James VI and I Quotes

Beware in making your sporters your councellors, and delight not to keepe ordinarily in your companie comedians or balladines.

Keep you therefore all in your own bounds, and for my part, I desire you to give me no more right in my private prerogative, then you give to any subject; and therein I will be acquiescent: As for the absolute prerogative of the Crown, that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is lawful to be disputed.
It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: good Christians content themselves with his will revealed in his word. So, it is presumption and high contempt in the subject, to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this, or that; but rest in that which is the king's revealed will in his law.

If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. … No bishop, no King!

I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions...Let [the Papists] assure themselves, that, as I am a friend of their persons, if they be good subjects, so am I a vowed enemy, and do denounce mortal war to their errors.

The House of Commons is a body without a head. The Members give their opinions in a disorderly manner. At their meetings nothing is heard but cries, shouts, and confusion. I am surprised that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution to come into existence. I am a stranger and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of.

Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.

God gives not kings the style of gods in vain, For on His Throne His sceptre do they sway; And as their subjects ought them to obey,
So kings should fear and serve their God again.
If then ye would enjoy a happy reign, Observe the statutes of your Heavenly King, And from His Law make all your laws to spring,
Since His lieutenant here ye should remain: Reward the just; be steadfast, true, and plain; Repress the proud, maintaining aye the right; Walk always so as ever in His sight,
Who guards the godly, plaguing the profane, And so ye shall in princely virtues shine, Resembling right your mighty king divine.

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. There be three principal similitudes that illustrate the state of monarchy: One taken out of the word of God; and two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens patriae, the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.

I commend unto your special care, as some of you of late have done very well, to blunt the sharp edge and vain popular humour of some lawyers at the bar, that think they are not eloquent and bold spirited enough, except they meddle with the king's prerogative: But do not you suffer this; for certainly if this liberty be suffered, the king's prerogative, the Crown, and I, shall be as much wounded by their pleading, as if you resolved what they disputed: That which concerns the mystery of the king's power, is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of princes, and to take away the mystical reverence, that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.