to God and the laws. Politicians may say what they please; but it is no hard thing at all for the meanest person, who hath common understanding, to know whether he be well or ill governed. If he be freely allowed to follow his trade and calling; if he be secure in his property, and hath the benefit of the law to defend himself against injustice and oppression; if his religion be different from that of his country, and the government think fit to tolerate it; (which he may be very secure of, let it be what it will) he ought to be fully satisfied, and give no offence, by writing or discourse, to the worship established, as the dissenting preachers are too apt to do. But, if he hath any new visions of his own, it is his duty to be quiet, and possess them in silence, without disturbing the community by a furious zeal for making proselytes. This was the folly and madness of those ancient puritan fanaticks: they must needs overturn Heaven and earth, violate all the laws of God and man, make their country a field of blood, to propagate whatever wild or wicked opinions came into their heads, declaring all their absurdities and blasphemies to proceed from the Holy Ghost.

To conclude this head. In answer to that objection of keeping up animosity and hatred between protestants, by the observation of this day; if there be any sect, or sort of people among us, who profess the same principles in religion and government which those puritan rebels put in practice, I think it is the interest of all those who love the church and king, to keep up as strong a party against them as possible, until they shall, in a body, renounce all those wicked opinions upon which their predecessors acted, to the

disgrace

disgrace of christianity, and the perpetual infamy of the English nation.

When we accuse the papists of the horrid doctrine, "that no faith ought to be kept with hereticks;' they deny it to a man: and yet we justly think it dangerous to trust them, because we know their actions have been sometimes suitable to that opinion. But the followers of those who beheaded the martyr, have not yet renounced their principles; and till they do, they may be justly suspected; neither will the bare name of protestants set them right: for, surely, Christ requires more from us than a profession of hating popery, which a Turk or an atheist may do as well as a protestant.

If an enslaved people should recover their liberty, from a tyrannical power of any sort, who could blame them for commemorating their deliverance by a day of joy and thanksgiving? And doth not the destruction of a church, a king, and three kingdoms, by the artifices, hypocrisy, and cruelty, of a wicked race of soldiers and preachers, and other sons of Belial, equally require a solemn time of humiliation; especially since the consequences of that bloody scene still continue, as I have already shown, in their effects upon us?

Thus I have done with the three heads I proposed to discourse on. But, before I conclude, I must give a caution to those who hear me, that they may not think I am pleading for absolute unlimited power

in

any one man. It is true, all power is from God: and, as the apostle says, "The powers that be are "ordained of God:" but this is in the same sense. that all we have is from God, our food and raiment, and whatever possession we hold by lawful means. Nothing can be meant in those or any other words of

Scripture,

Scripture, to justify tyrannical power, or the savage cruelties of those heathen emperors who lived in the time of the apostles. And so St. Paul concludes, "The powers that be are ordained of God:" for what? why, "for the punishment of evil doers, and "the praise, the reward of them that do well." There is no more inward value in the greatest emperor, than in the meanest of his subjects: his body is composed of the same substance, the same parts, and with the same or greater infirmities: his education is generally worse, by flattery, and idleness, and luxury, and those evil dispositions that early power is apt to give. It is therefore against common sense, that his private personal interest, or pleasure, should be put in the balance with the safety of millions; every one of which is equal by nature, equal in the sight of God, equally capable of salvation: and it is for their sakes, not his own, that he is entrusted with the government over them. He hath as high trust as can safely be reposed in one man, and if he discharge it as he ought, he deserves all the honour and duty that a mortal may be allowed to receive. His personal failings we have nothing to do with; and errours in government are to be imputed to his ministers in the state.

To what

height those errours may be suffered to proceed, is not the business of this day, or this place, or of my function, to determine. When oppressions grow too great and universal to be born, nature or necessity may find a remedy. But, if a private person reasonably expects pardon, upon his amendment, for all faults that are not capital; it would be a hard condition indeed, not to give the same allowance to a prince; who must see with other men's eyes, and hear with other men's ears, which are often wilfully blind and

deaf.

deaf. Such was the condition of the martyr; and is so, in some degree, of all other princes. Yet, this we may justly say in defence of the common people in all civilized nations, that it must be a very bad government indeed, where the body of the subjects will not rather choose to live in peace and obedience, than take up arms on pretence of faults in the administration, unless where the vulgar are deluded by false preachers to grow fond of new visions and fancies in religion; which, managed by dextrous men, for] sinister ends of malice, envy, or ambition, have often made whole nations run mad. This was exactly the case in the whole progress of that great rebellion, and the murder of king Charles I. But the late revolution under the prince of Orange, was occasioned by a proceeding directly contrary, the oppression and injustice there beginning from the throne: for that unhappy prince, king James II, did not only invade our laws and liberties, but would have forced a false religion upon his subjects, for which he was deservedly rejected, since there could be no other remedy found, or at least agreed on. But, under the blessed martyr, the deluded people would have forced many false religions, not only on their fellow-subjects, but even upon their sovereign himself, and at the same time invaded all his undoubted rights; and because he would not comply, raised a horrid rebellion, wherein, by the permission of God, they prevailed, and put their sovereign to death, like a common criminal, in the face of the world.

Therefore, those who seem to think they cannot otherwise justify the late revolution, and the change of the succession, than by lessening the guilt of the puritans, do certainly put the greatest affront imaginVOL. X.

G

able

able upon the present powers, by supposing any relation or resemblance between that rebellion and the late revolution; and, consequently, that the present establishment is to be defended by the same arguments which those usurpers made use of, who, to obtain their tyranny, trampled under foot all the laws both of God and man.

One great design of my discourse was, to give you warning against running into either extreme of two bad opinions, with relation to obedience. As kings are called gods upon earth; so some would allow them an equal power with God, over all laws and ordinances; and that the liberty, and property, and life, and religion of the subject, depended wholly upon the breath of the prince; which however, I hope, was never meant by those who pleaded for passive obedience. And this opinion hath not been confined to that par y which was first charged with it; but hath some times gone over to the other, to serve many an evil turn of interest or ambition; who have been as ready to enlarge prerogative, where they could find their own account, as the highest maintainers of it.

On the other side, some look upon kings as answerable for every mistake or omission in government, and bound to comply with the most unreasonable demands of an unquiet faction; which was the case of those who persecuted the blessed martyr of this day from his throne to the scaffold.

Between these two extremes, it is easy, from what hath been said, to choose a middle: to be good and loyal subjects; yet, according to your power, faithful assertors of your religion and liberties: to

avoid