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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	duke_n	king_n	lord_n	3,773	5	3.7457	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25575	An answer to the Bishop of Rochester's first letter to the Earl of Dorset, &c. concerning the late ecclesiastical commission by an Englishman.	Englishman.; Charlton, Mr.; Sprat, Thomas, 1635-1713. Letter from the Bishop of Rochester to ... the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.	1689 (1689)	Wing A3388; ESTC R15480	10,664	36

seems to me your Lordship debated with your self and came to a Resolution of Owning the Court to the degree of a Sentence ratifying your Devotion to the King and giving the Conspirators assurance thereby that allowing you the favour of a State Vote in particulars which they had no occasion for in general no Project of theirs was too open for your Compliance and with the help of your many precedent Instances of Submission putting Us out of doubt that you saw Heaven at the remote end of the Glass could not endure the Frowns of your Prince tho' all the Laws of the Land warranted you against them because you saw those Laws languishing under the weight of Dispensation nor hazard your Preferment for the sake of the best Church in the World because you thought her expiring The seventh Paragraph of the Letter For it was on the very day the Commission was open'd immediately as I remember after it was read that my Lord of London was informed against for not suspending Doctor Sharp which tho' it exceedingly surpriz'd me at first yet observing with what heat the Prosecution was like to be carried on against him that very Consideration did the more incline me to Sit and Act there that I might be in some Capacity of doing Right to his Lordship And whether I did him any Service through the whole Process of his Cause I leave it to my Lord to judge That I gave my Positive Vote for his Acquittal both the Times when his Suspension came in question I suppose I need not tell the world Answer The Persecution of the Bishop of London could be no Surprise that Diocesan having been found in a watchfulness too exact for the bearing of a Papist He knew God was no Respecter of Persons and had told the Duke of York so by inviting him to the Sacrament in our Church thereby confirming Our Discovery of a Religion that kept him not only from all Communion with Us after the first Discovery but from all Charity toward Us for it a Religion which hath wrought all the Evils these three Kingdoms have endured from the Reformation to this hour and may quickly double upon us in a return of Blood and Confusion if Surprises and Scruples shall pass for National Apologies That Discovery my Lord raised a subject matter for Displeasure in his Breast who wanted nothing but the Title of King then and when God permitted him as a Judgment for our Sins to take possession of the Crown afterwards would have been much more than so And there it lodged till the Plot had occasion to make use of it then Out it came under another Notion but might indeed surprise any Man that so mean a Cause as the not suspending Doctor Sharp should bring to light that secret of Indignation Visible in Forgiving the One and Persecuting the Other So that my Lord if you were exceedingly surprised that Very Exceeding ought to have Spirited your Lordship to some Honest Able Adviser And if you did observe with what Heat the Persecution was like to be carried on against him that very consideration ought to have engaged you not to sit nor act there And that you might be in the better capacity of doing my Lord of London right you ought to have joined in Averring his Plea protesting against the Jurisdiction And you could do him no other service through the whole Process of his Cause for there was no process of Cause beyond that Plea. Your Vote of Acquittal was insignificant if not prejudicial They had set Protestant against Protestant before the care was now to divide the Church against it self An Ecclesiastical Commission could have no colour without some Ecclesiastical Persons It was Art enough to bring a Bishop to judge a Bishop they could not expect to find him Theirs in the immediate Sentence And yet if upon an easie Judgment made of things Precipitation was then apparently their Ruine all that restrained them were so far wiser for them than they were for themselves and so much the more Our Enemies If the Judges had unanimously driven every Person and Matter into Condemnation the proceeding had been too Gross and Unpallatable but sure of a Plurality upon a stress by the mixture of the Men with Bishops and Lawyers to support the Foundation of the design Liberty of Assent or Dissent seemed a kind of Pro and Con which kept in sight a Form of Justice enough to amuse us tho no Realities at bottom to preserve us Thus far my Lord I have kept Company with your Letter Paragraph by Paragraph and if I do not mistake think fully signified my Affliction for your Lordship that you should expose to the World your No Vindication in so imaginary a Confession and have brought your Apology to Judgement where you hurried the Bishop of London into that unjust Sentence resolving your Venial Ignorance into Mortal Presumption I say you my Lord upon this distinction that when a Court is Legal every Man shall account for his own Opinion whether of unqualifying Ignorance or Wickedness so that if an Arbitrary desire or notorious Weakness in the Major Number of the Judges over-rule the Less yet that less shall stand when the Majority shall fall Nor with allowance against Infallibility shall a Judge if in his turn of Place finding the Plurality by their Opinions delivered to be against his be thought to maintain the Doctrine of the Bow-string if wanting some Heights of daring Honesty he shall rather be silent And tho' for a Judge to say I doubt without Reasons is no better in strictness than sitting Mute where the Natural Life of Man or the Political Life of a Nation is at stake yet it will be Cruelty to think the Doubter does not appear an unsatisfied Judge And in the Morning of a Persecution it may be thought some Test of his Aversion to Evil tho' not of firm Integrity and Purity from Crime if he adjourn himself to a short season of Retreat or be admitted considering the Vast Catalogue of Men to tempt his Quietus by a handsome Carriage in a second Cause For the Foundation of the Court being Just there is Room for Apology that he continues among them to do what Good and prevent what Evil he can But if a Court be Illegal not well Constituted and Erected every Arbitrary Proceeding shall stand in charge against all the Judges without regard had to any Affirmative or Negative in a particular because the Illegality being in the Frame the very Act of joining with it incorporates a Man to the Guilt of it and renders a Bishop as Censurable in being Ecclesiastical as it can do a Lawyer because a Commission and as I think with deference to the Wiser of Mankind it ought not in any high degree to do a Lay-man whose Obedience may without stram of thought be easily supposed to depend upon the judgment of the Professors All that looks like Repetition is too much Upon the whole matter therefore of your First Letter my Lord what remains of it is with me but what I call in the beginning of mine An Ignoble Surrender of your Better Understanding to the Extravagant Desires and the Vain Imaginations of your Prince And tho' every Paragraph following nay every Line in every Paragraph is liable to Refutation upon the Head Mean Shift yet my Intention being against you as an Adviser in the Second not directly against you as a Commissioner in this I will carry it on no farther desirous not to improve a Charge so heavy in it self But conclude thus The Commission was a Dragoon Commission no Moot Case among the principal Lawyers but a condemned abrogated and exploded Case among the Meanest And that your Lordship not protesting against the Court when the Bishop of London's Plea brought the Jurisdiction regularly into Examination without any Voluntary of your Own tho' the last was your Duty and ought to have been your Strict Inquiry Yet that Notice divested you of all manner of Pretence to Ignorance and a full stop should have been made So that all those reiterated Acts of Subserviency you claim under are but so many deplorable Instances of a wretched Compliance And how contrary soever to the Humour of the COURT your Votes were in particular Yet for as much as every Sentence was Irregular every Decree Extravagant All Prosecutions Unjust for they had no cogniuisance of any Cause And that my Lord of London by refusing to buy off the Suspension at so dear a Rate as the Prostitution of his Conscience to an Inglorious Submission might fully convince you how stedfast a Bishop ought to be in a Good Cause Your breaking lose from the Commission at a time when the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom were so disgraced they could do no less by all the Rules of Honour and Honesty than Unite into a general dissatisfaction that their Gallantry might cover the rest from the impending Storm and that all the Clergy of the Land had as it were one Man denyed Obedience to the Arbitrary Commands of the King in not reading a Declaration And the whole Body was ready to take Wing in Defence of the Protestant Religion and Interest upon the first Opportunity in a stand of Men to favour their Conjunction Your Retreat then my Lord and what you call joyning your self to the Honest Clergy again was in truth but a stealing your self away from the rest of your Bretheren the Commissioners in the Hour of Danger and so far from an Apology That if others are no Wiser than I you deserve a Reward Right Reverend London April the 23d 1689. Your Lordships Humble Servant FINIS

before knew themselves beyond the Ceremony of perswading you into their Service again It looks like an Assurance of their Man proof of Resignation no Extenuation of the matter At first no doubt there was some labour with you behind the Curtain for Men cannot easily depart from themselves into Obsequious Bondage Facing their Country in barbarous Adventures There will be some struggle of Honour if not of Conscience And Divines were treated after the manner of Lawyers We all know that when a Judge between fear and shame started at a farther degree of their Commands so that there was occasion for another the Course taken by the Workers of Iniquity was to dive into the Opinion of the Counsellor and having found or made him wicked as themselves out they brought him in Caparison and up they set him to give the Arbitrary Blow in the Formality of a Judge Adored by the Profane Crowd despised by the Brave a Scandal to his Profession a Traytor to his Country the Murtherer of Men and a Destroyer of Families The third Paragraph of the Letter At my return from thence to London I found I was appointed One in a New Commission But never could see a Copy of it nor did I ever hear the Contents of it or know the Powers granted in it till the Time of its being publickly opened at Whitehall whither I was sent for on purpose in haste that very Morning from my House in the Countrey being just come home from a Confirmation and from paying my Duty to her Royal Highness the Princess of Denmark at Tunbridge Answ. A Bishop of this Kingdom no less Man coming to London found himself appointed one in a New Commission No matter what but a New Commission and my Lord was appointed to be One down he goes into the Countrey without hearing the Contents of it or the Powers granted in it but a new Commission and my Lord was one satisfied with himself a Favourite to the Best of Kings James the Just Visits the believing World makes his Court to Princes takes a turn or two upon the Walks of Tunbridge that Parade of Gravity and Thinking and so home to his Countrey House satisfied with himself for my Lord was one By that time the Commission is ripe my Lord is sent for Express on purpose in haste that very morning from his Countrey-House and for ought appears to the contrary drove three quarters speed to the very Gates of Whitehall lest he should come half a minute too late For what Truly the no less Person than a Bishop came Post-haste to the no less wickedness than a Declaration of War to root the Protestant Religion out of these Kingdoms and by consequence out of the World. Was there ever such an Apology as this That a Bishop should find himself appointed One in a New Commission One that he could never see a draught of nor so much as be told the Contents of or the least Item of the Powers granted in it till it was publickly opened at Whitehall to be executed and he sent for in haste that very Morning for the Conspiracy was in Travel and could not be delivered till my Lord came from his Country-House to such a monstrous Birth methinks a Bishop of common Understanding should have been concern'd at the name of a New Commission have pursued an Inquiry into the utmost drift of it at least have in some measure examined the Contents before he had gone into the Countrey that so he might consider how to behave himself in the Commission for the Kings Honour if fit to be assisted or to avoid it if unlawful and not come in that hasty manner to such an extraordinary design as a New Commission must carry in the Belly of it at a time when every Protestant was supposed from the whole Conduct at Whitehall to be upon his Guard. The poor Curate of Mark-Lane the Curate of Timothy had more Honour he sacrificed all his utmost twenty pounds a year stript himself it may be to the Skin rather than betray his Profession so far as to read twenty lines of a Declaration at the Command of a Prince who but a little before had threatned us to raise the Glory of the Kingdom higher than in the time of any of his Ancestors by the same Measures that his Brother Charles the Merciful after the Dissolution at Oxford promised to Govern us by Law. The fourth Paragraph of the Letter Upon the first publishing the Commission I confess through my Ignorance in the Law I had little or no Objection in my Thoughts against the Legality of it especially when I considered that having past the Broad Seal it must needs according to my Apprehension have been examined and approved in the King 's Learned Council in the Law Men generally esteemed of Eminent Skill in their Profession Beside I was farther confirmed tho too rashly I grant in my Error when I saw two Gentlemen of the Long Robe Persons of the greatest Place and Authority in Westminster-Hall joyned with us who I should have thought would never have ventured their Fortunes and Reputations by Exercising a Jurisdiction that was Illegal Answ. Here Right Reverend if the Robe worn by your Lordship did not confine to Solemnity there is Room for more Wit than I have to dispose of For beyond all contradiction there was never a greater Satyr upon that King's Council in the Law than to call them Men generally esteem'd of Eminent Skill in their Profession or more Jest upon Persons of the greatest Place and Authority in Westminster-Hall at that time than to term them Men of Fortune and Reputation you impose upon the World my Lord in the Minute you desire excuse and think to write your self into Ignorance by endeavouring to write others out of it Satyr and Apology are repugnant You are not so Ignorant but to know the Inquiry was not after Skill but Readiness the Question was not what is Law but will you serve the King in his own way There was possibly a skilful Wretch among them whose Ambition might suppress his Honesty but in general the Men were not so Eminent And for Reputation and Fortune they despicable Ingredients were as strange to the Persons of the greatest Authority and Place in Westminster-Hall as the Bishop of Rochester must be unknown to all England if he can perswade us into the Opinion of his Ignorance as to the Legality of an Ecclesiastical Commission by the Rule of Perswading us out of our Senses into the skill of the One or the Reputation and Fortune of the other The fifth Paragraph of the Letter And I believ'd I had reason to conclude that this very Argument might prevail also with some others of the Temporal Lords that sate among us Particularly the Earl of Rochester has often assured me 't was that which induc'd him to accept of the Commission and that he did it as I my self did with a purpose of doing as much good as we were able and