Richard Baxter's penitent confession and his necessary vindication in answer to a book called…

2. I thought I had been a Rebel, if I had been against the Parliament, the Representative Kingdom, and the salus populi, or bonum publicum; and I thought the Legislative power was the Supreme, and that this power was in King and Parliament conjunct, and that neither of them had power against the other, but that their Union was the constituted summa potestas, which I was bound to endeavour, and their division was the dissolution of the Government: And I thought that all Subjects were under the Law, and that the King might not protect them from his Courts of Judicature.

2. I thought I had been a Rebel, if I had been against the Parliament, the Representative Kingdom, and the salus populi, or bonum publicum; and I thought the Legislative power was the Supream, and that this power was in King and Parliament conjunct, and that neither of them had power against the other, but that their Union was the constituted summa potestas, which I was bound to endeavour, and their division was the dissolution of the Government: And I thought that all Subjects were under the Law, and that the King might not protect them from his Courts of Judicature.

3. I knew that Points of Humane Policy and Laws, are not in our Creed, nor such Controversies so clearly decided in Scripture, as that Salvation should lye on them. Though Rich. Hooker's Opinion was for more popular power than mine, I find not that our Clergy place him in Hell for it or call him the most Bloody Instrument of Rebellion.

4. I have elsewhere showed, that the chief stream of the Writers of Policy, Laws, History, Heathens, and Christians, Papists and Protestants, Lawyers and Divines, doth give so much more power to the people than I do that I have been put oft to confute them. Yet how is Hooker extolled by them? while I that have confuted his popular Principles am a Rebel: King Charles II. verbally by a Declaration diso ned his Fathers Wars; he honoured many Generals, and Colonels of the Parliaments Army with the highest Offices; One of them General Monk by a Parliament Presbyterian Army restored him; yet I that never was a Commander or Soldier, nor ever stroke or hurt Man, or drew a drop of Blood in War, am the great instance of the Rebellion: Who did what I did to avoid the guilt of Rebellion; and to save England from being made like Ireland; where I thought it was Rebellion that Murdered two hundred thousand: And we were then so ignorant of War, that we commonly thought that one Battle would have ended all, and settled peace.