ONE of the MSS. given by Bishop Barlow to the Library of Queen's College, U. 16. b. p. 90, contains a memorandum that this Case of the Engagement was drawn up in answer to inquiries from T. Washbourne, Presbyter in Gloucestershire.'

The Letter containing Mr. Washbourne's inquiries, to which reference is expressly made in the opening of the Case, pp. 20, 21, is here given from Papers preserved in Lincoln College. And the entire Case is exhibited, in a more genuine and complete form than has ever appeared before, from the Original in Sanderson's own handwriting which is in the possession of that Society. Sanderson, it will be observed, speaks of this as the only perfect Copy he had. p. 35 below.

SIR,

THINK it not strange that this Paper salutes you from a strange hand; for though my name perhaps be unknown to you, yet cannot you be unknown to me, being deservedly honoured by all the remaining honest part of the Clergy of England for your learning and integrity, which shines bright to them even in these dark times. I heartily wish both the Church and University might have enjoyed the benefit of your studies in the public exercise of that eminent place to which you were called; but seeing the iniquity of the times deprive* us of that happiness, I hope and am confident you will not deny me your private opinion, which I humbly and earnestly entreat in a Case of Conscience, not to ensnare you, but to resolve myself. Had my wife's father, Dr. Fell, late Dean of Christ Church, and your friend, been now alive, I should have made him my pilot in this storm. But since God hath taken him away, I desire you would supply the place of a father in your counsel. And although it be not safe pinning one's faith on another's sleeve in points of Religion, yet in doubtful Cases, where arguments on both sides stand like rocks to split me, I had rather sail by your compass than mine own; and look, what

you conclude lawful or unlawful, I shall submit unto and acquiesce in as an Oracle.

The occasion moving me thus to trouble you is this. I am now required to subscribe the New Engagement: the penalty of refusing may prove the loss of my Church Living, which is the main subsistence of my family, a wife and five or six small children. But I thank God I have learned not to put the world in the one scale, when my soul is in the other; or, if I weigh them in the same balance, I know which should preponderate. As therefore I would not be flattered into a conceit that I may safely, without making shipwreck of a good Conscience, take the Engagement, which many do who are more learned, and would be thought as conscientious as the best, so would I not precipitately ruin myself in my temporal estate by an over-preciseness in refusing what is not repugnant to the Rule of Faith, by which every Christian, and especially a Minister of Christ, ought to steer his course. Give me leave then to propose the most common Arguments urged for the subscription; and the solution of them I assure myself you will easily and speedily return me by this bearer.

1. That it is only a Promise, not an Oath, and consequently not so obliging the Conscience, but only pro tempore, whilst the State stands in force; and that when the lawful Heir to the Crown shall come in place, it is void, &c.

2. That it is but a Civil Engagement, requiring no more than a passive obedience to the present Power, which I cannot resist, and therefore must submit to it.

3. That it is but just to promise fidelity, though to an unjust Power, under whom I live and from whom I have protection. 4. That it is the constant and avowed practice in frontier towns for the inhabitants to take an Oath to be true to that party which possesseth the place; and as soon as that party is ejected, they are freed from the Oath, and swear to be faithful to the contrary party.

5. That the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance (for the Covenant I never took) bind not to impossibilities; and since the Government is altered against my will, as I am not able, so I am not obliged to defend the King's person and authority, &c. 6. That the present Power, though usurped, is the only Power exstant; and we must be subject to that or none. And how can it be sin to promise what I cannot choose but perform, viz. to be true and faithful to the Parliament, &c? for had I the will to betray or oppose them, I want the ability.

7. That by not subscribing I become a prey to them, and thereby am made utterly unable, in a civil capacity, to serve the rightful Prince, if he should come in place to demand my assistance. 8. That the King, both before and since his coming into Scotland, hath (if strong report of some may be credited, who stick not to say they have it from his own mouth) given leave to his subjects rather to subscribe than suffer the loss of their estates.

In your Resolution, I crave not only an answer to these few, and, it may be, frivolous Objections to your sound and more discerning judgment, but to any other of weight or consequence which you can think upon for my further satisfaction. So doing, you will engage me to subscribe myself,

Sir, your true and faithful friend

Dombleton in Gloucestershire,

and servant in Christ,

THO. WASHBourne.

Jan. the 7th.

Let me trouble you with this one Query more. Whether, upon supposition that the words of the Engagement may bear a double construction, I may take it in my own sense or in the Imposer's? and whether I ought to ask his interpretation before I subscribe? I add this at the request of a friend who desires to be satisfied in this point.

To my very worthy and much esteemed friend Dr. Sanderson, Rector of Boothby Paynell, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, present these.

THE

CASE OF THE ENGAGEMENT.

SIR,

I HAVE hitherto been very sparing in delivering my opinion concerning the point now most in agitation, viz. of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of subscribing the Engagement, considering the mischiefs that must needs have followed, if it should be once noised abroad that I had given forth any determination in so tickle a point. I could not but foresee on the one side, if I should condemn it as utterly unlawful, how I should be looked upon by those that have all power in their hands, not as a refuser only, but a dissuader also of what they have thought fit to require. And on the other side, if I should allow it in any case lawful, what ill use would certainly be made thereof by multitudes of people, apt to be so far scandalized thereby, as either to swallow it whole without chewing, (that is, resting themselves upon the general determination of the lawfulness to take it hand over head, without due consideration either of the true meaning of it or of other requisite cautions and circumstances,) or else to conceive themselves, by so engaging, to be for ever discharged from the bond of their former allegiance.

Yet since by your Letter, and by sending your servant therewith on purpose so many days' journey, through unknown ways, and at this season of the year (especially as the weather hath proved since his coming forth) scarce passable, you have shown your earnest desire to understand what my opinion is in this point, so great, both for difficulty and concernment, I could not think it fit, nor consistent with that civility which is to be used, especially towards strangers, to send back your messenger without the return of some kind of answer. Wherein, albeit I shall not come up to the full of what your Letter declareth to be your desire, viz. in giving a particular judgment and estimate of the eight several argu

ments therein proposed, and the additional Quaere in the Postscript, yet you shall find something tending towards your satisfaction therein, by touching upon those points, so far as the straits of time would suffer, wherein the difficulty of the whole business seemeth chiefly to consist.

I. First, then, it is to be considered, that Allegiance is a duty that every Subject, under what form of Government soever, by the Law of Nature oweth to his Country, and consequently to the Sovereign Power thereof. For the very same Law (which we may call the Law of Nature, at least in a large acception) which inclineth particular men to grow into one civil body of a Commonwealth, must necessarily withal imprint a sense and tacit acknowledgment of such a duty of Allegiance in every inferior member of the Body, unto the Caput Communitatis, or Sovereign Power, by which that Commonwealth is governed, as is necessary for the preservation of the whole Body. So that the bond of Allegiance doth not arise originally from the Oath of Allegiance, as if those that had not taken the Oath had a greater liberty to act contrary to the Allegiance specified in the Oath than those that have taken it have; or as if, in case the Oath should be quite laid aside, there should be no Allegiance due. But it is so intrinsecal, proper, and essential a duty, and, as it were, fundamental to the relation of a Subject, qua talis, as that the very name of a Subject doth, after a sort, import it: insomuch, that it hath thereupon gained, in common usage of speech, the style of Natural Allegiance.

Whence all these Inferences will follow.

1. That the Bond of Allegiance, whether sworn or not sworn, is in the nature of it perpetual and indispensable.

2. That it is so inseparable from the relation of a Subject, that although the exercise of it may be suspended by reason of a prevailing force, whilst the Subject is under such force, viz. where it cannot be imagined how the endeavour of exercising it can be effectually serviceable to restore the Sovereign Power to the right owner, for the establishment of that public Justice and Peace wherein the happiness of Commonwealths consisteth, yet no outward force can so absolutely take it away or remove it, but that still it remaineth virtually in the Subject, and obligeth to an endeavour, so soon as the force that