Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/254

238 myteries of the , was not uffered to be pried into by any but uch as were initiated in it's ervice: becaue perhaps the exertion of the one, like the olemnities of the other, would not bear the inpection of a rational and ober enquiry. The glorious queen Elizabeth herelf made no cruple to direct her parliaments to abtain from dicouring of matters of tate ; and it was the contant language of this favorite princes and her miniters, that even that augut aembly “ought not to deal, to judge, or to meddle, with her majety’s prerogative royal .” And her ucceor, king James the firt, who had imbibed high notions of the divinity of regal way, more than once laid it down in his peeches, that “as it is atheim and blaphemy in a creature to dipute what the deity may do, o it is preumption and edition in a ubject to dipute what a king may do in the height of his power: good chritians, he adds, will be content with God’s will, revealed in his word; and good ubjects will ret in the king’s will, revealed in his law ."

, whatever might be the entiments of ome of our princes, this was never the language of our antient constitution and laws. The limitation of the regal authority was a firt and eential principle in all the Gothic ytems of government etablihed in Europe; though gradually driven out and overborne, by violence and chicane, in mot of the kingdoms on the continent. We have een, in the preceding chapter, the entiments of Bracton and Fortecue, at the ditance of two centuries from each other. And ir Henry Finch, under Charles the firt, after the lape of two centuries more, though he lays down the law of prerogative in very trong and emphatical terms, yet qualifies it with a general reriction, in regard to the liberties of the people. “The king hath a prerogative in all things, that are not injurious to the ubject; for in them all it mut be remembered, that the king’s prerogative tretcheth not to the doing of any wrong .” Nihil enim