking on this manner I have advanced the people themselves into the Throne having freed the City from Slavery and admitted the people to a share in the Government by giving them an equal right of Suffrage And in another place to the Herald of Thebes In the first place says he you begin your Speech Friend with a thing that is not true in stiling me a Monarch for this City is not governed by a single person but is a free State the people reigns here These were his words when at the same time he was both called and really was King there The Divine Plato likewise in his Eight Epistle Lycurgus says he introduced the power of the Senate and of the Ephori a thing very preservative of Kingly Government which by this means hath honourably flourished for so many ages because the Law in effect was made King Now the Law cannot be King unless there be some who if there should be occasion may put the Law in execution against the King A Kingly Government so bounded and limited he himself commends to the Sicilians Let the people enjoy their Liberty under a Kingly Government let the King himself be accountable let the Law take place