their piety and virtue and love of the truth; of which sort I persuade myself we have as great a number, as where you think there are most such. "But they have laid a heavy yoke upon the English nation:" what if they have, upon those of them that endeavoured to lay a heavy yoke upon all the rest? Upon those that have deserved to be put under the hatches? As for the rest, I question not but they are very well content to be at the expense of maintaining their own liberty, the public treasury being exhausted by the civil wars. Now he betakes himself to the fabulous rabbins again he asserts frequently, that kings are bound by no laws; and yet he proves, that according to the sense of the rabbins, "a king may be guilty of treason, by suffering an invasion upon the rights of his crown." So kings are bound by laws, and they are not bound by them; they may be criminals, and yet they may not be so. This man contradicts himself so perpetually, that contradiction and he seem to be of kin to one another. You say that God himself put many kingdoms under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. I confess he did so for a time, Jer. xxvii. 7. but do you make appear, if you can, that he put the English nation into a condition of slavery to Charles Stuart, for a minute. I confess he suffered them to be enslaved by by him for some time; but I never yet heard, that himself appointed it so to be. Or if you will have it so, that God shall be said to put a nation under slavery, when a tyrant prevails; why may he not as well be said to deliver them from his tyranny, when the people prevail and get the upper hand? Shall his tyranny be said to be of God, and not our liberty? There is no evil in the city, that the Lord hath not done, Amoss iii. So. that famine, pestilence, sedition, war, all of them are of

God; and is it therefore unlawful for a people afflicted with any of these plagues, to endeavour to get rid of them? Certainly they would do their utmost, though they know them to be sent by God, unless himself miraculously from heaven should command the contrary: and why may they not by the same reason rid themselves of a tyrant, if they are stronger than he? Why should we suppose his weakness to be appointed by God for the ruin and destruction of the commonwealth, rather than the power and strength of all the people for the good of the state? Far be it from all commonwealths, from all societies of freeborn men, to maintain not only such pernicious, but such stupid and senseless principles; principles that subvert all civil society, that to gratify a few tyrants, level all mankind with brutes; and by setting princes out of the reach of human laws, give them an equal power over both. I pass by those foolish dilemmas that you now make, which that you might take occasion to propose, you feign some or other to assert, that the " 'superlative power of princes is derived from the people;" though for my own part I do not at all doubt, but that all the power that any magistrates have is so. Hence Cicero, in his Orat. pro Flacco, "Our wise and holy ancestors," says he, "appointed those things to obtain for laws, that the people enacted." And hence it is, that Lucius Crassus, an excellent Roman orator, and at that time president of the senate, when in a controversy betwixt them and the common people, he asserted their rights, "I beseech you," says he, "suffer not us to live in subjection to any, but yourselves, to the entire body of whom we can and ought to submit." For though the Roman senate governed the people, the people themselves had appointed them to be their governors, and had put

that power into their hands. We read the term of Majesty more frequently applied to the people of Rome, than to their kings. Tully in Orat. pro Flancio, "It is the condition of all free people, (says he) and especially of this people, the lord of all nations, by their votes to give or take away, to or from any, as themselves see cause. It is the duty of the magistrates patiently to submit to what the body of the people enact. Those that are not ambitious of honour, have the less obligation upon them to court the people: those that affect preferment, must not be weary of entreating them." Should I scruple to call a king the servant of his people, when I hear the Roman senate, that reigned over so many kings, profess themselves to be but the people's servants? You will object perhaps, and say, that all this is very true in a popular state; but the case was altered afterwards, when the regal law transferred all the people's right unto Augustus and his successors. But what think you then of Tiberius, whom yourself confess to have been a very great tyrant, as he certainly was? Suetonius says of him, that when he was once called Lord or Master, though after the enacting of that Lex Regia, he desired the person that gave him that appellation, to forbear abusing him. How does this sound in your ears? a tyrant thinks one of his subjects abuses him in calling him Lord. The same emperor, in one of his speeches to the senate, "I have said," says he, "frequently, heretofore, and now I say it again, that a good prince, whom you have invested with so great power as I am intrusted with, ought to serve the senate and the body of the people, and sometimes even particular persons; nor do I repent of having said so I confess that you have been good, and just, and indulgent masters to me, and that you are yet so."

For

You may say, that he dissembled in all this, as he was a great proficient in the art of hypocrisy ; but that is all one. No man endeavours to appear otherwise than. be ought to be. Hence Tacitus tells us, that it was the custom in Rome for the emperors in the Circus, to worship the people; and that both Nero and other emperors practised it. Claudian, in his panegyric upon Honorius, mentions the same custom. By which sort of adoration what could possibly be meant, but that the emperors of Rome, even after the enacting of the Lex Regia, confessed the whole body of the people to be their superiors? But I find, as I suspected at first, and so I told. ye, that you have spent more time and pains in turning over glossaries, and criticising upon texts, and propagating such-like laborious trifles, than in reading sound authors so as to improve your knowledge by them. had you been never so little versed in the writings of learned men in former ages, you would not have accounted an opinion new, and the product of some enthusiastic heads, which has been asserted and maintained by the greatest philosophers, and most famous politi cians in the world. You endeavour to expose one Martin, who you tell us was a tailor, and one William, a tanner; but if they are such as you describe them, I think they and you may very well go together; though they themselves would be able to instruct you, and unfold those mysterious riddles that you propose: as, "Whether or no they that in a monarchy would have the king but a servant to the commonwealth, will say the same thing of the whole body of the people in a popular state? And whether all the people serve in a democracy, or only some part or other serve the rest?" And when they have been an Edipus to you, by my consent you shall be a sphinx to them in good earnest, and

throw yourself headlong from some precipice or other, and break your neck: for else I am afraid you will never have done with your riddles and fooleries. You ask, "Whether or no, when St. Paul names kings, he meant the people?" I confess St. Paul commands us to pray for kings, but he had commanded us to pray for the people before, ver. 1. But there are some for all that, both among kings and common people, that we are forbidden to pray for; and if a man may not so much as be prayed for, may he not be punished? What should hinder? But, "when Paul wrote this epistle, he that reigned was the most profligate person in the world." That is false, For Ludovicus Capellus makes it evident, that this epistle likewise was writ in Claudius's time. When St. Paul has occasion to speak of Nero, he calls him not a king, but a lion; that is, a wild savage beast, from whose jaws he is glad he was delivered, 2 Tim. iv. So that it is for kings, not for beasts, that we are to pray, that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness, and honesty. Kings and their interest are not the things here intended to be advanced and secured; it is the public peace, godliness, and honesty, whose establishment we are commanded to endeavour after, and to pray for. But is there any people in the world, that would not choose rather to live an honest and careful life, though never free from war and troubles, in the defence of themselves and their families, whether against tyrants or enemies (for I make no difference) than under the power of a tyrant or an enemy, to spin out a life equally troublesome, accompanied with slavery and ignominy? That the latter is the more desirable of the two, I will prove by a testimony of your own; not because I think your authority worth quoting, but that all men may observe how double-tongued you are,