only put on a knave's vizor for the present. In your introduction to your discourse of the pope's supremacy, you say, that some divines in the council of Trent made use of the government, that is said to be amongst bees, to prove the pope's supremacy. This fancy you borrow from them, and urge it here with the same malice that they did there. Now that very same answer that you gave them, whilst you were an honest man, now that you are become a knave, you shall give yourself, and pull off with your own hand that vizor you have now put on: "The bees," say you, 66 are a state, and so natural philosophers call them; they have a king, but a harmless one; he is a leader, or captain, rather than a king; he never beats, nor pulls, nor kills his subject bees." No wonder they are so observant of him then: but in good faith, you had but ill luck to meddle with these bees; for though they are bees of Trent, they show you to be a drone. Aristotle, a most exact writer of politics, affirms that the Asiatic monarchy, which yet himself calls barbarous, was according to law, Politic. 3. And whereas he reckons up five several sorts of monarchies, four of those five he makes governments according to laws, and with the consent of the people; and yet he calls them tyrannical forms of government, because they lodge so much power in one man's hand. But the kingdom of the Lacedemonians, he says, is most properly a kingdom, because there all power is not in the king. The fith sort of monarchy, which he calls παμβασίλεια, that is, where the king is all in all; and to which he refers that, that you call the right of kings, which is a liberty to do what they list; he neither tells us when, nor where any such form of government ever obtained. Nor seems he to have mentioned it for any other purpose, than to show how unjust, absurd, and tyrannical a ge

vernment it is. You say, that when Samuel would deter the people from choosing a king, he propounded to them this right of kings. But whence had Samuel it? Had he it from the written law of God? That cannot be. We have observed already, that the scriptures afford us a quite other scheme of sovereignty. Had Samuel it then immediately from God himself by revelation? That is not likely neither; for God dislikes it, discommends it, finds fault with it, so that Samuel does not expound to the people any right of kings appointed by God; but a corrupt and depraved manner of governing, taken up by the pride and ambition of princes. He tells not the people what their kings ought to do, but what they would do. He told them the manner of their king, as before he told us the manner of the priests, the sons of Eli; for he uses the same word in both places (which you in the thirty-third page of your book, by a Hebrew solecism too, call (n.) That manner of theirs was wicked, and odious, and tyrannical: it was no right, but great wrong. The fathers have commented upon this place too: I will instance in one, that may stand for a great many; and that is Sulpitius Severus, a contemporary and intimate friend of St. Jerome, and, in St. Augustin's opinion, a man of great wisdom and learning. He tell us in his sacred history, that Samuel in that place acquaints the people with the imperious rule of kings, and how they use to lord it over their subjects. Certainly it cannot be the right of kings to domineer and be imperious. But according to Sallust, that lawful power and authority that kings were entrusted with, for the preservation of the public liberty, and the good of the commonwealth, quickly degenerated into pride and tyranny: and this is the sense of all orthodox divines, and of all lawyers upon that place of Samuel. And you might have learned

from Sichardus, that most of the rabbins too were of the same mind; at least, not any one of them ever asserted, that the absolute inherent right of kings is there discoursed of. Yourself in your fifth chapter, page 106, complain, That "not only Clemens Alexandrinus, but all other expositors mistake themselves upon this text:" and you, I will warrant ye, are the only man, that have had the good luck to hit the mark. Now, what a piece of folly and impudence is this in you to maintain, in opposition to all orthodox expositors, that those very actions, which God so much condemns, are the right of kings, and to pretend law for them? Though yourself confess, that that right is very often exercised in committing outrages, being injurious, contumelious, and the like. Was any man ever to that degree sui juris, so much his own master, as that he might lawfully prey upon mankind, bear down all that stood in his way, and turn all things upside down? Did the Romans ever maintain, as you say they did, that any man might do these things suo jure, by virtue of some inherent right in himself? Sallust indeed makes C. Memmius, a tribune of the people, in an invective speech of his against the pride of the nobility, and their escaping unpunished, howsoever they misbehaved themselves, to use these words, viz. "To do whatever one has a mind to, without fear of punishment, is to be a king." This saying you catched hold of, thinking it would make for your purpose; but consider it a little better, and you will find yourself deceived. Does he in that place assert the right of kings? or does he not blame the common people, and chide them for their sloth, in suffering their nobility to lord it over them, as if they were out of the reach of all law, and in submitting again to that kingly tyranny, which, together with their kings themselves, their ancestors had

lawfully and justly rejected and banished from amongst them? If you had consulted Tully, you would have understood both Sallust and Samuel better. In his oration pro C. Rabirio, "There is none of us ignorant," says he, "of the manner of kings. These are their lordly dictates mind what I say, aud do accordingly." Many passages to this purpose he quotes out of poets, and calls them not the right, but the custom or manner of kings; and he says, we ought to read and consider them, not only for curiosity sake, but that we may learn to beware of them, and avoid them. You perceive how miserably you are come off with Sallust, who, though he be as much an enemy to tyranny as any other author whatsoever, you thought would have patronized this tyrannical right that you are establishing, Take my word for it, the right of kings seems to be tottering, and even to further its own ruin, by relying upon such weak props for its support; and by endeavouring to maintain itself by such examples and authorities, as would hasten its downfal, if it were further off than it is. "The extremity of right or law", you say, "is the height of injury, Summum jus summa injuria; this saying is verified most properly in kings, who, when they go to the utmost of their right, fall into those courses, in which Samuel makes the rights of kings to consist." And it is a miserable right, which, when you have said all you can for, you can no otherwise defend, than by confessing, that it is the greatest injury that may be. The extremity of right or law is said to be, when a man ties himself up to niceties, dwells upon letters and syllables, and in the mean time neglects the intent and equity of the law; or when a written law is cunningly and maliciously interpreted; this Cicero makes to have been the rise of that

common saying. But since it is certain that all right

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flows from the fountain of justice, so that nothing can possibly be any man's right that is not just, it is a most wicked thing in you to affirm, that for a king to be unjust, rapacious, tyrannical, and as ill as the worst of them ever was, is according to the right of kings; and to tell us that a holy prophet would have persuaded the people to such a senseless thing. For whether written or unwritten, whether extreme or remiss, what right can any man have to be injurious? Which, lest you should confess to be true of other men, but not of kings, I have one man's authority to object to you, who, I think, was a king likewise, and professes that that right of kings, that you speak of, is odious both to God and himself it is in the 94th psalm, "Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, that frameth mischief by a law?" Be not therefore so injurious to God, as to ascribe this doctrine to him, viz. that all manner of wicked and flagitious actions are but the right of kings; since himself tells us, that he abhors all fellowship with wicked princes for this very reason, because, under pretence of sovereignty, they create misery and vexation to their subjects. Neither bring up a false accusation against a prophet of God; for by making him to teach us in this place what the right of kings is, you do not produce the right Samuel, but such another empty shadow as was raised by the witch of Endor. Though for my own part, I verily believe that that infernal Samuel would not have been so great a liar, but that he would have confessed, that what you call the right of kings, is tyranny. We read indeed of impieties countenanced by law, Jus datum sceleri: you yourself confess, that they are bad kings that have made use of this boundless license of theirs to do every thing. Now, this right that you have introduced for the destruction