A LETTER FROM A BISHOP TO A LORD OF HIS FRIENDS  
THe present posture of our affairs is so strange, and the danger which threatens the King's faithful servants so considerable, that I should hardly have prevayld with myself to answer your letter, if I were not persuaded, that you ask my advice only to profit by it, and had not besides some reason to fear, you might interpret my silence for a tacit approbation of what these last two months was done against the King, the Church, and the State. Peradventure it were but justice to attribute mine, as well as the silence of divers of my brethren, to a prudence allowable in such an occasion. But some perhaps would think otherwise, and not without reason blame a man, who all his life has preached obedience to sovereigns, and been brought up at Oxford, under men equally famous for learning and piety, if I did not follow their example. For in the time of a rebellion worse than this, they did not only testimony to the truth, when they were requested: but had the courage to defend it before the Usurpers of the royal authority; and reproach their crime with a zeal worthy of our profession, and the inviolable fidelity, which has been always signal in the Clergy of the Church of England till now. But now wee see Bishops suffer themselves to bee drawn into the ways of the ungodly and sit in the seat of the scornful I mean, who have joined with that wretched Convention, in attempting upon the person and dignity of the Lord's anointed, I should believe myself unworthy of the place which I fill in our Church, and even of the name of a Christian, if I refused to open myself plainly to those who ask me an account of my opinion, which, according to the rule of S. Peter, wee ought bee ready to do as ●ften as wee are called upon. To begin my answer then, I shall tell you, My Lord, that you could not do better, than to refuse going to the Convention, and that your resolution has been an infinite joy both to me, and all those of my brethren who truly love the honour of the Church of England. And you have the satisfaction to have kept your conscience clear from a crime so great as rebellion. I confess, My Lord I am not able to understand which way the Gentlemen of the Convention can so much as pretend to wipe off that crime For you know that our Church has always taught obedience to lawful sovereigns as an essential duty of Christianity, established by the holy scripture, the doctrine of all antiquity, & particularly of the Church of England. Our 37. Article declares thus Regiae Ma●estas in ho● Angliae regno ac caeteris ejus dominiis summam habet potestatem, ad quam omnium statuum hujus regni, si●e illi Ecclesiastici sint, sieve Ci●●es, in omni●us causis su●rema gubernatio pertinet, & nulli exterrae jurisdict●oni est sub●ecta, nec esse deber. There is not a Bishop, or Clergyman of this Kingdom who has not sworn to this doctrine; which is yet more full in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, taken by all the Lords and Commons, when the King c●me first to the Crown, and as often besides, as they got or changed employments. They have sworn that our souveraign lord King J●mes is lawful and rightful King of the Realm: That the Pope, neither of himself, no by any authority of the Church or see of Rome, has any power to depose him; and that the Pope, nor any other, has no power to ab●olve of this Oath. In the Oath of Supremacy it is declared that the K●ng is the only supreme governor of this realm as well in all spirit●al or Ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal. And that no foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State, or Potentate, has, or ought to have any juri●diction, power, superiority, pre-eminence o● authority ecclesiastical, or spiritual in this Realm: and so they renounce and forsake all fo●reign jurisdictions, powers, superiority, or authority whatsoever, and do promise from henceforth to hear faith and true a●legiance and fidelity to the King, his heirs and lawful suc●●ssors, and to their power assist and defend all juris●ictions, praeeminences &c. There is not peradventure a single man in the Convention, ●… ho has not taken these Oaths, at one time or other, and the●… e is not a single man who has not broken them. If they be ve that these Oaths oblige them to any thing, it certainly was, ●… ot to do any thing of what their assembly has done, but to ●… ntinue faithful to the King. If they believe the Oaths ○ed them to nothing, they make a strange laughing stock 〈…〉 their King, their faith, and God himself, whom they so●… nly took witness of the promise which they made of fide●… y to the King. Neither according to the plain and common ●… se of the same words is there any shifting it off with fri●… lous interpretations For he who takes the Oaths, swears 〈…〉 a special clause that he understands the words according 〈…〉 the plain and common sense of the same words, without ●… y equivocation, or mental evasion, or secret reservation what ●… ver: which natural sense unexcusably involves all those ●… o have approved the proceedings made against the King, 〈…〉 the guilt of perjury, and such a perjury as is not only cri●… all before God, but destroys all mutual commerce among men. For what assurance of fidelity can sovereigns ever receive from their Protestant subjects, if Oaths bee no security, where God is called to witness, and the Gospels kist. You see My Lord, that this, of necessity brings on a just distrust, and obliges Princes to make themselves sure of their fidelity by other ways, and leaving them as little liberty as they can. The Papists themselves are less reprochable in this point, as contrary as a doctrine among them is to the security of Princes, for you know they do not all follow it, as appears by the approbation of the Oath of Allegiance given by eight & fifty Doctors of the Faculty of Paris in 1680, and other pieces printed by Peter welsh in his Causa Valesi na. And those who possessed with Bellarmin's, maxims refuse to take it, make it sufficiently appear that their refusal proceds not only from the fear of disobeying the Pope Paul V. Brieves, but from a persuasion likewise that if they had taken it, they were obliged to keep it. Equivocations then, and mental reservations are no longer to bee laid at the door of the Papists, but of the Zealots of the Convention, who can no way wash off the slain of perjury, but by declaring that they swore conditionally, that is, engaged to bee faithful no longer, than the King should bee faithful to them, by performing an imaginary contract betwixt Kings and the people; no longer than he should bee a Protestant; or, to say better, no longer than they pleased themselves.  
If such distinctions and clauses were new, they should yet have been propounded to the King, when the whole Kingdom promised him fidelity, at his coming to the Crown, and he made acquainted with the conditions of the Oaths taken to him. For no body was then ignorant that he professed the Romish religion. But all England believed then, that this was no justification of refusing to pay him the obedience due to him. All the Citys and Burroughs declared as much by their Addresses, when the memory was yet fresh of the endeavours used by seditious men in the Parliaments of Westminster and Oxford, to exclude him from the succession, upon pretext of Religion. The whole Kingdom then abhorred the maxims which the Convention has made foundation of their proceedings. They publicly detested the Association-proje●● drawn up by My Lord Shaftsbury, and his complices, thô it were less pernicious, than the Votes of the Convention. In fine all the reasons, pretended to justify that Association, were condemned in 1683. by the famous Censure of the University of Oxford. No body then appeared in defence of the dangerous maxims of the conspirators: every body condemned them as contrary to the word of God, the security of sacred persons, the good of the State; and as directly opposite to the doctrine of the Church of England. Which way then could it come to pass, that what was abominable in 1683. should bee agreeable to the laws of God and of the Land in 1689. but that the Convention has taken up other principles; equally subverted the laws of the Church and State; and after having so much declamed against arbitrary power, endeavours to set up one incomparably greater: for it would force us to break our oaths, and receive a foreigner whom in conscience wee cannot obey.  
These principles of the Convention cannot bee said to bee new, and so to furnish those with an excuse, who suffered themselves to bee surprised by them. All are reduced to one principal head, the original contract betwixt the King and his subjects, to which they piece two members; I. That as often as the King fails on his side, they are no longer bound by their oaths to obey him: II. That if a lawful power change into tyranny, or bee not exercised according to divine and human laws, it may bee abrogated. And these are just the 2. and 3 of those propositions which were solemnly conde●ned by the University of Oxford 3. July 1683. They were never taught, but by Buchanan, Knox, Dolman, Milton, Goodwin, and such seditious men, and have always been condemned by the Church of England, as heretical, seditious, tending to Anarchy, and the subversion of lawful powers, whereof none can bee safe, if 15. or 20. Fanatics take a fancy that the original contract is broken▪ and Magistrates act not according to the law of God. These maxims are but too much known, and the Nation has seen by a fatal experience what the consequences are. For these hurried on our furious rebels into an execrable Parricide, which wee cannot detest enough, and which the Church of England every year bewail by a solemn office. It is therefore unconceivable which way they can bee alleged in justification of an enterprise, in the eye of our law, very little inferior to the former, for so it is, to pluck off that lawful authority from the King, which the right of succession has vested in him. Whether these maxims bee reconciliable to Christian morality, is not now to bee examined. The Church of England has always been of a contrary judgement, not only while shee enjoyed her liberty, but even while she groaned under the oppression of her greatest enemys. D. Hammond, D. Heylin and several others writ in the time of the long rebellion, and their books are in the hands of every body. She has since divers times explained her self without, and beyond contest, among the rest, in the History of the late troubles, and of the Treaty at Uxbridge, to say nothing of the Censure in 1683. a little after the discovery of the Newmarket conspiracy. None of these public declarations met with any check in behalf of those who are now leading men in the Convention. All approved them, and there are few whose hand was not to some of these Addresses of fidelity which flowd in upon the King from Shires, Towns and Corporations. Wherefore there is no excusing them from an hypocrisy abominable before God and men, if believing then, as they do now, they declared the contrary: or from manifest rebellion. In following those maxims at this time, which they formerly detested. But, tis not hard to unriddle this different carriage so general of theirs. For if they had owned those damnable maxims, before the laws have been suspended by the general revolt of the kingdom, those laws would doubtless have punished them for traitors. They were stopped then, by the fear, not of God, but of punishment, which fear nevertheless ought not have swayed with them, if the doctrine, which they are now setting up, bee a part of their religion. All danger ought have been despised, to draw us out of the error, in which wee were, and still are, if it bee one to believe ourselves obliged by the law of God to obey those Kings and Princes, to whose authority he was pleased our birth should subject us. But that prodigious dissimulation, which always kept the venom of their doctrine close co●red, only to spread it abroad when lawful authority was oppressed, will not suffer us ever to trust those unhappy Fanatiks more. None were more eager than they to preach up obedience to sovereigns when time served: what invective was spared to reproach the Papists in a hundred occasions with their Italian deposing doctrines? vhat zeal appeared in the conspiracy discovered by Oats, and Bedloe: which by the way, after judgement given against the principal actors in that bloody Tragedy, I rather believe feigned than true. But after all what was this zeal? why, now wee see. All took alarm at fancies, and chimaeras, and the danger threatening England from the whimsy'd invasion of a foreign army commissioned by the Pope. But when with their own eyes they saw a foreigner, who has yet no more right than the Pope, come armed into the Kingdom; declare against the King; actually seize his person, and revenue; and do all the acts of a sovereign without any lawful authority: they forgot the old doctrine of their mother the Church of England, and failing in all the dutys which shee enjoins, favoured the attempt of an usurper by their silence, and by that favour made it successful. And I speak of those who are the most innocent, those who had no hand, save indirectly, in the doings of the Prince of Orange. They can no longer make this pass for a chimerical enterprise, as the Papists said of Oates's plot, and have at last brought the most sensible part of the Nation to believe. This last is found but too real. They approved it, then in their hearts, and believed it lawful, and agreeable to the word of God, and consequently betrayed the truth, and acted against their conscience, when by solemn Oaths they assured his Majesty that they acknowledged no authority on earth superior to his, and one way or other fell in to execrable perjury.  
All divines, both Protestant and Papist, agree, that the only case, in which it is not only lawful not to obey Princes, but unlawful to obey them, is when they command a thing contrary to the law of God. By this principle the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the six Bishops, who by his example, refused to publish the King's declaration in their Dioceses, levied themselves, declaring they could not obey in conscience. I will not take upon me either to condem or quit them, that business seeming to me very disputable. For since the Church of England lodges the supreme power of governing this Church in the King, subject to none but God, I do not see that the right is altogether so clear on their side as some pretend. For the question was not of admitting sectarys into Communion, whom the Church of England had formerly excluded, but only of publishing a declaration of their Prince, by which the rigour of the laws was suspended with respect to Dissenters, which is a matter purely temporal, and in which by consequence the Bishops have no more authority than the temporal Lords, that is, to propose in Parliament what they judge most for the public good. Nevertheless I willingly yeld them the glory of having done the part of good Pastors, by hazarding themselves for their flocks, a glory with which some flatter I fear, more pleasingly, than sincerely. The inward persuasion of their conscience may justify their intention, and, I have wondered a hundred times how the King could bee brought to meddle with that business. But yet me thinks that good conscience of theirs might have obliged them to explain themselves clearly when they were examined before the Council, or tried at Westminster-hall for a seditious libel. Had their petition, which was the ground of all, mentioned the original contract between the King and his people; the inconsistence of Popery with a King of England, or a counterfeit Prince of Wales: had it declared, that it is lawful to take up arms against their Prince, in defence of Religion; that a parcel of men meeting without authority, has power to dispose of the Crown, void the old, and make new laws; and such things as are now abetted by some of them: do you, My Lord, believe they would have been so easily acquitted by the Jury? Certainly no. As the Law is express, they would have been condemned for Traitors, and no body in a condition to help them. Here they ought freely to have brought forth those pretended truths, which they concealed in their hearts,( those who did conceal them) and have preached upon the house tops, what they whispered in one anothers ear, and not deceive the King and the world with perjurys, and feigned protestations of inviolable fidelity to his service▪ and their adhering to the doctrine of the Church of England. Let not those men, then, banter us longer with their pretended zeal, but think of asking God, and the King, pardon for the most detestable perfidiousness which ever blackened the reputation of our Clergy.  
I had reason to tell you that the maxims of the Convention, and of those Bishops, who sit with them, are not new. They began to spread in this Kingdom under Queen Elisabeth. The Divines whom the persecution of Q. Mary driven out of England, fled for the most part, to Geneva, Suitzerland, and the Palatinate. From thence they brought us back this unfortunate doctrine, wi●h which some Clergymen has already done so much mischief in the three Kingdoms, and began to corrupt our two Universitys. For it is certain that Calvin and his disciples never approved our reformation absolutely. They were not pleased with our Liturgy and Discipline, and he found in it, divers tolerable follys 
* In liturgia Anglicanae qualem mihi describitis multas vid●● tolerabiles ineptias.  His disciples endeavoured to make a kind of schism in the English Church, upon occasion of the Ceremonys which have been retained. To these men vee owe all the mischiefs which have since fallen upon her for near 120. years, as D. Heylin clearly shows in his History of the Reformation, and of the Presbyterians. If they did less harm in the reigns of Ed: 6. and Q. Mary, the reason was, because they had not time in the first: and in the second, feared to expose themselves to the danger, which then hung over the heads of all, who publicly owned the Protestant Religion in this Kingdom. Queen Elis●beth hindered them from corrupting the hearts of her subjects not only by several wholesome laws, made for uniformity in Religion and outward worship, but, which was more, by executing them severely. They never thought our religion in England could bee secure, but by punctually executing them, which has made them so very odious to the Presbyterians. And therefore t'is no wonder that one of the first cares of the Convention, was to pluck this thorn out of their sides. In the works of King James I. about the beginning of this age, wee find abundant evidence of what he suffered from the same Presbyterians. They began the troubles which lasted to the reign of Charles I and ended in the ruin of Monarchy, and an execrable parricide upon his person. All the world knows that those rebels, who, like our modern gentlemen, covered their treachery under the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, published then without reserve what they had at their hearts, whereas they approved the doctrine of the Church of England only with their lips: which is just what the Zealots of our time do. They cannot say that the Church of England approved at that time what they brought upon the stage, of an original contract between the King and his people, and authority in the people to reform the State; no more than the following positions faithfully collected by the University of Oxford: That people may give the government to whom they please: depose bad Princes, resist, and take arms against them: and are discharged from all oa hs of fidelity, when Princes act against God and the truth. No body is ignorant that the Church of England, oppressed by rebels, could not at that time make any authentik and solemn declaration against these damnable maxims. But her honour was supported by several great men who opposed them openly. D. Hammond, not content to have refuted them, writ about this matter to Fairfax himself, and his letter printed in the collection of his works, will serve to inform posterity of the true sense of our Clergy. D. Heylin appeared against them with the same zeal, as well as divers other faithful servants of the King, to whose works you are no stranger. Our Church which found zealous defenders of her doctrine even at that time, declared her self more vigorously, when shee had recovered her liberty by the Kings restoration. There was hardly a particular Church, which by Addresses, or other public Acts, did not declare their abhorrence of these Presbyterian maxims. The first Parliament held after the return of his late Majesty condemned the Covenant, and all the Acts made in pursuance of it were abolished by the last Act of Uniformity in 1662. and those which had been past to that purpose, under the reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles I confirmed, and revived. All attempts against the person of the King, his heirs, and lawful successors were declared Treason: and the same Act severely forbids preaching, teaching, writing, saying, or any way declaring that the Parliament begun in 1640 had any authority; that the oaths then taken obliged any body; and above all that either, or both Houses of Parliament have any legislative power without the King. Thô our laws have this advantage above those of other nations, that none is, or can bee made, without the consent of the people: yet this may bee said to have a particular stamp of liberty upon it and the authority whereof ought bee greater to all true Englishmen. For it was one of the first acts past after the happy restoration of his late Majesty and of all which ever the nation did, the action the most free, since nothing prevailed with them to aclowledge their lawful sovereign, and shake of the yoke of a tyranny, a hundred times more grievous than the reign of any of his predecessors, a● specious a cover as it had of Protection, but reason, and con●… ence and the true interest of the Nation. And this wee, or those who come after us will see again, thô I cannot answer they shall ●… nd it altogether so easy, to throw off the fetters, with which they ●ave loaded themselves to avoid an imaginary danger of losing our unvaluable liberty, so unthinkingly now deposited in very ●… angerous hands.  
There is another very undeniable proof of the horror which ●… he whole Nation had for those pernicious maxims, upon which ●… he Convention proceeds, and alleges for reasons sufficient to ●… si●y the turning all our laws topsy turvy. Is the trial of the Regicides in 1660. By the procedings very particularly drawn up, ●… t appears that those abominable Parricides went upon principles much what the same with our original contract, and supreme authority of the people. They pleaded that acting under the authority of Parliament, they acted by an authority which ought to ●… ear them out: and that the Parliament of 1640. was a lawful Parliament, as being a Convention or Assembly of the people. This was the plea of Scot, and his fellows. The Judges overruled ●t with reasons past reply, grounded on the laws, and uncontroversible presidents. Sir Orlando Bridgeman then Lord Chief Baron in his charge to the grand Jury instructed them to proceed upon this unquestionable maxim, the result, or rather ground of all our laws; That no authority, no single person, community of persons, ●… t the people, collectively or representatively, have any, coercive power over the King of England: A maxim which entirely overthrows all the principles, and by consequence all the proceedings of the Convention. This was not all: The Judges declared to the prisoners, who had a mind to enlarge upon this matter, and with their chimerical reasons justify the sovereign authority of the Commons, that the Court could not hear them, and that this very defence was a new Treason. All England was acquainted with, and approved these proceedings▪ nor has there appeared a single man since who had the confidence to bespatter those Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer with the condemnation of innocent men, or proceeding on false maxims contrary to law and justice. Now would I know of the Gentlemen of the Convention, how they can pretend to thrust in to solemn acts, and take for a ground of new laws, what the Judges could not endure in the mouth of prisoners at their trial; when they have liberty to say all they can for their defence, save what tends to Treason: as even Members of Parliament, notwithstanding freedom of speech in the House, may bee called to account if they publicly maintain such positions.  
To these proofs, taken from Acts of Parliament, and trials upon record, it seems useless to add matter less important, only to make it appear that the whole Nation has condemned the pernicious doctrine, which is now, not only brought into play, but topped upon us for the Common law of all nations, and ours in particular: especially since without so much as examining them, which they cannot do neither without treason, our Convention upon these sinking foundations, builds laws tending to the destruction both of Church and State. And yet there remains evidence enough besides that the Church of England was under no constraint, when she explained her self clearly against this infamous Presbyterian doctrine, which shee has always looked upon as the root of all our miserys. At that very time came out several pieces of D. Heylin, approved by Bishops, and esteemed and praised by every, thô he was very smart upon the Presbyterians in making out that they had stirrd up broils, and civil wars every where. Divers others work● of the same nature were likewise published of which the Church of England was so far from showing any dislike, that on the contrary, the solemn approbations of those books, showed she equally esteemed the Authors and their doctrine. About that time came out a pamphlet called Philanax Anglicus, whereof the author had a mind to pass for a Protestant. he striven to prove, that the doctrine of the greatest part of the reformed Churches was contrary to the obedience due to lawful sovereigns. D. Peter du Moulin Canon of Christ's Church at Canterbury, confuted this pamphlet, in an Apology for the doctrine of Protestants in this matter: and concludes with defying his adversary to subscribe several propositions, which he had alleged as conformable to the doctrine of good English Protestants; the last of which is this: The Peers and Commons of England have no power to judge th●ir King, much less to depose him, or put him to death, or to choose another King or to alter th● government of the State. he is not like to have the thanks of the House, who should move the Convention to sign such an Article now. And yet this was then the doctrine of the whole Kingdom: and the Nonconformists, particularly the Quakers were smartly handled, for not comforming to it, and not taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. Not that these sectarys were bad subjects, the greatest part of them. They were more set upon their whimsys, than malicious. One cannot say so much of the Presbyterians, who have always struggled all they could to get those Oaths abolished, and when they could not prevayl, took them against their conscience; as the French Ministers who fled hither, as great enemys as they are to the Hierarchy and Episcopacy not being able to take these Oaths consequently to the principles of their doctrine, yet surmounted all scruples, which stood in their way to English benefice. But the Bishops, who made so many others taKe those Oaths, and let the law loose upon refusers whether Papist or Protestant, could they believe those oaths obliged to nothing. In kindness to them, wee will think they did not: And then they unavoidably did, or seemed to believe, according to the Doctrine of the Church of England, that the Oaths obliged them to bee faithful to the King, and aclowledge no authority above him, neither in spirituals, nor temporals. How then could they shake of the obligation contracted by those Oaths, taken by themselves, and by them exacted from others? and by what authority take them quiter away, and substitute new in their room?  
Alas! their sin is manifest, and manifold: against God, whose name they have taken in vain in oaths so shamefully broken; against our laws which they have abolished; and against the whole nation, on which they take upon them to impose new ones. Tis a certain principle, and agreed by all Christians, that every man is obliged to comform himself to the laws of his country, his part being to obey, not to reform them. Our Conventioners then, and particularly the Bishops, were obliged to lay for the ground of their proceedings, the laws of the Kingdom, for the government both of Church and State. The oath by which they acknowledged the King supreme Governor of the English Church, engaged them to submit to all ecclesiastical laws, of which in that capacity he is the sole executor, and dispenser. For there is no other ecclesiastical authority, but that which proceeds from the King, nor have Parliaments ever pretended to share it with him. When the Bishops then consented to the repeal of the old oaths, and other things concerning ecclesiastical matters, they admitted a kind of Supremacy above the Kings, which has alvais past for High Treason, before the Judges, and before God for abominable perjury. For a King of England must be deposed from his Crown, before he can be deposed from his Supremacy. Now as our laws never settled any superior authority to deprive Kings of the power, which they receive from God by a lawful succession, the crime of our Conventioners is still the greater, because having sworn obedience to the King according to those very laws, as Englishmen and as Christians, they ought not have done any thing, which was not conformable to the laws recorded among us, and according to which Justice is administered in all Courts. There is not one president which allows the force of law to the violent proceedings of seditious men, who have risen at several, and particularly the later times, nor, till the government bee entirely changed, can attempts of this nature pass for any thing, but High Treason.  
Nay even supposing, what cannot bee, that there were a dormant authority superior to the Kings, the law still ought direct the manner of exercising that latent authority, as it does all other proceedings, whether against Peers, or Commons. The Conventioners themselves, I suppose, will agree, that there is no glimpse of any such matter in our law books; for whichs reason the Parliamentary Regicides were fain to contrive a method of their own heads. A method which the Convention must needs disliKe, since they thought not fit to taKe it themselves, whether that it was thought too palpably nought, or too provokingly odious, and therefore likely to open the eyes of those, who had any fear of God left, or any respect for the law. For the Peers were no part of their Hight Court of Justice, the Upper House was dissolved, and the whole authority of the Nation lodged in the Commons; the greatest part of whose members too, were thrust out of the House, so that of 500. and more which ought bee there, one could some times hardly count 50. But the Convention has preserved the prerogative of the Peers, and distinction of the Houses; and so the form at least is regular, and wants nothing but lawful authority for their meeting, and that fails them. For they met of themselves, without other authority than of bare circular letters from the Prince of Orange, who has no more himself, than private men, who have none at all. A general assembly of the Nation to have any authority, must bee a parliament: and there can bee no Parliament, unless it bee convened by the King Prin●ipium, caput & finis Parliamenti. All the world knows that the right of calling a Parliament resides only in the Kings person, which, thô it were not otherwise notorious, is evident in the very Writs of summons. Those which issue out to the Peers, call them ( Consilium impensuri And the Commons in the writs directed to the sheriffs &c. ●d faciendum & consentiendum. Evidently therefore neither the one, nor the other are called to judge the King: but the Peers to counsel him, and the Commons to consent to, or dissent from the motions made there, as they judge expedient for the good of the Nation. No record mentions any writ which gives either or both Houses any authority beyond this. They come to assist the King with their counsels: but t'is not to bee found they ever came to taKe information of his actions, and pass sentence against him, as the Convention has done, or to declare the throne vacant, and the Crown forfeited. Had our law furnished us with any presidents of such irregular proceedings, to bee sure they had never scap't the prying diligence of the long Parliament which yet could never fish out any one.  
Besides it is an undeniable maxim in our law that the King can do no w●ong. None of his subjects therefore can complain of him much less impeach and judge him. But they may by law demand justice of him against those who have abused his authority in their several stations. This is what our Lawyers have alvais delivered for Law without any contradiction, and which ought therefore have been a rule to the Peers and Commons in their proceedings, since neither their number, nor the face of their assembly exempts them from submission to the laws, to which every man is subject Had they followed this rule, they might have represented their grievances modestly to the King, and demanded justice: in which their failing is the more inexcusable, because his Majesty had himself actually summoned a Parliament, where they might have freely drawn up any bill of complaint; prayed execution of the laws whether upon Papists, or evil counsellors; and by unblameable ways obtained whatever they could reasonably pretend. This way had secured them from those misfortunes, into which they have now of set purpose cast themselves headlong, and which in all appearance will have very troublesone consequences. For they have thrown their liberty into the greatest hazard it has run these many ages, by choosing a master who by ways, sweet in appearance, but full of violence and cruelty, has already robbed one people of their liberty, which got it by a long war, with the expense of infinite treasure, and more blood than money. They have put our Religion in to the hands of a Presbyterian, who has already given it a fatal blow, by removing the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy; and is about burying it, in the abolition of penal laws against Protestant Dissenters, in altering the Book of Common-prayer and in a comprehension, to which, whatever arts have been used Parliaments hitherto would never yield. They have left our laws at the mercy of an Usurper, who has a strong interest in their ruin, since, if they stand, he cannot avoid his own. Succession by right of inheritance, firmly established without interruption for so many ages, barred the gate at the very first to his entrance in to this Kingdom, and much more strongly since the birth of an heir apparent. And so he was fain to begin with breaking this law and oblige a Convention at his beck, to declare him King: in which too he has betrayed the rights of his Wife and sister in law, and sacrificed both to his ambition. he is altogether as careless of the general interest of the Nation, which if he die without issue, as yet he has none, is like to fall in to confusion, and some body as ambitious as himself set up for King, with a declaration of the Commons, and some Lords gained by promises or frighted by threats. No precaution can secure our quiet, now oaths oblige us to nothing, and wee make and unmake them at pleasure, as the fancy taKes us. The Church of England was a little grating, with her doctrine contrary to Rebellion. And so he begins early to pull her down, by pulling down her props, all laws which are not favourable to his dear Presbyterians. The Nation was suspected for its natural ficklenes, and above all its jealousy, which so often sets us at odds with ours lawful sovereigns. And he has taken good order, by bringing over foreign soldiers enough to hold our noses to the grindstone. The too great liberty of every private man stood not with his design of setting up arbitrary power here, as he has in Holland, by imprisoning men, right or wrong, by denying justice; and the like legal proceedings. And his rhetorik has persuaded his creatures that the public good requires our too great liberty should bee restrained, and for his saxe to suspend a law, as dear to us as the apple of our eye. I say nothing but what is publicly known, neither is any body ignorant, that the pretexts, upon which wee revolted from the King, are so very frivolous in comparison of the infractions of the Usurper, that the history will hardly find belief with posterity. For it is very apparent that all which has been objected to the King, and taken by the Convention for a sufficient ground to vote the Throne vacant, is nothing to the tenth part of what the P. of Orange has already done. The King, they say, has been ruled by evil counsellors; he has endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws, he has dispens't with oaths enacted by Parliament; he has attempted upon the liberty of the subject by extraordinary proceedings; he has dispensed with the laws; he has designed against the religion established by law; he has exercised an arbitrary power. Why, tho all this were true, whereof half can never bee made out, his M. had done nothing which is not done by the Prince of Orange every day. he has subverted fundamental laws, and one or other I dare say made bold with a hundred; he has laid by oaths enacted by the authoriy, of King and Parliament; he imposes others: he is ruining Religion: he makes Fidelity, Treason, he imprisons us against the Law; he refuses us what the law allows: he overwhelms: us with taxes: he is engaging us in a cruel, and infinitely chargeable war; and all this while our Gentlemen of the Convention are well content: do his drudgery for him, and has take it upon themselves when they have done. The King has done, nothing of all this: he has only dispens't with what they have taken quiter away, the laws which enjoynd the taking of the Oaths and very lately the Test; and this is enough to vacate the Throne, and break the order of succession. The King had only a bare design upon those laws, which he would not execute neither, but in a legal way, by exorting the members of the approaching Parliament to consent to a repeal of the Test; and liberty of conscience. The Conventioners too had their design to remove them, for the sake of Presbyterian Dissenters. And this design they have executed, and by so doing violated all our laws. For they met without authority; they attempted upon the prerogative, the liberty, and safety of the person of the King; they took up arms against him and joined with his enemys; they broken their Oaths of fidelity; they brought in foreign forces in to the Kingdom: They have made a great seal; they have levied money upon the people; they have imprisoned free born Englishmen, over whom they had no manner of power. Let our law books bee consulted and it will bee found, that every one of these acts is High Treason; and that no law admits sovereign authority any where but in the King, nor allows subjects to redress all pretended abuses and grievances of the Nation, by way of fact, or aspertè, as the spencers called it; but grants them the bare way of remonstrance.  
Thô wee should then suppose, what never came in to the heads of our Ancestors, that the King our master were to give an account of his actions to his people, and that the proceedings of the Conventioners could bear some shadow of justice, I would ask those graceless lawyers, who like herod and Pilate took upon them to judge the anointed of the Lord, how they would regulate the form of proceeding. The truth is I cannot make the supposition without tears, when I remember what I saw with my young eyes, our blessed King Charles the Martyr hurried before those ●udges of iniquity, those infernal souls, who condemned him to death with the most execrable villainy, of which a Nation was ever guilty, and which will disgrace us with eternal inf●my. Alas who can hope that our wretched Conventioners would not have used the son, as those traytors used the Father, now wee see that no respect of human, or divine laws is able to stop them: and who can choose but thank God with all his heart, for infusing in to his Majesty the resolution of withdrawing out of the Kingdom in time? But to return to my purpose, suppose * who if they had had their due, would long since have had a halter, had, with their double portion of Bradshaw's spirit, drawn up articles of impeachment against the King, and the Convention would try him, and his Majesty would submit to make his defence: sti●l he must bee allowed what cannot bee refused to the meanest man in the nation, to bee tried By God and his country. To bee tried by God signifys that the Judges, the Jury, and Witnesses shall have God before their eyes and do nothing but according to their conscience, and the duty of a Christian. For I do not think the Conventioners mad enough to understand those words in the sense of that desperat regicide Harrison, who would bee tried by the word of God, interpnted, that is, by a fanatic. The whole assistance houted, when those words came out of his mouth; and yet they were not so ridiculous, according to the principles of the Convention. For if tried by God do not signify, the impious interpretation by which the word of God is corrupted; the literal sense of the word of God as it has been always understood by the Church of England, plainly is that wee are subject to Princes not only for fear of what may befall us from their anger, but for conscience of our duty: and that wee ought to look upon their power as received from God, and established by him whom they that resist, resist God. so that, bare Fanaticism, a trial between the King and his subjects will soon bee ended. Tis but to act according to the word of God, and the rules of conscience, which oblige us to keep the faith which wee have plighted, and our Oaths, in the natural usual sense of the words, without the conditional equivocations and restrictions, which are propped in, from consequences served out, of a pretended original contract never maintained by any but rebels. The Oaths wee have sworn to the King are absolute not conditional. And so by the first clause by God, and likewise by the second by my country, which can signify nothing but by the laws of my country, all these pretended judges, who have declared the throne vacant, being the Kings liege men, having sworn obedience to him, and being in all things subject to his sovereign power yet bounded by the laws, cannot bee his Judges.  
Ask the laws, and they will tell you that the King has his power by a natural right, vested in him by birth, God, nature, and the law: that this power cannot bee separated from his person, in which the body natural and politic, make but one body: that he is the only supreme governor, and no person has any authority but by patent, or commission from him: that he has absolute authority to make peace and war, leagues and alliances; to appoint all officers civil, and military, to pardon all offences against the law: and full authority in matters ecclesiastical. This is what our laws teach of the King 's power without any contradiction, according to which it is easy to perceive that even the collective body of the Nation, whatever power it may have otherwise, has none over the person of the King. Omnis sub rege, & ipse sub nullo nisi tantum Deo: non est inferior sibi subjectis, non parem habet in regno suo. Rex non habet superiorem nisi Deum: satis habet ad poenam quod Deum expectat ultorem. These are the words of Bracton, one of the greatest Lawyers which England ever had, which no body yet ever contradicted, and whereof the truth is very evident. For if the King could in any case whatsoever, bee subject to his subjects some law must needs bee producible in the point for the Convention to allege. But where should this law bee, of which no body ever heard a word, save from some criminals, who having unsuccesfully endeavoured to enact it by the sword, owned it likewise at the gallows, like men without honesty, or fear of God, as they were. No mortal man can show us a law, which makes the escape of a King, forced by rebellion and violence upon his person, to provide by that only means for his safety, a forfeit of his right to the Crown. No mortal man can furnish us so much as with one president, which authorises that disloyal maxim. And much less is the law discoverable, which deposes a King who has hearkened to bad counsel, or whose ministers have done things worthy of punishment.  
But that, which is in truth the great principle, and fundamental maxim of the Commons, the incompatibility of Popish religion with the quality of King of England, is yet more extraordinary. Strangers, who know nothing of our Law 〈…〉 can do no less than imagine, by their traitorous and abominable Vote, that in that plenty of laws made since the reign of Henry VIII. some one excludes Papists from succeeding to the Crown. And yet there is not one. The most famous in all our history, and the only one, is that, which authorized Henry VIII to dispose of the succession. And he ordered the Crown should descend first to his son Edward VI. next in default of Heirs from him, to Mary his eldest daughter, thô born of a marriage declared by himself incestuous and null: In default of issue by her, to Elizabeth born of Anne Bullen: and then to his own right heirs, that is, the children or descendants of Margarite Queen of Scotland. Here is no exclusion of Papists, nor so much as mention of Religion; which the truth is was not altogether changed at that time; he had only broken with Pope and see of Rome. According to this disposition, Mary succeeded her brother Edward. Opposition was made upon pretence of a will suggested to him by which he conveyed the crown to Jane Gray, and confirmed by an Act of Counci● under the great seal, set to it by order from the King: To all which so little regard was had, that those who had signed the act of Counci, and in pursuance of it proclaimed Queen Jane, were prosecuted for High Treason. And so all England acknowlegd, that notwithstanding all the Acts of Henry VIII. for withdrawing obedience from the see of Rome, and those of Edward VI. for settling the Reformation, they could not exclude Mary on the score of religion. Jane Gray, the Duke of Suffolk, the Marquis of Northampton, and several others, who had signed the order of Council, for the exclusion of Mary upon account of her religion, were impeached and condemned of High Treason, for having leavy'd War against the Queen, and conspired to set up another in her place. The Parliament in 1554. confirmed this sentence, and so it is palpably law, by which they may bee prosecuted in the same manner, who pretend to exclude a Popish Prince or princess from succeeding to the Crown For being never repealed, it is still in force.  
Queen Elizabeth might likewise have met with opposition from Protestants. For during the reign of her sister Mary, shee went to mass, and was outwardly a papist 
* Burnet. Hist. of the Reformation. l. 2. p. 2.  Shee would bee crwoned according to the Roman pontifical by own Oglethorpe, the Popish Bishop of Carlisle: shee made Sir Edward Karne her agent at Rome give Paul IV an account of her coming to the crown: shee had a solemn exequy performed for her sister, and for Charles V with all the ceremonys of the Romish Church, and whatever shee had in her heart, did enough outwardly to exclude her self, if the Law had excluded a lawful heir for difference in religion. But t'is plain there was no such law, and t'is very certain there has none been made since. When the Parliament in 1566 prest her to declare her presumtif heir and successor, shee refused it, and would not have this matter touched, which belonged not to the Parliament. After her death the nation obliged themselves by oath to James I. and his posterity, in virtue of whose right the succeeding Kings have reigned, and the oath taken to the head of the family by our ancestors, obliges us to obey his posterity. Nor is there any glimpse of any thing in our law, which shocks their right, save the proceedings of the long Parliament, which attempted to take the monarchy quiter away; but which can no more bee drawn in to example, than the Votes of the Commons in the Parliaments of Westminster and Oxford, when they striven to obtain the consent of his late Mty. to the exclusion of the Duke of York. No body is so little a lawyer not to know that the Votes of one, or both Houses are not law, nor more than body without soul, till they get life by the royal assent. There is no force, nor life, nor form in all that was done at that time, no more than in divers attempts of that nature heretofore, which never exempted those from the rigour of the laws, who broken them: neither do they serve for any thing, but only to show that the Convention is animated by the same fanatik spirit of rebellion, which has always been the character of Presbyterians, of whom the Lower House is full. But King Charles II remained firm against the Addresses of the Commons in this business, and suddenly dissolved the Oxford Parliament, and so all they may have done, was entirely null. The Commons themselves were far from being unanimous in this point. My Lord Dartmouth then no Peer, nor rebel, and divers others made ●… iff opposition: and Sir Leoline Ienkins, à man suspected of betraying the interest of the Nation, who under●… ood the law as well, as any other in the whole Kingdo●… e, delivered himself to this sense. No Bill was ever offered a Parliament of the like nature, so much against the justice of the Nation. It condemns a man never heard and then t'is a Law made ●● post facto. Very extraordinary! Against the fundamental justice ●… f the Nation, and will introduce a change of the government. ●… f the Duke will try to cut this Law with his sword, if he over●… me, he will have the same power to set a side all Laws both 〈…〉 Religion, and property: the power will be in the hands of the Conqueror, and certainly, he will change the government. 'Tis ●… 'gainst the Religion of the Nation, which teaches us to pay obe●… nce to our Governours whether good or bad, never so faulty or ●… minall. In primitive Christianity obedience vas paid to Heathen ●… rinces in licitis & honestis, and we are not to do evil, that good ●… y come of it, nor on the prospect of any good. I shall say one word ●… re, 'tis against the Oaths of the Nation, of Allegiance and Supremacy. 〈…〉 Duke is the Kings lawful heir, if he have no son, and in the eye 
* Heylin p. 98. 102. 105. 106.  of the Law I am sworn to him, and every oath is in the sense of the Lawgiver. If this desinherison pass now▪ into a new Law, who dispenses me from that oath to the King? This was the judgement of that great man, and which stopped the mouth of the other party to all, but fopperys. They are to bee seen in the Debates of the House, which whoever will red, without prejudice, I am certain will find that never were things said more impertinent, nor more contrary to all our laws, to our religion, and common sense. For those Parliaments, keeping some measures, the thought whereof troubles not the heads of our Conventioners, were not able to ground their motions upon any firm principle, because in reality there is no fundamental maxim, which has the force of Law, to abet the exclusion of a lawful heir. They were for it then to talk in the air of the preservation of Protestant Religion, as a sufficient answer to all that had been alleged, and this they turned a hundred ridiculous ways. But said not a word of the obligation of their Oaths; the laws of the Land; the doctrine of our Church; and the inconveniences of their project, which was found so ridiculous at last, that, as Sir H. Coventry put them in mind, while they excluded the Duke for his Religion, the Bill was so worded, that if the Duke should turn Protestant, he will be excluded, and if the princess of Orange turn Papist she will be not excluded. You may remember, my Lord, that divers such reflections were at that time made upon that monstrous bill and among the rest, that all went upon the preservation of Protestant Religion, which they pretended could not bee secure with a Popish successor: as if God, and the Laws allow all that is done upon pretext of maintaining Religion. But the Presbyterian Religion has privileges which others have not, and lights which wee blind good men want, who hardly stirring out of our Universitys and Churches, have no insight in the affairs of the world. And yet wee can see that the ancient Christians believed they ought to pray for the lives of even infidel Princes: and that the Presbyterian Ministers, with their pure word of God, prayed in Queen Marys time that God at his choice, would either take idolatry out of her, or her out of the world This was the zeal of those furys, who flying out of England, scandalized good Protestants, almost every where, so that they were banished from several places, at the request of their Conformist countrymen, for making open schisms, and following a doctrine and discipline, directy contrary to our Church. Melancton is a witness that some called them the Devil's martyrs. Vociferantur quidam Martyres Anglos esse martyres diaboli. But our modern Presbyterians must, to their confusion, look upon themselves as very short of the zeal of the first. For they at least suffered for Protestant Religion: ours are all for troubling the peace of our Church, and, since the beginning of this age, for making others suffer. No suffering themselves, they thank you, nor any thing which may led lo martyrdom. They have destroyed more good Protestants these last 50. years, than the most cruel persecutors of the Reformation have cut off in more than hundred, and vee find few in whom there is any disposition to suffer for religion. Tis true, that as one of their articles of faith is rebellion, and resistance of lawful powers, many have suffered death upon that account, and they are the martyrs of the party, whose good name I expect will bee restored by the Convention, thô to their own eternal infamy. I expect the mourning anniversary which wee keep with too much reason the 30 of January for the murder of King Charles I. should bee suppressed, and another appointed in it 's place, to deplore the innocent blood of the Duke of Monmouth, Earl of Argyle, My lord Russel, and the like martyrs, who dying impenitent in a manifest rebellion, have a fair title to martyrs of the Devil, the father of lies, and perjury, and a homicide from the beginning, who alone could inspire men with those abhominables maxims of rebellion, which have overflowed England with blood, armed brother against brother, and several years maintained tyrants in the thrones of their lawful soveraings.  
But I hope that God at last will let his justice loose, however the successful beginnings of their rebellion flatter them, which by a horrid blasphemy they attribute to a special blessing. They are not content to publish their pretended miracles of delivrance from the bondage of Popery and Arbitrary power at home, but have their charet abroad to sound them beyond sea, and heighten them by reflections in which the spirit of sedition and anarchy is visible, but not the smallest spark of charity. The most signal of them all is that extravagant Commentator upon the apocalypse, that millenary Heretic, who makes such a din in Holland, where he is admired, because he finds fanatiks and fools like himself, and where, since the Prince of Orange reign there, one must preach rebellion to bee endured. Nothing is more pleasant then to see how this man of visions heaps up miracles for us to take notice of the success of an Usurper, and to prove that wee ought to look upon him as our deliverer, and obey him as our lawful King. But this is just Presbyterian conscience. What has not this extravagant man said and written to prove against the reproaches of the Papists, that the Reformed in France have always taught, and always practised obedience to lawful Kings and Princes? How often has he tired the patience of his readers with his tedious amplifications upon the praise of those of his sect for fidelity. And yet this is the very man who is now become the panegyriste of Rebellion, the man who teaches that subjects may take up arms against their Prince, upon pretext of religion; he who in the marks he gives of the certain character of Antichrist, which he will needs find in the Pope, assigns and particularly reflects upon the authority, which the Italians attribute to him, of absolving subjects from their oaths of fidelity to their Princes. Another would have reflected that this bids fair to expose the Protestants in France to the utmost rigour, in a Kingdom where the power is very absolute. But what others suffer, never troubles these mercenary Pastors, provided they bee safe themselves. he has preached obedience to the Protestants of France; he has bragged of the obedience of those in England, as long as the King reigned peaceably: now an usurper has seized the crown, the note is changed, and he preaches the direct contrary: and if the usurpation, which God forbid, should stand, he will see new visions, and dream new dreams, to prove, that wee owe more to a tyrant, than our lawful Kings ever pretended from us. When the Hollanders shall at last become sensible that they are wholly oppressed, by this public enemy of liberty, who has already, reduct theirs to a worse slavery, than that could bee whereof they shook off the yoke, he will have his visionary reasons ready cut and dried, to convince them, that resisting the Prince of Orange, is resisting God. But the scripture loads those with curses who go different ways, as our Conventioners, and this Fanatik, who are provided wherewith to content Princes, and wherewith to justify Usurpers, and tyrants. T'is but what they learnt from Calvin, and his fellow reformers of Geneva, whose doctrine has always been like the two basKets of figs, the one good, the other nought & disrelishing, which according to the application of Dr Heylin, God shew'd the Prophet Jeremy. 
* Heylin Stumbling-blok. c. 1.  For, as he well observs none ever established the doctrine of obedience to Kings & Princes, and the unlawfulness of taking up arms against souveraigns, more positively, and expressly than Calvin; and at the same time none opens a gate to disobedience and rebellion more dangerously. But truth is one, & unchangeable, particularly when it has relation to the public safety And if it bee ill to disguise it, tis unpardonnably criminal to betray it, and cover the dissembling of it by false oaths, as the Huguenots in France, and Convention-Presbyterians in this Kingdom have done. Those, who will, may abuse the name of God, by attributing with intolerable sacrilege, the success of the most damnable attempt that has been heard of this long time; to his blessing; according to which false maxim, which the Parliament rebels of 1640. likewise enhanced, Mahumetism is to bee said more precious to God than Christianism, and so many martyrs, who  shed their blood in the primitive Church, were men abandoned by God, and the persecutors his favourites. Who does not know that God makes use of the wicked, and reprobates to chastise his children? And who can choose but aclowledge that his almighty hand is become heavy upon this nation, which has deserved new chastisements by new rebellions? But good Christians will not for this lose the confidence they ought to have in his mercy, but hope the ungodly man who is now exalted like the Cedars of Libanus, will disapear, without leaving any trace behind him; that the chastising rod will bee cast into the fire; and that the peaceable man our good King whose retiring spared a great deal of his subjects blood, will yet find fidelity enough to pay him the obedience due to him, and reseat him upon the throne of his Ancestors. This seemingly head of Gold, is not yet so strongly cemented to it's feet of mingled iron and day, that it may not fall in a moment. I know not what will come of all this, but without pretending to the prophet, I dare venture to assure you, that this new rebellion will draw new misfortunes upon the Nation, of which wee of the Clergy are like to have the first sad experience. But whatever happen, being strongly persuaded of all I vrite, and not finding my conscience disposed to allow me to change my mind, and aclowledge an usurper, I am preparing for what may follow, and have already taken order for my little concerns, to bee ready, as soon as our new oaths come to choke us, to retire, and perhaps without expecting that extremity, to slip out of the Kingdom, if I find opportunity. I hope you will favour me with your good advice on this occasion, and bee pleased, if I should bee forced to dislodge suddenly, to find me out a secure retreat somewhere for a few days. At least I beseech you to believe that I vrite nothing but what my conscience dictates, and which I am ready to maintain, even before the Convention, at the hazard of martyrdom. J am purposed according the words of the psalm 
* Psalm. 17. , that my mouth shall not transgress my oaths: and concerning the works of men hope I shall stick close to the word of God, and keep me by the word of his lips, from the ways of the destroyer of royal authority. If you my Lord bee of opinion that this letter which my zeal and affliction has lengthened beyond my intention, may bee useful towards keeping or confirming any of our friends in their duty, you may show it to whom you please: but I beseech you name me not, but to my Lords *** and *** and to Sir *** I am.  
From my house of *** 30 March 1689.