Selected quad for the lemma: law_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
law_n	common_a	king_n	time_n	5,545	5	3.5263	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56284	Scotlands holy vvar a discourse truly, and plainly remonstrating, how the Scots out of a corrupt pretended zeal to the covenant have made the same scandalous, and odious to all good men, and how by religious pretexts of saving the peace of Great Brittain they have irreligiously involved us all in a most pernitious warre / by H.P. ...	Parker, Henry, 1604-1652.	1651 (1651)	Wing P421; ESTC R40061	65,174	82

our hands and resigned into theirs who are the creators of our dangers and have declared for and thereby diverse times exasperated our greatest Enemy against us In Novem. 1643. before the Covenant was consummated the Lord Generall Essex moved in Parliament for the shortning of our war that the King who perchance was then encouraged to prolong the same out of hope of impunity at last in case his arms should miscarry might have a peremptory day set Him to come in or else to know his danger and this was consented to by both Houses but obstructed by the Scoch Commissioners what service was done to the King by this obstruction of the Scots and divers other the like ambidextrous dealings since that time and how much longer the war was protracted by it and how much mischief the same has at last drawn upon the Scots as well as us time has clearly enough demonstrated And yet still upon this the meanest and most intricate article of the Covenant they think they may break the unity and peace of great Brittain against one of the most indisputable fundamental tyes of the Covenant and that onely to shew their zeal to an Anti-covenanter which is a breach as indisputable and fundamentall as the former The intrinsecall form of the Covenant binds one party to assist the other against a common enemy it binds not one party to be assistent against the other for how can that be call'd assistence which is direct opposition Besides it binds specially to assist against such an enemy as is injurious to the others right freedom and property and can the Scots perform this bond to us when that which they call assistance to us is opposition against us even by taking away our right freedome and property for what right can remain to us whilest we are subjected to their forces what freedome whilest we are to be judged by their discretion What property when we have lost the independency of equals Certainly if we covenanted with the Scots as equall parties we did not covenant with them as superior Judges and if we had so covenanted with them our covenanting by Oath with God had been superfluous but we hope that will not be held superflous and therefore we will not endeavour to assoil our selves before the Scots we will onely in charity let them know how we have hopes to be assoiled before God The change of Government in England which could not be without the execution of the late King and rejection of his posterity more then they could be without change of Government was urged upon us and God before whom we plead knows we had not long premeditated it before nor imbraced it willingly at last by two unanswerable irresistable arguments The first was drawn from our duty to God the second from the naturall necessary care of our own preservation The first argument pressed us hard that what God had commanded could not be reversed by any act or pact of man that God had commanded us to punish blood with blood in all persons whatsoever under the power and force of our Laws and therefore our Covenant could not exempt the King himself If it be said that the King of England was above all Law that has been disputed by the sword these many years and decided for us by signall victories and the Scots have appeared as far upon that Triall as we have done and after that triall t is unequall for us to descend now to any other We prescribe nothing to other Nations whose Kings have a Legislative power and thereupon are solati Legibus and have their very wils interpreted and observed as Laws nor do we censure such States as have Princes subject to Laws yet use not rigor in all cases whatsoever We are willing that every one should stand or fall to his own Master Onely when immuring sequestring deposing impoysoning of Princes has been very frequent in the world that no Nation can be excused thereof at some time or other this seems beyond admiration that our judiciall publick execution upon the late Charles should undergo an harsher censure then all these meerly because it wanted not the due solemnities of Law and Justice to attend it May a Prince be reduced from his publick capacitie and when He is made a private person shall he be treated so as no private person may be treated Shall he be subjected to clandestine unlawfull proceedings belowe the right of a common person because He was once more then a common person and shall either Jurists or Statists that have any insight into the Laws of God and Nations stand for a secreted veiled justice such as blushes and dares not shew her face in open Court yet passe neglects upon that justice which as far abhors darknes and disdains the use of masks Our next argument was drawn from the hard necessity that was incumbent upon us for saving our selves from utter ruin Divers times we had made humble addresses to the King for a cordiall pacification the Lord knows our sincerity therin and the Scots that are now our accusers were for divers years our witnesses in that behalf but before 1646. the K had too much confidence in his English and Irish abettors and so would not hearken In the year 1646. the Kings English Forces in England failing we made new addresses at Newcastle where the King was in the nature of a Prisoner but we soon found at Newcastle that the Kings confidence was still supported there also by something that had been infused unto Him by the Scots and so that hope prooved frustrate likewise The dealing of the Scots herein was very close the English that were in Commission with the Scots for governing the affairs of that Army in the Scotch Quarters knew nothing by what invitation the King was drawn from Oxford thither nor to what purpose Montreil the French Agent was there solicititing but when our Propositions were rejected and that the Scots who joyned with us in tendring them began to dispute the Kings interests their own against us in other things and that their learned mouth Louden professed against the rigour of our capitulations in the same elaborate Oration to the King wherein He so zealously laid open the necessity of them we could not but discern a halting in that Nation and that that halting had as strange an operation upon the King The King thought now He had gotten as great a strength of Scots in the North the same being likewise fain away from our strength as He had lost of the English at Nasby and in the West and for our parts had the Scots been gold-proof we should have thought so too The disposing of the King was the matter in question the Scots were not desirous to take him into Scotland nor would leave him in England but being under our pay within our own territories where we had publick persons in Commission with them without the Parliaments or their Commissioners consents they would be a guard

to his Church and therefore when they will animate the people against us in war they tell them that God cannot deliver up his Turtle dove and his Covenant into the hands of such Enemies Now because we come not up to this hight of adoration we seem despisers of the Covenant in the Scots eyes and because we seem despisers of so holy a thing accounted by them the very soul of Religion and policy their gall flows out most violently against us They tell us we have brought great scandall and reproach upon the Name of God the Name of his people and the study of piety that we have not onely broken the Solemn League and Covenant betwixt God and these Nations but have in effect rejected it and trampled upon it are become enemies to all the ends of it yea persecuters of the servants and people of God for their adherence to it This in effect has been their burthen against us for divers yeers though it be as void of truth as it is of charity and though we who may more justly instance in this and divers other things as breaches of the Covenant on their parts have never made the Covenant any ground of quarrell or reproach against them T is far from us to under-value the Covenant we hold it a religious tie of mutuall assistance betwixt the Nations against the common Enemies of Religion Liberty and Union and so we think honorably of it only we make it no spell nor idol nor can we beleeve that it ties us to any duty which our Pretestation and Vow tied us not to before nor did our Protestation and Vow create any new duties to us when we first entred into them In the next place though there be many heavy breaches of Covenant ubrayded to us yet all of them resolve into these two That we make not good what we have covenanted for either to God or to the King They could never say till this last Summer nor can they truly say so of us last Summer that we ever entred their Countrey to disturbe their peace to claim or usurp any share in their Government to lay taxes seize Towns waste Villages and destroy Natives amongst them as they have done amongst us all that they can object to us is concerning injuries done to other parties within our own territories where by the Covenant they have no jurisdiction at all In the behalf of God they complain that our professed Faith is nothing else but a mixture of Arrianisme Socinianisme Antinomianisme Familisme Antiscripturisme Anabaptisme Erastianisme and Independency but they know well that for matter of Doctrine we still retain the old Articles of our Church without any staggering at all in the least and for matter of Discipline we are willing to comply with them so far as they comply with Gods Word but in this we have our eyes in our heads as well as they and t is no Law for us to damne the opinion of Erastus or the person of any Independent because they by them are dishonorably spoken of The truth is the Independent departs not so far from Erastus as the Presbyterian and Erastus is no Freind to the supreme power of Synods nor the uncontroulable dominion of Priests and this makes the Independent so injurious to God otherwise call'd the Kirk otherwise call'd Kirkmen were it not alone for this sin in the Independent Arrainisme Socinianisme c. though we were therewith more infected then the Scots as we are not would make no breach of Covenant at all amongst us In behalf of the King they complain that we have treated him not onely as an Enemy to the Covenant but also irreconcileable to the very being of our State and hereupon they take upon them to bewail the hard condition of the English that they are loaded with so many and so great taxes and subjected so rigorous and obdurate Laws which shall receive Answers in due place But in the mean time t is neither the Kings nor the peoples sufferings that stirs such a deal of compassion and zeal in the bowels of our fellow-Covenanters t is the change of our Government by which they perceive at last they themselves are verie great loosers The truth is the difference betwixt the King and us heretofore was of great advantage to them and this advantage though it was no property or right of theirs but a wrong and damage of ours is now faln away from them The King shall now have no more occasion to give them pensions in Scotland nor gratifications here to do us dis-service in behalf of his Prerogative nor shall we be any more bound to hire their service against the Crown and we must know that these double offices or ambidextrous versatile arts of doing services and dis-services was as great a revenue to them especially since these last troubles as the intra does of all Scotland Now this therefore in the third place may save us our labour of further inquiry about the ends and aims of the Scots in their exclamations and expostulations against us when they contest in behalf of the Covenant We see what the Clergie in Scotland and here are so thirstie of they would fain have Consistories in every Parish where they might have a free power to dispence the Ordinances of Christ to such as prove observant of them and to cast out all that are not submissive enough and for fear Lay Judges should ballance too much there they would have Classes above better defecated of such secular persons and for fear lest those Classes should be controuled by Parliaments they would have Assemblies above all to act for Christ in all matters whatsoever military or judiciall wherein Christs Throne that is the Kirk may be concerned No Protestant Bishops ever aspired to so sollid a power on earth nay except in the Popes own Patrimony where He is a Prince no Bishops in Europe und●r any other Lay Princes are allowed to sit and act so independently upon a Commission so large as the Scotch Assemblies do and therfore we cannot wonder if such a new Hierachy as this of the Presbyterians be so desirable amongst our Kirk-men Furthermore when such impetuous appetites of all the Clergie in Scotland backs with some thousands of ours in England shall also fall in at the same time with the interests of so many of the Nobility Gentry and Souldiery in Scotland as drove a very thriving trade heretofore by siding sometimes with the King against us at other times with us against the King and these things can be no other way compast or pretended to but by the ambiguous sense of the Covenant we cannot wonder if the Covenant be held so venerable a thing as it is in Scotland and made the price of blood and war as to every puntilio in it More then this needs not be said of the Scotch Presbyterians if as much could be said of the English Independents and that they may have as fair hopes and probable ends