to 〈◊〉 were then Punishable with a Premunire yet the Civil Law then obtain'd much more than it does now that Stat. being very young as well as the Reformation and by the Laws of the Church long before it they were such Latitudinarians in this point that the subsequent Marriage would Legitimate those that were born before the Contract but that I confess was rejected here in 20 Harry the 3d's time because contrary to the common Laws of the Realm which the Parliament resolutely declar'd they would not change But what ever power they had of Nullifying this and making Mary spurious 't is certain another and latter Act made her as much Legitimate by making her Hereditary insomuch that what ever Edward her Brother was prevail'd upon a young Prince and a dying one whose forward Understanding might be well disorder'd with an approaching Death and an untimely end and which might be easily prevail'd upon in such Circumstances by the Cruel sollicitations of the defigning Northumberland whose Son had but just Married Suffolk's Daughter the designed Queen yet 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 the truly Loyal Bishop and as true a Protestant of which his 〈◊〉 to the right of the Crown was the best testimony tho now 't is made but a preposterous Emphatical expression of that Religion to invade it that worthy Prelate tho he suffer'd in the Succeeding flames of a real Persecution when demanded by these State Projectors his sense of the setting up of this Testamentary Queen declar'd it was no way agreeable to Equity to disinherit the two Sisters and that the Succession could not be Lawfully alter'd upon any pretence tho Religion then too was the very thing pretended the Bishop of Hereford that was as good a Protestant observes upon the Suffolk men siding with Queen Mary tho they knew she was for setting up of Popery says that our English are in their respects to their Prince so Loyally Constant that no regard no pretext of Religion can extenuate their Affections to their Prince and Lawful Soveraign And he writ it in a Time when the most malitious can't object it was to flatter a suspected Successor and when most of the Prelates themselves were so far from Rome that there was scarce an Arminian Upon the death of her Sister Doctor Health Arch-Bishop of Canterbury presently declar'd Queen Elizabeth's right to the Parliament then sitting who did not put it to the Vote as our Republican would insinuate they use to do but however did as much as was usual acknowledg'd that she was right Lawful Inheritor and presently she was proclaimed in Westminster-hall and in the next vote they do declare moreover in full Assembly Lords and Commons That this their Queen Elizabeth is their Lawful Soveraign by the Laws of God and so not only in relation to 35 H. 8. by the Statutes of the Realm and the Blood-Royal and in this open and generous Recognition they must Implicitly disclaim all power of Election or give themselves the Lye and so must our Impostor put upon them a falsehood if here his Parliamentary Choice must pass for a Truth but where matter fails them before and he can't prove his Election antecedent to the Monarchs right then as in some other places and here at present he can make the Prince tho own'd Hereditary by some subsequent Act of his own to make himself Elective and for this he cites you the 13 of this Queen the purport of which is to disable any one even after her Death to inherit the Crown that shall pretend to it during her Life But does not every one know that this was Enacted as all the fore-mention'd irregular Acts of her Father with her own seeking and desire and the bringing this for a president for a Parliamentary Power is just as pertinent as that of palliating the Treason of their late Covenant with the Title and Pretence of an Association made in her Time too with her own Consent and for the same purpose that this Act was past both being contriv'd in opposition to the pretences of the Queen of Scots and must the only thing that has Blacken'd her clear Integrity with Injustice and Blemish't her Virgin Innocency with Blood be brought upon the Stage for an Imitation to our State and because the Grand-mother suffer'd with a Bill of EXCLVSION and an AXE and the Father with the same Fate must the Son too that has experienc'd exile dangers and all but death from this power of Parliament Succeed only in their Misfortune and his Blood be made Hereditary only in being Split All that he says of King James is but what makes against him and what he might have said of all the rest that they made a Recognition of his right upon his coming to the Crown and truly such an one as must silenc'd all such 〈◊〉 for they acknowledg him Lineal Lawful Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man this may suffice for my sense of his History and all honest hearts will concur with my Sentiments his subsequent observations are but the same with the Principles of his ASSOCIATES that follow where I shall reflect upon them together as they are combin'd And here only give him an omitted Instance as pertinent as the Presidents he has propos'd to bring down his Narrative to the Times Charles the first notwithstanding his proximity of Blood his possession of the Crown and his pretended right from God 〈◊〉 the Parliament imprison'd him MVRDERED him and put the Power in the People And now what can any Rational Soul living infer even from this Authors own Observations but that those Parliaments which he brings us here for Presidents both for disallowing the Discent of the Crown to purge the Defects of the Prince upon whom it descends as also those that concern'd themselves in altering the Lineal Discent it self are so far from warranting the same Practises and proceedings that they stand upon Record are Chronicl'd in History register'd in their own Journals declar'd by Special Acts REBELS and TRAYTORS and then no wonder if the poor People are encourag'd to Rebel when the very Presidents of TREASON shall be publish't as a Parliamentary Practise the deluded filly Souls don't so soon consider that if every Seditious Senate's determination shall decide too the Descent of the Crown that this consequence which even themselves may blush to own must as inevitably follow that from the Vnion of the Seven under Egbert to our present Soveraign the first Born Heir to our Three Vnited Kingdoms there never was or could ever be a REBELLION or ever one USURPER in the whole Catalogue of Kings Henry of Bullingbrook by this unreasonable sort of supposition had as much right to the Crown as that Unfortunate Richard from whom it was rent and torn Edward the Third but a Son Intitl'd to the wearing it before his Father had done with it himself and that Butcher of his Brothers Babes and the
Parliament make us a by-word to the Heathen and a Scandal even to the revolted Holland did not the very Turks bless themselves at the Villany and the Dutch since in Derision cut off the Tails of their Currs to let us know we made less of a Kings head than a Dogs Neck But this we mean to apply related to it's reputation upon a League too this was a Scandal also brought upon it by a Parliament this was the effect of unjustly altering the Succession And this was in the Time of Henry the 8 when the Princes of the Empire would have made him Head of the Protestant League but upon hearing of his Extravagant Parliamentary Proceedings of their repudiating what Wives he pleas'd and allowing a more cruel Divorce of a Pious Protestant Queen from her Life as well as his Bed and severing her Head from her Shoulders as well as the Crown when they saw the Senate of England so Inconsistent with themselves as to Legitimate Bastards and then make Bastards of those they thought Legitimate Then began our Nations Reputation to be low with our Neighbours Then began our Parliament's to be look't upon as insignificant and the Supream Power of our 〈◊〉 Assembly to Forreign Councils seem inconsistent and their mighty Credit so mean that they could not be trusted and thereupon all the Leaguer's 〈◊〉 rejected Henry whom they had preposed for their Head And well might they distrust the Councils of such a State that while they pretended the Reformation of Religion could chop off the Head of the most zealous Reformer and as Baker calls her one of the first Countenancers of the Gospel make her Issue spurious that was like to and afterwards did prove the most Protestant Princess and all this but to please a Lididinous King that could make her suffer for his constant Crime Inconstancy when that too was so little prov'd and her Innocency so much whatever prospect these pretenders of Reformation gave to the Princes of the Empire that they should think of making the head of this dissembling Parliament that of their League too I am sure they must all of them as Oates did when he took the Mass the Sacrament for his Religion only pretend it and tho they made the World and Forreign Princes think well of their affections to Reform tho they had excluded the Pope still they and their King could remain Papist's and a Reverend Author that has had the thanks of the House says that a Parliament was Summon'd that was resolv'd to destroy her so that we see a Parliament could then contrive to make our Nation signifie so little abroad and that our present King without one signifies so much that he stands the sole Arbitrator of War and Peace and Europe only debar'd of the benefits of it by the very Faction that upbraids the Government with its being disesteem'd and this Noble Traveller not only taken the Liberty to Lye with Fame but given Fame it self the Lye After he has Thunder'd out his Anathema's against the State in the Jargon I recited above of Evil Councellors Pensioner Parliament thorough pac'd Judges which still the most malitious Soul can't allow to be the true Reasons of our Maladies and Distempers But however the State Negromancer with his Rosacrucian the Doctor knew these terrible Names with the Populace are swallow'd like his Pills without chawing and which they understand no more than his Catharticks with which they are compos'd with that unhappy effect too that they can no more discern the bitter cheat when these Prepossessions are got into the Guts of the Brain then that of the drug when in those of the Belly but like Persons absolutely possess'd rave and rail only with the same words that are dictated by their Devil yet after all this and having Libel'd Courtiers that contrary to the true meaning of the Law as well in this Kings time as in that of the Late they have got Parliaments Dissolv'd Proroug'd for the keeping of the Governments Life and Soul together after all these Seditious suggestions still he defines but Negatively that none of these are the Causes but the effects of some Primary Cause that disturbs it but I am afraid this Primary Cause to him is yet an occult one unless the Discovery of our late Plots has so far illuminated his Understanding as to disclose it or he consulted his Doctor for his Diagnosticks and got him to make a better Crisis and Judgment of the distemper of the State But for those Acts by which he thinks his Majesty is oblig'd to call a Parliament for the Triennial one I think runs with a Clause and a Proviso that it may be oftner call'd and within the Term if occasion be and pray who shall be Judg of that occasion the King who calls them or the People who would be call'd and what if it be Judg'd an occasion not to call them at all the Preservation of the Prerogative may as well exclude the force of this as some new Emergencies which themselves plead for upon a necessity and for the Common-wealth and Peoples Benefit and Advantage can Invalidate others but for that obligation and Law for the Parliaments sitting in the late Kings time that which he would truly have reinforc'd is their being perpetual again and not to be dissolv'd but for that I think he need not perswade the Courtiers to Address or be so bold to Petition himself unless he would tell his Majesty they must again have the Militia they must fight once more against his Person for the sake of his Authority and sit taking of Covenants and Associations till they have taken off their King But after our English-man has been so tedious in his Impertinence so Fulsom in his Complement that the Venetian is forc't to condemn his troublesome Civility that is our Author begins to be asham'd of himself Why then we come to know that before this great Secret that occasions our Disquiet can be disclosed before we can come to know the Distemper that disturbs our own We must Discourse of Government in general and for the Original of it the Gentleman is resolv'd to doubt And why Because this Government must be Antecedent to such Authors as could give us an account of it and the matter of History as I suppose he must mean did occur long before they could get Historians to transmit it to Posterity as for particular Governments he is forc't to allow the Knowledg of their Originals to be possibly transmitted and truly that he might well in Civility consent to what in Modesty he could not contradict and Rome and Athens will be found what they were in their Primitive State so long as we can find Authors that can tell us of a Romulus a Theseus for their Founder But when the Gentleman is so cruel to himself as to keep close to the Text that there is no Origen of Original Primitive Government known for in truth these
I hope if you Banish the Men you 'll Banish some Women too consider how to prevent the Royal Family marrying Popish Women No man can doubt but the Protestant Interest has been much praejudiced by his Majesties marrying a Princess of that Religion Popish Instruments having 〈◊〉 themselves under her Protection The Country Gentleman wanted the Civilities of the Court being a declared Enemy to all Ladies but this shows plain their aims were beyond that of the Duke and that it was the Sense of some of the House the Queen was in the Plot as well as the Opinion and Asseveration of Oats his Oath against his exprest Testimony given before Sir E. H. Have we not ordered several good Bills to be brought in for the securing us against Arbitrary Power and shall we now lay aside all those and be content with the Exclusion Bill only which I think will be worth nothing unless you can get more and what some of those more are is explain ed in the next Oration to it W. G. I do admire no body does take notice of 〈◊〉 standing Army which if not 〈…〉 such a Number as may be but convenient for Guards and limited as they may not be encreased All your Laws signify nothing the words of that Hellish Association only differ thus when they swear more modestly only to endeavour entirely to disband all such Mercenary Forces as are kept up in and about the City of LONDON These are some of the very Words as our Author relates them as they were spoken in his House of Commons I do them only that Justice that this Historian has done to their Honours or they to themselves so if these accounts are Authentick tho I remember when dangerous to Question even the Authority of an unlicensed piece of Sedition then 〈◊〉 see that many of our late malecontents of the Commons as ' well as our Plato's Rebellious Barons were not like to be contented any more with our Kings granting them all the security themselves could ask for their Religion then these Imperious Lords were after all their Liberties were fortyfied with an extorted Charter and made as firm as Fate 〈◊〉 their foresight could provide But that nothing would satisfy unless both lopt off the best Limb of their Prerogative and allowed them to have Parliaments without Intermission or at least frequent enough for an Usurpation of all the Power that is Regal for as the Doctor of Sedition observes upon the Kings being allowed to Call and Dissolve them That our Liberties and Rights signify just nothing So might 〈◊〉 this politick Pis-pot have remarked That when once it comes to the Power of the People to summon themselves or sit so long a Season till their own Order shall determine the Session that truly their Venetian Doeg would be a Prince to the Monarch of Great Britain and we should soon have less left of a King in England than such implacable Republicans have of Loyalty for I am sure we must in reason have better Ground to dread those dangers and utter Subversion of the State from their too much sitting that has been experienced than they for that panick fear of Tyranny from their 〈◊〉 so often Dissolved which they never yet felt But to see the boldness of such Villains for encouraging an Insurrection The briskness of their Barons that rebelled for a Charter and frequent Parliaments was most providentially brought upon the Stage when they knew they had forfeited most of their own by their Faction and made their House of Commons from their obstinate proceedings not likely to be soon summoned when once Dissolved so that here was a plain downright Encouragement of a resolute Rebellion as Occasion should serve and letting the People know they must put on their Armour as well as the Barons and be as brisk upon Intermission of Parliaments How far this good Exhortation encouraged an Assassination of our Sovereign and the succeeding Plot may be gathered from their attempts to put it in Execution and for which both Author and Publisher Merit full as well the Fate of those that dyed for the practising those Principles that they the more primitive Traytors had instill'd In short to insist no longer on this black Topick of plain Treason With what Faith and 〈◊〉 with what Face and Countenance can he call that perfect Conspiracy of a parcel of Faithless Peers a Defence of the Government that for almost forty Years laid the Land all in Blood and with their Witchcraft their sorceries of Rebellion that briskness as he calls it of putting on their Armour made it imitate an AEgypts Plague and Anticipate the very Judgments of the Almighty by purpling her Rivers with the Slain can the Defence of a Kingdom consist with its Destruction or those be said to stand up for their Country that invited an Invader and swore Allegiance to Lewis a Frenchman against him that was their Liege Lord I am sure this was making over their Faith to a Foreigner and many may think it as much to bee condemned as that of their King his Crown to a Saracen especially when that by some Historians is doubted but their falsehood's confirmed by all Then was our England like to have been truly France which they now but so vainly Fear In the next place he is pleased to grant the Militia to be in his Majesty's Power But 't is only until such a sort of Rebels have strength enough to take it out for he tells us the Militia being given but for an Execution of the Law if it be mis-imployed by him to subvert it 't is a Violation of the Trust and making that power unlawful in the Execution And that which shall violate this Trust has he reduced to three of the most Villanous Instances that the most Excrable Rebel could invent or the most bloody Miscreant concelve the Murder of three Kings by their Barbarous and Rebellious Subjects And in all three their strength and Militia were first taken away and then their Lives first he tels us Edward the second forfeited his Executive Power of the Militia In misapplying his revenue to Courtiers and Sycophants Richard the Second for 〈◊〉 Worthless People to the greatest places And Charles the First in the Case of Ship Money can now the most virulent Democraticks hug such a piece without Horrour at its Inhumanity or the vilest of the Faction preserve it from the Flames can those popular Parliamentarians and the most mutinous of all our murmering Members of whom my self have known some that could Countenance this very Book can they here defend iusinuated Treason when Stanley dyed for a more Innocent Innuendo but if Faction has forc't from their Souls the poor remains of Reason will Humane Nature permit such precedents to prevail that terminated in the miserable Murder of as many Monarchs 'T is remarkable and 't is what I remember these very Papers were Publish'd near about one of their late Sessions
incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector how vainly he presumes upon his parts and Invention that he is a double Plagiary not only borrow'd this 〈◊〉 project against the present Privy Council from these proposals of our Seditious Senate in England but his very Quarantia of Venice was set up long before he could for an Author by those Zealots that were so resolutely resolv'd to Rebel in Scotland and he shall see those Daemagogues too those Devils of Sedition look't upon it even then as a praeparatory project and the best Expedient for their Invading of the Kingdom and the Crown Their Edenburgh their Metroprolis as well as ours here was then the Seat of Sedition so truly great that it's Faction and Villany was Commensurate even with it's very Walls And those too when Casually fallen were not suffer'd to be built as if they would have let the World known by praediction their Ominous Treason was to extend further 't was here that the Sycophants at the same time they pretended so much for their Kings preservation that they protested against the pious Prince's Proclamation only for the dispersing of that dangerous Rabble that seem'd to denounce with an Omen what too fatally follow'd his Death and Destruction his Majesties sincerity to them and their Religion was repeated in it often with assurances but what was as Sincerely promis'd from a King by these Monsters of the People was as Rebelliously Ridicul'd with scorn and derision and that the Government might be satisfy'd with a sure report of their Sedition they made those Heralds that proclaim'd their Princes pleasure to witness how much it displeas'd his Rebel Subjects and in defiance to their very Faces read their own Protestation Big thus with Rebellion and Labouring with their teeming Treason at last they are fairly deliver'd of the same Rebel Brat this Republican would adop't for his own a QVARANTIA they Covenant and agree and 't was time to Vnite for a Justification of those Villanies which nought but a Combination could defend for erecting four principal Tables and 't was time too to set up their own Councils when they had so Seditiously resisted their Kings To pursue the Contempt of this Proclamation which by his Majesties Council and Command was publish't for a further Violation of the Regal Authority they set up this truly Popular the first of their four Councels to consist of their Nobility the second of the Gentry the third of their Burgesses and the fourth of their Ministry and the Decrees of these their principal and general Tables as they call'd them as if as Universally to be receiv'd as Moses his Two of Stone what they did and was approv'd of by the General one the Choice Flow'r of all the Four was to be forc't as the Peoples Law but far I am sure from the Fundamental one of the Land from this their Rebellious assuming of the Soveraignty in their pretended Councils as they call'd them too but in truth a Convention of Conspirators proceeded presently the Renewing of their Negative Confession their Band their Covenant impos'd on all sorts of People with artiside force and Blood it self And can a Test now establish't by Authority and Law be look't upon an Imposition even by those that impos'd Oaths Vnlawful and Rebel'd against both it being by them expressly declar'd in two several Acts that all Leagues of Subjects amongst themselves without their Princes Privity to be Sedition and their Authors and Abetters to be punish't as movers of such And what did this Venetian Government terminate in in Scotland but a plain Confederacy to confound all and tho the Civil and Courteous contriver of our Ruin and Subversion minces the matter with making his Majesty to Exercise his four Magnalia with the consent of these four Councils 't would puzzle his Politicks to tell me the distinction between them and those principal Tables of the Scot what should confine them from Confederating against their King instead of Consulting for him what would signifie his Majesties having a president among those of his own placeing when every one of them would be their own Masters and out of his power to displace what should hinder those from protesting with their old Rebellious Assembly in Scotland against all their Kings desires intentions and Inclinations for the publick good while they presume their own Maxims the wisest and their measures the best and to tell us that these are to give Account and to be answerable to such a Parliament who chuses them is to say a Sidney is the best Judge of the Misdemeanor of a Nevil most qualifi'd to answer his Quaere whether this project be not a better Expedient than the Justitia of Arrogan or the Spartan Ephori or to tell us one that has suffer'd for Treason to a Monarchy is the fittest to Try him that would betray it to a Common-wealth The second Proposition in the Parallel is that Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament or by such Councils as they shall appoint The true Spirit the Life the Soul of Sedition that informes and animates the whole Body of the Faction speakes here the
know not with what equity a mere Fiction in Law robs a man of so much Realty are frequently recovered with fine at Common Law against the Right Heirs he won't pretend therefore sure a Parliament shall a Kingdom and a Crown against a Royal Successor His own Reason for it is the best Refutation for I say too the Crown is Governed by other Rules than a private Estate and the Romans who were Governed by those Civil Sanctions that have since the whole World tho by those they had a Dominion over their Issues Heirs and Estates yet those will not grant even to Kings the power of Disenheriting their own Successors Nay such Favorers were they then of the Right Heirs that they would not permit their Common Citizens to be disinherited at the Arbitrary Will of the Parent but obliged them to observe such certain express Rules in their Exhaeredation And heretofore some of the Writers of our own Law could affirm that the Inheritance that descended from their Ancestors was scarce ever suffer'd to be disposed by Will but to the next Heir for my part I look upon the word Heir not to have the same Relation in case of the Royal end that it has in that of a Subject who always claims his Estate from his Ancestor Common whereas the other Heir is call'd more properly the Kings SUCCESSOR but the Crown 's HEIR And it will be hard then to make him pass for the Parliaments I won't tell Mr. Hunt here of the Blood and Miseries the common Calamities the dismal Attendants of a Royal Heir being bar'd of his Right How many Millions of Lives how much Blood it has cost us already And if any thing of 〈◊〉 would have frightned us for Excluding a Duke of York too but it seems Blood did not terrifie Mr. Hunts Members of Parliament to whom their Oracle gives all the properties of an Elephant and then they must be only provok'd at Red 't is the Justice of it and every Moral Action that must direct Communities as well as Common Persons and a Mighty Parliament as well as a single Peasant If Expediency shall come to warrant Injustice in Aggregate Bodies every Individual may as well commence Villain for Convenience Away with that Paradox of Folly and Faction that a Parliament can do no wrong since we have seen such a numerous Senate transported like one Man with rage and Folly even to the Ruin of Three Kingdoms And with what Justice an Exclusion which wou'd here have been the greatest Punishment next to Capital that a Crowns Heir could suffer could well be past and that for punishing an Offence Antecedent to the Law I leave such Legislators to Judge It looks so much like their Bills of Attainder that I am loth to tell them such an one even in this Kings time was reversed with Ignominy and Reproach and for a Repealing of the Infamy the very Records of it raz'd from the File and should the Crowns Heir too have suffer'd by a subsequent Law he cou'd never Transgress Would they have given their God the Lye and made Transgression where there was no Law Did the Seminary Priest suffer here for Officiating before that Statute was in being Should the Profession of the Catholick Faith and that but suppos'd have had the force of a Salique Law even against him that cannot well be said to sin against it Set the Mark upon the door where there is Death and the Plague and then let those that will enter dye CHAP. IV. Remarks upon Julian THat this Author was a better States-man than a Christian that he consulted more the Security of his Person than the Purity of his Religion that he had much rather burn his Bible that suffer but a Tomkin's Finger into the Flame are such undenyable Truths that you must suspend your own reason and give your own Writings the Lye but to suspect them but how far this Doctrine of self preservation is always consistent with the Gospel and whether a man may never deny himself to Confess his Christ requires I believe not an absolute determination of School Divines but may be Collected from the Practical Inferences that may be drawn from many a Text in the New Testament How far our Saviour's Suffering on the Cross should influence those that profess themselves his Disciples to Suffer How much the precepts of their great Master was Imitated by those Christians that were truly Primitive is a Disquisition proper for a Divine And has been as industriously enquired unto by several hands engaged in that Holy Function the tide is turned at last with the Time and Jovian remains as 〈◊〉 as his Julian was thought to be 〈◊〉 Answer that Learned and Loyal Author has fixt the Pillars to the Controversie and if this adventurer with the Second part of his Julians-ship will force beyond it he may discover to us a new faith a new Bible but can never confute him from either of the old most of my Remarks shall be upon his Political Observations for what he would Reform in the Doctrine of the Church is only as it relates to Matters and Affairs in the State The Loyal Addressers feel the first Effort of his fury and the 〈◊〉 of Mahomet's Hobgoblins are placed even within their Brows for expressing he thinks their contradictory Protestations but such Bugbears will hardly frighten them from following the Precepts of their Saviour that still inculcate on sufferance and Subjection but only may deter such as prefer the Crescent of that Imposture to the Cross in Baptism that can baffie their Bibles where it restrains their Liberty or admit an Alcoran of the Turks to tolerate Licentiousness it might well be a Grievance to such disaffected Creatures to see the good Effects of his Majesty's Declaration and that all his good Subjects had gotten an opportunity of shewing that Affection and hearty Loyalty which was over-awed by the Tumultuousness of a Faction from discovering it self they knew their own Party's power had been prevalent a long time in putting up Petitions and in those Numbers augmented too with Artifice as well as Sedition had placed a Confidence which they saw failed them and themselves foiled with a Weapon not much unlike their own in its make tho the Mettal and Matter of Another and better temper Here in truth lay the contrariety the Contradiction that confounded them more than in the Nature and tendency of such Addresses which if this prejudic'd Divine had examined he would have found no more Zeal in them than what was consistent with their Loyalty and Religion Their Allegiance which they had sworn and of which some of our Protestants make as little account as if a Jesuits Equivocation would absolve them from a positive Oath that obliged them to declare for the Kings Heirs and Successors and the Protestant Religion might still be maintained under any perswasion of their Prince unless the Nation was obliged to believe
Monarchy mixt and of this even Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is 〈◊〉 with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Mis-representation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellions Plot that one 〈◊〉 that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous vell to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly This was the praeliminary Plot and an unhappy prelude to a long and bloody Civil War fomented first by the fury of a Faction that set up for Rebels only because not favoured as they thought sufficiently by the Court and then seconded even to an Assaulting of the Crown in the Siege of Paris and almost the Subversion of the Monarchy as some Learned Historians surmise from the secret Emissaries of the Republick of Geneva I need not touch on the particulars in which the
Congregators which were Conventiclers then too as well as now because the general Worship establisht was not theirs the Bible in their own Language But they no way contented with an Act of Grace from the Crown and Instigated by this Incendiary this Scandal of the Reformation Knox that had taught them they might Demand with their Swords what was deny'd them by Law fell a reviling her even for such a signal favour and when she sent for some of the more furious of the Faction they came all attended with a multitude of Favourites and Force that for her Preservation she was compell'd to Command them to depart And the best of Governors might well fear the worst from such an audacious Assembly but this was so much the more offensive to them only because they were Commanded to offend her less that they throng'd into her Privy Chamber threatned her with their Arms till she was constrained to pleasure them against Law And as they then menac'd a Force so they afterward made it good with as much violence for away they went pulling down Monasteries and Churches and seconding their Sedition with what could only succeed it Sacrilege that is from Traytors to their Soveraign to be Rebels to their God And this by that Sanctified Beast that invited them to debase themselves to Brutes to be divested of Humanity was call'd a Purging of the Temple as if our Saviour Christ had countenanced an Extirpation of the Religion of some Christians But though the Queen at last granted them the free and publick exercise of their Religion though at last she only begg'd the private use of her own that was by such Seditious Subjects thought a boon too great to be begg'd by their Soveraign they Protest against it Preach against it Print against it and Assault her House of Worship break the Wax Candles with the Windows of her Chappel force their Queen Regent to fly to Dunbar and then as fairly Depos'd her for being fled though at the same time they profest against her Deposition And if we 'll believe a Loyal and Learned Author they proceeded so far in their petulant piece of Reformation that they Religiously Reform'd the very Petticoats of the Queen and the Ladies of the Court which they look'd upon as too fine for the plainness or simplicity of the Kirk How near our present Pretenders that have taken Arms for the Protestant Religion will tread in the steps of their Reforming Predecessors must be Collected from the Precedents they give us of their being but Implacable Republicans especially when we have nothing now to be Reform'd 〈◊〉 what they deny'd to the Grandmother of our present Soveraign that their King himself shall not be 〈◊〉 to exercise by himself the Religion he professes at the same time he Protests to defend all his Subjects in the establish'd Profession of theirs The Actions of the late Rebel Scot of the last Age they say squinted like their Argyle that headed them working one way when they profest to design another and they might have had as much reason to distrust the Promises of his late Declaration the Sincerity of his Son that succeeded him even in a Rebellion In the Year 1565 when the Queen of Scots was married to Henry Stewart Lord Darnly The Rebel-Lords instigated from the Preachings and Principles of this Knox the Ferguson of his Age who rail'd at the Government and reflected upon the King betook themselves to Arms and brake into open Rebellion Lord Darnly upon this Match being proclaim'd King marcht against the Rebels who fled into England and though through Intercession this Rebellious Business was Reconcil'd yet within two Years after the King was barbarously Butcher'd and Dispatcht but by whom because their Historians do not agree in it can be only best determined by Conjecture and must probably lye at their Doors that could Rebel against their Sovereign in an open War and then sure as likely to set upon Him in a secret Affassination especially when their Principles instructed them in both and their Preachers had made the Murder of their King an Oblation to their God And besides when they rebell'd also against Bothwell the Queens second Husband too as well as the first whom they forc'd to fly into Denmark seiz'd on the forsaken Queen secur'd her in an Island compell'd her to resign her Crown and if we 'll credit an Authentick Historian were not so well satisfied with her Resignation of her Sovereignty but that they consulted too to deprive her of her Life and very likely to have prevented her loving Cousin Elizabeth in England Upon the same Principles the same Seditious Daemocraticks proceeded against her Son and Successor that was after ward our own Sovereign K. James then a young Prince about 12 Years old whom they seiz'd at Ruthen carried in Triumph and Constraint to Edenburgh from which he was forc'd to contrive an Escape which he made by the Means of Collonel Stewart a Captain of his Guards but shortly afterward incited by the Seditious Insinuations of their Geneva Principles brought them home fresh hot and reeking with Blood and Rebellion by one Melvill that had come from thence but a few years before to supply not only Knox's stock of treasonable Positions but to succeed him in his Place of an implacable Incendiary his Predecessor expiring a Year or two before he came over by this Factious Fellow 's and his Associates Seducements did I say shortly after the Earl of Gowry conspire against the King and break out into an open Rebellion which he deservedly suffered for with the loss of his Head Then is this succeeded by Bothwells Rebellion who had contriv'd to seize the King at Halyrood-House but unsuccessful forc'd to fly and returning better assisted the second time effected what only he design'd at first But the King escaping to Sterling Bothwell is pronounced a Rebel by the States but yet is so well befriended by these Disturbers of all Kingly Government that they gave him the very Moneys they had collected for their beloved Brethren in the Republick of Geneva by which with other Assistances they enabled him to fight his King in the Field Then is that succeeded with a second of the Gowry's the Son of him that rebell'd before where they contriv'd to get the King to dine in their House at Perth seduc'd him up into some higher Chamber and there left him to the mercy of an Executioner from which his Cry and the timely Assistance of his Servants only rescued Him These were the Confusions Distractions and even Subversions of some States that were occasion'd by the restlesness of Implacable Republicans Emissaries of Geneva throughout France Flanders Scotland and Germany You shall see now in the next place what disturbances they have created us here in our own Isle what Plots and Conspiracies their Principles have promoted in England as if in that expostulatory Verse of Virgil there was no Region upon Earth but
pardonable faults of this unhappy Prince tho our Law say A King can have none much less be punisht for it when he can do no wrong The greatest that Daniel condemns was his mighty favouring of his Minions Gaveston and Spencer's in Opposition to his Barons and must it be criminal to a King to have a Friend But however in his History calls it the first Example of a deposed Prince no less dishonourable to the State than to him 〈◊〉 calls the Bishop of Hereford that then was busied in the Resignation but a Mischievous Embassador and pray what was the Fate of those that were the first Leaders of the Rebellion and the most mutinous The mighty Duke of Lancaster was by his own Peers condemned to be Hang'd and Quartered and was only Beheaded and several Barons besides and afterward Mortimer the Queens own Minion and Favourite was impeached in Parliament of Edward the Third for making Dissention between the late King and Queen for murdering of his Sovereign and accordingly was drawn Hanged and Quartered for it with several of his Adherents But as Unanimous and as Clamorous as they seemed for his Deposition the greatest Contenders for it as some of our Historians affirm lamented it with regret when it was done and Stow tells us that when the Queen understood her Son was Elected she seemed to be full of sorrow as it were almost out of her Wits and the Son lamented too and swore that against his Fathers Will he would never take the Crown And after all what succeeded this most unjust Deprivation and Imprisonment of a King but what still is its immediate subsequent the Barbarous Murder this was verified in the following fate of King Richard this was the unfortunate Consequence of our late confined Martyr Mattrevers Iron soon followed the firsts Imprisonment in Corse and Berkley Gastle Exton`s Poll-ax as quickly dispatcht the Second at Pomsret and the Block at White-Hall too soon attended the Confinements of the last Martyr in Carisbrook and Holmby confirming even with his last breath and verifying in his latest Blood this too fatal Aphorism that a Death soon follows the Deprivation of a King and that there is in his own words but a little distance between the Prisons and the Graves of Princes And now the next that enters this Theater Royal is Edward the Third a Son too forward to accept of a Crown before 't was his due But notwithstanding this Rebellious Instance he hath given not so formally chosen as to make the Kingdom Elective for their very chusing of his Son and that the Eldest insinuates that in spight of their obstinate dissobedience their resolute Rebellion they were still toucht with a sense of right and priviledge of Primogeniture and the small remainders of Majesty the bare Right they had left him awd them so far as to think it necessary to palliate their too open villanies with the formality of a Resignation neither would the Son accept it neither was he proclaimed or Crown'd till his 〈◊〉 had resigned and let the bold audacious force they used for it lie at their Door that vindicate it his resigning entitled his Son and he had a sort of Right in Civil Law besides Hereditary pro derelicto Here 't is pretty remarkable the fine sort of Observation he makes on the Bishop of Canterbury's Text vox Populi that it was the voice of the Almighty too and impiously upbraids the sacred Dust of their own Martyred Lawd for placing a Divine Right in Kings when some of his Predecessors had so well lodged it in the People but did not the Impudence of his Brow almost exceed the villany of his Heart his Conscience as hard as his Fore-Head or both he could never thus inhumanely reflect on him whom they butchered too as barbarously and that with such a Reflection that flies in his own Face when the very Opposers of this pious Praelates Opinion verifyed afterwards his Prophetick fear and by the placing this Divine Right in the People sent assoon his sacred Majesty to follow the Praelate But can ever Wretches show more industrious Malice towards the Government when they shall close with the Doctrines of their worst of Enemies and which they would be thought so damnably to detest to do it an Injury cite you the Authority of the most Zealous Catholicks when it will make against the Monarchy yet baffle and burlesque the very Bible when it makes for it the malitious Miscreant knows the Clergy then were all bound by their Oaths besides their Opinions to be the Bigots of Rome He knows the Popes supremacy then would not admit of the Kings He knows the pleasing of the People was then the best Expedient for the promoting the Pope that from them came all the Penny 's that paid them for their Pater-nosters and that this beast of Babylon against which our Zealots pretend too as much Brutal rage then only trampled upon the Necks of Kings not only had Her stirrops held by them but rid upon the very backs of Princes and that only because the poor People were so Priest-ridden would he have had that Popish Prelate preach to them the Kings Supremacy told them he was not to be toucht because jure divino when themselves make it the Doctrin of their Church to dethrone them certainly such Sycophà nts dissemble when they cry up the Reformation that rely so much upon the Religion of those times before they were Reform'd The Bishop as he thinks having now pretty well asserted the Peoples supremacy by making them Divine he brings in as prettily Polidore Virgil proving them to be all Princes so that we have now but one Subject left and that 's the King but by his leave the Governments bark must be wrackt in a Rebellion and a storm before they can come to Reign like so many Trincaloes in the Tempest The Gentleman sure read Shakespear instead of Virgil and thinks our Isle enchanted too but to be serious in matters of Blood and Right and that when both Royal could any Person of sober sense be so simply sollicitous as from an Author forreign unknowing our Constitutions calling some of our Subjects Principes to suggest their Supremacy their Superiority we know as well as he what he means by it or what he must mean that they were some of the chief of the Realm and will that make them Rulers too the Latin Idiom sometimes applies the word Princeps to subordinate supremacy as well as to those that are sole Supream But even the Authority that he cites for this silly Suggestion and others P. Virgil himself is sufficiently secluded from being Authentick by Sir Henry Savill The next Factious Insinuation that follows is that John De Gaunt this Edward the Thirds fourth Son but the Eldest surviving disputed the Succession But this as a Learned and Loyal Author observes so far from Truth that he was at the latter end of his Fathers Life
modelling of the Church and in that our modern Republican agrees with our Old Rebels for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes That was one of the Projects was set afoot as the very forerunner of our former Troubles that was publisht over again in several Papers and Pamphlets now besides in this very piece and could they condemn our Fears of a Subversion of the Government when their Libels in about 80 lookt only like the new Editions of those in 41 as if printed Rebellion was to suffer but a 〈◊〉 You shall see how they began with the Bishops just before the last War in their Libels and then how of late they began to War upon Episcopacy again in their Papers and Pamphlets you shall see how the Parliament Espoused the Peoples Quarrel to that Hierarchy then and how near our late House of Commons was for falling upon the Prelacy now Leighton a virulent Scotchman led the Dance with a Zeal like that the Nation it self shewed afterward against that Apostolical Order he told the People plainly they must Murder all the Bishops And in his canting Phraseology Smite them under the fifth Rib. 'T is true the Government of Church and State stood yet so strong upon its Basis tho shaken with an undermining Plot that it dared to punish such an Execrable Villain with the Pillory and sentenced he was in the Star-Chamber to be stigmatised cropt and slit and tho the Parliament had not openly declared themselves against this good Government of the Church yet they had shown such Symptoms of their Disaffection to it that this Impudent Libeller could presume to make them his Patrons and present them with his Plea And I ha'n't found in all their Journal any Order for so much as the censuring him for such a piece of Presumption To exclude the Bishops from Voting in their Assembly the Confederates of Scotland drew up a Libel against them one in the Literal Sense full of Scandal and Reproaches But the denying them there their Rights in Parliament was soon seconded with the Robbing them of all too they had in the Church whom they had excluded they soon 〈◊〉 and then abolisht utterly the sacred Order so did also within two years after the good Parliament of England begin with the Prelacy too Pennington with his packt Petition of Prentices presented to them their Abhorrence of that Hierarchy the cunning and counterfeit Commons that Honse of Hypocrisie seemed a little dissatisfyed with an Alteration of the Church Government it self that is they did not care to pluck it up presently Root and Branch but fell upon another Argument somewhat more plausible tho to the Zealots less pleasing but what in truth was but Introductory to the same thing they more deliberately designed that they might proceed somewhat like Senators soberly to Sedition and that was about the Synod and Convocation Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical which they soon resolved to be against the Fundamental Laws of the Land But these Lay-Members were only mighty loth the Clergy should here have their Representatives as well as the Laick they must otherwise have seen that such a Resolution would upbraid them to their Faces with a Lye for this their Court of Convocation was as much founded upon Law and more too perhaps than even that of the Commons themselves who with their inconsistent Votes with Contradiction it self condemned it Exclude the Clergy and the very Foundations of your House must fall Did not former times allow you Representatives that every one might have an Hand in the Composuion of that which he had an Obligation to obey Banish the Bishops your Assembly and tell me by what Proxies the Church shall be represented and what shall tye her to the Observation of those Laws to whose Constitution she gives no consent For a Thousand Years before they had a being there were such Synods Assembled never called but by the King 's Writ and they have no other Authority for their own Sitting and might as well have Voted that their own Assembly as indeed it was afterward was against the Fundamental Laws of the Realm Prerogative of the King Property of the Subject Right of Parliament and did tend to Faction and Sedition And tho those Canons and Constitutions were streightned and limited in Henry the Eight's Time and it was provided that none for the future that had not the Royal Assent should be put in Execution yet such Reverence and Respect had the Parliament of those Times which I think was made up of a better sort of Reformers than what past their suffrages for the setting aside this Synod that notwithstanding that Limitation they put in an express Proviso that such Canons as were made before that Act so long as they did not contradict Law should be still in force after and this was at a time too when they were so far from being the Bigots of Rome that they were reforming from Her and acknowledged their Kings Supremacy even in several of those Convocations tho whatever Religion they were of Common Reason cannot make it a Crime the countenancing of the Churches Right but these Violators of her Privileges soon discovered their Design upon her Patrimony too for in the same Session and that soon after they that thus set aside the Churches Synod sent up an Impeachment of Treason against its Metropolitan and that by the Hands of Hollis a hot-headed Member whom his Majesty could have made appear and within a year after did demand for a greater Traytor too That Honoured Hollis that lived so long and so lately to Murder the Bishops once more in their Peerage as well as Person 〈◊〉 but having gone so far what they had scribbled down before with their Libels they soon damn'd with a Vote And in the same Year past that Bill that their Spiritual Lordships should have no suffrages in the Senate of Lords And when they were come to this once to deprive them of their prescrib'd Privileges and their Legal Rights to send twelve of them to the Tower only because they would not tamely forego the very Church's Birth-right but entered a Protestation against the betraying of their Trust you might think their Order it self tho never so Primitive never so much Apostolical was not like to be long liv'd for in the very next Year tho it was the good Kings giving one when Star-Chamber was abolisht the High Commission put down Ship Money relinquisht with six or seven several Acts besides for disclaiming Privileges still his Seditious Subjects had so little Sense of his Goodness that even in that very season of Grace a * Bill was brought in for Abolishing this sacred Order Root and Branch 't is true 't was then husht up in the House the provident Patriots understood how to time it better they had not yet come to covenanting and concluded with the Kirk but as soon as they had framed their Holy League
the Exchequer and one Justice for the Jews be likewise chosen by the Parliament ibid. 4. These sixteen so managed the Judges of their King upon a Presumption of their favoring their Soveraign that they got three of them strangl'd without process 5. They brought with them Consciences sull of Error and Schism against the Laws and the Canons 5. That there should be a Reformation in the Church and no Hugonots false Prophets fomenting Heresies against the Vicars of Christ. Mat. West pag. 332. favored 6. They would not have this Henry the 3d's Daughter marryed to Alexander King of the Scots and for a long time would give him no aid which at last with much ado they did 6. That his Allyance and Truce with the Kingof Navar was against the Interest of his Subjects 7. At Lewes they took upon them so much of the Militia that they made their Prince a Prisoner 7. That the strength of Provence be put in the hands of the Duke D'Aumarle or such others as they should nominate 8. The 24. to dispose of the King's Castles and no Peace till all the Forts and Castles be delivered to the keeping of the Barons 8. Leaguers seiz'd upon the King's City Castles and strong Holds D'avila pag. 328. 9. His Councellors elected by the Parliament allowed him such a pitance for his Houshold that they starv'd him out of his Palace M. Par. 807. 9. That the Kingdom could not be safe so long as the King was environed with Non-confiding Persons 10. They chose their own Peers called the Peeres Douze 10. That they might have the Disposal of all Honor vid. their King's Answer to their Manifesto This Parliament of those Rebellious Barons my Lord Cook that had as much Veneration as any Man for that Honorable Assembly called the mad Parliament the reverse of that of Edward the 3d. which he calls the good one And I am sure the Propositions of that in 41 would have made the Learned Lawyer had he lived to see them proposed pronounced that Senate as distracted too as that Oxford one of Henry the 3d's but it may suffice that special Act since supposed them in their Witts in declaring them what was worse TRAITORS CHAP. III. Remarks upon Mr. Hunt's Postscript THIS Disingenuous Author with his Hypocritical Apology for the Church of England has just done her as much Mischief as that of Bishop Jewels sincere one did her Good That pious Prelate with his unanswerable Arguments had defended her against all the powers of the Pope and this with his Argument which he Answers himself has made her all Popish Never did an Hypocrite pretend to so much Candor and Sincerity that had so little Shadow for such a Pretention His Falshoods look'd as if he designed and thought he could have imposed upon the Government and his God and in spight of Providence to have secured himself from the Justice of that which was established and at the same time made sure of the favor of those that were for undermining it The one was to be blinded with his being Author of the Bishop's Right The other imposed upon with his Penning the Postscript But however he deceives himself the Almighty will still make good his own Word That he won't be mock'd He has denounced express Judgment against a double Heart and the Nation now deserv'd Justice To such a Sycophant With what Face can such a Rumper tell us in the tayl of his Postscript that no Passion or prejudice perverts him against the State of the Kingdom when all know that it 's being thus established not only lost him a place in the Law but disappointed him of being an Irish Judge and thus the virulency of his Pen betrays the truth of His Passion which he would Apologize against with a lye and that it can rise as high as any Furies for as deep a resentment of an esteemed Injury when the Government all the while was far from doing him any wrong But if it should meet with him now I dare swear would do him Right And this is altogether Reasonable the World should know that the best of our Rebellious Male-contents tho' they strive to palliate their Passions and Prejudices against their Governors with a show of being impartial and indifferent that 't is but a meer shadow to cloud the Fire that Glows within while truly still implacable impatient and impossible to be govern'd and that those that pretend but with Moderation to discommend many things in our Monarchy have nothing in them but the meer Malice and Spirit of Republicans And this will appear from his very first Paragraph that provokes my Pen He lets us know that the Church of England is like to fall into that of Rome by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons Fall by a Divine Fate as he makes his Holyness to say for her folly That is as he must mean by Consequence for maintaining a Divine Right For to this purpose says he Sir Robert Filmer's Books were reprinted and others for the same And truly I am so far of this Gentleman's Opinion that the good man the Pope may very likely call it a very foolish thing and laugh at the Doctrine of any Kings Divinity that endeavors to set himself above all Kings so that unkind even to himself and his Friends the Dissenters he unawares ties them up together with the Tenents of the rankest Jesuits of the Romish Religion and endeavors with the self same Arguments and Objections to set up the popular Supremacy that those Impostures do the Papal But first only let me beg a postulate or two from him that pretends to be a Christian which an Infidel or Heathen won't deny much less then one that has the Bible for an asserting it's belief viz. 1. That power in general without appropriating it to any particular Government is somewhat that is Divine not barely as it is exercised by some Humane Beings below but as it is communicated to such from their God above that is all so and hath it as one of his Attributes any of which is Infinite and adequate to the Divinity it self 2. That this power is actually communicated to some Being here below for their better Government and Subsistence No Humane Beings but such as desire to live like Beasts can well deny 3. That this part of God's Attribute so communicated to Man from his own Mouth Dominion imparted cannot cease to be Divine notwithstanding such a Communication though to a Creature Humane all that understand the least part of Divinity will assert and without any supernatural Illumination even from this natural simile of the Sun 's Light can easily comprehend which tho' it dart its rays through almost an Infinite Darkness yet wheresoever they are extended still remain Light neither is his own by the Kindness of such a Communication the less So that taking it for granted which must be that a power of Government is communicated to us here below by
that must absolutely determine the Jurisdiction of the Prince He tells us when a matter is moved in Parliament by the King the Commons consent last and are therefore the Commons Co-ordinate with their King Or does that only signifie the Candid Custom of the Proceedings in Parliament The King is presumed upon his own Proposal of any matter the Party and they being consulted is only for their Advice as the very Words of the Writ expresly have it by which they are called and the very Etymology of their very Name the great Council expresses Controversies in such Cases will be Eternal until the Disputants agree in the same Notion of the Thing they so much dispute For otherways it is but making of Words instead of Arguments if they mean by the Legislative of the two Houses a power of Concurrence with their King in the making Laws and that their Consent is to be required they labor to prove just nothing or what they may have without so much pains and to so little purpose If they will insist upon the Natural Etymology of the very Word they will find the Derivative Legislative to be deduced as above from the Latinism Legem ferre and then in God's Name let the two Houses enjoy even of that an Arbitrary power and bring in what Bills they please so long as they will not again force upon us an Ordinance or Vote for Law and the Statute of the Land but if their Sense of this Legislative power must signifie That their Commons have as much of it as their King and That 't is that which makes their King Co-ordinate with his Commons as is sufficiently clear from their Writings that it is then I affirm 't is against Law against Reason and a Lye For the King by the very Law it self hath power to dispence with Statutes his Proclamation is a Law and an Edict and as much as any of the Decrees of the Roman Emperor's with the Advice of his Judges he will dispence with the rigor of the Laws if too severe and resolve their meaning if Ambiguous Have their two Houses whom they would have these mighty Law makers the power of repealing or so much as altering those very Laws they make without their Kings consent And tho this Laborious Lawyer observes That neither their King can pass any thing he proposes without theirs yet this his power and that when they have not so much as a Being Evinces the Prince at least supream in the Legislative The Learned in other Laws besides our own tell us a Legislative power may partly be delegated to other Persons tho Subjects and yet remain in the Prince even entirely notwithstanding such a Communication I confess the Opinion of Canonists and Civilians may not be so Authentick with some that abhor their very Names yet Grotius himself is of that Opinion and he a Person that our Republicans can cite even on their own Side but our own Laws allow it or else I think our Judges too might make themselves Co-ordinate because their King's Commission communicates to them all the power of destributive Justice that is in the King We are told the King has committed all his power Judicial some in one Court some in another and therefore the Judgements run Consideratum est per Curiam c. and 'T is resolved That if one should render himself to the King 's own Judgement it would be of none effect yet for all this it would be false to affirm That he does not do justice because he has delegated it to others to be done The King does not put in Members of Parliament as he does Judges yet Peers he makes and calls them to Sit and Commons cannot come without his Writs for Election but certain it is that our Kings once had a more absolute Legislative for they all know their Lower House commenced but so late and heretofore their Nobles and Bishops but such as the King should be pleased to call And I cannot imagine that when our Princes admitted the Commonalty to be concerned in the making Laws they then designed he should lay aside his own Legislative or put it in Common as they do their Land in Coparcenary or in their great Coke's the learned Lawyers Language make an Hotchpotch a Pudding of his Prerogative If every Politick Body that has but a share in this Legislative must also be presum'd to participate as much of it as the King I can prove to them every petty Corporation Co-ordinate with their great Convention of States and even a poor Parish as great Legislators as an House of Parliament for by the Laws of the Land even those can make their By-Laws without Custom or Prescription if they be but for the good of the Publick and if they can but prescribe to it may pass any private Acts for their own The Civilians make their Law to be the Will and pleasure of their Prince But tho our Antient Lawyers would not expound that absolutely for our own yet they seem to make it but little less only say it must not be meant with us of his unadvised Will but such an one as is determined upon the Deliberation and Advice of His Council Pryn that preposterous Assertor of this their Legislative has furnished them sufficiently with as contradictory Arguments as absurd as irrational Inferrences for its defence He tells us in his Treatise that Kingdoms were before Kings and then the People must needs make Laws that I confess setting aside the very Contradiction that there is in Terms For certainly the Word Kingdom was never heard of till there were Kings to Govern He might as well have told us of a Derivative that was a long time before the Primitive but bating this Solecism in Sense and Speech well meaning Will designed it perhaps for the Word Country that was I believe as well as he antecedent to the King but must it be inferred because the Land was once without Kings therefore now no Kings must govern the Land For the Conclusion is as absurd to say That therefore the People have the Legislative and their Prince no Negative they do not consider the result of such rash Inferences which return upon themselves more stronger in the rebound and that even upon their tenderest places which they can hardly suffer to be touched Kings and Lords did a long time meet in Parliament before Commons in that Convention were so much as thought of and therefore must none now be convened The Papists proudly tell us their Religion was long before Luther and must we not now profess our Protestant Religion Another of the same Nature and as much Nonsense is this They infer from the possibility of the King 's dying without Heir and the Government returning to the People who then would be the Sole Legislators That therefore they must have much now of the present Legislative and be at least Co-ordinate that have a
possibility of being Supream The Supposition sounds somewhat like the Song of the Children When all the Land is Paper c. Tho it spoils another good Proverb That no Man dyes without an Heir but the silly Souls do not consider that by the same Solecism and Supposititious Reason not a Subject has a Right to a Foot of His Land For the Law says All that is in England belongs to the King as Lord which if the owners dye without Heirs must escheat to the Crown and sure 't is as possible for any Subject to dye without Heirs as his Soveraign when the Law has taken special Care for them and then 't is but turning their possibility of a Right into an actual one and they will be the most obliging Subjects to the Crown that bring such Arguments against it Another of Pryn's pretty Paradoxes is the very same with Hunt's impudent Assertion I may with Modesty call it so since himself says he dares to be so bold to assert it It is that our Kings anciently always consented to Bills offered for the publick good and the Postscript that never any Bill was lost or wanted the Royal Assent promoted by the GENERAL DESIRES of the People That Bills have been rejected they 'll find upon Record and in the Journals of almost every Session and whatever is presented in Parliament must be supposed the Desires of the People who Sit themselves there in Representative but the mistaken Gentleman meant it of the Bill of Exclusion to be the Peoples General Desire but that at last he finds a Lye too and that the Generality have for the most part protested against it in Addresses declaring more the Sense of a People than a prevailing Party in an House of Commons when the best part of the Nation too the Lords did not concur But did not in Queen Elizabeth's Time and that even so lately the Parliament and even every Individual in the Nation desire her to declare her Successor I am sure with greater Sollicitation and a more general Unanimity than they could be said to desire that Exclusion of the present King's did not the two Houses offer her four subsidy Bills upon that very Consideration and she as resolutely reject both And could the refusing to shew even a Kindness to her next Successor upon the importunity of all her People with Money in their Hands be less resented And shall the King for declaring only against a Bill that was never tendered him for declining to concur in this deepest Injury to his own BROTHER and Heir and to pleasure those only that denyed to part with a Penny be reproached and condemned so much more Did not the Parliament tender to King James three several subsidies to break of the Match with Spain and the Treaty of the Palatinate and he refuse tho tempted with what is seldom the Subjects Bait Money How many Bills of Rebellion did the Mutinous Members and that in the Name of all the People prefer in their Propositions to our Martyred Soveraign to which the poor Prince prefer'd the most Ignominious Death rather than condescend with his Veult or Avisera Base Caitiff forgive but your own Billings-Gate should these neither have wanted the Royal Assent because offered in the name of all the People of England and as the general Desire of the Subject if that Suggestion must have extorted his Assent then mighty Miscreant he must have past an Act for his own Tryal Sign'd a Warrant for his Murder for in that name he was Arraign'd in that name he was Sentenced and in that he dyed Poor prejudic'd Soul whose discontent and Transport makes his own Maxims undermine the very Cause he would defend Is then this general desire of the People such an absolute infallible Determination of Matters of Religion and Descent of the Crown the very only points he labors for that if their Desires be but promoted put up in a Parliamentary way by Bill or Petition it must presently oblige the Royal Assent Be it so base Creatures your own Arguments as basely betray your own Religion your own Arguments will help truly to subvert that which you seek to Establish with such a furious but false Zeal for ought I know the Protestant Religion had been so setled in its Infancy in its first Reformation in the Reign of him that was the first Defender of our Faith that it could never have been so soon interrupted with a succeeding Persecution had but Henry the Eighth refused the Bill of the Six Articles prest upon him by both Houses this was Judged a just and necessary Bill from Hunt's General desire of the People but had it not been better had it not saved the Blood perhaps of all the mighty Book of Martyrs had the sturdy Prince rejected this as he did many other general Desires It was this Royal Assent alone which would to God it had been wanting And this Sycophant would have wish'd so too did he really love the Religion he so salsely labors for It was the Le Roy vult the Result of the Peoples importunity that then establish'd Popery by a Law which had it been but then neglected that new moulded Mass of Idolatry standing upon its last Legs had quite languish'd dropt into the Grave and been buryed in the Ruins and Rubbish of its own Idol Houses they demolish'd For in the latter end of his Reign so enraged did he seem against some Persons of that Perswasion that he acted as if he would have executed their very Religion hanging up some iCarthusians even in their Habits and mmured nine Monks in their own Monastery where they dyed This was it that so settled what they call Superstitious Worship that it survived the short liv'd Reign of the pious Edward and in Spight of all his providential care for it's exterpation run only like the Guaronne that Miracle of a River in one of their Climates of Popery if their Histories of their Country be not Legends too only through a little Province in silent darkness underground but rose again and that with greater rage in the next Region This good Kings Laws about Religion would never have been so soon repealed the Commons House never have been so forward as the Divine Doctor whom themselves have thankt for it does make them for the sending up a Bill for the punishing all such as would not return to the Sacraments after the old Service Had the Six Articles been but past by in stead of being past into an Act they would have had no such Service to return to they would have been Strangers to Rome and it's Religion and tho they were repealed in Edward the Sixth's time his Fathers ratifying them made them take such root that his short Reign could never Eradicate that left so many Catholicks in the Kingdom that Commendone the Popes Legate might well come over to reconcile her Highness's Crown to his Holyness's See And here
blood before the jurisdiction of the Court was Resolved and to him in a Moral sense 't was as much Guilt as if that Authority had been Absolutely Legal and tho he tells us he does not descend to salse Arrests yet I thank him for his Condescension 't is to such a matter as is no way distinguishable from it for an Arrest without Authority is equivalent to a false and is as much Tortius and Force as what is done upon a Forged Warrant The Cases reported by those two Lawyers he cites one of them but a Protonothary that other our great Oracle in my Conscience were never designed for proofs against Passive Obedience By their Resistance here of the Law was never understood that which was forbidden in the Gospel besides it was but the Resolution of the Judges against the Power of that Court which to be sure they did not care to favour and those two Authorities he has cited none of the best in Matters of Allegiance and Loyalty that part of Coke is looked upon not very favourable to the Government and Brownlow first Printed when there was none But his Triumphant Distinction between his Religion Established by Law and that which has no Law for it's Establishment is not only far from creating a Difference here as I have shown before because the precepts of the Gospel which must be more immutable sure than a Persian decree are still the same and are now the Question but the Offering here of such a distinction is in Truth as impertinently applyed as it is really none at all for whenever he can imagin here which God will avert any Sufferance for the sake of his Religion it must be according to the Law of the Land or else he 'll never be brought to suffer I 'll secure his Carkass for a Farthing and be bound to supply it with my own for the stake if ever his be tyed to it without reviving of the 〈◊〉 de Comburendo All the Martyrdoms in Queen Mary's Reign were but so many Executions of the Law and that Writ de 〈◊〉 he 'll find in Fitz Herbert as well as a Common Capias so that himself must first without Charity which won't sure then begin at home Give his Body to be burnt with his Imply'd suffrage in an House of Commons 〈◊〉 I believe He is not likely to be a Bishop before fire and faggot can come upon him to singe his Hair or touch his Garment for the sake of his Religion and how likely we are ever to meet with such a Parliament to Sacrifice themselves again to the Flames himself best knows who I believe does not fear it so that here his Foundation of Law Establishment has nothing to support it and then all his Privileges of Saint Paul his own Magna Charta his Case of Commissions all fall to the Ground and his very supposition of his Religion being Establisht by Law and at the same time against all Law to suffer for it is more contradictory than his Horns or Addresses for it can't be supposed but that the Power that punishes him for an Heretick will have Repealed all those old Laws that would have protected him for being such and enacted new ones to make him suffer for his Perseverance and 't is always remarkable and a great Truth that the laying down one single false Position can never be defended but with as many Lyes And this forces him to maintain the Christians suffer'd contrary to Law in the time of Julian Certainly he knows but little of Justinian and the Codes however his Hunt help't him to so much of our Cases out of Cook The Constitutions of the Jmperial Law were but the Decrees of their Emperors as well as the Corpus the Collection of one of them all the civil Law that governed then is called Caesaria Imperatoria because their Caesars their Emperors where the Authors of it and how can he plead for them their Charters that had nothing else to trust to but the Will and Edict of their Prince The Testamentary Donation of Edward the Sixth he brings for an Argument for Excluding the Right Heir which makes but very little for his own and as much for the cause he contends against not so Insignificant neither as he suggests only because they could not well avoid an Act of Succession in Harry the Eight's time for whether that Act had been made or not Queen Mary must have Succeeded by Proximity of Blood as next Heir after her Brother And 't was that inherent and unalterable Right that made the Nation the more Zealous in her Cause tho there were enough too as Warm for her Religion he very well knows how that Will was extorted from a weak and dying Prince by the Powerful Importunities of Northumberland for the sake of Jane the Eldest of the House of Suffolk whom one of his younger Sons had Marry'd he knows nothing but self Interest and Ambition promoted it he may Read that both the Learned in the Law and as emiment of the Divines were against it Bishop Goodwin tells us of Cranmer himself present that he opposed it and that for the same Reasons all good Subjects do now because he thought no pretence of Religion could warrant an excluding the Right Heir This was the Sense of a Protestant so Zealous that he afterward suffer'd for it but the power of the great Northumberland prevailed with him at last for his Consent of which himself afterwards heartily repented to the Queen tells her he never liked it that nothing griev'd him more and that he wish't he could have hinder'd it And the ill success that Attempt had is alone sufficient one would think to discourage such another 'T is strange that the very thing that has once brought a Calamitous War upon the Kingdom that in this very Instance terminated in the Confusion of all the Attempters brought Northumberland to be Executed and to Penitence too for having offended and poor Lady Jane as her self said to suffer justly only for accepting of a Crown so unjustly offer'd 'T is Prodigious that such contradictory Mediums should be urged for countenanceing a thing to which they are so much repugnant Did not a Parliament here of Protestants declare for a Popish Successor and as Bishop Goodwin says the Suffolk men set her up tho they knew her a Papist Did not a Popish Parliament after her death declare for Queen Elizabeth tho they knew her a Protestant and were not in all these sudden Revolutions the Right Heirsstill preferr'd notwithstanding their Religion was not the same that was profess'd how then can men that offer at such a piece of Injustice touch upon those times for the Justifying so much wrong where they see that under the same Circumstances they still asserted their Princes Right The next pretty Notion of this Ecclesiastical novice in the Law that we shall now pass our Notes upon is a quaint conceit relating to our Oath
to such a Protestant is the making her much worse than the Wildest Paganism Had he consider'd how unreasonable it was only from the selected Instances of some Turbulent Spirits how Irreligious and Vncharitable it is from a few furious provok'd Persons to have cast such an industrious blemish and blot upon the Practices of all the Primitive Christians of those Times certainly he would have found it much unbecoming his Profession more his Religion Why does he not conclude from thence too that in those days we never had any Martyrs or that all Fox's mighty Martyrology is nothing but a mere Romance for he 'll find Her Majesty the persecuting Mary in many places as severely handled Why does he not tell us in her time Wyat Crofts and Rudston REBELL'D And then conclude we had no Cranmer Latimer and Ridly that suffer'd Why does he not tell us of the Protestant Tumults of her time that there were those then could throw Stones and Daggers at a Bonner or a Bourn and not a word of the more Meeker men a Bradford or a Rogers that bid them be Patient and appeased them for his Maiden Virgin that Reviled Julian he could tell us too that of one Crofts a Maid that Mutter'd out as much Sedition against Queen Mary from the Wall and let him but deal as disingenuously in Conclusions here too the Reform'd Protestant will be as little Obliged to him as the Primitive Christian. In short if Julian abounded with such a Spirit of Meekness as he in many places makes him to demonstrate where then was this Terrible Persecution with which he makes such a dismal din If they were really Persecuted and Opprest how came they to be so powerful as to make such a signal resistance If his Old man in Berea was only rebuk'd by him for raging so hotly against his King and his Religion and only bid by his Prince in so much mildness as Friend forbear railing if at the Reproaches of the Antiochians he only declared against seeing them any more if as in his ridiculous Instance of old Father Gregory's kicking of his King he was so terfify'd and awd what is become of the Tyrant and all the Bloody Persecution that attended him to the Throne And if as in another place he has prov'd there was much the greater part that remain'd Christian where was this General Apostacy to the Pagan In my poor Apprehension the several Examples he has cited did in some sense tho beyond his design as much oblige his Adversaries cause and the late Case of Succession as some of the Loyal hearts that labour'd so much in its defence for they most of them prove that notwithstanding the perswasion of their Pagan Prince the Christian Religion flourisht as much as ever and he never Punisht any Person but for reviling him for his Apostacy to his Face and that they might have enjoy'd their own opinions quietly had they not so much molested and opposed his And must the Christian Religion then be made so Rebellious only because there were those that could revile their Prince and his perswasion that could call their Julian Goats beard Bull-burner Impious Apostate and Atheist Why then this Gentleman himself may infer that the Protestant we 〈◊〉 is as Rebelliously inclin'd and that because some Seduced Souls were not long since so much possest with Sedition as to Rebel against the Succession because a poor Perjur'd wretch could call his Soveraign Dog Devil and Traytor because M. 〈◊〉 himself suffers now a deserv'd Imprisonment for representing now his own most Christian King for ten times as great a Persecutor as the worst of the Pagan Emperors or because Protestant Subjects actual Rebels and in Arms against their Soveraign with an Arch-Traytor Attainted long since legally have publisht in his 〈◊〉 of a Declar'd Rebellion that their Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man that is Seated in the Throne of his Ancestors by the Protection and Providence of God tho so much endeavour'd to be Destroy'd and Excluded by the Plots and Practices of these Devils and that because such Rebel Subjects have declared this their undoubted and Merciful Soveraign an Vsurper and a Tyrant Our Protestant Religion I say by the same reason may suffer for the sake of those Seditious Souls themselves from several of their own examples of a Rebellious resistance as well as in their Arguments that traduce the Principles and Practices of the Primitive Christian. The very Rebel Books that are so much Consulted by our Asserters of a Common-wealth and the Favourers of a Republick because they make a Monarch so Mean and Contemptible even those have largely treated of the same Subject that Mr. Johnson thinks he himself has only so 〈◊〉 handl'd The Author of the Rights of Magistrates makes it most of the matter of his pernicious piece in the last Question which he proposes which is in these words Whether those that are to suffer for their Religion can resist that Prince that opposes the true Religion I confess he with abundance of Foreign Impertinence tells us of Princes being bound to maintain the true Religion a thing that no one ever doubted but then I doubt whether every Prince would not believe his Religion to be most true but when he comes to the Question whether the 〈◊〉 can resist if the Soveraign design for them a false then he comes to our Mr. Johns Resolution of the Case of a Religion Establisht by Law the point in which he deluded unhappily his Patron the late Lord Russel then he tells us the same Triumphant notion and discovery in which this Divine was so much exalted that the Roman Emperors had never allow'd the Christian Religion any publick exercise But yet this very work which some would have a Catholiques but which I can hardly believe from his Brutish rage that he shows in his railing against that Church whom in several places he is pleas'd to call beast whore and Bloody Harlot that it sounds too much like the Language of the Disciplinarians of those times which were nothing else but what we now call the Fanaticks of our own yet this very piece sufficiently pernitious by both parties disown'd and discommended wont allow them to resist the Soveraign when he alters the Religion only by the same Authority by which it was Establisht but then alone calls him a Tyrant when he would abrogate it by his own Arbitrary Power whereas our Julian is a Bar beyond the best of their Advocates and would have had us resisted before we had known whe ther our Religion was to be alter'd by Law or without it whether it was to receive any Alteration at all or whether the Prince they so much Libel'd would have come to be capable as a King to Subvert or defend it for the Bill which this Libeller whom the very Law has made since so and a Court of Justice would have
so necessary to be past by the same Reason that we use Remedies against the Plague that was only a Resistance of the present Authority in an Altering the Discent of the Crown which their own Laws Declare unalterable and that only by providing against Contingencies that might never have happen'd which is a sign that they aim'd only at the Succession it self more than any danger that they fear'd from it because the Successor might be supposed at the worst possible and perhaps willing to preserve to them their Religion which they so vainly fear to lose as well as he has since ratified it with his Royal word and at the present is the Defender of our Faith too as a King as well as he had often promis'd before he was so and Mr. Julian might have spared his Plaguy Metaphor of his Pitch and Tarbox till he felt more fumes of an infected Air and some better symptons of the Plague for while their is nothing but Cypher to that Disease in the Weekly-Bill the people would take this Doctor for a Mad-man should he run about the Streets with his Antipestilentials his Fires and his Fumes But yet in this his own Case had our Author oblig'd himself but upon a great penalty not to use his preparation of Pitch and Tar to prevent the distemper I fancy he would run the risk of an Infection rather then have than forfeited the Condition And I should think an Oath taken to be true to the Crowns Heir should oblige as much prevail upon his Soul as well not to use such means and methods as would make him forsworn tho it were for the prevention of an ascertain'd danger And I cannot see how such a Bill that dissolv'd the very band of our Allegiance could be call'd any thing less then an Act of Parliament for a Statutable Perjury for none but a Johnson or a Jesuit will allow that the same Lawful Authority that impos'd an Oath to be taken can command its violation after it is took and that sticks so much at present with some of our moderate Covenanters that they cannot think themselves by special Act of their Lawful King absolved from an Oath of Rebellion administer'd by none but Rebels and Usurpers And tho this Gentlemans Oracle of the Law was pleas'd to call them but Protestant Oaths I might as well tell them they are Christian ones too if they believe the Testament to which they swear And as this Gentleman agrees with and perhaps has borrow'd from this old Disciplinarian several of his Doctrines so has also Brutus's Vindiciae handled the same Question which he has propos'd in this form whether it be Lawful to resist a Prince that Violates the Laws of God and lays waste his Holy Church But from that Excellent Author our Julian might not only have prov'd the Doctrine of Resistance to be the practice of the Primitive Christians but that it was much Older and Commanded by God himself to the Jews and as the former Author his Predecessor can only from the Text tell us of the Kings of Israel being oblig'd to propagate the true Religion such as David Solomon Asa Johosaph Hezekiah Josiah c. All Foreign to the Question so does this Brutus tell us an idle tale and the Fancy of his own Brain that therefore the People of Israel fell with Saul because they would not oppose him when he violated the Laws of God that the People suffer'd Famine for their not opposing his persidiousness to the Gibeonites that they were punish'd with the Plague because they did not resist David's numbring of the People and that the People suffer'd for Manasses poluting of the Temple because they did not oppose it But where stilldo any of these prove that the People did resist their Kings or were commanded so to do 't is but an Irreligious Presumption to think the Almighty should punish his chosen only because they did not Rebel against his Anointed when that Rebellion even by the same sacred Text is declared worse than Witchcraft and that primitive one of Corah and his Accomplices was so remarkably punish'd But I know these Authors will tell us That Eliah destroyed the Priests of Baal notwithstanding that Ahab their King countenanced their Idolatry That Jehoida the Priest set Joas on the Throne and not only rebelled against his Mother Athalia but destroyed her to restore the Worship she had abolish'd But in both these Instances they may do well to consider 1. That what was done here was by the express Direction of the true Spirit of God in his Prophets to which when our inspired Enthusiasts our Oracles only of Rebellion can prove their right as well as they but pretend it they shall be better qualified to Judge their King when he offends against the Laws of his God And does not the Text tell us upon these very Occasions always That the Word of God came to his Servants 2. Athalia here whom the People resisted deposed and slew had no Title to the Crown but what she waded through in the Blood of all the seed Royal Religion was not there the rise of the Rebellion but the right of the Crown 's Heir which was in the young King Joas whom they set on the Throne of his Father Ahaziah and for which Heavens had preserved him notwithstanding the 〈◊〉 and Design there was to destroy him 3. If Religion were the Occasion of such Insurrection as it really was not yet the Worship then introduced was altogether Pagan which by the express Command of God they were bound to extirpate And whatever our Apostate fansies in his Comparison of Paganism and Popery my Charity will oblige me as a Christian not to look upon the Professors of the same God and Saviour like to so many Turks and Mahometans unless they can prove to me from the Text that by the Worshipping of Baal is only meant the Catholick Faith and to believe in Christ is to be an Infidel In the fourth place they do not consider that even their own Arguments make all such Applications to all ourpresent Kings altogether impertinent For these Republicans that maintain these Doctrins tell us too that the Kings of Israel were always to be regulated by the seventy Elders as those of Lacedaemon by their Ephori that to these seventy the high Priest did always preside as Judg of the most difficult Affairs so that Arguments and Presidents brought from such Topicks where they make the Kings to be govern'd by their Subjects can't be applyed to Monarchs that are Modern and more absolute tho this their very Assertion that makes against their own Application is no less than a great Lye For we find both the Kings of Israel and Judah from the Chronicles the very Records of those times to be Princes altogether absolute and to have executed too that unlimited Jurisdiction I have related these few passages out of the fore mentioned Authors to let this
or opinion the rants of our implacable Republicans that are pleas'd with nothing that recommends a Monarchy no tho it be the very Bible and the Book of the Almighty Cannot those silly Souls that are transported out of Sense conceive that there is a difference in Assertion to say That Monarchy is by Divine Right and that every Monarch Rules by the same Right Divine then indeed we should run into Sidney's Absurdities of making every Rebel that could but reach at a Crown a Cromwell or a Monmouth as much a Divinity Monarch as our best and Lawful Soveraign tho it must be granted that those Successions even of Lines that have for a long time descended lineally do intimate to us somewhat of the Divine Will that it shall so succeed and even the paternal Successions in this sort of Royal Government was given us for our Instruction that God approv'd of it from the time he gave the Children of Israel and Judah their first Kings who throughout all the History of the Bible succeeded from Father to Son but that which garbles and really grieves our Republicans is that even the Divine Right of Monarchy it self can be Asserted that we have so much as the Intimation of the Will of God any Reason to conclude from his Word that he has given the Approbation to the Kingly Government any preference to Monarchy it self they quarrel at the very Bible for mentioning so much as a King or Prince and they would make the version Libel the Original when it makes a Melchisideck the King of Salem or Hamor the Hivite Prince of the Country they would have their INDEX too and expunge a whole Chapter of Genesis for talking of ten Kings besides Abraham and make all the Old Testament an entire Apocripha that does but mention a Monarch And for this Plato tells us plainly that Moses made them all Commonwealths and that afterward over those they call'd Kings the Sanhedrim and Congregation of the People did preside tho the Text tells us Moses was King in Jesurun and so the King it seems made it a Common-wealth These Rebels to the Majesty of their King are as refractory to what the Divine Majesty has approved they damn the very History of the Creation and the Original composure and Constitution of Nature because it once made a Monarch in a single Man and has puzl'd them to find out any more of Adams Common wealth but among his Beasts they Curse the Dispensations of Providence for preserving a Monarchical Government throughout the Universe and has left them nothing but two or three Rebellious States they condemn the deluge for not destroying Noah too but left so much of Regal Authority to remain in the Ark this makes them when they are perplext with the pesterings of some Loyal Positions to put us upon deducing our Kings Pedigree from Adam or as Mr. Sidney says from the Eldest Son of Noah the Foolishness and unreasonabless of their Postulates the ridiculousness of those demands I cannot better answer to my Satisfaction or theirs then by sending them to St. John's Coll. in Oxford I 'll promise them there if they 'll be but pleafed there they shall see even the most everlasting Line drawn down from the Garden of Eden to White-Hall from the first Adam to their present Soveraign K. James and if they don't like the Heraldry let them dispute it with the Painter I cannot tell how to gratify the Impertinence of their demands but with as pleasant a message But if a Man can be serious among such Buffoons I must tell them 't is one thing to say that Noah and Adam Rul'd by a Right Paternal and another that every Monarch must have the same Paternal Right from Adam and Noah 'T is one thing to say that God approv'd of Princes to Govern and another that he appointed to every Prince the same Right of Government the form of Regal Government I hope from the Royal Authority of the Patriarchs may be Justified to be of Divine Institution tho the Succession of the whole series of Succeeding Soveraigns be not resolv'd all into the same Title I can tell them of not only an absurdity but a plainlye would be the Consequence of such a position for then there must have been no Battels Fought after the Flood no Ten Kings in one Chapter of the Testament none of that long Catalogue of Egyptian Princes and in truth at present but one Vniversal Monarch in the World tho that some Learned and Laborious Heads do too industriously sometimes attempt to deduce from Scripture by the Almighty to have been once design'd and Babel for the seat of such an Empire For it would be a great piece of Paradox indeed and a greater of Impertinence to persuade such Seditious Authors there was ever any thing of an Vniversal Empire design'd that won't allow there was ever a particular one Establish'd That tell us no general revolts of a Nation can be call'd Rebellion and then I am sure they must maintain that there is no particular Supremacy from which the generality of the Subjects can be said to Reble but Mr. Sidney borrow'd this pretty Position too from that pernicious piece that was publish'd about the Rights of Magistrates for that tells us too That the Danes imprisoning their King Christien to his dying day the Swedes rejecting their Sigismund for his persisting in the Romish Religion were no Rebels I confess their Monarchys admitting so much mixture of Democracy may make the people there to have a greater power in publick Administrations but certainly cannot well extend to impower them to subvert the very publick Weal it self which must be said to consist in the supream head of it the King and tho they will seperate his Person from that publick political Consideration and say they may maintain the Monarchy tho they depose such a particular King this will not mend the matter for those that have a power to reject ONE Prince are as much empowr'd to refuse to Elect another and then the result of it must be this that our Republicans will admit no more of a particular Empire then a Vniversal In short those that had but the least Inclinations to be Loyal and did but Love and like an Establisht Monarchy that were not resolutely resolv'd to Rebel against the Light of Nature as well as the Resolution of the Laws would soon see and be satisfy'd of the Solid Reasonableness the Innocent Truth of these three several Propositions I have so lately Labour'd in First that Primogeniture obtain'd by the Institution of the Almighty and his continued Approbation in the Bible both in Paternal discent and Regal ones and that the Laws and Practise of Nations have confirm'd it in both since and that home to our Doors Secondly that Paternal Right and Power by the same Authority of the Almighty has been prefer'd by the Laws of Nature Maintain'd and by the Civil Sanctions of
most prodigious piece of Paradox to see some of our Seditious Republicans to rail at Ministers of State and Mr. Sidney of all Men had the least reason to have reflected for his Sufferings upon those that sate on the Bench with the rest of the Rabble of his Democraticks who of late in these tumultuous times have talkt of nothing less than the punishing of those that held the Sword of Justice threatned them with the Fates of Tresilians Fulthorps Belknaps with the Gallows Fines and Imprisonments whereas these two were only punisht in the Reign of a King wherein they actually rebell'd and deposed their Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY And that preferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the sound of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors AEdils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the Lands of the King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the
what must be fill'd with their diffusive and elaborate Sedition Queen Elizabeth was no sooner setl'd in her Throne but they as seditiously endeavour'd to subvert it They libell'd her Person set their Zealots tumultuously to meet in the Night invading Churches defacing Monuments and so full at last of the Rebellious Insolencies of that Italian Republick to which they commonly repair'd to receive Instruction that her Majesty thought fit to hang up Hacket with a half dozen more of them as dangerous Subjects to her Sovereign Crown and Dignity When King James who succeeded her came to our Crown did these Malecontents that had molested him so much in Scotland disturb his Government here too as much Melvil that Northern Incendiary was as busie with his Accomplices here too to set Fire to Church and State and for that purpose publish'd several Libels against both for which being then at London he was sent to the Tower And so far had those darling Daemagogues insinuated themselves that the Hydra of a Popular Faction began to shew its fearful Faces in the very first Parliament of his Reign though in that they had so fully formerly recogniz'd his Right For in some of those several Sessions of which that consisted one of the Seditious Senators had the Confidence to affirm in the open Assembly That the giving the King Moneys might empower him to the cutting the Members Throats an Insolency that some of our Modern Mutineers upon the same Occasions have as seditiously express'd King James Dissolv'd that Parliament call'd another and that as Refractory as the former which instead of answering the Kings Request draw up their own in a Remonstrance second it with a Protestation for Priviledges representation of Religion and Popery intermedling with his Match of Spain and several Affairs of State so that he was forc'd to dissolve that Politick Body too and soon after suffer'd a Dissolution of his own Natural one dying under the Infirmities of Old Age and leaving behind him an old Monarchy rather weakned with Innovations of Republicans with the worst of Legacies to his Son and Successor A discontented People an Empty Purse with a Costly War into which he was not so much engag'd as betray'd And now we are arriv'd to what all the Stirs and Tumults of our Seditious Souls our discontented Daemocraticks in the Reign of King James did aim at and design the Destruction of the Monarchy which they could not accomplish till this of King Charles in that they never left till they laid such a Plot that at last laid all the Land in Blood and made an whole Kingdom an Akeldama For that they first quarrell'd at the Formality of his Coronation because in the Sacred Part of it the Prayer for giving him Peter's Key was first added This some silly Sots suggested to savour of Popery tho' it struck purposely at the very Popes Supremacy it self For that they begun to Tax their King for taking his Tonnage without an Act and yet refus'd to pass one that he might take it by Law unless he would accept of it in Derogation of his Royal Prerogative for Years or precariously during the Pleasure of the Two Houses when most of his Ancestors enjoy'd it for life Turner and Coke led up the dance to Sedition and reflect upon their King in their Speeches The Commons command his Secretary Office and Signet to be searcht and might as well have rifled his Cabinets too They clamour against his favouring of Seminary Priests tho' he had sent home the very Domesticks of the Queen and that even to a disgust to France and a rupture with that Crown They upbraid him for dissolving Parliaments tho' grown so insolent as to keep out the Black-Rod when he came to call them to be Dissolv'd tho' their King notwithstanding the provocations assembled another assoon and that tho' he had the fresh President of the then King of France That had laid aside his for a less presumption Thus they call'd all his Miseries and Misfortunes Misgovernments and Faults when themselves had made him both faulty and unfortunate They accuse him for favouring the Irish Rebellion tho' the first disorders in Dublin were by his diligence so vigorously supprest their Goods confiscated their Lands seiz'd their Persons imprisoned and such severities shew'd them by his Commissioners there that two Priests hang'dthemselves to prevent what they call'd a Persecution The Scot Mutinies upon the King 's restoring the Lands to the Church of which but in the minority of his Father it had been robb'd assail the Ministers in the Church in the very administration of the Sacrament because according to the Service-Book Protest against their King's Proclamations set up their four Tables at Edenburgh that is their own Councils in opposition to their King 's Hamilton had promised them as Commissioner to convene an Assembly they come and call a Parliament by themselves which tho' dissolv'd they protest shall sit still then desperate in a Sedition break out into open War Invite Commanders from abroad seize Castles at home agree to Articles of Pacification and then break all with as much Perjury Lowden their Commissioner sent to propose Peace At the same time treats with the French Ambassadour for War bring their Army into Northumberland and Durham and prey upon those Counties they had promised to protect while the Parliament at London will not give their King leave or the Citizens lend a penny for opposing those that came to pull him out of his Throne At the Treaty of Rippon they quarrel with their King for calling them Rebels that had invaded his Realm the Commissioners of the Scots conspire with the English who then fall upon Impeaching his Privy Counsellers and the unfortunate Strafford suffers first because so ready to Impeach some of them and they make that Treason in a Subject against the King which was heard known and commanded by the Soveraign Then follows Lawd a Loyal Learned Prelate and that only for defending his Church from Faction and Folly As they posted the Straffordians and repair'd in Tumults to their King for the Head of that Minister of State so Pennington with his pack of Aprentices petition'd against the Bishops and the Pillars of the Church Then Starchamber must down High Commission be abolisht Forest bounds limited yet all too little to please when the Irish Rebellion followed to which the Scots had led the Dance no Moneys to be levied in England for suppressing it till the King had disclaim'd his power of Pressing Soulders and so disarm'd himself that is he was not to fight for his defence till they had disabl'd him for Victory They quarrel with him because he would not divide among them the Lands of the Irish before they were quell'd and subdued at the same time they had quite incapacitated him to Conquer and Subdue them Then Acts must be past for Annual Triennial and at last perpetual Parliaments And whereas the Law says
The King never Dies they made themselves all Dictators more Immortal They were summon'd in November and by the time that they had sate to May they had made of a Mighty Monarch a meer precarious Prince And in August following supposing he had sufficiently oblig'd the most Seditious Subjects which I think he might Imagine when he had made himself no King he sets out for Scotland to satisfie them as much there while the Senate of Sedition that he left to sit behind him resolv'd it self into a sort of Committee of Conspiracy and that of almost the whole House made a Cabal among themselves to to cast off the Monarchy which the Knaves foresaw could not be done but by the Sword and therefore cunningly agreed to second one another for the putting the Kingdom into a posture of Defence against those dangers abroad which they themseves should think fit to feign and fancy at home To carry on their Plot against the Bishops they put in all probability that lewd Leighton upon writing of his Plea which was Bring out those Enemies and slay them before him to smite those Hazaels under the fifth Rib For which in the Starchamber he was Fin'd and Imprison'd but for his Sufferings and the Dedication of his Book to the Commons they Vote him Ten thousand pound Upon the Kings return from his Northern Expedition which was to procure Peace only with a shew of War they having had a competent time for Combination and Plot were arriv'd to that exalted Impudence that notwithstanding he was received with Acclamations from all the common People of the Kingdom the People whom they were bound to represent the welcome from his Parliament was to present him with Remonstrances and Petitions which against his very express order they Printed and Publisht of such sort of Grievances that sufficiently declared they were griev'd at nothing more than his being their King They put upon his Account the thirty thousand pounds they had pay'd the Scots for Invading England that is they gave them the Moneys for Fighting of their King and then would have had the King paid his own Subjects for having against him so bravely Fought They should for once too have made him responsible and his Majesty their Debtor for the two hundred thousand pounds they paid the same Fellows at Newark to be gone whom with their thirty thousand pounds they had invited in before They should have made the King pay for his own purchase and answerable for the Price the Parliament had set upon his Head This seem'd such an unconscionable fort of Impudence that their hearts must needs have been Brass and seer'd as well as their Foreheads in offering it An Impudence that none but such an Assembly were capable of Impudence the Diana of these Beasts of Ephesus the Goddess of all such designing Democraticks that to be somewhat in the true sense of the Satyrist must defie a Dungeon These their Petitions they seconded with Tumult and Insurection sent the Justices of Peace to the Tower only for endeavouring to suppress these Forerunners of a Civil War when they had taken the Liberty to Impeach some of the King 's best Subjects for Traytors yet deny'd their Soveraign to demand their Members that had committed High Treason About the twenty eighth of January 1641 they humbly desire the Soveraignty and their Petition that BEGUN Most Gracious Soveraign ENDED only in this Make us your Lords for they 1st demand the Tower of London 2ly All other Forts 3ly The Militia and they should have put in the Crown too The stupid Sots had not the sense to consider or else the resolv'd blindness that they would not see that those that have the power of the Army must be no longer Subjects but the Supream power The King you may be sure was not very willing to make himself none and might well deny the deposing of himself tho' he after consented even to this for a time but what he would not grant with an Act they seiz'd with an Ordinance and though they took the Militia which was none of theirs by Force and Arms yet Voted against their King's Commission of Array that was settled upon him by Law they force him to fly to the Field and then Vote it a Deserting the Parliament they necessitate him to set up his Standard at Nottingham and then call it a Levying War they Impeach nine Lords for following their King and yet had so much nonsense as to call them Delinquents which the Law says none are but what adhere to his Enemies they send out their General fight their King and after various events of War force him to fly to the perjur'd Scot to whom they had paid an hundred thousand pounds to come in and were glad to give two to get out and for that they got the King into the bargain An Act of the Scot that was compounded of all the sublimated Vices that the Register of Sins or Catalogue of Villanies can afford feigned Religion forc'd Hypocrisie Falshood Folly Covetousness Cowardize Perjury and Treason for upon his refusal to Sign their Proposals they tell him the defence of his Person in the Covenant must be understood only as it relates to the safety of the Kingdom and upon the English profering them the Moneys they wou'd prettily perswade him that the promise their Army made him for his preservation could not be kept because the Souldiers and the Army were different things and the Army might promise what the Souldiers might refuse and were unwilling to perform But this purchase of their double Perjury was punisht with as much perfidiousness their Army got into their hands for nothing the poor Prince the Parliament thought they paid for too dear And as that Seditious Senate sought their Soveraign in the Name of King and Parliament so now the Souldiers of Fairsax set themselves to fight the Senate for the sake forsooth of the Parliament and Army Good God! Just Heavens that could visit such Vipers such Villains in the same villany they committed and make such Seditious Hypocrites suffer by as much Treason and Hypocrisie Their Agitators menace the King with Death and Deposition they make him their Prisoner move in the House their non-addresses make it Treason to confer with their King set up an Ordinance for his Tryal and there Sentence that against which Treason could only be committed as a Traytor to the State And here then With what face can the Faction justify such a Barbarous Rebellion or accuse their King for the beginning of the War Yet such a sort of Seditious Democraticks does our Land afford Sidney says Such a general revolt of the Subjects can not be call'd a Rebellion And Plato Our Parliament never did as they pretended make War upon the King Till such persuasions are rooted up out of their Rebellious hearts as well as they are in them no Prince under the Heavens can protect himself from such resolute Rebels as will
their Politick presumptions in a piece of Treason for Gospel and as infallible as a Creed and that because their Associated Excluders in a Scheam of Rebellion tell us Queen Mary proved the Wisest Laws insignificant to keep out Popery therefore it must be concluded it connot now be kept out This Gentleman knows that I believe chopt up so much Logick with his Commons at the University if Educated there where commonly better principles use to be Instill'd that it is a most false Inference from a Particular to conclude absolutely and Vniversal and when besides Henry the 8th's Reforming Edwards the 6th short Reign had hardly settled the Reformation there being more Romanists then in the Kingdom than such as had truly Reformed it was never truly begun or throughly perfected till Queen Elizabeth's Reign which might be easily observed from the Parliaments so soon declaring for Popery in Queen Mary's first entrance upon the Throne yet however he might observe tho the Suffolk Men set her up as undoubted Heir to the Crown which as the Bishop of Hereford in the History of her Reign says was then so prevalent with our Englishmen that no pretence of Religion was a sufficient Suggestion for opposing such a Right Yet they soon deserted her when they saw her bent for introducing a new one and such a defection might have endangered her establishment had not the generality of the Nation been then of her perswasion But what Maxims of State should now move another Prince of that Religion to endeavour it's establishment when All the Kingdom 's so bent against it when the Protestant has been rooted here for above this hundred year we have a King whom God preserve that has promis'd and may live yet many to defend it They must imaginesuch a Successor seduced against his Interest his Councils besotted to set him upon such Measures now as must certainly disturb the Quiet of his Government tho the Faction cannot Overturn it so that this great point will come to this Whether having more contingencies than one of having such a Religion introduced as first the great Casualty there was of his not coming to the Crown which might have been prevented by a Natural death without their Expedients at the Rye their unhuman and unnatural Barbarities and then imagining such an Actual Succession that Improbability of making such a sudden Alteration in Religion only for his own Disquiet and without any Probability of Establishment in his Reign which according to the Course of Nature must betoo short tho I shall still pray for any of the Lines longest Life and the little continuance it can expect should it be introduced when all that are to succeed him are profest Protestants These being such Casualties as upon good Conjecture and Probability may interpose the question is Whether in prudence or Policy we ought to have Involv'd our State in certain danger only to prevent a contingent one I could never get any one yet to prove that to be matter of Expediency for the good of the Publick That such an Exclusion would have been certainly dangerous our Annals too sadly Testifie and any one need but to turn back to my Remarks upon our History and he 'll find it Chronicled in Blood And that any danger of our Religion is but merely Contingent must be allow'd by all that think it not Predestinated to be changed And what now have these good Subjects done to be thus reviled by the bad Why they have declared in their Addresses to Assert that Right which in their Oaths they have Sworn to defend And a Pious Divine that has dispensed with them Libels them for not being Perjur'd for company His distinction of the Religion being Establisht by Law is far from creating any difference for the question is here what is the Doctine of the Gospel and it can't be imagin'd any sort of Christians upon the Privilege of any Political Establishment are enabled to dispense with the precepts oftheir Religion and confute their Bibles with the Statute Book Saint Paul's sufferings are so far from discountenancing such a Doctrine that they are alone the best the clearest Confirmation of it he was beaten suffer'd Imprisonment and all for the sake of his Saviour he told them after his durance to whom they had done it and the greatest Sticklers for Passive Obedience will allow Mr. I. to plead his Magna Charta if he won't with the Barons beat it into the Head of his Soveraign with Club Law or knock out the Brains of an Imprisoned King for it with a Battle-axe his Breath can plead his defence without Resisting unto Blood Paul could have pleaded his privilege of being a Roman and uncondemned sure as available before his Sufferings had he not thought it is duty to suffer and he may read in the same Book of those that went away Rejoycing that they were counted Worthy of it for his Name A man may be born to a great deal of Right when 't is none of his Birth-right to Rebel and that against the very Monarchy it self His case of the Pursivant is as much to the Purpose as if he had pitch't upon the First in the Report there was an Arrest of a Body by such an Officer to bring him to appear before them that constituted them an High Commission Court And as often it happens in Execution of the Law many times there is Opposition made sometimes Maiming is the Result many times Murder here it hap'ned that the Officer's Assistant was kill'd and the Law that makes it but Manslaughter in a Common Fray in an Execution of an Office makes it Murder and that must depend upon the Authority of that Court from whence such Officer receives his Writ Warrant or Commission 't is adjudg'd in the Case that they might have cited to Appearance and upon Contumacy to have proceeded to Excommunication and then have arrested upon their Writ of Capias but that they could not Arrest him outright upon a Surmise That a Man may resist an Authority that is not Lawful any man will allow for it is the same as if he resisted none at all however if Murder be the Consequence of such a Resistance all his Expositors upon the sixth Commandment will hardly help him to distinguish it into Man-slaughter And tho my Lord Hales whose Memory will still be pious for his equal destributions of Justice was a great Latitudinarian in allowing too much scope for premeditated Malice yet the Decalogue will make that Murder for which the Law will allow him the Benefit of his Clergy and did in Harry the Eight's time without distinction to all sort of shedding of Blood and then the Book that he talks of was dedicated to Cromwel would have been Authoriz'd by the Law which in some sort it self then made all Killing no Murder neither in an equitable sense was this Homicide excused from being a Murderer because he resisted unto