Reipublicae Sponsiones If we do not form our actions in agreeableness thereto and comport with them in our judgments we do not onely disobey the Authority of Laws but are also false Traytors to the Government by violating our publick Faith And now O ye people foolish and unwise ye stupid and perverse generation will you still persevere to call that which is lawful nay necessary nay commendable and heroical to which we are urged by necessity to which we are obliged by the virtues of Religion to God Loyalty to our King the Faith that we owe to the Community A doing Evil that Good may come thereof Your own Condemnation must be just if you be detruded amongst the number of stupid Sots reckoned amongst those that have lost their Reason extinguished their Faculties suppressed their virtue and have no other use of their Reason left them but what is to betray them to greater Evils as a just punishment for their former abusing it You perversely and absurdly mis-apply words without sense To the purpose that you may give countenance to your impieties your utter neglect of Gods true Religion the safety of your Prince and the publick peace and become Traytors to God your King and Countrey without any sense or remorse I have but one Observation to make and one word of my self and I shall conclude The Observation is this Scarce any Government hath been intestinely destroyed but its destruction was from it self which could never have hapned if the great men had not been guilty of connivance at and sufferance of Evils that might have been timely prevented And for that after the long continued stupidity of the upper and lower vulgus which are moved by nothing but what they feel they have grown impatient of the smart of those Evils they could not or would not foresee To this Histories do give ample testimony as they do also testifie that Concussions in Governments and Convulsions in State proceed mostly from Flatterers incroachments of power attempts upon the Government and decay of Faith and Trust in our Governours and secondly from Factious Demagogues But these never appear until the Flatterers and Projectors upon Government have first played their tricks they wait as Owls for the twi-light and Woodcocks for the winter they are onely useful as revulsive remedies against the Evils of the other but are without all manner of Grace where the Government is uprightly and duely Administred And thirdly and principally from the frailty of Humane Virtue When some of better place for the preservation of the Ancient Government and Gods true Religion amongst us will not endure to forego or loose some accommodations or advantages of life which they may be well without and perhaps do not deserve how can it be expected that the generality of Mankind should suffer Martyrdoms in meer Loyalty that is be contented to become miserable and and calamitous and have no other payment for their miseries and Calamities they suffer but that their Prince receives therein an imaginary pleasure and a false satisfaction When all is said men will never govern themselves by the Doctrine of the severe Casuists But their virtue of Loyalty will bear the same proportion as their other virtues do to the Canon of Morality The best service that can be done to any Government is to keep it true to its own Constitution good and tolerarable to the People To this all wise and good men should in their several places apply themselves with Heroical zeal a busie care manly and firm resolutions and thereby prevent if possible those Evils that Mankind will not endure and sustain If all that were dis-interested from any Faction would interpose with wise applications to such purposes Governments would not be so easily dissolv'd and Nations rendred miserable or ruin'd If all that are illightned and truly honest would thus dutifully behave themselves at all times to their King and Countrey both Demagogues and Flatterers would soon be ashamed confounded and forsaken both by Prince and People and Governments be of everlasting continuance But that no man may wonder at my boldness and the freedom I have used in these Discourses I have only this true account to give of my self That Loyalty and Religion and the Prosperity and Peace of my Countrey have therein entirely conducted my thoughts and guided my hand I have therein affirmed nothing but what is publickly known for truth and which the Cause I defend requires to be said It is the Cause of our Government Religion and Nation that I advocate The Cause is pleaded in its proper Court before God and the King Angels and Men no other forum can take Cognizance of the Cause To this the Writers of the other side hath invited us by appealing thereto with their Reasons I am free from any just imputation of malice and contumely against the person who is most concerned in the right disputed I have consulted therein his true Interest which cannot be divided from the Peace and Happiness of Three Kingdoms Justice her self will acquit me from having done any thing amiss and I cannot suffer in the Censures of honest and reasonable men In these Considerations I am encircled as in a brazen wall safe and secure for as for the fears of Rage and Injustice they shall never affect me The POSTSCRIPT SIR I Now render you my hearty thanks for your free advice you gave me concerning the publishing of the Argument for the Bishops Right of Judging in Capital Causes in Parliament and for asserting their civil Honours and Rights in the Government Because it hath given me an occasion both of vindicating the most of the Inferiour Clergy from those Imputations which you have remembred to me and are commonly discoursed to their disadvantage whereby they have lost their Esteem with the People and also of rectifying the mistakes of some for their number is not great who have given too much cause therein of publick complaints You disswade me from giving any assistance to the Rights of the present Bishops for that the Clergy out of whom the Bishops must be made have entertained Principles that are destructive to the Government They affirm you say That it is in the Power of a Prince by Divine Right to govern as he pleaseth that the power of the Laws is solely in him that he may if he please use the consent of Parliaments to assist the reason of his Laws when he shall give any but it is great condescention in Kings to give a reason for what they do and a diminution to their most unaccountable Prerogative You say That they are for a Popish Successor and no Parliament and do as much as in them lies give up our Ancient Government and the Protestant Religion the true Christian Faith to the absolute will of a Popish Successor giving him a Divine Right to extirpate Gods true Religion established amongst us by Law and to evacuate our Government by his absolute pleasure Our Government by a
King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all Ages accounted Treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25 Edw. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the Government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for Ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yeild to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usuage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stripped of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain for that they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater Revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy Charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church-men and make them at least very indifferent in their Concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought if they could perish by themselves to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country To be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the Antient Christians These their deserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable than their fault that deserved that name and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their Preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared Opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Scheme of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first Design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants they have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their Design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by Force or Argument which have hitherto wanted success and such attempts always attended with dishonour and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our Follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title-page and the Publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Panick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is difficult to tell how that late unhappy War began or how it came to issue so Tragically in the Death of the late King though we know how it ended viz. The Nation recovered within twelve years after the most deplorable Death of that excellent King into a renowned Loyalty and in spight of a great Armed Power never before foil'd ever victorious then kept on foot for the Interest of a very few men restored our present King may his Reign be long and happy to the Government of his Kingdoms without the least assistance of any of the Cavalier-party and oblig'd a wary General in the head of a factious and republican Army to Loyalty Nay within that time also
understanding to appear and come forth for the undeceiving and rectifying the Judgments of the most deceivable part of Mankind and with just ignominy and scorn to beat down the assumings and presumptions of such Pretenders and Smatterers in Letters especially in such a Weighty Matter as this when the poor people if mistaken must be mistaken to their Ruine and perish by the Deceit if deceived which I hope is scarce possible for very many to be by this frivolous Pretender and Offerer of Considerations which none but he that deserves our pity could think of but for that he dares to offer them publickly to the World and under the stile of Great and Weighty Considerations he most justly deserves our Indignation a private Scorn a publick Censure For that purpose we will now produce him HE begins his Considerations with a Consideration and Recommendation of himself and would fain prove his Honestly for he was with reason conscious that this undertaking would render him more than probably suspected He proves as well as any thing he undertakes and as well as it can be proved That he is an honest man This he would have the World believe because there is such a thing as sincerity in the World and for that there have been some men that have owned an afflictive Righteous Cause against self-interest and the displeasure of a prevailing Faction but we know the Cause that he Patronizes is the most unrighteous Cause that ever any man of Front espoused but that should not trouble us But that which afflicts us and is the heart-aking of all good men is That this Scribler with too much reason we know presumes that the Brave men whom he reviles for adhering to the only means of the saving of three Kingdoms with the Gross of the Nation are designed to be subdued by a party of men whose strength the King in his profound Knowledg and Wisdom best knows how to Calculate but certainly this Addresser imagines very great whatever he pretends and that he is well backed by force Otherwise he could not adventure publickly to despise the Interest of a House of Commons If this Considerer and his Fellow-Conspirators had not some secret reserves of Strength he would not advise the King as he doth to Adhere to and Govern with the House of Lords and his Privy-Council and to lop off the House of Commons from the Government as an unprofitable Branch In the next Paragraph he tells us The Chiefest Principle and Maxim of the true reformed Religion in this Kingdom is fully Epitomized in this excellent Precept Give to every one his due If there can be more nonsense spoken in so many words It is this Patriot must do it and you shall find him often performing what I have undertaken for him And sure after such demonstrations of his Honesty and proof of his Understanding you must take him for a True Patriot and a fit Addresser of GREAT and WEIGHTY Considerations In the next Paragraph he undertakes to commend and allow chide and disapprove our leading Men I believe he means of the House of Commons but we want his Name it 's fit he should discover himself before we can admit him to sit Judge of the Actions of the most excellent Persons of the late House of Commons I perswade my self he would blush however immodest he appears in his Address if he were drawn out and exposed to publick view under such a Character we might spare him the Pillory rotten Eggs and Turnep-tops which is due to infamous Libellers against Governours for he is a man of such fashion I believe that he would suffer too much of Shame and Confusion of Face if he were but known well enough to be pointed at after we have done with him In the fourth Paragraph he allows it is a glorious thing to establish the True Protestant Religion but he would not have it established upon Quick-sands neither would we because it is impossible it should be so established we would not have it depend upon loose accidents expos'd to Chance and Contingencies and expect it should be supported by rare events and morally impossible nor to be left at Six and Sevens a chance that is not upon the Die and hope that things should out of their Course and Nature unite and combine together for its support That which is Glorious is so because it is Excellent in it self and difficult to be atchieved and whatever is difficult is to be obtained by unusual and extraordinary means to deny or condemn the use of them when lawful is to deny us the end and is so far in truth from allowing it to be Glorious that he doth not allow it at all That it is made difficult to support the Protestant Religion we owe to the Popish Conspiracy and the design of this man is to make it impossible to that purpose he requires you to lay aside Humane Policy which is the same as true Prudence which is the onely Guide God hath given us and the onely Oracle he hath left us to consult in our Affairs and is never repugnant as he would have it but always conformable to the Laws of God and Nature lest we should be furnished with a Remedy against the designed mischiefs to us and our Religion To this commendable sort of Policy the design of the Bill will be made agreeable in the following Discourse That we may admit the absurd Doctrins of the Church of Rome we are required to abandon our Reason and that we may more easily again fall unto her we must if we will be ruled by the Considerer renounce our Prudence and those that will not must endure his slanderous Reproaches with which he goes on to revile the Promoters of the Bill of Exclusion whom he calls Hypocrites Factious Spirits of the Fanatical Leven that they make a Cloak of Religion to palliate black Designs fierce Zealots acting like the rump-Rump-Parliament Guilty of Antichristian attempts repugnant to the Ordinance of God and to the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom a few turbulent Zealots assuming to themselves a Soveraign and despotical Power of Deposing the DVKE of YORK and says That they impudently affirm That this hath been the Ancient Custom of Parliaments to Depose Princes and dispose of Kingdoms whereas the Crown hath been always Haereditary and never depended upon the Suffrages of the Subject Since this bad man presumes to say so many bad words falsely of the Excellent Members of the late House of Commons reproches their Zeal for the publick Safety most Heroically exerted in the time of the greatest Need and most threatning Dangers calls their appearance for the support of the Protestant Religion established by Law Hypocrisie And the prosecuting the Discovery of the Hellish Plot and the best means of preventing the Plot from taking effect black Designs Since I say his Immodesty hath given him so much Licence I wonder he had no more Scurrilities especially since he is so impertinent as to call
patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a divine Original according to the Prophesies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross The Christians acquired a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer Violence and Cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. after his Religion is exalted into Dignity and Honour and civil Authority If the Senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make Laws for extirpating the Christian Faith What is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession to the Crown is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe Transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into Fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his Dreams are Dreams of phrensie There are some things so false that they cannot be disproved as some things are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This Proposition hath no colour to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor is there any thing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall adde that this Doctrine is the Doctrine of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any Age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergie of England in the Case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergie renownedly Learned and Prudent By the Providence of God and the Piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honours It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious That we cannot have new Laws for the preservation of our Religion but must lose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunities which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers Can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws one Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy But I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good-natured Gentlemen of the Clergy It is thus they perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Vnlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their natural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call their fellow-Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and Dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best supported with Truth and Justice This new Doctrine is not true and whosoever entertains a belief of it is not onely barely mistaken but will be led by the mistake into the most mischievous impious and sacrilegious injustice and treachery It is very agreeable to a good man to embrace a proposition with an easie belief that offers the least seeming probability of a security against the miseries of War by all means to be avoided But this Doctrine of the Divinity of Kings is most dangerous to the Peace of Kingdoms for it is pregnant with Wars Besides that it will give bad Princes which sometime hereafter may be Born into the World for such there have been now and then power to
been ashamed of some of their works of darkness and do not bring into present use some of their most gross Impostures and some worse than Pagan Superstitions Yet when this light is extinguish'd it will be a most dismal and eternal Night upon the Christian world If we return to her our Ears will be bored and we shall be irredeemably enslaved The spirit of Popery if it returns and possesseth us again that hath been walking in the reformed Countries as in dry places seeking rest and finding none and finds us thus swept and garnisht will bring with it seven Devils more wicked than it self and our last estate will be worse than the first The Pride Cruelty and Avarice Domination and Luxury of their Priesthood will be aggravated upon us and the minds of the Laity more lowly depressed by Superstition and Ignorance The Gospel of Cardinal Palavicini will be the Canon of the Christian Religion or it may be something worse for who can tell what will be the Religion that that Church will offer in process of time to the world under the Christian-Name When the Pope by his pretended infallibility may make the Christian Religion what he please by interpreting adding altering or detracting with an uncontroulable Authority For us therefore to become Papists to return to the Church of Rome acknowledge the Popes Infallibility there is no other way to become Papists is virtually to betray the Christian Faith to renounce our Allegiance to our Lord Christ to prefer the Bulls of a profane Pope to the holy Oracles of God and the Revelation of Jesus God blessed for ever With this Religion therefore we can never make an accommodation we may as well make a Covenant with Hell This as Dr. Jackson one of the glories of the Church of England in his Book called The Eternal Truth of Scriptures vehemently admonisheth us admits no terms of parley for any possible reconcilement whose following words to this purpose I shall here transcribe The natural separation of this Island from those Countries wherein this Doctrine is professed shall serve as an everlasting Emblem of the Inhabitants divided Hearts at least in this point of Religion And let them O Lord be cut off speedily from amongst us and their Posterity transported hence never to enjoy again the least good thing this Land affords Let no print of their Memory be extant so much as in a Tree or Stone within our Coast Or let their Names by such as remain here after them be never mentioned or always to their endless shame Who living here amongst us will not imprint these or the like wishes in their Hearts and daily mention them in their Prayers Littora Littoribus contraria fluctibus undas Imprecor arma armis pugnent ipsique Nepotes Which he thus renders Let our forein Coasts joyn Battel in the Main E're this foul Blasphemy Great Britain ever stain Where never let it come but floating in a Flood Of our our Nephews and their Childrens blood I shall only subjoyn my hearty Desires and Prayers that we may all fear God and be zealous for his true Religion Honour the King and firmly adhere to the Government and in our several places steadily oppose and resist those Villains that are given to change That by our Vnion we may defeat the crafty designs of our cruel and implacable Enemies who if they can continue those Divisions they have made amongst us by their wicked Arts will certainly at length destroy us who are bent upon our destruction though they themselves perish with us we cease to be a Nation and our Language be forgotten in a foreign Captivity Sir Now I have given you my Answer to your Reasons to disswade me from publishing the Argument for the Bishops by representing how few of the Clergy can with reason be thought guilty of Opinions so mischievous to the Church and State which you charge to have generally corrupted them and how easily and with little consideration they will be laid aside by them I will make no other Apologie for the publishing this than that I have communicated these thoughts to no Man alive either of the Church of England or any other denomination or consulted any mans advice about it That I can serve to design of no party of men herein nor any particular design of my own I wish they can be serviceable in the least degree to publick good I have had them by me a great while and have considered them under the several varieties of temper that our bodies are disposed to which induce different thoughts and various apprehensions in most things under the several passions that the fluctuation of publick affairs have occasioned under the Ebbs and Flows of Hopes and Fears in reference to the state of the Kingdom for some length of time And finding them to have the same appearance and to give me the same satisfaction in all their several postures and the views that I could take of them I assure my self I was sincere when I thought and that they result meerly from my Judgment such as it is uncorrupted That I am not perverted or biassed by any secret passion or desire of any sort which many times lurk and steal upon us deceive us unawares and undiscernedly abuse us Sir the sum of my Apologie is this that I know my self sincere of honest Intentions moved by nothing but a hearty love and affection to our King Religion and Country And for what any man shall think of me I am not Solicitous Yours T. H. The Great and Weighty CONSIDERATIONS Relating to the Duke of York OR Successor of the Crown Offered to the KING and both Houses of Parliament CONSIDERED WITH An ANSWER to a LETTER from a Gentleman of Quality in the Country to his Friend relating to the Point of Succession to the Crown Whereunto is added A short HISTORICAL COLLECTION touching the same LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1682. TO THE READER I Have in the Postscript offered Reasons of the Lawfulness of an Act of Exclusion which to all true Protestants must needs be desirable if it can be lawfully obtained Yet for the farther satisfaction of unthinking people and Men of weak Minds who are never certain especially in great Matters where Men of Note are divided in their Opinions but for that very Reason where they have no direct Reason to guide them in forming their Judgment remain scrupulous if not doubtful and for that they doubt they must therefore conclude the Matter as to themselves at least unlawful I have Reprinted these Discourses that were Printed near three years since in Answer to two Books written by two Eminent Persons the first supposed to be writ by a great Secretary the other by a notable Lawyer thereto employed under promises and expectations of great Preferments This mans Book especially is highly applauded by the Ducal Party his very words made the stile of the
are pleased with these things there is no wrong done them and if we affect a change of our Religion and Government it may be easily obtain'd The King hath no reason to consent to disinherit his Brother if the People rejoyce in the hopes of such a Successor or at least will acquiesce under that fate but if we would avoid it we must deprecate it in such applications to his Majesty as consists with true Loyalty and with such earnestness as the matter requires and at the same time represent the smalness of the numbers of Addressers and the inconsiderableness of their quality Thus his Majesty would understand better the Sense of his People especially when most of the Addressers themselves shall by joyning in such Applications shew what they meant by Lawful Successors in their Addresses And that when in the same Addresses they did engage to serve the King with their Lives and Fortunes they did not intend to subject themselves and all that they have to his Majesties absolute pleasure In that they thank his Majesty for his Promise of frequent Parliaments they desire them and when they thanked him for his promise to maintain the Protestant Religion they desired the continuance of it and such a Law as is absolutely necessary for its preservation Then it may appear that the Abhorrers themselves did not understand that the name of the Earl of Shaftsbury in the business of Abhorrence is but like the name of John a Styles and John an Oaks of Titius and Sempronius in putting a fictitious Case And that the onely Question askt was Who are the most damnable Plotters at this time the Protestants or Papists And that this was the Question intended to be put to the People in the Sollicitation of Addresses of Abhorrence is evident If we did dutifully represent to his Majesty these Proceedings as the Arts of our Enemies for dividing us and the Methods of our designed Ruine we should not be undone and there is nothing more than this necessary for the preventing of our Ruine since we have so gracious a King Our King is duly stiled Pater Patriae he will not suffer his People to be calamitous as no good Prince can suffer his to be from any cause whatsoever that is to be removed no not from their own Fears and Jealousies if they are innocent reasonable and probable The Affections of a Prince to his People supersede his Affection towards any private Relation So strong is the Tye of Duty upon him from his Office to prevent publick Calamities as no respect whatsoever no not of the Right Line can discharge nor will he himself ever think if duly addressed that it can By the Kingly Office he is taken up from amongst men and is made a God to us he is not to suffer the passions of a private man so as to be swayed by them In this high capacity In the matters of the Government nothing ought to determine him but the Common weal to which purpose all Governments are instituted Besides the excellent humanity of our King which hath made his Reign so clement doth dispose him to a tender Affection towards his People committed to his care and must powerfully incline and perswade him to do any thing that is necessary for preventing such Evils which as they are greater than can be supported by his People so if they come upon us we shall never be able to emerge or recover from under their pressures There wants nothing but a universal desire of being happy to make us so and nothing but a declaring our steady abhorrence of the Evils we cannot sustain is further necessary for preventing them Our Enemies will be destroyed meerly by our uniting they have no direct Strengths of their own all their hopes and confidence is in our Divisions We may evacuate their designe by making it impossible without a Conflict with any of the Evils fear'd We shall have no Enemies from that time we are at peace with our selves if we have courage enough to say we are not content to perish we are immediately safe Our Traytors would disappear if we had no Neuters and we cannot lose either our Religion or Government if we have a just concern for them If the Protestants would in time understand that the single Art and Stratagem they have to undo us is by dividing us we should not assist it by receiving false and hated Characters of the several Sects that are amongst us from the Popish Writers and represent them to our selves as more detestable than the Popish Traytors and alike Enemies to the Government It is no more agreeable to a scrupulous man about a Ceremony of the Church to depose and murder his lawful Prince than to a man of a nice Conscience to be impiously wicked Too true it is all Nations and Religions have been sometime or other stain'd with the horrid guilts of Deposing and Murdering Kings under a pretence of destroying Tyrants and vindicating their Country from Oppression The Bishops concur'd with the Temporal Lords in deposing the second Richard In an Address to that King they justifi'd themselves therein Ex Antiquo Statuto from the Constitutions of the Kingdom and Ex facto nuperrimè dolendo by which they meant the deposing of Edward the Second Knighton one of the Decem Scriptores published by Mr. Selden gives us the Address in terminis Until the Collectors of Dissenters Sayings can justifie the Bishops in this matter let them not trouble the world any more with the farrago of some of their wicked Sayings thereof to make a Character of a Dissenter for it belongs no more to him as such to be a Traytor or Rebel than it doth to the Character of the English Bishops to depose their King and cause his most Sacred Bloud to be shed and profan'd as a common thing But for removing the fears that our cautious Church-men have of Dissenters which hath cast them into a cold indifferency and inert neutrality at this time when if ever the Applications of an active Prudence are required from all honest men and lovers of their King Country and Religion I wish they would weigh and consider the mischiefs on either hand What the Popish Party designes and what the Dissenters would have What powers the Popish Party have what endeavours they use to force their Superstitions upon us and to change our Government That the Dissenters have neither Power nor Will to destroy our Religion or Government They are already of our Church and it is expected that they should be Petitioners to the Bishops for their intercession towards obtaining some Indulgence in some little matters that may bring them into an entire Communion with us It may easily be known who are for the preservation of our Government or dissolution of it by their Desires or Abhorrences of Parliaments and who desires Parliaments more than Dissenters which would preserve our ancient Government in Church and State and the true Religion establish'd among
us and recover us into a firm Peace and Union by just and necessary provisions for their support Whilst the Government is preserved the Church is safe and secure for no man can fear that the King and the States of the Realm will ever give place to wild Fanaticism and suffer so excellent an Ecclesiastical constitution as we enjoy to be subverted for any Extravagancies that shall deserve the name of Fanaticism But the pretences of our Neuters for their Neutrality are not more groundless than their reasonings are absurd by which they oppose the only remedies to the Evils that now beset us and the greater we fear That absurd Opinion Dominium fundatur in gratiâ is charg'd upon those that are for the Exclusion of the Duke and they think by pronouncing this piece of absurd Latine they have at once put to silence and shame all the reasons of Nature Religion and State that urge it and require it That there is nothing can be more absurd than that Dogma will appear for that almost whole Dutch Systems of false and paltry Theology go to the making of it in the most tolerable sense it can have and for that it hath been improv'd into a most villainous sense to give countenance to the vilest Outrages of the German Anabaptists But Dominium signify'd Property not Government and Rule until our admirably accomplished young Divines of this last Age out of their great skill in the Latine Tongue would have it so for the service of the great Defender of the Protestant Religion and of the Church of England All Rights as well Natural as Civil are forfeitable by Crimes in such measure and degree as Laws appoint and as good Government requires Notwithstanding Grace be not admitted a good Title to any thing that the Saint will desire though of the Roman stamp I confess Natural Rights but they are very few are not controlable by Laws but are by Laws to be defended and the free use of them to be justifyed and allowed most certainly not to be condemned by any Civil Authority A right in Nature every man hath to live until he hath forfeited his Life Whatever he doth that is necessary for his preservation is and ought to be justifyed by all Laws though he kills though he breaks the Civil Inclosure of Property which cannot and was never intended to shut out the Natural Right that every man hath in the last extreamities Every man hath a right to his plank in a Wreck though the owner of the Ship perish by him for want of it All the Authority of all the Legislators in the world united cannot make unlawful any Act that is done in self-preservation Sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae where the man is innocent But Civil Rights are without iniquity alterable and controleable by Laws and by acts of Government ordainable to the publick good Nothing is so intirely perfectly and abstractly Civil as Government the perfect Creature of men in society made by pact and consent and not otherwise most certainly not otherwise and therefore most certainly ordainable by the whole Community for the safety and preservation of the whole to which it is in the reason and nature of it intirely design'd But we are told by some that will not contest the lawfulness of Exclusion That we trouble our selves with the fears of an imaginary danger That we are endeavouring a remedy against the Evil that may never happen That we impertinently trouble our selves about providing that which we may never want or need That the Duke may dye before the King And if the Duke should survive he neither can nor will change our Religion That it is not lawful for any man Occupare facinus quod timet and to destroy the person whom he fears I wish it were considered on the other side That if the Duke dye before the King there is no wrong done to the Duke by Excluding him It is onely his hopes and expectations that are cut off for the preventing our fears a possibility of hurt provided against by shutting out the possibility of effecting it and that not by any hurt to his Person but meerly by disabling it a Remedy proportioned and suited to the disease we desire to be eased of our fears by a just security against them But if the Duke should certainly survive the King and could and would change our Religion they who thus discourse seem to allow it lawful to exclude him But for that they say the Duke if King will not or cannot change our Religion let every man consider his present Will and Power and how far he hath proceeded towards it before he is entred into his Kingdom These silly dreamers dishonour him whilst they pretend to serve him His Princely Virtues make him the more dreadful to a Protestant Kingdom They who thus talk make him a bad man of that bad Religion weak in his conduct and feeble in his power But how can this be when they have instructed the Nation into absolute obedience and have measured the duty of obedience by the Kings pleasure and not by Laws That the pleasure of a King is irresistable some of them will not allow passive obedience to be at all obedience Besides all caution is proportioned to the greatness of the Evils feared No wise man ever left the sum of his Affairs to Chance Where the Evils are not to be remedied or resisted when they happen the caution is just that prevents them If there be no remedy against the Evil we fear but the Exclusion the Exclusion is not onely lawful but commendable And for this we have the Authority of the Illustrious Grotius under his general Doctrine and determination Lib. 2. Cap. 1. De Jure belli ac pacis It is Engraven in Capital Letters upon the Foundation-Stones of all the Governments in the world That any person unfit for Government shall be Excluded from Governing Though Fools cannot read it until the foundations be removed and the Government subverted That his Royal Highness hath rendred himself unfit for the Government hath been declared more than once by the unanimous consent of all the States of the Realm and how far the King hath been of the same opinion may be conjectured by those Expedients that have been offered in several Parliaments by Privy-Councellors and Ministers of State and the Dukes greatest Friends Onely such were those of the late Parliaments that opposed the Bill of Exclusion but even these were for sequestring the Royal and Soveraign Powers and Authorities during the Life of a Popish Successor and to leave him content with the Name of a King onely An Indignity this both to the Name and Office a thing repugnant to the Fundamental Constitutions This tends to destroy the Monarchy it self It points directly to the Evils of the late times and would make the Parliament Sequestrators of the Crown But such absurdities those that appeared most his Friends would run us upon rather than a Popish
submissions which is the sum of the Apostles Doctrine in this matter The Christian Religion instituted no form of Governments but enjoyns us to be obedient to those we have not onely by express command in the case but by its general Rules of a most refined improved and extensive morality But though I said the Scriptures have not prescribed or directed any universal Form of Governments yet the Scripture hath declared the falshood of this new Hypothesis of Kingly Government to be Jure Divino or by Divine Right For St. Peter 1 Peter 2.13 and 14 stiles Kings as well as the Governours under him the ordinance of man which cannot have any other sence but that men make them and give them their powers By St. Paul the power of Governments indeed is called Gods Ordinance Romans 13.2 but that is for this reason because in general God approves of Governments as necessary to the well-being of Mankind for the improvement of humane nature for the punishing of Vice encouragement and security of Virtue without them it being impossible to live honestly and in peace And he hath made them the under-Ministers of his providence and care over Mankind and expects of them that they should promote his true Honour and worship in the world which will be always accompanied with the exercise of all civil virtues These two different places must be so understood that they may be both true and by no other interpretation can they be reconciled and made consistent It is impossible that any thing can be of mans appointment which is of Gods Ordination there can be no such thing as a Co-legislative power of Men with their Maker Government therefore is from God as he hath made Governments necessary in the general order of things but the specification thereof is from men The best definition that can be made of Government is in the words of both the Apostles put together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such Governments which men make God approves and requires our obedience to them upon all those reasons which make Governments necessary The natural and easie consequence and result of these Scriptures is this which I desire those Gentlemen to observe That whatsoever is not lawfully established by men no Law of God not the Christian Law doth oblige us to obey The Christian Religion doth equally condemn in the reason of its Institutions Usurpation and Contumacy Where the Apostle admonish us that if we be free we should not become Servants he hath by virtue of that Admonition made it commendable not to suffer the encroachments of Power over us Most certainly therefore as the Christian Religion doth not prejudice the Soveraign Rights of Princes such as they are in the several Forms and Models of Monarchical Governments non eripit terrestria qui regna dat coelestia as Sedulius so doth it not enlarge them when by the Gospel God made us free from his own positive Laws to the Jews sure he did not intend thereby de Jure to render us Slaves to the Arbitrary pleasure of men No man intends by any thing in the Scripture that all Mankind is obliged to any one Form of Government and therefore all men are left to their own It hath not therefore altered the terms of Government and Obedience that every Nation hath established for themselves but hath confirmed and strictly obliged the observance of them To Obedience to Government we are obliged by as many ties as there are Christian Virtues and he must disown his Christianity that departs from his due Allegiance And since our Saviour is declared King of Kings and Lord of Lords all Christian Kings are to govern in imitation of his mercy and goodness and in subserviency to the interest of his Religion and Kingdom Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis cuncta supercilio moventis Whence then is this absolute Authority of Kings if it come neither from God nor man Give me leave now to inform you that these opinions render you all Traytors guilty of Treason of State perduellionis rei obnoxious to be punished as Traitors by an Authority lodg'd in Parliament in the Constitution of the Government You your selves must needs condemn your selves to have forfeited all your own who hold such Principles that tend to destroy every mans Right by resolving all things into the absolute pleasure of a Monarch in which you mostly disserve the King and are contrary to his Majesties late Declaration The men of these Principles the less of the Government they are intrusted with the better for the less they have to give up and betray I confess if I could believe that this Doctrine was become Orthodox among them and the prevailing opinion of the Clergie I should conclude us to be the most unhappy people under the Sun This is an Hypothesis indeed that will bring on new Heavens and a new Earth but such wherein no Peace or Righteousness can ever dwell But I deem all such as are Defenders and Promoters of it do deserve a civil Excommunication more smarting than their Ecclesiastical and to be condemned to live upon and onely feed themselves with their thin and crude Speculations To be excluded from any share of that Government that they professedly in their Principles betray To be punished as seditious persons and most mischievous Schismaticks far more intolerable in this matter than the scrupulous Brotherhood for their boglings at an indifferent and insignificant Ceremony For that to the ruine of our Religion and destruction of the publick Peace they divide from that Polity to which by drawing here their first breath they made Faith and to which the condition of their birth doth oblige them they falsifie that which Arrian in his Epictetus calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than which nothing is more sacred and inviolable By creating themselves a new Allegiance and obtruding it upon their fellow-Citizens and Members of the same Kingdom they set up a Kingdom within a Kingdom more dangerous and mischievous than the Papal Imperium in Imperio which certainly will be introduced if this Modern and monstrously-extravagant opinion can prevail by a general Credence It is criminal and no less dangerous to the being of any Polity to restrain the Legislative Authority and to entertain Principles that disable it to provide remedy against the greatest mischiefs that can happen to any Community No Government can support it self without an unlimited power in providing for the happiness of the people No Civil establishment but is controulable and alterable to the publick weal. Whatever is not of divine Institution ought to yield and submit to this power and Authority The Succession to the Crown is of a civil nature not established by any Divine Right Several Kingdoms have several Laws of Succession some are Elective others Hereditary under several Limitations All humane Constitutions are made cum sensu humanae imbecillitatis under reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and emergencies
make their Reigns worse than War and Plague and Famine to boot The Panick fear of a change of the Government that this Doctrine occasioned and the Divisions it made among us was the principal cause of the late War It is not without reason that together with these new principles revived since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have a perpetual din and noise of Forty one Then that fatal War began which proceeded to the destruction of the Prince and ruin of the Church and State The remembrance of it is the principal matter that stuffs our weekly Pamphlets and it is brought into common discourse and grown so trival that it is mentioned and heard without abhorrence and regret And what Service this can be to His Majesty I do not understand much better it were that the memory of it were utterly extinct and abolished for ever except onely in the Anniversary of that great Prince that so fell Then I say and then onely is it fit to be remembred when we are on our Knees to God Almighty and in his presence affecting our selves with sorrow and remorse deprecating the like Judgments and bewailing the National Sins that occasioned those For notwithstanding the Glories of that Great Prince his unhappy death and the admired Devotions of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The story of the Calamities of his people all his three Kingdoms involved in War during his Reign and the remembrance of them will be with some Men not very Loyal a stain and diminution to the Glories of the Royal Family In Princes their Calamities are reckoned amongst the abatements of their Honor and meer misfortunes are disgraces and have the same influence upon the minds of the common people as real faults and male administrations How then can this tend to the peace of the Nation or the Honor of the King what satisfaction is it to have our almost-healed wounds thus perpetually rub'd and kept green Quis sua vulnera victus commemorare velit Why should any of our Nation insult over the miseries of his own and neighbour Kingdoms when he must be the most barbarous villain and have devested himself of all humanity that is not deeply empassioned at the remembrance of them If a Thuanus or a Philip de Comines were to pass a Judgment of the condition of our late times upon the consideration of our late Tragedies and the Preludium's to it in the Reigns of King James and the late King it would be formed and pronounced in these words of Tully upon another occasion Mihi quidem si proprium verum nomen vestri mali quoeratur fatalis quoedam calamitas incidisse videtur improvidas hominum mentes occupavisse ut nemo mirari debeat humana consilia divina necessitate esse superata But this is not all Nec Dum finitur Orestes We are affrighted by the weekly Pamphlets with the expectation of another Parliamentary War and this is the true reason of the mention of the late War that we may forgo our Parliaments for fear of another So it is written in our publick Prints which are published under permission as if Parliaments are designed to be rendered hateful and to be feared as Plagues Famines or Inundations of the Sea But who is to begin who designs this War the Pamphleteers or those that set them on work best know We had never heard of any such thing if the Mercenary writers of the Popish Faction had not told us of it as they do weekly and hitherto we cannot find any Colour for this affrightful Lye they are impudent so to talk of it as if they believed it and have brought some as weak men as they are false Knaves to a belief of it But to do them no wrong those may best know what is to come to pass who have the power of contriving and designing Qui pavet vanos metus veros fatetur The vilest Traitors cannot contrive a greater prejudice to the King and his Family than by advancing such a dismal thing into credit and belief for fears though but upon imaginary and false grounds produce real effects as well as they are in themselves really afflictive and that almost equally if of continuance to the evils feared Do these men speak like true Loyalists that are mentioning perpetually the Calamitous War in the time of our Kings Father and fright us with another now ensuing after those Universal Solemn and hearty Joys of the whole Nation for his Restauration after so many Millions of Money most dutifully issued out of the affections of his people from time to time at His Majesties Royal pleasure and nothing complain'd of but that they have not opportunities of issuing ten times more to the service of His Majesties Glory Nay they speak of this ensuing War as if the Royal Standard was already displayed and the Rebels had made their Musters which must certainly affect the Royal Family with the greatest danger If there were twenty Trajans derived from one stock that had Reigned in an uninterrupted Succession Two immediate Successours that should have their Reigns successively attended with civil Wars were enough to efface their own and the glories and merits of such Ancestors But base Caitiffs you can no more truly believe the last Parliaments designed upon his Majesties Crown and Dignity to make War and change the Government than you can believe that every Mothers Child of them before they came up to the last Parliaments set his House on fire and burnt his Wife and Children But these impudent Forgeries against the House of Commons are contrived to make the people afraid of Parliaments that this new model of Government in process of time when we have an enterprising Successor may take place for the service of the Popish Religion For upon the strength of Dr. B s performance who hath with great labour found out which is hard for any man acquainted with our English History to be ignorant of that our Parliaments were not always such as now constituted This blessed change of our Government will never be atchieved The Nation will never be perswaded by any thing that he hath found out in his diligent research that the House of Commons is an overgrown Wen an unnatural Accrescency to the Government and fit to be cut off if that which is offered in the Argument to consideration be duly weighed Neither can the most insolent Paradox of Sir Robert Filmers Patriarcha contribute much to this purpose But for that I have in my Argument too forwardly despised it considering that many have conceived a favourable opinion of it that it may be able to deceive but a very few for the time to come for the sake of such Gentlemen who have not chosen their side are glad of the least Colour or dream of a Shadow a single opinion of any body it matters not whom to relieve their modesty in their notorious defections from Truth Justice and the Government I shall here consider his
the Bill of Exclusion an Antichristian Attempt Repugnant to the Ordinance of God though God never yet made any Law or Ordinance in that Case and the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom though no Laws of Men are so Fundamental but they are alterable The Constitution of Government is indeed unalterable by Law but no Laws but are alterable by the Government for the Government was before Laws and made and constituted most chiefly for the business of Legislation That the House of Commons assumes a Soveraign Power he knows to be false and knows too that all the world knows he is therein a Falsary What can be expected of Candour or Sincerity from a man of such Effrontery and to the making the Slander compleat he joyns Despotical to Soveraign power as if they were the same an instance of his egregious Ignorance except he flatters the King and would signifie to him that he hath despotical power because he hath a Soveraign Power and this commends him indeed for a true Patriot A Despotical Power is such as Masters use over their Servants that command what they will because they will Soveraign Power is exercised for the good of those that are governed and the Commands that come from the Soveraign Power are Laws that are deduc'd from publick Reason as they are the publick Measures and are always reasonable or pretend to be so No body ever affirmed before this Addresser to the King That it hath been the Ancient Custom of Parliaments to dispose of the Crown or that it depended upon the Suffrages of the Subjects which he falsly and maliciously adventures to say to misrepresent the most Venerable late House of Commons whose Proceedings will justifie themselves in true Story to all succeeding Generations and will we all hope be seconded and out-done by the next if the good People can keep themselves from being deceived by such Artificial men as this Addresser is But this is said and truly That a Parliament which is King Lords and Commons have declared and particularly a Parliament in the Reign of that most Excellent Princess Queen Elizabeth of Eternal Memory the wisest and greatest of the Princes that are Glorious for the Reforming the Christian Religion did declare a Power in themselves for Great and Weighty Reasons of State to alter the Succession otherwise than of course it is by Law appointed and most reasonable it is for no Government can want a Power to preserve it self and obtain its great end viz. the preservation of the Community and Polity it self and no less Reasons than these require and urge the Use and Exercise of this Power in an Act of Parliament for Excluding the D. from Succeeding to the Imperial Crown of England In order to these ends the Power of a Parliament is unrestrain'd and unlimited which this Consideration-Monger calls Scoffingly Impiously and Prophanely towards God and irreverently towards the Government Omnipotency In the next Paragraph he produceth his first Reason against the Excluding Bill And by an execrable Argument he adventures to prove That the descent of the Crown is Sacred viz. That an Attainder in Treason cannot debar the next Heir from succeeding in the Government But if the Heir had died of that Attainder the Argument had been spoiled For cannot that Power that can inflict Capital Sentences and that ought to do it against all in subjection that incur them Banish instead of Kill sure he is no true Friend to his Royal Highness whatever he pretends we will sooner admit him a true Patriot for that he makes the condition of his presumptive Heir so hard That he must either Die or Reign A very judicious Advocate and deserves very well of his Client who will remember him sure when he comes into his Kingdom for bringing him into such danger I believe this considering Patriot shifted himself in this Consideration into France where they have Princes of the Blood against whom no Criminal Process can be formed nor no Attainder of Blood is admitted to the purpose that the most enormous Crimes may not seem faults in those that participate of the blood of that haughty Tyranny But the better to disguise himself he criminates the Parliament calls the House of Commons in derision Cunning Politicians that would have a new Model of Government he chargeth them with assuming a power to depose the King and will conclude because he will and hopes the People will take his Word for it for no other reason in the world that we may as well Depose the King as foreclose a Presumptive Heir which he will call deposing him for this Ruffian-like man will not submit to the common use of Words and is at defiance with the common Sense of Mankind and will say it That it is as lawful to Depose the Possessor of the Crown as to make an Act of Parliament for preserving the Life of the present King by disabling the next Successor that brings it in danger And likens the late House of Commons upon the score of their Bill of Exclusion to the Rump Oh! for a Discoverer that would bring this man to Light and Shame and thereby to Reason and Sobriety Upon this weak and slight colour of a Reason see in the next Paragraph how he lays about him with what vehemency and expostulation and yet in his magisterial Rant the trifler could no sooner name an extravagant Bill but he thinks of a Box of Gilded Pills which if he had been lately under cure by Mr. Hobbs his Doctrine of the train of Thoughts they could not escape coming together And yet this Thinking Addresser is not altogether so happy in dividing and opposing as in compounding For he affirms that to go about to establish the Protestant Religion by a Bill to Exclude the Popish Successour is inconsistent with the Government and is to destroy the very Root and Life of Government But pray Sir for the sake of Reason tell us Doth the Government it self depend upon the person that Governs or is the Government it self changed by the alteration of the Succession may not Governments for kind the same have different modes of Succession and are not the kinds of Succession more than the kinds and forms of Government Can the Government be safe without a Power to exclude a Person inhabil in Nature to support it or of one Principled to destroy it Can we imagine a Government which is of Humane Contrivance to be without a Power to preserve it self and an Authority in Cases that threaten its Ruine to interpose with apt Remedies for its preservation That a Government made by men should be left meerly to chance and the contingency of Birth whatever happens of inability in the Persons that come under the general Rule and Limitation of Succession Doth the Exercise of this power turn the Kingdom from being Hereditary to Elective is there no difference between the inconvenience of Judging of the several Degrees of fitness in several persons competently qualified and the
you will allow agreeable to the man I believe immodesty is the unhappy Vice and Fate of his Nature for no man ever arrived to the like Degree in it before him you must not ask what he means by a point without example or president or why he puts us a point that is not in our Case and still will be talking of deposing a Prince for this man oweth no account of his matters But thou False Considerer So Loyal I am That I would not have that point in the Case for half I am worth But pray why thus impertinent Why dost thou send us to Asa and Maachah Jeroboam Rehoboam Jehu and Joram Asa and his Mother and Azaria we know little of the Constitution of the Jewish Monarchy save that God after the Jews had rejected his Government and desired a King kept some remains of his Theocracy over them which he administred by his Prophets whom he commissioned to Exauctorate and Anoint Kings Their Histories are short but besides every Nation is to be governed by their own Laws and there are as many kinds almost of Governments as there are Governments we are not warranted by their Presidents nor to be Justified or Condemned by them but we must Stand or Fall to our own Laws But let this Patriot know that our case will never be Cromwels as he reproaches us we will not neither can we stand in need of any Apology that would serve either for the Rump or him for we are preserving that Government and Church which they destroyed Neither will we O man of small Consideration make use in our defence of the Papists excluding the King of Navarr a Protestant King in France No more than we will allow the French to murder a Protestant Minister because we execute a Seditious Traiterous Roman Priest No more than we can allow in others or justifie in our selves to prosecute dissenting Protestants whose Principles are peaceable and obedient to Governours Because we duly sharpen our Laws and exact the Severity of them against the Papists the sworn enemy to all Religions but their own and to all mankind upon the score thereof How grosly therefore is that of the Apostle misapplyed Whosoever thou art O man that judgest another c. For doth a publick Executioner incur the Judgment of shedding mans Blood for executing a Sentence against a Murderer Thou man of Observation mayst possibly know what kind of Beasts we muzzle and tye up He observes for our Imitation That the Orthodox did not Depose the Arrian Emperours we ought undoubtedly to imitate them therein for that no man much less a Prince ought to lose any right for a Speculative Error or meer mis-belief But onely for wicked practices and opinions that promote excite and encourage them But it is also very observable which the Considerer by his mention of Julian the Emperour in this place gives me occasion to offer That the Behaviour of the Church towards the Pagan Roman Emperours was much different from that which they bore to Julian who succeeded to Christian Emperours was educated a Christian and sometimes bore a place in the Church for whereas the Apostles had enjoyned the Christians to pray for the Pagan Emperours though actual Persecutors of the Church yet the whole Church did Curse and Anathematize Julian with an Anathema quo Deus rogatur ut aliquem è medio tollat In Julianum cum defectioni adderet machinationes evertendi Christianismi usa est Ecclesia isto extremae necessitatis telo à Deo est exaudita Grotius in Luc. Cap. 6. Vers 12. I will not trouble the Reader with more Quotations to this purpose the Authority of this Great man is more than ten Witnesses And for what he lays down generally that the Orthodox did not Depose the Arrian Emperours I must remember him out of Socrates the Ecclesiastical Historian lib. 2. cap. 38. Gr. when the Souldiers of Constantius the Arrian Emperour were by his command sent to enforce them to become Arrians they took Arms in defence of their profession of Religion how justifiable therein I will not now discourse But this may be said that the Christian Religion with indifferency to all Sects was made the Religion of the Empire by Imperial Rescripts and all Christians had thereby a Civil Right to a free and undisturbed profession of their Religion in their several Perswasions For Constantine the Great carried so indifferent an hand between the Contending Parties that he endeavoured to make Peace rather by silencing the Disputes than by determining the Controversie Worthy of the imitation of the Guides of Christendom and the onely means of freeing the Reformed Religion from being depraved by the Jargon and Gibberish of the Sectaries If the Crown should devolve upon the Roman Successor it would require consideration whether we could justifie the Dethroning of him though the French Papist could not be justified in rejecting the King of Navar. But this untrue Patriot shifts his Cause from what it is to what it is not that he may have some colour to inveigh against the true Patriots far more excellent and righteous than himself and have some umbrage to betray the best Religion and the best Government while he pretends with false Hypocrisie to support them But I am glad to find in him at least one grain of Sense and Honesty he saith well to do him right that is the best Religion that gives every one his due But he must consider farther to the confusion of the Cause he Advocates That to give every one his due is to administer Defence to the Innocent and by Authority of Law to subdue the aggressors of Mankind how great and mighty soever they be for they that are mighty Offenders ought in proportion to be mightily punished Fiat Justitia therefore as he saith Ruat Coelum for to punish much less to lay a restraint upon evil Persons is not to do evil that good may come of it which he would impute to the proceedings in Parliament against the Duke for which he must be self-condemned for I cannot take him for a German Anabaptist And now we find this Considerer complaining of some Pamphleteers that write ridiculously Sophistical and unreasonable Reasons that tell stories he saith of Edgar Athelin William the Conquerour Arthur Plantagenet and King John that write Antichristian and Fanatical Logick never heard of until the Spirit of Belial revealed it to Oliver and the Rump I believe if there be any such Pamphlet this Pamphleteer is the Author of it or some of his Complices to the purpose that there might seem some one worse than his own and that he might be able to quarrel with and confute and do advantage to his bad Cause by some worse Reasonings than he would seem to be Master of or than his Cause is capable of which is not capable of a good one But what he says cannot possibly be true of any Pamphlet but rather than he will not be slandering he
and doth virtually renounce the Government may not be left out of the Succession This is the true state of the Question and the Question thus stated gives its own solution And who except those of the Conspiracy do not so state it and allow it As to his Question Whence the Parliament derives their Power let him know that the Parliament derive their Power and Authority from the same Original the King derives His The King hath not His Power from them nor they theirs from the King They both derive their Authority from the Consent of the People in the first Constitution of the Government either tacit or express or by their express or tacit Consent in the insensible and little or great and more remarkable alterations that the Government hath suffered in the course of Time The King can make the Parliaments Power no greater than it is nor they His. Though true it is he may put an unlimited Trust reposed in Him into Stated Laws and Govern by Counsels established into Laws which is not to alter or lessen His Power but to make it more Safe and Wise and impeccable in the exercise of it He may ascertain the indefinitness of his Power that it may not be abus'd And that King doth best provide for a happy and wise Administration of his Government who leaves the fewest things to fortuitous resolves who reduceth his Prerogative to the measures of Common Right and makes the Kingdom secure and safe by leaving the Succession less Capacity and Scope to do mischief It is mostly incumbent upon his Sacred Majesty to secure the Government committed to his Care and keep it upright and steady upon its own Basis and to preserve all things in a due and Legal Course To watch to prevent all machinations against it and such as would destroy and subvert it and by his executive power of the Laws obtain to us the ends of Government that we may live quiet and peaceable Lives in all Godliness and Honesty For the sake of this High Trust and the Dignity of this Office his Person is most Sacred and Inviolable The King and his great Council providing for the establishment and security of the Government in their proceedings are not tyed up to forms of Judicial proceedings but are to act upon such inducements and in such methods whereby the Wisest men govern their affairs in which they are at perfect Liberty and not under the restraint of Laws They cannot do unjustly whatever methods or means they use that are prudentially and morally necessary to this End This power can be no more wanting in Governments than we can be without Government That which establisheth the one which is the Law of God declared in the Make and Frame of Humane Nature affirms and allows the other By the Authority of this Law of God so declared and promulgated as I have told you do Kings Reign and Senators or Princes Decree Justice By virtue of this Law and in Obedience to it is this Bill fram'd against which this Considerer declaims like a speaking Brute From this Law of God the said Bill when it passeth into a Law will have its Approbation Sanction and Establishment But against this Bill with his accustomed Truth Candor and Modesty he doth object That if such an Authority shall belong to the Parliament as to disable one successor upon such inducements as are sufficiently known a Parliament some time or other may be corrupted by a King and by mercenariness comply with him to sell the Succession of the Crown to a Foreigner We all well enough know that this Bill is designed to keep out the Tyranny of France or at least the French Tyranny But for this I leave the King to reckon with him and the Pensioners of the late long Parliament The Gentleman continues to add the story of Ahab contriving to possess himself of Naboth's Vineyard by causing him to be falsly accused of Blaspheming God and the King by which if true by the Jewish Laws Ahab had been Justly entitled to it as a Royal Escheat But if he had not been as stupid as a Block he had not mentioned this story which is a president and an adjudg'd case against himself who but a Line before had so vilely Blasphemed so great a King a far greater King than Ahab though the Parliament divide some Authority with the King in the Government But what were the Constitutions of the Jewish Monarchy this Writer of Considerations I am sure knows no more than his Foot-boy But let him know that the Romish Religion is a Blaspheming God and to bring the Kings Life in danger is worse than to Blaspheme him See what wise Work this Considerer makes when forsooth he would argue That the Duke of York cannot be shut out of the Succession no more than Ahab could take Naboth's Vineyard from him The man of Weighty Considerations tells us in the next Paragraph That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right and therefore the Duke must not lose his contrary to his Will and all Justice by a prevailing Faction of his Inferiours Who ever told him That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right Did not God purpose the Birth-right to Jacob before the Brothers were born and before they had done Good or Evil Could God be angry with him for agreeing and executing his own Purpose and Decree Did not Isaac and Rebekah both know and understand the Oracle and in Obedience to it Jacob was effectively Blessed by his Father Isaac's confirming the Blessing first gotten by surprize and by the Solemnity of that Blessing his Father Isaac transferred the right of the Promise made to Abraham to be fulfilled in the Line of Jacob Indeed the place he quotes in Heb. 12.17 is this Let no Whoremonger or Prophane Person be amongst you like Esau that would prefer a Sensual pleasure before the great things that were promised by our Lord to them that obey him Wherein the mention of Esau's Story is only to illustrate and set off what they fell short of the Grace of God and the designs of his Holy Institution Indeed if he could prove to us that his Royal Highness being the younger Brother had any such thing transmitted to him in his Generation as the Jews called the Segulah by which they mean some peculiarity which did appropriate the Right of the Promises made to Abraham which Jacob had and Esau wanted they say If he had any Divine mark upon him besides the Contingency of his Birth that design'd him mark'd him for a King besides Roman Zeal there would be some Consequence in his Discourse and this would be the best Argument that he hath yet us'd though the King would be little beholden to him for it But where God doth not interpose by express Revelation Humane Affairs Concerns and Interests of all sorts must be Governed and Ruled by the Laws Orders and Decrees of the respective Governments I would not have been
so long in animadverting upon this last passage but that I think our Considerer hath taken into his assistance in these Considerations some Divine by his abounding so much in Scriptural Allegations And that hereby you may see the Size of the rest of the men of that Order that are Chaplains to the Cause of the Succession and that they ought to be of little regard in this matter as they deserve none it being not in their way though in matters that belong properly to their Function they may deserve much who are of the meanest of that Order Our Gentleman next proceeds to his political Arguments but those can be answered I perswade my self by every man who hath heard of the Plot. Though a man of his Size may frame puzzling Arguments that may perplex mens Minds with scruples and doubts which a Fool may do and a Wise man cannot remove yet it is scarce possible for him to deprive men of their Senses and make them insensible to all the Evils that they hear see and feel and justly fear If the Protestants are not as he saith very strong abroad we have reason to be more united at home and united by the awful Authority of a Law If we are threatned with a great power of the Roman Religion from abroad which he affrights us with we have no reason to retain the biggest power to hurt us within our own Bowels But if it be in the power of such bad men as this Pretender to divide by slights and wiles the good People of England and keep them from uniting in the onely means of their safety we must perish But Wo be to them by whom we are thus destroyed His last effort upon the minds of the People is to intimidate them that by their fears they may fall under the evils they design upon us he scatters his menaces as if he were in the place of God against us and as if he had the executing of the Plot in his Power and tells us of sins that fit us for ruine It is convenient to these Plotters to imagine us mighty wicked that they may believe we deserve the Vengeance they design Our Government it self our Laws our Religion must become wicked when they arrive to a probable power to hurt us They never contrive a Gunpowder Plot a Massacre or burning a City but they dream the iniquity of the People is grown ripe They would turn us into Sodom and Gomorrha which this Considerer frights us with if they could call for Fire from Heaven and then publish us to all the world if we were much better than we are to be as wicked as the Cities of the Plain If we cannot obtain this Bill I shall then begin to think that the Decree is gone forth and our Fate is approaching and that God will let these Villains have their will over us By Gods displeasure not theirs I shall take the true measures of our Sins His displeasure will be remarkable and evident if he seems to deny us the means of our Safety and Preservation and which is the onely means of the Kings Salvation from their Traiterous design If this Bill do not pass they will take him for a wicked King too and they will say he hath no lawful Issue to succeed him for his own sins though our Considerer saith at present that our Sins are the cause of it and many other remarks of wickedness they will make upon him when they find it convenient and for their interest to destroy him at best he will be then but Tenant at Will to them of his Life as well as his Crown which this Considerer most slanderously chargeth to be designed by us but if he will follow the counsel of that excellent Bill he may live long and see good days and peace upon our Israel to which let all good people say AMEN I shall onely remark two or three things in the close of the Paper of Weighty Considerations First that he undertakes to say and affirm that the King is as much subject to the Power of the Parliament as the Duke which doth dethrone the King himself and lessens him to the degree of a Subject Secondly that in this his Address he perswades the King to rend the Government to lay aside the Commons of England and abandon them as Rebels to divide from them and govern by a House of Lords and Privy Council And thirdly that the most venerable and Loyal Parliament that ever was conven'd in this Nation though not so clearly purged from the corrupt Villains of the late long Parliament as the next we hope will be are charged by him to follow the Anarchical Encroachments of the Factions in the Rump-Parliament by which he insinuates that we must become Papists admit of a Popish Successor or be used as Rebels and Traitors by these three Remarks it is evident what Principles and Designs these men are of that oppose the Dukes Bill and from thence you may find reason to assist it and promote it with the greatest unanimity and resolution and the rather for that the Duke himself cannot want Considerations to dispose him to approve of it For what should he do with a Crown that he cannot wear Why should he accept of a trust that he cannot discharge and a Government that his Principles oblige him to transfer to a Forein Prince he is too generous a Prince to enter upon a Province onely to betray it He is a Prince of great Charity it was that surely mov'd him publickly to confess the Roman Religion that he might thereby recommend that Religion to our belief for the better reforming us from Heresie Why then should not the same Charity move him to renounce the Government lest he should offer an irresistable temptation to the People to a Rebellion a greater sin accounted by a King though a Catholick however the Priests rate it than an errour in belief But how can we imagine that he will condescend to be our King He doth not intend to accept of our Oaths of Allegiance and had rather not be King than we should be his Subjects upon those terms Why should we trouble him with the name of King reproach him call him Apostate Heretick and Infidel by swearing our selves his Subjects in the terms of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Pray think no more of it write no more Great and Weighty Considerations for he intends to be no more your King than he doth to desert his Religion and the Roman Catholick Faith Besides his Zeal and Services and the Difficulties that he hath undergone for that Church and the hazards he hath incur'd deserve the best Place and highest Office in that Church which is that of a Priest he ought not to be put off and meanly rewarded with the Sheriffalties which their Eminencies of the Conclave despise and be prefer'd to all the Drudgeries and Cruelties that the Priesthood of that Church require of the Kings of that Communion that
become Zealots He is a Prince that can deliberate and consider and will conclude that it is better for him to betake himself to a Monastery now before he hath filled the Land with Blood and Slaughter and all the mischiefs that the hellish Plot designs upon us than to take Sanctuary in one hereafter loaded with the melancholy considerations of a lost design and intolerable guilt if he himself should chance to survive and not perish ingloriously in the enterprize never to be gathered to his Fathers and shut out of the Sepulchres of Kings He is a great lover of his Brother as he ought in gratitude to be who lets him live and in his good opinion too after he had departed from his Allegiance and become a Member of another Hostile Polity and Regimen and after in consequence thereof the King's Life is brought in conspicuous danger Besides that it was natural and necessary that attempts upon the Life of the King should ensue upon his publick declaration of himself to be a Papist And we cannot without thinking too meanly of him think him without a foresight thereof there remains therefore no way for him to avoid the guilt of his Brother's Murder we tremble at the probability of it than by renouncing the Crown The King cannot in probability die before him except he falls to the Interest of that Religion which his Highness doth profess So that the Duke will relinquish nothing by the consenting to the Bill but the hopes to succeed upon his Brother's Murder but he would not the one so virtuous we will think him to obtain the other Admit him to be King he must be a King without Subjects for he must be a Slave to one part of the people to destroy the other these may not be the other will not be his Subjects To be an open Enemy is more Princely than to submit to the sordid methods of Falshood and Treachery than to betray us and deceive us in the confidence we justly should have in him if he should succeed to the Crown by a legal appointment He hath already departed from the Government which is Treason in a common person but we will give it in him an honester name and call him onely an Enemy to our State and Religion and his departure to be an overt declaration of Hostility let him therefore be consistent with himself purchase the Government by Conquest by the assistance of the Arms of France his Popish Adherents and home-bred Traitors But let him not assume the Crown by Title and Succession under obligations to govern by Law and to preserve us in our Religion which is our Legal Right and more precious to us than any thing else the Law entitles us unto Let him not add falshood to his mistaken and cruel zeal and do all the mischiefs the Plot designs while he pretends to Govern Let him openly assault us Miscreants subdue us Infidels that already stand Cursed and Excommunicated whom he hath Warrant enough from his Religion to destroy with an utter destruction He is an excellent Son of King Charles the First of blessed Memory who died a Martyr for the Government of Church and State and lost his Life as well as his Government when he could not preserve it any longer by his Sword And do you think that James his Son who carries the Royal Name of his Grandfather though the first of England yet the Sixth of that Name in Scotland will suffer the Government to be altered and to be a King and no King It is more just for him to chuse an Exclusion from the Succession than to suffer the Government to be changed we must therefore suppose him to be willing rather to consent to the Bill and renounce the Succession conformably to the recent example of his never-to-be-forgotten Father than to consent to or be bound by any Act of Parliament that shall alter the Government They are not his Friends nor agreeable to him that would spoil the Government more valuable in his esteem as well as his Father's than a personal Reign That would make him a King in mockery That conspire against the Government it self which he will not he ought not to sustain and endure as long as there is any Iron and Steel in the hands or Blood in the Veins of Loyal Roman Catholicks He is an equal Prince and will not take it so much to Heart that he sees the People of his Nativity not stupid Sots but that they can be sensible of the dangers that he urgeth them with and provide apt remedies against the evils which threaten us But if these Reasons will not obtain his express Consent to that Law for his Exclusion they will be allowed Inducements sufficient enough to pass it and conclude his Assent for the nature of a Law is to be first reasonable and to make those willing that should be consenting to it as reasonable and fit but are not and to render them obedient and submitted For this is one of the greatest benefits of Government that they that cannot or will not chuse what is best for themselves the Laws will chuse for them with regard to the Publick Good For the better clearing the matter of the Constitutions of this Realm in relation to the Succession I thought it necessary to add the substance of an Act of Parliament yet in force made 13 Elizabethae 13 Elizebthae Cap. 1. An Act whereby certain Offences are made Treason FOrasmuch as it is of some doubted whether the Laws and Statutes of this Realm remaining at this present in force are vallable and sufficient enough for the surety and preservation of the Queens most Royal Person in whom consisteth all the happiness and comfort of the whole State and Subjects of the Realm Which thing all Faithful Loving and Dutiful Subjects ought and will with all careful study and zeal cnosider foresee and provide for By the neglecting and passing over whereof with winking Eyes thâ—…e might happen to grow the subversion and ruine of the quiet and most Happy State and present Government of this Realm which God defend Therefore c. to Declare c. during her Maiesties life that the Right of the Crown was in any other Person should be Treason And such Person that should during her Maiesties Life Vsurp the Crown or the Royal Stile Title or Dignity of the Crown or Realm of England c. they and every of them so offending shall be utterly disabled during their natural Lives onely to have or enjoy the Crown or Realm of England or the Style Title or Dignity thereof at any time in Succession Inheritance or otherwise after the Decease of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen as if such Person were dead any Law Custom Pretence or matter whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding After which these words follow And be it further Enacted That if any Person shall in any wise hold and affirm or maintain That the Common Laws of this Realm not altered