ily statutes and ordinances, enjoining such pains
thereto as he thinks meet, without any advice of parliament or estates,
yet it lies in the power of no parliament to make any kind of law or
statute, without his sceptre be to it, for giving it the force of a law."
King James's Works, p. 202. It is not to be supposed that, at such a
critical juncture, James had so little sense as directly, in so material
a point, to have openly shocked what were the universal established
principles of that age: on the contrary, we are told by historians, that
nothing tended more to facilitate his accession, than the good opinion
entertained of him by the English on account of his learned, and
judicious writings. The question, however, with regard to the royal
power, was at this time become a very dangerous point; and without
employing ambiguous, insignificant terms, which determined nothing, it
was impossible to please both king and parliament. Dr. Cowell, who had
magnified the prerogative in words too intelligible, fell this session
under the indignation of the commons. Parliament. Hist vol. v. p. 221.
The king himself after all his magnificent boasts, was obliged to make
his escape through a distinction which he framed between a king in
abstracto and a king in concreto: an abstract king, he said, had all
power; but a concrete king was bound to observe the laws of the country
which he governed. King James's Works, p. 533. But how bound? by
conscience only? or might his subjects resist him, and defend their
privileges? This he thought not fit to explain. And so difficult is it
to explain that point, that to this day, whatever liberties may be used
by private inquirers, the laws have very prudently thought proper to
maintain a total silence with regard to it.]

[Footnote 53: NOTE AAA, p. 434. Parliament. Hist. vol. v. p. 290. So
little fixed at this time were the rules of parliament, that the commons
complained to the peers of a speech made in the upper house by the
bishop of Lincoln; which it belonged only to that house to censure, and
which the other could not regularly be supposed to be acquainted with.
These at least are the rules established since the parliament became
a real seat of power and scene of business: neither the king must take
notice of what passes in either house, nor either house of what passes
in the other, till regularly informed of it. The commons, in their
famous protestation 1621, fixed this rule with regard to th