. p. 205. Parl. Hist.
vol. viii, p. 132.

*** State Trials, vol. v. first edit. p. 171.

**** Sir Edward Coke's Reports, twelfth report, p. 18. our
ancestors were, to depend upon his prudence and discretion
in the exercise of them.

This particular reason, as well as all the general principles,
is applicable to the question of the tests; nor can the dangerous
consequence of granting dispensations in that case be ever allowed to be
pleaded before a court of judicature. Every prerogative of the crown, it
may be said, admits of abuse: should the king pardon all criminals, law
must be totally dissolved: should he declare and continue perpetual war
against all nations, inevitable ruin must ensue: yet these powers are
intrusted to the sovereign.

Though this reasoning seems founded on such principles as are
usually admitted by lawyers, the people had entertained such violent
prepossessions against the use which James here made of his prerogative,
that he was obliged, before he brought on Hales's cause, to displace
four of the judges, Jones, Montague, Charleton, and Nevil; and even Sir
Edward Herbert, the chief justice, though a man of acknowledged virtue,
yet, because he here supported the pretensions of the crown, was exposed
to great and general reproach. Men deemed a dispensing to be in effect
the same with a repealing power; and they could not conceive, that less
authority was necessary to repeal than to enact any statute, if one
penal law was dispensed with, any other might undergo the same fate:
and by what principle could even the laws which define property be
afterwards secured from violation? The test act had ever been conceived
the great barrier of the established religion under a Popish successor:
as such it had been insisted on by the parliament; as such granted by
the king; as such, during the debates with regard to the exclusion,
recommended by the chancellor. By what magic, what chicane of law, is it
now annihilated, and rendered of no validity? These questions were every
where asked; and men, straitened by precedents and decisions of great
authority, were reduced either to question the antiquity of this
prerogative itself, or to assert, that even the practice of near five
centuries could not bestow on it sufficient authority.[*]

* Sir Robert Atkins, p. 21.

It was not considered, that the present difficulty or seeming absurdity
had proceeded from late innovations introduce