deceived and abused to serve to others ends Object That they openly professed to manage their War for King and Parliament not against his Person and Authority but against Delinquents that were fled from Justice and against evil Councellers Answ Mr. Baxter would make their War just That it was professed and engaged to be managed for King and Parliament Certainly they did no more in this then all Subjects ever did that made War against their King that is to disstinguish the King's interest from the cause of the War A less pretension cannot be for a Rebellion Rebellion in the nature of it is so much a Monster as it seeks the best cover and never has the face to pretend against the King The fallaciousnesse of this he himself evinced in his following by saying or at least concluding That a subdued King is never fit again to rule over the People that subdued him We need no other evidence now then the things themselves so as we are to argue à posteriori from the ends and issues back to their causes that is that all War taken up by Subjects upon any pretence whatsoever or by whatsoever caution or limitation evermore in the nature of it intends the destroying of King and Kingdom Object That the two Nations of England and Scotland did in the midst of the Wars swear in the Solemn League and Covenant to be true to the King Answ Still this was but the same thing to strengthen the confederacy when at any time there should be a fainting or scrupling by the People a new engagement or profession to publick ends and to common preservation whereof the King was the Head would give new life to it And this was all the use that ever was made of that Covenant It never served the King at all but to beat him down and destroy him And all bringing the people into a body by Covenant is unlawful because Government meerly consists in having no contracts of the people acting of themselves And likewise the Covenant was not absolute as a Kings preservation should be but had a loose in it that made it nothing It was with a so far as consists with Religion Laws and Liberties The King's life and his Rights were not absolutely covenanted O God forbid there should not be an exception as to Religion Laws and Liberties and this a destroying power would be interpreter of So as this Covenant was like Nebuchadnezzar's Image the upper parts of Gold and Silver the lower parts of Iron and baser stuff but the truth is when men Covenant things contradictory as to fight against the King and to be true to him they cannot be expected to perform better for truth is of that Nature that though men abuse it ever so much yet it is unalterable Effects are certain to their causes and own their true Parents Object The Committees Commanders Ministers and People thorowout the Land professed openly to go only upon such tearms as managing but a defensive War against the King's miscariages but an offensive against delinquent Subjects Answ There is no such thing in Nature as a defensive War against a King by Subjects as I shall more clearly demonstrate in due place But in this Mr. Baxter grants as far as is possible to make it defensive necessary and of meer necessity on the King's part It was offensive against delinquent Subjects as much as to say it was a War on the Parliaments part to the destruction of the King's Subjects and the King must be unconcern'd in it sit by and be idle with-draw all protection and become immediately out of possession For such is the Nature and being of a King when an armed power is acting and the King sedentary and not resisting In a Kingdom a War cannot be against any party and not against the King for it deprives the King of his governing power Consider but what the Nature of a War taken up by the People is for his Senate signifies nothing he shall find the whole is but King and People First when it once becomes powerful it gains from its very unlawfulnesse a liberty to be governed by none for in unlawful actions they are all equals No obligation can arise but where there is a primary justice to fix it to and we see in this every thing that prevails never disputes right and the reason is because the whole is unlawful And I present this to Mr. Baxter's reason as it is visible to his observation to shew him that such a kind of War can be wicked but cannot find a Justice to govern it and his first of rebelling with caution and condition was a meer fiction His next is a Narrative only Object In that it was known that the Army was quite altered not only by a new modelling but by an intestine Jesuitical corrupting of multitudes of Souldiers before this odious Fact could be done And it was known that the corrupted part of the Army though the fewer did so excel the rest in Industry and Activity that thereby they hindred their Opposition And it is known that the Jesuited party that afterwards so many of them turned Levellers did draw unto them the Anabaptists Libertines and other Sects upon a Conjunction of Interests and by many sly pretences especially tying all together by the predicated Liberty for all Religions And yet after this the World knows they were fain before they could accomplish it to master the City of London to master the Parliament to imprison and cast out the Members and to retain but a few that were partly of their mind and partly seduced or over-awed by them to joyn with them in the work Answ It is incident alwayes that when a King's Power is dissolved all Wickedness and all manner of Factions and Divisions do grow up in the place of it for want of that Power to retain them and their own guilt still driving them on and being all equals in wickedness these are so natural Causes as I wonder any one can dispute them They ly all in the first Cause of taking away the King's Power all the rest results out of it And they themselvs had proceeded so far as to all Deprivations of the King and all manner of Imputations and Proscriptions as guilty of all the evill of the War setling him in the condition of a Traytor being King kept him in custody after they had bought him of the Scots and not enduring him to terms till the last when it was too late I grant his party would not have had the King bin killed A poor reserve when he is made incapable of any other condition If the People did but know what it were to subdue their King and deprive him of his Power they would never dispute terms of disposing him It is the same thing as killing it stays but the acting And this servs to all he says of this kind And let me insert this though I consent wholly to his Narrative that it is very ordinary and
Prerogative she did every thing with her Parliament as with Subjects they knew their own business and she would keep them to it and abundantly the better for their obedience for every thing is good or evil as it is governed Not a Fast or Humiliation day or Preaching His Plea for the Lords p. 409. as learned Mr. Prin hath given the recital of it that they could set up for themselves but she would check it and bring them to Humiliation for it So dangerous a wise Prince sees it popular liberty but to begin to creep out They had essayes upon her about Marriage she would not admit the pressure upon her nor suffer them to be Judg in it Then after that of her Successor that went nearer to her Camden's An aâ—s Elizb a pinching thought and in this the repulse of them was harder because apparently did depend upon it the safety or danger of the Kingdoms after her yet in this she was resolved 't was too precious to her to part with it to them kept it to the last hour of her life when she could live no longer then she declared a Successor imprisoned their Members that promoted it laid absolute peremptory command upon the House against it Pryn's Plea for the Lords p. 410 411. at other times imprisoned their Members and would usually tell them when they exceeded that it was in Her to give them being and to dissolve their being and to assent and dissent to any thing done in Parliament This from the best and wisest of Princes well knowing that it is not possible for a Prince to be just to the People without true obedience from the people King James his time by some Passages then in the Parliaments will shew us the difference betwixt Regal Right and Parliamentary Right Parliament 5 James Dr. Rawley's result from Sir Francis Bacon p. 38 39. the Earl of Salisburyes words to a Committee of the House That matter of War or Peace was Arcanum Imperii and must be kept within the vail nevertheless that sometimes Parliaments have been made acquainted with matter of War and Peace in a generality but it was upon one of these two motives when the King and Councel conceived that either it was material to have some declaration of the zeal and affection of the people or else when the King needed to demand monies and aids for the charge of the War The Earl of Northampton at the same time another of the Council of State that both by Philosophy and Civil Law Ordinatio belli et pacis est absoluti Imperii He further reasoned That the composition of the House of Common was meerly Democratical and intended to have a private and local Wisedome as to the places that sent them and not fit to examine secrets of State which depend upon variety of circumstances and although there be divers Gentlemen in the mixture of the House that are of good capacity and insight in matters of State yet that was the accident of the person not the intention of the place and things are to be taken in the institution not in the practice The Parliament of the 18th of King James was a Parliament of contest and dispute and held out long by an able King and a severe People It was an effectual Parliament as to the granting of Subsidies and reforming abuses yet in the end thrown off The evills that it had to work upon were the evils of Peace and making danger of Religion a Monster and looking at it through the glass of their own Passions would dictate extreams to the King about it and the Spanish match formidable and the Kings unkindnesses from Parliaments had put him upon petty helps as livelihoods Monopolies about those bred no breach but was matter served them to work upon and wholly put to them and the persons offenders in it exposed and the King himself a chief actor to suppress it And to pull down the Chancellor Bacon for Bribery was their work yet at last it had not a legal end of a Parliament but dissolved by Proclamation and Crimination The King enforced to this for this King never acted to publick offence by his Passion but meerly his necessity Therefore I shall resort back and take some remarks and passages of the proceedings along with me to find where the stone of it was After the matter of the punishments were over the great and high considerations as for diversion of the Match with Spain and declaring war against that King for the Palatinate and new devised pressures upon Papists and pressing executions of Laws upon them so as they involve all the Kings Interest into their hands under the notion that it was the Kingdomes Interest The King hearing of this and it beating thorow his sides betakes himself to high resolution and to prevent the prejudice of receiving it formally from them writes thus to the Speaker These are to command You to make known in Our Name unto the House that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with any thing concerning Our Government or deep matters of State and namely not to deal with Our dearest Son's Match with the Daughter of Spain and also not to meddle with any mans particulars which have their due motion in Our ordinary Courts of Justice And whereas we hear they have sent a Messenger to Sir Edwin Sandis to know the reasons of his late restraint You shall in Our Name resolve them That it was not for any misdemeanor of his in Parliament But to put them out of doubt of any question of that nature that may arise among them hereafter You shall resolve them in Our Name That we think Our selves very free and able to punish any mans misdemeanors in Parliament as well during their Sitting as after Their Answer by way of Petition to the King first Palliating over and with the manner and inducements to go upon such things they have these words In the discourse whereof we did not assume to our selves any power to determine of any part thereof nor intrude upon the Sacred bounds of your Royall Authority to whom and to whom only we acknowledg it doth belong to Resolve of Peace and War and of the Marriage of the most Noble Prince your Son but as your most loyal and humble Subjects and Servants representing the whole Commons of your Kingdome who have a large interest in the happy and prosperous Estate of your Majesty and your Royal Posterity and of the flourishing Estate of Our Church and Common-wealth did resolve out of our cares and fears truly and plainly to demonstrate these things to your Majesty which we were not assured could otherwise come so safely and clearly to your knowledg and that being done to lay the same down at your Majesties feet without expectation of any other answer of your Majesty touching these higher points then what at your good pleasure and in your own time should be held fit Now if we do but
People beyond Subjection which is their best condition The very end and design of the Government being to keep down the great Monster of it that threatens it so as on neither side it can be imaginable that Rebellion should ever be the People's best good remedy or necessity which is pretended for it when it is acted being so wicked and unlawfull in it self Therefore we see it is ever either of the People pampered with Peace and know not what belong to War or judge not of the good of Government though they have it but in some degree good or else are cheated into it by Treason in a party designing other ends And the Vulgar the Character of them is all folly and evil inclination as mis-judging and to be unsatisfied so as never any condition makes their good under Government but when it is utterly out of their own Power Now the evil and destructive mischief of Rebellion as all accidents of destroying and oppressing come into it must needs prove the unlawfulness for wherefore are things unlawful but as they in their Natures are wicked Rebellion being of all causes in nature the greatest cause of Wickedness must needs be the greatest unlawfulness We are a little further to consider of the difficulty of Government in its self how many things naturally oppose to the good of it though the common good of all the Members is placed in it yet the most in their particular good or profit would act against it or some prejudice to it as every unlawful acting is against it besides all the dangers that come into it and difficulty to the means of it And some King's Governments naturally as it were though from accident are obstructed with difficulties and dangers which they must still over-come or else they perish so that the best that ever I could discern in it is for a Parliament to help the King as much as they can possibly to the good of it And a King of England his necessity will ever bring him to meet the People in Parliament And still let it be noted that resistance out of a Parliament makes no difference at all for it is rebelling still against the governing Power and most destructive when it shall pretend a lawfulness in another power I shall come now to the King 's own acting Did he not deny his own Prerogative about Ship-money and all other extraordinaries Regulate the Privy-Council and take away the Star-Chamber High-Commission-Court dissolve the great body of the Bishops out of Parliament to please the House of Commons Establish a Triennial Parliament pass against his Judgment and Conscience the Act for condemning and executing the Earl of Strafford and after grant them perpetual sitting against his power of dissolving Did so much to his own preserving that he gave away the means of his preservation and wrought his own ruine by it The like he had done before in Scotland restrained his Royal power there rewarded the very Rebels and against nature justified their Acts of Emnity against himself and declared his own party guilty I have set forth this to shew the nature of Kings in this their condition and in relation to the People and wherein a King's Interest consists that is not to fight for his own which by peace he possesseth and likewise it disproves them about the War it self to prove the Injustice of it on their part mearly affected to destroy the Government and to decline the King To shew what compliers Kings are to peace we ever see all Kings style their People their good People most when they fear evil from them treat them by all possible means of satisfaction and lowly tearms send forth Proclamations to purge any evil apprehensions of the People awed even by the very thoughts of the People such is the nature of Government to implant fear in Kings which is their great Governour Henry VIII the veriest Tyrant in his nature of any man that ever was yet his Government as to the Commons was good he acted cruelties beyond any other King upon particular persons of the great Ones whom his Jealousy did reach to In his Government good in general and declined all things of breach with the People though he seemed absolutely to command them 'T is true There are no Princes so stout as those who are most just as Queen Elizabeth with her sure ground of goodness to defend her kept her Parliament and People at greatest distance from encroaching upon Royal Authority King James had innocency and worth enough in him to vindicate him still and the truth is if the People could but weigh and penetrate into the exigencies and urgencies of State Interests how hard a thing it is to do but indifferently well in the Work of Government as to the People's satisfaction they would not seek to take advantages of Kings and hold them to extreams and can never have any good in the nature of it for the misfortune of the King ever returns upon the People It was not possible for the People to know their own Happiness under the Government of former Princes and it is a Blessing man never is endowed withal to know the measure of his good whilst he enjoys it and this is the cause that they prize it not but throw it away and wilfully bring themselvs to misery King James in whose time the People had nothing to do but laugh and play and follow their own Interests no great Taxes not the half as of Queen Elizabeth as for the time no fear upon the Nobility no fear or danger from the Prince's humour Religion perfectly Protestant the King himself the great owner of Interests in the reason and science of them yet the People most ungrateful no more satisfied than if they had been under a bad Government tired out with their very peace It is his own words to them in the Parliament 18. of his Reign We indeed find by experience that a number of our Subjects are so pampered with peace as they are desirous of Change though they know not what This happiness continued in the substance though not in all circumstances till the people themselves destroyed it so as they acted their sin and their Plague in one We come in the next place to that wherein he betrayes himself to the utter overthrowing of his Cause which I foresaw he would do at last Object If the Souldiers must know beforehand that if they do purchase a Victory by their bloud when they have all done they must be Governed by him whom they have conquered and lye at his mercy they would hardly ever have an Army to defend them for who would do the uttermost that is possible to exasperate him that he knows must rule him when all is done Answ If this be reason with Mr. Baxter now why not at first What Faith could he have in his Covenant which he destroyes by a Principle in his understanding We at first looked upon their pretences as for
of the King the Fountain in opposition to the King it is but an opacous Body the light withdrawn from it Grotius states the case Grotius de jure Villi 54. inventi sunt nostro seculo whether Subordinates may act against the Supream Power that is whether any sort of Magistracy under a King have any quality or consideration in them as dividing from the King and he resolves it in the Negative He reasons it thus that these publick Persons are but private in respect of the chief and all the faculty of governing in them is so subjected to the chief Power as whatsoever they act against the Will of that is defective of the faculty and is but of the Nature of a private Act. I shall give it off here because hereafter I shall demonstrate the impossibility of two Soveraignties or Supremacies in one Government and reduce Parliamentary Rights to their due Qualification Now then take away this the other falls this the Theatre Mr. Baxter erects for judging the King and Scaffold for beheading him The truth is the Laws are all silent about this Question Whether a Parliament may commit Tteason so as if we shall not take them in their general understanding we have no law in this Case It is a thing not to be doubted that the Law never had it in imagination that there was any exception to the committing of Treason so as no such thing mentioned in Laws nor ever entred into the mind of any Commentator who write at large and many times their own conceipts yet it never came into the conceipt of any Person to except a Parliament for committing Treason It is many times in Nature the strongest Law that which is not mentioned because the case never imagined to be and therefore not provided for So as if Mr. Baxter will not take all the Laws that are generall without exception to include all Persons then is the King without Law as against a Parliament All the sense of the Laws respect the King without any consideration of Persons no sense or intendment of that but only the end to which it is directed and therefore it is called Crimen laesae Majestatis which shews where the end is in the King's Preservation but the means never differenced in respect of any It were in vain to enumerate the Laws and to aggravate them all dread and all saving being to the life of the Government the King This differencing is out of all Laws never thought of it had its Law and Execution at once as Treasons are never owned till they are acted But let the Reader consider upon the Statute 25 Edw. 3. which is the Declarative of Treasons whether there is discernable any differencing in it or exceptions of Persons or Callings or of qualities or any imagination of this Proposition till now that wickedness strives to defend it self I shall take occasion here to speak to former actings of Parliaments upon Kings deposing them and consequently killing them because the Nature of man is to think any thing that hath bin done may be done and so never finds end of wickedness but to make it infinite Any extraordinary or transcendent acting upon Government though never so unlawful and violent yet if it become powerful it commonly creates something to others to derive from it as those Persons whom Mr. Baxter would vindicate long before they divided declared That in case they should act to the highest Presidents they should not fail in duty or trust having their eye and aim upon the deposing of Kings Ed. 2. Rich. 2. And the last Actors that compleated the Tragedy conclude power of Parliaments from former destroying Kings and setting up others I shall produce it only into some considerations by Epitome only leaving the large Subject of it to the Histories how those Princes came to be declined and lose their Power The first Edw. 2. his condition was to be Prisoner to his own Queen and his Son a Prince of fourteen years of Age and the implacable hatred of the Queen and her party was such as the King must be destroyed no competition being to them both The whole Power was with them they call a Parliament which acted meerly as they prescribed The King deposed by Act of Parliament submitted and resigned in hope of life which he could not have The other as unhappy Richard II. Prisoner to the Usurper Henry of Lancaster his Cousin-Germane The Fate of subdued Kings by Traytors is ever to run into the same Center Traytors leave nothing undone of the last Act of destroying Now the actings being thus what are the considerations upon it First these Persons and the Parliament were the first that ever acted so in England and so must derive the Justice and Authority of it out of themselvs and nothing from whatsoever had been done before Next there was no such thing as King or Parliament in the Nature of it As well Jack Cade or Wat Tyler if they had compleated their Rebellion might have convened any party out of the People calling it a Parliament set himself up King for one Subject hath as much Right to be King as any other Next such a Parliament as it was it was the Subject of an Army the Army of the Usurper by which he had got Possession and destroyed the King's Power so as in effect condemning deposing was the Act of the Army absolutely for so it must be done by such a party called a Parliament and for the purpose and so are all our Mock-shews to set up any wickedness own Authority but act servilly and are meer imposture Next the Act horrid Treason as was imaginable or possible to be in Nature Now the Question comes to be Whether doing wickedly can create a lawfulness If so all sins and villanies by the perpetrating them lose their Natures to be evils and become lawful A conceipt nothing that comes into imagination can be more monstrous There must be a first lawfulness in every Act else the doing it is a Wickedness and still that wickedness perpetuated and multiplied in the after-acting it Next this condemned by the first Parliament that was upon the change of the Power for so long as the Power continued it stood for good as all Wickedness does But the Parliament under the rightful King damns it as traiterous detestable to be driven out of the World never to rise up again pulling down God's Judgments upon the Land Civil War and all the Plagues of it I shall conclude this that Wickedness can be no President Now having gone along with him upon his particulars which he only asserts not proves my next is to take notice and mind him that he is very near losing his cause which I fear he will do anon for he is arguing to a lawfulness in their putting the King to death and it is his business to keep himself out of it and likewise the Parliament's Cause and War and the Religion Protestant and Presbyterian
as madness it self yet I think that God would take it ill that we should mock him to set up a King to Govern and then to reserve a Power to destroy him against his Word and meaning for the very power of Governing invests him with all these rights of protection vertually all these Attributes fall to him by his actual governing It is a principle in nature that Supremacy attracts all right to it and all perfection to be King and not perfect is impossible And this I will say at last of the King himself which I think his very enemies and destroyers cannot deny that never any Prince fell by his people that had fewer faults and more vertues Now at last my exception to Mr. Baxter is that he personates the Protestants so as to destroy them and their Religion There is no other way of keeping the guilt and imputation of that horrid accursed act from the Religion but by a total condemnation of it We say and justly that it was an act that transcends all that ever was worse and more infernal and execrable then any thing else the Pope or man can do Now Mr. Baxter out of his particular makes it the Protestant interest that it be not so evil as the wickedness under the Religion of Papists and so puts it upon the Protestants account of whatsoever nature it be and makes it their interest to extenuate the evil of it which is a meer involving them and their cause into it and the most unjust in the World for Is a Religion to answer for what wickedness men do in it I mean being of it or professing it But thus he loves to hale all Interests after him to follow his sense Let him himself be in love with it extenuate it find Jesuitical abstracted quintessential notions to dissolve all Allegiance upon Terms let him take it to himself and not make it more general then his own party Having done with this sad subject we will see him in his next whither he will lead us Object It is a grievous Case that the Senate or Body of a Nation should think themselvs necessitated to defend themselvs and the Church and State against their Prince or any that act by his Commands it will strongly tempt them to think that the end is to be preferred before the means and it ceaseth to be a means which is against or destructive to the end Answ The poor unfortunate King that could never by any possible compliance and means begg off his own and his Kingdoms ruine of them was wont to tell them when they used the great Argument of necessity for all violent actions that they were necessities of their own making Because their ends were exorbitant and such as the Laws would not bear they must proportion the means which drew on the necessities Now to his preferring the end before the means a principle he is fallen upon and the most dangerous one of the World for by this he may decline all Truth and Justice to go the next way over to his ends and yet a very strong one that the end is that for which the means is there is no use or consideration of the means but to the end By this ground he hath laid flat all Honesty Truth Goodness whatsoever for it may be it doth not suit to the end And hence it was that their ends being Reformation as they call our Deformation and Destruction it could not be done by a lesse means I do but mind him of this his party having made so much use of it The truth is if men would ty themselvs to the Justice of the means they could never attain to unjust ends Object It is essentiall to governing Power to be for common good Answ No doubt but it is as appears by their destroying the Government and we never had any good since But without taking this advantage I will give him a further Answer from the nature of Government and every other thing we call good that is good in the generality not exact good in every action of it Object It is no Authority which is used against common good Answ Then there is no Authority in the World for there is no Authority or Magistracy but at some time or other is used against it He multiplies forward still Object It would tempt them also to think that God never gave Power to any against himself or above his Laws or against the end of Government Answ He should prove here that God gave them a Right of destroying both the King and the Government for that is the Case For he confesseth the War raised by themselvs against delinquent Subjects But to answer to this as he intends it God doth some times give evil Governours and doth he not likewise give them Power God himself fore-spake in Saul and then concluded the People in these words then that is when they were oppressed by their King 1 Sam. 8.18 Grotius de jure Belli 81. shall they cry out that is to say seek help of God Quia scilicet humana remedia nulla extarent Grotius exposition of it call to God for help that is there was no means of resistance to be used on their part His next Object A Senate or the Body of a Nation will be apt to think themselvs fit to discern when the Publick safety is dangerously assaulted and will hardly be brought to trust any one to be the finall Judge of their necessity as thinking such a publick necessity proves it self and needs no Judge but sense and reason to discern it Answ Suppose there had been no Parliament this Argument would have served for the Body of the People to rise up and take away the King's Power as not fit to judge of the necessity or to be trusted with the Publick safety It was the King's Act to call a Parliament and 't was his and our ruine that he put himself upon it Having hitherto kept equal pace with him in these his severall distinct heads give me leave in general to censure of them that is that in them he hath sown the seeds of all the Rebellions in the World Let them be taken as truths abstractedly without their alloy or composition as so the very Elements would destroy us no Government can stand Do we not as often as we err in any thing employ the means against the end and shall we as often fall out with our selvs These abstracted Considerations cannot consist with the being of Man which is not certain in any thing but subject to error and as often as ever a King errs so often by his Argument the means is against the end and loseth the essence of a governing Power So as by Mr. Baxter's Learning there can never want matter for Rebellion In the next he raiseth his Parliament as an out-work to affront and batter Monarchy in these words Object And if they also think that the fundamentall Constitution of the Government doth make the Senate
People or any party out of the King to resist his power for then he should govern no longer than the governed party were disposed to obey and so no Government at all nor is it possible in the reason of Government to put a power upon the governing Power and yet that to govern So as no Argument can be made for resisting because it is against Government it self But saith Mr. Baxter Then what assurance of Laws all at the King 's Will. Now the precise consideration upon this is that the very Nature of the Government and the King's Interest in it binds him to the good of it The Law saith Nulli magis tueri Rempublicam creditum est quà m Regi no person so believed to intend the good of the Common-Wealth as the King his sole Interest makes it so all others as Subject◠have private Interests in them and so have private respects which commonly consists not with the publick the King is the only publick Person of the Kingdom who hath no reason or consideration of his being but as King without that or beyond that nothing his whole being placed in it the publick is his private and this very reason in Nature of Government making the Government the same with the King is the full absolute cause of the certainty and good of it and is as much as is for any thing in Nature or any Being in the World since nothing can be more assured than Self-Interest for the good of it And therefore Kingly Government is the most certain Government because there can be no end out of it all contained in it the good of the Government is the King 's good without any difference Whereas in all other Forms of Government the Persons that govern have particular ends as private persons and this is truly the Nature of it never any reason can be for the abuse of Government by a King It may be abuse upon the King's Government but never out of any just end of it So as it is the foulest mistake that can be to suppose a King's Interest divided from the People's and that he must be held in chains for the People's good and certainty of Government when as the People directly lose all their good if the King want freedom of Will and Power to act The People's consistency is meerly in the King's power without that it were nothing presently the Government grows seditious and factious and moving in parts when the Regal Power cannot retain it And hence it is that those Persons that pretend for Liberty and Power over Kings are cause of Murders and Massacres of the People Nevertheless if it be objected that there are evils and abuses under a King's Government yet not so considerable especially here with us in England where hardly can be any great grievance the form of the Government being so equal as to make War for them Government hath many hard things come into it and extream difficulties and the evils of it are out of the People themselves stubbornly acting against the King and repugning to the means of Government and of Persons doing wickedly and great Ones oppressing and having their ends by wicked means Nor is it possible almost in any Government to have it so that the ordinary People can be able to find Remedy against the Oppressions of great Ones such as are wicked and turn even the Government it self into the means of it and the King is the party most extreamly wronged in it for all reflects upon the King and yet it cannot be helped but in degrees as things are subject to their accidents and so far only the good of Government goes and never to an absoluteness Now the manner is that where the universality meets in Parliament all is represented and they complain and supply the King's wants and this is the great means to redress And if some hard condition in the Government cannot be got mended at present yet extreams do never long endure but return to the nature of the Government they cannot hold out so as we see all excesses in Government are causes still of falling back and reverting to its right temper and commonly causes of pulling away something of the former with it as ever all violating of the grand Charters and Liberties are cause of binding them up and taking greater advantage of the King A King can never affect to govern ill but they may affect to have Power for Power is not simply good or evil but in the use of it and to have treasure and the People in Parliament not complying Kings are inforced to break out into extraordinaries and it cannot be helped for it is not to be supposed a failer of the means of Government all must dy and perish before it King James in the Parliament the 18th of his Reign tells them that in ten years he had not made use of them and had he not bin all peace he could not have lived so When the War began the contest was about nothing but that they would not trust the King and were resolved to bring him below them being an inexorable party and cruelty growing out of Religion is of all other the greatest Cruelty But the Laws and Rights were just the same as in all times formerly no alteration as to the great Interest of Regal right and the People's Rights which shews it is not alterable that which no time had wrought upon and all accidents had in all those ages and times come into it of so durable matter is the Government as no fear ever can be in it as to necessitate Arms of the People to vindicate it The People themselvs are the only destroyers of it Nevertheless though a King may seem all Power yet naturally and necessarily all Government involvs it self into the consent of the People and all Power comes out of them so as we are to see where the Interest of it lyes not meerly in the King's Will who is tied to more necessities than any other so foolish it is to think that though they have the Power of governing they have not the natural restraints and necessities of Government upon them We are at last to consider the infinite mischsef of a Civil War and the strange danger the People run into the greatest and most devouring Gulf that is in nature a body destroying its self and ripping out its own Bowels for it is all-acted within the body it self and the People know not whether they shall ever return to their Government again but live under perpetual Usurpation and Rebellion which utterly destroys a People to fall and live under the King's destroyers for Usurpation is all wickedness and all misery and all force and cannot be amended so long as it stands in resistance so as if possible the People's Interest is to get out of it and come under their Government And it is so far a King of England's cause that hath no military Power in governing as he will never inforce the