§. 239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute monarchy, is
forced to allow that a king may be resisted, and ceases to be a king. That is
in short — not to multiply cases — in whatsoever he has no authority,
there he is no king, and may be resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases,
the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who have no authority. And
these two cases that he instances differ little from those above mentioned, to
be destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle from
which his doctrine flows, and that is the breach of trust in not preserving the
form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government
itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a king has
dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his people, what
shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other
man, who has put himself into a state of war with them, Barclay, and those of
his opinion, would do well to tell us. Bilson, a bishop of our Church, and a
great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake
not, in his treatise of "Christian Subjection," acknowledge that
princes may forfeit their power and their title to the obedience of their
subjects; and if there needed authority in a case where reason is so plain, I
could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the author of the
"Mirror," and others, writers that cannot be suspected to be ignorant
of our government, or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough
to satisfy those men who, relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are
by a strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it.
Whether they are herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their
own fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so new,
so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as former ages
never could bear the broaching of it, so it may be hoped those to come,
redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian under-taskmasters, will abhor
the memory of such servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve their
turn, resolved all government into absolute tyranny, and would have all men
born to what their mean souls fitted them — slavery.
