Where therefore there is no lawful investiture, there is no moral power to be owned; otherwise John of Leyden's authority might have been owned: the unlawfulness of such a power consists in the very tenor itself; and if we take away the use or holding of it, we take away the very being of it: it is not then the abuse of a power lawfully to be used, but the very use of it is unlawful. But in the usurpation of this man, or monster rather, that is now mounted the throne, there is no lawful investiture in the way God hath appointed as is shewed above; therefore there is no moral power to be owned. To clear this a little further, it will be necessary to remove the ordinary pretences, pleaded for a title to warrant the owning of such as are in power, which are three chiefly, to wit, possession, conquest, and hereditary succession. The first must be touched more particularly, because it hath been the originate error, and spring of all the stupid mistakes about government, and is the pitiful plea of many, even mal contents, why this man's authority is to be owned, asserting, that a person attaining and occupying the place of power (by whatsoever means) is to be owned as the magistrate. But this can give no right: for, 1. If providence cannot signify God's approbative ordination, it can give no right; for without that there can be no right; but providence cannot signify his approbative ordination, because that, without the warrant of his word, cannot signify either allowance or disallowance, it is so various, being often the same to courses directly contrary, and oftentimes contrary to the same course; sometimes savouring it, sometimes crossing it, whether it be good or bad, and the same common providence may proceed from far different purposes, to one in mercy, to another in judgment; and most frequently very disproportionable to men's ways. Providence places sometimes "wickedness in the place of judgment, and iniquity in the place of righteousness," Eccl. iii. 16. that is, not by allowance. By providence it happens to the just according to the work of the wicked, and to the wicked according to the work of the righteous, Eccl. viii. 14. No man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all, there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked, Eccl. ix. 1, 2. It were a great debasing of the Lord's anointed, to give him no other warrant than sin hath in the world, or the falling of a sparrow. 2. Either every providential possession, in every case, gives a title; or, God hath declared it as a law, that it shall be so in this particular matter of authority only.
The first cannot be said: for that would justify all robbery: nor the second, for where is that law found? Nay, it were impious to alledge it; for it would say, there is no unjust possessor or disorderly occupant, but if he were once in the possession, he were right enough, and then usurpation would be no sin. 3. If none of the causes of magistracy be required to the producing of this possessory power, then it cannot give or have any right; for without the true causes it cannot be the true effect, and so can have no true right to be owned: but none of the causes of magistracy are required to the production of this; neither the institution of God, for this might have been, if magistracy had never been instituted; nor the constitution of men, for this may usurp without that. 4. That which must follow upon the right, and be legitimated by it, cannot be owned as the right, nor can it give the title: but the possession of the power, or the exercise thereof, must follow upon its right, and be legitimated by it: therefore.——A man must first be in the relation of a ruler, before he can rule; and men must first be in the relation of subjects, before they obey.
The commands of public justice, to whom are they given but to magistrates? They must then be magistrates, before they can be owned as the ministers of justice: he must be a magistrate, before he can have the power of the sword: he cannot, by the power of the sword, make himself magistrate. 5. That which would make every one in the possession of the magistracy a tyrant, cannot be owned: but a possessory occupation giving right, would make every one in possession a tyrant; for, that which enervates, and takes away that necessary distinction between the king's personal capacity and his legal capacity, his natural and his moral power, will make every king a tyrant (seeing it makes every thing that he can do as a man, to be legally done as a king) but a possessory occupation giving right, would enervate and take away that distinction: for how can these be distinguished in a mere possessory power? The man's possession is all his legal power; and if possession give a right, his power will give legality. 6. What sort or size of possession can be owned to give a right? Either it must be partial or plenary possession: not partial, for then others may be equally entitled to the government, in competition with that partial possessor, having also a part of it: not plenary, for then every interruption or usurpation on a part, would make a dissolution of the government. 7. Hence would follow infinite absurdities; this would give equal warrant, in case of vacancy, to all men to step to, and stickle for the throne, and expose the commonwealth as a booty to all aspiring spirits: for they needed no more to make them sovereigns, and lay a tie of subjection upon the consciences of people, but to get into possession: and in case of competition, it would leave people still in suspense and uncertainties whom to own; for they behoved to be subject only to the uppermost, which could not be known until the controversy be decided: it would cassate and make void all pre-obligations, cautions, and restrictions from God about the government: it would cancel and make vain all other titles of any, or constitutions, or provisions, or oaths of allegiance: yea, to what purpose were laws or pactions made about ordering the government, if possession gave right, and laid an obligation on all to own it? Yea, then it were sinful to make any such provisions, to fence in and limit the determination of providence, if providential possession may authorize every intrusive acquisition to be owned: then also in case of competition of two equal pretenders to the government, there would be no place left for arbitrations.
If this were true, that he has the power that is in possession, the difference were at an end; no man could plead for his own right then; in this also it is inconsistent with itself, condemning all resistance against the present occupant, yet justifying every resistance that is but successful to give possession. 8. That which would oblige us to own the devil and the pope, cannot be a ground to own any man; but if this were true, that possession gave right, it would oblige us to own the devil and the pope. Satan we find claiming to himself the possession of the world's kingdoms, Luke iv. 6. which as to many of them is in some respect true, for he is called the god of this world, and the prince of this world, John xiv. 30. 2 Cor. iv. 4. Are men therefore obliged to own his authority? or shall they deny his, and acknowledge his lieutenant, who bears his name, and by whom all his orders are execute, I mean the man that tyrannizes over the people of God? For he is the devil that casts some into prison, Rev. ii. 10. Again, the pope, his captain-general, lays claim to a temporal power and ecclesiastic both, over all the nations, and possesses it over many; and again, under the conduct of his vassal the duke of York, is attempting to recover the possession of Britain: shall he therefore be owned. This cursed principle disposes men for popery, and contributes to strengthen popery and tyranny both on the stage, to the vacating of all the promises of their dispossession. 9. That which would justify a damnable sin, and make it a ground of a duty, cannot be owned; but this fancy of owning a very power in possession would justify a damnable sin and make it the ground of a duty; for, resistance to the powers ordained of God is a damnable sin, Rom. xiii. 2. But the resisters having success in providence, may come to the possession of the power, by expelling the just occupant; and, by this opinion, that possession would be ground for the duty of subjection for conscience sake. 10. If a self-created dignity be null and not to be owned, than a mere possessory is not to be owned; but the former is true: as Christ saith, John viii. 54. If I honour myself my honour is nothing. 11. That which God hath disallowed possession without right, Ezek. xxi. 27. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, until he come whose right it is, Hos. viii. 4. They have set up kings and not by me, Matth. xxvi. 52. All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword; by this the usurper of the sword is differenced from the true owner. 12. Many scripture examples confute this; shewing that the possession may be in one, and the power with right in another.
David was the magistrate, and yet Absalom possessed the place, 2 Sam. xv. xvi. xvii. xviii. xix. chap. Sheba also made a revolt and usurped the possession in a great part, and yet David was king, 2 Sam. xx. 2. Adonijah got the start in respect of possession, exalting himself saying, I will be king: yet the kingdom was Solomon's from the Lord, 1 Kings 1. The house of Ahaziah had not power to keep still the kingdom, 2 Chron. xxii. 9. and Athaliah took the possession of it, yet the people set up Joash, xxiii. 3. Next we have many examples of such who have invaded the possessor, witness Jehoram and Jehoshaphat's expedition against Mesha, king of Moab, Elisha being in the expedition, 2 Kings, iii. 4, 5. Hence we see the first pretence removed.
The second is no better; which Augustine calls Magnum Latrocinium, a great robbery; I mean conquest, or a power of the sword gotten by the sword; which, that it can give no right to be owned, I prove That which can give no signification of God's approving will, cannot give a title to be owned: but mere conquest can give no signification of God's approving will, as is just now proven about possession: for then the Lord should have approven all the unjust conquests that have been in the world. 2. Either conquest as conquest must be owned, as a just title to the crown, and so the Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines, &c. prevailing over God's people for a time, must have reigned by right, or as a just conquest. In this case, conquest is only a mean to the conquerors seizing and holding that power, which the state of the war entitled him unto; and this ingress into authority over the conquered, is not grounded on conquest but on justice, and not at all privative, but inclusive of the consent of the people; and then it may be owned; but without a compact, upon conditions of securing religion and liberty, and posterity, cannot be subjected without their content; for whatever just quarrel the conqueror had with the present generation, he could have none with the posterity, the father can have no power to resign the liberty of the children. 3. A king as king, and by virtue of his royal office, must be owned to be a father, tutor, protector, shepherd, and patron of the people; but a mere conqueror, without consent cannot be owned as such.
Can he be a father and a patron to us against our will, by the sole power of the sword? A father to these that are unwilling to be sons? An head over such as will not be members? And a defender thro' violence? 4. A king, as such, is a special gift of God, and blessing, not a judgment: but a conqueror, as such, is not a blessing, but a judgment, his native end being not peace, but fire and sword. 5. That which hath nothing of a king in it, cannot be owned to make a king; but conquest hath nothing of a king in it: for it hath nothing but violence and force, nothing but what the bloodiest villain that was never a king may have, nothing of God's approving and regulating will, nothing of institution or constition; and a plain repugnancy to the ordination of God, for God hath said, Thou shalt not kill; conquest says, I will kill, and prosper, and reign. 6. A lawful call to a lawful office may not be resisted; but a call to conquest, which is nothing but ambition or revenge, ought to be resisted; because not of God's preceptive will, otherwise he should be the author of sin. 7. That power which we must own to be the ordinance of God, must not be resisted, Rom. xiii. 2.
But conquest may be resisted in defence of our king and country: therefore it must not be owned to be the ordinance of God. 8. That which God condemns in his word, cannot be owned; but dominion by the sword God condemns in his word, Ezek. xxxii. 26. "Ye stand upon the sword,——and shall possess the land," Amos vi. 13. "Ye rejoice in a thing of naught, which say, Have we not taken to us horns by our own strength?" Habbak. ii. 5, 6.——"Wo to him that encreaseth that which is not his, how long," &c. 9. We have many examples of invading conquerors; as Abraham, for the rescue of Lot, pursued the conquering kings unto Dan, Gen. iv. 4. "Jonathan smote a garrison of the conquering Philistines," 1 Sam. xiii. 3. The Lord owning and authorising them so to do. The people did often shake off the yoke of their conquerors in the history of the judges: but this they might not do to their lawful rulers. What is objected from the Lord's people conquering Canaan, &c. is no argument for conquest: for he, to whom belongs the earth and its fulness, disponed to Israel the land of Canaan for their inheritance, and ordained that they should get the possession thereof by conquest; it followeth not therefore, that kings now, wanting any word of promise, or divine grant to any lands, may ascend to the thrones of other kingdoms than their own, by no better title than the bloody sword. See Lex Rex, quest. 12. The third pretence of hereditary succession remains to be removed; which may be thus disproven, 1. This classes with the former, though commonly asserted by royalists.
For either conquest gives a right, or it does not; if it does, then it looses all allegiance to the heirs of the crown dispossessed thereby: if it does not give a right, then no hereditary succession founded upon conquest can have any right, being founded upon that which hath no right: and this will shake the most part of hereditary successions that are now in the world. 2. If hereditary succession have no right but the people's consent; then of itself it can give none to a man that hath not that consent; but the former is true. For, it is demanded, how doth the son or brother succeed? By what right? It must either be by divine promise; or by the father's will, or it must come by propagation from the first ruler, by a right of the primogeniture; but none of these can be. For the first, we have no immediate divine constitution tying the crown to such a race, as in David's covenant: it will easily be granted, they fetched not their charter from heaven immediately, as David had it, a man of many peculiar prerogatives, to whose line the promise was astricted of the coming of the Messias, and Jacob's prophecy that the sceptre should not depart from Judah until his coming, Gen. xlix. 10. was restricted to his family afterwards: wherefore he could say, The Lord God of Israel chose me before all the house of my father, to be king over Israel for ever; for he hath chosen Judah to be the ruler; and of the house of Judah, the house of my father; and among the sons of my father, he liked me to make me king over Israel; and of all my sons he hath chosen Solomon, 1 Chron. xxviii. 4, 5. All kings cannot say this; neither could Saul say it, tho' immediately called of God as well as David: yet this same promise to David was conditional, if his children should keep the Lord's ways, 2 Chron. vi. 16. Next, it cannot be said this comes from the will of the father; for according to the scripture, no king can make a king, though a king may appoint and design his son for his successor, as David did Solomon, but the people make him. The father is some way a cause why his son succeedeth, but he is not the cause of the royalty conferred upon him by line: for the question will recur, who made him a king, and his father, and grandfather, till we come up to the first father? Then, who made him a king? Not himself; therefore it must be resounded upon the people's choice and constitution: and who appointed the lineal succession, and tied the crown to the line, but they? It is then, at the best, the patrimony of the people, by the fundamental law of the kingdom, conferred upon the successor by consent.
And generally it is granted, even where the succession is lineal, he that comes to inherit, he does not succeed by heritage, but by the force of law; the son then hath not his kingdom from his father, but by law, which the people made and stand to, as long as it may consist with the reasons of public advantage, upon which they condescended to establish such a family over them. Neither can it be said, it is by a right of primogeniture, propagated from the first ruler; for this must either be Adam the first of the world or Fergus for example, the first of this kingdom. It could not come from Adam as a monarch and father of all: for that behoved to be, either by order of nature, or his voluntary assignment: it could not be transferred by order of nature; for besides the difficulty to find out Adam's successor in the universal monarchy, and the absurdity of fixing it on Cain, (who was a cursed vagabond, afraid of every man and could not be an universal monarch, yet Adam's first born.) It will be asked, how this passed from him unto others? Whether it went by fatherhood to all the sons, fathers to their posterity? Which would multiply as many commonwealths, as there have been fathers since: or if it went, by primogeniture, only to the first-born, that he alone could claim the power which would infer the necessity of an universal monarchy, without multiplication of commonwealths.