take any care about them, certainly he would have the same reformation made in the commonwealth, that he would have made in the church, especially it being obvious to every man's experience, that infallibility and omnipotency being arrogated to one man, are equally mischievous in both. God has not so modelled the government of the world as to make it the duty of any civil community to submit to the cruelties of tyrants, and yet to leave the church at liberty to free themselves from slavery and tyranny; nay, rather quite contrary, he has put no arms into the church's hand but those of patience and innocence, prayer and ecclesiastical discipline; but in the commonwealth, all the magistracy are by him entrusted with the preservation and execution of the laws, with the power of punishing and revenging; he has put the sword into their hands. I cannot but smile at this man's preposterous whimsies; in ecclesiastics he is Helvidius, Thraseas, a perfect tyrannicide. In politics no man more a lackey and slave to tyrants than he. If his doctrine hold, not we only that have deposed our king, but the protestants in general, who against the minds of their princes have rejected the pope, are all rebels alike. But I have confounded him long enough with his own arguments. Such is the nature of the beast, lest his adversary should be unprovided, he himself furnishes him with weapons. Never did any man give his antagonist greater advantages against himself than he does. They that he has to do withal, will be sooner weary of pursuing him, than he of flying.

CHAPTER IV.

PERHAPS you think, Salmasius, that you have done enough to ingratiate yourself with princes; that you have deserved well of them but if they consider their own

interest, and take their measures according to what it really is, not according to the false gloss that your flatteries have put upon it, there never was any man in the world that deserved so ill of them as you, none more destructive and pernicious to them and their interest in the whole world than yourself. For by exalting the power of kings above all human laws, you tell all mankind that are subject to such a government, that they are no better than slaves, and make them but the more desirous of liberty by discovering to them their error, and putting that into their heads, that they never so much as dreaint of before, to wit, that they are slaves to their princes. And without doubt such a sort of government will be more irksome and unsufferable, by how much the more you persuade the world, that it is not by the allowance and submission of nations, that kings have obtained this exorbitant power; but that is absolutely essential to such a form of government, and of the nature of the thing itself. So that whether you make the world of your mind or no, your doctrine must needs be mischievous and destructive, and such as cannot but be abhorred of all princes. For if you should work men into a persua sion, that the right of kings is without all bounds, they would no longer be subject to a kingly government; if you miss of your aim, yet you make men weary of kings, by telling them that they assume such a power to themselves, as of right belonging to them. But if princes will allow of those principles that I assert; if they will suffer themselves and their own power to be circumscribed by laws, instead of an uncertain, weak, and violent government, full of cares and fears, they will reign peaceably, quietly, and securely. If they slight this counsel of mine, though wholesome in itself, because of the meanness of the author, they shall know

that it is not my counsel only, but what was anciently advised by one of the wisest of kings. For Lycurgus, king of Lacedemon, when he observed that his own relations that were princes of Argos and Messana, by endeavouring to introduce an arbitrary government, had ruined themselves and their people; he, that he might benefit his country and secure the succession to his own family, could think upon no better expedient, than to communicate his power to the senate, and taking the great men of the realm into part of the government with himself; and by this means the crown continued in his family for many ages. But whether it was Lycurgus, or, as some learned men are of opinion, Theopompus, that introduced that mixed form of government among the Lacedemonians, somewhat more than a hundred years after Lycurgus's time (of whom it is recorded, that he used to boast, that by advancing the power of the senate above that of the prince, he had settled the kingdom upon a sure foundation, and was like to leave it in a lasting and durable condition to his posterity) which of them soever it was, I say, he has left a good example to modern princes; and was as creditable a counsellor, as his counsel was safe. For that all men should submit to any one man, so as to acknowledge a power in him superior to all human laws, neither did any law ever enact, nor indeed was it possible that any such law should ever be; for that cannot be said to be a law that strikes at the root of all laws, and takes them quite away: it being apparent that your positions are inconsistent with the nature of all laws, being such as render them no laws at all. You endeavour notwithstanding, in this fourth chapter, to make good by examples, what you have not been able to do by any reasons that you have alleged hitherto. Let us consider whether your examples help your cause;

for they many times make things plain, which the laws are either altogether silent in, or do but hint at. We will begin first with the Jews, whom we suppose to have known most of the mind of God; and then, according to your own method, we will come to the times of christianity. And first, for those times in which the Israelites being subject to kings, who, or howsoever they were, did their utmost to cast that slavish yoke from off their necks. Eglon the king of Moab had made a conquest of them; the seat of his empire was at Jericho; he was no contemner of the true God; when his name was mentioned, he rose from his seat: the Israelites had served him eighteen years; they sent a present to him, not as to an enemy, but to their own prince; notwithstanding which outward veneration and profession of subjection, they killed him by a wile, as an enemy to their country. You will say perhaps, that Ehud, who did that action, had a warrant from God for so doing. He had so, it is like; and what greater argument of its being a warrantable and praiseworthy action? God uses not to put men upon things that are unjust, treacherous, and cruel, but upon such things as are virtuous and laudable. But we read no where that there was any positive command from Heaven in the case. "The Israelites called upon God;" so did we. And God stirred up a saviour for them; so did he for us. Eglon, of a neighbouring prince became a prince of the Jews; of an enemy to them he became their king. Our gentleman, of an English king became an enemy to the English nation; so that he ceased to be a king. Those capacities are inconsistent. No man can be a member of the state, and an enemy to it at the same time. Antony was never looked upon by the Romans as a consul, nor Nero as an emperor, after the senate had voted them both enemies. This Cicero tells us

in his fourth Philippic: "If Antony be a consul," says he, "Brutus is an enemy; but if Brutus be a saviour and preserver of the commonwealth, Antony is an enemy; none but robbers count him a consul." By the same reason, say I, who but enemies to their country' look upon a tyrant as a king? So that Eglon's being a foreigner, and king Charles a prince of our own, will make no difference in the case; both being enemies and both tyrants, they are in the same circumstances. If Ehud killed him justly, we have done so too in putting our king to death. Samson, that renowned champion of the Hebrews, though his countrymen blamed him for it, "Dost thou not know," say they, "that the Philistines have dominion over us?" Yet against those Philistines under whose dominion he was, he himself undertook a war in his own person, without any other help; and whether he acted in pursuance of a command from Heaven, or was prompted by his own valour only; or whatsoever inducement he had, he did not put to death one, but many that tyrannized over his country, having first called upon God by prayer, and implored his assistance. So that Samson counted it no act of impiety, but quite contrary, to kill those that enslaved his country, though they had dominion over himself too; and though the greater part of his countrymen submitted to their tyranny. "But yet David, who was both a king and a prophet, would not take away Saul's life, because he was God's anointed." Does it follow, that because David refused to do a thing, therefore we are obliged not to do that very thing? David was a private person, and would not kill the king; is that a precedent for a parliament, for a whole nation? David would not revenge his own quarrel, by putting his enemy to death by stealth; does it follow, that therefore the magistrates must not punish a malefactor according to