this common liberty to himself would tread down all other men into the condition of slaves and beasts, they quite lose their commendation. He confesses a rational sovereignty of soul and freedom of will in every man, and yet with an implicit repugnancy would have his reason the sovereign of that sovereignty, and would captivate and make useless that natural freedom of will in all other men but himself. But them that yield him this obedience he so well rewards, as to pronounce them worthy to be slaves. They who have lost all to be his subjects, may stoop and take up the reward. What that freedom is, which "cannot be denied him as a king, because it belongs to him as a man and a Christian," I understand not. If it be his negative voice, it concludes all men, who have not such a negative as his against a whole parliament, to be neither men nor Christians: and what was he himself then, all this while that we denied it him as a king? Will he say, that he enjoyed within himself the less freedom for that? Might not he, both as a man and as a Christian, have reigned within himself in full sovereignty of soul, no man repining, but that his outward and imperious will must invade the civil liberties of a nation?* Did we therefore not permit him to use his reason or his conscience, not permitting him to bereave us the use of ours? And might not he have enjoyed both as a king, governing us as freemen by what laws we ourselves would be governed? It was not the inward use of his reason and of his conscience, that would content him, but to use them both as a law over all his subjects, "in whatever he declared as a king to like or dislike." Which use of reason, most reasonless and unconscionable, is the utmost that any tyrant ever pretended over his vassals. In all wise nations the legislative power, and the judicial execution of that power, have been most commonly distinct, and in several hands; but yet the former supreme, the other subordinate. If then the king be only set up to execute the law, which is indeed the highest of his office, he ought no * In the midst of his declamation on the pretended felicity of the country, Clarendon admits the wickedness of the court, and the violation of the constitution; and, while ostensibly reprehending the discontents of the people, shows they were a necessary consequence, springing from the profligate tyranny of their rulers. "The court," he says, 66 was full of excess, idleness, and luxury; and the country, in consequence, full of pride, mutiny, and discontent." Strange picture of a happy people !-ED. more to make or forbid the making of any law, agreed upon in parliament, than other inferior judges, who are his deputies. Neither can he more reject a law offered him by the commons, than he can new make a law, which they reject. And yet the more to credit and uphold his cause, he would seem to have philosophy on his side; straining her wise dictates to unphilosophical purposes. But when kings come so low, as to fawn upon philosophy, which before they neither valued nor understood, it is a sign that fails not, they are then put to their last trump. And philosophy as well requites them, by not suffering her golden sayings either to become their lips, or to be used as masks and colours of injurious and violent deeds. So that what they presume to borrow from her sage and virtuous rules, like the riddle of the Sphinx not understood, breaks the neck of their own cause. But now again to politics: "He cannot think the majesty of the crown of England to be bound by any coronation oath in a blind and brutish formality,* to consent to whatever its subjects in parliament shall require." What tyrant could presume to say more, when he meant to kick down all law, government, and bond of oath? But why he so desires to absolve himself the oath of his coronation would be worth the knowing. It cannot but be yielded, that the oath, which binds him to the performance of his trust, ought in reason to contain the sum of what his chief trust and office is. But if it neither do enjoin, nor mention to him, as a part of his duty, the making or the marring of any law, or scrap of law, but requires only his assent to those laws which the people have already chosen, or shall choose; (for so both the Latin of that oath, and the old English; and all reason admits, that the people should not lose under a new king what freedom they had before;) then that negative voice so contended for, to deny the passing of any law which the commons choose, is both against the oath of his coronation, and his kingly office. * Despots in all ages have made very free with oaths. With them perjury is among the arts of state. "Nam, si violandum est jus, regnandi gratiâ And if the king may deny to pass what the parliament hath chosen to be a law, then doth the king make himself superior to his whole kingdom; which not only the general maxims of policy gainsay, but even our own standing laws, as hath been cited to him in remonstrances heretofore, that "the king hath two superiors, the law, and his court of parliament." But this he counts to be a blind and brutish formality, whether it be law, or oath, or his duty, and thinks to turn it off with wholesome words and phrases, which he then first learnt of the honest people, when they were so often compelled to use them against those more truly blind and brutish formalities thrust upon us by his own command, not in civil matters only, but in spiritual. And if his oath to perform what the people require, when they crown him, be in his esteem a brutish formality, then doubtless those other oaths of allegiance and supremacy, taken absolute on our part, may most justly appear to us in all respects as brutish and as formal; and so by his own sentence no more binding to us, than his oath to him. As for his instance, in case "he and the house of peers attempted to enjoin the house of commons," it bears no equality; for he and the peers represent but themselves, the commons are the whole kingdom. Thus he concludes "his oath to be fully discharged in governing by laws already made," as being not bound to pass any new, "if his reason bids him deny." And so may infinite mischiefs grow, and he with a pernicious negative may deny us all things good, or just, or safe, whereof our ancestors, in times much differing from ours, had either no foresight, or no occasion to foresee; while our general good and safety shall depend upon the private and overweening reason of one obstinate man, who against all the kingdom, if he list, will interpret both the law and his oath of coronation by the tenor of his own will. Which he himself confesses to be an arbitrary power, yet doubts not in his argument to imply, as if he thought it more fit the parliament should be subject to his will, than he to their advice; a man neither by nature nor by nurture wise. How is it possible, that he, in whom such principles as these were so deep rooted, could ever, though restored again, have reigned otherwise than tyrannically? He objects, "That force was but a slavish method to dis pel his error. But how often shall it be answered him, that no force was used to dispel the error out of his head, but to drive it from off our necks? for his error was imperious, and would command all other men to renounce their own reason and understanding, till they perished under the injunction of his all-ruling error. He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to excuse his possible failings, a position false both in law and divinity: yea, contrary to his own better principles, who affirms in the twelfth chapter, that "the goodness of a man's intention will not excuse the scandal and contagion of his example." His not knowing, through the corruption of flattery and court-principles, what he ought to have known, will not excuse his not doing what he ought to have done; no more than the small skill of him, who undertakes to be a pilot, will excuse him to be misled by any wandering star mistaken for the pole. But let his intentions be never so upright, what is that to us? What answer for the reason and the national rights, which God hath given us, if, having parliaments, and laws, and the power of making more, to avoid mischief, we suffer one man's blind intentions to lead us all with our eyes open to manifest destruction? And if arguments prevail not with such a one, force is well used; not "to carry on the weakness of our counsels, or to convince his error, as he surmises, but to acquit and rescue our own reason, our own consciences, from the force and prohibition laid by his usurping error upon our liberties and understandings. "Never anything pleased him more, than when his judgment concurred with theirs." That was to the applause of his own judgment, and would as well have pleased any self-conceited man. "Yea, in many things he chose rather to deny himself than them." That is to say, in trifles. For" of his own interests" and personal rights he conceives himself" master." To part with, if he please; not to contest for, against the kingdom, which is greater than he, whose rights are all subordinate to the kingdom's good. And "in what concerns truth, justice, the right of church, or his crown, no man shall gain his consent against his mind." What can be left then for a parliament, but to sit like images, while he still thus, either with incomparable arrogance assumes to himself the best ability of judging for other men what is truth, justice, good ness, what his own and the church's right, or with insufferable tyranny restrains all men from the enjoyment of any good which his judgment, though erroneous, thinks not fit to grant them; notwithstanding that the law and his coronal oath require his undeniable assent to what laws the parliament agree upon ? "He had rather wear a crown of thorns with our Saviour." Many would be all one with our Saviour, whom our Saviour will not know. They who govern ill those kingdoms which they had a right to, have to our Saviour's crown of thorns no right at all. Thorns they may find enow of their own gathering, and their own twisting; for thorns and snares, saith Solomon, are in the way of the froward: but to wear them as our Saviour wore them, is not given to them that suffer by their own demerits. Nor is a crown of gold his due, who cannot first wear a crown of lead; not only for the weight of that great office, but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him, which here he terms in scorn, 66 an imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any factions," meaning his parliament for the question hath been all this while between them two. And to his parliament, though a numerous and choice assembly of whom the land thought wisest, he imputes, rather than to himself, "want of reason, neglect of the public, interest of parties, and particularity of private will and passion;" but with what modesty or likelihood of truth, it will be wearisome to repeat so often. He concludes with a sentence fair in seeming, but fallacious. For if the conscience be ill edified, the resolution may more befit a foolish than a Christian king, to prefer a selfwilled conscience before a kingdom's good; especially in the denial of that, which law and his regal office by oath bids him grant to his parliament and whole kingdom rightfully demanding. For we may observe him throughout the discourse to assert his negative power against the whole kingdom; now under the specious plea of his conscience and his reason, but heretofore in a louder note: "Without us, or against our consent, the votes of either or of both houses together, must not, cannot, shall not." (Declar. May 4, 1642.) With these and the like deceivable doctrines he leavens also his prayer. |