POSTSCRIPT

TO THE

TRANSLATION

OF THE

HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE.

THAT government, generally considered, is

of divine authority, will admit of no dispute; for whoever will seriously consider, that no man has naturally a right over his own life, so as to murder himself, will find by consequence, that he has no right to take away another's life; and that no pact betwixt man and man, or of corporations and individuals, or of sovereigns and subjects, can entitle them to this right; so that no offender can lawfully, and without sin, be punished, unless that power be derived from GOD. It is he who has commissioned magistrates, and authorized them to prevent future crimes by punishing offenders, and to redress the injured by distributive justice. Subjects therefore are accountable to superiours, and the superiour to Him alone; for the sovereign being once invested with lawful authority, the

subject has irrevocably given up his power, and the dependance of a monarch is alone on GOD. A King, at his coronation, swears to govern his subjects by the laws of the land, and to maintain the several orders of men under him in their lawful privileges, and those orders swear allegiance and fidelity to him; but with this distinction, that the failure of the people is punishable by the King, that of the King is only punishable by the KING OF KINGS. The people then are not judges of good or ill administration in their King; for it is inconsistent with the nature of sovereignty that they should be so. And if at some times they suffer through the irregularities of a bad prince, they enjoy more often the benefits and advantages of a good one, as GoD in his Providence shall dispose, either for their blessing or their punishment. The advantages and disadvantages of such subjection are supposed to have been first considered; and upon this balance they have given up their power without a capacity of resumption; so that it is in vain for a commonwealth party to plead, that men, for example, now in being, cannot bind their posterity, or give up their power; for if subjects can swear only for themselves, when the father dies the subjection ends, and the son who has not

Our author, in the courtly doctrine here stated, was but too much countenanced by the clergy, many of whom enforced from the pulpit the slavish tenet of passive obedience and non-resistance, grounded on the exploded notion of the divine right of Kings.

sworn can be no traitor or offender, either to the King or to the laws and at this rate a long-lived prince may outlive his sovereignty, and be no longer lawfully a King. But in the mean time, it is evident that the son enjoys the benefit of the laws and government, which is an implicit acknowledgment of subjection.

It is endless to run through all the extravagancies of these men, and it is enough for us that we are settled under a lawful government of a most gracious prince; that our monarchy is hereditary; that it is naturally poized by our municipal laws, with equal benefit of prince and people; that he governs as he has promised, by explicit laws; and what the laws are silent in, I think I may conclude to be part of his prerogative; for what the King has not granted away is inherent in him.

The point of succession has sufficiently been discussed, both as to the right of it, and to the interest of the people. One main argument of the other side is, how often has it been removed from the right line as in the case of King Stephen, and of Henry the Fourth, and his descendants of

the house of Lancaster. But it is easy to answer

them, that matter of fact, are different considerations.

and matter of right,

Both those Kings

were but usurpers in effect; and the Providence of God restored the posterities of those who were dispossessed. By the same argument they might as well justify the rebellion and murder of the late

King; for there was not only a prince inhumanly put to death, but a government overturned; and first an arbitrary commonwealth, then two usurpers set up against the lawful sovereign; but to our happiness the same Providence has miraculously restored the right heir, and, to their confusion, as miraculously preserved him. In this present History, to go no further, we see Henry the Third, by a decree of the Sorbonne, devested, what in them lay, of his imperial rights; a parliament of Paris, such another as our first long parliament, confirming their decree; a Pope authorizing all this by his excommunication; and an Holy League and Covenant prosecuting this deposition by arms: yet an untimely death only hindered him from reseating himself in glory on the throne, after he was in manifest possession of the victory. We see also the same Sorbonists, the same Pope, parliament, and league, with greater force opposing the undoubted right of King Henry the Fourth; and we see him, in the end, surmounting all these difficulties, and triumphing over all these dangers: GOD Almighty taking care of his own anointed, and the true succession; neither the papist nor presbyterian association prevailing at the last in their attempts, but both baffled and ruined, and the whole rebellion ended either in the submission or destruction of the conspirators.

It is truc, as my author has observed in the beginning of his History, that before the Catholick League, or Holy Union, which is the subject of

this book, there was a league or combination of Huguenots against the government of France, which produced the conspiracy of Amboise; and the Calvinist preachers (as Mezeray, a most impartial historian, informs us,) gave their opinion, that they might take up arms in their own defence, and make way for a free access to the King, to present their remonstrances; but it was ordered at the same time, that they should seize on the Duke of Guise, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, his brother, who were then chief ministers, that they might be brought to trial by process before the States: but he adds immediately, who could answer for them that the prisoners should not have been killed out of hand, and that they would not have made themselves masters of the Queen-mother's person, and of the young King's, which was laid afterwards to their charge? The concealed heads of this conspiracy were Lewis, Prince of Condè, and the famous Admiral de Coligny; who being discontented at court because their enemies, the Guises, had the management of affairs under the Queenregent, to their exclusion, and being before turned Calvinists, made use of that rebellious sect, and the pretence of religion, to cover their ambition and revenge. The same Mezeray tells us in one of the next pages, that the name of Huguenots, or Fidnos, (from whence it was corrupted,) signifies league or association, in the Swiss language; and was brought, together with the sect, from Geneva into France. But from whencesoever they had