had governed them uprightly. As Livy praises the Romans, who took occasion from Tarquinius, a wicked prince, to gain their liberty, which to have extorted, saith he, from Numa, or any of the good kings before, had not been seasonable. Nor was it in the former example done unlawfully; for when Roboam had prepared a huge army to reduce the Israelites, he was forbidden by the prophet, 1 Kings xii. 24, "Thus saith the Lord, ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren, for this thing is from me." He calls them their brethren, not rebels, and forbids to be proceeded against them, owning the thing himself, not by single providence, but by approbation, and that not only of the act, as in the former example, but of the fit season also; he had not otherwise forbid to molest them. And those grave and wise counsellors, whom Rehoboam first advised with, spake no such thing, as our old grayheaded flatterers now are wont, stand upon your birthright, scorn to capitulate, you hold of God, not of them; for they knew no such matter, unless conditionally, but gave him politic counsel, as in a civil transaction. Therefore kingdom and magistracy, whether supreme or subordinate, is called “ a human ordinance," 1 Pet. ii. 13, &c.; which we are there taught is the will of God we should submit to, so far as for the punishment of evil-doers, and the encouragement of them that do well. "Submit," saith he, " as free men." "But to any civil power unaccountable, unquestionable, and not to be resisted, no not in wickedness, and violent actions, how can we submit as free men ?" "There is no power but of God," saith Paul, Rom. xiii. as much as to say, God put it into man's heart to find out that way at first for common peace and preservation, approving the exercise thereof; else it contradicts Peter, who calls the same authority an ordinance of man. It must be also understood of lawful and just power, else we read of great power in the affairs and kingdoms of the world permitted to the devil: for saith he to Christ, Lake iv. 6, all this power will I give thee, and the gkery of them, for it is delivered to me, and to whomsever I will, I give it: neither did he lie, or Christ gainsay what he affirmed; for in the thirteenth of the Revelation, we read how the dragon gave to the beast power, his seat, and great authority: which beast se aathorized most expound to be the tyrannical powers and kingdoms of the earth. Therefore Saint Paul in the forecited chapter tells us, that such magistrates he theans, as are not a terrour to the good, but to the evil, such as bear not the sword in vain, but to punish of nders, and to encourage the good. If such only be mentioned here as powers to be obeyed, and our submission to them only required, then doubtless those powers, that do the contrary, are no powers ordained of God; and by consequence no obligation laid upon us to obey or not to resist them. And it may be well eserved, that both these apostles, whenever they give this precept, express it in terms not concrete, but abstract, as logicians are wont to speak; that is, they mention the ordinance, the power, the authority, before persons that execute it; and what that power is, best we should be deceived, they describe exactly. So the that if the power be not such, or the person execute not such power, neither the one nor the other is of God, but of the devil, and by consequence to be resisted. From this exposition Chrysostom also on the same place dissents not; explaining that these words were not written in behalf of a tyrant. And this is verified by David, himself a king, and likeliest to be the author of the Psalm xciv. 20, which saith," Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee?" And it were worth the knowing, since kings in these days, and that by Scripture, boast the justness of their title, by holding it immediately of God, yet cannot shew the time when God ever set on the throne them or their forefathers, but only when the people chose them; why by the same reason, since God ascribes as oft to himself the casting down of princes from the throne, it should not be thought as lawful, and as much from God, when none are seen to do it but the people, and that for just causes. For if it needs must be a sin in them to depose, it may as likely be a sin to have elected. And contrary, if the people's act in election be pleaded by a king, as the act of God, and the most just title to enthrone him, why may not the people's act of rejection be as well pleaded by the people as the act of God, and the most just reason to depose him? So that we see the title and just right of reigning or deposing in reference to God, is found in Scripture to be all one; visible only in the people, and depending merely upon justice and demerit. Thus far hath been considered chiefly the power of kings and magistrates; how it was and is originally the people's, and by them conferred in trust only to be employed to the common peace and benefit; with liberty therefore and right remaining in them, to reassume it to themselves, if by kings or magistrates it be abused; or to dispose of it by any alteration, as they shall judge most conducing to the public good. may We from hence with more ease and force of argument determine what a tyrant is, and what the people may do against him. A tyrant, whether by wrong or by right coming to the crown, is he who, regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction: thus St. Basil among others defines him. And because his power is great, his will boundless and exorbitant, the fulfilling whereof is for the most part accompanied with innumerable wrongs and oppressions of the people, murders, massacres, rapes, adulteries, desolation, and subversion of cities and whole provinces; look how great a good and happiness a just king is, so great a mischief is a tyrant; as he the public father of his country, so this the common enemy. Against whom what the people lawfully may do, as against a common pest, and destroyer of mankind, I suppose no man of clear judgment need go further to be guided than by the very principles of nature in him. But because it is the vulgar folly of men to desert their own reason, and shutting their eyes, to think they see best with other men's, I shall shew by such examples as ought to have most weight with us, what hath been done in this case heretofore. The Greeks and Romans, as their prime authors witness, held it not only lawful, but a glorious and heroic deed, rewarded publicly with statues and garlands, to kill an infamous tyrant at any time without trial: and but reason, that he, who trod down all law, should not be vouchsafed the benefit of law. Insomuch that Seneca the tragedian brings in Hercules, the grand suppressor of tyrants, thus speaking; -Victima haud ulla amplior -There can be slain No sacrifice to God more acceptable But of these I name no more, lest it be objected they were heathen; and come to produce another sort of men, that had the knowledge of true religion. Among the Jews this custom of tyrant-killing was not unusual. First Ehud, a man whom God had raised to deliver Israel from Eglon king of Moab, who had conquered and ruled over them eighteen years, being sent to him as an ambassador with a present, slew him in his own house. But he was a foreign prince, an enemy, and Ehud besides had special warrant from God. To the first I answer, it imports not whether foreign or native: for no prince so native but professes to hold by law; which when he himself overturns, breaking all the covenants and oaths that gave him title to his dignity, and were the bond and alliance between him and his people, what differs he from an outlandish king, or from an enemy? For look how much right the king of Spain hath to govern us at all, so much right hath the king of England to govern us tyrannically. If he, though not bound to us by any league, coming from Spain in person to subdue us, or to destroy us, might lawfully by the people of England either be slain in fight, or put to death in captivity, what hath a native king to plead, bound by so many covenants, benefits, and honours, to the welfare of his people; why he through the contempt of all laws and parliaments, the only tie of our obedience to him, for his own will's sake, and a boasted prerogative unaccountable, after seven years warring and destroying of his best subjects, overcome, and yielded prisoner, should think to scape unquestionable, as a thing divine, in respect of whom so many thousand Christians destroyed should lie unaccounted for, polluting with their slaughtered carcasses all the land over, and crying for vengeance against the living that should have righted them? Who knows not that there is a mutual bond of amity and brotherhood between man and man over all the world, neither is it the English sea that can sever us from that duty and relation: a straiter bond yet there is between fellow-subjects, neighbours, and friends. But when any of these do one to another so as hostility could do no worse, what doth the law decree less against them, than open enemies and invaders ? or if the law be not present or too weak, what doth it warrant us to less than single defence or civil war? and from that time forward the law of civil defensive war differs nothing | from the law of foreign hostility. Nor is it distance of place that makes enmity, but enmity that makes distance. He therefore that keeps peace with me, near or remote, of whatsoever nation, is to me, as far as all civil and human offices, an Englishman and a neighbour: but if an Englishman, forgetting all laws, human, civil, and religious, offend against life and liberty, to him offended, and to the law in his behalf, though born in the same womb, he is no better than a Turk, a Saracen, a heathen. This is gospel, and this was ever law among equals; how much rather then in force against any king whatever, who in respect of the people is confessed inferior and not equal: to distinguish therefore of a tyrant by outlandish, or domestic, is a weak evasion. To the second, that he was an enemy; I answer, what tyrant is not? yet Eglon by the Jews had been acknowledged as their sovereign, they had served him eighteen years, as long almost as we our William the Conqueror, in all which he could not be so unwise a statesman, but to have taken of them oaths of fealty and allegiance; by which they made themselves his proper subjects, as their homage and present sent by Ehud testified. To the third, that he had special warrant to kill Eglon in that manner, it cannot be granted, because not expressed; it is plain, that he was raised by God to be a deliverer, and went on just principles, such as were then and ever held allowable to deal so by a tyrant, that could no otherwise be dealt with. Neither did Samuel, though a prophet, with his own hand abstain from Agag; a foreign enemy, no doubt; but mark the reason, "As thy sword hath made women childless ;" a cause that by the sentence of law itself nullifies all relations. And as the law is between brother and brother, father and son, master and servant, wherefore not between king, or rather ty rant, and people? And whereas Jehu had special command to slay Jehoram a successive and hereditary tyrant, it seems not the less imitable for that; for where a thing grounded so much on natural reason hath the addition of a command from God, what does it but establish the lawfulness of such an act? Nor is it likely that God, who had so many ways of punishing the house of Ahab, would have sent a subject against his prince, if the fact in itself, as done to a tyrant, had been of bad example. And if David refused to lift his hand against the Lord's anointed, the matter between them was not tyranny, but private enmity, and David as a private person had been his own revenger, not s much the people's: but when any tyrant at this day can shew himself to be the Lord's anointed, the ou mentioned reason why David withheld his hand, he may then, but not till then, presume on the same privilege. We may pass therefore hence to christian times And first our Saviour himself, how much he favoured tyrants, and how much intended they should be found or honoured among Christians, declared his mind obscurely; accounting their absolute authority no bet ter than Gentilism, yea though they flourished it ove with the splendid name of benefactors; charging that that would be his disciples to usurp no such dominion but that they, who were to be of most authority among | (for it could be no slight cause,) that they were called them, should esteem themselves ministers and servants his peers, or equals. This however may stand imto the public. Matt. xx. 25, "The princes of the Gen- movable, so long as man hath to deal with no better tilés exercise lordship over them; and Mark x. 42, than man; that if our law judge all men to the lowest "They that seem to rule,” saith he, either slighting or by their peers, it should in all equity ascend also, and accounting them no lawful rulers; "but ye shall not judge the highest. And so much I find both in our be so, but the greatest among you shall be your ser- own and foreign story, that dukes, earls, and marvant." And although he himself were the meekest, quisses were at first not hereditary, not empty and and came on earth to be so, yet to a tyrant we hear him vain titles, but names of trust and office, and with the not vouchsafe an humble word: but, "Tell that fox," office ceasing; as induces me to be of opinion, that Luke xiii. "So far we ought to be from thinking that every worthy man in parliament, (for the word baron Christ and his gospel should be made a sanctuary for imports no more,) might for the public good be tyrants from justice, to whom his law before never thought a fit peer and judge of the king; without regave such protection." And wherefore did his mother gard had to petty caveats and circumstances, the chief the virgin Mary give such praise to God in her pro- impediment in high affairs, and ever stood upon most by phetic song, that he had now by the coming of Christ, circumstantial men. Whence doubtless our ancestors cut down dynastas, or proud monarchs, from the throne, who were not ignorant with what rights either nature if the church, when God manifests his power in them or ancient constitution had endowed them, when oaths to do so, should rather choose all misery and vassalage both at coronation and renewed in parliament would to serve them, and let them still sit on their potent not serve, thought it no way illegal, to depose and put seats to be adored for doing mischief? Surely it is not to death their tyrannous kings. Insomuch that the for nothing, that tyrants by a kind of natural instinct parliament drew up a charge against Richard the Seboth hate and fear none more than the true church and cond, and the commons requested to have judgment saints of God, as the most dangerous enemies and sub- decreed against him, that the realm might not be enverters of monarchy, though indeed of tyranny; hath dangered. And Peter Martyr, a divine of foremost not this been the perpetual cry of courtiers and court- rank, on the third of Judges approves their doings. Sir prelates? whereof no likelier cause can be alleged, but Thomas Smith also, a protestant and a statesman, in that they well discerned the mind and principles of his Commonwealth of England, putting the question, most devout and zealous men, and indeed the very "whether it be lawful to rise against a tyrant;" andiscipline of church, tending to the dissolution of all swers, "that the vulgar judge of it according to the tyranny. No marvel then if since the faith of Christ event, and the learned according to the purpose of received, in purer or impurer times, to depose a king them that do it." But far before those days Gildas, and put him to death for tyranny, hath been accounted the most ancient of all our historians, speaking of those so just and requisite, that neighbour kings have both times wherein the Roman empire decaying quitted and upheld and taken part with subjects in the action. relinquished what right they had by conquest to this And Ludovicus Pius, himself an emperor, and son of island, and resigned it all into the people's hands, tesCharles the Great, being made judge (du Haillan istifies that the people thus reinvested with their own my author) between Milegast king of the Vultzes and original right, about the year 446, both elected them his subjects who had deposed him, gave his verdict for kings, whom they thought best, (the first christian Brithe subjects, and for him whom they had chosen in his tish kings that ever reigned here since the Romans,) room. Note here, that the right of electing whom and by the same right, when they apprehended cause, they please is by the impartial testimony of an em- usually deposed and put them to death. This is the peror in the people: for, said he," A just prince ought most fundamental and ancient tenure, that any king of to be preferred before an unjust, and the end of govern- England can produce or pretend to; in comparison of ment before the prerogative." And Constantinus Leo, which, all other titles and pleas are but of yesterday. another emperor, in the Byzantine laws saith, " That If any object, that Gildas condemns the Britons for so the end of a king is for the general good, which he not doing, the answer is as ready; that he condemns them performing, is but the counterfeit of a king." And to no more for so doing, than he did before for choosing prove, that some of our own monarchs have acknow- such; for saith he, "They anointed them kings, not ledged, that their high office exempted them not from of God, but such as were more bloody than the rest." punishment, they had the sword of St. Edward borne Next, he condemns them not at all for deposing or before them by an officer, who was called earl of the putting them to death, but for doing it overhastily, palace, even at the times of their highest pomp and without trial or well examining the cause, and for solemnities; to mind them, saith Matthew Paris, the electing others worse in their room. Thus we have best of our historians, "that if they erred, the sword here both domestic and most ancient examples, that the had power to restrain them." And what restraint the people of Britain have deposed and put to death their sword comes to at length, having both edge and point, kings in those primitive christian times. And to couple if any sceptic will doubt, let him feel. It is also affirmed reason with example, if the church in all ages, primifrom diligent search made in our ancient books of law, tive, Romish, or protestant, held it ever no less their that the peers and barons of England had a legal right duty than the power of their keys, though without exto judge the king: which was the cause most likely, press warrant of Scripture, to bring indifferently both king and peasant under the utmost rigour of their | this is far more largely in the ecclesiastic history of canons and censures ecclesiastical, even to the smiting Scotland, 1. 4, with many other passages to this effect him with a final excommunion, if he persist impe- all the book over, set out with diligence by Scotsnitent: what hinders, but that the temporal law both men of best repute among them at the beginning of may and ought, though without a special text or pre- these troubles; as if they laboured to inform us what cedent, extend with like indifference the civil sword, we were to do, and what they intended upon the like to the cutting off, without exemption, him that capitally occasion. offends, seeing that justice and religion are from the same God, and works of justice ofttimes more acceptable? Yet because that some lately with the tongues and arguments of malignant backsliders have written, that the proceedings now in parliament against the king are without precedent from any protestant state or kingdom, the examples which follow shall be all protestant, and chiefly presbyterian. In the year 1546, the duke of Saxony, landgrave of Hesse, and the whole protestant league, raised open war against Charles the Fifth their emperor, sent him a defiance, renounced all faith and allegiance toward him, and debated long in council, whether they should give him so much as the title of Cæsar. Sleidan. 1. 17. Let all men judge what this wanted of deposing or of killing, but the power to do it. And to let the world know, that the whole church and protestant state of Scotland in those purest times of reformation were of the same belief, three years after, they met in the field Mary their lawful and hereditary queen, took her prisoner, yielding before fight kept her in prison, and the same year deposed her. Buchan. Hist. 1. 18. And four years after that, the Scots, in justification of their deposing Queen Mary, sent ambassadors to Queen Elizabeth, and in a written declaration alleged, that they had used towards her more lenity than she deserved; that their ancestors had heretofore punished their kings by death or banishment; that the Scots were a free nation, made king whom they freely chose, and with the same freedom unkinged him if they saw cause, by right of ancient laws and ceremonies yet re ers in choosing the head of their clans, or families; all which, with many other arguments, bore witness, that regal power was nothing else but a mutual covenant or stipulation between king and people. Buch. Hist. 1. 20. These were Scotsmen and presbyterians: but what measure then have they lately offered, to think such liberty less beseeming us than themselves, presuming to put him upon us for a master, whom their law scarce allows to be their own equal? If now then we hear them in another strain than heretofore in the purest times of their church, we may be confident it is the voice of faction speaking in them, not of truth and reformation. "Which no less in England than in Scotland, by the mouths of those faithful witnesses commonly called puritans and nonconformists, spake as clearly for the putting down, yea, the utmost punishing, of kings, as in their several treatises may be read; even from the first reign of Elizabeth to these times, Insomuch that one of them, whose name was Gibson, foretold King James, he should be rooted out, and con In the year 1559, the Scots protestants claiming pro-maining, and old customs yet among the highlandmise of their queen-regent for liberty of conscience, she answering, that promises were not to be claimed of princes beyond what was commodious for them to grant, told her to her face in the parliament then at Stirling, that if it were so, they renounced their obedience; and soon after betook them to arms. Buchanan Hist. 1. 16. Certainly, when allegiance is renounced, that very hour the king or queen is in effect deposed. In the year 1564, John Knox, a most famous divine, and the reformer of Scotland to the presbyterian discipline, at a general assembly maintained openly in a dispute against Lethington the secretary of state, that subjects might and ought to execute God's judgments upon their king; that the fact of Jehu and others against their king, having the ground of God's ordinary command to put such and such offenders to death, was not extraordinary, but to be imitated of all that preferred the honour of God to the affection of flesh and wicked princes; that kings, if they offend, have no privilege to be exempted from the punishments of law more than any other subject: so that if the king|clude his race, if he persisted to uphold bishops. And be a murderer, adulterer, or idolater, he should suffer, not as a king, but as an offender; and this position he repeats again and again before them. Answerable was the opinion of John Craig, another learned divine, and that laws made by the tyranny of princes, or the negligence of people, their posterity might abrogate, and reform all things according to the original institution In the year 1581, the states of Holland, in a general of commonwealths. And Knox, being commanded by assembly at the Hague, abjured all obedience and subthe nobility to write to Calvin and other learned men jection to Philip king of Spain; and in a declaration for their judgments in that question, refused; alleging, justify their so doing; for that by his tyrannous go that both himself was fully resolved in conscience, and vernment, against faith so many times given and brohad heard their judgments, and had the same opinionken, he had lost his right to all the Belgic provinces; under handwriting of many the most godly and most learned that he knew in Europe; that if he should move the question to them again, what should he do but shew his own forgetfulness or inconstancy? All that very inscription, stamped upon the first coins at his coronation, a naked sword in a hand with these words," Si mereor, in me," "Against me, if I deserve," not only manifested the judgment of that state, but seemed also to presage the sentence of divine justice in this event upon his son. that therefore they deposed him, and declared it law ful to choose another in his stead. Thuan. 1. 74. From that time to this, no state or kingdom in the world hath equally prospered: but let them remember not to look with an evil and prejudicial eye upon their neighbours | in reality to be thought his subjects, notwithstanding walking by the same rule. their fine clause in the covenant to preserve his person, crown, and dignity, set there by some dodging casuist with more craft than sincerity, to mitigate the matter in case of ill success, and not taken, I suppose, by any honest man, but as a condition subordinate to every the least particle, that might more concern religion, liberty, or the public peace. But what need these examples to presbyterians, I mean to those who now of late would seem so much to abhor deposing, whenas they to all christendom have given the latest and the liveliest example of doing it themselves? I question not the lawfulness of raising war against a tyrant in defence of religion, or civil liberty; for no protestant church, from the first Waldenses of Lyons and Languedoc to this day, but have done it round, and maintained it lawful. But this I doubt not to affirm, that the presbyterians, who now so much condemn deposing, were the men themselves that deposed the king, and cannot, with all their shifting and relapsing, wash off the guiltiness from their own hands. For they themselves, by these their late doings, have made it guiltiness, and turned their own warrantable actions into rebellion. To prove it yet more plainly, that they are the men who have deposed the king, I thus argue. We know, that king and subject are relatives, and relatives have no longer being than in the relation; the relation between king and subject can be no other than regal authority and subjection. Hence I infer past their defending, that if the subject, who is one relative, take away the relation, of force he takes away also the other relative: but the presbyterians, who were one relative, that is to say, subjects, have for this seven years taken away the relation, that is to say, the king's authority, and their subjection to it; therefore the presbyterians for these seven years have removed and extinguished the other relative, that is to say, the king; or to speak more in brief, have deposed him; not only by depriving him the execution of his autho There is nothing, that so actually makes a king of England, as rightful possession and supremacy in all Causes both Civil and Ecclesiastical: and nothing that so actually makes a subject of England, as those two waths of allegiance and supremacy observed without equivocating, or any mental reservation. Out of doubt then when the king shall command things already con-rity, but by conferring it upon others. If then their stituted in church or state, obedience is the true essence of a subject, either to do, if it be lawful, or if he hold the thing unlawful, to submit to that penalty which the law imposes, so long as he intends to remain a subjeet. Therefore when the people, or any part of them, stall rise against the king and his authority, executing the law in any thing established, civil or ecclesiastical, I do not say it is rebellion, if the thing commanded theagh established be unlawful, and that they sought first all due means of redress (and no man is further band to law); but I say it is an absolute renouncing beth of supremacy and allegiance, which in one word is an actual and total deposing of the king, and the set-confident, that to him he is in no subjection: and in ting up of another supreme authority over them. And whom hostility takes place of subjection, for they can whether the presbyterians have not done all this and by no means consist together, to him the king can be mach more, they will not put me, I suppose, to reckon not only no king, but an enemy. So that from hence пра a seven years story fresh in the memory of all men. we shall not need dispute, whether they have deposed Have they not utterly broke the oath of allegiance, re- him, or what they have defaulted towards him as no Jecting the king's command and authority sent them king, but shew manifestly how much they have done from any part of the kingdom, whether in things law- toward the killing him. Have they not levied all these ful or unlawful? Have they not abjured the oath of wars against him, whether offensive or defensive, (for Supremacy, by setting up the parliament without the defence in war equally offends, and most prudently beking, supreme to all their obedience; and though their forehand,) and given commission to slay, where they Now and covenant bound them in general to the parknew his person could not be exempt from danger? ament, yet sometimes adhering to the lesser part of And if chance or flight had not saved him, how often lords and commons that remained faithful, as they term had they killed him, directing their artillery, without 1., and even of them, one while to the commons with- blame or prohibition, to the very place where they saw cut the lords, another while to the lords without the him stand? Have they not sequestered him, judged or commons? Have they not still declared their mean- unjudged, and converted his revenue to other uses, deng, whatever their oath were, to hold them only for taining from him, as a grand delinquent, all means of preme, whom they found at any time most yielding livelihood, so that for them long since he might have to what they petitioned? Both these oaths, which perished, or have starved? Have they not hunted and were the straitest bond of an English subject in refer- pursued him round about the kingdom with sword and thee to the king, being thus broke and made void; it fire? Have they not formerly denied to treat with him, llows undeniably, that the king from that time was and their now recanting ministers preached against him, by them in fact absolutely deposed, and they no longer as a reprobate incurable, an enemy to God and his oaths of subjection broken, new supremacy obeyed, new oaths and covenant taken, notwithstanding frivolous evasions, have in plain terms unkinged the king, much more then hath their seven years war, not deposed him only, but outlawed him, and defied him as an alien, a rebel to law, and enemy to the state. It must needs be clear to any man not averse from reason, that hostility and subjection are two direct and positive contraries, and can no more in one subject stand together in respect of the same king, than one person at the same time can be in two remote places. Against whom therefore the subject is in act of hostility, we may be |