have occasion afterwards to speak some-what more to this But further it is Objected That a King may be any thing else if he be inferior to his People And if he be their Superior then it is manifest that he cannot be accountable to them it being repugnant to the very beeing of a Superior to be subject to those who are subject to him And therefore a King is loosed from all Laws neither can any bind him These being his Laws and appointed only for tying the Subjects And hence our Saviour must either have not understood the Power and Dignity of a King or else design'd to oblige all Subjects to what That imports But still the Subect and the Slave are confounded and mixt together However I ask those who depend upon this whether or not the Subject has such a Right in the Laws that the Prince cannot make or repeal any without him If he has as he must have if he be a Subject then the Laws are not so entirely the Kings but they are the Subjects too It is indeed the Kings Glory and Advantage to Rule his Subjects by Laws But it is also the Subjects Priviledge and Security to be ruled by them And if the eminency of Splendor which redounds from the Laws falls to the Kings share and if also That be sufficient to sound the common denomination of Property Then no Subject can reasonably envy his Soveraigns ascribing the Property of the Laws to himself Yet I doubt if there will many be found who shall willingly acknowledge that the Laws are so much the Kings that he may make and un-make them at his pleasure This then being without question it naturally follows according to the Consequences I drew before that the Subject may justly vindicat his Right in the Laws if it be attempted Tho then the King be Superiour to the whole Body of the Subjects when he Rules according to Law Since both he has a transcendent kind of Power in the making of the Laws and an intire one for putting them in Execution Yet when he deserts the Laws and takes up his own Arbitrary Will in lieu of them then the Subjects may look to themselves whatever be in the Character of his being King to state them as his Inferiours So that a Limited Monarch is but a Limited Superiour And they who drive any issue of the Matter upon a King 's being Superiour over his People seem only to be fondly possest with the abstract Notion of Superiority without considering that his Power whom they stile Superior is really confin'd within certain bounds It must nevertheless be confest that a King is so far above the Laws that his Person ought always to be Sacred to his Subjects The cutting off the very Skirt of a Kings Rob wrought a very sensible remorse upon the Man after Gods own heart for his heart smote him for it 1 Sam. 24. ver 4. 5. And it is the duty of every Subject to say with him vers 6. The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master the Lords anointed to stretch forth my hand against him seing he is the annointed of the Lord. And there is still such a silial regard to be had to the Person of a King that nothing less than the Barbarity of which a Son that would cut his Fathers Throat could not but be horridly guilty could suffer any Subject to put hand in the Father of his Countrey however much he had forefeited that Title by the violent Invasions he had made upon his own Children And in this sense only can the Solutus Legibus that is so much talkt of be understood unless it shall only be appropriated to those Monarchs who have form'd their Copy after the Model of the East To all this it is added That if the whole Body of the Subjects can oppose themselves to their Prince can rise up against him and assert their Right in the Laws whether he would or not Then every single Subject is hereby allowed to resist his Soveraign when-ever he is unjustly attacked by him For all the Individuals of a Common-wealth have a-part as much Right in the Laws as the Whole has and on the other hand the whole Body can never combine together against the Soveraign unless the particular Members shall in their private capacity work the Design against him And of how pernicious consequence this were to any State is easie to be told Neither could any Subject be justly brought to Punishment for entering into Conspiracies against the Government if he could make it appear that he was only endeavouring to free the Subjects from Tyranny Oppression So that our Saviour must either have thought that every private Subject might thus preserve himself or else have intended that his Doctrine should Militate against such a method when used by the Whole But it is still forgot that therefore every Subject must reckon himself to be even naturally a Slave Nevertheless I answer directly That indeed no private Subject ought to resist the Government under which he lives even when he suffers the most injuriously by it provided there be no more but a meer transient and private Act of Injustice in it without tending to the common prejudice of the Government or to the Subversion of the Right of the whole Subjects in the Laws For tho he has Right in the Laws yet his whole Right in them is founded in his being a Member of the Common-wealth as I told you before And therefore he has no other Right to the Means whereby he ought to or can justly assert his Right in the Laws but only in so far as the whole Common-wealth is concerned Since in the first constitution and end of all Common-wealths the Publick Good is chiefly aimed and the Private comes in only by way of Result And therefore no Means can be Legittimate to any individual Person that can clash with the general interest of the whole Body And consequently the Means that any single Subject can pretend to for making his Right in the Laws to be effectual to him must have a special regard in the very nature of the thing to the publick advantage of the Common-wealth Now when as things stand in the World it is absolutely impossible for Subjects to Cope with their Soveraign without the greatest danger to the Common Good of the Common-wealth every single Subject that meets with an injury however atrocious is obliged by his being a Member of such a Body not to attempt any thing because of his own private concern that may set his whole Fellow-subjects and the Soveraign by the Ears together And the hazard of the Publick Damage does sufficiently preponderate all the wrong that he can actually suffer to wit as he is comprehended in the Original Design of the Society Indeed if he shall lay aside his Title to his own Preservation upon the Principles of being a Member of the Common wealth it is palpable that if any other
notion of a King does especially imply such an Absolute Power as is quite irreconciliable with any other Obedience in the Subjects than what is such that the greatest wrongs they can suffer can never justifie their not behaving Passively at least And that therefore Our Saviour and his Apostles could not but mean such a Subjection when they recommended any at all To this I answer That it is plainly false that the Notion of a King involves any such thing as the Word King is generally taken unless it shall be granted that there is no possible distinction upon the Matter betwixt a subject and a Slave And it is an infinite Error for one to let his thoughts pore constantly upon the Notion of a King without allowing some cool ones to reflect what kind of Creatures a King is to Rule over If therefore it shall not be denyed that Subjects have a true and real and practical Right in the Laws and not only such an Imaginary and Speculative and Ineffectual one as some please themselves with Then either a King may have a limited Power or if it must be so none is a King but who is it at the rate the Grand Signor is so And yet if that be only to be a King those who are mostly Kings because over Subjects need not grudge Him the Monopoly of the Title and whatever other they shall assume as their peculiar will sound as much more big as its being Special to them will render it more deserving that it should Wherefore there was no necessity upon Our Saviour to calculate the Measures of Subjection unto this Notion of a King. In the next Place it is Alledged That without an absolutely irresistible Power in the Soveraign the peace of no Nation can be preserved Because no Government can be so very exactly well ballanced but that there will always be many discontented Persons under it either because things do not answer their own expectations or because of those other Passions which are wont not more to ferment Mens Minds than to raise Commotions in the Common-wealth And therefore if Subjects had the Liberty to start a Quarrel with their Soveraign and then to Judge of the sufficiency of that themselves and after all to frame a new Model after their own Humor there could be no settled quiet in any State at all but one Confusion would still succeed upon the neck of another and nothing could put an end to them but that which would do so to this World. Now Our Saviour must needs have either done very little or no good to Mankind by all that he taught concerning Subjection or else laid bonds upon all Subjects to carry patiently under all the injuries they could suffer from their Princes this being the only way possible to prevent such disorders and perpetual Insurrections But still I answer That this either proves that a Subject and a Slave is the very same thing or else it proves nothing at all as is manifest by what was said in these Inferences by which I deduc'd that against which this Objection is Levelled upon the meer supposition of a certain Right and Property lodged in the Subject Therefore I doubt not but all will acknowledge that if it proves a Subject to be the same with a Slave it proves too much and this ends in a short way of Arguing But not barely to cut the knot It is not every Picque or Grievance that will infer such a wrong from the Soveraign as can justifie so high a Redress And I told you before that the Subjects are obliged by Conscience not to bestir themselves till a most important and impendent Danger should threaten the Subversion of the Government it self And since the Laws of a Nation and the Essentials of its Constitution are patent to every body It is not morally presumeable that the most considerable Part of the Subjects will in spight not of their Honour but their very Consciences concur in an attempt where the mistake cannot but be as evident as they must know it will be fatal tho none but God should punish it Where ever then Conscience gets freedom to work it will undoubtedly secure the peace of any People whose Soveraign has not been so excessively unjust unto them that if a storm falls upon him he has only himself to blame for it And that Our Saviour should have rais'd such a Fence about those who could so little merit it at his hands when they must first violate their Consciences before they can give any provocation of that nature to their Subjects by endeavouring to tyrannize it over them were too odd to imagine of him who was the Preacher of Righteousness Besides if Conscience cannot keep the Peace of a Nation when there can be no just temptation to break it certainly it would far less do so when the instigations that flow from Self-preservation would drive on our deprav'd Natures to gagg it for a while till we should put our selves in the condition of being more at Gods mercy than at Mans. For the greater the Temptations be the less proportionably of vigour force has Conscience in the most part of men And when there would be so great a struggle to be made by Flesh and Blood against Violence and Oppression Conscience would much sooner succumb and quite the Field Than when we were only to deal with those impatiencies and frettings with this ambitious temper or that soure thought which we could not but be ashamed of when ever we returned again to our selves And upon this account Our Saviour has better consulted the Security of Kings and the tranquillity of Subjects than if he had carried the Obligation of Conscience to such an unmeasurable length as some would be at thinking it should go to For if we were implicitly upon all emergencies to submit 't were many to one but that at long run we would come to be so despair'd of our estate as rather to choose once for all to give our Conscience a pull and to attempt a Freedom which needed not occasion its being so troublesome to us any more And we know already what a sandy Foundation the best formed Government would have if Conscience did not Support it It is true God in his Providence does sometimes permit a Nation to be its own Scourge by persecuting a Prince which is its Glory and Happiness and needlessly nay wantonly embroiling it self when it wallows in Plenty and Prosperity And this day furnishes us with as deplorable an Instance of that as ever any other day did any other Nation But as that is owing to a Peoples own Sins so as they would never repeat the Mischief let them beware not to reiterate the Causes of it And at least this advantage may be gathered from it that the most foreward and heated People have an example before their eyes how much Conscience can be trampled under and how much the most sober Principles can be misapplyed and abused But I shall
ground justifie him to shift the best way he can for himself he must do it not as a Subject but meerly as a Man. And then the case becomes quite impertinent to our Affair But notwithstanding all this there must other thoughts be taken up when the Subjects Right in general is Invaded and the Injustice reaches the Publick Interest of them all Then every particular Subject not only may but by the terms of his being a Member with the rest of the Subjects ought to do whatever he can contribute to the relieving the whole Subjects Right in the Laws from that Tyranny and Oppression it is falling or fallen under Otherwise it were non-sense and contradiction to say that Subjects have Right in the Laws Because according to the ground this Objection went upon the whole Body of the Subjects can never Morally speaking jump out at once into a common Vindication of their Right without matters had been previously concerted by single persons 'T is true if a private Subject be of a publick Spirit he must do it at his perill And there were no glory nor merite in the thing if he did it not so And tho his best intentions should happen to be defeated and he to fall in the hands of the Prince Yet then if the Prince be a good one and can be prevail'd with to mend what has been done through mistake or by evil Counsel he will be so far from looking upon such a man as his enemy that he will reckon him amongst his sincerest friends for having given him occasion to understand that the true interest of a Monarch is not to suffer such a diminution of his Character as the violenting his Subjects Rights carries alongst with it And supposing the Prince to be engaged in a desperate resolve to break through all difficulties rather than not possess himself of an as mistaken as illimited Power and so that he who was endeavouring to stand in the way of it must suffer as a Traitor and a Rebel Yet in the sight of God and of all honest Subjects his reputation will be as much without stain as his Conscience will be without guilt and his Death when the most cruel will be so much the more glorious Martyrdom for his Countrey And the Providence of the great Disposer of all mens lives must be reverenc'd in all I confess that the evidence of Oppression had need be very great and common before one apprehended in any design against the Soveraign can be presum'd to have been about the Publick and not his own Private Concern Otherwise this would never fail to be perverted unto a pretence for the most villanous and wicked Plots against the Government that the most furious Traitors can Embarque into Wherefore I must here again inculcate that all along in what I have been saying upon this Head I have walked upon this supposition That the Princes invasion of the Subjects strikes manifestly at their Right in the Laws and does visibly appear to the World to be a robbing them of their Priviledges as Subjects and an enslaving them to all the miseries of an Arbitrary Power For when the wrongs done by the Prince amounts not to this and when the evidence of these wrongs is not without question then all must go in his favours and the Subjects Conscience must quitt the cost But now in fine all these and other Objections of this nature can never come home to the main Point in hand For in so far as they proceed upon Reasons of an antecedent consequence to the Institution of the Christian Religion they cannot be brought against this Principle That our Saviour never meant by his Doctrine about subjection to alter the Rights of Soveraigns or of Subjects as they are stated by the several Constitutions of different Nations And in so far as they leave out the consideration of the Subjects Right in the Laws they are impertinent against this Supposition That he has really such a Right The only thing therefore that such Objections ought to be adduced for is That whoever is a Monarch cannot but be Invested with such an Absolute and Illimited Power as the Great Turk enjoys And that there can be no Real Subject but that all under any Soveraign Power whatsoever are effectually Slaves Truly if there could be a midle Estate found out betwixt such a Subjection as envolves the Right I have inferr'd all I have spoke from and Slavery it may be that hitherto I have been talking in the Air. But if men have strength of thought enough to search into things as they tend to Practice and the event and shall not amuse themselves with empty sounds of Words or Metaphysical Speculations and abstract confus'd Ideas They will send after an impartial enquiry that Contradictions and Subject and Slave do equally admit of a Mean betwixt them I am not ignorant that there is a Salve offered whereby a limited Monarchy and Subjection without such a Right as I have ascribed to it may be reconciled together It is therefore said That a Slave is the Correlative only of such an Absolute Monarch as is under the Government of no Law but a Subject is of such a limited Monarch as has his Soveraign Power regulated by known and standing Laws which indeed he cannot make nor repeal without the consent of the People And tho the People are tyed to mere passive Obedience even when he breaks these Laws and Governs by an Arbitrary and Lawless Will yet they are not to be accounted Slaves there being notwithstanding a vast difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy For first a Limited Prince tho he may make his Will a Law to himself and the only Rule of his Government yet he cannot make it the Law of the Land he may break Laws but he can neither Make nor Repeal them and therefore he can never alter the Frame and Constitution of the Government tho he may at present interrupt the Regular Administration of it and this is a great Security to Posterity and a present Restraint upon himself Secondly It is a mighty uneasie Thing to any Prince to Govern contrary to known Laws He offers as great and constant Violence to himself as he does to his Subjects The breach of his Oath to God and his Promises and Engagements to his Subjects makes the Exercise of such an Arbitrary Power very Troublesome and tho his Subjects are bound not to Resist yet his own guilty Fears will not suffer him to be Secure Thirdly Tho Subjects must not Resist such a Prince who Violats the Laws of his Kingdom yet they are not bound to Obey him nor to Serve him in his Usurpations as being only bound to yield an active Obedience only according to Law. And it is a mighty uneasie thing to the greatest Tyrant to Govern always by Force and no Prince in a Limited Monarchy can make himself Absolute unless his own Subjects Assist him to do so Hence it is dangerous for any
refulgent Marks of their long'd for Deliverer Hence it is manifest that Our Saviour would have had but to lay hold on those Importunat Invitations wherewith he was dayly throng'd for mounting the Throne of his Royal Ancestor David And yet we know that he stole away from the Multitude that would have made him King John 6. vers 15. And as solicitously declin'd the Highest Elevation among Men as others Court and Fight for it Nay as he himself was preparing immortal Crowns of Righteousness for all those that should walk in those Paths he had so clearly chalked out unto them Besides his interest among the People was such that not only the Priests at several times durst not set upon him for fear of them but even when he was in their Clutches when Pilat had him at his Mercy he was in a capacity of getting himself rescued and that by ordinary means If my kingdom were of this World said he then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews Joh. 18. vers 36. So that if he had thought it lawful for Subjects either to shake off their Governours or to resist them when they fall to oppress them he had never cast such a Copy to his Followers who could not but be presum'd not to follow the Actions of their Master as much as his Words Yea further He not only would not suffer St. Peter to defend him in an hostile manner but also up-braided the rashness of his undertaking with this smart rebuke Put up thy sword into his place for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword Mat. 26. vers 52. And thus he did at once condemn the Doctrine of its being lawful for Subjects to resist the Supreme Authority even when they suffer the most unjustly by it and also furnisht us with the most eminent Instance of non-resistance that the violentest Attack could give us occasion for But however much this has been urged I would fain know whether or not our Saviour design'd by such an Example to entrench upon the Right of the Subject Yet to answer by piece-meal I say to his refusing to be King That then Jacobs Prophecy was fulfilled and the Scepter was departed from Judah because Shilo was come And so that Constitution which was appointed by God to be peculiar to that People was then expir'd And the Romans were become their lawful Governours not only by their right of Conquest but even by their own Sollicitation of the Protection of their Power as Josephus reports Unless therefore it could be made out that the Romans were then usurping over them by violating the fundamental Constitution of their new Government our Saviour acted but conformably to the Principles I have laid down about Subjection neither would he have yielded to the desire of the People to be their King without overturning those Measures and Rules of Government which were then established both by the Law of Nature and of Nations Yet moreover it was totally inconsistent with our Saviours design to have ever assum'd any other Principality to himself but what tender'd him to be the Prince of our Peace with God his Father and the Captain of Eternal Life and Salvation unto us And when he only departed alone into the Mountain to escape the design of making him King without reproving it of injustice as wronging the rightful Soveraign there are thoughts suggested thereby to us of a far different nature from those in behalf of which such a Passage is alledged For he who taught openly in the Temple those things that were most distasteful to the Jews cannot reasonably be construed to have dar'd in the Mountain to have expos'd such a wicked Error as the People then shew they entertain'd It seems then that it was sufficient to his Purpose to let them understand that whomever they designd to make their King 't is like because of the Oppressions they were lying under he was not the Person that could embrace it his Errand to this World being only to dispose them for a Kingdom in that which is to come Then as to our Saviours Behaviour in the Presence of and Answer to Pilate He both shew he was not to go over the limites of that Private Station he had confin'd himself unto and that he had not set up for any Temporal Monarchy his Kingdom being a Spiritual one that involved quite other Rights than those that were repugnant to the Subjection he as a Member of the Common-wealth was oblig'd to pay Wherefore tho nothing could have been more barbarous and unjust than was the Treatment he met with first from his Accusers the Jews and then from the Governour Pilate yet in the capacity of a single Subject he reckoned it unlawful to gainstand such an act of Oppression as extended not immediatly in its own nature to endanger the Common-wealth but only fell heavily upon his individual concernment But there is something shrewdly imported in these words then would my Servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews For it were blasphemous to think that our Saviour under any kind of Supposition about himself would have given his Verdict to what in it self was unjust and unwarrantable And as to the Reprimand St. Peter got it is palpable that our Saviour only intended by it to show that altho the Sword was lawful against the Assaults of privat Invaders since he had given Commission even to barter ones Garment for one upon that account Yet no private Quarrel was sufficient ground for drawing it against the publick and lawful Authority and that neither He himself nor his Doctrine however sacred both were was to be defended against Persecution by such carnal Means It is also observable that the Verse 54 But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be denotes that there was something particular in that whole Affair relating to his Person and that in a certain Subordination to the End why he took our Nature upon him he was necessitated to submit to the Governing Power that then was in the Nation notwithstanding it was infinitely abus'd in its management toward him It cannot indeed be denyed but that St. Peter in his first Epistle Chap. 2. Verse 21. tells us that one end of his suffering was for our Imitation having says he suffered for us to leave us an example that we should follow his steps But then our Sufferings must resemble the Motives and Limitations of his And it were very odd to Dream unless it were by Dreaming indeed that the Copy ought to contain more than was in the Original But where our Saviours Doctrine and Example obliges us to suffer will more fully appear in the ensuing fourth Part of this Discourse And now I am naturally brought to it Namely I am to take notice of those Errours that most commonly â—ppâ—sâ— themselves to our Christian Doctrine about Subjection and which do little better than entirely evacuate the whole