Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	king_n	power_n	religion_n	3,708	5	5.7948	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54578	A discourse concerning liberty of conscience In which are contain'd proposalls, about what liberty in this kind is now politically expedient to be given, and severall reasons to shew how much the peace and welfare of the nation is concern'd therein. By R.T.	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.; Dury, John, 1596-1680.	1661 (1661)	Wing P1881A; ESTC R213028	34,446	118

the Clergy or Laiety of this Land or either of them Which Vote of that House may seem to be grounded on this consideration that a Legislative power is inseparable from the King and Parliament and that if a Parliament would transmit their interest in the Legislative Power to any other order of men they cannot do it more then a Judge can delegate his Authority to his Clerks or any be a Deputies Deputy I shall onely here further observe that the Lawyers whose Obligations on the account of interest to moderate the power of Bishops I have before spoke of are still likely to be a great part of the House of Commons and to have the conduct of Parliamentary Affaires much in their hands and to concur with any party against the Bishops if they should invade the due Liberty of mens Consciences or endeavour to make themselves formidable in the Nation The LAST REASON I shall urge to prove what advantages will redound to the Nation from the allowance of a due Liberty of Conscience is that it will necessarily produce an advancement of our Trade and Traffick the hinderance whereof must needs follow from the contrary practice The largenesse of Trade in any Countrey is most certainly founded in the populousnesse of it 'T is onely in populous Countries that the wages of work-men are cheap whereby a greater store of Manufactures is prepared for Exportation In populous Countries onely they fell their own Commodities dear and buy foreign cheap 'T is there that Land is worth twice as many yeares purchase as elsewhere And in such Countries onely is the fishing Trade carryed on which none will employ themselves in that can live upon the shore reasonably well and which in populous Countries enough will not be able to do This then being laid down as a principle that the wealth of any Nation depends on its populousnesse I may confidently affirm that the populousnesse of a Countrey doth much depend upon the Liberty of Conscience that is there granted The Kingdom of Spain may here serve for this to be Exemplified in where there are not men enough to Manufacture their own Wooll and where there is more black mony Brass or Copper Coin used then in other Nations notwithstanding all the Silver that comes thither from the West-Indies It was the rigour of the Inquisition that brought that Monarch who would have been an universall one to send Ambassadours to his high and mighty subjects But we need not look out of our own Countrey for instances of Trades suffering together with Freedom of Conscience For by reason of the former severity exercised on those that would not conform to the Ceremonies imposed many thousands of people bred up in a way of Trade and Traffick left the Kingdom going some of them to America and others to Holland where our Countrey-men did compensate to the Hollanders for severall Manufactures which they directed us to when the Rage of Duke Alva's persecution occasion'd their residence among us And what could more prejudice the Trade of our Countrey I know not then the peopleing other Countries with our Artificers and the teaching them our Arts and Manufactures And it is considerable that the sort of Trading men on whom the shock of persecution did seem to light most heavily was that of those whose Trades did lie chiefly in advancing our staple-Commodity of Wooll and preparing our Old and New Draperies for Exportation to which Trades the ordinary sort of Puritan Non-Conformists were rather inclined then to ploughing and digging because in these Trades of theirs as namely Weaving Spinning Dressing c. Their Children might read Chapters to them as they were at work and they might think or speak of Religious things or sing Psalmes and yet pursue their Trades Besides these Trades were more suitable to their Constitutions which were generally not so Robust as of others and to the melancholy of their tempers Now these men being frequently disturb'd by Apparitors and summon'd to Ecclesiasticall Courts for working on Holy-Days perhaps or going on a Sunday to some Neighbouring Parish when they had no Sermon in their own or for some such causes were so hinder'd in the course of their Trades that they were necessitated to remove out of the Kingdom They could not expect that Merchants or other Trading persons would imploy them and take their work unlesse they could bring it in at such a set time that it might be as occasion required Exported and sent to Faires and Markets abroad at punctuall times likewise which Merchants are concern'd in taking care of lest their Commodities be undersold Now these Puritan Traders were not in a capacity to dispatch the sending in of their Manufactures to others at the time agreed on by reason of their frequent Citations to and Delays at the Bishops Courts And since other Nations have now the way of making Cloath as namely France Holland and Flanders if we do not sell it cheaper then they we shall hardly have any abroad sold at all To conclude the Examination of this particular affaire not any that hath search'd at all into the nature of the Trade of this Nation but believes that the best way to advance it would be to call in and invite any Protestant strangers to come and live among us and to encourage Artists of all Nations to come and plant themselves here which cannot be done without the giving them a due Liberty of Conscience and if it be our interest to encourage strangers and give them this Liberty this dealing may much more be expected by our own natives But 't is needlesse to insist longer in giving plain reasons for a plain proposition I shall onely therefore before I now draw this discourse about the due Liberty of Conscience that is fit to be practised in this Nation toward an end shew that thereby the Reverend Fathers of the Churche the Bishops will find their inter●st advanc'd in particular as well as the interest of the Nation in generall If any man shall say that the Government of the Church by Bishops is the most pure and Apostolicall I am firmly of his opinion yet as No Bishop no King is now no uncontradicted Maxim so is it lesse unquestion'd that no force in matters of Religion no Bishop But notwithstanding the severity that hath been exercised on mens Consciences by former Prelats such is the prudence of some of the present Fathers of the Church that they will I believe see it to be as much their interest to give Liberty of Conscience as it can be the interest of any men to receive it And indeed if this were but in a fair manner distributed among the severall Sects I have spoken of they would no more endeavour the destruction of the Episcopall Clergy then the Iews at Rome tolerated do design the ruine of the Pope Nay further these Sects having liberty under their Government would serve them as a ballance against popular envy I have often wish'd that our Nobility

the Church hath any spark of it but from him 'T is there said how the Legats were of opinion that the question of the Divine Right of Bishops was set on foot to gratifie the Authority of Bishops and that the importance of that might be to inferre that the Keys were not given to Peter onely that the Council was above the Pope and the Bishops equall to him they saw that the Dignity of Cardinals Superiour to Bishops was quite taken away and the Court brought to nothing that the Preventions and Reservations were remov'd and the Collation of Benefices drawn to the Bishops Thus we see how apt men are to make use of Divine Right as fire and to count it a good servant but a bad Master Nor are some without their feares that if Bishops were here publickly own'd as by Divine Right that the King would quickly lose his Power of nominating them and subjects the benefit of Appeals from their Courts to the King in Chancery I acknowledg that a moderate Episcopacy is generally reputed of Church-Governments the best But the believers of the Divine Right of it are of late years grown very few For the skirmishes in the Presse and Pulpit concerning it between the Divines of severall parties have occasion'd two popular reasons to be brought against it which how valid they are is not my task to determine The first is this That is not likely to be of Divine positive Right which is the Right here meant about which Christians equally considerable for strength of parts both naturall and acquired and for time spent in that part of Controversiall Divinity that concerns Church-Discipline and withall for holinesse in their lives do at last disagree The second Reason drawn from the eager Disputes of Church-men about their severall Divine Rights is this Nothing really oppressive of Civil Societies or destructive of their welfare is of Divine Right but so these forms of Church-Government have been by the opposite Divines of each Perswasion accused to be and likewise by other persons It hath been further observ'd by many that though severall things were once confirm'd in the Church by an Apostolicall Precept or Practise they are like Lawes abolish'd by desuetude and do not now oblige the Christian world according to the Vogue of all our Church-men as namely the Diaconissae the Anointing the sick with Oyle the Peoples saying Amen after the Ministers Prayers and Preaching with the head uncover'd c. To conclude the Examination then of this particular a considerable number of the Laity whose Fortunes and Parts do keep them from standing up and drawing their swords to maintain other mens Creeds in every circumstance of them having by the contests of the Clergy found out as they think the Vanity of all their pretendings to Divine Right will not encourage immoderate and high behaviours in any one party of them but upon this their imagin'd detection adhere to that form of Church-Government that shall seem to them most consistent with the Nations good just as the Roman Emperours were sometimes chosen in the Camp Evulgato as Tacitus saith Imperiarcano Principem alibi quam Romae fieri posse Thirdly it is naturall to Parliaments to check any Power that invades a due Liberty of Conscience themselves wanting it as well as those whom they represent Nor can any body of men be well without it as we see in the late Assembly of Divines that party which joyn'd against the Independents did want Liberty of Conscience about no mean points in Religion some of those Presbyterian Divines as they were call'd being of Calvins and others of Bishop Davenants opinions concerning Election and Reprobation And moreover the Parliament that call'd that Synod was in matters of Religion much more divided But I shall chuse to look further back on the nature of our Parliaments in reference to Religion It cannot be expected that while Popery was prevalent in England much Liberty of Conscience should be granted the Pope being then reputed the Vicar of Christ in Spirituall things was necessarily to be obey'd therein And yet notwithstanding the Authority he had here no man suffer'd death for opposing his Dictates in Religion till the second of Henry the fourth Nor are there wanting Lawyers and those both Learned in their Profession and in this case uninteressed who deny that this Statute was ever more then a pretended one and say that it was never assented to by the Commons and that whereas in the Act it self it is said Praelati clerus supradicti ac etiam communitates dicti regni supplicarunt that those words Communitates dicti regni are not in the Parliament-Roll in which when the Law comes to be Enacted it runs in this form of words Qui quidem Dominus Rex ex assensu magnatum aliorum procerum ejusdem Regni concessit statuit c. where the Commons are not at all named See Mr. Bagshaw of the Temple his Reading on the Statute of 25. Edward the III. call'd Statutum pro clero p. 32. But that de facto this Statute went currant for Law the cruell effects of it did too clearly shew Yet as high as the Popish Clergy then was with whom that usurping King complyed the Commons petition'd the King to take away their Temporal Possessions and that the Statute made against Lollards in the second year of the King might be repeal'd And by the complaint of the Commons as appeares by the Statute of 25. Henry the VIII it was then in part repeal'd Afterward in a Parliament held Vicesimo octavo of the Queen the Commons quarrell'd with the Excessive Power of the Clergy desiring to have it restrain'd both in the conferring of Orders and in their Censures and Oath Ex officio 'T is true the Foundation of the high Commission is built upon the Statute of the first of Queen Elizabeth but the design of that was chiefly to destroy the interest of the Popish Clergy then not exterminated In the Reigns of following Princes a party known by the Name of Puritan had obtain'd a large Vogue in Parliament insomuch that that party and another call'd the Patriots a sort of men who were Zealots for the welfare of the Nation though not for any Religion being frequently in conjunction were the over-ballancing party in the House of Commons And in the last Parliament on the fifteenth of December 1640. It was resolv'd nemine contradicen●e That the Clergy of England Convented in any Convocation or Synod or otherwise have no power to make any Constitutions Canons or Acts whatsoever in matter of Doctrine or otherwise to bind the Clergy or Layety of this Land without the Commons consent in Parliament and that the severall Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall treated upon by the Arch-Bishops of Canterbury and York and the rest of the Bishops and Clergie of those Provinces and agreed upon by the Kings Majesties Licence in their severall Synods began at London and York 1640. do not bind