to O. C. by our old Laws which was the first thing in question But then I proceeded further and shewed * Sol. Ab. pag. 12 13. that he had no legal Form of Settlement in the Sovereignty by any other Laws to which I refer your Memory and Consideration For the improvement of which I will further demonstrate that he was no King either in Name or Thing For first he was Created even by his own Faction not Sovereign but Protector only of the People And that Office was not Royal as appears by the third and fourth Articles of the Instrument of his Government instituted by his Officers first and after again pretendedly confirmed by his pretended House of Commons which he had first purged of all suspected Persons and this after he had refused the Style of King which he saw would not pass Muster in his Army Tho' therefore he Ruled by the force of his Confederacy yet not as legal Sovereign nor according to any Law or lawful â—orm of Constitution even in that false Authority But if you will allow meer Force to be sufficient to a Settlement and Constitution then all the little Elves and Goblins of Power that after him pretended to sit at Helm in the whole course of those Changes till the Return of the Royal Family were all worshipful Mushroom Sovereigns forsooth And what I have heard a Person of great Parts Honour and Authority sometimes say that tho he is no very Old Man yet he hath seen five and twenty Governments in England was perhaps as severely true as it seemed pleasantly spoken Have you any more Straws to pick in this Matter or will you dismiss me in peace Dyscher No no Friend you must not think to slip your Collar so You say that O. C. did not and could not pretend a National Contract as having no House of Lords nor free House of Commons Whatever he might do I am sure that he did pretend that he was advanced to the Government by the Consent and even Grant of the People of England What was it else he did pretend M. S. Reflex Eucher Tho' I mentioned his Non-pretension as well as incapacity to pretend a National Contract to argue thence that really he had none yet the intended force of my Reasoning lies in his real want of such Contract of which his Non-pretension in his Case and care for Pretensions is a Moral Argument For had he really had it the Civil effect had been the same without a Pretension which alone can have no Civil Efficacie or Obligation But however that I may not seem to neglect your Pretences let us examine his I allow therefore that he made some Pretence but none to the Lord's House which he utterly cashier'd which yet however had been and still is necessary to a National Contract I allow you also that he pretended his Advancement by the People as the word restrainedly signifies the Commons of England and he had a small Colour for this in the acknowledgment of the Usurping Pack that pretended to sit for the Common People of England against all the Laws and Rights of the People And yet had these been a free fair and full Representative they could not have given O. C. a Legal Dominion over the superior Estate of Peers because the Commons never had it themselves But as the word People properly comprehends all subject Orders Estates or Persons of the Realm so neither did nor could he pretend an Advancement by the People But the main point we are concerned in and which you can say nothing for pertinent to our Debate is to what State Stile or Character he was advanced or pretended to be advanced by them whom he called the People Was it to a real Royal Soveraignty No no his Mouth Watered his Bowels hanker'd at it but he was however forc'd to sit down and pretend only to a Protectory Trust for the Commons of England Dyscher This I confess reduces me to some difficulty and unexpected Surprize Yet will I repeat to you the remainder of what my reflecting Friend remarked that in the next place for the justice of his pretence that he had no House of Lords I suppose he made that no pretence against himself as you would have me believe MS. Reflex Eucher Truly I never perswaded or tempted you to believe that O. C. made any pretence against himself I only told you that he neither did nor could pretend the Contract of the Lords House and can you prove the contrary Dyscher But he did not think a Lords House necessary to make a National Representation It could not be so originally And therefore they as Lords are no Parties in the Original Contract We know an * This is false for there were near 200 excluded Members that could not sit to make it an entire House House of Commons hath Voted them useless And at this Day the Lords do not pretend to the Right of granting away the Money of the People And I suppose it is upon this Account that they do not look upon themselves as the Representatives of the People MS. Reflex Eucher Here I think my self obliged to do your Party right that these are not their common Sentiments This was a singular Nostrum of your assuming Emperick to heal a diseased Cause But by the good leave of the Lords and Commons whom I have no mind to set at variance we will sift these odd Politicks Is it then first of all likely that O. C. did not think a Lords House necessary to a National Contract If he did it 's no matter if he did not think them National Representatives The Language of Men herein is various many Men commonly assert the whole Parliament to represent the Nation since what is Enacted by them and the King altogether is taken for the Act of the Nation But strictly speaking the Lords are no formal Representatives nor did I ever say they were tho' you would trump the term of Representation upon me to ensnare me to a concession that the Lords represent But I am not so to be tricked I know the Lords to be an Estate Originally Principal acting Personally for themselves in their own Right and Name not in the Name or on the Mission of others and under the King they are the upper part of the Parliament and People in the most comprehensive Sense of this word But the lower House only are the Representatives of their Respective Counties Cities and Burroughs in whose Name and Right they Act for all the Commons of England But if O. C. knew the Lords House necessary to the King himself to Enact the Bills even of the Commons into Laws could he think them needless to the legitimating his Order or his Acts Surely he could not except upon this one only supposition that he thought nothing could legitimate it which is indeed not improbable but then that exauctorates the Commons also of that Power by which he pretended himself advanced
communicate with us in all that is Lawful Now it is actual Communion in all publick Offices and Worship which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sence of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome that is Actual Communion in Publick Worship So with an insignificant Remonstrance you can go to Mass and are willing to do it See this and a great deal more such stuff in T. B's 2d Lett. p. 12 13. Eucher This is indeed a notable fetch that I should excite you to rejoyce with us for Redemption from Popery and yet profess a readiness and desire to communicate in it and in that very communion to remonstrate against it This no doubt would be a very pleasant way of accordance with the Roman Forms and yet at last when I invited you to Communicate with us in all that is Lawful I meant only what you think Lawful what is by us both confessed Lawful not to what we only think Lawful against your opinion and to this end * Sol. Ab. p. 3. that you might the better heal what you think we do amiss and so much agreement I confess we owe to all that is good in the Church of Rome and by us acknowledged for such as well by them But that I invited you not to any actual Communion in any thing you judge Unlawful while you judge it so appears in that I required not your presence to * Ibid. page 15. that Prayer of New Allegiance on the 29th of May while you are under the perswasions of its Impiety But in truth having as I thought proved us not to be actually Unchurched I willed that you should yield us so much Communion as may signifie your acknowledgement that we are yet of the Church of Christ viz. in all those Offices which you can Judge Good and Lawful in order to an easier accommodation for so I presume of this Church and of you too that you would not refuse any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations which import some though not a plenary Communion with the Church of Rome in order to a Restitution of the Churches of Christendom to a Primitive Frame were the Church of Rome disposeable thereto And they that will deny this to any corrupt Churches I think are not real Christians nor so much as externally qualified Members of the Church Catholick and to this innocent purpose and consequence only were my words so exactly ordered with a design to stave off all Catches herein that nothing but an inexcusably wretched spite and bitterness could have hewn out of them so perverse and undesigned a construction Dyscher I am not satisfied that you will allow our Deprivation to be a Persecution only on supposition that it be for adherence to the Doctrines of the Church or the Laws of God What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand to the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which forbid force against and Deposition of Kings and exclusion of the Heir I think this had been no ill Cause c. T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher I did not mention the Laws of the Land because till they are Authentically Vacated the Laws of God and the Doctrines of our Church do assert their obligation on our obedience so far as it is in our power to perform it and a voluntary violation of the Laws and Constitutions of Civil Government is a violation of the Laws of God which the Church Preaches in her Doctrine Therefore I allow you that adherence to the permanent obligation of the standing laws of the Land is a good Cause for the maintenance whereof all Sufferings are Persecutions and all the voluntary Agents in them Persecutors But if the reason or obligation of any Law ceaseth or if you mis-understand Laws and will oppose your private Judgment on them against the received and constant Judgment and Practice of the Nation on our Laws then your Sufferings upon such Prejudices cannot come under that black Character which is a thing enquireable between you and me Dyscher Then I take it for a very odd demand that we must give in a very clear proof that we are Ejected for adhereing to the Laws of God I pray who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiom in Law that they who expect the benefit ought to make the Proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no Reason for it And yet it would be but to little purpose to prove to a Thief that he has stolen my Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 14. Eucher But do you not consider that in Law and Reason whoever accuses any man before a Judge ought to prove his Bill if the Accused plead Not Guilty And you by complaining to the World of the wrong done to K. James and the Deprived Appeal not to them whom you account Thieves but to all others to avoid their Communion Now to draw off all People from their Communion it is necessary to prove their actions Illegal according to the Laws of Tenure in the Crown and the Ecclesiastical Promotions since they whom you implead challenge those Laws for their Justification And further by your leave he that is out of Possession but lays a claim of Right and expects the benefit of it ought to prove his Claim and the Possession of the Adversary injurious For they that are in peaceable or legal form of Possession have no need to make nor consequently to prove a Claim if not disproved Beside your Case is not concerned meerly in your own personal Right but in the Consciences and Salvation of other mens Souls even of those whom you call Thieves and therefore you are obliged to convince them of the unlawfulness of such Changes which they think lawful and not only so but in the present circumstances necessary Dyscher But I will further examin your own Proposals and Concessions herein * Sol. Ab. p. 4. An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think the Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession Nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced not falsly imputed For so any man that is driven out of his House or takes a Journey from Home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real it can only affect the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir But has that person made a Cession who tho' to preserve his Life he fly from fraud and irresistible force yet all the while claims his right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be to
King had prejudged against all the Argument for Abdication and had been a virtual Sentence that he had not abdicated And they could not well have resumed that debate without rejecting his Letters after reading and censuring their own admission of them which would more justly have exposed their Wisdom and offended you than the measures which they observed But after judgment past for the Abdication they could not admit his Letters under the Royal Style because they had judged that he was not our then King and so the Admission of his Letters as their Kings had been a virtual Reverse of that their Judgment in the same Session and Breath by which they had rendred themselves if not altogether incompetent yet very injudicious Judges And if after Judgment against his then Sovereignty they had sent to him under the style and salutation of late King and have made him King a-new had it not been a wise Transaction much to their Credit Thanks and the Nations Interest So much then for the Conspiracy Next for the Authority which you say was none since no National Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch can be his Judges And by Mr. Johnson's leave I will say so too and did say so * Sol. Ab. p. 4. most expresly tho' you in great sincerity take no notice of it because it it seems it was not considerable enough But is it not a very considerable Assertion That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions and doth not exert any Royal Power or presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty which is not to make them Judges of the Kings Person but in the want of his Person of the State of the Kingdom and the Rights of the Nation in Order to Settlement And can you either disprove this saying or charge it or me with Regicide Principles Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus may well deserve your remembrance here especially since I told you * Ibid. p. 9. that King James was never in Law subject to them or under their Power But as to the Authority of the Estates to convene when there is no King actually regnant you may learn if you please that tho' the Estates were created by Kings yet their Rights and Charters are perpetual and constituted for a fundamental Council to the Land under the King while we have one governing but when we have none authoritative of themselves to resettle the Nation the best manner they in their judgment may or can And this right they have in common with all the like Orders of Estates in all other Kingdoms otherwise the Nation would not have been so earnest for a Free Parliament when that liberty was opened to them by General Monks Conduct Dyscher I shall talk with you about that Parliament by and by And when I have told you That your second Parliament hath no more Authority than your Hocus Pocus transubstantiating Convention that riotous Assembly all whose Acts were contrary to Law and censurable by Law and so cannot confirm them I will examin your grave Position That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty But am I bound to follow their Judgment against manifest Right and my known Duty T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher No no by no means but in such a Crisis you have no other known Duty toward any Settlement but to abide by that which they establish in the Land for the time being for that all Rights and Duties then debatable are in such junctures determinable by them to all Civil Effects and Obligations and therefore their Judgments ought not to be opposed by any slanders or factions whatsoever even tho' King James from abroad condemns them Por a Foreign Censure is no Civil Judgement and by consequence of no legal validity or virtue Kings sometimes suffer wrong but whensoever by these sufferings they are removed from their People the Estates must provide for the Nation as they can and as they do we must be content nor has the suffering King any Right to engage us from abroad to the contrary And this Authority even without a King is so full in it self that it needs no Ratification on the post-fact to make its Acts obliging or effectual tho' such a declarative sort of Ratification as our second Parliament made be of use to satisfie unsetled minds and second a former Obligation which was what I had respect to when I said We are the more to submit to the proceedings of the Convention and first Parliament since the Kingdom hath ratified their proceedings in a second viz. by a Declarative Recognition and reinforcement of their legality and virtue Dyscher After all your considerable Assertions are but a malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away thro' wantonness and would have nothing to do with us T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. And herein Mr. Johnson seems more sincere in his wickedness than your Dawbers For he tells your Parliament that there was no Desertion * Pres to the Commons before his Argument p. 16. For King James must needs go and leaves us to understand the rest of the Proverb by an Aposiopesis that he was Devil driven And so far speaks plain as to say That he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he claimed as he fled by the Rochester Letter And he further shews * Ibid. p. 19. That no advantage could be taken of a Kings withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been voluntary as all the World knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to return again in forty days And therefore he roundly professes that the people abrogated their King after his Expulsion And whence is it then that he exerts not his power You know he exerts all the power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours you may have both his Power and Presence among you too if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your Defence T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. Eucher Mr. Johnson falsly owns the fact you charge upon the Nation for the sake of his Principle which his spite to all Kings and Kingly Power has cast him into viz. That the People may Depose their Kings as often as they judge them Peccant which is almost as often as they please But 't is notorious that the Estates judged the Throne made Vacant not by their Act of Abrogation but the Kings own Abdication which if so all the world knows it must be in some degree Voluntary Now here will I challenge Mr. Johnson to say out Does that claim of the then
subsequent Ratification or Power of Revocation by their Principals Dyscher But notwithstanding all pretences they ought to have recalled King James and it being in their Pawer to do it 't was piacular wickedness to omit it and erect his Adversary this is obvious to common Sense and the first simple Notions of Right and Wrong against which no civil forms or combinations can oblige Eucher You are no competent Judge upon them or us what Right required them to do in their then exigencies and if in truth they could not do what you would have had them nor well and safely do otherwise than they did then all this black Charge turns to a blanck and comes to nothing Now 't is true the Prince had no setled or proper Jurisdiction or legal Authority strictly taken to enforce a Convention or any thing upon it nay they had liberty before the judgment of Abdication to have voted King James's Revocation But if they had done so and the Prince in bar thereto had pleaded the Desertion to have been an Abdication devolving the Title to his Princess according to the ordinary and legal course and so had required them to dissolve if they had dissolved what could such vote have effected If they had not dissolved the refusal might have opened a Scene of War between the Prince and the two Houses And considering how great the even minor number in the Houses which might have sided with the Prince would have been and the vast and zealous Army which he had about him with all the formed advantages and preparations of War together with the hearts of at least the general multitude are you sure that the naked Majority of the Convention could have safely adventured the dispute with cold Iron Or if upon a casual adventure they had been conquered how could they have evaded the Prince's Arbitrary Power Or if during the War King James or the French had supervened and carried it had not all the Laws and Liberties of the Nation dipt and sunk under Absolute and Popish Power and that most probably French or a la mode de France All this is obvious to common Sense and was undoubtedly much more so to that National Assembly which otherwise wisely composed all Domestick Riots as well as secured us from foreign Inrodes and little deserve the reproach of Riotous or Juglers which manners to your own deprived Fathers and other your Friends that sate there should have taught you to forbear Dyscher Whereas you tell us 't is a prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy I hope Sir you do not think I require a King to be present when he is absent and then with your good leave I think it no such peevishness to act by his Commission in his absence but that it is a thing which if it can be had ought rather to be done Richard the First was engaged in the Holy War when his Father died * This is false for he was King before he went and deputed the Bishop of Ely Chief Governor It was Edward the First that was proclaimed King while in the Holy Land but he was never Prisoner so that he was far enough from his Throne and unable to exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People And to make the matter worse in his return he was taken Prisoner and detained in Germany In this Case had you been one of the Estates you would have been for setting up another King that would exert his Royal Power and Presence to his People but they had another sense of their Duty they mourned under the common Calamity caused all proceedings to pass under his Nane and stretched their Purses to redeem him c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher But here currente Rotâ you have omitted something considerable and inconsiderately offered what is not so For I only state the Case when a King that was actually in the Throne goes off from it and resigns all to Anarchy which is justly interpretable to an Abdication of Government which was not Richard's Case which is therefore instanced altogether impertinently Yet in that * See Sir Richard Bakers Reign of Richard the First very Case whatsoever had been the procedures of the then Estates for the time being the subject people must have acquiesced in their judicial determinations and presumed them Legal till reversed in as Legal and Authentick Forms of Judgment tho' Richard had lain for ever unredeemed because the multitude are uncapable of judging our National Laws Rights and Capacities and cannot act regularly to the recovery of Right or performance of a National Duty Yet it is bold in you to say that my Vote would have passed against Richard's restitution since I that have well known the motions and sympathies of my own Soul thro' all this Revolution should certainly have been carried by my Bowels for that unfortunate King James against the wiser and major part of that Assembly you traduce But besides your insincerity in this parallel and your Censoriousness on me you seem to pervert or misunderstand my meaning when I said it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy For tho' it is then only proper to require a King or any person to restore his Presence when he is absent when during his Absence his presence is needed yet I never was so silly as to think Presence and Absence competible and connecessary at once or that a Commission in time of Absence was improper to supply the desect of personal Presence according to that ridiculous guise you clap upon my words but my apparent palpable intention was that it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission as necessary to make the Session of Estates Authentick when he affords neither Presence nor Commission for want of which all is left in supine and gasping Anarchy which were my express words on purpose set to obviate this and other like Cavils tho' honestly omitted by you for inconsiderable tho' therein lies the main force and form of my Argument which is like to stand unmoved notwithstanding all the impotent flurts of unmanly peevishness Dyscher At last you say the Estates of any Nation being * Sol. Ab. p. 4. invited by a victorious and unresisted Power may come together and treat with him that thus calls them tho' he hath no antecedent Authority strictly taken to call them Here is a pretty fetch in the word unresisted Power for irresistible you knew it was not and if it was unresisted whose fault was that May they refuse to resist an invading Power when they are able And may they make that disobedience the reason of their Compliance with him and casting off their own Sovereign But if without dawbing you had put the Case as it was it ought to run thus The Estates of any Nation or the natural
Heb. 11.1 but in an apparent explicit and authentick Determination as all other Duties pursuant to Laws and Publick Judgments are and no otherwise And you that will allow the Churches Loyalty as to the Object to be guided by the true Constitution of the State but not by every Civil Judgment have need to explain your self what shall he the Supream Civil Judgment for you concerning the Laws and Constitutions of our State in rare unusual and dangerous Cases of Desertion and Anarchy For if you assert to every man a practical Judgment upon our Laws and Rights in such Cases and that even against a National Judgment the Confusions must be eternal If there must be a Civil Council I pray assign me any other like that of the Estates in Convention who indeed as often as such Cases call upon them are the Supream Judges of the Constitutions and Rights of the Nation and Arbiters of our Settlement concluded thereupon And if you will not yield to every such Civil Judgment you may as well say you will yield to none excepe it comports with your private Humours or Persuasions which is the true and plain English of your Answer herein if I may use the freedom you take with me of being your Paraphrast or Interpreter and is a wonderful Expedient to settle us by eternal and unreconcilable discords in Opinion and Practice Dyscher Let us now see what a fine account you give us of the Laws and Rules of our Succession and hereon you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 4. That the general and ordinary Rule of Succession to this Crown is Hereditary but in extraordinary Interruptions and Convulsions of State against the ordinary Course our Laws and Constitutions do allow the Estates such a King as can be actually had for the time being till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered Now if a man were to speak this in plain English it would be thus By our Laws and Constitutions the Crown is Hereditary but if any Vsurper or Traytor will not suffer it to be so but puts by the Right Heir and gets possession himself the Laws and Constitutions allow him to be King yes marry and a Lawful King too i. e. the Crown goes in a Lineal Succession while people are peaceable and Obedient but if they be troublesome and rebellious it is catch as catch can and he had Right and Law on his side who gets Possession and so will another and another without end who can successively wrest the Possession from those who had the Right whilst they could keep Possession Did ever any Body hear of such a Constitution as this Or was any thing better fitted to produce eternal Confusions Certainly you have a mind to persuade us that our Constitutions were made by the Wise Men of Goatham or the Wiser Men of Bedlam T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher You frequently use a suspicious Artifice of travesteering what cannot be plainly answered into farce and mishapen figures and then expose it in Ridicule By which however you call upon you the Sentence of the Psalmist What shall be done unto thee thou false Tongue Mighty and sharp Arrows with hot burning Coals For if I may be my own Paraphrast my Sense is that all Estates and Subjects are to their utmost obliged to preserve together the Sovereign and the Sovereignty and the established forms of Government according to the precise constitution of the Laws but if these be irresistibly overborn or the Sovereign abdicates all to Anarchy then it is Lawful for the Estates to settle under such Sovereigns as can be actually had for the time being till the old Rules can be fairly recovered which being positive must give place to a temporal necessity But did I ever say that Tyrants or Traytors getting into Possession by meer Force had Right and Law on their side No sure for they may break all Law Right and antecedent Rules of Obligation and yet the oppressed Estates may lawfully admit the Oppressive Power when it appears too formidable under prospects of further inevitable Ruins This I expresly and cautiously told you in these words * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or right of War yet if he doth do so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself on the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not on them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things and again * Ibid. p. 6. Wars and victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the wrong lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And could such a Confessor for Conscience Truth and Piety put lying Senses on my words without any remorses or touches of Conscience More integrity was due and becoming such starched or sacred pretensions But I have well learned that Faction leavens the Soul not only with sowerness but with insincerity also But as I truly stated and have now explained the Nature and Duties of our Constitution I assert it a Fundamental Law to all Civil Societies except perhaps that pair of dissyllable Seigniories which you mention where the Politcks Logicks and Ethicks suit with your and where unless you 'll to the Antyceryae I must leave you And since all Kingdoms and Empires are by the just and adorable Counsels of Gods Providence subject to such various Turns of Fate all Princes that take Crowns upon them take them with the Laws of their fortune and a concession to the regular consequences of such Change under which they acquit the innocent Subjects under new submissions tho' they condemn and being reduced prosecuted all those that enforced the Change But as long as the Duties of Subjection are such as I have described intestine changes and disorders cannot arise from them And while Princes minister Justice and Judgment to their People and make their Prosperity the Royal Care they are seldom threatned with Commotions But yet it sometimes happens that for unsearchable tho' Just Reasons the Judgment of God permits the most innocent Princes to intestine as well as foreign troubles which yet however they that promote shall not escape Divine Vengeance And yet after the determination of such Wars it can be no sin to acquiesce under those forms of Settlement which our Estates can procure for the time being tho' different from the ordinary Course And there is no other Rule to recover the Civil Felicity of Nations but by these Principles which every Princely Spirit must be presumed to allow in equity and compassion to all his good Subjects to rescue them from utter extirpation or perpetual misery Dyscher At last you are willing to qualifie the matter and
Deliverance having forgotten that Compassion which I deeply have for all Royal Tragedies would be apt to make a jest of this and reply upon you that they have been served well enough in the first place before the Prince and Princess of Orange who are well enough served too and all as they deserve But I shall only observe your inconsiderateness of discourse in bringing in King James into the Catalogue of his own Heirs after his Cession upon which I said the Succession was not violently broken but altered by the consent of the next Heirs And this I think I may still defend without breach of modesty even tho' I should allow the proceedings of the Convention to have been violations of his Right For a violent Expulsion of a Possessor may consist with the true Succession of the next Reversioners But admitting the Cession or Abdication for real what need was there to solicit his further consent to our Establishments And for your Prince of Wales beside the doubt of the Nation concerning his Descent the late Queen brought him into a Cession before the Cession and Abdication of the King nor were there any Claims entred for him before the Convention and so he might be legally neglected for want of Claimer I know this has been charged on the Prince and the Convention for not admitting the Discussion of that Descent But I think no Law could oblige them to move it ex officio when he was absent and no Promoter appeared on his behalf But further to enquire into the Equity hereof if King James at the Prince's demand had called a Parliament that had been one of the Principal Articles to have been judicially determined by the Parliament between them But King James not calling a Parliament nor allowing the Convention power of Judgment herein there was no reason such a Question should be admitted there which if determined against King James and his Prince of Wales should not have concluded them but if given against the Princess of Orange should have confined and excluded her As to your politick stroke upon the Princess of Denmark I shall reflect no more than this that if she will permit you to the Conduct of her Counsels she is like to thrive mightily by it For you will advise her either to present flight or sedition only to make way for I know not what or how many new Princes of another Venter whose real Descent no one should ever know but the Men of the Mysteries Perhaps your Agents have laid the Seeds of Discontent between the two Princely Ladies already in order to form your other Projects but I hope that God that has hitherto preserved them in their natural Rights against all the Arts of those who would have illegitimated or intercepted their Sucession will still preserve her Royal Highness from the Snares you lay for her And since you have blurted out the Secret to the Publick she and the whole Kingdom have reason to take close notice of it Dyscher When we object the immoralities of these proceedings you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That the internal immorality of all Actions must be carefully distinguished from the Civil Consequences of them A Son say you by fraudulent Arts gets judgment in Law and seizes his Fathers Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this mans immorality is damnable Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so while they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law But if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an Evil Act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawful Acts then their being Officers of Law will rather increase than diminish their Guilt T. B's 2d Lett. p. 23. Eucher Now all this I allow too whether done judicially or in forms of Law or no. But if it be done in private and not in Legal Forms it is nothing to our purpose or my objection But if the Judges sit in Judgment between the Father and the Son and very wickedly cast the Father in his Cause yet it being done in form of Law the Judgment will pass into such Execution as will be taken for formally legal tho' the Judgment be morally unjust and contract an heinous Guilt on the Conscience of the Judge So that still the Subject People are innocent in admitting the Acts of the Convention as Legal tho' really before God they had been Unrighteous Judges Yet because you herein sharpen a Dart against the King and Queen tho' I never intended my Objection to such a Reflection the Case you set is not parallel to ours For the Convention sate not in Judgment between the Father and Son and Daughter the Father not being subject in Law nor submitting his Cause to them but when the Father had left his Royal Estate the Prince calls them together to settle the forsaken State of the Kingdom which they did as it now stands And as this Judgment was in Form Legal and Authoritative so you cannot prove it immoral or injurious For as the Estates were not concerned to enquire into the temper of Spirit in the Contest between the Father and the Children toward each other which was not of Civil Cognizance so they debated only the Civil Purposes of King James's Actions and how the state of this Land might be legally and securely fixed after his Desertion in which they acted as Legal Judges and no otherwise What was done before or out of Convention by any of the Members and the inner motions and aims of particular mens minds there sitting during these agitations these are extrajudicial and so not chargeable on the whole Court as a Council of State as being no parts of their formal Determinations Dyscher So for your Robbers and Pirates a man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it But if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawful if you say they acquire a just Right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually joyn with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher This it seems is your reply to what I said * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And is not this a pretty Refutation of that Assertion to say that all that assert assist and share in Wrong are Rogues The reason of my instance was that such Pirates and Tyrants often seize on such as they have no Right of Dominion over and may perhaps threaten to torture or destroy them except they submit and contract
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
is that which you promise me from the Scriptures I pray out with that too that I may either reply to it or send it to the Censure of Gilman's Coffee-House or the Impartial Reflections of a Private Friend Eucher I cannot be sullen to you to whose Felicity and sound Judgment I wish with all my Soul I could contribute And you being men of Religion that can dare to suffer for what you think right and sacred will be like to have greater respect to good and clever Arguments from the Holy Oracles We will therefore consider the several Settlements of the Children of Israel under Civil Forms of Government and try whether their actual plenitude consisted in a National Contract or any other bottom And in order hereunto I shall observe two sorts of Settlements among them one Consequent to an Antecedent Right and Title the other constituent of the Title to and in the Sovereignty And according to this Order I begin with the former First Then God upon a good original and antecedent Title actually settles himself in the political Royalty and Government of that People hence by Divines usually called the Theocracy by that Covenant at Sinai by which he properly and peculiarly became their God and King also and they his peculiar People not only under a Religious and Ecclesiastical but also a Civil Relation Exod. 19. Exod. 24. alib passim When God himself and Samuel the Prophet in God's Name had entitled Saul to the Throne of Israel by a sacred Unction yet was he afterwards actually and fully settled therein by the Popular Engagement of true Allegiance to him and was hence said to be made and chosen King as well by the People as by God and Samuel 1 Sam. chap. 9. Chap. 10. Chap. 11. Chap. 12. Thus tho' David's Title to that Succession was divinely originated in the Unction of Samuel 1 Sam. 16. yet his full and actual Settlement over Judah consisting in his Unction by the People in Hebron 2 Sam. 2. and after the death of Ishbosheth he was thro'ly and actually settled over the other Tribes by their Covenant and Unction transacted by their Elders 2 Sam. 5. And Solomon tho' designed by God and advanced by David and anointed by Zadock into the full Title unto that Sovereignty was yet finally and compleatly settled in that Throne of the Lord by the consequent Acts and Unction of that People as an Induction on an antecedent Presentation and Institution 1 Kings 1. 1 Chron. Chap. 24. Chap. 25. And thus to Rehoboams Paternal Title the People were to add their Actual Consummation of his Settlement in like manner 1 King 11. 2 Chron. 10. And last of all Jehu who by a Prophetick Unction and Gods Designation had a Divine Right and Title to the Sovereignty of the Ten Tribes and began to make way to his Actual Settlement by the slaughter of Joram Ahaziah and Jezabel yet sends to the Council at the Royal City Samaria and bids them settle the best and meetest of their Masters Sons on the Throne of their Father Ahab as knowing that that had been the usual Office of the Senate But they not daring to oppose Jehu tho' perhaps they knew nothing of his Prophetick Unction reply that they would not make any King i. e. any but himself but they contract a total submission to him and sealed that Contract in the Blood of Ahab's Sons and so actually admitted him into the full Settlement and Possession of that Sovereignty 2 Kings Chap. 9. Chap. 10. So that tho' these Titles to the Sovereignty were not founded in the Grant of the People but of God yet the full Settlement of all these New Kings consequent to their Titles did consist in the Publick Contract and Recognition of the People Secondly The Peoples Concurrence was sometimes constituent of a Title meerly human as well as a full and formal Settlement Thus the People would have given Gideon an hereditary Monarchy Judges 8. as the Elders of Gilead made Jephthah their Captain Judges 11. and as the Shechemites did what in them lay entitle Abimelech Judges 9. The Ten Tribes made Jeroboam King which God that had preingaged it by his Prophet ratified by an inhibition against Rehoboams recovery 2 Kings 12. 2 Chron. Chap. 10. Chap. 11. But Zimri who reigned but seven days in Tirzah without the full consent of the whole People wanted a good Title as well as a full Settlement thereupon and so was opposed by the Camp at Gibbethon who set up Omri against him and so he perished in a Fire of his own kindling 1 Kings 16. And this was that perhaps which Jezabel objects to Jehu 2 Kings 9. Had Zimri peace who slew his Master Did the people permit him a full and peaceable Settlement in the Throne who slow his own Sovereign Which Omri however obtained after the extinction of Tibni his Competitor 1 Kings 16.22 23. Thus in the Kingdom of Judah after Josiah's death the People of the Land took Jehoahaz probably the younger Brother to Eliakim and made him King And in that Act of the People the fulness of his Title as well as his Actual Settlement seems to have consisted 2 Kings 23. 2 Chron. 36. So that in short the Regular Constitution of their Native Kings was that subordinately to Gods Election the People should settle each New Line according to the direction of the Law Deut. 17.14 15. When thou shalt say I will set a King over me thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose c. But in the degeneracy of the Ten Tribes they set up Kings by their own Act alone without waiting or consulting the Will of God as he complains Osee 8.4 They have set up Kings but not by me they have made them Princes but I knew it not Yet God's permission hereof made the usage valid to a Title meerly human tho' done contrary to the Law And therefore to Baasha who came in this way God says 1 Kings 16.2 I have exalted thee out of the Dust and made thee Prince over my People Israel Now these things in fact were done as well in injury to the Heirs-Royal as to God and yet the full and actual Settlement by the People according to their modes gave them a form of human Title which was civily valid tho' not otherwise and especially Sacred And to conclude since it is recorded that God at first granted them Kings at their request after the manner of the Nations 1 Sam. 8. it intimates that this was then the Formal Rule of New Settlements at least among all the bordering Nations However this Office of the People being always the final Act must needs give the last plenitude to the Settlement and God surely in the admission of these Forms must be granted to know and judge them to be full and final whatsoever else was or might be sometimes constituent of an antecedent Title which the Convocation-Book does not make essentially
which they accept for their Majesties under that Interpretation contracts no Evil he thereupon takes in their Sense as judicially Legal and no other This I think is no Cozening of the State in the Swearer but a fair sincerity before God and the World and answerable at any Tribunal whatsoever Have you any thing more to say upon this Point Dyscher My Friend T. B. suggested no more matter of Arguments to me hereupon but only huffed and laid about him what that innocent Sense might be and the double boil'd Crambe of Swearing to Usurpers to maintain their Usurpations that while you make such a Pother about Senses your Conscience lies snarling within as he does without when he scorns your Pity and stiles you meek For-swearers meek Rebels meek Traitors meek Turks meek Jews meek Renegadoes and taxes your Merciless High-Priest for want of Bowels to a poor Boy whom it seems some of his Party had imployed in carrying Seditious Libels I will not tell you the manner of his Fury but it so startled me that I thought verily I must have sent for the Doctor Ser. J. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27 28. Eucher But what say you to the danger of the Law even when King James returns if you treasonably break your Allegiance to King William Dyscher In this I find you are a Man tam Marti quam Mercurio otherwise called an Ambodexter For if you cannot perswade us you will affright us into the Oath or any thing else For you endeavour to possess us with an Opinion that King James if ever he returns will hang all them that do not Swear and pay Allegiance to William An hard Case that a Man can't be Wise and Honest without Hanging But why this extreme Severity Why Because the Lineal Heir may hang a Man as a Traytor for breach of Allegiance to an extralineal King Well but if King James should hang up all that did not pay Allegiance to William one would think he should not spare those who would not pay Allegiance to himself and this would make clear Work When Edward the Fourth first joined Battle against Henry the Sixth did not you think this would have made a powerful Speech for him to his Souldiers Gentlemen go on couragiously your Cause is good the Crown is evidently my Right and if I can recover it by your assistance I will certainly hang you up every Man for fighting against the extralineal King Henry Sixth who here appears in the Field against us and keeps me from it Sir I do not believe there is any Law to hang a Man for Loyalty and of all Men living I least fear it from King James T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. And I appeal to your self whether you can believe that Interpretation you put upon our Laws * Sol. Ab. pag. 12. viz. That King James may Hang Men as Traitors for breaking their Allegiance to King William This is the same as if King Charles the Second should have Hanged Men as Traitors to the Common-Wealth of England who restored him to his Crown M. S. Reflex But in Truth all this Hanging stuff seems to have another Design not to tell what K. James may do but what you would have others to do as if they were excusable for any severity towards those who deny them that for which even King James himself may punish them It is a pious hint to your Government and your Mob T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. Eucher I was willing to have saved you if it had been possible out of Error that so I might have kept you out of Danger But if there be no such Danger I am very glad of it What King James will do I am no Arbiter nor did I ever assume upon me to discover his Intentions I only minded you what by our Laws he may do if you are guilty of Treason against Allegiance required by our Laws to the present Sovereign But you according to the sincerity of a Zealot repeat me to have said that King James may hang you for not taking the present Oath that I may stir up the Powers and Mobb to do so presently But I thank God for your sake that tho' the Laws are severe upon unhappy Clergy-Men that cannot conform to the Oath yet such Recusancy does not by any Law make Men Traitors as not being made Treason If you live otherwise quietly and contrive no Seditions neither I nor the Laws can touch your Lives either now or hereafter in any Revolution But if you will incur Treason against extralineal Kings the Law since Henry the Seventh may be in force against you under the recover'd Reign of the Lineal however they stood in the Days of Henry the Sixth 'T is true Heirs Lineal that promote such Treasons may and no doubt always do stake Faith and Troth not only to indemnify but prefer their Adherents But in Edward the Fourth's Age and Army the Souldiers were not Lollards and Hereticks with whom the most Holy See and the more Holy Society will keep no Faith especially to succour and secure their Heresie He that hath seen what has been may easily see what will be if he will not shut his Eyes * See the state of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James And in England among all other advances remember the Fanatick Commissions for enquiry into past tho' legal Prosecutions against Conventicles on purpose to enrage them to join their Skeems with the Papists to cut our Throats who had but just before saved the Kings own Throat from the same Hands But if the Old prudent Câ—ution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will produce no faith in you I leave you to your own Paradise Dreams and Dotages since the sagacious Observation of the Poets never quadrated so well to any person or purpose as me and mine upon this occasion invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti And yet for all my good will the sport you make with me in your Edward the Fourths Martial Oration exposes your Principles perhaps more than my Law For by the straiâ—s you have made upon the Duties of Christian subjection which Custom has named Passive Obedience Edward the Fourth's Souldiers had been bound to have fought for him tho' he had made them such an Oration which could not have been imprudent upon your Principles of Christian Loyalty But if such an Oration would have justified the consequent Revolt or recession of his Army then is this Nation and all the Protestants of King James's Army justified in their leaving him and going over to the Prince since his assumed Dispensing Power and superlative Prerogatives the Obedience contracted to the Sec of Rome and the Society of Jesus and all his hasty steps he made to the dissolution of our Laws Liberties and Religion were a Proclamation as fatal to this Kingdom and his Protestant Souldiers as the Speech you have framed for King Edward And they took the Language and intention of his Actions accordingly
as if he had said My Protestant Nobles Clergy Magistrates Officers and Souldiers do you actually fight for me execute all my Commands be passive under all my Contrivances against your Religion Laws and Liberties and when I have gained my ends I 'll make you all sworn Slaves and Papists or else Iâ—le melt your Grease for you But to return from this pertinent Sally as to the Law that I set it rightly as it stands at this Day from a long Descent is notorious to the World from the Judicial and received Determinations in Parliament and the King's Courts so often pleaded and alledged by the Advocates for our present Allegiance to whom and to whose Originals I therefore refer you Only I think fit here to relate the yet unpublished sense of a most judicious and excellent Person sent me before any Prints appeared on this Subject His words are these What I principally insist on is That our Law requires Subjection and Obedience to the Powers in being To prove this I shall here set down the words of Sir Edward Coke and in the Margin note the Authorities to which he refers Sir Edward Coke speaking of the Statute of the 25th of Edward the Third concerning Treason saith that this Statute is to be understood of a King in Possession of the Crown and Kingdom Vid. 11. Hen. 7. c. 1. For if there be a King Regnant in possession altho' he be Rex de Facto non de Jure yet is he Seignior le Roy 4 Edw. 4.1 Instit part 3. fol. 7. within the Purview of this Statute And the other that hath Right and is out of Possession is not within this Act. Nay if Treason be committed against a King de Facto non de Jure and after the King de Jure cometh to the Crown he shall punish the Treason done to the King de Facto and a Pardon granted by a King de Jure that is not also de Facto mark this for it concerns the Nation against wheedling Declarations is void So to the same effect Judge Hales his Pleas of the Crown pag. 11. This Argument saith my invaluable Friend I take to be of great force because the measures of Subjection are not the same in all Countreys but must be taken from the Laws and Customs of every Countrey Thus he And if you will impartially reflect upon your own Words in which you blame me for inferring that King James when he returns may punish Men for breaking Allegiance to King William these words concede it For if you admit unto me a breach of Allegiance in facts committed against King William you then presuppose an Obligation for Allegiance to him so broken and to break a Duty is punishable by the penal Sanction or virtue of that Law that makes it a Duty and therefore if not punished nor pardoned before the return of the King de Jure he may punish it as a Crime against his Laws And your taking the instance of the Oliverian Common-wealth to this your concession impudently admits Allegiance due thereunto and makes the Opposers thereof Traitors and Legally punishable by King Charles the Second for High Treason But in Truth no Laws had engaged Allegiance to O. C. or his Common-wealth as they have to Kings de facto And moreover if the Estates themselves in free and at that time and case extraordinary legal Parliament upon the antecedent Expiration and in utter Renunciation of that Common-wealth and all other Forms of Democracy recalled him it had been Treason to have opposed and Loyalty to have concurred in that their Restitution But I stated the Case of O. C. so clearly in our last Conference that I fancy it beyond the power of T. B. himself as spiteful as he is to parallel the Tenure of O. C. with that of King William whatsoever he may without Argument rant and rave to the contrary As for the Reproach of stirring up the Powers or the Mob against you I reply that you prevent me in that Intrigue your selves and I will give you any Form of Security either Sacred or Secular upon Soul or Body or Goods that I will never provoke them against you as much as your selves have done and still for ought I see persevere to do Dyscher We are very luckily fallen in again upon the mention of O. C.'s Authority and Settlement over us I pray let us review that Article For tho' T. B. for want of Argument cries out stark shame upon you and is once oh wonder ashamed for you in such a sort of Civility as he never vouchsafes himself how much soever he needs it because you will not be confuted by his Brass and Impudence and our Learned Pens I will see what Grace may be wrought in you by some Impartial Reflections of a softer Metal but of great weight You make a pretty sort of disparity between the Tenure and Settlement of King William and O. C. * Sol. Ab. g. 12 13. Because O. C. was not King as if the Charm lay in a word Call him Hospador if you will for me Is not the Duke of Muscovie King of that Countrey because he is called Duke It is the Authority and Power we are speaking of not by what Names it is called M. S. Reflex Eucher I took my self for a Conjurer nor will I endeavour to enchant you with words instead of things since your Temper will not hearken to the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely And therefore without troubling the Peace of that great Duke you may please to remember that there is an old received and approved distinction between the Titles and Characters of King and Tyrant The former is he that Reigns according to the Laws and Forms of Civil Constitutions and his Character and Authority is Grateful and Honourable The latter Rules by meer force oppression and bondage without any Civil Form of Tenure or Settlement by a power only potential not potestative and therefore without a proper Authority And this Character is in most especial manner given to Usurping Rebels as well as to Foreign Invaders to destroy which Tyrants the Universal Sense of Nations ever judged it lawful because they have no Form of Title but that of the Sword Violence and forcible Entry Now King William holds this Sovereignty by the former legal way of National Contract and Civil Establishment but O. C. had no other Mode of Profession but Tyrannical and so had no legal which is the only Form of Authority And yet beside perhaps the very Style of King is necessary to the real Sovereigns of England in order to their Claims of Allegiance by virtue of the old Oath and Laws tho' when new Laws and Constitutions extinguish the old a new Allegiance may be due to a new Sovereign under any other Titular Style But if this Style be thus necessary to oblige our Allegiance by the old Laws then for want of that very Character no Allegiance was due
no more divinely instituted than the lowest Orders of Levi tho' he was to higher Services Nor is the Doctor less mistaken in his extraordinary Esteem and Elogy of the Annual Expiation as more noble than any Episcopal Functions For notwithstanding all its Solemnities and Operations yet its highest Excellency was but Typical of that Grace which was not given by Moses but by Jesus Christ And all its actual present Energy reached no further than a legal imaginary Cleansing of the Body of the Jews and this only for one Year past and that only for the securing him in the Temporal benefits promised in that Law But our Priestly Functions are not merely Typical of Grace not yet given but both commemorative and exhibitory also of that Grace which hath already appeared for the Salvation of all Men and consecrates the Souls and Bodies of Men unto Immortality not to mention the extraordinary Measure of the Spirit collated in the especial Acts of Episcopal Ordinations In all which interiour Sanctifications tho' there is no Transubstantiation yet is there a mystical Union betwixt Christ and his Members by the illuminating Communion of the Holy Spirit For which truth it is needful that we contend tho' I confess it was needless for him to contend against it And yet further supposing all this had been right which the Doctor hath dictated yet here arises another Infelicity in his Logic For tho' God might admit an intruded High-Priest yet it does not follow that Men may admit an intruded Bishop for can Man pretend to all the Authorities of God God is indeed superior to all his own Institutions and may dispense with them or ratifie Violations of them as he did the violent Successions in the Kings of Israel But does it follow that Men can lawfully without any Divine Dispensation given and granted admit the Violations of his Laws and the perverters of that Hierarchy which he has made organical to the Sanctity and Salvation of his Church Nay further yet the Doctor is very unaccurate in his very State of the Question which properly is not whether any Man may lawfully succeed an Ecclesiastic deposed by a lay-Lay-power for if we grant that there can be any such Lay-deposition no doubt the Succession may be lawful but the Question is whether there can be any Ecclesiastical Deposition inflicted on Spiritual Orders by a Lay-power This is that we and our Fathers complain of that the Lay-powers enact Spiritual Censures of Suspension and Deprivation which your Ecclesiastics admit as regular and valid which were they so we should not quarrel at the Successions This I am sure is our Question whatsoever that of the Baroccian Treatise is if this differs from ours then in that respect the Treatise is impertinently adduced in our Case Besides the Question is not whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastic Office of God's Institution may not be deposed by any Lay power For if God in the Jewish Church did subject their Ecclesiastics to a Lay-deposition no doubt in the Nature of the thing it might be lawful But the Question is whether first God did so subject the Jewish Ecclesiastics to such a Lay-authority And secondly supposing that God had so subjected their Ecclesiastics the next Question is whether he hath in like manner so subjected the Christian Hierarchy For if there be any specific Difference or intentional Disparity in the Nature and Purposes of the Jewish and Christian Religions if there have been such Changes admitted by God in the Authorities of one which have not been so conceded upon the Authorities of the other then the Argument from the Jewish doth not conclude upon the Christian Hierarchy And therefore by the Doctor 's leave not only the Divinity of the Institution but the Nature of the Offices and the Rules of Tenure and Succession instituted by God in his Church are to be considered in this Debate For to put the matter into a short Theory I think it fairly possible to conceive that the Jewish Religion in what it was peculiarly Jewish was only of a carnal Sanctity in Order only to Temporal Fruitions and so might be under the Conduct of Temporal Powers that are the Supreme Guardians of all Temporal Enjoyments but the Christian Religion is purely Spiritual not subordinated to Temporal Ends and so not under the like Authority of Temporal Powers Now whatsoever are the civil Authorities about matters Christian I suppose the Essential Differences of our Religion from the Jewish will bar the Argument for the same Rules of Subjection And if you please upon another Consultation to propose the matter to the Doctor 's second Thoughts I will be at the pains of repeating my Observations hereupon †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 21 22. First that the whole Institution of the Levitical Law was not of a Spiritual but carnal Sanctity yielded them by God somewhat in opposition and somewhat in conformity to the Aegyptian or other foreign Religions among whom the Priesthood had been long subjected to and perhaps first instituted by the Scepter And herein the Supreme Judgments in Civils upon the Law and Oracular Responses upon Consultations about Peace War and Temporal Actions and Successes were essential to the Authority of the Pontificate And yet we find this High-Priest not subject to any ordinary Power till Kings were also given this People after the manner of the Nations among whom the Mitre was subject to the Crown All which put together makes Abiathar 's Deprivation by a Temporal Power under that Constitution Legal But from the beginning it was not so Then there were Priests who till the Flood had the Government of the World without any Civil or Military Power and that Priesthood was in all its Intentions Spiritual So that when our Saviour came not only to restore but even to refine upon the primitive Rules he restored the Priesthood from Vassalage and founded his Hierarchy not in Princes but Apostles not inarmed but in unarmed Powers But if among the Nations of old the carnal Priesthoods were subject to Arbitrary and Imperial Powers and God conceded the Jews Kings with such Power after that Gentile manner the Jewish High-Priests thereupon became Subject not only to a Judicial but Imperial Authority and so legally deprivable at the pleasure of the secular Prince so far at least that these Censures might be effectually valid tho' not always good and just And hence all the Changes of the High-Priests violently and arbitrarily made by heathen Princes in the Jewish Pontificate seem to be legally and regularly valid ex jure Imperii toties quoties and so are nothing at all to the Case of an uncanonical Deprivation or the Doctor 's purpose But our Priesthood has nothing Civil in it nor is by God subjected to the Arbitrary Empire of Princes that so we should think our selves obliged to bow down our Faith and Freedom to such feeble Principles of Spiritual Bondage and Pusillanimity Eucher But a little to
interrupt you did you not deny * Sol. Ab. pag. 23. Zadok's Title to be derived from the Kings donation tho' the Scripture expressly affirms that K. Solomon did put Zadok the Priest in the room of Abiathar I Kings 2.35 And do you now on a sudden put all the power of disposing that Priesthood in the arbitrary will of their Sovereigns that so you may oppose the Drs. Principles Dyscher What I delivered then can well consist with my present Sentiments which I offer not in an itch of contradicting the Doctor but upon the reasonableness of the thing it self For in Solomon's time the Genealogies were extant and the due course of Succession obvious on which account I take it Zadok had before in David's time been admitted under Abiathar into the communicable Offices of the Pontificate in order perhaps to the next plenary Succession after the death of Abiathar which Succession now commenced on Abiathar's remove before the time preintended by the actual introduction of him by King Solomon into the possession of what he had an antecedent Title to upon the next vacancy either by the right of Primogeniture which the antient Jews have owned from the first Patriarchs and the Law Lev. 16.32 or upon an ordination by the Ecclesiastic Powers of the Sanhedrin as men of Talmudic learning have conjectured Now it is certain that their native Kings of God's own appointment were obliged to keep the Law and every man's Rights established by it and the doing otherwise was really sinful and offensive tho' such unjust acts of Kings had among them the effectum juris as appears in the sentence of David between Ziba and Mephibosheth If therefore Solomon had rejected Zadok as well as Abiathar such causeless procedure in my opinion had been unjust but yet valid as being not subject to any Tribunal and presumable for just and done upon reasonable although secret Causes But when the Sovereignty fell into the hands of gentile Princes not tyed to the Mosaic Constitutions as their native Kings were and the Genealogies were lost and the Legal Successors unknown or absent the necessity of some high-Priest made the person upon each such vacancy Elective by the Supreme power or with the permission thereof by the priests and people as appears in the Maccabâ—ic History and Josephus Amongst which instances there is one above all most considerable viz. that of Simon who was made high-Priest by the Jews and Priest for ever until there should arise a faithful Prophet 1 Maccab. 14.41 to discover the lineal Successor as also to shew them what to do 〈◊〉 the defiled Stones of the Sanctuary 1 Maccab. 4.46 Whence it appears the sense of that people from the constitution of that Priesthood in Simon and his heirs for want of the true Proprietary Family First that there was an absolute necesity of the high-priesthood Secondly that it legally belonged to Aarons lineal heirs Thirdly that in want of them they if they had freedom were to elect another Family for that Succession All which set together discovers Zadok to be the next regular Successor to Abiathar since the Scriptures impeach not the King of any irregular and despotic injuries against the Laws of the high Priesthood Eucher But what say you to that note of the Dr that it was of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the annual Expiation performed by one apointed to it by God Does not this argue the Deposition of such a one null and yet upon necessity God permitted the Jews to own the Successor coming in by mere intrusion Dyscher To this I answer that if God himself allowed the Jews to admit such intruders then it appears that it was not of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the Expiation performed by one to whom it belonged by the constitution of the Law For if the Intruders Expiations were effectually acceptable they did the business as well as the Liturgy of the legal Proprietor But further Gods admission of the Intruder after Intrusion takes off his irregularity ratifies his Title and vacates that of the ejected and so is of Gods particular occasional appointment for the time being tho' not by the original designation of the Law and so this is nothing to the Drs. Hypothesis or Cause And this is in fact the real state of that Case in such Changes The State Civil first intruded Successors into the room of the expelled but this not creating any Plenitude or Sanctity of Title God made up this defect by giving the Intruders the Spirit of Prophecy which supervening made them also Gods high-priests to all Sacred as well as Civil purposes Which act of Gods was not a mere acknowledgment of their antecedent Authority but an efficient thereof to all the intents of the Levitic Law tho' the Dr. would fain perswade us to a contrary notion herein Yet had it been a mere consequent acknowledgment of their Priest hood held only by Intrusion as * Case of Sees c. Ch. 3. § 3. the Dr. intimates it had been nothing to his purpose because upon the Extinction of the Genealogies and Ignorance of the lineal Heirs and the more plenary Subjection therefore of that pontificate to the Gentile Sovereigns who were despotic and free from all the ordinary Rules that obliged their native Kings this had made these Changes of High-Priests in the potificate being an office carnal and temporal even in its Religious acts formally valid and authoritative for that these Gentile powers came into the Sovereignty of their native Kings or perhaps a greater to whom God at their request had subjected the Hierarchy after the manner of the Nations And a great deal of this I told you * Sol. Ab. pag. 24. in our last Conference which no doubt you consulted your Dr. upon tho' he takes no notice of it And I then drop'd another note perhaps worth a second Rumen with you that those Intrusions tho' thus admitted by God were signs of a broken Church and State hastening to its last Dissolution and so no just Precedent for the Christian Church to follow which is to continue to the End of all things except we must yield to methods of Violation that lead to our Extinction And I leave it to the pious consideration of every Religious Conscience to judge whether those servile Submissions to Imperial violences in the instances of the Baroccian Treatise and the others produced by the Learned Dr. against his Opponents did not properly lead to the ruin of the Church into which the Greeks from these precedents are fallen under Mahometan powers all which had been effectually obviated had the Church stuck to the Laws and Canons of the Christian Hierarchy and Communion against the encroachments of wicked Emperors against which it is the Duty of all Churches obstare principiis in contempt of persecutions Hereby and hereby alone shall we be able to stifle all Erastian and Antichristian Arts with which their concomitant persecutions
recover his Right T. B. 2d Lett. p. 15. Eucher I will freely allow you that to a legal and effectual Cession there must be some voluntary Act of the Cedent on which a Title in any Estate Office or Authority is vacated But then such Act shall have effect against the desires of retention in the Agent as in two Benefices taken to be illegally held without a Dispensation Nor is it a pure unmixed Act of Will free and discharged from fear and terror or trouble that alone can make a Cession but receding from necessary Government for fear of Life makes a real Cession as appears in mens quitting of Garisons to an Enemy for fear of storm either before or after he sits down before them Upon which Cession and the Entry of the Enemy the Dependents on that Fortress are discharged from the actual Bond of their old upon the Enemies demand of a New Allegiance to which they may lawfully and honestly submit for the time being And this holds Due on the present Title of the new Possessior in the Dominion of such Place tho' the Cedent still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a claim of Right to it and endeavours a 〈…〉 which tho' he has Right to recover yet 〈…〉 present Right in the actual Allegiance of the Dependents so legally transferred till he dâ—â—â— again recover the place Else if you will not allow this Doctrine you will be but mean Favourites in the French Court whose new Conquests have all this form of Establishment And I must remark to you that a mans leaving his Estate upon going a Journey is not a matter parallel to leaving of Kingdoms dissolved thereby into Anarchy and Confusion For an Estate may lie still and unoccupied without harm or danger and so a Rectoral Presence or Actual Administration not be necessary to the Tenure but the Civil State of Nations requires a continual Course of Government and he that leaves it dissolved permits it to another by a proper Cession And whereas you say that such Cession if it be real shall not prejudice the next Heir this does not allways and universally hold true as in the instance of deserted Garrisons and the dependent Territories But in other cases if they that have a plenipotentiary Right of acting for an Heir in Minority make a Cession for him or bring him also thereinto then the Subject people are discharged from adhering to such Heir also were his Title to the Inheritance otherwise indubitate beyond all suspicion of imposture Dyscher But let us see what a kind of Cession you fix upon your King * Sol. Ab. p. 3. This was say you such a Cession that the Estates in Convention judged it a virtual Abdication of the Sovereignty and of †My Words are of this being a point of Law they were to us at that time and in that juncture the most competent c. this you add they were the most Competent Authentick and Final Judges And this you tell us * Ibid. My Words are We are the more to submit to c. we are to submit to because the Kingdom hath ratified those proceedings in a second Parliament But Competent they could not be who for the prevailing part of them were either actually in the Conspiracy against him or joyned with the Conspirators and refused so much as to read his Letters or hear any Message from him Nor could they be Authentick Judges who had no Law to authorize them or their proceedings Nor did I ever hear that the natural Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch could be his Authentick Judges unless from President Bradshaw the Regicides and their Adherents And if upon this score you will have the Proceedings valid against the Son you must also justifie the Barbarous Murther of the Father And then they could not be final Judges because being neither Competent nor Authentick they were no proper Judges at all Nor doth it at all help the matter that you call these your Judges the Estates and further to countenance the matter place them in Convention For how are they Estates but with respect to the King and Constitution Which if they overthrow what becomes of their Estateships It is the King made them such and they are so in subordination to him Nor is their Convention any thing without him they cannot convene without his Writ You may remember that your Oracle Dr. B tells you that a single Defect makes an essential nullity So they must act under him and all they resolve is nothing without his assent And by our Law if they act against him they are Rebels and so unfit for Competent Authentick and Final Judges T. B's 2d Lett. p. 15 16. Eucher Here is an hideous Out-cry as if the whole Machine of the World were breaking into ruines But yet methinks it should be no hard task to stay the Convulsion First then The Objection against the Competency is never to be proved and 't is almost if not altogether manifestly false For the prevailing part must be the major number in both Houses all which I suppose cannot be charged as parties to the Conspiracy or the Conspirers The Prince in his march did not pass thro' above ten Counties and touched but little of several of them he saw not twenty Parliamentary Buroughs nor sent any Agents to concert with them not many Peers joyned him till King James disbanded and fled The insurrections in the North tho' unopposed were far from general and the far greater part of England and all Wales saw nothing of it and contributed nothing to that Commotion How then can the Majority be all concluded into a Conspiracy against King James before their Convention that thereby they should become incompetent Besides no man is to be taxed as a Criminal in order to forfeiture or punishment till judicially convict or confessed Otherwise if he stands upon his innocency and Capacities his Claim is to be admitted and his Civil Priviledges secured against which in our Convention no man found Objection upon such surmise or imputation which yet ought to have been made by the Innocent against the Guilty to the eviction of their incompetency Let us see then whether the refusal of his Letters or Message renders them Judges incompetent Now this I think rather appertains to the Question of actual Justice in their Proceedings than to their Competency or Qualification for sitting in Judgment For a Judge duly authorised may act unjustly and yet his judgment till reversed shall be authoritative and effectual which it could not have been if the Judge had thereby become incompetent But even in this which till well considered seems the hardest case it was necessary first to resolve the Question of Abdication before all others which if carried in the Negative then his Letters must in Law and Duty have been received as from their present King but till that point were determined 't was necessary to deny the Letters for the Reception of them as from their then actual
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
name they might give it to put a better gloss upon the thing they were no Parliament till King Charles made them so for he their lawful King by an Act in Legal Parliament might stamp on them that Character and give them that Authority and Force which they had not before and thus several of their Acts might become Laws by virtue of that after Ratification not by any force of their own But as for calling back the King that was not making any new Law but enforcing the old and was not so much an Act of Authority as Obedience and Duty And if you could find out the same way you would be the best Friends to your Country and your selves T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17 18. Eucher To answer according to the way and order you lead me as I have before told you we are now under no obligation to call in King James so being under another settlement things are not out of Order and Unsettled as they were upon the convening of that Free Parliament and as there is no occasion so there is no opportunity to attempt it But whereas you charge the Subjects in general with Rebellion and Expulsion of their King 't is a broad slander and falshood for beside the far greater numbers of the people that never moved it seems that very few that actually went over to the Prince ever designed the expulsion of King James but only the secure reduction of him and his exorbitant claims of omnipotent Prerogative to the just limits of Law and Reason by Parliamentary ways of Composure Which tho' they could not procure yet did they not expel him but he went off himself either for fear of Life or obstinacy against a Parliamentary Discussion or because of the fatigues of an unsuitable Government But as to the Convention it self it rebelled not against him for had he continued his Presence they would have desired to meet by his Call and then I believe not an Hair of his Head had fallen to the Ground whatsoever his too conscious fears and apprehensions were since the only Argument for the Vacancy of the Throne was founded in his Abdication and that in his Departure from us and leaving us in a state of Anarchy upon which it was not possible that they could rebel against him without his Presence As for your innate Authority to wish and vote for Right I allow your meaning tho' not the impropriety of your words for an inward Right of wishing well is no proper Authority which imports a Superiority over Inferiors nor are private wishes formal votes in Civil Matters in which an Authority to vote is not a natural Right of every man but a positive Power of constituting Orders And in Civil Negotiations all private wishes must concede to publick Suffrages and Determinations And the Land sent up that Free Parliament not on their Natural Rights but Civil Capacities of voting and doing the best Right they could And tho' they did well in bringing back the King de jure having no other King de facto established nor any impediment to the Reduction of the Heir Lineal yet if there had appeared to them any such obstacle as would have rendred his Reduction destructive to the Nation and its Fundamental Liberties and Constitutions according to the Aspects of our Case they would have made some other provision for the time being with which the Nation would then and ought to have acquiesced and so would a good Prince too but there being no difficulty in that Juncture they did their Duty in restoring the King And as for the Name and Character of Parliament whensoever de jure enstamped on them it matters not for they were in that Juncture and those Circumstances a Legal and Authentick Council of the Land tho' extraordinary and whatsoever Settlement they had made for the time being had been valid from their Authority as well as what they did had also authority both from their Duty and the Kings consequent Ratifications for single Acts may have sometimes plural Authorities and Confirmations But to convince you that Conventions of Estates in such Junctures and Confusions are by themselves authoritative to resettle I will discuss it with you and I pray answer me fairly Dyscher Pray try your skill Eucher First then in such a State of Confusion as that in which King James left us has the Nation any Right or Reason to consult for some security order and settlement Dyscher It seems reasonable that this be allowed Eucher By whom then should a National Consultation be transacted Or who should or can be so regularly and efficaciously entrusted as the old standing Council of the Land Dyscher I must confess I cannot assign any Council so proper as that and none else that can be pretended legal Eucher Must the Determination of this Council be allowed any publick Efficacy or Virtue to oblige Dyscher Yes if it pass according to Right Eucher But if they judge their Determination to be right must their Judgment take place to all Civil Effects against all private and extrajudicial Objections or no Dyscher Yes except the prevarication is notorious Eucher Notorious To whom notorious Dyscher To all men to the whole Nation to their own Consciences as the Exclusion of King James was Eucher Then no Notoriety less than National shall justifie a Recusancy to such publick Decision Dyscher I were as good as allow it for it seems so Eucher But how shall we discern such a general Notoriety Dyscher By the general and unanimous Censure of all Orders of Men that adhere to the ancient Laws of the Government and fundamental Principles of our Constitution Eucher This will become such an intricate and endless debate whose are the Legal Principles that it will create an intestine War in order to a Decision You must therefore admit a notorious generality or majority of the People or all Orders in it comprehensively or else we shall never get out of the brake or be relieved by any National Consultation if such indeterminate Surmises or Pretensions shall interrupt its Obligation Dyscher Be it so what then Eucher Then I think I have fairly gained my Points for these Concessions admit in a State of Anarchy upon an Abdicant Desertion a Convention of Estates to be Lawful and Authoritative without a Kings Commission or Presence Secondly That the Acts of our Covention were and are valid as not being censured for other but admitted as such by the generality or notorious majority of the Nation which is sensibly apparent by comparing the numbers conforming with the Recusant Conformity and Recusancy being the only proper and legal Tests of Mens Senses hereupon Tho' the Authority of our National Council is such as needs no after Ratification from the disfusive Multitude or the original Freeholders or Burgers of the Land because as the Lords are primitively Councellors for themselves so the Trust signed to the Representative House is total and absolute without need of any
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
to suffer this only till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered If this be so why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their Power to mend when they please Let them unanimosly as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self and without any great pains trouble or danger T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19 20. Eucher But I thought I had long before strangled the life and force of this Objection having abundantly proved our Submission to this National Settlement faultless And so a breach of National Contract is no fair way to a recovery for an opportunity only of doing a thing legally can put us into a fair capacity of recovering the ordinary Course which is not as you â—ancy the business of a moment but an expectation of years and proper Conjunctures at the hands of God whose leisure we are to wait for without our own too violent anticipations Thus the Nation behaved it self thro-out all the Reigns of Henry IV V. and VI. whom you would have challenged for Rebels in lingring too long in the restitution of the Right Line But whereas you propose to us an universal unanimity in reversing this Constitution I will dare undertake the Affair for you sub poena Capitis when you can find me out an effectual Expedient of making us all unanimous Otherwise what shall the unanimous do that are the far less numbers unarmed and in no publick Capacity of acting for the Kingdom against those settled and formed Powers that can easily squeeze all our little unanimities to pieces Shall there be no end of strife No yielding to legal forms of Determination And when there is but little hope or â—wisting the Sand-rope can your thing do it self and that with little trouble pains or danger And yet if King James Abdicated by a real Cession as the Nation judged and I have proved your project would violate not only this extraordinary Settlement but your ordinary Rule also by which in the moment of Cession it devolves on the next Heir Lineal and the Course cannot turn retrograde without the Consent of all the Heirs in being or their proper Curators for them Dyscher But I see you relapse again and become a zealous Advocate for your extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by Extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Vsurpations and Confusions be what they will still men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like Acts. Nor do I think such a State doth acquit men from the Obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind And if any such things as are necessary for the maintenance of human Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should now be done or enacred and hereafter be confirmed by King James I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher Since I am bound to follow the way you lead me the first thing I am to observe is your mistake or perâ—â—â—â—ion of my words about the submission of Heirs Lineal by which you say I subtilly mean their confirmation of the Statutes of Extra-lineal Kings which is no part or glance of my meaning and no man carefully heeding the Order of my words could think it to be so For I mention their submission to somewhat mentioned before those Statutes And I truly meant the long and frequent submissions of the Heirs Lineal as Subjects â—o Kings Extra-lineal actually Regnant particularly under the Lancastrian Reigns And even your Edward the IVth Father Duke of York swore Allegiance to King Henry the VIth and kept it till new â—â—aâ—ses of Rupture arose between them So that it is a very impertinent importunity to clamâ—â—r aâ—or◠〈◊〉 subsequent confirmations which I â—ever â—â—â—tioned And instead of subtil it had beer too silly in me to have called a Confirmation of an invalid Act a submission to that feeble thing which is thereby enlivened And yet by your leave all After-confirmations do not suppose always an antecedent Nullity in the Act confirmed for they sometimes secure sometimes continue and sometimes double an antecedent validity which all the Statutes under Extralineals had in themselves for the time being before there could be room for those subsequent Ratifications and the perpetuity of their Virtue stands not in those Ratifications but in the Non-repeal of them And yet however had it been otherwise by parity of Reason all our Acts obliged the Subject now during this present Reign and we are thereby acquitted in our present submission whatsoever nullities it may fall under in your next Revolution But there is a Famous Act viz. the 11th of Henry the VIIth Chap. 1. made in an Extra-lineal Reign that declares it for Law and Equity that Subjects pay their Allegiance to the King for the time being and indemnifies them herein against after punishments This Law was never since confirmed censured or repealed by any succeeding Prince or Parliament and yet stands firm in the Body of our Statutes to all Civil Effects and Judgments which pass ever since according to the importance and tenour thereof And you your self grant me enough for the time being that the Estates may sit in Parliament under Extra-lineal Kings to do and enact things necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind and are not acquitted from an obligation to do so thro' the disorder in the Succession and such Acts in this Reign when hereafter confirmed by King James you will not condemn Sir your humble Servant But can you tell how such Acts could or can pass in such Parliaments without an Oath of Allegiance taken to such Extra-lineal Kings by all the Members I doubt this will put you out of your good humour again and that is a great pity because you are so seldom in it But however these honest Acts must be valid for the time being upon us till King James returns or else the Obligation of the present State to preserve the Society or promote the real Good of Mankind by them will be but of little Virtue or Use Dyscher But pray Sir upon such extraordinary interruptions did all men ever think themselves bound to approve them Did not they still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or very ill purpose while no Peace or Ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men
think it the best way to put an end to them as soon as can be But you cast out that Right that only can restore our Peace and when you have conjured up most horrid confusions plead for their continuance I know not what could be done more by an Advocate for the Prince of Darkness As for what you say concerning Bishop Overals's Convocation Book I am sorry that a pretender to so much modesty should be guilty of such an impudent Assertion when that matter hath been fully cleared by so many learned and judicious Pens T. B. 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher This is a very paronymous Caress indeed but such as convinces me no more than your Arguments But I know who has taught me to give place unto wrath while I encounter your Reasons First then Is it not a Question profoundly wise whether all Men did ever think themselves bound to approve Extra-lineal interruptions For did you ever know all men in the same Opinion that they ought to approve any one State of things But this is not your only Lapse of Sense It is not the Interruptions and Convulsions of State that I would have you approve for no good man can approve Interruptions in setled Government as such But I require you only to submit to such National Settlements as close up our Confusions and so far only to approve them as they are Ends of Strife and War it there appear no other Good in them As wise also is your second Question Did they not still as opportunity served assist Right I pray who are these They but your All men just before mentioned as the Antecedent to this Relative But did all men as opportunity served assist Right How then came there any to be in the Wrong Or how came all men together to want an opportunity to do Right Or how came there in any Disorders and such a general Expence of Blood and Treasure to very ill purposes But what think you of those that enforced these fatal Expences Were they of the All men or no Or did they act aright in breaking down the Settlements of the Nation in order to what you call Restitution of Right For my part I would not vindicate an Inheritance by the slaughters of poor harmless people in the prostration of their Civil Settlement to gain the most absolute Empire in the whole World For I think no one mans mear personal interest in any external priviledge is worth one innocent mans life whatsoever your or other Martial Opinions may be in these Matters But if you justifie those Sanguinary Commotions and Barbarities against the Publick Settlements heretofore for the reduction of the Heirs Lineal and can tell us that we can have no Peace in our present State I hope henceforth your Party will not say that I enrage the present Powers against them since you openly proclaim an irreconcilable War against the Established Constitution and blow the Trumpet for your own destruction if the Government were not gentle and compassionate to your very Ravings But whereas you charge us for having conjured up Confusions and pleading for the continuance of them I shall reply that all the Evil that hath been done against our Constitutions from the time that King James began to vacate our Laws and to embroil us in discords in order to an Arbitrary and Popish Government until the day of the new Settlement under their present Majesties contributed to our Confusions and every Party to those Evils of what Character soever must account to God for it who will admit no Plea for those Evil Actions or Confusions But on the Day in which the Prince became King our Confusions ended in an orderly peaceable and were it not for your unquietness an entirely happy Settlement for the continuance of which we plead against those unsupportable Confusions to which your bitterness would reduce us And now as ill luck would have it we are fallen in on Bishop Overal's Convocation who can have no ease neither because of our Confusions But now I pray what have I said of that Monument they have left behind them No more than this And Bishop Overal 's Convocation Book comes up to it To what Why to this that a full Settlement under Extra-lineal Kings must be submitted to both by the Clergy and the People And doth it not come up full to this in their First Book and 28th Chapter and Canon Where it assigns this Obedience to the full Settlement even of ambitious Princes and Rebels procuring that thro' Settlement by wicked means And in the 27th Canon of the same Book it is resolved If any man therefore shall affirm that any person born a Subject and affirming by all the Arguments that Wit or Learning could devise that God had called him to murther the King do facto under which he lived yea tho' he should have first procured himself to be proclaimed or anointed King as Adonijah did c. he doth greatly err Now a King de facto with this Synod is one that is in by full and legal Forms of Settlement as by Submission or Continuance Lib. 1. Cap. 30 tho' attaining thereto by unjust means And such Submission to such thro' Settlement is what alone I quoted this Book for and whatsoever fate other mens Theories hereupon have incurred sure I am I have not declined the least from the Sense of that Synod who in those passages had an undoubted aspect on our several Revolutions and actual Settlements under those Extra-lineals whom the Lawyers have styled Kings de facto by a Distinction from those that are de jure whose terms herein the Convocation used Otherwise their Determinations herein could be of no use to ratifie any Settlements past nor to direct us in time to come how to end our Confusions or when to be at peace Dyscher At last you very gravely give us your Opinion that in the late Oath of Allegiance the word Successors was added after Heirs on this very self same Ground that tho' Heirs by the Ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extra-ordinary This it is for men to give their Opinions without Book and without any other consideration than to pervert the State of the Case Had you given your self the small Trouble to read over the Oath you could not for shame have put this interpretation upon it for the express words of it are Lawful Successors which follow the word Heirs by way of Limitation or Restraint to shew that none shall succeed but the Legal Heir And thus Sir the words of the Oath instead of admitting plainly and peremptorily exclude your extra-ordinary Successors and extra-lineal Kings Thus your new invention hath added a fresh absurdity instead of being a remedy to those many others which your Party run into upon Discourses of this Matter And tho' you mince the matter yet you might have been so bold to say the Oath requires Allegiance to unlawful Successors as what you
Queen Mary upon her Fathers Abdication Now when you or your Prompters perform either of these Exploits then use your invective Powers even unto hoarsness but till then 't will not be prudent at the same time to be censorious rude and insincere too But I will not discourage you from going on I pray proceed in your Charge Dyscher When you had asserted that Extra-lineal Successors may in extra-ordinary Cases be Legal * Sol. Ab. p. 5. I pressed you to shew how he can be Legal that thrusts out the Legal King or Legal Successor And you strained a point to make him so But let us see your fine Art of proving Right Wrong and Wrong Right Your Discourse of Kings thrusting out Kings is a direct thrusting out Right and encouraging and justifying Ambitious Persons in embroyling the World in perpetual Wars and Confusions But I shall not expose it as it deserves because it is nothing to the purpose of a plain known Right and no Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Sir I think my self obliged to scrape a Leg once or twice to you for your eminent tenderness in exposing my designs in inverting the Characters of Right and Wrong But I pray what fouler exposition had you behind the Veil than this that I thrust out Right and animate men to embroil the World in Blood and Ruins If your Razor be tender yet you have a pretty close Hand which yet I am willing to bear considering that your Cause is in ipsâ acie novaculae But if I may expound your word Expose in your true sense it will signifie Answer and then on my Conscience you were in the Right of it For to answer it as it deserves is either to confute or confess it but you are not ingenious enough to do one and less ingenuous than to do the other But perhaps it was an inconsiderable piece of Impiety Let us see then what was this Draconick Incendiary Mormo of mine Why this verily * Sol. Ab. p. 5. One King by a Legal War may thrust out him that till he was thrust out was Legal King of his own People For the first offending Prince loses not his Sovereignty to the offended meerly by the offence till actually thrust out by the offended This I think is the general Law of the Trumpet and allowed for valid among all Nations But if you doubt let us refer the point to the French King whom You cannot suspect of Unfaithfulness to You or Your Cause But if the War be altogether Legal upon Offences that will warrant all the process of it till the Offender leaves his Dominions in the hands of the injured Conqueror a Just Change may follow here without justifying Illegal Wars and Rapins of unprovoked and injurious Powers Which tho' it be a Truth most clearly innocent yet a calumny was necessary to keep up the Ball and use a Talent But let this be I pray Sir how shew you that this is nothing to our purpose Dyscher If you would make a fair answer here you ought to give a direct Answer to this Question If a Person having really no Right doth disclaim any Right to a thing and by publick Declarations doth profess that he makes no Pretentions to it nor hath any Design to disturb another in his Right I say if this Person shall by ill Arts seize it doth this notwithstanding all his Protestations and Declarations to the contrary even against all Right and Reason create him a Right whether he will or no c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Here I confess you have taken a secure way to enclose my Answer to your side And as you have set the Question in learned light I answer to your Hearts content that such a Person shall hereby have no Right either with or against his will And to all such Questions I had given you a round and comprehensive Answer before to the same purpose tho' it so often escapes your notice belike for its inconsiderableness Yet it being a right Answer you shall have it in both Ears whether you will or no. And it was such * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or Right of War yet if he doth so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself upon the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practices of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determin for us in such Exigences as is manifest in the long Contentions and many Turns between the Houses of York and Lancaster and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things And again * Sol. Ab. p. 6. Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission So that taking Right for a Title founded in real Justice no man really can have Right in the sight of God by a meer unjust Act or Acquisition And yet tho' the preparations to acquire new Kingdoms or Dominions be unjust if that very constituent Act which transfers the Possession does at the same time infringe no mans present and permanent Right such possession becomes Rightful But all this is nothing to the purpose For our Question is only of who or what is formally legal not what is in real honesty morally Rightful For all Possession which a man obtains by legal forms of Process either in War or Peace is formally and apparently Legal to all Civil Purposes and Constitutions tho' the Cause obtaining be far from being really and morally right And a man by legal Judgment may de facto be put into possession of what another man hath a real Right to so that the possessor shall have the Legal Form of Title in what is really anothers Due And in all such Cases all Affairs belonging to such Estate follow the Legal Tenure of the Possessor who is therefore in Law taken as bonae fidei possessor And even antecedently to Judgement quiet possession in a private Estate tho' slipt into by cunning Frauds and Artifices against which there is no Civil Law is taken by the Law for formally Legal till the Occupant loses it either by Art or Judgment Now all independent Persons and Princes that are subject to no Judicial Tribunal contend by War not Law and what they settle themselves in by the forms consequent upon War they have such a formal Title to as the Laws of War and Revolutions yield them and no other tho' whether Cause is just and consequently thereupon whose Possession is honestly rightful none can effectually judge but God amidst so many pretensions And in such Turns the Subject People must or may lawfully yield to the formal Titles or Fates of War since they are not authoritative Judges on the Causes or Rights of
doubt of the Lineal Right will you require them to swear Allegiance to a doubted Title If not then what allowances do you concede under these doubted Lancastrian Reigns Or what Judgment pass you on the Allegiance then always given For so there must have been none sworn at all But if you will require a Nation to swear to a doubted Title does that Oath import an assertion of Right or no If it does then you will require a Nation to affirm that upon Oath of which confessedly they are not certain and that is one degree of Perjury If such Oath does not implicitly at least assert Right then it is no acknowledgment of Right nor founded on the presumption of it which yet however you all contend for to render our present Allegiance in this point perjurious But it is hardly possible to suppose a whole Nation in doubt when there are Competitions For the Competitors and their Complices or Parties use absolutely to assert their Right without any doubt or pretence of doubting and then they that doubt tho' the generality must either suspend or go over upon uncertain Trust whereby they may exclude the Right unawares But if you will make allowances in doubtful Cases then what think you of the Questions arising upon King James's Desertion Did they afford any possible occasion or ground for disputation and scrutiny If so then it ministred doubts to be discussed and the Case was dubitable But 't is a vanity for you to say that it gave no possibility of disputation for they that disputed it thought otherwise and between their and your Opinions doubts must arise herein among the multitude to whom therefore your great allowances are to be made in their present Allegiance But to deal plainly with you I think no Man or Nation is to swear upon what is to them dubitable as what is honestly rightful may be but what is visibly formally and judicially Legal cannot be as coming home to the Senses of the Subject by publick ways of notice and operation and therefore all suspences and personal doubts must herein concede to such judicial Determinations to put an End to all those Miseries with which you unjustly charge us and maliciously threaten us Dyscher As for the Cession you mention you would do well to prove it a little better before you thus run away with it for granted You know we deny it and have given our Reasons for it to which I know no Answer returned unless it be Goals Fines and Pillories and threatnings to help it with Hemp. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 22. Eucher I think upon recollection you may find very full proof of the Cession already made but at your demand I will offer you another which tho' not better in it self yet will be better for you because it is of your own approbation Dyscher I pray what is that Eucher Do you not excuse the Desertion from being a Cession because he went away to save his Life Dyscher Yes I do See T. B's 2d Lett. p. 15. Eucher Did you not tell me at our last Conference * Sol. Ab. p. 22. that Abiathar at Solomons command went of to Anathoth to save his Life thereby And yet that his Priesthood determined by his own voluntary Cession herein Dyscher I have indeed owned * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 36. that it was a manifest Cession on Abiathar's part and I think it was well proved but then Abiathar did not oppose a claim as King James does Eucher If you mean a verbal owning the Right of the High-Priesthood 't is a hard matter to judge what Abiathar might say hereupon at Anathoth Yet admitting his silence under Solomon's Sentence and his Recession to Anathoth to be a real Cession from his Office in Law this being once effectually past and after claim could not have nulled this Cession any more than he * Vindic. of Depr Bish p. 70. that quitted his See by leaving the Omophorion could null that Act of Resignation by a verbal Protestation to the contrary For such Cession being a positive Act consists in quitting an Office thereby vacant and when that is filled with another Officer 't is too late for the Cedent or Deserter to renew a Claim and say his Desertion was no Cession which is nothing else but a vain Protestation against manifest fact which is perfectly King James's Case Dyscher He had need of a Case-hardned Face that will undertake to defend what you say that * Sol. Ab. p. 5. the Hereditary Succession was not violently broken but altered by the Consent of the next Heirs Sir it was broken with a witness for there were four before your Idol and now there are six and will you say there was no violence when our Native Prince was close confined in his own Kingdom But now you will needs persuade us that this was done with consent Now you would have done well to have produced the consent of King James and the Prince of Wales who ought to be served in the first place And then as for the two Princesses whom certainly you mean by those whom you fasly call the next Heirs they may dispose of their own as they please but they ought not cannot give away anothers Right Only as to the Princess Ann of Denmark if she have given up her Right it will concern her for her safety to make it as publick as she can but if she have not given it away it then perhaps may concern her to make as much haste after her Father as may be and to carry her Son with her out of Herod 's Clutches for if her Sister should die 't is ten to one it comes too late T. B's 2d Lett. p. 22. Eucher I thought when you and I began Conferences on this Subject we should have only talked of Casuistical Points in order to the information and conduct of our Consciences and not have deviated into such an Unchristian and Seditious Railings And it grieves me on your behalf to the very bottom of my Soul to experience so much disingenuous bitterness in a man of your Character But since you are so unhappy as to know no bounds of moderation I must touch your miscarriages a little lightly After the Cession of King James I said the Succession was not violently broken And in answer to this you mentioned the Dutch Guards assigned by the Prince to attend King James before his Cession And this you falsly call a close confinement for had it been such how had he so easie liberty of going off But whatever this was it was before the Cession and then what is this to the after proceedings of the Convention of which alone I was speaking as not violent Then you as improperly require the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales who must be served first as antecedent in the Course of Descent Now I must tell you that there are among us some who thro' joy of our
a perpetual Servitude by Oath or other forms of engagement which they under such Exigences may lawfully yield to And proportionably the Estates of any Nation may be thus pressed by an irresistible Prince and thereupon lawfully submit to that injurious Demand of such Prince Nay if any Prince and the fiduciary Council of any Nation concert to oppress the Subject People by an unjust demand of Submission they being not only in Fact but Legal Constition uncapable to resist may for the same reason contract Submission or Legal Allegiance when their former Lord hath left them without order to shift for themselves and acts not within his Sphere as heretofore For herein you do not injure him but save your self which he has no right in such cases to deny you And this at least is the Case of all those who have taken the Oath of New Allegiance without doing any thing else in the Revolution tho' the Prince and our Convention had really done King James and us wrong For we could neither in Right nor Fact oppose it for our Representatives and the Lords having determined upon the Nation we were inhabil to censure their Judgement and consequently to oppose or subvert what we had no Authority to condemn Dyscher Much such another instance is * Sol. Ab. p. 6 7. your Lord of a Mannor Let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lords Tenants conspire against their lawful Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him Sir you may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your honesty for it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher I observe two grand defects in this Reply One that 't is not supposably legal that all the Tenants in the Mannor can by Legal Forms of Judgment dispossess a Lawful and possess a wrong Person into the Lordship of a Mannor because these Tenants are not Judges in Law And any other violent and illegal Forms of Expulsion and Admission quadrate not with our Case But Secondly 'T is a very silly supposition and never any where exemplified in Fact that all the Tenants under a state of National Government should violently out a true and put in a wrong Landlord vi armis and swear and pay the wrong Possessor all the Duties of the Homage accustomed when the Lord that is in by Law will bring the strength of the Country to reduce them And Thirdly You cannot duly apply this to our present Case of Allegiance For all King James's Subjects did not concur to out him either violently or judicially nor consequently to bring in the Stranger which is the form in which you state the Case of Rebellious Tenants Otherwise however my parallel holds good that if a great many of the Tenants conspire with a Stranger and bribe the Judges to a corrupt Judgment against the old true Landlord who being thereby ejected the Stranger comes in by forms of Law I say still the rest innocent Tenants tho' conscious of the Wrong may swear Homage and Fealty to the New de facto Landlord And so here put the Case as you would have it at the worst that never so great a part of King James's Subjects had with the Prince of Orange actually conspired against him and made him fly and thereupon a National Court assembling to sit upon the Tenure of his Estate had been corrupted to give wrong Judgment against him for the Prince yet the form of Process being legal the innocent Subjects may or must take him for their Royal Landlord that is in by Forms of Law and swear him the customary Homage and Fealty But for the justice of that Judgment I have fully advocated already and so in this place shall have no need to make repetition Dyscher But let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset You say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge King William with subjection to King James c. But does a Nephew or a Son in Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher Since I must bear the penance of answering your loose and impertinent Questions so often inculcated know you then that as to the point of Duty a Nephew owes an Uncle and a Son in Law owes his Father in Law Reverence on the account of those Relations if the Superior Relation loses not his Title to that Reverence by ill usage For if an Uncle shall misuse a Nephew or a Father in Law the Son in Law without Cause and will not fairly adjust or refer their differences upon demand the Nephew and Son in Law owe no respect at all for that such Uncle and Father in Law is worse than a stranger and a most unnatural Enemy And therefore the Nephew and Son in Law having not derived their Being Maintenance nor Education from the Uncle and Father in Law and being under no present dependence on them are free to vindicate their Gauses against such Uncle and Father in Law by those ways of defence that they are legally capable of either by Law Arbitration or War As for injustice you know I am no Advocate for it and therefore your Interrogation hereupon with your Reflection upon his Majesty is as invidious toward me as injurious towards his Majesty as I have before abundantly shewed Dyscher The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. she is in Duty bound to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and that with a more plenary consent if she judges her Husbands Cause to be just in it self But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is thus bound to follow her Husband thro' thick and thin let her have a care how she becomes partner in his sins But doth the Duty of a Wife take away the Relation of a Child They may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent But yet the great end of these Relations is to strengthen and support and not to destroy each other Besides your Reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there
would arise another Relation and then he in these Dominions must follow her Fortunes not she his But to let this pass all that has been done is contrary to the Duties of those Relations which they were and are under by the Fifth Commandment T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher But all this is but noise and shuffle For why had you not openly denied or yielded the truth of my Proposition that a Wife is to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority against the will of her Father if she thinks her Husbands Case to be just For tho' you will say * These words I unawares omitted in the last Citation of T.B. This Judgment is not worth a Farthing except the Cause be just in it self Yet be it just or unjust she must act upon her own judgment of it And to what purpose have you such a care that she follow him not thro' thick and thin in his sins Did I ever assert that liberty to a Wife or to the Princess of Orange Do not I expresly except out of this Case * Sol. Ab. p. 7. all violations of all those Decencies that are yet notwithstanding her Marriage due by the Fifth Commandment to her Father which are consistent with her Husbands Rights and Interests and in her Rightful Power to perform But this was another inconsiderable which you in great sincerity have omitted that it might not justifie my piety to the Fifth Commandment and prevent all occasion of reproach But I think you are a very loose Casuist for a Wife between the Authorities of Husband and Father if you think that the Husbands Power limits the Wife only in those Commands of the Father that are in themselves inconsistent with the Duties of a Wife whether the Husbands prohibition intervene or no for except this be your meaning 't is nothing to the purpose nor against me For it is not the Husbands Power but the Law of God that binds the Wife from the violation of her Duties to her Husband as it does bind her to keep her Duties to her Parents and all other persons even Subjects that have no power over her But by your favour if a Father commands a Married Daughter in any indifferent thing importing in it self no ill to her Husband she has no absolute Authority to promise or do it but on grant or just presumption of her Husbands leave for if he forbid it at any time before it is done the Wives hands are in duty bound up from the performance and how faulty soever the Son in Law be in his perverse and needless inhibitions the Daughter is discharged of all Guilt in the non-compliance to her Fa-Father So that strictly speaking all Imperial Power meerly human is in things that in themselves are left at liberty by the Laws of God And now whether I have said any thing more or worse than this speak out without wrigling and subterfuge And yet to deal openly with you and piously I hope with the Laws of my Creator I think there is a great latitude of equity in this Fifth Commandment and that it consists not in a meer indivisible point nor is founded meerly in the Relation but the Causes and Designs of it by the Ordinance of God and Nature For Parents being Vice-Gods to their Children while under their Family and Dominion the more they Resemble God in their Offices of Piety especially toward God and their Children the more their Children are bound to honour them even when they are sent off from the House of their Parents to found new Families and to subsist freely by themselves For tho' the ties of proper subjection are then loosed yet the Duties of Honour still remain uncancelled But if the Parents recede from their Piety toward God the common and Supreamest Father of all the greater this impiety of Parents is the less Honour is due to them even from their own Children And I truly am of Opinion that if such Impiety grow up to perfect Atheism or Defiance of God from which all the long and tender Supplications of the Children cannot reduce them the Chidren are discharged from all the Offices of Personal Honour toward them tho' not of Pity and Compassion for them And upon this ground the Law of Moses does not exempt Enticers to Idolatry from the Vengeance even of the nearest Relations Deut. 13.6 to 11. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy Bosom or thy Friend which is as thine own Soul entice thee saying Let us go and serve other Gods Thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him neither shall thine Eye pity him neither shalt thou spare neither shalt thou conceal him But thou shalt surely kill him thine Hand shall be first upon him to put him to death and afterward the Hand of all the People And thou shalt stone him with Stones that he die because he sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God c. So that all such Persons were by the Law of God looked on as a common Pestilence not to be honoured loved or cherished but destroyed by the nearest Relations Dyscher But Parents here being omitted out of this exact Catalogue of other Relations it shews them to be not within this Law and therefore that this Law does not derogate from the Honour due to Parents by the Fifth Commandment tho' they entice their Children to Idolatry the Reason being grounded on the Authority of Parents over Children which would be nulled if Children might prosecute this Law upon their Parents And for this Cause also by this Law the Wife is not required to destroy her Idolatrous Husband Eucher If you will literally interpret this Law only of the very Relations that are expressed than all other even less Relations will be exempt which is unreasonable But if you will argue a majori ad minus that if none of these Relations are exempt surely no less Relations ought to be judged discharged then the relation of Parents to Children being less than that of the Wife to the Husband and no greater than that of Children to Parents will be concluded within this Law Nor could their Natural Authority indemnifie them for all that was from and under God and was ipso facto forfeit whensoever they rejected God for Idols Otherwise such an exempted Authority of Parents must have been a Snare to the Children to draw them from the Lord their God or at least to restrain them from asserting their God impartially against all his Enemies And in the same Chapter Idolatrous Cities were to be utterly destroyed by all the rest of the People without regard to any Relations dwelling in them for when the Judgment of God was past upon them all Natural Relation and Authority ceased as to all consequent offices of Respect Love or Honour when the impious Apostates were convict and doomed to excision 'T is true indeed that Law being in its
all Christendom at this day principally seemeth to depend And this and all that I have said to you I speak with all sincerity which if it persuade not you I cannot help that but I think it is a reasonable ground for that Allegiance which I have not carelesly or inconsiderately given Dyscher You do us manifest injustice when you suppose or feign that we admit no Settlement under Powers procured by the breach of Gods Commandments And this in all reason you must do knowingly and wilfully because I think there is not one who on our behalf hath concerned himself in the matter of the Convocation-Book but hath stated this Question and always admitted a thorow Settlement whatever were the means whereby it was procured 'T is true we neither commend nor encourage such wicked doings but on the other hand we do not think Dominion to be founded in Grace and that a man cannot have a good Title unless he be a good Christian We can mourn over the bad man whilst we submit to the good Title But we complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title to which we may submit For who can own that to be a good Title against which there are prior and better Titles in being contesting and claiming Or who can take that for a Settlement where a bad Title by bad means is maintained against a just and good Title T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. We say that a full Settlement in one while another who has Right claims and endavours to recover his Right is contradictory nonsense T.B. ibid. p. 40. Eucher I very well know and freely own that all your Disputations upon the Convocation-Book do in terms allow a full Settlement however procured tho' you contradict the Convocation in your notions of a thorow Settlement But it does not therefore follow that all of your Party think so The most that I have orally discoursed stand upon the breach of the Moral Laws as the grand exception against the Right on which only they can swear Allegiance since say they Allegiance follows Right and Right cannot be founded in Acts morally Evil Note That in Sol. Ab. p. 8. I did not make Dyscheres positively to deny Submission to all Settlements procured by breach of Gods Commandments because I know they do not all deny it but because it is the common Objection with most of them in point of Conscience I made Dyscheres reply not should say No and essentially injurious and consequently by such there be be no full or thorow form of Settlement And if you will give me leave to deliver my Opinion I think if Gods Providence had not so disposed of things as to bring that absolutely No but what if I Book into publick Light by the hand of my Lord Arch-Bishop Sancroft in this very Juncture all your Pleas would have chiefly stuck in the Laws of God whose violation with you should have been alone sufficient to have nulled all Rights and Titles But now as it is you are pinched by the Authority and the Edition of that Book and forced against your wills to own it and have no relief but in forced Arts of Evasion Such is that demure Protestation that you do not think Dominion founded in Grace which you know was and is a pretence toto coelo distant from our matter as claiming all Secular Rights by virtue of their Religious Character or Election But will you allow that a full and legal form of Settlement can be founded in any Act really injurious I would have you speak out without boggling or clouting your Tongue If not then the Defect of Plenitude in such Settlements stands in the iniquity and breach of moral Justice and Gods Commandments And in truth this at last is the true English of all those Reasons on which you complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title tho' those Reasons are wrapped up in forms of words chiefly relating to Civil Laws For the sum of all is the Possession of another mans Right is no full Settlement because it has no good Title as being a violation of Right and Gods Commandments Of which I shall have occasion perhaps to discourse more anon In the mean time as I have already given you part of my sense herein so will I now deliver and settle it as full viz. That when several persons claim Right then pendente lite either in Law or War the Legal Presumption of Right must be for the quiet Possessor but after judgment given to be in the person to whom it is adjudged till reverse of judgement and all other antecedent Titles and Pretensions are to be deemed null and cessant to all Civil Effects and Constructions whatsoever the Errors or mens private Senses herein may be and the condemned Titles must not be taken to be good and still in being tho' new claims and contestations may be promoted by the outed Party Which being premised I can easily yield you that that can be no good Title against which there are prior or better Titles apparently in being contesting and claiming and that it is no full and Legal Settlement where an apparently bad Title is by bad means apparently maintained against a Title apparently just and good But this is not to be taken in a judged Cause But who was Judge between King James and King William while the former disputed the new Possession of the later with the Sword to determine the Civil Practice of the Nation If none then were we to abide by King Williams quiet form of possession If there were any Judge it was foreign or domestick Now there neither was nor could be a foreign Judge to oblige us if domestick it was either private or publick if private that cannot oblige the whole Nation if publick then it was in the Estates convened but they have judged King James's Title void and Cessant and not in being and so tho' extrajudicially claimed neither just nor good But if you will neither allow quiet Possession nor publick Judgment as a Rule to State Titles Legally but will throw up all to private Opinions or Humours you dissolve all the ties of Civil Society into Eternal Wars and Commotions But because you clamour that we have no Settlement I will make further Advances and prove the Admission of their Majesties by the Estates of this Land to be a full and proper Settlement tho' against King James's claim and contest from the Laws of this Land the universal Usage of all Nations natural Reason and Holy Scripture Dyscher This is a teeming Promise have a care lest the Production be ridiculous Eucher First then I begin with the common Laws of this Nation which are nothing else but the constant and general Customs of England which Lawyers justifie for good and binding upon a fair presumption of their Descent to us from some immemorial Compositions Real and National made by our Fore-fathers whose Acts and Contracts
for future Ages do by the Laws of all Nations bind their Posterities that are yet in their Loins as in the lowest degree of minority till they are validly vacated And such Obligations are justified by sacred Instances as in the Oath of Jacob's Children to carry Joseph's Bones out of Egypt in the Covenants between God and Noah Abraham Moses in the League of Israel with Gibcon and all other their National Contracts and the Laws of Jonadab on the Rechabites c. So that fidelity to the Contracts Ordinances and Compositions Real of our Fathers and Ancestors obliges us to the Customs that yet continue as the Common Laws of England from that supposed Original And thus their Legal Obligation is founded not in Force but in Truth and Honesty Which being premised I add that our Nation in these two last Parliaments after a full Debate hath judged their Admission of King William and Queen Mary according to our Laws Legal and the second Parliament hath moreover recognized them King and Queen of Right according to those Laws And the first Parliament upon this Constitution fixed on them the full Allegiance of the Subject to be secured by Oath as much as to any other Kings whatsoever that so they might thro'ly make this present Settlement full and entire which therefore they judged to be such according to our Laws without any concurrence and notwithstanding the opposition of the Late King which on his Cession or Abdication could in their Judgment create no defect in this present Settlement since the Confusion and Anarchy we were put into thereby did in their Judgments give them a Legal Right to resettle as they could under the then Exigences for the Common Preservation nor did they judge us tied to a State of continued Anarchy during King James's pleasure that while he provided for himself in France by his own private Counsels without the consent of the Nation we should be at no liberty at home to provide for our selves against a Ruin otherwise impendent and inevitable And if we look back to all the Changes in the Succession ever since there have been two Houses of Parliament the full and final Settlement after all Ruptures Disorders and Disputes hath determined in the Recognitions and Allegiances enacted by these Parliaments even without the consent and against the presumed claim of the outed Competitors tho' these were sometimes Lineal Heirs and present in the Land Much less then is such consent or cessation of pretence or claim in the relinquishing and absent Competitors necessary to the fulness and validity of such Settlements And tho' the Dispossessed afterward moved Stirs and Wars against those past Settlements that becomes no Argument against their real plenitude for the time being in form of Law for by those new Commotions they designed to reduce themselves into such a full form of Settlement by Parliamentary Recognitions out of which by present Wars they designed to eject their settled Adversaries for to a fuller Advancement they could never raise themselves by the greatest force and successes whatsoever Thus all the precedent Usages in such cases lay before our Estates first in Convention and since that in Parliament and according to these have they made this Settlement as legally full and Obligatory as 't was possible as judging it to be so full in its own Nature and Reason without any present Defects or Capacities of addition Dyscher I wonder you cannot observe here what you readily can when it makes for you that the first Constituting Parliament did not recognize King William and Queen Mary to be de jure but excluded that Assertion out of the Oath But the second Parliament recognized their Right tho' hereby as you will say they added nothing of that intention to the Oath Now then the first Settlement to which those being tacked bears proportion going no further than a Constitution de facto was not at the full because it came not up to the fuller Recognition de jure which being judicially apparent is with you the Legal Form of Title and Ground of Allegiance And so the Oath being required to a Settlement that was not thro'ly full cannot by Bishop Overals Convocation Book be proved due from both Clergy and Laity for that the Settlement to be sworn to was herein defective And herein even Mr. Johnson is more sincere and honest than you who scorns to pay * Pres to the Argument p. 12 13 14. Allegiance upon any kind of Success or forms of Settlement except they are really founded upon Legal Right Eucher It will be as easie for you to observe as for me to remark that the Recognition is but a Declaration not a Constitution of Right and so adds nothing of Right that before was really wanting but more fully declares the Right that stands and is founded in the first Constitution which actually was at full before tho' not so fully declared this Recognition being designed not only to repress the Contradictions of their Majesties Right and Title but to compose as much as might be mens Doubts and Surmises and perhaps this your very Objection hereupon But whatsoever be the Rights Titles or Pretensions of Princes to Crowns antecedent to the actual Settlement they may be fair preparations and grounds of claim but they enter not into the essential form and constituent Reason of a full actual Settlement which commences and consists purely in a Legal Form of Admission by the Estates of this Realm judging for themselves that they may lawfully admit this or that Pretender or Sollicitor even when they are not permitted to judge any thing on the Right of his demand of such Admission which belongs to the Question de jure And to those that are thus de facto settled whether they had any real antecedent Right of claiming or no the National Allegiance is by publick Contract always given to the full without any distinguishing Measures Forms or Abatements And this is not only otherwise evident but is made more so by this present Recognition For this second Parliament that enacted this declarative Recognition of Right gave and could give no further Allegiance than had been before given on the meer Legal Form of Actual Settlement which they in their zeal would have done undoubtedly had they judged the first Settlement any wise deficient in it self or its Obligations to a plenary Allegiance which yet however is of no other form or virtue than that Allegiance which is always given even to meer Kings de facto Which shews the sense of our Nation to be that by our Law Allegiance is given to Kings not on the account of an antecedent real Title to the Crown but on the account of the Legal Form of Settlement into the Actual Possession thereof upon which there is no superiour Judge to hear nor determin Quarrels and Claims of Titles And you that require more to the nature of a full Settlement require more than the Convocation has done which assigns your
Opinion must concede in order to Publick Peace So that here your imprudent Zeal on false Notions of Loyalty hurries you into Principles absolutely Seditious and Destructive to the Legal Constitution of all Governments and particularly that which the Kings of England have themselves established Dyscher Well to put an End to this Disquisition upon our own Laws what have you to say for the Legality or fulness of your Settlement from the Usages or customary Practice of Nations Eucher I hope you do not require me to corrade a vast heap of Historical Instances National Decrees and Determinations of Civilians hereupon This would be to repeat whole Libraries to an evidence of one particular Custom But your own reading will inform you that under the pressing exigences of Anarchy and Ruin the Superiors or Agents of all People have ever authentically contracted a change of Government and Governours as to them then appeared necessary to the Common Preservation Dyscher 'T is so indeed upon Conquests which some have pretended here to the shame reproach and forfeiture of their Country as well as in contradiction to common Sense the pretences of your King and the Sense of your Parliament But where there are no Conquests 't is not so easie to adduce such Custom of Nations Eucher That the Nation was not conquered is most evident yet that King William in the Military Course grew stronger than King James who disbanded all his Forces and stooped to the prevailing Prince is as evident nor was this any False Doctrine in the sense of the Nation But to assert that hereby alone the Right of the Crown accrued to King William even without the consequent Admission and Contract of the Nation had he pleased to have taken it on the meer Right of the Sword is what is indeed contrary to all Law and Reason For the meer force or victory of the Sword gives no Right or Authority even over a vanquished People till they federally resign to the Conqueror and then much less doth it so in a Nation not conquered But to omit the Laws of pure Conquests there are instances enough of Abdications Cessions and Desertions as many I believe and more than of simple and proper Victories to set out the sense of all Nations by For upon all such the places quitted admitted such consequent Settlements as the straits they were cast into would permit as is manifest in the leaving of Garrisons Holds or Countries And the truth is there is the same reason upon all proper Conquests and other Surrendries that legitimates the admission of a Change viz. the necessity of preserving the Publick Body from ruins and devastations Dyscher I do not remember indeed any ininstance to the contrary in the practices of Nations for they perhaps have been and are as bad as we ready to for shift themselves upon any pinch but generally careless of and perfidious to their unfortunate Princes Interests But what Reason can you shew for it in our Case which is so very plain and obvious that we were at liberty to have preserved our Sovereign and our selves together and if so how can this Settlement be admitted for legal or be reputed full against the so just Claims of our real Sovereign Eucher Here again you transgress the proper limits of a private Judgment when you take upon you to say that we i. e. our Convention could have secured King James in his Throne and this Nation in its Rights and Properties But in the main point where you stick viz. the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales you are very unreasonable For shall he who at last put all his Subjects into confusion by his leaving the Government hinder us from settling till he give us his Consent Or must the Consent of a Infant be waited who if he ever was or yet is is in the custody and disposal of an Enemy King who would settle him and us too with a witness if he had but a lucky Wind and a fair Opportunity It is possible that an offended Prince may meditate revenge on a People that will not yield up all to the insatiable claims of boundless Prerogative And Desertion would be the cheapest surest and severest way of revenge if they must never settle again till he please to authorize them and this truly would be the strangest of all Prerogatives There are also that say that King James's Priests counselled and his Queen engaged him to go off on this very account that we might fall into such Plagues thro' our Divisions and unsettled Looseness as should enable him to return with an absolute plenitude of Arbitrary Power But not to depend on uncertain fames with their oblique constructions what can the legal language of that Cession speak to his Loyal People but this I have disbanded my Army and will not contest it with the Sword I shift for my self and must leave you to shift for your selves and settlement as you can Since I yield to my fears and necessities so may you If even a Natural Parent to save his own life leaves his Son to the mercy of his Enemies the Son may contract Peace and subjection to that his Fathers Enemy for his own preservation nor can the meer Natural Relation and Interest of the Father in the Son vacate moral Obligation of such Contract till that power of his Enemy over his Son be otherwise legally dissolved by the Laws of War Redemption or otherwise So that tho' we should allow you that all King James's Enemies sinned in procuring this new Settlement upon us all yet his most Loyal Subjects may most innocently submit from the reason of the thing and the virtual Concession hereunto in the voice of his Desertion which must be supposed as made to his faithful Adherents tho' not to his Enemies So that should he ever return again he could not in any justice punish the meer submission to this new Settlement in those who contributed nothing to it And you that refuse it refuse that liberty which his Desertion legally gave you by all Civil Interpretations All which put together should be of great might with you to admit the present submission as Legal Nor ought his resumed Contests to be taken as Legal or just bars to the contrary For if there were such a Virtual and Legal Concession in his Desertion the Estates of his People taking the benefit of it have provided for us a Settlement upon that Concession which being passed and confirmed the supposed revocation of that Concession by a new War or Inauthoritative Declarations is null void and unobliging And so here was tho' not a Verbal yet a Legal Censent of King James which is as much as you your selves can in reason require to the justifying our present Submission and to the plenitude of our present Settlement Dyscher * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. These are pretty tricks to catch Dotterils But above all your most amazing pretence for your Cause
ingredient to a full Settlement or the Obligations to Allegiance founded thereupon For if a Nations Settlement be not full under New Powers till all the former lineal Heirs be Extinct or cease making their claims from Forreign Dominions I know not how many Ages may sometimes be necessary to fill the Settlement and it will be very hard if submission thereto for want of such a ground of plenitude should be Treason and all Sanguinary Commotions against it Pious and Loyal till the claim of all the Succeeding Heirs Lineal shall surcease for ever Or if you will allow a term for Prescription against all after claims then you must allow that a Settlement attaining to Prescription may exclude a Native Right or that a Native Right ceases by such a Tract of Continuance If it excludes Right only then you are no more to comport with it than with present Settlements exclusive if the Right ceases I pray shew me by what equity mere time can destroy a right in me Anno. 93. which was whole and within Memory Anno. 92. especially since the Regestries of Lines Royal usually endure as just Records that will out-live the longest ocular Testimonies and personal Memories whatsoever For the reason why Prescription passes Title is when there is no Authentick Evidence or memorial to the contrary And I will further note that the same Laws of Nations which admit prescriptions as a form of Title do not therefore assert the Title really right in the original means of procuring it but only externally Legal for want of better Evidence Prescription in it self being the weakest form of Title that must give place to all others if verified in foro and its ground or reason is only a supposed Composition Real I say supposed only not Asserted And those very Laws of Nations do not always suppose those Compositions every way right but only Legally Authoritative and Settling and do indeed allow such present Settlements within memory to be as Legal and Valid as those which being out of record and beyond memory can but be supposed Legal and this with more reason because men can better judge of what is present than of what is past into a Tohu an Age in which all things are forgotten Dyscher You are very long and I am almost tired considering the Zeal that is in me Eucher I have kept you so long under the Fatigue because what I ever thought has lately appeared in your Prints that the total ground of the Schism between us lies in this point of Right For you all say that Allegiance follows a thorow Settlement but a thorow Settlement is founded in the Right of him that Reigneth So that if admit the wrong then immediately all our Prayers for him are Immoral Polluted and Abominable as conteining Imprecations against the right and justice of him that is wronged and giving God Praise for the Advancement of the Usurper which we blasphemously attribute to God Whence there follows a necessity that all good Bishops Priests and People renounce Communion in these Liturgies and with all that use them and that if hereupon they be deprived by the Usurpers of all the Publick Advantages of their Ministry they must keep up holy Ministrations among themselves for so the Rule is set and agreed for with most prodigious Zeal and no less Accuracy and Learning by your admirable Author of Christian Communion But I wonder this great Man did not see how Tottering and Casual the visible State of Religion then must be upon every turn of the secular State and the various Competitions for the Sovereingty For how is it possible that Godly Pastors and their Flocks can be all unanimously certain at all times whore the real Right and Justice lies when matters of Fact and Law are so remote from their Cognisance Nor will your evasion of doubtful Cases which you allow much to heal the matter For in all such cases some will assert an indubitable Right others a dubitable one and that on both sides at the same time And thus your indubitable Men must fall into a state of Schism or Separation from each other upon their contrariant confidences in the Right of the opposite Claimers And your dubitable men must either be neuter to all Communion or choose a Communion with one or other of the indubitables at all adventure which to do with a doubting mind is a Sin and Snare And so it is in our present case Some says 't is indubitable that K. James is King de jure and that K. William is not King at all others say as indubitably that K. James is not King at all but K. William is King de jure others own K. William to be King only de facto and K. James de jure others that are indubitably for his being de facto doubt his being de jure King And a great number through ignorance confide or doubt more or less in all these points which they cannot reach Now since Practice must follow Principles and rules of Conscience how shall we settle all these under one Religious Communion on that Authors Maxims There is no possible way but by following the direction of the Convocation Book in Obeying the thorow Settlement of the King de facto made by publick Submission or continuance the form of which being a point of Law not Religion must be determined and defined by the Supremest Domestick Judgment we have in Civils which Certainly is that of Parliament after whose Decisions we need no further Torment our selves in vain about Antecendent questions but consider the Right we have as well as Duty to Live quiet under Publick Formal and Judicial Settlements which we are to take as Gods Ordinance for the time being By which Rule we shall secure our selves from both Extreams either of owning forcible Entry for Legal Title or proper Settlements or of Asserting all Change of Government to be Invalid and unobliging as Contrary to the Law of God who we know changeth Times and Seasons and all the Kingdoms of the Earth and Dissolves and Resettles all the States of Men under proper Laws of Constitions according to the Just and Unsearchable Counsels of his Will And now I will only apply your Rules of Communion to our Case and so dismiss this Theorie If this present Settlement be full and the Judgment of the Nation herein against your Right then all your Prayers and Execrations against the present State are Irreligious Immoral Polluted and Abominable and under an ipso facto Anathema upon which all Christians must abhor your Communion even without any Ecclesiastical Sentence as being self-condemned and cut off And if all these Dangers and Snares await us upon every Civil Change upon Mens Private Cross Opinions about Right and Plenitude of Settlement Christian Religion Ecclesiastical Union could not have continued a Twelve-Month under the Changes of the Empire from Nero to Vespasian but must have Expired before it had been Exposed to the World And I desire
the Learned Casuist to Suit his Principles if he can with the Conditions and Capacities of Human Life and after Good endeavours this way he will find that these Civil Questions are not of Private Determination But if there be such Dreadful Dangers of Immoral Devotions on such Contested Rights of Government they Naturally ly on them who in Civil matters Oppose their Private Conceptions and Practices to Publick and Judicial Constitutions which is a Course in its own Nature formally Seditious and for that cause Un-Christian and may too truly and sadly Corrupt their Communion and Defile their Devotions who will not know the ways of Peace Dyscher You will needs suppose that if it be the Life of King James then it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Prince of this Crown But why may not both do it For because the Lawful King is Living and Claiming therefore the Commandments of God require of all his Subjects that they Pay him their Dutiful and Loyal Obedience They ought by all means to Support him in his Throne or Restore him to it as his Condition requires T. B. 2d Let. p. 20. Eucher In the Murther of a Parent King by his Son and Heir * Sol. Ab. p. 8. I proved that the sin did not Incapacitate the Parricide but that our Constitutions admit him to the Crown which you not being able to deny I conclude that Breach of Gods Commandments Nulls not a Title procured thereby And then you Assign the cause hereof that the Parent and all his Rights are Extinct by his Death but King James's Life and Contestation Diversifies his Case Then I rejoyn that it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Princes of this Crown but the Life and Contention of King James And is not this an Accurate and an undeniable Observation For if Breach of Gods Commandments either alone creates or with other Causes concurs to a Civil Incapacity then such Breach doth either partially or solely obstruct such capacity And if so the Murther of a Royal Father must be some Bar to the Succession of the Parricide But if it be none at all in that Case why should a less Sin against God Preclude a Title in another Case in Conjunction with another Cause which yet your selves will not dare deny to be alone Enclusive of King Williams Title Here then I will sift you upon this Point Would the continued being and Claim of King James Incapacitate King William of the Royal Title if King William had never broken any Commandment of God or No If you say Yea then the Breach of Gods Commandments Contributes nothing to King Williams Incapacity which alone ariseth by it self from the Life and Claim of King James it being Naturally impossible for two Men to be Total and Separate Proprietors of the same Right at one time a truth not at all belonging to Ethic's or Divinity If you say No then you yield that King William may be Entitled to King James's his Throne without breaking Gods Commandments even during the permanency of King James his Life and Right And han't you hereby well amended the matter But such are the results of affected Sophistries especially when they are Impertinent also Now that yours are so will be hence Manifest For our Question last was whether no Settlements procured by Breach of Gods Commandments must be Submitted to and particularly such as follow the Extinction of the former Proprietors Tenure and Title through such ill means And now you Answer me that Gods Commandments do Incapacitate King William of King James's Crown because King James's Title is not Extinct but Lives with him Which if it had been true I should also have denied King William a capacity to the Title not from the Moral Law but from Natural and Legal Impossibility And therefore I suppose King James's Tenure first Extinct when I say * Sol. Ab. p. 8. But if His Tenure be Extinct as it hath been Publickly judged by this Nation our Oath to him Ceases tho' be contend never so much for the Recovery And there I take it for necessary that the Judgment of the Nation must overballance all your contrary private Opinions as to all our publick Duties and Obligations Now when your words are disinvolved they amount to no more than this that the Law of God forbids one Man to seize on another Mans Permanent Right and Title in which as it is nothing to the Rhombus so you have no adversary But this is not your second or single Failure but here appears a third point of Ignorance for our Question was not what Gods Comments do forbid but whether the doing what God forbids in order to the procuring formal Titles and Tenures in Law by the real or Judicial Extinction of another Mans Tenures does Create a Civil Incapacity or Nullity in the Tenure so acquired This is what I deny and I defie you to Prove The instance of a Royal Heir upon the Murther of his Father is an unmovable Argument for me for tho' the Laws of God forbid him to procure the Crown that way yet if he violates those Duties the Laws of God do not null the Tenure acquired by forbidden Wickedness The Law of God forbad David to Usurp Vriah's wife while the Hittite's Title in her continued with his Life and the King might actually keep her but by no Legal form of Tenure The same Law of God forbad the King to Murther Vriah with the Sword of the Children of Ammon in order to a Matrimonial Tenure of his wife Yet when that wickedness was compleated the Title of the King in Bathsheba was Legal and valid even by the Judgment and Ratification of God himself Nay when Ahab had slain Naboth by Judicial Condemnation for falsly imputed Blasphemy the form of Title by which he after enjoyed Naboths Vine yard was Legal by Judicial Forfeiture tho' it were Morally unjust in the sight of God for had there been a Civil Nullity therein it had been necessary for him to have compassed Naboths Death by Capital Sentence in order to a Civil Title which Jezebel procured for him this way to avoid the Odium of open and formal Un-entitled Usurpation So that had your Loud Obloquies against their Majesties morals been never so true Yet King James's Tenure being Extinct doth not preclude a Civil Title in their present Majesties which we are now to abide by and defend by the greatest Suffrage of Gods Laws Reason and the Laws of Nations at which expression I have heard that your Friend T. B. winds up his Mouth and * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 26. thanks God he hath not so Learned Jesus Christ And it is like to be true for he seems to have Learn'd but little of him at least in his Doctrine Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly of heart and ye shall find rest to your Souls Dyscher To the Objection that Allegiance seemeth to imply
it into the body of the Oath and besides they knew it would have made many Persons abhor it but it is plain this they designed and tricked upon you Hence you may perceive that your slippery Remark will not deliver you from the Intention of the Imposer T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27. Eucher This Discourse is so involved and you talk of an Imposer so like an Imposer that it is somewhat difficult to trace out your Sense Yet this I will endeavour and if I can be lucky I will give you my Sense of it Here then we are to consider the Intentions first of the Constituting Parliament or Convention secondly of the Recognizing Parliament and thirdly of their Majesties in the Imposition of the Oath First then * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I acknowledged that the Constituting as well as ensuing Parliament did judge it in their Lawful Right rebus sic stantibus to admit King William and Queen Mary And so they always judge that they for their part act Lawfully and of Right when they admit only a King de facto either when unlawfully forced or otherwise necessitated thereunto by insuperable Exigencies And so Men may Honestly for their part contract faithful Obedience to their Piratick Masters to preserve themselves tho' unlawfully brought into that Necessity This being done by the first Parliament and that in their Judgment on their part lawfully and justly they consider for an Oath of Allegiance always usual upon such new Constitutions And hereupon a Motion was made for an Assertion of Right to be inserted into the Oath but it was rejected This must therefore in legal construction evince that their intention in the Enacted Oath did not imply an Assertion of Right For tho' you can according to the Temper you are of opprobriously tax the Wisdom and Gravity of that Great Assembly yet we are obliged only to an open and sincere Intention not a tricked one especially that which you would trick upon them and us too that you might blacken and reproach our Innocency tho' yet how we could be tricked out of our Senses if Allegiance manifestly includes Right as you say I cannot divine However herein are two points of Right observable one in their Majesties taking the Crown and another in the Convention in the admission of them thereto And in both these they obliged us to Swear no Assertion but only as * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I told you to promise that Allegiance due by our Laws to Kings thus actually admitted without any other charge upon us to Swear the Justice and Rectitude of their Proceedings of which there is no competent or superiour Judge or Witness but God Secondly After the Constituting comes the Recognizing Parliament who added a Declaration of their Majesties Right in taking and possessing the Crown as well as of the Rectitude of our Admission for this makes up the Title de Jure in their Majesties This might be the mental intention of the first Parliament but it was not by them promulgate or recognized which omission was therefore supplied by the second Parliament But notwithstanding this Recognition of Right they neither added nor altered any thing as to the Oath but that still stood and yet stands in its first Intention which it received wholly and solely from the first Parliament So that the first Parliament discharging us from an Assertion of Right in their and their Majesties Proceedings and Settlement in that Oath and the second Parliament doing nothing to the Oath it does not by its Recognition charge us to Swear more or otherwise than the first had done So that all the Right that can fairly be supposed owned and imported in taking and imposing that Oath is that private Subjects have a Right to Swear and pay that Allegiance which the Estates have thus fixed And here also we must distinguish between the Intentions of Judgments and Acts of Parliaments in all those Parts Points and Articles which the Subject Swears nothing to and those particular words or points which are directly set in the Oath and so proposed to common Observation For the former only oblige the Conscience of the Subject to exteriour and civil Duties without involving any interiour Censure or Sense upon the Moral Integrity and Conscience of our Masters But an Oath asserting the Moral Justice of Humane Intentions or Procedures is a dangerous snare in all Cases above a Man's understanding liable to debate doubt or question as all publick Politicks generally are especially with the Vulgar And if a Man may be allowed with Modesty to guess at the Piety of his Superiours it seems it is such a snare as the Parliament never intended to lay for themselves and therefore not for us for whom they must have began the Example For 't is rational to believe that most of the Members that really were of and for the Opinion de Jure as well on their Majesties Measures as their own in this Settlement would not willingly have Sworn that Right absolutely tho' they would have Sworn their belief of it For Matters of Fact of which alone we can be certainly conscious either by our outer or inner Senses are the only proper Matter of Assertions and especially legal Depositions But Points of Law and Right concerning Matters of Fact are more remote from that evidence and clearness of Sense and Perception than to be given upon Oath and are delivered by Courts as Judicial Opinions only that pass into a Civil Effect tho' the Judges if put to it would not always not any time willingly Swear the Infallibility of such Judgments especially the doubtful or dissenting Judges against their own private and personal apprehensions Thus then in Parliament the Matters of Fact appeared evident enough to the Houses but the Points of Law arising upon the Facts underwent much and long discussion upon which at last the Judgment for Abdication and an actual vacancy passed so that in their Opinion they for their part might in that State of Affairs proceed to this Settlement and upon these Opinions they acted as taking them for True Legal and Right Yet considering that most of both Houses were not Lawyers it is not imaginable that they could willingly have Sworn the certain and absolute Rectitude of these Opinions especially they who were of contrary Sentiments but over-ruled by the majority And hence the Assertion of Right was rejected from the Oath And I wish all Projectors of Oaths in points of Law Title and matters without our reach or power would follow and reverence the Exemplary Wisdom and Tenderness of our Parliaments herein that no tricks nor traps may be laid for Consciences in a State and Age in which we have given them so profuse a liberty But to return from this Progression the alteration from the old or last Form made in this Oath by the designed omission of asserted Right argues an intentional discharge of that difficulty or doubt in this present Oath which has nothing in
it Testimonially affirmative of other Mens Morals but only promissory of each Man 's legal Subjection which implies no positive Assent to the Moral Justice of the Constitution For Allegiance is not only personal but local also due in great measure as well from Foreign Sojourners as from Natives and what may be as well required upon Oath of Strangers during there abode here who yet however are not engaged to maintain the real Rectitude of our Establishments And tho' a Native Allegiance be a closer and more perpetual Tie to several especial Offices and Duties yet while the Form of its Engagement is purely promissory it obliges us to look back to no further dark Originals than the legal Forms of actual Settlement and Recognition So Sheriffs by their Oath are obliged to Execute Royal and Judicial Orders and Decrees of State and Courts in legal Forms directed to them yet do they not Swear the Rectitude of all such Mandates or Judgments which they Swear to Execute tho' declared right by the Superiour Authorities So a Tenant Swearing Homage and Fealty to a new Landlord obtaining by Law doth not assert the reality of his Right tho' the Jury in Verdict Swear it to be his in their Judgment and the Judges give Judgment accordingly upon sworn Engagements to Justice For the Tenant may justly suspect the Errors or Injustice of the Process even while he Swears the Fealty because his Oath is not concerned in or depends on the Original Merits of the Cause but the legal Forms of Judicial Assignation But if you will take Rightful and Lawful for meer Civil and Regular forms of Introduction I will grant you that an Oath of Native Allegiance imports an acknowledgment of such a kind of Rightful and Lawful Settlement and Form of Title To conclude this Discourse since Intentions do not explain the words they utter but words intentions especially in obliging and legal Formularies of Contracts we are obliged to no more by them than their express words do openly propose to our apprehensions and so pass all Judgments in Law upon Pleas of Contract according to this Rule of expounding Words Oral or Written in Bargains Testimonies and Covenants If then a Recognition or Assertion of Right be not expresly tendred in the very words of the Oath or jointly with it by some determinate Rule of Explication we are not concluded in such Oath to such an Assertion much less if such Assertion be openly excluded from the Oath to prevent suspicion But let us see whether the Assertion of Right so manifestly precluded be yet tricked into the Oath by any surreptitious Implication Now if it be so it must be involved either in the Stile of King and Queen or in the Terms of Faith and Allegiance but neither can be justly pleaded since the known Judicial distinction of Kings de facto and de jure shews the Title to be in common given both to those who come in without any violation of our Laws and so are in Right and to others who have injuriously got without any antecedent legal Capacity into the legal Forms of Settlement and so are in Fact only Kings And true Faith and Allegiance is by our Laws always given in the same or like promissory Forms of Oath to the meer Kings in Fact as well as others But this is not all I will further ex abundanti shew you that this closeness to the meer Sense of express words is the interpretative Rule of obligation in Oaths and Contracts not only by the Laws and Reason of Mankind in common but is particularly justified by precedents in the Divine History on the sacred Judgment of God's own People The Case I refer to is mentioned Judges 21. There the Israelites in Mizpeth make this Oath There is not any of us shall give his Daughter unto Benjamin to wife Here by the word Us they intend all the People beside the Benjamites as presuming all the rest engaged there against Benjamin and really intending that Benjamin henceforth should never have one Wife from among the rest of Israel After this it appeared that the Men of Jabesh Gilead had not concurred in that Expedition and therefore they destroyed all the Jabesites except the Virgins and these they gave for Wives to Benjamin contrary to their real Intention in the making that Oath Now what shall be said hereupon Did they violate the Oath of God or take upon them in their Sanhedrin to dispense with it on a reserved Right of the Imposers No there was yet no Popery nor such dispensing Power under that Pontificate For it appears by their Care in a second instance that they were very tenderly sensible of their indissoluble obligation by the Oath nor does the Scripture Censure them for any such prevarication How shall we then untie this Knot Thus whereas they had sworn None of us it was literally interpretable to a valid Obligation on those only and their Daughters who were actually present or engaged in that War so that the Jabesites tho' at first comprised in the general design and intention on presumption of their Concurrence yet in fact not being engaged were easily judged not actually included in the Oath as not really being within the express term of the Us in Mizpâ—h Moreover the Jabesites did not give their own Daughters as being all before 〈…〉 the Elders gave them and herein they that gave them gave not their own particular Daughters and they were given tho not as the Daughters of mere Heathens yet as Daughters of Men aliened by the publick Anathema and excession from God's People and so not of the Us collectively taken for the united Community or Society of the Children of Israel Thus not all intentions had in the conception of this Oath did oblige but only what the Words thereof did expresly include Again when this Expedient was found insufficient for the surviving Benjamites a further Consultation arises in the Sanhedrin how to furnish them with Wives consistently with their Oath And at length they find this lawful Evasion from and contrary to their first intention They direct the Benjamites to surprize their Daughters in the Dances of Shiloh and promise to pacifie the Parents and Kindred of the surprized Damosels And herein they judged themselves free from Perjury because the natural Parents did not give their respective Daughters nor did the Sanhedrin manually deliver them as the Daughters of the People but only contriv'd directed consented to and after confirmed the Surprize Which shews that in the sense of that sacred Court Oaths do not tie the Conscience beyond the necessary Sense of the Words tho' more be actually intended by the Persons instituting and taking the Oath in their first Conception And then the Rule holds much more clear when the Swearer intends no more than the words simply signifie and is directed by the very Imposers to use that freedom and discharged from all other collateral or consequential Constructions as we are by the
rejection of the Proposals for an Assertion of Right But I presage that all this procedure of the Sanhedrin or my Accounts of it will pass with you for pretty juggling who are so dextrous and hardy to reproach whole Nations as if you had been another Elias tho' herein I would advise you to premit your Reasons to your Censure In the Interim we will in the third place ascend to their Majesties intention herein Of which I shall in general say that no Man can evince that they intended any more in their imposition of the Oath than the Estates but if they did those personal intentions came not into the Act or Oath and so can be of no publick cognisance or obligation the Oath being made to satisfie their Majesties intentions indeed as far as they were uniform with the intention of the Estates but no further or otherwise And the Estates did indeed desire to satisfy their Majesties as far as justly they could without crucifying the Conscience of the Subject which could contribute nothing to the interest of their Majesties nor to the Honour of their Tenderness and Clemency So that the Question properly is whether the joint and complex intention of their Majesties and the Parliament in the Oath was That we should judge them to be a King and Queen that had no Right And here I answer that they never intended that we should deny the Right of their Title in Thought Word or Deed. Nay I add that in the Recognition they designed to create an Opinion and Belief in us of their Majesties Right as far as the publick Judgment of a Nation can morally conduce thereunto and also to silence all Tongues and Pens to the contrary but of what they gently willed Men to believe they did not presume to require a peremptory Oath thro' their excessive Tenderness for liberty of Conscience Now the intention we are upon by the good leave of the Syllogism is not the inclining will to perswade us to a Belief nor the authoritative will of silencing contradictions but that will which imposes the Oath i. e. what they willed and intended peremptorily to be sworn And this does not import so much as an assent or Belief much less an absolute assertion de Jure tho' King William is de Jure in the publick Judgment of the Nation And what ground have you to fancy that this is not satisfactory to their Majesties Their Right is publickly recognized a full Allegiance of the Subject upon Oath given with sufficient Laws for the Coercion of Recusants and all that is necessary to secure them in the Throne and can you dare to say they are not hereby satisfied because every Man is not bound to swear the Jus which many feeble Senses may not understand I hope you never heard of any Complaint made hereupon by their Majesties and if not 't is a bold and indecent Suggestion to object or surmise it but the most frontless rudeness of all is to say that the Nation was Tricked and open Nonsense to assert this of a project of concealing an intention of Right in words which you say manifestly include it Dyscher No doubt both Parliaments had the same intention and the Recognition was but a fuller Declaration of the Sense of the former Parliament in the Constitution And for such Bodies to ensnare us to a Belief of K. William's Right while we are taking Oaths to him is if not to command yet to insinuate Perjury since they that are hereby tricked into that Opinion intend the assertion of it in the Oath and the Opinion of Right being the Publick Doctrine the publick taking of the Oath without an express Denial of the Right doth either really or seemingly at least import an Assertion of Right and so gives a just Scandal to all Men of Integrity as looking like an Exemplary consent to and Profession of the Right and is as Exemplary a Snare to the Consciences of the Ignorant * T. B. Sec. Lett. p. 22. For has not William ravished away the Rights of all the Royal Heirs in Being Has he not violated the standing Laws of our Succession in seizing the Crown before his time Eucher To humour you for once let us suppose that K. William and Q. Mary had violated the Laws of Succession and so were not every way de Jure Sovereign yet the Assertion of Right being rejected at the framing of the Oath a little Care will remove all prejudices in our selves and others by observing that we swear no more than was expresly imposed in the form of the Oath with an explicit exclusion of that Assertion of Right and that other points and Acts consequent fall not under our intention by the will of the imposers against their Will But 't is in truth a bold thing but like you to take it for evident that their Majesties have broken the Laws of Succession when the whole Kingdom hath judicially determined otherwise 'T is indeed possible for a publick Opinion to be Erroneous and a private one on the contrary true yet nothing but an undeniable as it were Meridian Evidence must practically confront a publick Opinion against its Civil efficacy which I suppose you have not gotten against the Civil Judgment de Jure I will not here proceed on such Originals of Royal Title as will justifie Changes of Kings every day I will not cast in my Lot nor mix my Counsels with those seditious Men who by cajoling the Subjects into false Notions and aims of Power cokes them thereby into endless Ruins and Commotions I will only follow the good Ancient and constant Rules of Order Peace and Righteousness which alone can make us an happy People and Advocate for their Majesties Innocency toward these The ordinary Rule of Succession I still grant you to be Lineal or properly Hereditary so that if a Prince's Tenure be extinct by Death or otherwise the next Heir of ordinary Course should succeed But if a Question arise upon the Tenure whether permanent or cessant in a state of Anarchy and actual vacancy in the Throne or who is the next Heir this is most properly determinable by the Estates of the Kingdom as being our Masters and Trustees to oblige and direct our Allegiance Here then they judged King James's Tenure cessant by a virtual Abdication and the Princess of Orange the next Heir But considering the then state of Affairs they judged it absolutely lawful and necessary for the time being with the smooth concession of the two next Heirs apparent to invest the Order during the Prince's Life It was therefore changed but not violated and a temporary Change in the Course was admitted to secure the true Descent in a just Line for ever as appears by the settled and determined Series of Successors Dyscher Very well I see you and your Estates make nothing of the Prince of Wales But your Prince of Orange had before not only assaulted our Law but overturned the Government
of humane Confederacies And truly if K. William himself would upon reference made deliver his sense he would declare K. Lewis more injurious than K. James in this war for K. James seems to have some colour for provocation but K. Lewis had none to engage in K. James's quarrels But if he engages on other Reasons then he is not an enemy on K. James's account but his own And if K. James and K. Lewis should ever happen to come into K. Williams hands there would be so sensible a difference in his respects toward them as would discover his resentments of French injuries as greater than K. James's tho' unquestionably he would shew a Royal compassion to them both And now I am provided with a Reason why I dislike your Prayers for victory to the late K. James against K. William First because your Prayers assert the late K. James to be our present King and import K. William to be the Nations Enemy whereby you condemn and pray against the present Constitution of which by our Law and consequently God's Law you are subjects not Judges nor de jure Adversaries Again you confess you pray absolutely against K. William as K. James's Enemy And this you must judge of him either in the moral or military sense If in the moral you must then do it either of infallible certainty or opinion only The former the matter is not capable of because of the darkness of men's interiour passions and the disputable nature of Civil Titles But upon mere opinions you ought not to pass absolute Censure upon any mans Conscience and become his utter Enemy by your own choice And yet were K. William infallibly and certainly injurious to K. James yet since K. James's Cessation of war to pray for such victories of blood which you alone account victory is to pray for a return of a Cessant War in order to a sanguinary Victory and its Consequences If you take K. William only as a military Enemy he was then innocent and so your Prayers then aimed at the ruine of the innocent and his Cause But now he is no military Enemy to K. James 't is more impious to pray for his Ruine which K. James himself does not now attempt Upon which even K. James himself has opened our Church-Doors to you to joyn with us in our Prayers for King William and Queen Mary But if you take the French War to be K. James's we have all reason to thank you kindly for your Prayers in a time of such a dangerous War as not only affects all our Temporals but our very Church and Religion the noblest Structure and Bulwark of the Reformation Of which God in mercy make you truly sensible and even in this respect turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the Wisdom of the Just Amen Dyscher Yet I find you are not so confident for all your forms of Devotion For †Sol. and Ab. pag. 15. You think there is one Prayer on the 29th of May so dangerous that you graciously give us leave to forbear to be present at it But Sir who gave you Authority to dispense with terms of Communion You have done more I fear than you will receive any thanks for None you are like to have from us who have no â—eed of your License and you ought not to expect it from those who will think their Authority hereby invaded T. B. See Lett. pag. 33. Eucher This I confess is a dangerous foyl Nor was I well aware of that nasute quickness which appears in this Stricture But as argute as you are was it I that thought this Prayer dangerous or my brother Dyscheres Was it not you that complained that in that Prayer there is a vow of Allegiance to K. William and Queen Mary which upon your Principles you cannot be present at or concede Well then this was so and what said I Then forbear to be present at it But must this presently be interpreted to an Act or Power dispensing with the Duty Truly I intended no more but to yield that therein you must be left to act according to your own Principles and Convictions and adventure the Displeasure of the Powers and legal Consequences thereupon whom and which I believe you would not much more exasperate by this one omission once a year if you constantly joyned in all our other daily Prayers and otherwise live inoffensively So it is ordinary to use the Imperative in a bare permissive without a concessive Sense as Do if you will since you cannot be perswaded take your own Course run your own risks play your own game take your own fortune counsels c. And tho I confess this is form of permission that merits no thanks so neither did I court any thanks herein either from you or the Public For as for you in this hard time you are not very liberal in point of gratitude as I have found by my own experience And I pray God you fail not in this Duty towards God for his mercies to the Nation as you do towards those that wish you well because they run not with you into your unaccountable excesses But as to our Governours if I have not hereby arrogated the dispensing Power I hope I have not much offended them If I have for your ungrateful sakes I will endeavour to atone for this one offence and have a Care how I ensnare my self again upon your Score Dyscher But yet you think we need not be so very coy as to this Prayer For you say that you have been assured by a good Author that the Recusant Bishops did not all stick at it but that some gave directions and consent to the use of it and also before their Suspension deputed Persons to administer the Oath in the Execution of the Authorities and Offices Episcopal Sir If I should say your good Author was an arrant lying knave I hope you would not only pardon my bluntness but also be more careful for the future how you gave any credit to such Persons T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 33. Eucher Indeed Sir if you prove that excellent Person whom you know not to have deceived me with a lye I am your humble servant But I cannot but smile within my self to think how when this your treatment comes to his knowledge that religious and prudent person will entertain the blunt Character considering his most tender Compassions to the Condition of the Deprived But in truth the reasons of his discovering this advice and consent were not calumnious but conscientious as exhibiting matter in a religious Conference for consideration and practice in these various turns of things humors and sentiments But I have been told that in Law negatives cannot be proved but by inference from positives which I doubt will hold you a tugg tho' your tongue be all teeth and jawbones Dyscher As for this pretended Deputation I will set before you the true story and then you and
of Crimes * Sol and Ab. pag. 19 20. as Apostasie Heresie Schism c. and demanded whether the Clergy and People may desert a Bishop under such pestilential crimes and impostures and procure another from Social Bishops For if they may Canonically do this in such Cases then perhaps they may canonically do so in other which tho' not so designedly malignant yet necessitate an exauctoration tho' founded in meer infirmities and too pious prejudices as I explained my self in those very passages at which it seems the gall of T. B. is exasperated Dyscher Well I think it not decent for us to draw hard on this invidious subject let us if you please discuss the Canonical forms of your procedure herein which your party generally defends from pretended precedents of Civil Authorities over the Jewish High Priests and the Practice of Christian Churches in submission to Imperial Orders especially the Greek Church under Turkîsh Changes made in their Patriarchal See Now the most famous instance among the Jewish High Priest is that of Solomons deprivation of Abiathar Which tho' you endeavoured to parallel to our present Case yet herein I brought you such just exceptions as neither you nor all your Party will be able to take off For if the Crime was nothing like if there was such a difference between the Constitutions of the Jewish and Christian Churches if it was a manifest Cession on Abiathar's part all which I well proved then that Instance can by no means come up to this Case T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 36. Eucher Tho' I could not deny the force of your reasonings upon this instance yet have I consulted my friends upon it as well as you have done upon me And the chiefest of their senses I will lay before you to which if you can make any weighty reply you must not thence conclude a vice or fault in the Cause for if I cannot defend it my self perhaps its proper Patrons may who as they have singular Opinions so have they as singular abilities to maintain them Dyscher This is a secure Caution for your own Reputation tho' it betrays an inward suspicion of the Arguments you intend to produce But however since it is but just that no personal defects should prejudice a good Cause and that one man's Errors should not affect another man's Estimation I grant you your Demand and therefore I pray proceed Eucher Have you not seen the Book entitled The Case of Sees Vacant c. whose learned Authors felicity is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This great man pretends to dissolve all your machins against this grand Precedent for a Lay-Deprivation and I will exhibite you his Argumentations according to your and his Order First then he observes that * Case of Sees Vacant c. Chap. 2. § 2. this perhaps may be the Plea of our Adversaries in answer to the examples of the Jewish High-Priest that the Office of a Bishop amonst us is much more Spiritual than the Office of those High-Priests To that Plea I answer that he that considers the true and full import of the Question now before us will find it to be no other than this whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastical Office of God's own Institution and Ordinance being deposed by the Lay-power any other can lawfully succeed in that Office Now as to God's particular Institution and Appointment whatsoever otherwise the difference may be which is needless for us to contend about it is certain that the Jewish High-Priests were rather superior than inferior to our Bishops 'T was by God himself and that too in an extraordinary manner that the Office of the High-Priest was instituted and it was from God alone that he received his Authority If therefore a Person was accepted by God as a true and real High-Priest tho' put into the room of another deposed by Civil Authority then a Bishop likewise may be truly a Bishop and accordingly ought to be received tho' put into the place of a Bishop deposed by that Power To this I add that the annual Expiation for the Sins of the whole People was to be performed by the High-Priest This was the chief of the federal Rites of that Religion and that to which our Saviour's offering himself up a Sacrifice is particularly compared in the Epistle to the Hebrews And this they did ex opere operato so that it was of the greatest Consequence to the Jews to have this Divine Institution performed by one appointed to it by God And tho' no provision was made for Cases of necessity yet necessity was understood to be a provision for it self And it is certain these annual Expiations were accepted of God till our Saviour's days For that is a certain Consequence of their being still in Covenant with God since these Expiations were the yearly renewing of that Covenant Nor can any of the performances of the Christian Priesthood be compared to this unless we believe the Power of Transubstantiating These examples of the Jewish High-Priest alone were there no other to be alledged would sufficiently warrant our submission to our present Possessors Dyscher This Doctrine of that learned Doctors is very new and amazing in every Sentence of it as also is his original Principle But whether it be of sincere Metal or no must be tried by the proper Touchstone First then it is strange that he shou'd affirm it certain that the High-Priests are rather Superior to our Bishops as to the Divinity of their Institution For are not Bishops instituted originally by God himself and in a manner more extraordinary than that of Aaron's Consecration For this appears indeed in the Levitical Law to be divinely solemn and glorious as far as external Pomp and Ceremony could adorn it and an Oracular Power of Judgment in things Temporal sanctifie him but yet as the Agent for God in this Consecration was a Servant only viz. Moses so the Oracular Sanctity was not purely Spiritual But the first Bishops were the Apostles made so not by the Hand of a Servant but the Son of God himself in our own Flesh ordaining them with an extraordinary Power of Miracles of all kinds with the insufflation of the Holy Ghost in order to the remission and retaining of sins upon the Soul by the Acts of an Authority to be ratified in Heaven To them the Sacraments were committed the Laver of Regeneration and the Mystery of our Incorporation into Christ and Participation of his Holy Spirit besides the glorious Effusion of the Spirit on them at the Feast of Pentecost consecrating them Preachers of the Resurrection of Christ with an amazing Glory in the sight of all Nations gathered together at Jerusalem in a manner more superlatively divine than any the meaner Forms of Aaron's Investiture Besides the Doctor may as well prefer the Institution of the meanest Levites to that of the Highest Apostles upon the same grounds on which he hath so superexalted the Jewish Pontiff who was
remind me of your own Principles and Senses I fear I shall fall into the Spirit of T. B. again and not use you very partially in some of my Reflexions Eucher I am sensible by experience of your infirmity And since good natur'd Men are sometimes passionate I know how to bear as well as to correct a little rudeness I pray good Brother let me know what 't is now that begins to provoke your choler Dyscher When you had spent a great many Arguments drawn out with much Pomp and Ostentation being basted in them you grow weary with strugling and fairly give up all and acknowledg that †Sol. ab pag. 27.29 an Act of State Christian cannot alone vacate a Spiritual Charge Charge by any Divine Law primitive Canon or Prescription This is as full as can be worded against the Power of the State to deprive Bishops Now see how you come about again in the very next words Yet such an Act received and admitted by the Church may from her concurrence have a just and legal Effect And then upon this Notion the Statute of Deprivation ipso facto must be taken as a Law upon the Church to reject the Recusants totally from their Stations Here you will not have the Deprivation to proceed from the Act of the State alone but to save some Honour to the Clergy you make their Deprivation valid by their Concurrence to the Act of Deprivation But I pray how did they concur Was it otherwise than by submitting to the Act when it was made And is such Submission any Authority I thought they had been quite different things Did the Clergy shew any signs or make any protestations for their Right viz. that the Act of Parliament for the Deprivation of the Bishops was not valid without their Concurrence No not a word but when it is done they submit to it and acknowledg it And you would make a Protestation against Fact that their Concurrence was necessary to it that themselves did not pretend nor dare they do it to this day It is certain the Parliament thought their own Authority sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask or think they needed the Concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid On the contrary no Clergy-men have dared to dispute it but those who are deprived And for others to imagin to come in by their Concurrence into a share of the Authority is like the fly on a Wheel of the Chariot that thought he contributed to the dust that was raised for he too gave his concurrence It is possible such Men as you should not see how contemptible it renders them to pretend to an Authority they dare not avow And upon this Foundation to raise Arguments to justify their proceedings which they cannot maintain any other way For these Men to deny themselves to be Erastians or ever to name any Ecclesiastical Authority I had almost said to call them a Church Or to speak as †Sol. c. Ab. Pag. 29. you do that the Church ought not to admit Deprivations on improper or unreasonable Demands As if the Parliament did request it from the Convocation or left it to their admitting or not admitting As if they durst dispute the validity of an Act of Parliament for want of their Concurrence As if any of them durst let such a word come out of their Mouth Behold the Ghost the Echo of a Church c. M. S. Reflex and that the consent publick and actual Concurrence of the Church is necessary to give an Ecclesiastical Effect to Civil Ordinances in Matters of the Church Now this Concession overthrows your whole Cause and being placed after the main Body of your Arguments is it self an Argument that you had little faith in them So then our Bishops being never Canonically Deprived are the yet proper Bishops of their Sees But you come like a Spiritual Jugler and perswade us that this hath been Canonically done For the Church say you ought to empty the Sees of such Incumbents that are dangerous to the Civil State But Sir must the Church cast out her Bishops as oft as they will not comply with Vsurpers c. But you say this was done by Acts of Separation properly Ecclesiastical the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church taking the Jurisdiction till the Chapter elect and Bishops consecrate another But Sir you cannot but know that the Dean and Chapter have no Jurisdiction over their Metropolitane and the See must be vacant before they can proceed to Election T. B. Sect. Pag. 37.38 Eucher I have heard with much patience yea pleasure all your Noble strains of Rhetoric and need only say If I have spoken evil bare witness to the evil but if well why smitest thou me For if the Deprived assert the Churches Concurrence necessary to give Acts of State an Ecclesiastical Effect and I grant it what Cause have you to fly in my face for even that very Concession But for you to upbraid me with my Candour who are so heedless in attending to my words as to take or set them off in other Senses than rationally can be fixed on them in their clear account of this Concurrence is neither very courteous nor prudential Let us therefore again look over these oversights and see whether we can come again to our selves First then I never said that the Concurrence of the Church was necessary either to make an Act of Parliament or to make it valid in Ecclesiasticals and particularly in Acts of Deprivation But I admitted your Principle so far and no further that her Concurrence is necessary to give Statutes an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue For an Act of Parliament may justly require of the Church some certain Ecclesiastical proceedings without any joynt Session or Consultation of the Church And such Acts shall be just and valid of themselves to oblige the Conscience of the Church to obedience or executive Concurrence As suppose an Act of Parliament repealing all the Statutes of Premunire which cramp the liberties of the Church in the Episcopal Successions and Synodical Consultations for a perfect reformation to a Primitive purity should consequently require our Bishops or Convocations to proceed upon such relaxation to provide and execute better rules of Discipline on the morals and duties of the Christian Church under their care and to renew the Commercium formatarum with foreign Churches for a general Restitution of Piety and Order to its Primitive State such a Law I think would valioly oblige the Church to Concurrence without which however actually given it could not have its Ecclesiastical Effect When King Joash commanded the Priests to employ the sacred Money to the reparation of the Lords House it was a valid command to oblige but while the Priests neglected it it had no Sacred effect 2 King 12. So when Moses spake unto Aaron Eleazar and Ithamar to eat the meat offering and heave shoulder according to set Rules the precept was very
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the