Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A56398
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A reproof to the Rehearsal transprosed, in a discourse to its authour by the authour of the Ecclesiastical politie.
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Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.
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1673
(1673)
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Wing P473; ESTC R1398
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225,319
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538
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whole Chapters in my first Book to prove that as the opposite opinion is no less than rank Atheism or Blasphemy so it utterly subverts the Power of all Government and irrecoverably destroys the safety of all societies in the World This Confidence of yours is so provoking that I cannot but wonder your ears have not done Penance for the rudeness of your Tongue Macedo thou art able to outforge and outbrazen ten Macedos And yet so assured are the drivers of the dissenting Herd and so silly the Creatures they stear that there is scarce a Shop-Divine in the whole Nation that does not as heartily believe this unhoopable Jurisdiction to be the only design of all my Books as he does the ten Commandments to be obligatory or the Apostles Creed to be true But when my innocence as to this charge is so infinitely clear and when they have nothing to object against me or to plead in their own behalf but upon its presumption that is a demonstrative Argument of a bassled and defenceless cause that can be defended with no other weapon but impudent and bare-faced Calumny And now when you have once taken this for granted away you run clattering with abundance of noise and nothing till you fall into another story full as lowd and ratling as this That I have complemented his Majesty so far as to inform him that he may if he please reserve the Priesthood and the exercise of it to himself So said J. O. too and was very pleasant in his Remarques upon it but was I suppose sufficiently satisfied or at least silenced with this plain and simple Answer That in the Paragraph against which this Objection is level'd I undertook to give a brief Historical account of the Original of all Civil and Ecclesiastical Government where I shewed how in the first Ages of the World they were vested in the same Person and founded upon the same Right of paternal Authority and in this State of things antecedent to all superinduced Restraints and positive Institutions I asserted the supreme Magistrate might if he pleased reserve the exercise of the Priesthood to himself And so all Writers that I know of assert as well as I. Though afterwards the Priestly office was in the Jewish Common-wealth expresly derogated from the Kingly Power by being setled upon the Tribe of Levi and the Line of Aaron and so likewise in the Christian Church by being appropriated to the Apostles and their Successors that derive their Priestly Office and Power from our Blessed Saviours express and immediate Commission Now what I affirm'd of things in the bare State of Nature without the guidance of Revelation for this man to represent it as if I had applyed it indifferently to all Ages and Periods of the Church by whatsoever positive Laws and different Institutions they may be govern'd is wonderfully suitable to the Genius of his own Wit and Ingenuity But though I think I have passed so high a Complement upon his Majesty this only troubles you how his Majesty would look in all the Sacerdotal Habiliments and the Pontisical Wardrobe Alas good man Your tender heart would not serve you to behold the Ceremonies of the Coronation The Rebels Wounds bled too fresh in your Memory it would have rubb'd up all the late sad spectacles at Cheering-Cross and minded you of all those choice ones that were hang'd to make way for this great Solemnity for whose sakes the 29. of May is annually observed among the secret ones as a day of private humiliation to bemoan the loss and commemorate the Martyrdom of so many anointed and precious Brethren But as for the malicious Consequence that you out of stark staring Love to the Church of which you are so enamour'd that it even joys your Heart to hear any thing well said of her suggest upon this Occasion that then he may and it is all the reason in the World he should assume the Revenue too it only shews your Judgment at nicking a Lucky juncture of Affairs When you have put the King in mind of his Coronation-Oath in which he swears to protect and defend the Bishops and the Churches under their Government to preserve their Canonical Privileges to confirm the Laws Customes and Franchises granted to the Clergy by the glorious King St. Edward and all other Kings of England his Lawful and Religious Predecessours Immediately whilst this Oath is piping hot to advise him to disfranchise them from the common rights of all Subjects and to invade their Proprieties not only contrary to his solemn Oath but to the most ancient and most ratified Laws of the Realm But methinks it more concerns the Parliament than any private man to chastise such bold and lavish talk as plainly subverts the very foundations of all our Proprieties in that the Churches Rights and Revenues are vested in her by as firm and fundamental Laws as any by which you or I can hold or claim our Estates so that the Laws of England have made but a very silly provision for any mans Birthright if they are not a sufficient security for the Churches Patrimony And it becomes such a tender assertor of the English Liberties to insinuate the subversion of those Laws upon which alone they are founded I hope you will be consider'd for your pains at least for your good will it is no wonder to see you upon all occasions so afraid of Pillories and Whipping-Posts for if you are resolved to follow these courses and at last go uncropt to your Grave it will be a scandal to the Justice of the Nation But before I quit this Master-Calumny of the unhoopable Magistrate it will not be improper to take an account of your Hoops and Hola's that relate to it for when you have acted over your six Plays you begin them all afresh for you have at least eleven or twelve distinct Beginnings and run them together with some few coincident passages all down with Hoops and Hola's i. e. with noise and confidence The first next to these I have answer'd is that I have asserted the unhoopable Power wherewith I have invested Princes to be their Natural Right and Antecedent to Christ c. But oh the Consequence then his Majesty may lay by his Dieu and make use only of his Mon-droit Hoop and Hola hold not too lowd for it does not so necessarily follow that because he has his Patent under the Broad-Seal of Nature that therefore he derived it not from God for as much as Nature it self has no power of making grants but all its Commissions are sign'd only by the Author of Nature and all Natural Rights whatsoever are the Immediate Gifts of his Providence that has order'd and disposed the frame of Nature according to his own Sovereign Will and Pleasure and therefore you must resolve all Natural Rights as well as all Natural Laws into his Authority for though Nature may discover yet it is only he that passes and enacts them