Question XXV.



What force the supreme law hath over the king, even that law of the 

people's safety, called "salus populi."



The law of the twelve tables is, salus populi, suprema lex. The safety 

of the people is the supreme and cardinal law to which all laws are to 

stoop. And that from these reasons: —



1. Originally: Because if the people be the first author, fountain and 

efficient under God, of law and king, then their own safety must be 

principally sought, and their safety must be far above the king, as the 

safety of a cause, especially of an universal cause, such as is the 

people, must be more than the safety of one, as Aristotle saith, (1. 3. 

polit., alias l. 5,) ou meti pephnki to meros uperechon tou pantos

[2] — "The part cannot be more excellent than the whole;" nor the effect 

above the cause.



2. Finaliter. This supreme law must stand; for if all law, policy, 

magistrates and power be referred to the people's good as the end, (Rom. 

xiii. 4,) and to their quiet and peaceable life in godliness and 

honesty, then must this law stand, as of more worth than the king, as 

the end is of more worth than the means leading to the end, for the end 

is the measure and rule of the goodness of the mean; and, finis ultimus 

in influxu est potentissimus, the king is good, because he conduceth 

much for the safety of the people; therefore, the safety of the people 

must be better.



3. By way of limitation: because no law in its letter hath force where 

the safety of the subject is in hazard; and if law or king be 

destructive to the people they are to be abolished. This is clear in a 

tyrant or a wicked man.



4. In the desires of the most holy: Moses, a prince, desired for the 

safety of God's people, and rather than God should destroy his people, 

that his name should be rased out of the book of life; and David saith, 

(1 Chron. xxi. 17,) "Let thine hand, I pray thee, O Lord my God, be on 

me, and on my father's house; but not on thy people, that they should be 

plagued." This being a holy desire of these two public spirits, the 

object must be in itself true, and the safety of God's people and their 

happiness must be of more worth than the salvation of Moses and the life 

of David and his father's house.



The Prelate (c. 16, p. 159) borroweth an answer to this — for he hath 

none of his own — from Dr Ferne (sect. 7, p. 28): The safety of the 

subjects is the prime end of the constitution of government; but it is 

not the sole and adequate end of government in monarchy; for that is the 

safety of both king and people. And it beseemeth the king to proportion 

his laws for their good; and it becometh the people to proportion all 

their obedience, actions, and endeavours for the safety, honour, and 

happiness of the king. It is impossible the people can have safety when 

sovereignty is weakened.



Ans. — The Prelate would have the other half of the end, why a king is 

set over a people, to be the safety and happiness of the king, as well 

as the safety of the people. This is new logic indeed, that one and the 

same thing should be the mean and the end. The question is, For what end 

is a king made so happy as to be exalted king? The Prelate answereth, He 

is made happy that he may be happy, and made a king that he may be made 

a king. Now, is the king, as king, to intend this half end? that is, 

whether or no accepteth he the burden of setting his head and shoulders 

under the crown, for this end, that he may not only make the people 

happy, but also that he may make himself rich and honourable above his 

brethren, and enrich himself? I believe not; but that he feed the people 

of God; for if he intend himself, and his own honour, it is the 

intention of the man who is king, and intentio operantis, but it is not 

the intention of the king, as the king, or intentio operis. The king, as 

a king, is formally and essentially the "minister of God for our good," 

(Rom. xiii. 4; 1 Tim. ii. 2,) and cannot come under any notion as a 

king, but as a mean, not as an end, nor as that which he is, to seek 

himself. I conceive God did forbid this in the moulding of the first 

king. (Deut. xvii. 18, 19, 26.) He is a minister by office, and one who 

receiveth honour and wages for this work, that, ex officio, he may feed 

his people. But the Prelate saith, the people are to intend his riches 

and honour. I cannot say but the people may intend to honour the king; 

but the question is not, whether the people be to refer the king and his 

government as a mean to honour the king?



I conceive not. But that end which the people, in obeying the king, in 

being ruled by him, may intend, is, (1 Tim. ii. 2,) "That under him they 

may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty." And 

God's end in giving a king is the good and safety of his people.



P. Prelate (c. 16, p. 160). — To reason from the one part and end of 

monarchical government — the safety of the subjects, to the destruction 

and weakening of the other part of the end — the power of sovereignty 

and the royal prerogative, is a caption a divisis. If the king be not 

happy, and invested with the full power of a head, the body cannot be 

well. By anti-monarchists, the people at the beginning were necessitated 

to commit themselves, lives and fortunes, to the government of a king, 

because of themselves they had not wisdom and power enough to do it; and 

therefore, they enabled him with honour and power, without which, he 

could not do this, being assured that he could not choose, but most 

earnestly and carefully endeavour this end, to wit, his own and the 

people's happiness; therefore, the safety of the people issueth from the 

safety of the king, as the life of the natural body from the soul. "Weak 

government is near to anarchy. Puritans will not say, Quovis modo esse, 

etiam pœnale, is better than non esse: the Scripture saith the contrary; 

it were better for some never to have been born than to be. Tyranny is 

better than no government.



Ans. 1. — He knows not sophisms of logic who calleth this argument a 

divisis; for the king's honour is not the end of the king's government. 

He should seek the safety of state and church, not himself; himself is a 

private end, and a step to tyranny.



2. The Prelate lieth when he maketh us to reason from the safety of the 

subject to the destruction, of the king. Ferne, Barclay, Grotius, taught 

the hungry scholar to reason so. Where read he this? The people must be 

saved, that is the supreme law, therefore, destroy the king. The devil 

and the Prelate both shall not fasten this on us. But thus we reason: 

when the man who is the king endeavoureth not the end of his royal 

place, but, through bad counsel, the subversion of laws, religion, and 

bondage of the kingdom, the free estates are to join with him for that 

end of safety, according as God hath made them heads of tribes and 

princes of the people; and if the king refuse to join with them, and 

will not do his duty, I see not how they are in conscience liberated 

before God from doing their part.



3. If the P. Prelate call resisting the king by lawful defensive wars, 

the destruction of the head, he speaketh with the mouth of one 

excommunicated and delivered up to Satan.



4. We endeavour nothing more than the safety and happiness of the king, 

as king; but his happiness is not to suffer him to destroy his subjects, 

subvert religion, arm papists who have slaughtered above two hundred 

thousand innocent protestants, only for the profession of that true 

religion which tho king hath sworn to maintain. Not to rise in arms to 

help the king against these were to gratify him as a man, but to be 

accessory to his soul's destruction as a king.



5. That the royal prerogative is the end of a monarchy ordained by God, 

neither Scripture, law, nor reason can admit.



6. The people are to intend the safety of other judges as well as the 

king's. If parliaments be destroyed, whose it is to make laws and kings, 

the people can neither be sale, free to serve Christ, nor happy.



7. It is a lie that people were necessitated at the beginning to commit 

themselves to a king; for we read of no king while Nimrod arose: fathers 

of families (who were not kings), and others, did govern till then.



8. It was not want of wisdom, (for in many, and in the people, there 

must be more wisdom than in one man,) but rather corruption of nature 

and reciprocation of injuries that created kings and other judges.



9. The king shall better compass his end, to wit, the safety of the 

people, with limited power, (placent mediocria,) and with other judges 

added to help him, (Num. ii. 14, 16; Deut. i. 12-15,) than to put in one 

man's hand absolute power; for a sinful man's head cannot bear so much 

new wine, such as exorbitant power is.



10: He is a base flatterer who saith, The king cannot choose, but 

earnestly and carefully endeavour his own and the people's happiness; 

that is, the king is an angel, and cannot sin and decline from the 

duties of a king. Of the many kings of Judah and Israel, how many chose 

this? All the good kings that have been may be written in a gold ring.



11. The people's safety dependeth indeed on the king, as a king and a 

happy governor; but the people shall never be fattened to eat the wind 

of an imaginary prerogative royal.



12. Weak government, that is, a king with a limited power, who hath more 

power about his head than within his head, is a strong king, and far 

from anarchy.



13. I know not what he meaneth, but his master Arminius's way and words 

are here, for Arminians say,[1] "That being in the damned, eternally 

tormented, is no benefit; it were better they never had being than to be 

eternally tormented;" and this they say to the defiance of the doctrine 

of eternal reprobation, in which we teach, that though by accident, and 

because of the damned's abuse of being and life, it were to them better 

not to be, as is said of Judas, yet simpliciter comparing being with 

non-being, and considering the eternity of miserable being in relation 

to the absolute liberty of the Former of all things, who maketh use of 

the sinful being of clay-vessels for the illustration of the glory of 

his justice and power, (Rom. ix. 17, 22; 1 Pet. ii. 8; Jude v. 4,) it is 

a censuring of God and his unsearchable wisdom, and a condemning of the 

Almighty of cruelty, (God avert blasphemy of the unspotted and holy 

Majesty,) who, by Arminian grounds, keepeth the damned in life and 

being, to be fuel eternally for Tophet, to declare the glory of his 

justice. But the Prelate behoved to go out of his way to salute and 

gratify a proclaimed enemy or free grace, Arminius, and hence he would 

infer that the king, wanting his prerogative royal and fulness of 

absolute power to do wickedly, is in a penal and miserable condition, 

and that it were better for the king to be a tyrant, with absolute 

liberty to destroy and save alive at his pleasure, as is said of a 

tyrant, (Dan. v. 19,) than to be no king at all. And here consider a 

principle of royalists' court faith: — 1. The king is no king, but a 

lame and miserable judge, if he have not irresistible power to waste and 

destroy. 2. The king cannot be happy, nor the people safe, nor can the 

king do good in saving the needy, except he have the uncontrollable and 

unlimited power of a tyrant to crush the poor and needy, and lay waste 

the mountain of the Lord's inheritance. Such court-ravens who feed upon 

the souls of living kings, are more cruel than ravens and vultures, who 

are but dead carcases.



Williams, bishop of Ossory, answereth to the maxim, Salus populi, &c. 

"No wise king but will carefully provide for the people's safety, 

because his safety and honour is included in theirs, his destruction in 

theirs." And it is, saith Lipsius, egri animi proprium nihil diu pati. 

Absalom was persuaded there was no justice in the land when he intendeth 

rebellion; and the poor Prelate, following him, spendeth pages to prove 

that goods, life, chastity, and fame, dependeth on the safety of the 

king, as the breath of our nostrils, our nurse-father, our head, corner-

stone, and judge (c. 17, 8, 18, 1). The reason why all disorder was in 

church and state was not because there was no judge, no government; none 

can be so stupid as to imagine that. But because, 1. They wanted the 

most excellent of governments, 2. Because aristocracy was weakened so as 

there was no right. No doubt priests there were, but (Hos. iv.) either 

they would not serve, or were over-awed. No doubt in those days they had 

judges, but priests and judges were stoned by a rascally multitude, and 

they were not able to rule; therefore it is most consonant to Scripture 

to say, Salus regis suprema populi salus, the safety of the king and his 

prerogative royal is the safest sanctuary for the people." So Hos. iii. 

4; Lament, ii. 9.



Ans. 1. — The question is not of the wisdom, but of the power of the 

king, if it should be bounded by no law.



2. The flatterer may know, there be more foolish kings in the world than 

wise, and that kings misled with idolatrous queens, and by name Ahab 

ruined himself, and his posterity and kingdom.



3. The salvation and happiness of men standing in the exalting of 

Christ's throne and the gospel, therefore every king and every man will 

exalt the throne; and so let them have an uncontrollable power, without 

constraint of law, to do what they list, and let no bounds be set to 

kings over subjects. By this argument their own wisdom is a law to lead 

them to heaven.



4. It is not Absalom's mad malcontents in Britain, but there were really 

no justice to protestants, — all indulgence to papists, popery, 

Arminianism, — idolatry printed, preached, professed, rewarded by 

authority, parliaments and church assemblies; the bulwarks of justice 

and religion were denied, dissolved, crushed, &c.



5. That by a king he understandeth a monarch, (Judg. xvii.) and that 

such a one as Saul, of absolute power, and not a judge, cannot be 

proved, for there were no kings in Israel in the judges' days, — the 

government not being changed till near the end of Samuel's government.



6. And that they had no judges, he saith, it is not imaginable. But I 

rather believe God than the Prelate. Every one did what was right in his 

own eyes, because there was none to put ill-doers to shame. Possibly the 

estates of Israel governed some way for mere necessity, but wanting a 

supreme judge, which they should have, they were loose; but this was not 

because where there is no king, as P. P. would insinuate, there was no 

government, as is dear.



7. Of tempered and limited monarchy I think as honourably as the 

Prelate, but that absolute and unlimited monarchy is more excellent than 

aristocracy, I shall then believe when royalists shall prove such a 

government, in so far as it is absolute, to be of God.



8. That aristocracy was now weakened I believe not, seeing God so highly 

commendeth it, and calleth it his own reigning over his people. (1 Sam. 

viii. 7.) The weakening of it through abuse is not to a purpose, more 

than the abuse of monarchy.



9. No doubt, saith he, (Hos. iv.) they were priests and judges, but they 

were over-awed, as they are now. I think he would say, (Hos. iii. 4,) 

otherwise he citeth Scripture sleeping, that the priests of Antichrist 

be not only over-awed, but out of the earth. I yield that the king be 

limited, not over-awed, I think God's law and man's law alloweth.



10. The safety of the king, as king, is not only safety, but a blessing 

to church and state, and therefore this P. Prelate and his fellows 

deserve to be hanged before the sun, who have led him on a war to 

destroy him and his protestant subjects. But the safety and flourishing 

of a king, in the exerases of an arbitrary unlimited power against law 

and religion, and to the destruction of his subjects, is not the safety 

of the people, nor the safety of the king's soul, which these men, if 

they be the priests of the Lord, should care for.



The Prelate cometh to refute the learned and worthy Observator. The 

safety of the people is the supreme law, therefore the king is bound in 

duty to promote all and every one of his subjects to all happiness. The 

Observator hath no such inference, the king is bound to promote some of 

his subjects, even as king, to a gallows, especially Irish rebels, and 

many bloody malignants. But the Prelate will needs have God. rigorous 

(hallowed be his name) if it be so; for it is impossible to the 

tenderest-hearted father to do so. Actual promotion of all is 

impossible. That the king intend it of all his subjects, as good 

subjects, by a throne established on righteousness and judgment is that 

which the worthy Observator meaneth. Other things here are answered.



The sum of his second answer is a repetition of what he hath said. I 

give my word, in a pamphlet of one hundred and ninety-four pages, I 

never saw more idle repetitions of one thing twenty times before said; 

but (p. 168) he saith, "The safety of the king and his subjects, in the 

moral notion, may be esteemed morally the same, no less than the soul 

and the body make one personal subsistence."



Ans. — This is strange logic. The king and his subjects are ens per 

aggregationem, and the king, as king, hath one moral subsistence, and 

the people another. Hath the father and the son, the master and the 

servant, one moral subsistence? But the man speaketh of their well-

being, and then he must mean that our king's government — that was not 

long ago, and is yet, to wit, the popery, Arminianism, idolatry, cutting 

off men's ears and noses, banishing, imprisonment for speaking against 

popery, arming of papists to slay protestants, pardoning the blood of 

Ireland, that I fear, shall not be soon taken away, &c., — is 

identically the same with the life, safety, and happiness of 

protestants. Then life and death, justice and injustice, idolatry and 

sincere worship, are identically one, as the soul of the Prelate and his 

body are one.



The third is but a repetition. The acts of royalty (saith the 

Observator) are acts of duty and obligation, therefore, not acts of 

grace properly so called; therefore we may not thank the king for a 

courtesy. This is no consequence. What fathers do to children are acts 

of natural duty and of natural grace, and yet children owe gratitude to 

parents, and subjects to good kings, in a legal sense. No, but in way of 

courtesy only. The observator said, the king is not a father to the 

whole collective body, and it is well said he is son to them, and they 

his maker. Who made the king? Policy answereth, The state made him, and 

divinity, God made him.



The Observator said well, the people's weakness is not the king's 

strength. The Prelate saith, Amen. He said. That that perisheth not to 

the king, which is granted to the people. The Prelate (p. 170) denieth, 

because, what the king hath in trust from God, the king cannot make away 

to another, nor can any take it from him without sacrilege.



Ans. — True indeed, if the king had royalty by immediate trust and 

infusion by God, as Elias had the spirit of prophecy, that he cannot 

make away. Royalists dream that God, immediately from heaven, now 

infuseth faculty and right to crowns without any word of God. It is 

enough to make an enthusiast leap up to the throne and kill kings. Judge 

if these fanatics be favourers of kings. But if the king have royalty 

mediately, by the people's free consent, from God, there is no reason 

but people give as much power, even by ounce weights, (for power is 

strong wine and a great mocker,) as they know a weak man's head will 

bear, and no more. Power is not an immediate inheritance from heaven, 

but a birthright of the people borrowed from them; they may let it out 

for their good, and resume it when a man is drunk with it. The man will 

have it conscience on the king to fight and destroy his three kingdoms 

for a dream, his prerogative above law. But the truth is, prelates do 

engage the king, his house, honour, subjects, church, for their cursed 

mitres.



The Prelate (p. 172) vexeth the reader with repetitions, and saith, The 

king must proportion his government to the safety of the people on the 

one hand, and to his own safety and power on the other hand.



Ans. — What the king doth as king, he doeth it for the happiness of his 

people. The king is a relative; yea, even his own happiness that he 

seeketh, he is to refer to the good of God's people. He saith farther, 

The safety of the people includeth the safety of the king, because the 

word populus is so taken; which he proveth by a raw, sickly rabble of 

words, stolen out of Passerat's dictionary. His father, the 

schoolmaster, may whip him for frivolous etymologies.



This supreme law, saith the Prelate, (p. 175,) is not above the law of 

prerogative royal, the highest law, nor is rex above lex. The democracy 

of Rome had a supremacy above laws, to make and unmake laws; and will 

they force this power on a monarch, to the destruction of sovereignty?



Ans. — This, which is stolen from Spalato, Barclay, Grotius, and others, 

is easily answered. The supremacy of people is a law of nature's self-

preservation, above all positive laws, and above the king, and is to 

regulate sovereignty, not to destroy it. If this supremacy of majesty 

was in people before they have a king, then, 1. They lose it not by a 

voluntary choice of a king; for a king is chosen for good, and not for 

the people's loss, therefore, they must retain this power, in habit and 

potency, even when they have a king. 2. Then supremacy of majesty is not 

a beam of divinity proper to a king only. 3. Then the people, having 

royal sovereignty virtually in them, make, and so unmake a king, — all 

which the Prelate denieth.



This supreme law (saith the Prelate, p. 176, begging it from Spalato, 

Arnisζus, Grotius) advances the king, not the people; and the sense is, 

the kingdom is really some time in such, a case that the sovereign most 

exercise an arbitrary power, and not stand upon private men's interests, 

or transgressing of laws made for the private good of individuals, but 

for the preservation of itself, and the public, may break through all 

laws. This he may, in the case when sudden foreign invasion threateneth 

ruin inevitably to king and kingdom: a physician may rather cut a 

gangrened member than suffer the whole body to perish. The dictator, in 

case of extreme dangers, (as Livy and Dion. Halicarnast show us,) had 

power according to his own arbitrament, had a sovereign commission in 

peace and war, of life, death, persons, &c., not co-ordinate, not 

subordinate to any.



Ans. 1. — It is not an arbitrary power, but naturally tied and fettered 

to this same supreme law, salus populi, the safety of the people, that a 

king break through not the Law, but the letter of the law, for the 

safety of the people; as the chirurgeon, not by any prerogative that he 

hath above the art of chirurgery, but by necessity, cutteth off a 

gangrened member. Thus it is not arbitrary to the king to save his 

people from ruin, but by the strong and imperious law of the people's 

safety he doth it; for if he did it not, he were a murderer of his 

people. 2. He is to stand upon transgression of laws according to their 

genuine sense of the people's safety; for good laws are not contrary one 

to another, though, when he breaketh through the letter of the law, yet 

he breaketh not the law; for if twenty thousand rebels invade Scotland, 

he is to command all to rise, though the formality of a parliament 

cannot be had to indict the war, as our law provideth; but the king doth 

not command all to rise and defend themselves by prerogative royal, 

proper to him as king, and incommunicable to any but to himself.



1. There is no such din and noise to be made for a king and his 

incommunicable prerogative; for .though the king were not at all, yea, 

though he command the contrary, (as he did when he came against Scotland 

with an English army,) the law of nature teacheth all to rise, without 

the king.



2. That the king command this as king, is not a particular positive law; 

but he doth it as a man and a member of the kingdom. The law of nature 

(which knoweth no dream of such a prerogative) forceth him to it, as 

every member is, by nature's indictment, to care for the whole.



3. It is poor hungry skill in this new statist, (for so he nameth all 

Scotland,) to say that any laws are made for private interests, and the 

good of some individuals. Laws are not laws if they be not made for the 

safety of the people.



4. It is false that the king, in a public danger, is to care for himself 

as a man, with the ruin and loss of any; yea, in a public calamity, a 

good king, as David, is to desire he may die that the public may be 

saved, 2 Sam. xxiv. 17; Exod. xxxii. 32. It is commended of all, that 

the emperor Otho, yea, and Richard II. of England, as M. Speed saith 

(Hist. of England, p. 757,) resigned their kingdoms to eschew the 

effusion of blood. The Prelate adviseth the king to pass over all laws 

of nature, and slay thousands of innocents, and destroy church and state 

of three kingdoms, for a straw, and supposed prerogative royal.



1. Now, certainly, prerogative and absoluteness to do good and ill, must 

be inferior to a law, the end whereof is the safety of the people. For 

David willeth the pestilence may take him away, and so his prerogative, 

that the people may be saved (2. Sam. xxiv. 17); for prerogative is 

cumulative to do good, not privative to do ill; and so is but a mean to 

defend both the law and the people.



2. Prerogative is either a power to do good or ill, or both. If the 

first be said, it must be limited by the end and law for which it is 

ordained. A mean is no farther a mean, but in so far as it conduceth to 

the end, the safety of all. If the second be admitted, it is licence and 

tyranny, not power from God. If the third be said, both reasons plead 

against this, that prerogative should be the king's end in the present 

wars.



3. Prerogative being a power given by the mediation of the people; yea, 

suppose (which is raise) that it were given immediately of God, yet it 

is not a thing for which the king should raise, war against his 

subjects; for God will ask no more of the king than he giveth to him. 

The Lord reapeth not where he soweth not. If the militia, and other 

things, be ordered hitherto for the holding off Irish and Spanish 

invasion by sea, and so for the good of the land, seeing the king in his 

own person cannot make use of the militia, he is to rejoice that his 

subjects are defended. The king cannot answer to God for the justice of 

war on his part. It is not a case of conscience that the king should 

shed blood for, to wit, because the under-officers are such men, and not 

others of his choosing, seeing the kingdom is defended sufficiently 

except where cavaliers destroy it. And to me this is an unanswerable 

argument, that the cavaliers destroy not the kingdoms for this 

prerogative royal, as the principal ground, but for a deeper design, 

even for that which was working by prelates and malignants before the 

late troubles in both kingdoms.



4. The king is to intend the safety of his people, and the safety of the 

king as a governor; but not as this king, and this man Charles, — that 

is a selfish end. A king David is not to look to that; for when the 

people was seeking his life and crown, he saith, (Psal. iii. 8,) "Thy 

blessing upon thy people." He may care for, and intend that the king and 

government be safe; for if the kingdom be destroyed, there cannot be a 

new kingdom and church on earth again to serve God in that generation, 

(Psal. lxxxix. 47.) but they may easily have a new king again; and so 

the satety of the one cannot in reason be intended as a collateral end 

with the safety of the other; for there is no imaginable comparison 

betwixt one man, with all his accidents of prerogative and absoluteness, 

and three national churches and kingdoms. Better the king weep for a 

childish trifle of a prerogative than that popery be erected, and three 

kingdoms be destroyed by cavaliers for their own ends.



5. The dictator's power is, 1. A tact, and proveth not a point of 

conscience. 2. His power was in an exigence of extreme danger of the 

commonwealth. The P. Prelate pleadeih for a constant absoluteness above 

laws to the kin or at all times, and that jure divino, 3. The dictator 

was the people's creature; therefore the creator, the people, had that 

sovereignty over him. 4. The dictator was not above a king; but the 

Romans ejected kings. 5. The dictator's power was not to destroy a 

state: he might be, and was resisted; he might be deposed.



P. Prelate (p. 177). — The safety of the people is pretended as a law, 

that the Jews must put Christ to death, and that Saul spared Agag.



Ans. 1. — No shadow for either in the word of God. Caiaphas prophecied, 

and knew not what he said; but that the Jews intended the salvation of 

the elect, in killing Chnst, or that Saul intended a public good in 

sparing Agag, snall be the Prelate's divinity, not mine. 2. What, 

howbeit many should abuse this law of the people's safety, to wrong good 

kings, it ceaseth not therefore to be a law, and licenceth not ill kings 

to place a tyrannical prerogative above a just dictate of nature.



In the last chapter (c. 16) the Prelate hath no reasons, only he would 

have kings holy, and this he proveth from Apocrypha books, because he is 

ebb in Holy Scripture; but it is Romish holiness, as is clear, — 1. He 

must preach something to himself, that the king adore a tree-altar. Thus 

kings must be most reverend in their gestures (p. 182). 2. The king must 

hazard his sacred life and three kingdoms, his crown, royal posterity, 

to preserve sacred things, that is, anti-christian Romish idols, images, 

altars, ceremonies, idolatry, popery. 4. He must, upon the same-pain, 

maintain sacred persons, that is, greasy apostate prelates. The rest, I 

am weary to trouble the reader withall, but know ex ungue leonem.







[1] Jac. Armini. Declar. Remonstrant. in suod. dordrac.



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[2] Not yet checked against original Aristotle text.