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manifest that all laws, both of God and man, are made without exemption of any person whomsoever; and that if kings presume to overtop the law by which they reign for the public good, they are by law to be reduced into order; and that can no way be more justly, than by those who exalt them to that high place. For who should better understand their own laws, and when they are transgrest, than they who are governed by them, and whose consent first made them? And who can have more right to take knowledge of things done within a free nation, than they within themselves?

Those objected oaths of allegiance and supremacy we swore, not to his person, but as it was invested with his authority; and his authority was by the people first given him conditionally, in law, and under law, and under oath also for the kingdom's good, and not otherwise; the oaths then were interchanged, and mutual; stood and fell together; he swore fidelity to his trust; (not as a deluding ceremony, but as a real condition of their admitting him for king; and the conqueror himself swore it oftener than at his crowning;) | they swore homage and fealty to his person in that trust. There was no reason why the kingdom should be further bound by oaths to him, than he by his corobation oath to us, which he hath every way broken: and having broken, the ancient crown oath of Alfred above mentioned conceals not his penalty.

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ful vow, than a deliberate and well-weighed covenant; swearing us into labyrinths and repugnances, no way to be solved or reconciled, and therefore no way to be kept; as first offending against the law of God, to vow the absolute preservation, defence, and maintaining of one man, though in his sins and offences never so great and heinous against God or his neighbour; and to except a person from justice, whereas his law excepts none. Secondly, it offends against the law of this nation, wherein, as hath been proved, kings in receiving justice, and undergoing due trial, are not differenced from the meanest subject. Lastly, it contradicts and offends against the covenant itself, which vows in the fourth article to bring to open trial and condign punishment all those that shall be found guilty of such crimes and delinquencies, whereof the king, by his own letters and other undeniable testimonies not brought to light till afterward, was found and convicted to be chief actor in what they thought him, at the time of taking that covenant, to be overruled only by evil counsellors; and those, or whomsoever they should discover to be principal, they vowed to try, either by their own supreme judicatories," (for so even then they called them,) or by others having power from them to that effect.” So that to have brought the king to condign punishment hath not broke the covenant, but it would have broke the covenant to have saved him from those judicatories, which both nations declared in that covenant to As for the covenant, if that be meant, certainly no be supreme against any person whatsoever. And besides discreet person can imagine it should bind us to him in all this, to swear in covenant the bringing of his evil any stricter sense than those oaths formerly. The acts counsellors and accomplices to condign punishment, and of hostility, which we received from him, were no such not only to leave unpunished and untouched the grand dear obligements, that we should owe him more fealty offender, but to receive him back again from the accomand defence for being our enemy, than we could plishment of so many violences and mischiefs, dipped before when we took him only for a king. They from head to foot, and stained over with the blood of were accused by him and his party, to pretend liberty thousands that were his faithful subjects, forced to their and reformation, but to have no other end than to own defence against a civil war by him first raised make themselves great, and to destroy the king's per-upon them; and to receive him thus, in this gory pickle, son and authority. For which reason they added that to all his dignities and honours, covering the ignothird article, testifying to the world, that as they were minious and horrid purple robe of innocent blood, that resolved to endeavour first a reformation in the church, sat so close about him, with the glorious purple of to extirpate prelacy, to preserve the rights of parlia- royalty and supreme rule, the reward of highest exceltent, and the liberties of the kingdom, so they intend- lence and virtue here on earth; were not only to swear d, so far as it might consist with the preservation and and covenant the performance of an unjust vow, the defence of these, to preserve the king's person and austrangest and most impious to the face of God, but thority; but not otherwise. As far as this comes to, were the most unwise and unprudential act as to civil they covenant and swear in the sixth article, to pre- government. For so long as a king shall find by exserve and defend the persons and authority of one an- perience, that, do the worst he can, his subjects, overether, and all those that enter into that league; so that awed by the religion of their own covenant, will only this covenant gives no unlimitable exemption to the prosecute his evil instruments, not dare to touch his king's person, but gives to all as much defence and person; and that whatever hath been on his part of preservation as to him, and to him as much as to their fended or transgressed, he shall come off at last with own persons, and no more; that is to say, in order and the same reverence to his person, and the same honour subordination to those main ends, for which we live as for well doing, he will not fail to find them work; and are a nation of men joined in society either chris-seeking far and near, and inviting to his court all the tian, or at least human. But if the covenant were concourse of evil counsellors, or agents, that may be made absolute, to preserve and defend any one whom- found: who, tempted with preferments and his promise fter, without respect had, either to the true religion, to uphold them, will hazard easily their own heads, those other superiour things to be defended and pre- and the chance of ten to one but they shall prevail at red however, it cannot then be doubted, but that the last, over men so quelled and fitted to be slaves by the renant was rather a most foolish, hasty, and unlaw-false conceit of a religious covenant. And they in that

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"It is a sad fate," he saith, "to have his enemies both accusers, parties, and judges." Sad indeed, but no sufficient plea to acquit him from being so judged. For what malefactor might not sometimes plead the like? If his own crimes have made all men his enemies, who else can judge him? They of the powderplot against his father might as well have pleaded the same. Nay, at the resurrection it may as well be pleaded, that the saints, who then shall judge the world, are "both enemies, judges, parties, and accusers."

So much he thinks to abound in his own defence. that he undertakes an unmeasurable task, to bespeak "the singular care and protection of God over all kings," as being the greatest patrons of law, justice,

superstition neither wholly yielding, nor to the utmost | tuous, most manly, most christian, and most martyrresisting, at the upshot of all their foolish war and ex- like, both of his words and speeches here, and of his pense, will find to have done no more but fetched a answers and behaviour at his trial. compass only of their miseries, ending at the same point of slavery, and in the same distractions wherein they first begun. But when kings themselves are made as liable to punishment as their evil counsellors, | it will be both as dangerous from the king himself as from his parliament, to those that evil counsel him: and they, who else would be his readiest agents in evil, will then not fear to dissuade or to disobey him, not only in respect of themselves and their own lives, which for his sake they would not seem to value, but in respect of that danger which the king himself may incur, whom they would seem to love and serve with greatest fidelity. On all these grounds therefore of the covenant itself, whether religious or political, it appears likeliest, that both the English parliament and the Scotch commis-order, and religion on earth. But what patrons they sioners, thus interpreting the covenant, (as indeed at that time they were the best and most authentical interpreters joined together,) answered the king unanimously, in their letter dated January the 13th, 1645, that till security and satisfaction first given to both kingdoms for the blood spilled, for the Irish rebels brought over, and for the war in Ireland by him fomented, they could in nowise yield their consent to his return. Here was satisfaction, full two years and upward after the covenant taken, demanded of the king by both nations in parliament for crimes at least capital, wherewith they charged him. And what satisfaction could be given for so much blood, but justice upon him that spilled it? till which done, they neither took themselves bound to grant him the exercise of his regal office by any meaning of the covenant which they then declared, (though other meanings have been since contrived,) nor so much regarded the safety of his person, as to admit of his return among them from the midst of those whom they declared to be his greatest enemies; nay from himself as from an actual enemy, not as from a king, they demanded security. But if the covenant, all this notwithstanding, swore otherwise to preserve him that in the preservation of true religion and our liberties, against which he fought, if not in arms, yet in resolution, to his dying day, and now after death still fights again in this his book, the covenant was better broken, than he saved. And God hath testified by all propitious and the most evident sign, whereby in these latter times he is wont to testify what pleases him, that such a solemn and for many ages unexampled act of due punishment was no mockery of justice, but a most grateful and well-pleasing sacrifice. Neither was it to cover their perjury, as he accuses, but to uncover his perjury to the oath of his coronation.

The rest of his discourse quite forgets the title; and turns his meditations upon death into obloquy and bitter vehemence against his "judges and accusers;" imitating therein, not our Saviour, but his grandmother Mary queen of Scots, as also in the most of his other scruples, exceptions, and evasions; and from whom he seems to have learnt, as it were by heart, or else by kind, that which is thought by his admirers to be the most vir

be, God in the Scripture oft enough hath expressed; and the earth itself hath too long groaned under the burden of their injustice, disorder, and irreligion. Therefore "to bind their kings in chains, and their nobles with links of iron,” is an honour belonging to his saints; not to build Babel, (which was Nimrod's work, the first king, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel,) but to destroy it, especially that spiritual Babel: and first to overcome those European kings, which receive their power, not from God, but from the beast; and are counted no better than his ten horns. “These shall hate the great whore," and yet “shall give their kingdoms to the beast that carries her; they shall commit fornication with her," and yet “shall burn her with fire," and yet "shall lament the fall of Babylon," where they fornicated with her. Revelations chap. xvii. and xviii.

Thus shall they be to and fro, doubtful and ambigu ous in all their doings, until at last, "joining their armies with the beast," whose power first raised them they shall perish with him by the "King of kings," against whom they have rebelled; and "the fowls shall eat their flesh." This is their doom written, Rev. xix. and the utmost that we find concerning them in these latter days; which we have much more cause ta believe, than his unwarranted revelation here, prophesying what shall follow after his death, with the spirit of enmity, not of St. John.

He would fain bring us out of conceit with the good success, which God hath vouchsafed us. We measure not our cause by our success, but our success by our cause. Yet certainly in a good cause success is a good confirmation; for God hath promised it to good men almost in every leaf of Scripture. If it argue not for us, we are sure it argues not against us; but as much or more for us, than ill success argues for them; for to the wicked God hath denounced ill success in all they take in hand.

He hopes much of those "softer tempers," as he calls them, and "less advantaged by his ruin, that their consciences do already" gripe them. It is true, there be a sort of moody, hotbrained, and always unedified consciences; apt to engage their leaders into great and

dangerous affairs past retirement, and then upon a sudden qualm and swimming of their conscience, to betray them basely in the midst of what was chiefly undertaken for their sakes.* Let such men never meet with any faithful parliament to hazard for them; never with any noble spirit to conduct and lead them out; but let them live and die in servile condition and their scrupulous queasiness, if no instruction will confirm them! Others there be, in whose consciences the loss of gain, and those advantages they hoped for, hath sprung a sudden leak. These are they that cry out, the covenant broken! and to keep it better slide back into neutrality, or join actually with incendiaries and malignants. But God hath eminently begun to punish those, first in Scotland, then in Ulster, who have provoked him with the most hateful kind of mockery, to break his covenant under pretence of strictest keeping it; and hath subjected them to those malignants, with whom they scrupled not to be associates. In God therefore we shall not fear what their false fraternity can do against us.

He seeks again with cunning words to turn our sucress into our sin. But might call to mind, that the Scripture speaks of those also, who "when God slew them, then sought him;" yet did but "flatter him with their mouth, and lyed to him with their tongues; for their heart was not right with him." And there was one, who in the time of his affliction trespassed more against God. This was that king Ahaz.

He glories much in the forgiveness of his enemies;

A severe rebuke this to the Presbyterians.

so did his grandmother at her death. Wise men would sooner have believed him, had he not so often told us so. But he hopes to erect "the trophies of his charity over us." And trophies of charity no doubt will be as glorious as trumpets before the alms of hypocrites; and more especially the trophies of such an aspiring charity, as offers in his prayer to share victory with God's compassion, which is over all his works. Such prayers as these may haply catch the people, as was intended: but how they please God is to be much doubted, though prayed in secret, much less written to be divulged. Which perhaps may gain him after death a short, contemptible, and soon fading reward; not what he aims at, to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man, or to unsettle the conscience of any knowing Christian, (if he could ever aim at a thing so hopeless, and above the genius of his cleric elocution,) but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and image-doting rabble; that like a credulous and hapless herd, begotten to servility, and enchanted with these popular institutes of tyranny, subscribed with a new device of the king's picture at his prayers, hold out both their ears with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatized and bored through, in witness of their own voluntary and beloved baseness. The rest, whom perhaps ignorance without malice, or some errour, less than fatal, hath for the time misled, on this side sorcery or obduration, may find the grace and good guidance, to bethink themselves and recover.

DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,

IN ANSWER TO

SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.*

[FIRST PUBLISHED 1692.]

THE PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH I fear, lest, if in defending the people of England, I should be as copious in words, and empty matter, as most men think Salmasius has been in his defence of the king, I might seem to deserve justly to be accounted a verbose and silly defender; yet since no man thinks himself obliged to make so much haste, though in the handling but of any ordinary subject, as not to premise some introduction at least, according as the weight of the subject requires; if I take the same course in handling almost the greatest subject that ever was (without being too tedious in it) I am in hopes of attaining two things, which indeed I earnestly desire the one, not to be at all wanting, as far as in me lies, to this most noble cause, and most worthy to be recorded to all future ages: the other, that I may appear to have avoided myself that frivolousness of matter, and redutdancy of words, which I blame in my antagonist. For I am about to discourse of matters, neither inconsider able nor common, but how a most potent king, after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a shock to its religion, and begun to rule at his own will and pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his own subjects, who had undergone a long slavery under him; how afterwards he was cast into prison, and whe he gave no ground, either by words or actions, to hope better things of him, he was finally by the suprem council of the kingdom condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gates of the royal palace. I sha likewise relate (which will much conduce to the easing men's minds of a great superstition) by what right. especially according to our law, this judgment was given, and all these matters transacted; and shall easily defend my valiant and worthy countrymen (who have extremely well deserved of all subjects and nations in the world) from the most wicked calumnies both of domestic and foreign railers, and especially from the re proaches of this most vain and empty sophister, who sets up for a captain and ringleader to all the rest. F what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so brightly, as that of the people of Engla: then did, when shaking off that old superstition, which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment up the king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been their king, caught as it were in a net by his ow ławs, (who alone of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right,) and scrupled not to inflict t’same punishment upon him, being guilty, which he would have inflicted upon any other? But why do I met tion these things as performed by the people, which almost open their voice themselves, and testify the preset of God throughout? who, as often as it seems good to his infinite wisdom, uses to throw down proud and unr kings, exalting themselves above the condition of human nature, and utterly to extirpate them and all th family. By his manifest impulse being set on work to recover our almost lost liberty, following him as guide, and adoring the impresses of his divine power manifested upon all occasions, we went on in no obscur but an illustrious passage, pointed out and made plain to us by God himself. Which things, if I should much as hope by any diligence or ability of mine, such as it is, to discourse of as I ought to do, and to com them so to writing, as that perhaps all nations and all ages may read them, it would be a very vain thing me. For what style can be august and magnificent enough, what man has parts sufficient to undertake so Ta task? Since we find by experience, that in so many ages as are gone over the world, there has been but le and there a man found, who has been able worthily to recount the actions of great heroes, and potent states. can any man have so good an spinion of his own talents, as to think himself capable to reach these glorious wonderful works of Almighty God, by any language, by any style of his? Which enterprise, though some

• This translation of the author's " Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" Mr. Toland ascribes to Mr. Washington, a gentleman of the Tem ́le

the most eminent persons in our commonwealth have prevailed upon me by their authority to undertake, and would have it be my business to vindicate with my pen against envy and calumny (which are proof against arms) those glorious performances of theirs, (whose opinion of me I take as a very great honour, that they should pitch upon me before others to be serviceable in this kind of those most valiant deliverers of my native country; and true it is, that from my very youth, I have been bent extremely upon such sort of studies, as inclined me, if not to do great things myself, at least to celebrate those that did,) yet as having no confidence in any such advantages, I have recourse to the divine assistance; and invoke the great and holy God, the giver of all good gifts, that I may as substantially, and as truly, discourse and refute the sauciness and lies of this foreign declamator, as our noble generals piously and successfully by force of arms broke the king's pride, and his unruly domineering, and afterwards put an end to both by inflicting a memorable punishment upon himself, and as thoroughly as a single person did with ease but of late confute and confound the king himself rising as it were from the grave, and recommending himself to the people in a book published after his death, with new artifices and allurements of words and expressions. Which antagonist of mine, though he be a foreigner, and, though he deny it a thousand times over, but a poor grammarian; yet not contented with a salary due to him in that capacity, chose to turn a pragmatical coxcomb, and not only to intrude in state-affairs, but into the affairs of a foreign state though he brings along with him neither modesty, nor understanding, nor any other qualification requisite in so great an arbitrator, but sauciness, and a little grammar only. Indeed if he had published here, and in English, the same things as he has now wrote in Latin, such as it is, I think no man would have thought it worth while to return an answer to them, but would partly despise them as common, and exploded over and over already, and partly abhor them as sordid and tyrannical maxims, not to be endured even by the most abject of slaves: nay, men that have sided with the king, would have had these thoughts of his book. But since he has swoln it to a considerable bulk, and dispersed it amongst foreigners, who are altogether ignorant of our affairs and constitution; it is fit that they who mistake them, should be better informed; and that he, who is so very forward to speak ill of others, should be treated in his own kind. If it be asked, why we did not then attack him sooner, why we suffered him to triumph so long, and pride himself in our silence? For others I am not to answer; for myself I can boldly say, that I had neither words nor arguments long to seek for the defence of so good a cause, if I had enjoyed such a measure of health, as would have endured the fatigue of writing. And being but weak in body, I am forced to write by piecemeal, and break off almost every hour, though the subject be such as requires an unintermitted study and intenseness of mind. But though this bodily indisposi

tion may

be a hindrance to me in setting forth the just praises of my most worthy countrymen, who have been the saviours of their native country, and whose exploits, worthy of immortality, are already famous all the world over; yet I hope it will be no difficult matter for me to defend them from the insolence of this silly little scholar, and from that saucy tongue of his, at least. Nature and laws would be in an ill case, if slavery should find what to say for itself, and liberty be mute: and if tyrants should find men to plead for them, and they that can master and vanquish tyrants, should not be able to find advocates. And it were a deplorable thing indeed, if the reason mankind is endued withal, and which is the gift of God, should not furnish more arguments for men's preservation, for their deliverance, and, as much as the nature of the thing will bear, for making them equal to one another, than for their oppression, and for their utter ruin under the domineering power of one single person. Let me therefore enter upon this noble cause with a cheerfulness, grounded upon this assurance, that my adversary's cause is maintained by nothing but fraud, fallacy, ignorance, and barbarity; whereas mine has light, truth, reason, the practice and the learning of the best ages of the world, of its side. But now, having said enough for an introduction, since we have to do with critics; let us in the first place consider the title of this choice piece: "Defensio Regia pro Car. Primo, ad Car. Secundum: a Royal Defence (or the king's defence) for Charles the First, to Charles the Second." You undertake a wonderful piece of work, whoever you are; to plead the father's cause before his own son: a hundred to one but you carry it. But I summon you, Salmasius, who heretofore sculked under a wrong name, and now go by no name at all, to appear before another tribunal, and before other judges, where perhaps you may not hear those little applauses, which you used to be so fond of in your school. But why this royal defence dedicated to the king's own son? We need not put him to the torture; he confesses why. "At the king's charge," says he. O mercenary and chargeable advocate! could you not afford to write a defence for Charles the father, whom you pretend to have been the best of kings, to Charles the son, the most indigent of all kings, but it must be at the poor king's own charge? But though you are a knave, you would not make yourself ridiculous, in calling it the king's defence; for you having sold it, it is no longer yours, but the king's indeed: who bought it at the price of a hundred jacobusses, a great sum for a poor king to disburse. I know very well what I say: and it is well enough known who brought the gold, and the purse wrought with beads: we know who saw you reach out greedy fists, under pretence of embracing the king's chaplain, who brought the present, but indeed to embrace the present itself, and by accepting it to exhaust almost all the king's treasury.

But now the man comes himself, the door creaks; the actor comes upon the stage.

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