Principles of western civilisation

484 WESTERN CIVILISATION

Peter: “‘ Whatsoever thou shalt bind,” etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God, unless he makes believe, like the Manichean, that there are two beginnings. ‘This we consider false and heretical, since by the testimony of Moses, not ‘‘in the beginnings,” but “in the beginning” God created the Heavens and the earth. Indeed we declare, announce and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff. The Lateran, Nov. 14, in our Sth year. As a perpetual memorial of this matter.

6. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.

Reprinted by permission from S. R. Gardiner’s Constituttonal Documents of the Puritan Revolution, (January 15, 164§. Old Parliamentary History, xviii. 5109. See Great Civil War, iv. 295.) An Agreement of the People of England, and the places therewith incorporated, for a secure and present peace, upon grounds of common right, freedom, and safety.

Having, by our late labours and hazards, made it appear to the world at how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned our cause as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we do now hold ourselves bound, in mutual duty to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition and the chargeable remedy of another war; for as it cannot be imagined that so many of our countrymen would have opposed us in this quarrel if they had understood their own good, so may we hopefully promise to ourselves, that when our common rights and liberties shall be cleared, their endeavours will be disappointed that seek to make themselves our masters. Since, therefore, our former oppressions and not-yet-ended troubles have been occasioned either by want of frequent national meetings in council, or by the undue or unequal constitution thereof, or by rendering those meetings ineffectual, we are fully agreed and resolved, God willing, to provide, that hereafter our Representatives be neither left to an uncertainty for times nor be unequally constituted, nor made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto we declare and agree,

First. That to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the long continuance of the same persons in supreme authority, this present Parliament end and dissolve upon, or before, the last day of April 1649.