that seek our subversion as being the greater and nobler part of the Empire and better devoted to your person and Crowne then they are Neither is it distrust in our owne numbers forces or advantages that drawes these lowly loyall expressions from us nor is it any doubt in our cause for Christianity dies as much lift up the heart in a just war as it dies weaken the hands in unjust enterprises and the world shall see it is as far from transforming us into ashes as into woolves Prefer your sacred eares therefore we pray you from the suggesâ—ions of our enemies and the abusers who may render us in your thoughts either absolutely disloyall or hestially servile and doe usually traduce our Religion as being utterly inconsistent either with duty or magnanimity Let it bee a confutation to them at this present that we doe neither derogate in this case from your Majesties prerogative nor utterly renounce our owne interests and yet that we doe rather fore-judge our selves inasmuch as though we doe not disclaim yet we forbeare to claime a right of establishing true Religion and abolishing idolatry as also of bringing your seducers to condigne punishment And thus far wee condiscend in all humility for our blessed Religions sake that thâ—t may be liable to no aspersions as if it had any causality in this war and that you may receive in the better apprehension and relish of the profession from the humble comportment of the professors It is not in us to set an end to these broyles because we have no prevalence with you to gaine just satisfaction from you but it is in you without all impediment to quiet our party in regard that we fight not now for a well being but a meer being not that Paganisme may be subverted but that Christianity may subsist all our conditions are intirely in your owne hands and they speake no more but this let us have hopes to remaine safe and you shall have assurances to remain Caesar If his Grace of Armagh like not this Remonstrance let him frame an answer to it in so doing he shall appear a profounder Scholer a more judicious Statesman a more peaceable Patriot a more godly Preacher then his last Sermon upon the 13. Rom. did shew him I am sure there is no man that lives in these dayes can say I have fained an impossible case especially when He sees two Parliaments of two Protestant Kingdomes driven to petition for their lives to a Prince that does acknowledge the truth of the Protestant Religion and the priviledges of both Parliaments and the liberties of both Kingdomes and yet brings a third Popish Kingdome against them though traiterously besmear'd in the blood of thousands of Protestants and proclaimed against by the King himselfe as the most execrable monsters of men But perhaps our Primate will say that the Roman law of royalty did extend farther and that the people thereby did conferre to and upon the Emperour omne suum imperium potestatem and thereupon it was said Omnia poterat imperator and Quicquid Principi placebat Legis habebat vigorem I take these to be no parts of the royall Law but only severall glosses and interpretations of Jurists thereupon yet all these extend no farther then to a perpetuall dictature For the people could conferre no more on the Emperour then what it had in it selfe and no man will say that the people had any power to destroy it selfe and what end could the people have if that Law might bee said to bee the peoples act in inslaving themselves or giving away the propriety of themselves where the Princes pleasure is entertained for Law it is intended that that pleasure of the Prince shall bee naturall and prudentiall and that it shall be first regulated by Law if not in its formalities yet in its essentials Grotius tells us of the Campanians how they did resigne themselves and all that they possest in ditionem Romanorum and hee conceives that by this resignation they did make the Romans their proprietaries By the favour of Grotius I think there is stronger reason that no Nation yet ever did voluntarily or compulsorily embrace servitude or intend submission to it it is more agreeable to nature and sense to expound this word ditio in a mild sense and to suppose that the Campanians did intend to incorporate themselves with the Romans and to live under the same government or dition and no other and not only reason but the true story makes this good and evidence of fact the strongest of proofes puts it out of doubt that the Campanians were not at all differenced in freedome from the Citizens of Rome themselves In briefe we may rely upon these assertions First there is no certainty of any Nations that ever they so formally did resigne themselves in Terms as the Romans and Campanians did here scarce any story can parallell such particular grants of Soveraignty Secondly if these be expounded mildly and in favour of publick liberty as they ought they can create no prejudice at all to those Nations which enacted them or any other Thirdly if they be expounded in a tortious unnaturall sense they are to be damned and rejected by all people and they remain no way vigorous or obligatory in any country whatsoever If the Primate have now recourse to the practise of the Christians in the first ages and urge that because they used no arms but tears and prayers when they were oppressed wee ought to doe the like we answer First The Christians till Constantines time in probability were not equall in numbers and forces with the Pagans whatsoever Tertullian might conceive Secondly if they were they wanted other advantages of arms commands and other opportunities to free themselves Aug. Caesar by fourty Legions and the strength of Cittadels and other places of strength yoked and inthralled fourty times as many in number as those Legions and so did but purchase fear for fear making himself as formidable to the people as the people was to him Thirdly if they wanted no power nor advantage they might want policie to infranchise Religion perhaps they might be tainted with Tertullians opinion who thought it not onely unlawfull to resist tyranny but also to flie from it Fourthly History is clear that in Constantines dayes they did adhere to him being a Christian and fight against Licinius being a Pagan and their Enemie And in the reigne of Theodosius such Christians as lived in Persia and were there tyrannically and cruelly treated did incite the Romane Emperour to undertake their defence against their own naturall Lord Let this be sufficient for the Romane storie and for the phanning out of our way such advantages as the Primate and his fellow Royalists may seem there to lay hold of in expounding this text of the 13. of Rom. to our prejudice our method now hands us to our own Laws and Chronicles let us follow our Preacher thither If St. Paul teach us that the supreame power is not to be resisted by any persons meerly inferior and subordinate but leaves us no certain rule whereby to discern what that supreme power is in all Countreys our Preacher should do well to let us know what he utters out of his meer Text and what he utters out of his own imagination Barclay Grotius Arnisseus all our Royalists besides are so ingenious as to acknowledge that a Prince in an Aristocracy or compounded Democracie is not so irresistible as an absolute Monarch nay in Monarchy they do acknowledge degrees also What shall we think then of this Prelate who without proving Caesar an absolute Monarch or reducing England to the pattern of Rome or stepping at all out of his Text where neither Rome nor England is mentioned yet will out of his Text condemne both Rome and England and by consequence all other States to the remedilesse servitude of non-resistance The Emperour of Germany is now Caesars successor and not denyed to be the supreme Magistrate in that country in diverse respects yet the Electors and other Princes are in some respect supreame also in their severall territories and may use resistance against the Emperour in some cases Now if our Preacher may except Germany out of his Text why not England unlesse He will appeale to something beyond his Text and if England why not others and if hee except nor Germany nor England nor any nor will refer himselfe to any other authority but his Text which mentions no particulars let Him inlarge his Sermon and be a little more ingenious and vouchsafe us some account why He is induced thus to confound all formes of government and to recede from the judgement of all Polititians But soft what have we to doe with a meer Divine let the Monarchy of England speak for it selfe let Divinity and Law and Policy be admitted into this Junto for that which is to be the subject of this consultation is to be reckoned inter agenda and not inter credenda FINIS Eerata Pag. 3. l. 4. r. desire them p. 21. l. 30. r. Dramoctidas p. 37. l. 7. dele the p. 38. l. 3. r. commune jus vetet p. 42. l. 1. for death r. slavery
consent but professed openly Eam pecuniam caeteraque omnia esse Senatus Populisque Rom. nos enim usque adeo nihil habemus proprium ut etiam vestras habitemus aedes How diametrically opposite is this to that which our State-Theologues doe now buzze into the Kings eares They instead of giving the subjects a just and compleat propriety in the King resigne the subject and all that he possesses to the meer discretion of the King instead of restraining Princes where the lawes let them loose they let loose Princes where the law restraines them But our Royalists will say this is to make the condition of a King miserable and more abject then a private mans condition For answer to this I must a little anatomize the State of a Prince For a Prince is either wise and truly understands the end of his promotion or not if he be not wise then he is like a sottish prisoner loaden and bound with golden fetters and yet is not so much perplexed with the weight as inammor'd with the price of them Then does he enter upon Empire as if he went only ad auâ—eam messem as Stratocles and Dramoclidas had use to make their boasting in merriment but these vain thoughts serve onely to expose him to the traines of Flatterers and Court-Harpyes till having impoverisht thousands to inrich some few and gained the disaffection of good men to be abused by villaines he never reads his errour till it comes presented to his eye in the black characters of ruine The same wholesome advertisement commonly which first encounters him as that hand-writing did which appear'd to Belshazzar in his drunken revells lets him understand withall that all repentance will be too late If the Prince be wise then does he sit amongst all his sumptuous dishes like Damocles owing his life perpetually to the strength of one horse haire and knowing that nothing else saves his head from the swords point then must his Diadem seem to him as contemptible or combersome as Seleucus his did who confidently affirmed that no man would stoop to take it from the ground to whom it was so perfectly knowne as it was to him And it was no wild but a very considerate interpellation of some other sad Prince who being to put on the Crowne upon his owne head amongst all the triumphant attendants of that solemnity could not but break out into this passion O thou deceitfull ornament farre more honourable then happy what man would stretch forth his hand to take thee out of the dust if he did first look into the hollow of thy circle and seriously behold the throngs of dangers and miseries that are there lodged Secondly A Prince is either good and applies himselfe to compasse the end of his inauguration or not if hee bee not good then does he under the Majesticall robes of a God act the execrable part of a Devill then does he imploy all those meanes and helps which were committed to him for saving purposes to the destruction of Gods people and to the heaping up of such vengeance to himselfe as scarce any private man hath ability to merit How happy had it bin for Tiberius for Nero and for a hundred more if they had wanted the fatall baites of royalty to deprave them or the great advantages of power to satisfie them in deeds of lust and cruelty Neroes beginning his quinquenium shewes us what his disposition was as a meer man but the latter part of his tragicall raign shewes us what the common frailty of man is being overcharged with unbounded seigniory Amongst other things which made Caius appeare a monster and not a man Suetonius in the first place reckons up his ayry titles of pious most great and most good c. his impiety made him so audacious as to prophane these sacred stiles and these sacred stiles made his impiety the more black and detestable If the Prince be good then as Sencca saies Omnium domos unius Principis vigilia desendit omnium otium illius labor omnium delitias illius industria omnium vacationem illius occupatio And in the same Chapter hee further addes Ex quo se Caesar orbiterrarum dedicavit sibi eripuit siderum modo quae irrequieta semper cursus suos explicant nunquam illi licet nec subsistere nec quicquam suum facere 'T is true of private men as Cicero rightly observes ut quisque maximè ad suum commodum refert quecunque agit ita minimè est vir bonus But this is much more true of publick persons whom God and man have by more speciall obligations confined to publick affaires only and for that purpose raised above their own former narrow orbe O that our Courtiers at Oxford would admit of such politicks and blush to publish any directly contrary then would these raging storms be soon allayed But alas amongst us when the great Counsell desires that the Kings children may not be disposed of in marriage without publick privity and consent all our peace and religion being nearly concerned therein it is answered with confidence that private men are more free then so So when the election or nomination of Judges Commanders and Counsellors of State is requested 't is answered that this is to mancipate the Crowne and to subject the King to more exactnesse in high important affaires then common persons are in their lower interests Till Machiavells dayes such answers never durst approach the light but now Princes have learnt a new lesson now they are not to look upon the people as Gods inheritance or as the efficient and finall causes of Empire but as wretches created for servility as mutinous vassalls whose safety liberty and prosperity is by all meanes to be opposed and abhorred as that which of all things in the world is the most irreconcileably adverse to Monarchy Salust a heathen complaines of his times that instead of the ancient Roman vertues they did entertain luxury and covetousnesse publice egestatem privatim opulentiam That which he complained of as the symptome of a declining State we Christians cry up as a rare arcanum imperii to make the Court rich and keep the countrey poor as in France is held the most subtile art of establishing a Prince Trajan a Pagan was an enemy to his owne safety further then it could stand with the safety of the State as Pliny writes and would not indure that any thing should be wisht for to befall him but what might bee expedient for the publick Nay hee appeal'd to the Gods to change their favour towards him if ever hee changed his affection to the Common-wealth Yet Clergy men now in holy orders advise Princes not only to preferre themselves before the people but even to propose the peoples poverty as the best mean to their wealth and the peoples imbroyling the nearest passage to their safety Cicero out of Plato gives Princes these precepts so to provide for the peoples commodity as in all their actions to
have relation to the same and utterly to forget their private advantage and in the next place to extend their care to the whole body of the Common-wealth and every part of it Our Divines on the contrary think they cannot speak more like themselves then by inverting this order making the Kings profit the sole scope of his aimes and actions and the peoples either secondary thereunto or which is worse inconsistent therewithall and so farre are they from taking any consideration of the whole body that if the major part bee not condemned to slavery and poverty they conceive the weale of the whole is exposed to great hazard It is to be noted also that we Christians are not only degenerated in our politicks and become more unnaturall then Gentiles but even we also amongst Christians which have been born under regular governments doe more preposterously let loose the raines of Soveraignty then those Gentiles which knew no such regulations Seneca under the Roman Empire sayes Non licet tibi quicquam tuâ— arbitrio facere His reason is magna fortuna magna servitus In England this would now be treason if not blasphemy against God and the King we must bee so far from saying that our King though hee pretend not to an absolute prerogative is a servant that we must not say he is universis minor wee must bee so farre from denying him an arbitrary power in any thing that we must allow him an arbitrary dissent even in those things which the States of Kingdomes after mature debate propose to him Maximus the Emperour in his oration to his souldiers uses this expression Neque enim unius tantum hominis possessiâ— principatur est sed communis totius Ro populi siquidem in illâ— urbe sita est imperij fortuna nobis autem dispensatatio tantum atque administratio principatus una vobiscum demandata est Who dares now avow at Court that the whole nation of England hath a true interest and possession of this Crowne and that there is nothing therein committed to the King but the office and charge to dispense and manage the same together with the people for the peoples best advantage That which was true at Rome when there was neither religion nor perfection of policy to bridle Tyranny is now false dangerous trayterous in England amongst the most civill and knowing Christians that ever were what can be now spoken more odious in the Court of England then this undeniable truth that the King is a servant to the State and though far greater and superiour then all particulars yet to the whole collectively taken a meer officer or Minister The objections of our adversaries against this truth are especially these two First They say the end is not more honourable and valuable then the means And Secondly it cannot be so in this case because they say it is contradictory in sense and a thing impossible in nature to be both a servant and a Lord to the same State As to the first objection whereas the example of our Saviour is produced to prove that some instruments may be of more dignity then those ends for which they are ordained we answer our Saviour though hee did by his blood purchase our redemption yet was in the nature of a free and voluntary agent he was not design'd to so great a work of humiliation by any other cause then his owne eternall choice and therefore since hee receives no ordination or designation from those whom hee came to redeem nor had no necessary impulsion from the work it selfe of redemption but was meerly moved thereunto by his owne intire {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} wee say he was not our mean or instrument but his owne and whereas the example of the Angells is next alleadged we answer also that their Ministery performed unto men is rather a thing expedient then necessary and it is not their sole or chiefe Ministery neither doe they perform the same as necessarily drawne thereunto by any motive from man as being the immediate end of their Ministery but their service is injoyned immediately by God and so God not man is the true scope of their attendance Lastly whereas it is prest that the Advocate is ordained for the Client the Physitian for the Patient c. yet it is frequently seen that the Advocate is better then his Client the Physitian then his Patient c. We answer every particular Advocate or Physitian is not to be compared with every particular Client or Patient but it is true in generall that the skill and art of the Advocate and Physitian is directed in nature not so much for the benefit of him which possesses it as of him which is served by it and therefore Aristotle in the 2. Phys. cap. 1. affirmes truly that the Physitian cures himselfe by accident as the Pilot wafts himselfe by event it being impossible that he should waft others if hee were absent In all arts that which is principally intended is the common benefit of all and because the Artist himselfe is one part of the whole body consequently some part of the benefit redounds to him So after the same manner hee that sits at the helme of a State amongst others steers the same for his own ends but according to Plato and and Cicero both his maine aime his supreame law ought to bee salus populi it is a fit title for Princes to be called {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and wee know in a Philosophicall understanding the shepheard though by kind farre more excellent then his charge yet in quantum a shepheard considered meerly in that notion with respect to his charge is subordinate and bound to expose himselfe for his sheep It is our Saviours saying and it was crowned with our Saviours practise Bonus Pastor ponit vitam pro ovibus Besides Advocates Physitians c. as they voluntarily choose their owne professions perhaps intend their own private profit in the first place the publick in the second such is the perversenesse of humane nature but as the State designes or authorizes them that intends publick ends in the first place I passe now to the second objection which maintaines Lord and Servant to be incompatible our Tenet is that Kings may have supreame Majesty as to all individuall subjects yet acknowledge themselves subject to the whole State and to that supreame Majesty which flowes perpetually from that fountaine In briefe according to the old received maxime the greatest Monarchs in the eye of Law policy and nature may be singulis majores universis minores they may obtaine a limited Empire or sub regno graviore regnum Our adversaries though they cannot disprove yet they much disrelish this doctrine they cannot say it is impossible for all Democracies Aristocracies mixt and limited Monarchies make it visibly true nor can they say it is incommodious for there are more mixt and limited States then absolute and those which are mixt and limited