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.