keepe myselfe especially to your Pulpit-Pasquill: so if I meete with any variae lectiones, in your Apologie, or Epistles, or the Newes from Ipswich, or your addresses to the Lords of the Privie Councell, and my Lords the Judges, I shall use them also either for explication or for application. Such your extravagancies, as cannot easily be reduced to the former heads, I either shall passe over, or but touch in transitu. This is the order I shall use.
First for the King, you may remember what I told you was the Puritan tenet, that Kings are but the Ministers of the Commonwealth, and that they have no more authority than what is given them by the people. This though you doe not say expresly, and in terminis, yet you come very neare it, to a tantamont: finding great fault with that unlimited power which some give to kings, and as also with that absolute obedience which is exacted of the subject. One of your doctrines is, that all our obedience to Kings and Princes and other superiors must be regulated by our obedience to God. Your reason is, because the King is God’s Minister and Vice-regent, and commands as from God, so for God, and in God. Your doctrine and your reason, might become a right honest man. But whats your use?
Your first use is, for reprehension or refutation of those that so advance man’s ordinances and commandements, as though they be contrary to God’s Law, and the fundamentall lawes of the state, yet so presse men to the obedience of them as they hold them for no better than rebells, and to deserve to be hanged drawne and quartered that refuse to obey them, pag. 77. So pag. 88. a second sort come here to be reproved, that on the other side separate the feare of the King from the feare of the Lord: and those are such as attribute to Kings such an unlimited power, as if he were God Almightie himselfe; so as hereby they would seeme to ascribe that omnipotency to the King which the Pope assumes, and his parasites ascribe to his holinesse. So pag. 89. Thus these men crying up, and exacting universall absolute obedience to man, they doe hereby cast the feare of God, and so his Throne, downe to the ground.
Finally you reckon it amongst the Innovations wherewith you charge the Prelats in point of doctrine, that they “have laboured to make a change in the doctrine of obedience to Superiours, setting man so in God’s throne, that all obedience to man must be absolute without regard to God and conscience, whose only rule is the word of God,” pag. 126. In all which passages, however you pretend the word of God, the fundamentall Lawes of state, and conscience: yet clearely you expresse your disaffection unto the soveraignty of Princes, and in effect leave them no greater power than every private man shall thinke fit to give them. Besides there is a tacite implication also, that the King exercises an unlimited power, which cannot possibly consist with the subject’s conscience, the fundamentall lawes of the Kingdome, or the word of God. It had beene very well done of you to have told the people, what were the fundamentall lawes of State, which were so carefully to be preserved; within what bounds and limits the authority of Kings is to be confined, and to have given them a more speciall knowledge of the rule of conscience. For dealing thus in generalls only, (Dolosus versatur in generalibus, you know who said it) you have presented to the people a most excellent ground, not only to dispute, but to disobey the King’s commands.
Now Sir I pray you what are you, or by what spirit are you guided, that you should finde yourselfe agreeved at unlimited power, which some of better understanding than yourselfe have given to Kings: or thinke it any innovation in point of doctrine, in case the doctrine of obedience to our superiours bee pressed more home of late than it hath beene formerly. Surely you have lately studied Buchannan de jure regni, or the vindiciae writ by Beza under the name of Junius Brutus: or else perhaps you went no further than Paraus, where the inferiour magistrates, or Calvin, where the three estates have an authority to controule, and correct the King. And should the King be limited within those narrow bounds which you would prescribe him, had you power; he would in little time be like the antient Kings of Sparta, in which the Ephori, or the now Duke of Venice, in which the Senate beare the greatest stroke: himselfe meanetime, being a bare sound, and an emptie name, Stet magni nominis umbra, in the Poet’s language. Already you have laid such grounds, by which each private man may not alone dispute but disobey the King’s commandements. For if the subject shall conceive that the King’s command is contrary to God’s word, though indeede it be not; or to the fundamentall lawes of state, although hee cannot tell which be fundamentall; or if he finde no precedent of the like commands in holy Scripture, which you have made to be the only rule of conscience: in all these cases it is lawfull not to yeeld obedience. Yourselfe have given us one case in your Margin, pag. 77. We will put the other. Your reprehension is of those, that so advance man’s “ordinances and commandements, as though they be contrary to God’s Law, and the fundamentall lawes of state, yet presse men to obedience to them,” your instance is of one which was shrewdly threatened (how true that is we meane to tell the world hereafter) for refusing to doe that which “was not agreeable to the word of God, viz. for refusing to read the booke of sports, as you declare it in the Margin, pag 26.1 whether you referre us. So then the case is this. The King permits his people honest recreations on the Lord’s day, according as had beene accustomed, till you and your accomplices had cryed it down: with order to the Bishops to see his declaration published in the Churches of their severall dioceses, respectively. This publication you conceive to bee repugnant to God’s word, (though none but a few factious spirits ever so conceived it, and that your doctrine of the Sabbath be contrary to all antiquity and moderne Churches): and therefore by your rule they doe very well that refuse to publish it. It’s true indeed, in things that are directly contrary to the law of God, and such as carry in them a plaine and manifest impietie; there is no question to be made, but it is better to obey God than man. But when the matter chiefly resteth either in misapplying, or misunderstanding the word of God, (a fault too incident to ignorant & unstable men, & to none more than to your disciples and their teachers too) or that the word of God be made a property like the Pharisees’ Corban, to justifie your disobedience unto Kings and Princes: your rule is then as false, as your action faulty. So for your second limitation, that’s but little better; and leaves a starting hole to malicious persons, from whence to worke on the affections of the common people. For put the case, the King in necessary and emergent causes, touching the safety of the kingdome, demand the present aid of all his subjects; and any Tribunitian spirit should informe them, that this demand is contrary unto the fundamentall lawes of state: according to your rule, the subject is not bound to obey the King, nay he might refuse it, although the businesse doth concern especially his owne preservation. But your third limitation, that of conscience, is the worst of it all. For where you make the word of God to bee the only rule of conscience, you doe thereby conclude expressly that neither Ecclesiasticall or Civill ordinances doe bind the conscience: and therein overthrow the Apostle’s doctrine, who would have Every soule be subject to the higher powers. Not for wrath only, but for conscience sake. So that in case the King command us any thing, for which wee finde not some plaine precept or particular warrant in the word of God; as if the King command all Lecturers to read the Service of the Church in their hoods and surplices, before their Lectures: such his command is plainly against conscience, at least the lecturers are not bound in conscience to submit unto it, because there is no speciall precept for it in holy Scripture. And certainly this plea of Conscience, is the most dangerous buckler against authority, which in these later ages hath been taken up. So dangerous that were the plea allowed, and all the judgments of the king in banco, permitted to bee scanned and traversed in this Court of conscience; there were a present end of all obedience. Si ubi jubeantur, quaerere singulis liceat, pereunte obsequio imperium etiam intercedit, as he in Tacitus. If every man had leave to cast in his scruple, the ballast of authority would be soon weighted down.
Yet since you are so much greived at the unlimited power as you please to call it, which some give to Kings; will you be pleased to know, that Kings do hold their Crownes by no other Tenure, than Dei gratia: and that whatever power they have, they have from God, by whom Kings reigne, and Princes decrees justice. So say the Constitutions ascribed to Clements […]. So Irenaeus also an antient father, Cuius iussu homines nascuntur, eius iussu reges constituuntur.2 And Porphirie remembreth it amongst