Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A50893
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A defence of the people of England by John Milton ; in answer to Salmasius's Defence of the king.; Pro populo Anglicano defensio. English
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Milton, John, 1608-1674.; Washington, Joseph, d. 1694.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing M2104; ESTC R9447
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172,093
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278
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the Law of Nature to oppress their Subjects and go unpunished because as circumstances may fall out it may sometimes be a less mischief to bear with them than to remove them Remember what your self once wrote concerning Bishops against a Jesuit you were then of another opinion than you are now I have quoted your words formerly you there affirm that seditious Civil dissentions and discords of the Nobles and Common people against and amongst one another are much more tolerable and less mischievous than certain misery and destruction under the Government of a single person that plays the Tyrant And you said very true For you had not then run mad you had not then been bribed with Charles his Jacobusses You had not got the King's-Evil I should tell you perhaps if I did not know you that you might be ashamed thus to prevaricate But you can sooner burst than blush who have cast off all shame for a little profit Did you not remember that the Commonwealth of the people of Rome flourished and became glorious when they had banished their Kings Could you possibly forget that of the Low-Countries which after it had shook off the yoke of the King of Spain after long and tedious Wars but Crown'd with success obtained its Liberty and feeds such a pitiful Grammarian as your self with a Pension not that their youth might be so infatuated by your Sophistry as to chuse rather to return to their former Slavery than inherit the Glorious Liberty which their Ancestors purchased for them May those pernicious principles of yours be banished with your self into the most remote and barbarous corners of the World And last of all the Commonwealth of England might have afforded you an example in which Charles who had been their King after he had been taken captive in War and was found incurable was put to death But they have defaced and impoverished the Island with Civil broils and discords which under its Kings was happy and swam in Luxury Yea when it was almost buried in Luxury and Voluptuousness and the more inured thereto that it might be enthralled the more easily when its Laws were abolished and its Religion agreed to be sold they delivered it from Slavery You are like him that published Simplicius in the same Volume with Epictetus a very grave Stoick Who call an Island happy because it swims in Luxury I 'm sure no such Doctrine ever came out of Zeno's School But why should not you who would give Kings a power of doing what they list have liberty your self to broach what new Philosophy you please Now begin again to act your part There never was in any King's Reign so much blood spilt so many Families ruined All this is to be imputed to Charles not to us who first raised an Army of Irishmen against us who by his own Warrant Authorized the Irish Nation to conspire against the English who by their means slew Two hundred Thousand of his English Subjects in the Province of Uâ—… besides what Numbers were sâ—ain in other parts of that Kingdom who sollicited two Armies towards the destruction of the Parliament of England and the City of London and did many other actions of Hostility before the Parliament and people had Listed one Soldier for the preservation and defence of the Government What Principles what Law what Religion ever taught men rather to consult their ease to save their money their blood nay their lives themselves than to oppose an enemy with force for I make no difference betwixt a Foreign Enemy and another since both are equally dangerous and destructive to the good of the whole Nation The People of Israel saw very well that they could not possibly punish the Benjamites forSpanâ— Murthering the Levite's Wife without the loss of many Men's lives And did that induce them to sit still Was that accounted a sufficient Argument why they should abstain from War from a very Bloody Civil War Did they therefore suffer the Death of one poor Woman to be unrevenged Certainly if Nature teacheth us rather to endure the Government of a King though he be never so bad than to endanger the lives of a great many Men in the recovery of our Liberty it must teach us likewise not only to endure a Kingly Government which is the only one that you argue ought to be submitted to but an Aristocracy and a Democracy Nay and sometimes it will persuade us to submit to a Multitude of Highway-men and to Slaves that Mutiny Fulvius and Rupilius if your Principles had been received in their days must not have engaged in the Servile War as their Writers call it after the Praetorian Armies were Slain Crassus must not have Marched against Spartacus after the Rebels had destroyed one Roman Army and spoil'd their Tents Nor must â—â—mpâ—y have undertaken the Piratick War But the State of Rome must have pursued the dictates of Nature and must have submitted to their own Slaves or to the Pyrates rather than run the hazard of losing some Mens lives You do not prove at all that Nature has imprinted any such notion as this of yours on the minds of Men And yet you cannot forbear boding us ill luck and denouncing the Wrath of God against us which may Heaven divert and inflict it upon your self and all such Prognosticators as you who have punished as he deserved one that had the name of our King but was in Fact our implacable Enemy and we have made Atonement for the Death of so many of our Countreymen as our Civil Wars have occasion'd by shedding his Blood that was the Author and Cause of them Then you tell us that a Kingly Government appears to be more according to the Laws of Nature because more Nations both in our days and of old have submitted to that Form of Government than ever did to any other I answer If that be so it was neither the effect of any Dictate of the Law of Nature nor was it in Obedience to any Command from God God would not suffer his own People to be under a King he consented at last but unwillingly what Nature and right Reason dictates we are not to gather from the practice of most Nations but of the wisest and most prudent The Grecians the Romans the Italians and Carthagenians with many other have of their own accord out of choice preferr'd a Commonwealth to a Kingly Government and these Nations that I have named are better instances than all the rest Hence Sulpitius Severus says That the very Name of a King was always very odious among freeborn People But these things concern not our present purpose nor many other Impertinences that follow over and over again I 'll make haste to prove that by Examples which I have proved already by Reason viz. That it is very agreeable to the Law of Nature that Tyrants should be punished and that all Nations by the instinct of Nature have punished them which will expose your Impudence and
scorn to have Charles compared with so cruel a Tyrant as Nero he resembled him extremely much For Nero likewise often threatned to take away the Senate Besides he bore extreme hard upon the Consciences of good men and compelled them to the use of Ceremonies and Superstitious Worship borrowed from Popery and by him re-introduced into the Church They that would not conform were imprisoned or Banisht He made War upon the Scots twice for no other cause than that By all these actions he has surely deserved the name of a Tyrant once over at least Now I 'le tell you why the word Traytor was put into his Indictment When he assured his Parliament by Promises by Proclamations by Imprecations that he had no design against the State at that very time did he List Papists in Ireland he sent a private Embassie to the King of Denmark to beg assistance from him of Arms Horses and Men expresly against the Parliament and was endeavouring to raise an Army first in England and then in Scotland To the English he promised the Plunder of the City of London to the Scots that the four Northern Counties should be added to Scotland if they would but help him to get rid of the Parliament by what means soever These Projects not succeeding he sent over one Dillon a Traytor into Ireland with private Instructions to the Natives to fall suddenly upon all the English that inhabited there These are the most remarkable instances of his Treasons not taken up upon hear-say and idle reports but discovered by Letters under his own Hand and Seal And finally I suppose no man will deny that he was a Murderer by whose order the Irish took Arms and put to death with most exquisite Torments above a hundred thousand English who lived peaceably by them and without any apprehension of danger and who raised so great a Civil War in the other two Kingdoms Add to all this that at the Treaty in the Isle of Wight the King openly took upon himself the guilt of the War and clear'd the Parliament in the Confession he made there which is publickly known Thus you have in short why King Charles was adjudged a Tyrant a Traytor and a Murderer But say you why was he not declared so before neither in that Solemn League and Covenant nor afterwards when he was delivered to them either by the Presbyterians or the Independents but on the other hand was receiv'd as a King ought to be with all reverence This very thing is sufficient to persuade any rational man that the Parliament entred not into any Councils of quite deposing the King but as their last refuge after they had suffered and undergone all that possibly they could and had attempted all other ways and means You alone endeavour maliciously to lay that to their charge which to all good men cannot but evidence their great Patience Moderation and perhaps a too long forbearing with the King's Pride and Arrogance But in the month of August before the King suffered the House of Commons which then bore the only sway and was governed by the Independants wrote Letters to the Scots in which they acquainted them that they never intended to alter the form of Government that had obtain'd so long in England under King Lords and Commons You may see from henâ—e how little reason there is to ascribe the deposing of the King to the principles of the Independents They that never used to dissemble and conceal their Tenents even then when they had the sole management of affairs profess That they never intended to alter the Government But if afterwards a thing came into their minds which at first they intended not why might they not take such a course tho before not intended as appear'd most advisable and most for the Nation 's Interest Especially when they found that the King could not possibly be intreated or induced to assent to those just demands that they had made from time to time and which were always the same from first to last He persisted in those perverse sentiments with respect to Religion and his own Right which he had all along espoused and which were so destructive to us not in the least altered from the man that he was when in Peace and War he did us all so much mischief If he assented to any thing he gave no obscure hints that he did it against his will and that whenever he should come into power again he would look upon such his Assent as null and void The same thing his Son declared by writing under his hand when in those days he ran away with part of the Fleet and so did the King himself by Letters to some of his own Party in London In the mean time against the avowed sense of the Parliament he struck up a private Peace with the Irish the most barbarous Enemies imaginable to England upon base dishonourable terms but whenever he invited the English to Treaties of Peace at those very times with all the power he had and interest he could make he was preparing for War In this case what should they do who were intrusted with the care of the Government Ought they to have betrayed the safety of us all to our most bitter Adversary Or would you have had them leâ—â— us to undergo the Calamities of another Seven years War not to say worse God put a better mind into them of preferring pursuant to that very solemn League and Covenant their Religion and Liberties before those thoughts they once had of not rejecting the King for they had not gone so far as to vote it all which they saw at last tho indeed later than they might have done could not possibly subsist as long as the King continued King The Parliament ought and must of necessity be entirely free and at liberty to provide for the good of the Nation as occasion requires nor ought they so to be wedded to their first Sentiments as to scruple the altering their minds for their own or the Nation 's good if God put an opportunity into their hands of procuring it But the Scots were of 〈…〉 opinion for they in a Letter to Charles the King's Son call his Father a most Sacred Prince and the putting him to death a most execrable Villany Do not you talk of the Scots whom you know not we know them well enough and know the time when they called that same King a most â—…rable person a Murtherer and Traytor and the putting a Tyrant to Death a most sacred action Then you pick holes in the King's Charge as not being properly penn'd and you ask why we needed to call him a Traytor and a Murtherer after we had stiled him a Tyrant since the word Tyrant includes all the Crimes that may be And then you explain to us grammatically and critically what a Tyrant is Away with those Trisles you Pedagogue which that one definition of Aristotle's that has lately beeen cited will utterly confound