h matrons,
to blow up the senate, and burn his metropolis, openly to renounce God
and Christ, and worship the devil. These and the like exorbitances are
in the power of a single person to commit without the advice of a
ministry, or assistance of an army. And if such a king as I have
described, cannot be deposed but by his own consent in parliament, I do
not well see how he can be resisted, or what can be meant by a limited
monarchy; or what signifies the people's consent in making and repealing
laws, if the person who administers hath no tie but conscience, and is
answerable to none but God. I desire no stronger proof that an opinion
must be false, than to find very great absurdities annexed to it; and
there cannot be greater than in the present case: For it is not a bare
speculation that kings may run into such enormities as are
above-mentioned; the practice may be proved by examples not only drawn
from the first Caesars or later emperors, but many modern princes of
Europe; such as Peter the Cruel, Philip the Second of Spain, John
Basilovitz[12] of Muscovy, and in our own nation, King John, Richard the
Third, and Henry the Eighth. But there cannot be equal absurdities
supposed in maintaining the contrary opinion; because it is certain,
that princes have it in their power to keep a majority on their side, by
any tolerable administration; till provoked by continual oppressions, no
man indeed can then answer where the madness of the people will stop.

[Footnote 12: Peter the Cruel is Pedro of Castile. Ivan Basilovitz was
the first emperor of Russia who assumed the title of Czar. He was born
in 1529, and died in 1584.]

As to the second part of the objection; whether the people of England
convened by their own authority, upon King James's precipitate
departure, had power to alter the succession?

In answer to this, I think it is manifest from the practice of the
wisest nations, and who seem to have had the truest notions of freedom,
that when a prince was laid aside for mal-administration, the nobles and
people, if they thought it necessary for the public weal, did resume the
administration of the supreme power (the power itself having been always
in them) and did not only alter the succession, but often the very form
of government too; because they believed there was no natural right in
one man to govern another, but that all was by institution, force, or
consent. Thus, the cities of Greece, when they drove out their
t