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that it is not by the allowance and submission of nations that kings have obtained this exorbitant power; but that it is absolutely essential to such a form of government, and of the nature of the thing itself. So that whether you make the world of your mind or no, your doctrine must needs be mischievous and destructive, and such as cannot but be abhorred of all princes. For if you should work men into a persuasion that the right of kings is without all bounds, they would no longer be subject to a kingly government; if you miss of your aim, yet you make men weary of kings, by telling them that they assume such a power to themselves, as of right belonging to them. But if princes will allow of those principles that I assert; if they will suffer themselves and their own power to be circumscribed by laws, instead of an uncertain, weak, and violent government, full of cares and fears, they will reign peaceably, quietly, and securely. If they slight this counsel of mine, though wholesome in itself, because of the meanness of the author, they shall know that it is not my counsel only, but what was anciently advised by one of the wisest of kings. For Lycurgus, king of Lacedemon, when he observed that his own relations that were princes of Argos and Messana, by endeavouring to introduce an abitrary government had ruined themselves and their people; he, that he might benefit his country, and secure the succession to his own family, could think upon no better expedient than to communicate his power to the senate, and taking the great men of the realm into part of the government with himself; and by this means the crown continued in his family for many ages. But whether it was Lycurgus, or, as some learned men are of opinion, Theopompus, that introduced that mixed form of government among the Lacedemonians, somewhat more than a hundred years after Lycurgus's time, (of whom it is recorded, that he used to boast, that by advancing the power of the senate above that of the prince, he had settled the kingdom upon a sure foundation, and was like to leave it in a lasting and durable condition to his posterity,) which of them soever it was, I say, he has left a good example to modern princes; and was as creditable a counsellor, as his counsel was safe. For that all men should submit to any one man, so as to acknowledge a power in him superior to

all human laws, neither did any law ever enact, nor indeed was it possible that any such law should ever be; for that cannot be said to be a law that strikes at the root of all laws, and takes them quite away it being apparent that your positions are inconsistent with the nature of all laws, being such as render them no laws at all. You endeavour notwithstanding, in this fourth chapter, to make good by examples, what you have not been able to do by any reasons that you have alleged hitherto. Let us consider whether your examples help your cause; for they many times make things plain, which the laws are either altogether silent in, or do but hint at. We will begin first with the Jews, whom we suppose to have known most of the mind of God; and then, according to your own method, we will come to the times of Christianity. And first, for those times in which the Israelites, being subject to kings, who, or howsoever they were, did their utmost to cast that slavish yoke from off their necks. Eglon the king of Moab had made a conquest of them; the seat of his empire was at Jericho; he was no contemner of the true God; when his name was mentioned he rose from his seat: the Israelites had served him eighteen years; they sent a present to him, not as to an enemy, but to their own prince; notwithstanding which outward veneration and profession of subjection, they killed him by a wile, as an enemy to their country. You will say perhaps, that Ehud, who did that action, had a warrant from God for so doing. He had so, it is like; and what greater argument of its being a warrantable and praiseworthy action? God uses not to put men upon things that are unjust, treacherous, and cruel, but upon such things as are virtuous and laudable. But we read nowhere that there was any positive command from Heaven in the case. "The Israelites called upon God;" so did we. And God stirred up a saviour for them; so he did for us. Eglon of a neighbouring prince became a prince of the Jews; of an enemy to them he became their king. Our gentleman of an English king became an enemy to the English nation; so that he ceased to be a king. Those capacities are inconsistent. No man can be a member of the state, and an enemy to it at the same time. Antony was never looked upon by the Romans

as a consul, nor Nero as an emperor, after the senate had voted them both enemies. This Cicero tells us in his Fourth Philippic: "If Antony be a consul," says he, "Brutus is an enemy; but if Brutus be a saviour and preserver of the commonwealth, Antony is an enemy: none but robbers count him a consul." By the same reason, say I, who but enemies to their country look upon a tyrant as a king? So that Eglon's being a foreigner, and king Charles a prince of our own, will make no difference in the case; both being enemies and both tyrants, they are in the same circumstances. If Ehud killed him justly, we have done so too in putting our king to death. Samson, that renowned champion of the Hebrews, though his countrymen blamed him for it, "Dost thou not know," say they, "that the Philistines have dominion over us?" Yet against those Philistines, under whose dominion he was, he himself undertook a war in his own person, without any other help; and whether he acted in pursuance of a command from Heaven, or was prompted by his own valour only, or whatsoever inducement he had, he did not put to death one, but many, that tyrannized over his country, having first called upon God by prayer, and implored his assistance. So that Samson counted it no act of impiety, but quite contrary, to kill those that enslaved his country, though they had dominion over himself too; and though the greater part of his countrymen submitted to their tyranny. "But yet David, who was both a king and a prophet, would not take away Saul's life, because he was God's anointed." Does it follow, that because David refused to do a thing, therefore we are obliged not to do that very thing? David was a private person, and would not kill the king; is that a precedent for a parliament, for a whole nation? David would not revenge his own quarrel, by putting his enemy to death by stealth; does it follow, that therefore the magistrates must not punish a malefactor according to law? He would not kill a king; must not an assembly of the states therefore punish a tyrant? He scrupled the killing of God's anointed; must the people therefore scruple to condemn their own anointed? especially one that after having so long professed hostility against his own people, washed off that anointing of his, whether

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sacred or civil, with the blood of his own subjects. I confess that those kings, whom God by his prophets anointed to be kings, or appointed to some special service, as he did Cyrus, Isa. xliv. may not improperly be called the Lord's anointed but all other princes, according to the several ways of their coming to the government, are the people's anointed, or the army's, or many times the anointed of their own faction only. But taking it for granted that all kings are God's anointed, you can never prove that therefore they are above all laws, and not to be called in question, what villanies soever they commit. What if David laid a charge upon himself and other private persons, not to stretch forth their hands against the Lord's anointed? Does not God himself command princes not so much as to touch his anointed?" which were no other than his people, Psal. cv. He preferred that anointing wherewith his people were anointed, before that of kings, if any such thing were. Would any man offer to infer from this place of the Psalmist, that believers are not to be called in question, though they offend against the laws, because God commands princes not to touch his anointed? King Solomon was about to put to death Abiathar the priest, though he were God's anointed too; and did not spare him because of his anointing, but because he had been his father's friend. If that sacred and civil anointing wherewith the high-priest of the Jews was anointed, whereby he was not only constituted high-priest, but a temporal magistrate in many cases, did not exempt him from the penalty of the laws; how comes a civil anointing only to exempt a tyrant? But you say, "Saul was a tyrant, and worthy of death." What then? It does not follow, that because he deserved it, that David in the circumstances he was then under had power to put him to death without the people's authority, or the command of the magistracy. But was Saul a tyrant? I wish you would say so; indeed you do so, though you had said before in your second book, page 32, that "he was no tyrant, but a good king, and chosen of God." Why should false accusers, and men guilty of forgery, be branded, and you escape without the like ignominious mark? For they practise their villanies

with less treachery and deceit than you write and treat of matters of the greatest moment. Šaul was a good king, when it served your turn to have him so; and now he is a tyrant, because it suits with your present purpose. But it is no wonder that you make a tyrant of a good king; for your principles look as if they were invented for no other design than to make all good kings so. But yet David, though he would not put to death his father-inlaw, for causes and reasons that we have nothing to do withal, yet in his own defence he raised an army, took and possessed cities that belonged to Saul, and would have defended Keilah against the king's forces, had he not understood that the citizens would be false to him. Suppose Saul had besieged the town, and himself had been the first that had scaled the walls; do you think David would presently have thrown down his arms, and have betrayed all those that assisted him to his anointed enemy? believe not. What reason have we to think David would have stuck to do what we have done, who when his occasions and circumstances so required, proffered his assistance to the Philistines, who were then the professed enemies of his country, and did that against Saul, which I am sure we should never have done against our tyrant? I am weary of mentioning your lies, and ashamed of them. You say, it is a maxim of the English, "That enemies are rather to be spared than friends;' and that therefore, "we conceived we ought not to spare our king's life, because he had been our friend." You impudent liar, what mortal ever heard this whimsy before you invented it? But we will excuse it. You could not bring in that threadbare flourish, of our being more fierce than our own mastiffs, (which now comes in the fifth time, and will as oft again before we come to the end of your book,) without some such introduction. We are not so much more fierce than our own mastiffs, as you are more hungry than any dog whatsoever, who return so greedily to what you have vomited up so often. Then you tell us, that David commanded the Amalekite to be put to death, who pretended to have killed Saul. But that instance, neither in respect to the fact, nor the person, has any affinity with what we are discoursing of. I

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