Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A90770
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A Plea for succession in opposition to popular exclusion wherein it is evidenced, that an association, or any other such method, is a more immediate way to arbitrary power and a more certain road to popery than a standing up to the right of succession can in any reason be supposed to be : with some remarques on Coleman and his letters.
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1682
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Wing P2516; ESTC R225594
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23,646
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20
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therefore he will not resist him and to Love his Religion and for that Reason he will not help to destroy it He hath been taught in the same Acts to Fear God and to Honor the King by yielding Passive where he cannot yield Active Obedience Therefore if he shall ever fall under a King that shall set up Popery he neither helps forward the work nor resists the Powers but commits himself to Him who governs the Kingdoms upon Earth which of old was called the Faith and the Patience of the Saints Now when these stand Neuter it is utterly impossible that the Papist Party should ever do any thing by Arms upon the numerous Body of Dissenters Indeed if Dissenters prepare or begin a resistance or if at any time they take up Arms against the King the case is quite altered for then the King and all Loyal Subjects whom these Parties all brand for Papists are equally indangered and then we are bound to defend both our King and our selves against fellow Subjects who have no Authority to disturb us Now suppose we fall under so nice and trying a case that we conceive we cannot defend our King but we must enable Him to inslave our selves and Enemies together yet however we must do our Duty and leave the event to God For we are not to sin our selves that thereby we may prevent others from doing so You cry Popery is coming and therefore Rebel now we do not see the Popery but we see the Rebellion we cannot tell whether that will ever come but we see the other is come already Now we are to take the safest side but if we joyn with you we may be gull'd into a needless War as many were in the time of the late King whereas by a Rebellion the Powers the Government and every private Interest are indangered Moreover if we run on your side we are sure to be undone which way soever the Victory falls for if you are overcome we perish with you as Malefactors but if you do overcome we are ruin'd by you and if we sit still you destroy us and our King together Therefore in such a case as duty commands so safety presses us to defend our selves and King at once without considering Him as such but simply as our King and therefore whether he be this or that which is agreeable to the voice of God both in Nature and Revelation too And indeed if we allow any Liberty of resistance we bring confusion into the World set all Government upon Hinges and make a gap for all manner of Villanies to creep in at Whence St. Paul discours'd like a Polititian as well as a Divine when he commanded the Romans to submit and not to resist the Powers even when Nero was their Emperor who was justly branded for the Monster of Mankind Therefore unless Dissenters by their Rebellions give such advantages to Popery it cannot in our time come in by our own Arms. Nor 2. By Foreign Aids For 1. If a King shall make use of such He takes the readiest course imaginable to disoblige His Protestant Subjects Especially since these Aids must be supposed to come from France against whom the English have the greatest antipathy of any People in the World 2. In case the French King come at all he must come with very numerous Forces and consequently leave himself weak at home and thereby would draw all Neighbor Princes upon him not only for the recovery of what he hath lately taken from them but also to hinder his farther growth whereby he may set up himself an Universal Monarch over this part of the World By which means he would soon be drawn off to save his own at home 3. We cannot in Reason think the King of England will ever call in those who if too weak loose Him His Crown and if strong enough will take it from Him For hereby he would bring Himself into a certain ruine either by His Subjects at home or His Aids from abroad Look into the World and tell me where Protestant or Papist Princes either in this or in former Ages use to sell their Kingdoms into the hands of any for the sake of forcing their Subjects to a Religion they could not otherwise oblige 'em to Honor and secular Interest cause Princes of the same Religion to War one upon another At this very time the Emperor the King of Spain the French King and Italian Princes though all Roman Catholicks are either in a War or upon their Guards every one waiting but till another strikes Queen Mary while settling Popery at home lost the last of the English Conquests on the Continent of France And can we think that the King of England will tread counter to all the Kings upon Earth That he alone had rather have no Subjects than not have them in all points such as himself could wish Judg by your selves and you will believe there is no Man so mad as rather to have no Estate than not have a few incumbrances with it Indeed when Subjects are contending for the Government they usually call in Foreign assistance for when once it comes to this point that they must have such Aids or fall it is easie determining what to do For by such means they may reach their end however they can but fall and they think better fall under a Foreigner who by their means may gain the whole than under the Powers they would have dispossess'd for the former may give 'em Life the latter the Gallows Thus our True Protestant Rebels called in the Scots And a piece Entituled The growth of Knavery tells you by what Lord they desired the French King to be ready in case they should Pray his Aids And this at that very time too when they were charging the late King with Foreign Correspondencies it being ever their way to charge those Evils on the Government which they are Acting their own selves as again in this case because they may not Act Arbitrarily in chusing Sheriffs contrary to the Law and usage of this City for many Ages before us and contrary to their own Order in the Reign of King Charles the first they cry out of Arbitrary Power as if they could never make Persons and things appear so odious as by putting them in their own Livery Their Brethren the True Protestants in Hungary having Rebelled against their Emperor call in the Turk and are shuting out the Bible by the Alcoran But as Kings may fall but cannot rise so they are very jealous of their Interest both at home and abroad and industriously careful that they give none an advantage against them And certainly none could have thought such a thing of His Royal Highness was it not for Coleman's Letter which as His Royal Highness did deny to be writ by His order or knowledg so we have all the Reason in the World to believe Him not only from the unreasonableness of the Hypothesis as before but farther 1. From Coleman's
many Ages growth and was but check'd or interrupted rather than removed For though Henry VIII dissolved Abbies yet it was Edward VI. that settled the Reformation which was not half received nor well understood by the Body of the People before he dies After whom Queen Mary restores and continues Popery near Five Years longer Whereas now it is a stranger and generally disliked and in the Methods this supposition puts it can make but very slow advances nor can His Royal Highness be supposed if He outlive the King at all to have any considerable time to smile upon it Therefore being not Established by Law nor secured by the Sword it lives only as a Favourite which at the departure of a King goes off and makes way for the Darling of the next Successor If the Church of England though Establish'd by Law so hardly rubs through the crouds of Dissenters who every step she takes grin and shew their Teeth and stretch out their threatning Paws and deal by her as the Watchmen by the Spouse or the Sober Party by the Lord Mayor at the late Election of Sh justle and buffer and pull or beat off her Veil from her can we think that Popery can obtain meerly because supposed to be some little time upon sufferance amongst us The result then is this viz. an Association or Popular way of Exclusion puts us immediately under Arbitrary Power and the ready Road to Rome while Succession being circumstantiated as it is may very probably be no way capable of effecting the Evils which Men would persuade us to fear Therefore while our Libel faith we know what we must expect from a Popish Successor we may more justly say we know what we must expect from the True Protestant Association In fine it is certainly a most fond trouble that we disquiet our selves withal about the Succession and the King of France For the Queen may Dye the King Marry and leave Heirs of his own body Or the Duke may Dye first and the Succession fall upon a Protestant Indeed the King is the elder but it is so little that it is recompenced in his advantages of being the first born for it is held that the Seminal vertue is greater in the first than in the second Generation and in this than in the third and so downwards whence it is observed that the Eldest Brother generally outlives the Younger unless in case of accidents of contagious Diseases which seize the sounder and stronger Constitutions rather than the weak and the more disposed to Corruption and of ill Habits or Diseases contracted by any kind of intemperance accordingly we see His Majesty is the stronger and more likely to live therefore it is not yet come to an even Cast the odds lie on the King's side Therefore for this Reason only the Evils under a Popish Successor are improbable because it is more probable they will not reach us than that they will And certainly it is the greatest folly in the World to trouble our selves with improbable Evils Were these Evils certain but yet at a distance solely because they are at a distance we ought not by the fear of them to imbitter our lives at present An anticipation of miseries is a double misery and the former which consists in the fear is the worst because wilful the latter more supportable because unavoidable that is our sin this our unhappiness only The one we bear as Men the other as Fools But that men should make their lives uneasie by a load of Plagues which are both at a distance which we may never live to see come in case they ever come and also unlikely ever to come at all is the business of men that want both wit and something to do And as for the French King we know not whether he may live to see an alteration here and if his Son do it is uncertain what Spirit he may prove of That Kingdom is set round with Enemies and may be disabled to transport Armies into another Soyl. Or however these things happen he is a likely instrument of seting up Popery in these Kingdoms who is pulling it down in his own Upon the whole matter then I cannot believe these Men fear what they talk of it is not their Passion but their Policy Even this Pamphlet in the second part pretends the same fears under His present Majesty and yet in this part pag. 4. saith he hath too much goodness and pag. 5. that he hath too little mony to do it themselves Expound their own Riddle and give us to understand that by pretended Fears they would beguile us into real Evils Finis hujus Argumenti