_T. H._ My sixth paradox he calls a rapper. A rapper, a swapper, and such like terms, are his Lordship’s elegancies. But let us see what this rapper is: it is this; the civil laws are the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest. Truly, I see no other rules they have. The Scriptures themselves were made law to us here, by the authority of the commonwealth, and are therefore part of the law civil. If they were laws in their own nature, then were they laws over all the world, and men were obliged to obey them in America, as soon as they should be shown there, though without a miracle, by a friar. What is unjust, but the transgression of a law? _Law_ therefore was before unjust: and the law was made known by sovereign power before it was a law: therefore _sovereign power_ was antecedent both to _law_ and _injustice_. Who then made unjust but sovereign kings or sovereign assemblies? Where is now the wonder of this rapper, _that lawful kings make those things which they command just, by commanding them, and those things which they forbid unjust, by forbidding them_? Just and unjust were surely made. If the king made them not, who made them else? For certainly the breach of a civil law is a sin against God. Another calumny which he would fix upon me, is, that I make the King’s verbal commands to be laws. How so? Because I say, _the civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him that hath the sovereign power, concerning the future actions of his subjects_. What verbal command of a king can arrive at the ears of all his subjects, which it must do ere it be a law, without the seal of the person of the commonwealth, which is here the Great Seal of England? Who, but his Lordship, ever denied that the command of England was a law to Englishmen? Or that any but the King had authority to affix the Great Seal of England to any writing? And who did ever doubt to call our laws, though made in Parliament, the King’s laws? What was ever called a law, which the King did not assent to? Because the King has granted in divers cases not to make a law without the advice and assent of the lords and commons, therefore when there is no parliament in being, shall the Great Seal of England stand for nothing? What was more unjustly maintained during the Long Parliament, besides the resisting and murdering of the King, than this doctrine of his Lordship’s? But the Bishop endeavoured here to make the multitude believe I maintain, that the King sinneth not, though he bid hang a man for making his apparel otherwise than he appointed, or his servant for negligent attendance. And yet he knew I distinguished always between the King’s natural and politic capacity. What name should I give to this wilful slander? But here his Lordship enters into passion, and exclaims: _Where are we, in Europe or in Asia? Gross, palpable, pernicious flattery, poisoning of a commonwealth, poisoning the King’s mind._ But where was his Lordship when he wrote this? One