to their conversion, is, to make them sensible of * A table (tableau, Fr.) in old language, signified-a 4 greater favour than the law; you have given them the benefit of clergy: if they can but read, and will be honest enough to apply it, they may be saved. God Almighty give an answerable success to this your royal act of grace! may they all repent, and be united as the body to their head! May that treasury of mercy which is within your royal breast, have leave to be poured forth upon them, when they put themselves in a condition of receiving it! And in the mean time, permit me to implore it humbly for myself; and let my presumption in this bold address be forgiven to the zeal which I have to your service, and to the publick good. To conclude, may you never have a worse-meaning offender at your feet, than him who, besides his duty and his natural inclinations, has all manner of obligations to be perpetually, SIR, Your MAJESTY's most humble, Most obedient, and most faithful Subject, and Servant, JOHN DRYDEN. 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 5 Our author, in the courtly doctrine here stated, was but too much countenanced by the clergy, many of whom en. forced 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 It is endless to run through all the extrava- The point of succession has sufficiently been |