Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	follow_v	king_n	scotland_n	2,694	5	8.4812	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54191	A perswasive to moderation to dissenting Christians in prudence and conscience humbly submitted to the King and his great council by one of the humblest and most dutiful of his dissenting subjects.	Penn, William, 1644-1718.	1685 (1685)	Wing P1337A; ESTC R28423	35,496	61

the care of the Government for their safety they have no need of their Captains nor These any ground for their Pretences For as They us'd the People to value themselves and raise their Fortunes with the Prince so the People followed their Leaders to get that ease they see their Heads promis'd but could not and the Government can and does give them Multitudes cannot Plot they are too many and have not Conduct for it they move by another Spring Safety is the pretence of their Leaders If once they see they enjoy it they have yet Wit enough not to hazard it for any Body For the endeavours of busie men are then discernable but a state of Severity gives them a pretence by which the Multitude is easily taken This I say upon a Supposition that the Dissenters could agree against the Government which is a begging of the Question For it is improbable if not impossible without Conformists since besides the Distance they are at in their Perswasions and Affections they dare not hope for so good terms from one another as the Government gives And that Fear with their Emulation would draw them into that Duty that they must all fall into a Natural dependance which I call holding of the Prince as the Great Head of the State From abroad we are as safe as from within our selves For if leading Men at home are thus disappointed of their Interest in the People Forreigners will find here no Interpreters of their dividing Language nor matter if they could to work upon for the Point is gain'd the People they would deal in are at their ease and cannot be bribed and those that would can't deserve it It is this that makes Princes live Independent of their Neighbours and to be lov'd at home is to be fear'd abroad One follows necessarily the other Where Princes are driven to seek a forreign Assistance the issue must either be the Ruin of the Prince or the absolute subjection of the People not without the hazard of becoming a Province to the power of that Neighbour that turns the Scale These consequences have on either hand an ill look and should rebate Extreams The Greatness of France carries those Threats to all her Neighbours that politically speaking 't is the Melanchollist prospect England has had to make since Eighty Eight The Spaniard at that time being shorter in all things but his Pride and Hope than the French King is now of the same universal Monarchy This greatness begun by the eleaventh Lewis some will have it has not been so much advanced by the Wisdom of Richlieu and Craft of Mazarene no not the Arms of the present Monarch as by the assistance or connivance of England that has most to lose by him Cromwell begun and gave him the Scale against the Spaniard The Reason of State he went upon was the support of his usurp'd Dominion And he was not out in it for the Exile of the Royal Family was a great part of the price of that Aid In which we see how much Interest prevails above Nature It was not Royal Kindred could shelte a King against the Solicitations of an Vsurper with the Son his Mother's Brother But it will be told us by some People We have n●● degenerated but exactly follow'd the same Steps ever since which has given such an Increase to those Beginnings that the French Monarchy is almost above our reach But suppose it were true what 's the cause of it It has not been old Friendship or nearness of Blood or Neighbourhood Nor could it be from an Inclination in our Ministers to bring things here to a like issue as some have suggested for then we should have clogg'd his Successes instead of helping them in any kind lest in doing so we should have put it into his power to hinder our own But perhaps our cross Accidents of State may sometimes have compell'd us into his Friendship and his Councils have carefully improv'd the one and husbanded the other to great Advantages and that this was more then made for our English Interest and yet 't is but too true that the extreams Heats of some men that most inveighed against it went too far to strengthen that understanding by not taking what would have been granted and creating an Interest at home that might naturally have dissolved that Correspondence abroad I love not to revive things that are uneasily remembred but in Points most tender to the late King he thought himself sometimes too closely prest and hardly held and we are all wise enough now to say a milder Conduct had succeeded better For if reasonable things may be unreasonably prest and with such private Intentions as induced a denial Heats about things doubtful unwise or unjust must needs harden and prejudice Let us then create an Interest for the Prince at Home and Forreign Friendships at best uncertain and dangerous will fall of course for if it be allow'd to private men shall it be forbid to Princes only to know and be true to their own Support It is no more than what every Age makes us to see in all Parties of men The Parliaments of England since the Reformation giving no quarter to Roman Catholicks have forced them to the Crown for shelter And to induce the Monarchy to yield them the Protection they have needed have with mighty Address and Skill recommended themselves as the great Friends of the Prerogative and so successfully too that it were not below the Wisdom of that Constitution to reflect what they have lost by that constiveness of theirs to Cath●licks On the other hand the Crown having treated the Protestant Dissenters with the severity of the Laws that affected them suffering the sharpest of them to fall upon their Persons and Estates they have been driven successively to Parliaments for Succour whose Priviledges with equal Skill and Zeal they have abetted And our late unhappy Wars are too plain a proof how much their Accession gave the Scale against the Power and Courage of both Conformists and Catholicks that adhered to the Crown Nor must this contrary Adhesion be imputed to Love or Hatred but necessary Interest Refusal in one place makes way for Address in another If the Scene be changed the parts must follow for as well before as after Cromwell's Usurpation the Roman Catholicks did not only promise the most ready Obedience to that Government in his Printed Apologies for Liberty of Conscience But actually treated by some of their greatest Men with the Ministers of those Times for Indulgence upon the assurances they offer'd to give of their good Behaviour to the Government as then establisht On the other hand we see the Presbyteriens That in Scotland began the War and in England promoted and upheld it to Forty Seven when ready to be supplanted by the Independants wheel to the King In Scotland they Crown him come into England with an Army to restore him where their Brethren joyn them but being defeated They

yielded their King the ablest Captain of the Age namely Turene It was an Hugenot then at the Head of almost an Hugenot Army that fell in with a cardinal himself see the Union Interest makes to maintain the Imperial Crown of France and that on a Roman-Catholicks head And together with their own Indulgence that Religion as National too against the pretences of a Roman-Catholick Army headed by a Prince brave and learned of the same Religion I mention not this to prefer one party to another for contrary Instances may be given elsewhere as Interests have varied In Sweedland a Prince was rejected by Protestants and in England and Holland and many of the Principalities of Germany Roman-Catholicks have approv'd themselves Loyal to their Kings Princes and States But this suffices to us that we gain the Point for it is evident in Countries where Dissenters are tolerated the Insecurity of the Prince and Government may as well come from the Conforming as Dissenting Party and that it comes not from Dissenters because such But how happy and admirable was this civil Union between the Cardinal and Turene two most opposite Religions both followed by People of their own Perswasion One says his Mass 'tother his Directory both invoke one Deity by several wayes for one success and it followed with Glory and a Peace to this Day O why should it be otherwise now what has been may be Methinks Wisdom and Charity are on that side still It will doubtless be objected that the Dissenting Party of England fell in with the State Dissenter in our late Civil but Vnnatural War And this seems to be against us yet three things must be confessed First That the War rather made the Dissenters than the Dissenters made the War Secondly that those that were then in being were not tolerated as in France but prosecuted And lastly that they did not lead but follow great Numbers of Church-goers of all Qualities in that unhappy Controversie which began upon other Topicks than Liberty for Church-Dissenters And though they were herein blameable Reason is Reason in all Climates and Latitudes This does not affect the Question Such Calamities are no necessary Consequences of Church-dissent because they would then follow in all places where Dissenters are tolerated which we see they do not but these may sometimes indeed be the effects of a violent endeavour of Vniformity and that under all Forms of Goverment as I fear they were partly here under our Monarchy But then this teaches us to conclude that a Toleration of those that a contrary course makes uneasie and desperate may prevent or Cure Intestine Troubles as Anno forty eight it ended the Strife and settled the Peace of Germany For 't is not now the question how far men may be provok'd or ought to resent it but whether Government is safe in a Toleration especially Monarchy And to this Issue we are come in Reason and Fact That 't is safe and that Conformists generally speaking have for their Interests as rarely known their Duty to their Prince as Dissenters for their Consciences So that the danger seems to lie on the side of forcing Vniformity against Faith upon severe Penalties rather than of a discreet Toleration In the next place I shall endeavour to shew the Prudence and Reasonableness of a Toleration by the great Benefits that follow it Toleration which is an Admission of dissenting Worships with Impunity to the Dissenters secures Property which is Civil Right and That eminently the Line and Power of the Monarchy For if no man suffer in his Civil Right for the sake of such Dissent the point of Succession is settled without a Civil War or a Recantation Since it were an absurd thing to imagin that a man born to five Pounds a Year should not be liable to forfeit his Inheritance for Non-conformity and yet a Prince of the Blood and an Heir to the Imperial Crown should be made incapable of his Inheritance for Church-dissent The Security then of Property or Civil Right from being forfeitable for Religious dissent becomes a security to the Royal Family against the Difficulties lately labour'd under in the business of the Succession And though I have no Commission for it besides the great Reason and Equity of the thing it self I dare say there can hardly be a Dissenter at this time of day so void of Sense and Justice as well as Duty and Loyalty as not to be of the same mind Else it were to deny that to the Prince which he needs and prays from him Let us not forget the Story of Sigismund of Sweedland of Henry the fourth of France and especially of our own Queen Mary Had Property been fix't the Line of those Royal Families could not have met with any let or Interruption 'T was this Consideration that prevail'd with Judge Hales though a strong Protestant after King Edward's Death to give his Opinion for Queen Mary's succession against that of all the rest of the Judges to the contrary which noble President was recompenc'd in the Loyalty of Arch-Bishop Heath a Roman-Catholick in favour of the Succession of Queen Elizabeth and the same thing would be done again in the like case by men of the same Integrity I know it may be said That there is little Reason now for the Prince to regard this Argument in favour of Dissenters when it was so little heeded in the case of the Presumtive Heir to the Crown But as this was the Act and Heat of Conforming men within Doors so if it were in Counsel or Desire the Folly and Injustice of any Dissenters without Doors shall many entire Parties pay the Reckoning of the few busie Offendors They would humbly hope that the singular Mildness and Clemency which make up so great a part of his Majesties publick Assurances will not leave him in his Reflection here 'T is the Mercies of Princes that above all their Works give them the nearest Resemblance to Divinity in their Administration Besides it is their Glory to measure their Actions by the Reason and Consequence of things and not by the Passions that possess and annimate private Breasts For it were fatal to the Interest of a Prince that the Folly or Vndutifulness of any of his Subjects should put him out of the way or tempt him to be unsteady to his Principle and Interest And yet with submission I must say it would be the Consequence of Coertion For by expossing Property for Opinion the Prince exposes the Consciences and Property of his own Family to the Church and disarms them of all Defence upon any alteration of Judgment Let us remember that several of the same Parliament-men who at first sacrificed civil Rights for Non-conformity in common Dissenters fell at last to make the Succession of the Crown the Price of Dissent in the next Heir of the Royal Blood So dangerous a thing it is to hazard Property to serve a turn for any Party or suffer such Examples in the