patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a divine Original according to the Prophesies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross The Christians acquired a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer Violence and Cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. after his Religion is exalted into Dignity and Honour and civil Authority If the Senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make Laws for extirpating the Christian Faith What is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession to the Crown is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe Transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into Fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his Dreams are Dreams of phrensie There are some things so false that they cannot be disproved as some things are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This Proposition hath no colour to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor is there any thing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall adde that this Doctrine is the Doctrine of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any Age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergie of England in the Case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergie renownedly Learned and Prudent By the Providence of God and the Piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honours It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious That we cannot have new Laws for the preservation of our Religion but must lose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunities which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers Can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws one Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy But I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good-natured Gentlemen of the Clergy It is thus they perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Vnlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their natural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call their fellow-fellow-Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and Dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best supported with Truth and Justice This new Doctrine is not true and whosoever entertains a belief of it is not onely barely mistaken but will be led by the mistake into the most mischievous impious and sacrilegious injustice and treachery It is very agreeable to a good man to embrace a proposition with an easie belief that offers the least seeming probability of a security against the miseries of War by all means to be avoided But this Doctrine of the Divinity of Kings is most dangerous to the Peace of Kingdoms for it is pregnant with Wars Besides that it will give bad Princes which sometime hereafter may be Born into the World for such there have been now and then power to
Mr. Hunt's POSTSCRIPT FOR Rectifying some MISTAKES in some of the Inferiour CLERGY Mischievous to our GOVERNMENT and RELIGION With Two Discourses about the SUCCESSION And Bill of EXCLUSION In Answer to Two Books Affirming the Unalterable Right of SUCCESSION and the Unlawfulness of the Bill of EXCLUSION In turbas discordias pessimo cuique plurima vis pax quies bonis artibus indigent Tacit. Hist l. 4. LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1682. To the Right Honourable JOHN EARL OF RADNOR Viscount Bodmin Lord Roberts Baron of Truro And Lord President of His Majesties most Honorable Privy-Council My Lord THE Reason that moved me to inscribe these following Discourses to your Name is to create a prejudice and bespeak a good esteem with all Mankind to whom your Lordships Character is arrived of my Integrity and Snicerity therein Your Lordships free and open Acknowledgment of your self to the World That you have liv'd your inward Nature That you never dissembled or disguised your self avowed plainness and despised all Arts Intrigues and Applications hath made your Lordship Universally Honoured every where and by all sorts and parties of men entirely trusted and you are become an Illustrious instance That nothing is so popular in a Noble Person as Simplicity and open Sincerity no not Bounty and Beneficence it self to which Office likewise your Lordship is not indebted or in any arrear A great Moralist prescribes and commends to all Men that would hold on an uninterrupted Course of Virtue and preserve their Innocence to put on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a Defensative and Out-guard to Virtue That is to say a stiffness and inflexibleness of Mind something that can resist those soft and gentle prejudices that perswade undue compliances and abuse the facile weak and tender Minds to accommodate themselves in little Matters to the present occasions until by little and little sincerity is almost quite perished from the World and mischiefs apt to destroy it ready to follow in consequence of such unmanly compliance Men to relieve themselves from inward reproach whilst they contradict their inward sense have found out the specious names of Civility Submission to our Superiours Nay have usurpt the glorious name of the Virtue of Modesty which is the Noblest and most ample Virtue which gives Rules that are almost comprehensive of our whole Duty for to this Virtue we owe a greatness of Mind and a reverence of our selves as well as equability and Justice to others to varnish over Dissimulation Craft Hypocrisie Flattery Treachery Falshood and a deceitful Conversation And are bold to reproach the severe Honest with the Names of Morose Disloyal and Disobedient to turn off from themselves the shame of their own prevarications and utter defections from publick Interest which God knows men easily slide into insensibly if they once suffer themselves for any regard whatsoever to be carried off from the Rule of Right for they bring themselves under some kind of Necessities of complying with the Evils their first aberrations occasioned by greater faults which increase reciprocally at every turn until they become desperate Out-laws absolve themselves from all Duty they owe to their King and Countrey abandon themselves to Chance to live and subsist by untoward shifts and arts which increase their first Guilts and turn their Errors into unpardonable Crimes having shipwreck'd their Consciences they care not if the Government be wreck'd too to which they have made themselves so very abnoxious This whilst men please others they lose themselves and from Flattery it is easily proceeded to the most mischievous Treacheries He that despiseth his own way shall dye saith King Solomon A man that accommodates himself to serve Occasions dissembles himself and appears other than he is will soon extinguish his Conscience and dye to Virtue He that doth not honour himself will not regard men and they that do not Reverence Men will not fear God Qui non verentur homines fallent Deos. The Arts of Complaisance so much relyed upon at the Courts of Princes hath extruded the Laws of Honesty thence where they are most necessary This hath made the Condition of great Men very uncertain and fortuitous infinitely subject to Chance and Hazard the Thrones of Princes unstable and tottering and left the Peace and Security of Kingdoms scarce at any time undisturbed with Fears Jealousies evil surmises and contending Factions upon Reasons true and false real and feigned causes Every man almost is sometimes complaining of the uneasie condition that he himself concurs to make to himself but is always in some sort miserable by fearing from others whom he gives too much cause to fear from himself and to mistrust him for his double dealing But what other consequence can they expect that ever feign and uncessantly dissemble but not to be believed not to be trusted hated for their baseness and feared for that great Evil they would dissemble The greatness of the Evil designed is justly measured by the coarse and base Artifices they use to hide them they are impudent to all the discerning and wise whilst they busily set themselves by mean and base Arts to abuse the Fools and inconsiderate the vain and the credulous whom they have at the same time in the greatest scorn whilst they have nothing to value themselves upon but that such little men are deceived by them But there is another sort of men that design well for the Publick whilst they dispense with the strict Laws of Truth and Sincerity But I cannot tell upon the whole matter whether they are not more hurtful to themselves than profitable to the Common-wealth by their well-design'd and honestly-directed compliances and dissimulations I mean such men as lend themselves to the service of the Publick who are so kind as to disfigure themselves to take other shapes and appearances of what they are not Who are content to neglect their Honour and Reputation of Sincerity whilst under a feigned assentation they hinder all the evil and do all the good they can do and the present state of things will permit and suffer the rest with a great compassion for the Publick Weal But such mens Praise must come from God their Honour will never be entire amongst men and after all the difficult and hazardous Services they can perform for their King and Countrey their Honour will still remain suspected doubtful and obscure amongst men who must judge according to appearance When we have been often abused by the fairest pretenders to a regular and constant Virtue we cannot easily trust those that have sometime dissembled and represt it My Lord It is a peculiar Felicity of your Lordship that from a Generous and Honest Nature and a Noble Mind rather than from the institution of Books though your Learning is famously great to which you seem made rather than instructed your sincerity is incorruptible and stands in no need of that
believe it I am sure not much longer than they are reading it I will not grudge my pains in furnishing a short Demonstration of the Popish Plot since it is of such importance to the saving of these men and the whole Nation which possibly may fix their minds notwithstanding so vain they be into a belief of it which I have made short that it may be the better remembred which I do in kindness to them since it was lately and may be so again shortly a criminal matter to bring the truth of it into question and they are by all honest men reckoned as Plotters themselves who doubt it The Plot has been declared by the Kings Proclamation and four Parliaments one of them consisting of Pensioners and Dependents on the Court which for eighteen years together were giving Demonstrations of their Loyalty to their Prince almost forgetting the publick Weal A solemn National Fast has been Indicted by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority of the Kingdom for averting the mischiefs thereby designed and solemnly Celebrated by the whole Nation in which certainly they did not mock God and deride his Providence Many unparallel'd Villanies have been committed for the stifling concealing and suppressing the discovery of it which however wicked the Papistical Sect of base false and degenerate Christians are we cannot without breach of Charity towards them think they would commit cheaply and without cause and to no purpose They have murdered a Minister of Justice because he had the knowledge of it and left nothing undone that they thought necessary to Assasinate another for strenuously opposing it They have attempted upon the Lives of our Witnesses By perjuries and forgeries they have endeavoured to charge them with the most infamous crimes to destroy them in their Lives and Reputations too in a form of Justice They have attempted by fears and rewards upon the integrity of all our Witnesses to draw them to retract their Testimony against the Plot for which some of their Agents have been judicially censured One Gentleman to the Pillory Fin'd 1000 l. and Condemned to a years imprisonment so evident and notorious was his offence and by the Court thought so heinous that it provoked the passion of the Court and they seemed to exceed the ordinary Rules of Justice for that they judged the Case to be of an exorbitant and transcendent nature The Plot of the Meal-Tub is a sublimated piece of wickedness the last accomplishment of villany it hath out-done all former and Will never be out-done in after-Ages The Papists by the Discovery of the first Plot became less hopeful in a Massacre and of effecting their purpose by force They dare not now kill the King for that the World would not now believe it to be done by Mr. Claypole and his feigned accomplices which must have born the blame from the Papists and he and they long since Executed as Traitors if that part of the Plot against the Kings Life had not been prevented by being detected I say the first design of the Plot being rendered less feasible by the discovery They keep the King alive with care as well for their avoiding the rage of the Nation as to lessen the credit of the Plot But contrive to destroy as many as they thought fit to be Massacred in form of a legal process and to charge them with a design of raising Rebellion against the King They had made a List of a great number of considerable persons whom they intended to charge principal Nobles and worthy Gentlemen about the Town had prepared witnesses to swear the charge against them and would certainly with more ease after the first Conviction and Execution have sworn all that they had a mind to destroy into the same guilt And thus all the truly Religious the Noble Good and Virtuous of our Nation that had courage enough to own assert and defend the true Christianity and our Government must to the eternal dishonour of our Nation and Religion have suffered the execrable death of Traitors We have reason to think them humane when they onely designed a Gun-powder Treason or a Massacre Our abhorrence of this usage dischargeth in us all reluctancy to Martyrdom Let them bring us to the Stake as Martyrs then we shall bear our Testimony to the truth of the best Religion and our Lives will not be cheaply lost but by this means we must be forced to dishonour this Religion by our deaths By a Massacre or a Gun-powder Plot the vileness cruelty and treachery of that Apostate Church had been declared to all the World and that false Religion as well as the professors of it had been rendered detestable for which end a good man would scarce refuse to dye But by this means they would have forced us to personate their own proper Crimes and Villanies and dishonour our own peaceable and holy Religion A man of Honour prefers his Honour to his Life and would redeem it by his Death But by this means we were though innocent to lose our Lives by dishonour and to fasten a stain upon our Memories by our death The Priests their impudent Lyes at their deaths in denying the matters of the Plot of which they were upon clear evidence Convicted and Sentenced must have past for truths and all our worthy men dying with protestations of their innocence must to the everlasting infamy of our Religion and Nation been accounted false and impious at their last breath There is no reason to be assign'd of the patience of God or Man towards such miscreants but that they may have time to add one impiety to another until an easie vengeance triumphs over them And though this last mentioned Plot is cleared beyond all exception their Faces are hardned and they are not yet ashamed but they have since contrived and suborned Witnesses to swear the very Discovery of the first Plot to be a false contrivance of a Plot against the Papists To this purpose they suborned a Son by perjury to commit parricide against his Father this the greatest Sin against Earth the other the greatest affront against Heaven What a Religion is this that must be thus supported Nay as if they did not fear or care to loose the favour of their most indulgent Prince which they have possest since he used Papists in making his escape at Worcester they have contrived these two last Plots with such Art as to bring them under his Majesties Observation and represented them as things fit for his encouragement Sure if they were not urged with the fears of a real guilt and a restless Conscience of the Plot they would never have adventured thus to have interested the honor of the King and to tempt him to abandon them to the publick Justice of the Nation which begins to grow impatient by the delays of it against this Hellish Plot. For we have had four Parliaments dissolved since the Discovery of it one a darling to the Crown The bringing into question the
that may happen in humane affairs and so they must be intended and so interpreted The several limitations of the descent of the Crown must be made by the people in conferring the Royal Dignity and Power which is more or less in several Kingdoms And the descent of the Crown in particular cases is governed according to the presumed will of the People and the presumption of the Peoples will is made by measuring and considering what is most expedient to the publick good whereas private Estates are directed in their descent according to the presumed will of the Decedents And this is the reason tha◠the descent of the Crown is governed by other rules than private Estates Onely one Daughter and not all as in private Estates shall succeed to the Crown because the strength of the Kingdom is preserved when continued united and the peace and concord of the people better established A son of the second venter shall inherit which is not allowed in private Estates because a son of the second venter is equally of the bloud of the great Ancestor upon whom the Crown was first conferred by the people or after he had got into the Throne obtain'd their Submissions and may equally participate of his virtues If the Royal Family be extinct it belongs to the people to make a new King under what limitations they please or to make none for the Polity is not destroyed if there be no King created and consequently in case of this cesser or discontinuance of the Regnum there may be Treason committed against the people By all which it is evident that the Succession to the Crown is the peoples right And though the Succession to the Crown is Hereditary because the people so appointed it would have it so or consented to have it so yet in a particular case for the saving the Nation the whole Line and Monarchy it self it may be altered by the unlimited power of the Legislative Authority We have been more just to the Royal Succession than the wonderful Sir Robert Filmer for his Hypotheses will not allow at all of Hereditary rightful Succession For he establishing the right of the universal Empire of the World in Adams right Heir since this Illuminato hath enlightned the world in this secret no Successor can according to his Doctrine derive any hereditary right from his Predecessor His title can be only his own possession for no man can claim by descent the Usurpation of his Father but he that is not conscious to the wrong and is bonae fidei possessor under the presumed right and title of his Father I would be understood to speak as the matter can be considered in a free reason not under the prejudice of any positive municipal Law for to such Laws the right of Crowns as the renowned Knight will have it are not submitted So that here in this matter their Knight fails them and can give them no help Their other friend the great Leviathan-maker is so far from establishing an Hereditary Succession that he leaves Kings to be rightfully assaulted deposed and destroyed by any person that can who stands in danger of being destroyed by the King though justly condemned to death Leviathan Part 2. cap. 21. Those saith he that have committed a capital Crime for which they expect death have the liberty to defend themselves by Arms as well as the Innocent But I mention him onely to render him detestable for I take his Books to be the dehonestamenta humani generis But I desire them to regard the sence of all Mankinde in the words of Isiodorus Pelusiota 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This governed the Judicious and Learned Dr. Falkner for when he had carried Christian Loyalty as high as he could to the honour of our Religion and the benefit of the world for which we are all extreamly beholden to him he concludes thus in his excellent Book called Christian Loyalty viz That if any Prince undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power or that really acts the Destruction or the Vniversal Calamity of his people Grotius thinks that in his utmost extremity the use of a Defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis presidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the Common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the governing of these persons as Subjects and consequently of being their Prince or King What unreasonableness is there then in shutting the Door upon him and making it fast against him by an Act of State who hath excluded himself by his principles and designs For the truth of the fact I shall onely refer you to his Secretary Coleman his Letters wherein he saith That his Masters interest and the King of France his interest is one and the same and their design their glorious design the same viz the extirpating the Northern Heresie How far the King of France hath complied with the design the cruel Persecution and Exiles of his Protestant Subjects who at the time of that Letter were under the security and protection of the Laws of that Kingdom and the Faith of that Crown do declare to the world And by what secret influences I know not he is made so great his Conquests so easie and expedite that he is like to do the work himself here in England too and go away with all the Glory But if the work must lie upon our hands let no man think with himself that Popery is not to be introduced here because the numbers of Papists are few for that will not render the design impracticable but the execution of it more cruel and barbarous a whole Nation upon the matter must be corrupted from the Faith of the true Religion or destroy'd One single arm of an ordinary strength not resisted may assassinate a whole Nation Let no man betray his Country and Religion by pretending the example of the patience and sufferance of the Primitive Christians for our rule The Reformed Religion hath acquired a civil right and the protection of Laws if we ought not to lose our Lives Liberties and Estates but where forfeited by Law we ought much rather not to lose them for the profession of the best Religion which by Law is made the publick National Religion And it is strange that some men of the same Religion in profession can think that notwithstanding it makes no matter what is done to men if they be Religious but if they be not so the least publick injuries and injustice threatned or done them may be resisted vindicated remedied and by right defended by old Laws or new ones to be made for that purpose The Christian Religion was publish'd when the whole world was Pagan and therefore it was submitted to such usage as the Governments would give it But when the Christian Faith had by miracles of
make their Reigns worse than War and Plague and Famine to boot The Panick fear of a change of the Government that this Doctrine occasioned and the Divisions it made among us was the principal cause of the late War It is not without reason that together with these new principles revived since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have a perpetual din and noise of Forty one Then that fatal War began which proceeded to the destruction of the Prince and ruin of the Church and State The remembrance of it is the principal matter that stuffs our weekly Pamphlets and it is brought into common discourse and grown so trival that it is mentioned and heard without abhorrence and regret And what Service this can be to His Majesty I do not understand much better it were that the memory of it were utterly extinct and abolished for ever except onely in the Anniversary of that great Prince that so fell Then I say and then onely is it fit to be remembred when we are on our Knees to God Almighty and in his presence affecting our selves with sorrow and remorse deprecating the like Judgments and bewailing the National Sins that occasioned those For notwithstanding the Glories of that Great Prince his unhappy death and the admired Devotions of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The story of the Calamities of his people all his three Kingdoms involved in War during his Reign and the remembrance of them will be with some Men not very Loyal a stain and diminution to the Glories of the Royal Family In Princes their Calamities are reckoned amongst the abatements of their Honor and meer misfortunes are disgraces and have the same influence upon the minds of the common people as real faults and male administrations How then can this tend to the peace of the Nation or the Honor of the King what satisfaction is it to have our almost-healed wounds thus perpetually rub'd and kept green Quis sua vulnera victus commemorare velit Why should any of our Nation insult over the miseries of his own and neighbour Kingdoms when he must be the most barbarous villain and have devested himself of all humanity that is not deeply empassioned at the remembrance of them If a Thuanus or a Philip de Comines were to pass a Judgment of the condition of our late times upon the consideration of our late Tragedies and the Preludium's to it in the Reigns of King James and the late King it would be formed and pronounced in these words of Tully upon another occasion Mihi quidem si proprium verum nomen vestri mali quoeratur fatalis quoedam calamitas incidisse videtur improvidas hominum mentes occupavisse ut nemo mirari debeat humana consilia divina necessitate esse superata But this is not all Nec Dum finitur Orestes We are affrighted by the weekly Pamphlets with the expectation of another Parliamentary War and this is the true reason of the mention of the late War that we may forgo our Parliaments for fear of another So it is written in our publick Prints which are published under permission as if Parliaments are designed to be rendered hateful and to be feared as Plagues Famines or Inundations of the Sea But who is to begin who designs this War the Pamphleteers or those that set them on work best know We had never heard of any such thing if the Mercenary writers of the Popish Faction had not told us of it as they do weekly and hitherto we cannot find any Colour for this affrightful Lye they are impudent so to talk of it as if they believed it and have brought some as weak men as they are false Knaves to a belief of it But to do them no wrong those may best know what is to come to pass who have the power of contriving and designing Qui pavet vanos metus veros fatetur The vilest Traitors cannot contrive a greater prejudice to the King and his Family than by advancing such a dismal thing into credit and belief for fears though but upon imaginary and false grounds produce real effects as well as they are in themselves really afflictive and that almost equally if of continuance to the evils feared Do these men speak like true Loyalists that are mentioning perpetually the Calamitous War in the time of our Kings Father and fright us with another now ensuing after those Universal Solemn and hearty Joys of the whole Nation for his Restauration after so many Millions of Money most dutifully issued out of the affections of his people from time to time at His Majesties Royal pleasure and nothing complain'd of but that they have not opportunities of issuing ten times more to the service of His Majesties Glory Nay they speak of this ensuing War as if the Royal Standard was already displayed and the Rebels had made their Musters which must certainly affect the Royal Family with the greatest danger If there were twenty Trajans derived from one stock that had Reigned in an uninterrupted Succession Two immediate Successours that should have their Reigns successively attended with civil Wars were enough to efface their own and the glories and merits of such Ancestors But base Caitiffs you can no more truly believe the last Parliaments designed upon his Majesties Crown and Dignity to make War and change the Government than you can believe that every Mothers Child of them before they came up to the last Parliaments set his House on fire and burnt his Wife and Children But these impudent Forgeries against the House of Commons are contrived to make the people afraid of Parliaments that this new model of Government in process of time when we have an enterprising Successor may take place for the service of the Popish Religion For upon the strength of Dr. B s performance who hath with great labour found out which is hard for any man acquainted with our English History to be ignorant of that our Parliaments were not always such as now constituted This blessed change of our Government will never be atchieved The Nation will never be perswaded by any thing that he hath found out in his diligent research that the House of Commons is an overgrown Wen an unnatural Accrescency to the Government and fit to be cut off if that which is offered in the Argument to consideration be duly weighed Neither can the most insolent Paradox of Sir Robert Filmers Patriarcha contribute much to this purpose But for that I have in my Argument too forwardly despised it considering that many have conceived a favourable opinion of it that it may be able to deceive but a very few for the time to come for the sake of such Gentlemen who have not chosen their side are glad of the least Colour or dream of a Shadow a single opinion of any body it matters not whom to relieve their modesty in their notorious defections from Truth Justice and the Government I shall here consider his
understanding to appear and come forth for the undeceiving and rectifying the Judgments of the most deceivable part of Mankind and with just ignominy and scorn to beat down the assumings and presumptions of such Pretenders and Smatterers in Letters especially in such a Weighty Matter as this when the poor people if mistaken must be mistaken to their Ruine and perish by the Deceit if deceived which I hope is scarce possible for very many to be by this frivolous Pretender and Offerer of Considerations which none but he that deserves our pity could think of but for that he dares to offer them publickly to the World and under the stile of Great and Weighty Considerations he most justly deserves our Indignation a private Scorn a publick Censure For that purpose we will now produce him HE begins his Considerations with a Consideration and Recommendation of himself and would fain prove his Honestly for he was with reason conscious that this undertaking would render him more than probably suspected He proves as well as any thing he undertakes and as well as it can be proved That he is an honest man This he would have the World believe because there is such a thing as sincerity in the World and for that there have been some men that have owned an afflictive Righteous Cause against self-interest and the displeasure of a prevailing Faction but we know the Cause that he Patronizes is the most unrighteous Cause that ever any man of Front espoused but that should not trouble us But that which afflicts us and is the heart-aking of all good men is That this Scribler with too much reason we know presumes that the Brave men whom he reviles for adhering to the only means of the saving of three Kingdoms with the Gross of the Nation are designed to be subdued by a party of men whose strength the King in his profound Knowledg and Wisdom best knows how to Calculate but certainly this Addresser imagines very great whatever he pretends and that he is well backed by force Otherwise he could not adventure publickly to despise the Interest of a House of Commons If this Considerer and his Fellow-Conspirators had not some secret reserves of Strength he would not advise the King as he doth to Adhere to and Govern with the House of Lords and his Privy-Council and to lop off the House of Commons from the Government as an unprofitable Branch In the next Paragraph he tells us The Chiefest Principle and Maxim of the true reformed Religion in this Kingdom is fully Epitomized in this excellent Precept Give to every one his due If there can be more nonsense spoken in so many words It is this Patriot must do it and you shall find him often performing what I have undertaken for him And sure after such demonstrations of his Honesty and proof of his Understanding you must take him for a True Patriot and a fit Addresser of GREAT and WEIGHTY Considerations In the next Paragraph he undertakes to commend and allow chide and disapprove our leading Men I believe he means of the House of Commons but we want his Name it 's fit he should discover himself before we can admit him to sit Judge of the Actions of the most excellent Persons of the late House of Commons I perswade my self he would blush however immodest he appears in his Address if he were drawn out and exposed to publick view under such a Character we might spare him the Pillory rotten Eggs and Turnep-tops which is due to infamous Libellers against Governours for he is a man of such fashion I believe that he would suffer too much of Shame and Confusion of Face if he were but known well enough to be pointed at after we have done with him In the fourth Paragraph he allows it is a glorious thing to establish the True Protestant Religion but he would not have it established upon Quick-sands neither would we because it is impossible it should be so established we would not have it depend upon loose accidents expos'd to Chance and Contingencies and expect it should be supported by rare events and morally impossible nor to be left at Six and Sevens a chance that is not upon the Die and hope that things should out of their Course and Nature unite and combine together for its support That which is Glorious is so because it is Excellent in it self and difficult to be atchieved and whatever is difficult is to be obtained by unusual and extraordinary means to deny or condemn the use of them when lawful is to deny us the end and is so far in truth from allowing it to be Glorious that he doth not allow it at all That it is made difficult to support the Protestant Religion we owe to the Popish Conspiracy and the design of this man is to make it impossible to that purpose he requires you to lay aside Humane Policy which is the same as true Prudence which is the onely Guide God hath given us and the onely Oracle he hath left us to consult in our Affairs and is never repugnant as he would have it but always conformable to the Laws of God and Nature lest we should be furnished with a Remedy against the designed mischiefs to us and our Religion To this commendable sort of Policy the design of the Bill will be made agreeable in the following Discourse That we may admit the absurd Doctrins of the Church of Rome we are required to abandon our Reason and that we may more easily again fall unto her we must if we will be ruled by the Considerer renounce our Prudence and those that will not must endure his slanderous Reproaches with which he goes on to revile the Promoters of the Bill of Exclusion whom he calls Hypocrites Factious Spirits of the Fanatical Leven that they make a Cloak of Religion to palliate black Designs fierce Zealots acting like the Rump-Parliament Guilty of Antichristian attempts repugnant to the Ordinance of God and to the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom a few turbulent Zealots assuming to themselves a Soveraign and despotical Power of Deposing the DVKE of YORK and says That they impudently affirm That this hath been the Ancient Custom of Parliaments to Depose Princes and dispose of Kingdoms whereas the Crown hath been always Haereditary and never depended upon the Suffrages of the Subject Since this bad man presumes to say so many bad words falsely of the Excellent Members of the late House of Commons reproches their Zeal for the publick Safety most Heroically exerted in the time of the greatest Need and most threatning Dangers calls their appearance for the support of the Protestant Religion established by Law Hypocrisie And the prosecuting the Discovery of the Hellish Plot and the best means of preventing the Plot from taking effect black Designs Since I say his Immodesty hath given him so much Licence I wonder he had no more Scurrilities especially since he is so impertinent as to call
proceeding upon evident notoriety to exclude one that designs the subverting of it and the destruction of those that are to be governed and protected and hath incurr'd a severer Doom I well hope there are very few in this Nation so ill instructed that doth not think it in the Power of the People to depose a Prince who really undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power Or that really acts the Destruction or the Universal Calamity of his People The Learned and Judicious Mr. Falkner than whom there is no person of this Age with the Church of England in greater esteem Who truly merits the high esteem of all men for his excellent Candour and Learning In his Book called Christian Loyalty cannot deny the right to be so upon those cases really happening but is not willing to suppose such Cases can ever happen in Fact He tells us If any such strange Case as is proposed should really happen in the World it would have its great difficulties Grotius he tells us thinks that in this utmost extremity the use of such defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis proesidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this Ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the Governing these persons as Subjects and conseqently of being their Prince and King and then notwithstanding his Proposition saith he would remain True viz. That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King All that Mr. Falkner offers in this matter out of his commendable Care and Zeal to Peace and Government is to argue the Cases in Fact impossible and that such suppositions may be the undue imputations of Factious persons against their Soveraign He thinks that Princes may have a Consideration of the Account they must give in the other World of their Government here That they have a regard to their Honour and Esteem and a Respect to their Safety To the quiet and serenity of their own minds and will avoid the Diroe Vltrices and the Tortures of mind that attend Cruelty and the Actors of great mischief and by such Considerations as these be contain'd in their Duty But do these Arguments of his that should reasonably and ordinarily do secure us against the Oppressions of Potentates give us in this juncture any Security are these Considerations Disswasives or Incitements to a Popish Prince to act our Fears and give reality to the Suppositions To any under the Principles and Counsels that guide such a Prince already entred upon the Design and his party obnoxious these Considerations would urge him to proceed and make our Calamity certain These Arguments of his applyed to such a state of things is like a Protestatio contra factum and like the Sophistical Arguments of the Stoicks who would undertake to prove a thing acknowledged and existent and present to be impossible How wild then and transported must this Patriot seem who will undertake to argue the Bill guilty of the highest Iniquity and Injustice Arraign the greatest and Best part of the Nation adjure them to answer it at his Tribunal challenge us for so his Expostulations and Enquiries of us doth import with intentions to over-reach Providence and that we despair of the justness of our Cause or the goodness of God And he tells us That God doth not want our Wickedness to fulfil his Holy Will We answer How far the Providence of God will assist us in this undertaking we know not it is not new in the world for the most Righteous Causes to be unprosperous we are only to do our Duty and leave the Issue and Event thereof to his All-Wise Providence But we know and are most assured of the Justness of the undertaking and we have a good hope in the goodness of God that he will succeed it for that herein we are doing nothing that is evil but fulfilling his Holy and Good Will I mean not that we are certain to obtain what we desire and pursue But it is the will of God concerning us who hath left us in the hands of our own Counsel and hath not told us That he will save us by a Miracle that we should be Loyal to our Soveraign zealously love that excellent Religion and that excellent Government that his Gracious Providence hath established amongst us by Law And also that we desire and endeavour by Law to disable in the understanding of the representative of the Nation a profest Enemy both to our Religion and Government from getting into the Throne that he be not by that advantage of Power enabled to effect his purpose But we are resolved we that will not call that Design Evil tho' it do not succeed nor think that we are not doing the Holy Will of God tho' we should be unprosperous therein and without success If there was an Oracle to Consult we would not know what the Success should be lest our Virtue should lose its Glory No brave man but would despise all Auguries when he is to contend for his Country and things more precious to him than his Life Sortilegis egeant dubij This false Patriot takes Sanctuary in his Revolt from publick Interest and he thinks he is swimming to Shore with his Plank before a Wreck and will fly the Danger before it approaches but we will do our Duty weather the Storm secure of the event for the goodness of the Cause makes us hopeful and we will Triumph in our Integrity tho' disappointed Of any other Will of God save what is his Will for us to do as Citizens Souldiers or Martyrs we are not so sollicitous to know The Noble Roman when advised by his Friend Labienus to Consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon as to the event of the War in which he was then engaged Thus answered him Quid Quaeri Labiene Jubes an liber in armis Occubuisse velim potius quam Regna videre An noceat vis ulla bono fortunaque perdat Opposita virtute minus Laudandaque velle Sit satis Et nunquam successu crescit Honestum Scimus haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon I do but right to my Country-men to bear my publick Testimony that their generous and godly Resolutions are agreeable to this Noble Roman But that done I will calmly tell him That we are in a Legal method allowed by the Government contending for its preservation by the Bill of Exclusion and that most certainly he can have no right against a Law for such it will be when that Bill hath the Royal Assent to any thing that he shall forfeit thereby And whether such a Law is not most righteous let God Angels and Men Judge And here it will not be amiss to admonish this Patriot That no man hath a Right to any thing from God and Nature to use his
pretends onely to foreclose him doth truly depose him It is insufferable that this man should impute to the House of Commons and the best People of England Diabolical Fiction the worst of all Jesuitical Equivocations and of endeavouring to make a colour to their perfidious and perjurious dealings for these reasons onely because we will not believe or take our selves to have sworn Allegiance to the Duke of York when we swore it to the King Because we will not allow that a Parliament of England which is the King Lords and Commons have no more to do with our Government than the Pope of Rome or that the Pope hath as much power to depose one of the Kings as the Parliament hath to punish a most obnoxious Subject This he dares address to the King and publish to the World He proceeds to presume and tell us that this at least must be granted that whosoever is by Bloud next Heir to the Crown we are by our Oath obliged before God to bear him Faith and true Allegiance nay to defend him against all attempts until he is disinherited by Act of Parliament and therefore says he whatsoever we do against him before this Act be fully established is a violation of our Oath and therefore the very attempt of voting and passing this Bill makes the actors and abettors Perjurers before God and the World Sure it will be allowed that this Gentleman is mistaken sure he doth not intend to speak Treason but hath a way of speaking which he will use by himself and will make Words stand for what he hath a mind to which Will and Pleasure of his this peremptory absolute man thinks himself not bound to explain though to save his Neck if he should be Indicted therefore of Treason which I desire he may and Arraigned too for the better clearing the matter if it be possible how we are now bound to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the Duke But he will sooner be Hanged than make out how a thing may be done Lawfully which is not Lawful to go about That the Duke of York may be Lawfully Dis-inherited but the Voting and Passing of the Bill must be Perjury May not he that is bound by an Oath to pay money desire a release from the Debt without Perjury Cannot all Civil Debts Duties and Contracts though confirmed by Oath be discharged by the Interested Person to whom the Duty is to be performed and for whose Benefit the Contract is made May not Kings by renouncing their Governments make the Oath of Allegiance cease to all effects of Obligation And cannot an Act of Parliament that shall disable a Successour equally prevent it from passing any Obligation upon us But shortly to explain of what Import and for what reason the words Heirs and Successors are put into the Oath of Allegiance and it is this That in case of the Demise of the King and the Devolving and vesting of the Crown upon the Heir and Successor the Oath that we took to the Predecessor by virtue of those Words laies hold upon our Consciences and obligeth us to him from the first minute of his Reign but not before and so we are not one minute free from the Bonds of our Allegiance This being the scope of the Law that requires it and of the Oath it self it must likewise be by that interpreted for finis discendi est ratio dictorum and an Oath doth not oblige as this or that man would interpret neither according to the vulgar or technical use of the Word but in such a sense as is adaequate and agreeable to the Intent and End of the proposing and requiring it But by what is said before it appears that we are not yet under the Obligation of that Oath to the Duke and that it is in the Pleasure and Power of the Parliament whether we ever shall be our Comfort is whatever he thinks that there is a great difference between Hopes and Enjoyment And further it appears that the Heir Apparent is but equivocally and in a less proper sense so and yet this Considerer who if he be not a perfect Atheist and serves a turn in this Paper must be a Papist in his heart according to the Modesty of the Gentleman chargeth us with Jesuitical Equivocations in the Oath of Allegiance while in the mean time he is equivocating the King out of his Throne shifting the Duke into his place by an aequivocal Abuse of the word the coursest slight that ever was used by any Hocus Pocus or any Pretender to Legerdemain And yet upon the Confidence of these weak and mistaken Reasonings he presumes to arraign the House of Commons of the greatest Injustice and Iniquity and would have us apprehend Slavery the Arbitrary and Despotical Power of Parliaments The loss of all Security either of Property or Liberty by a prevailing Faction of Parliament which he will be able to effect at the same time when he can perswade us to dissolve the Polity and exchange the best and safest Government into an Anarchy To be without Judges for fear of unrighteous Sentences and without a Power of Legislation for fear of Laws of Iniquity But it is not a new thing for obnoxious Criminals and Out-laws to turn Rebels against Government What this man is and what the Cause is he Espouses is declared sufficiently in that he hath no better ways of Advocation and Defence than by Opposing and Reviling the Government it self and he that dares revile the Government would if he had Power Destroy it In that he calls the major part of the House of Commons a Prevailing Faction I challenge him Guilty of the Highest Treason of a Treason not onely against this Government but of a transcendent Treason of a Treason virtually against all mankind for that we cannot subsist without Polities and no Polities can subsist but by deference to the results of the Governing Power which is Interpretatively in the resolves of the major part But he proceeds to question whether by the Constitutions of this Government the Parliament can extend their power to shut out the Duke from succeeding to the Crown for admitting he means That it is Just which we will not accept of as a voluntary concession of this Considerer for that it doth appear not onely Just but highly necessary to exclude the Duke by Bill he will then draw it into question Whether there be any competent power in the Government for doing a thing not onely just but absolutely necessary for the preservation of the King and Kingdom Whether there be any Subject too great for Justice or any private Right that is not governable and may not be ordered as to the Legislature shall seem necessary to the preservation of the whole Whether that which is properly the Right of the Community for so is the Succession may receive no alteration in a single instance for the Weightiest Reasons and whether he that declares that he will not Govern but Destroy