summa potestas
ceases to be their king, and if conquered forfeits to them his former share. And surely if Charles had been victor, he would have taken the Parliament's share to himself. If it had been the Parliament, and not a mere faction with the army, that tried and beheaded Charles, I do not see how any one could doubt the lawfulness of the act, except upon very technical grounds.
Ib. p. 41.
For if once legislation, the chief act of government, be denied to any part of government at all, and affirmed to belong to the people as such, who are no governors, all government will hereby be overthrown.
Here Baxter falls short of the subject, and does not see the full consequents of his own prior, most judicious, positions. Legislation in its high and most proper sense belongs to God only. A people declares that such and such they hold to be laws, that is, God's will.
Ib. p. 47.
In Cornwall Sir Richard Grenvill, having taken many soldiers of the Earl of Essex's army, sentenced about a dozen to be hanged. When they had hanged two or three, the rope broke which should have hanged the next. And they sent for new ropes so oft to hang him, and all of them still broke, that they durst go no further, but saved all the rest.
The soldiers, doubtless, contrived this from the aversion natural to Englishmen of killing an enemy in cold blood; and because they foresaw that there would be Tit for Tat.