princes whom they have provoked, lest they be added to the examples of those that miserably have tasted the event. Stories can inform them how Christiern the II. king of Denmark, not much above a hundred years past, driven out by his subjects, and received again upon new oaths and conditions, broke through them all to his most bloody revenge; slaying his chief opposers, when he saw his time, both them and their children, invited to a feast for that purpose. How Maximilian dealt with those of Bruges, though by mediation of the German princes reconciled to them by solemn and public writings drawn and sealed. How the massacre at Paris was the effect of that credulous peace, which the French Protestants made with Charles the IX. their king: and that the main visible cause, which to this day hath saved the Netherlands from utter ruin, was their final not believing the perfidious cruelty, which as a constant maxim of state hath been used by the Spanish kings on their subjects that have taken arms, and after trusted them; as no latter age but can testify, heretofore in Belgia itself, and this very year in Naples. And to conclude with one past exception, though far more ancient, David, whose sanctified prudence might be alone sufficient, not to warrant us only, but to instruct us, when once he had taken arms, never after that trusted Saul, though with tears and much relenting he twice promised not to hurt him. These instances, few of many, might admonish them, both English and Scotch, not to let their own ends, and the driving on of a faction, betray them blindly into the snare of those enemies, whose revenge looks on them as the men who first begun, fomented, and carried on beyond the cure of any sound or safe accommodation, all the evil which hath since unavoidably befallen them and their king.

I have something also to the divines, though brief to what were needful; not to be disturbers of the civil affairs, being in hands better able and more belonging to manage them; but to study harder, and to attend the office of good pastors, knowing that he, whose flock is least among them, hath a dreadful charge, not performed by mounting twice into the chair with a formal preachment huddled up at the odd hours of a whole lazy week, but by incessant pains and watching in season and out of season, from house to house, over the souls of whom they have to feed. Which if they ever well considered, how little leisure would they find, to be the most pragmatical sidesmen of every popular tumult and sedition! And all this while are to learn what the true end and reason is of the gospel which they teach; and what a world it differs from the censorious and supercilious lording over conscience. It would be good also they lived so as might persuade the people they hated covetousness, which, worse than heresy, is idolatry; hated pluralities, and all kind of simony; left rambling from benefice to benefice, like ravenous wolves seeking where they may devour the biggest. Of which, if some, well and warmly seated from the beginning, be not guilty, it were good they held not conversation with such as are: let them be sorry, that, being called to assemble about reforming the church, they fell to progging and soliciting the parliament, though they had renounced the name of priests, for a new settling of their tithes and oblations; and double-lined themselves with spiritual places of commodity beyond the possible discharge of their duty. Let them assemble in consistory with their elders and deacons, according to ancient ecclesiastical rule, to the preserving of church discipline, each in his several charge, and not a pack of clergymen by themselves to belly-cheer in their presumptuous Sion, or to promote designs, abuse and gull the simple laity, and stir up tumult, as the prelates did, for the maintenance of their pride and avarice. These

things if they observe, and wait with patience, no doubt but all things will go well without their importunities or exclamations: and the printed letters, which they send subscribed with the ostentation of great characters and little moment, would be more considerable than now they are. But if they be the ministers of mammon instead of Christ, and scandalize his church with the filthy love of gain, aspiring also to sit the closest and the heaviest of all tyrants upon the conscience, and fall notoriously into the same sins, whereof so lately and so loud they accused the prelates; as God rooted out those wicked ones immediately before, so will he root out them their imitators and to vindicate his own glory and religion, will uncover their hypocrisy to the open world; and visit upon their own heads that "curse ye Meroz," the very motto of their pulpits, wherewith so frequently, not as Meroz, but more like atheists, they have blasphemed the vengeance of God, and traduced the zeal of his people.

*And that they be not what they go for, true ministers of the protestant doctrine, taught by those abroad, famous and religious men, who first reformed the church, or by those no less zealous, who withstood corruption. and the bishops here at home, branded with the name of puritans and nonconformists, we shall abound with testimonies to make appear: that men may yet more fully know the difference between Protestant divines, and these pulpit-firebrands.

'Luther. Lib. contra rusticos apud Sleidan. 1. 5.

'Is est hodie rerum status, &c. "Such is the state of things at this day, that men neither can, nor will, nor indeed ought to endure longer the domination of you princes."

'Neque vero Cæsarem, &c.

"Neither is Cæsar to make war as head of Christendom, protector of the church, defender of the faith; these titles being false and windy, and most kings being the greatest enemies to religion." Lib. de Bello contra Turcas, apud Sleid. 1. 14. What hinders then, but that we may depose or punish them?

'These also are recited by Cochlæus in his Miscellanies to be the words of Luther, or some other eminent divine, then in Germany, when the protestants there entered into solemn covenant at Smalcaldia. Ut ora iis obturem, &c. "That I may stop their mouths, the pope and emperor are not born, but elected, and may also be deposed as hath been often done." If Luther, or whoever else, thought so, he could not stay there; for the right of birth or succession can be no privilege in nature, to let a tyrant sit irremovable over a nation freeborn, without transforming that nation from the nature and condition of men born free, into natural, hereditary, and successive slaves. Therefore he saith further; "To displace and throw down this exactor, this Phalaris, this Nero, is a work pleasing to God;" namely, for being such a one: which is a moral reason. Shall then so slight a consideration as his hap to be not elective simply, but by birth, which was a mere accident, overthrow that which is moral, and make unpleasing to God that which otherwise had so well pleased him? Certainly not: for if the matter be rightly argued, election, much rather than chance, binds a man to content himself with what he suffers by his own bad election, Though indeed neither the one nor other binds any man, much less any people, to a necessary sufferance of those wrongs and evils, which they have ability and strength enough given them to remove.

*All that follows, to the end of this tract, was left out not only in the edition printed 1738, in 2 vols. folio, but in that of Mr. Toland, who first collected the author's works: how this omission arose, the reader will see in a note at the beginning of this tract, page

374.

VOL. I.

50

"Zwinglius, tom. 1, articul. 42.

Quando vero perfidè, &c. "When kings reign perfidiously, and against the rule of Christ, they may according to the word of God be deposed."

'Mihi ergo compertum non est, &c. "I know not how it comes to pass, that kings reign by succession, unless it be with consent of the whole people." Ibid.

"Quum vero consensu, &c. "But when by suffrage and consent of the whole people, or the better part of them, a tyrant is deposed or put to death, God is the chief leader in that action." Ibid.

Nunc cum tam tepidi sumus, &c. "Now that we are so lukewarm in upholding public justice, we endure the vices of tyrants to reign now-adays with impunity; justly therefore by them we are trod underfoot, and shall at length with them be punished. Yet ways are not wanting by which tyrants may be removed, but there wants public justice." Ibid.

'Cavete vobis ô tyranni. "Beware, ye tyrants! for now the gospel of Jesus Christ, spreading far and wide will renew the lives of many to love innocence and justice; which if ye also shall do, ye shall be honoured. But if ye shall go on to rage and do violence, ye shall be trampled. on by all men." Ibid.

"Romanum imperium imô quodque, &c. "When the Roman empire, or any other, shall begin to oppress religion, and we negligently suffer it, we are as much guilty of religion so violated, as the oppressors themselves.' Idem, Epist. ad Conrad. Somium.

'Calvin on Daniel, c. iv. v. 25.

'Hodie monarchæ semper in suis titulis, &c. "Now-a-days monarchs pretend always in their titles, to be kings by the grace of God: but how many of them to this end only pretend it, that they may reign without control! for to what purpose is the grace of God mentioned in the title of kings, but that they may acknowledge no superior? In the mean while God, whose name they use to support themselves, they willingly would tread under their feet. It is therefore a mere cheat, when they boast to reign by the grace of God."

Abdicant se terreni principes, &c. "Earthly princes depose themselves, while they rise against God; yea they are unworthy to be numbered among men rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads, than to obey them." On Dan. c. vi. v. 22.

'Bucer on Matth. c. v.

'Si princeps superior, &c. "If a sovereign prince endeavour by arms to defend transgressors, to subvert those things which are taught in the word of God, they, who are in authority under him, ought first to dissuade him; if they prevail not, and that he now bears himself not as a prince but as an enemy, and seeks to violate privileges and rights granted to inferior magistrates, or commonalties, it is the part of pious magistrates, imploring first the assistance of God, rather to try all ways and means, than to betray the flock of Christ to such an enemy of God: for they also are to this end ordained, that they may defend the people of God, and maintain those things which are good and just. For to have supreme power lessens not the evil committed by that power, but makes it the less tolerable, by how much the more generally hurtful. Then certainly the less tolerable, the more unpardonably to be punished."

'Of Peter Martyr we have spoken before.

'Paræus in Rom. xiii.

'Quorum est constituere magistratus, &c. "They whose part is to set up magistrates, may restrain them also from outrageous deeds, or pull them down; but all magistrates are set up either by parliament or by electors, or by other magistrates; they, therefore, who exalted them may lawfully degrade and punish them."

Of the Scots divines I need not mention others than the famousest among them, Knox, and his fellow-labourers in the reformation of Scotland; whose large treatise on this subject defends the same opinion. To cite them sufficiently, were to insert their whole books, written purposely on this argument. "Knox's Appeal;" and to the reader; where he promises in a postscript, that the book which he intended to set forth, called, "The Second Blast of the Trumpet," should maintain more at large, that the same men most justly may depose and punish him whom unadvisedly they have elected, notwithstanding birth, succession, or any oath of allegiance. Among our own divines, Cartwright and Fenner, two of the learnedest, may in reason satisfy us what was held by the rest. Fenner in his book of Theology maintaining, that they who have power, that is to say, a parliament, may either by fair means or by force depose a tyrant, whom he defines to be him, that wilfully breaks all or the principal conditions made between him and the commonwealth. Fen. Sac. Theolog. c. 13. Cartwright in a prefixed epistle testifies his approbation of the whole book.

'Gilby de Obedientiâ, p. 25 and 105.

"Kings have their authority of the people, who may upon occasion reassume it to themselves."

'England's Complaint against the Canons.

"The people may kill wicked princes as monsters and cruel beasts." 'Christopher Goodman of Obedience.

"When kings or rulers become blasphemers of God, oppressors and murderers of their subjects, they ought no more to be accounted kings or lawful magistrates, but as private men to be examined, accused, and condemned and punished by the law of God; and being convicted and punished by that law, it is not man's but God's doing." Č. x. p. 139.

"By the civil laws, a fool or idiot born, and so proved, shall lose the lands and inheritance whereto he is born, because he is not able to use them aright: and especially ought in no case be suffered to have the government of a whole nation; but there is no such evil can come to the commonwealth by fools and idiots, as doth by the rage and fury of ungodly rulers; such, therefore, being without God, ought to have no authority over God's people, who by his word requireth the contrary." C. xi. p. 143, 144.

"No person is exempt by any law of God from this punishment: be he king, queen, or emperor, he must die the death; for God hath not placed them above others to transgress his laws as they list, but to be subject to them as well as others; and if they be subject to his laws, then to the punishment also, so much the more as their example is more dangerous." C. xiii. p. 184.

"When magistrates cease to do their duty, the people are as it were without magistrates, yea, worse, and then God giveth the sword into the people's hand, and he himself is become immediately their head." P. 185. "If princes do right, and keep promise with you, then do you owe to

them all humble obedience; if not, ye are discharged, and your study ought to be in this case how ye may depose and punish according to the law such rebels against God, and oppressors of their country." P. 190.

"This Goodman was a minister of the English church at Geneva, as Dudley Fenner was at Middleburgh, or some other place in that country. These were the pastors of those saints and confessors, who, flying from the bloody persecution of Queen Mary, gathered up at length their scattered. members into many congregations; whereof some in upper, some in lower Germany, part of them settled at Geneva; where this author having preached on this subject to the great liking of certain learned and godly men who heard him, was by them sundry times and with much instance required to write more fully on that point. Who thereupon took it in hand, and conferring with the best learned in those parts, (among whom Calvin was then living in the same city,) with their special approbation he published this treatise, aiming principally, as is testified by Whittingham in the preface, that his brethren of England, the protestants, might be persuaded in the truth of that doctrine concerning obedience to magistrates. Whittingham in Prefat.

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These were the true protestant divines of England, our fathers in the faith we hold; this was their sense, who for so many years labouring under prelacy through all storms and persecutions kept religion from extinguishing; and delivered it pure to us, till there arose a covetous and ambitious generation of divines, (for divines they call themselves!) who, feigning on a sudden to be new converts and proselytes from episcopacy, under which they had long temporised, opened their mouths at length, in show against pluralties and prelacy, but with intent to swallow them down both; gorging themselves like harpies on those simonious places and preferments of their outed predecessors, as the quarry for which they hunted, not to plurality only but to multiplicity; for possessing which they had accused them their brethren, and aspiring under another title to the same authority and usurpation over the consciences of all men.

Of this faction, diverse reverend and learned divines (as they are styled in the philactery of their own title-page) pleading the lawfulness of defensive arms against the king, in a treatise called "Scripture and Reason," seem in words to disclaim utterly the deposing of a king; but both the Scripture, and the reasons which they use, draw consequences after them, which, without their bidding, conclude it lawful. For if by Scripture, and by that especially to the Romans, which they most insist upon, kings, doing that which is contrary to Saint Paul's definition of a magistrate, may be resisted, they may altogether with as much force of consequence be deposed or punished. And if by reason the unjust authority of kings "may be forfeited in part, and his power be reassumed in part, either by the parliament or people, for the case in hazard and the present necessity," as they affirm, p. 34, there can no scripture be alleged, no imaginable reason given, that necessity continuing, as it may always, and they in all prudence and their duty may take upon them to foresee it, why in such a case they may not finally amerce him with the loss of his kingdom, of whose amendment they have no hope. And if one wicked action persisted in against religion, laws, and liberties, may warrant us to thus much in part, why may not forty times as many tyrannies by him committed, warrant us to proceed on restraining him, till the restraint become total? For the ways of justice are exactest proportion; if for one trespass of a king it require so much remedy or satisfaction, then for twenty more as heinous crimes, it requires of him twenty-fold; and so proportionably, till it come to what is