Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A41817
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Two letters written to the author of a pamphlet entituled Solomon and Abiathar, or, The case of the deprived bishops and clergy discussed
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Grascome, Samuel, 1641-1708?
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1692
(1692)
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Wing G1579; ESTC R37402
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44,307
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44
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well to answer these and the like reasons before you so peremptorily assert any inferiour Courts to be authentick Interpreters of publick Oaths You had best have a care that you be not followed with a cry of Priviledge of Parliament and indeed that legislative Power is little better than ridiculous which may be authentically evaded or made quite another thing by the inferior Ministers of it and after all the Interpretations of those Courts will not excuse you from Insincerity and prevaricating with the State as you seem to fear p. 10. For if those Courts did give a lower and more easie sense of the Oaths than could reasonably be thought was intended by the Imposers you ought not to catch at that for an advantage which they had no Power to give nor ought you to joyn with them in eluding the Oath but to take care of your selves that they neither cosen you nor you others for an Oath ought to be taken in Judgment Truth and Righteousness in all which points you will fail if you take this course But have a care you do not gull your self at the last for what is that innocent sense which the most tender Recusant might have sworn to Truly I think the secret is worth Money and poor as I am I would have given something to know it but that we may not trisle with our Consciences I desire you and all your innocent Brethren to give me any one innocent sense wherein an Oath may be taken to an Usurper in order to the maintaining his Usurpation against the lawfull King and though I do not believe that either you or they though Men of admirable invention can ever do it yet if you could it would not do your work for it is not what sense you give or take but what they impose But Sir whilst you plead for others Sincerity you render your own very suspicious for why are you so scrupulous about the sense of the Oath Do not you insolently charge King James with a Cession Do not you thence ground a Vacancy Do not you assert William to be admitted according to the Laws and Constitutions and by the proper Judges Now though these things be never so false yet if you believe them true you believe him to be your Lawful King and therefore according to your declared Judgment may without scruple take the Oath in as severe a sense as ever any Oath of Allegiance has been given in amongst us and therefore for you to make such a pother about Senses and to look about so sharp for an innocent Sense is enough to make a Man suspect that you do not deal bona side but that there is something still gauls you and that your Conscience lies snarling within whilst you make such fair weather abroad The Impiety of the Revolution hath been already considered and your Question about Settlement answered your pitty we scorn and whether we or you be the Men whose Minds are intangled with wrong Notions that they can act well no way you ought to have considered that such Men's Infirmities have less right to overthrow than to obstruct publick Constitutions you shall have free leave to object the latter to us when you have cleared your selves of the former Whereas you think those tame Persons who submit to be one sort of the meek who shall inherit the Earth though I do not take such easie Submitters to wickedness to be any of God's meek yet I believe you have hit the true reason of most Men's submission and upon the Principles many have proceeded we may have as occasion serves meek Forswearers meek Rebels meek Traytors yea meek Jews meek Turks meek Renegadoes and all to inherit the Earth yet after this slender return as if our Mouths were quite stop'd and we had nothing to say you make us as it were to threaten a better Plea for our Cause if ever King James return The Scoff is not worth Thanks but Sir may King James return assoon as God pleases we need not stay till then but can make our Plea now and need not your help who take so much pains to spoil it and this your Godly Brethren are too well aware of which makes them so strictly guard the Press and be so very cruel to all on whom they can fasten any thing in the least tending that way witness the barbarous Usage of a poor Boy whose Mother a Widdow is not able to find him Bread who by the sly arts of your never-forgiving High-Priest hath in spite of all honest endeavours been kept in New-gate near a year and half and there lies still and like to lie to rot or starve meerly for going on an Errand and carrying he knew not what As justly in a manner might an illiterate Man be hanged for carrying the Greek Testament as a poor Boy thus used for delivering a Paper not knowing what was in it Surely he hath forgot that there is a God who hath both promised to hear the Cry and revenge the Wrongs of the Widdow and Fatherless It is a material Question By what Authority you transferred your Allegiance without his i. e. King James will And it is no trifling Objection That you were sworn to him not to the Estates of this Realm But the Answer is amazing That you had his authentick Grant for so doing p. 11. If this could be produced it would go a great way though it would not fully do the business but see what a cunning Man can do that which no body else thought on he hath found in King James 's Declaration of Indulgence where you say he does dispense with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to all his Subjects I am not bound to defend every act either of him or you however that act is far from destroying his right for the dispensing with a thing is not the giving an Order and Grant to transfer it to another And farther you ought to consider that it is one thing to dispense with an Oath of Allegiance another thing to dispense with the Allegiance it self an Oath may give a farther enforcement to Allegiance but the Allegiance it self is antecedent to it and arises from the natural relation betwixt Subject and Prince he might be unwilling that every disloyal act of a fickle rash People should seem to be aggravated with the horrid crime of Perjury but he never discharged them of the Allegiance it self for that had been to un-king himself which certainly never entred into his thoughts for after that he reigned as King and required and used the Allegiance of his Subjects as before But if he had done more than you say and not only dispensed with but acquitted and absolved all his Subjects not only from the Oath but the Allegiance it self it would not help your Cause for though he might de-throne himself yet immediately thereupon our Constitutions which admit no interregnum had transplanted our Allegiance and given it to the next Heir For if a King die or
about if they be not sensible already I doubt not but they will in a little time And now Sir if you will give me the same liberty to put together which you take I cannot learn from all this how our old Laws and Oaths binds us to your new Allegiance but that rather our Constitutions and Oaths binds us to King JAMES and not to William though the contrary hereto is your shameless conclusion from your wild Premises All along you make Dyscheres by whom you represent us to give up the cause as far as you go which disingenuous dealing we have too much cause to complain of but the better to detect it I must follow your steps and now comes such a tremendous Objection that I wonder your Joynts did not tremble and your Hand shake when you set Pen to Paper it is to this effect That when the violence is essentially unjust unnatural and contrary to the moral and eternal Laws of God and Righteousness no Human compacts can ratifie such wrong or justifie and confirm what is essentially injurious nor ought the Priests of the most High God to consecrate and confirm such Rapes by Oaths and Religious Sponsions If there be any such thing as this and such I fear we shall find there is if there be any such thing as God's Commandments we had need have a care what we do That Man's wit is ill bestowed on him who argues himself out of his own Soul But here you think to slip your Neck out of the Collar by telling us That the internal Immorality of all actions must be carefully distinguished from the civil Consequences of them Well be it so we will do this for you too as fairly and carefully as we can and what then Why then suppose say you p. 6. A Son by fraudulent Arts gets Judgment in Law and seizes his Father's Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this Man's Immorality is damnable Is it so I think this is a bone for some body to pick which may hold him tug tho' his Teeth were as long as his NOSE But Sir what if a Daughter should do thus Will not this Womans Immorality be damnable If not pray next time you write give us a reason of the difference But it seems if they should be both damned Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so whilst they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law but if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers make themselves Parties and join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an evil act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawfull Arts then their being Officers of Law will rather encrease than deminish their guilt And so for your Robbers and Pirates a Man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it but if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawfull if you say they require a just right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually join with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge Much such another instance is your Lord of a Mannor let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lord's Tenants conspire against their lawfull Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him you Sir may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your Honesty for it But now let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset There are a sort of Protestants who I think are resolved by making away the Fifth Commandment to be even with the Papists for suppressing the Second and indeed according as some Men act and write unless it be to furnish pretence and to shew our fine Cloaths and eat roast Meat on Sundays I see not what occasion they have for any Commandments and so they might make Religion a Law of Liberty or a Liberty from all Law and I do not perceive Sir that you much mend the matter you say That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge K. W. with Subjection to King JAMES c. p. 7. If by this you mean that we cannot thence prove him to have been his Subject I do not know that ever any Man attempted such a thing but does a Nephew and a Son-in-Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the right The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say That she is in Duty bound to follow her Husband's Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and this with a more plenary consent if she judged her Husbands Cause to be just I do not think either her or your judgment worth a farthing unless the Cause be just in it self Sorry Arguments will serve to persuade Ambitious persons that they have right to a Crown though unconcerned persons at the same time plainly see the fallaciousness of them But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is bound thus to follow her Husband through thick and thin I grant that she ought to be the Partner both of his Joys and Sorrows but let her have a care how she becomes Partner in his Sins nor doth the relation of a Wife take away the relation of a Child as you seem to intimate tho' you are ashamed plainly to say it they may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent but yet the great end of these relations is to strengthen and support not to destroy each other as you closely insinuate Besides your reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there would rise another relation and then he in these Dominions must follow her Fortunes not she his for according to our Constitutions she would be his Queen and here he must be her Subject It is true the Name of King would be allowed but the Power by our Constitutions would be lodged in her and he would be liable to offend against her Laws to Treason against her Person and to be tried by her Authority