How much he counted it his Honour to die for the Pretender’s Cause, I shall not say; but I am well assur’d, that he employ’d all his Friends to do their utmost for saving his Life, and obtested them to do it, as they had any regard to the Blessings of himself, his Wife, and five Children. And I am satisfy’d, that the Reverend Mr. Patten will own to the World, if it be requir’d, that Mr. Hall, in order to save his Life, would have had Mr. Patten declare to the Court, that he the said Mr. Hall was mad; which he thought was as good a Plea for an English Squire, as for a Scotch Earl. This makes his End truly ignominious and shameful, and shews that he had no such Opinion of the Truth and Justice of the Cause for which he suffer’d, as to make his Death a Duty, Vertue and Honour, till he found he must come to the Gallows, and there he sets up for a Hero and a Martyr.
Mr. Hall, having acted as a Justice of Peace under the present Government till the Rebellion broke out, ought to have had some knowledg of the Law; and therefore we might have expected some Reasons from the Statute Book, why he calls the Pretender his only Lawful Sovereign: but ’tis probable he knew, that ’twas not to be done, and therefore thought it enough to pawn his bare Assertion upon the Jacobite Mob for Law, as his Fellow-Sufferer the Clergyman did his for Gospel. ’Tis evident, that both their Talents were better adapted to Rail, than to Reason; otherwise, the one would have given us a Text, and the other a Statute, to prove that they suffer’d in defence of the Laws of God and the Land: but since neither of them have done it, and that none of the Party either has been, or will ever be able to do it for them, we have reason to conclude, that they dy’d Traitors, but not Martyrs.
Those who have read the Old and New Testament with Attention, must certainly be satisfy’d, that there is not one Word in either for a Divine Indefeasible Hereditary Right in any Person or Family to Government; but on the contrary, that our Saviour, the Prophets, and Apostles, taught Obedience to such Governments and human Constitutions, as were in being at the respective times when they liv’d; and laid their Followers under no other Restriction, as to their Obedience to the Superior Powers they found in the World, but to obey God rather than Man, when their Commands interfered.
As to the Laws of Great Britain, our Adversaries will never be able to prove any other Hereditary Right than what was deriv’d from those Laws; which being alterable, according to the Nature of all human Constitutions, succeeding Generations must always, according to the Laws of Nature and Reason, have the same power to alter them for their own Security, as their Ancestors had to enact them for theirs. If this be not allow’d, this Absurdity must naturally follow, that had any preceding King and Parliament made an Act that all their Successors shou’d be Pagans, Papists, Turks, or Slaves, we had been left without a Remedy.
The SPEECH.
I declare that I die a true and sincere Member of the Church of England; but not of the Revolution Schismatical Church, whose Bishops have so rebelliously abandon’d the King, and so shamefully given up the Rights of the Church, by submitting to the Unlawful, Invalid, Lay-Deprivations of the Prince of Orange. The Communion I die in, is that of the True Catholick Nonjuring Church of England; and I pray God to prosper and increase it, and to grant, if it be his good pleasure, that it may rise again and flourish.
REMARKS.
This is so much of a piece with what Parson Paul said in his Speech, that I need say little more upon it: only Mr. Hall says, that the Rights of the Church were given up by the Submission of the Bishops and Clergy to the Unlawful Invalid Lay-Deprivations of the Prince of Orange.
The Church of England used formerly, when charg’d with being Erastian in her Constitution, to alledg that it cou’d not be so, since the Sovereign of England was mixta Persona, and by consequence a Clergyman as well as Layman. But tho the High-Church has thrown up that Argument, ’tis plain from the Statutes quoted in answer to Mr. Paul, that by the Laws of England our Sovereign is made Head of the Church; and from him the Bishops and Clergy of England do immediately derive all their Ecclesiastical Power and Authority. And since it was the Parliament of England which invested our Princes with the Power of conferring that Authority, King William was as lawfully possess’d of it as any of his Predecessors.
But farther, since all the Episcopal Power which the Bishops of England can pretend to, is deriv’d from Laymen (if the King and Parliament must be call’d so) it follows in Reason, that a Lay-Deprivation is sufficient to make void a Lay-Institution, if the Deprivation be founded on a just Cause, as disowning the Government certainly is. Besides, it ought to be consider’d, that the Bishops who sit in Parliament are Clergymen; and since they consented to the Deprivation, it can’t in Justice be wholly call’d a Lay one, unless they had protested against it in Convocation, where they sit as Clergymen: and that they did not so protest, is evident to all the World.