Selected quad for the lemma: law_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
law_n	king_n	land_n	lord_n	7,496	5	3.7518	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56579	A modest and peaceable letter concerning comprehension, &c.	B. P.	1668 (1668)	Wing P7; ESTC R7834	7,213	16

A Modest and Peaceable LETTER CONCERNING Comprehension c. LONDON Printed in the Year 1668. A LETTER Concerning COMPREHENSION Good Cousin I Am right sorry that the Parliaments casting out the Bill of Comprehension should so much concern you as to put you into such a passion as you exprest against them and me at our last nights meeting Sure the Company you now converse with and the strange Principles with which they have now possest you have alter'd your nature and turn'd your former reason into prejudice and unbelief if not you would have believ'd what I did so seriously affirm to be a known truth namely That this Age is not more severe against the disturbers of the setled Peace and Government of the Church and State than they were in the very happy days of our Good Queen Elizabeth Some of the Reasons why I said so I do with very much affection tender to your Consideration and to your Censure to and that the last may be the more charitable and you not apt to make the errors or failings of your Governors seem more or greater than indeed they are let me intreat that you remember what I have very often said to you namely That malicious men of whom really I do not take you to be one are the best Accusers and the worst Judges And indeed I fear it would prove to be a bitter truth if some had that power which too many labour for in these days in which Schism and Sedition are taken to be no sins by men who pretend a tenderness of Conscience in much smaller matters And that I may keep some order and you be the better satisfied in what I intend in this Letter I earnestly intreat that you will at your next leisure read in Mr. Cambdens true History of the Life and Raign of our Good Queen Elizabeth in which you may find what care was then taken to prevent Schism and the sad confusion that attends it and how the Contrivers of Libels and dispersers of them have been severely punisht many of them even to death as namely Henry Barrow and many of his Sectaries for disturbing the publick peace of the Nation by scattering abroad their monsterous Opinions as also for affirming the Church of England to be no true Church and the like As you may find written by the said Mr. Cambden in the thirty-sixth year of that Good Queens Raign But I commend more especially to your Consideration the story and sad death of Hacket and his Adherents as namely of Wiginton Arthington and Copinger all of one Sect and Brotherhood But I say I do most seriously commend to your Consideration the beginning and death of the said Hacket who was first but a Schismatick and stopt not there but became by degrees so fully possest by the evil spirit the spirit of pride and opposition that he publickly revil'd the Queen the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor and at last became so infamous an Heretick that he was condemn'd to death for his errors at which time he revil'd and curst his Judges and died blaspheming and reproaching his Creator This you may read in the Thirty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth as it is written by honest learned Mr. Cambden who concludes this story of Hacket with this observation Thus doth the enemy of Mankind bewitch those men whom he seeth are not content to be wise unto sobriety These stories I say and too many like them you may find in Mr. Cambd. Hist of Q. Eliz. and you may find the like in Bishop Spots woods History of the Church of Scotland and also the like in Mr. Fullers History of the Church of Great Brittan and you may there find also what labour hath been used by the discontented Non-conformists to unsettle the Government of the Church and consequently of the State and may there also find how severely many of them have been punisht So that you need not wonder at what I said last night not think these the only times of persecuting men of tender Consciences And for the better Confirmation of what I now write to you I will refer you toone Testimonymore in the time of our peaceful K. James and you may view it in the second Volum of the Reports of Judg Crook a man very Learned in the Law But I shall first tell you the occasion of that Report which was this The Non-conformists which are in that Report called by the name of Puritans had given out that the King had an intent to set up or give a Toleration to Popery and they had also compos'd a large Petition complaining of the severity of some usage and of some Laws that concern'd themselves and desir'd that the severity of those Laws might be mitigated and other like desires were in the said petition to which they had procur'd not less than seven hundred hands and the close of it was That if these desires were not granted many thousands of his subjects would be discontented Which indeed was not a threatning but was understood to be somewhat like it This report of his Majesties intent to set up or tolerare Popery begot many fears and discontents in the Nation and to prevent greater disturbances the King did appoint many of his Privy Council and all the Judges of the Land to meet together in the Star-Chamber in which Assembly the Lord Chancellor declar'd to them the occasion of this their publick Convention and asked the Judges this following question As you may read it in the very same words in the said Learned Judges Reports in the second year of the Raign of King James Whether it were an ofsence punishable and what punishment they deserv'd who framed petitions and collected a multitude of hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denyed their suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented Whereto all the Judges answered that it was an ofsence sinable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising sedition rebellion and discontent among the People To which resolution all the Lords agreed And then many of the Lords declared That some of the Puritans had raised a false rumor of the King That he intended to grant a Toleration to Papists Which ofsence the Judges conceiv'd to be hainously finable by the rules of the Common Law either in the Kings-Bench or by the King and his Council or now since the Statute of the Third of Henry the Seventh in the Star-Chamber And the Lords severally declared How the King was discontented with the said false rumor and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended it and that he would spend the last drop of blood in his body before he would do it and prayed that before He or any of his Issue should maintain any other Religion than what he truly professed and maintained

beg this mercy they be the Letany and Collects of the Church composed by those learned and devout men whom you and I have trusted to tell us which is and which is not the written Word of God and trusted to translate those Scriptures into English And in these Collects you may note that I pray for pardon of sin and for grace to believe and serve God absolutely but for health and peace and plenty for all these I pray conditionally even so far as they may tend to his Glory and the good of my Soul and not further and this confessing my sins and begging mercy and pardon for them I do by adoring my God and the humble posture of kneeling on my knees before Him and in this manner and by reverend sitting to hear some chosen parts of Gods Word read in the publick Assembly I spend one hour of the Lords day every forenoon and half so much time every evening And since this uniform and devout custom of joining together in Publick Confession and Praise and Prayer and adoration of God and in one manner hath been neglected the power of Christianity and humble Piety is so much decayed that it ought not to be thought on but with sorrow and lamentation And lastly for I am tedious beyond my intention whereas you and your party would have the Bishops and Cathedral-Church-Lands sold to supply the present necessities of the Nation I say first God prevent the Nation from such necessities as shall make them guilty of so many Curses as have been by the Doners of those Lands intail'd with those Lands upon those men that alienate them to any other use than of those that shall serve at God's Altar to which end the Priests Portion was kept with Care and Conscience till the dayes of King Henry the Eighth who is noted to make the first breach of those Oaths that were always taken and kept by his Predecessors and taken by himself too to preserve the church-Church-Lands and it is noted that he was the first Violator of those many Laws made also to preserve them out of which Lands he took at the dissolution of the Abbies a part for himself exchang'd a part with others that thirsted to thrive by the dissolution and gave the rest to be shar'd amongst the Complying Nobility and other Families that then were in greatest power and favour with him concerning which I refer you to a little Treatise written by the Learned Sir Henry Spelman called Do non temerandis Ecclesiis and especially to the Preface before it in which you may find many sad Observations of the said King and find there also that more of the Nobility and those other Families and their Children that shared in the Church-Lands came to die by the Sword of Justice and other eminent misfortunes in twenty years than had suffered in four hundred years before the dissolution for a proof of which he refers you to the Parliament Roles of the twenty-seventh of that King And to me it seems fit that the Observations of the ruin and misfortune of the other Families that were sharers of the Church-Lands made by that pious and learned Knight since the said twenty years are not also made publick but possibly they may pare too neer the quick and are therefore yet forborn I will say nothing of Queen Elizabeth but for King James I will say he did neither follow King Henry's nor her President and his Childrens Children sit this day upon his Throne And for his Son Charles the First who is justly called the Martyr for the Church He had also well considered the Oaths taken by all his Ancestors and by Himself too at his Coronation and therefore in his Book of Penitential Meditations and Vows made in his Solitude and Imprisonment at Holmby you may in that Chapter of the Covenant there find that at that time when he apprehended Himself near to death yet that this was then his Resolution The principal end of some men in this Covenant is the abasing of Episcopacy into Presbytery and of robbing the Church of its Lands and Revenues But I thank God as no man lay more open to the sacrilegious temptation of usurping them which issuing chiefly from the Crown are held of it and can legally revert only to the Crown with my consent so I have always had such a perfect abhorrence of it in my soul that I never found the least inclination to such sacrilegious reformings yet no man hath a greater desire to have Bishops and all Church-men so reform'd that they may best deserve and use not only what the pious munificence of my Predecessors have given to God and the Church but all other additions of Christian bounty But no necessity shall ever I hope drive me or mine to invade or sell the Priests Lands which Pharaoh ' s Divinity and Joseph ' s true piety abhorred to do I had rather live as my Predecessor Henry the Third sometimes did on the Churches Alms than violently to take the Bread out of the Bishops and Ministers mouths There are ways enough to repare the breaches of the state without the ruines of the Church as I would be a restorer of the one so I would not be an Oppressor of the other under the pretence of publick debts the occasions of contracting them were bad enough but such a discharging of them would be much worse I pray God neither I nor mine may be accessary of either Sir I have been longer than I intended for which I crave your pardon and I beg of God that you may at last see and well consider the many errors that your indiscreet zeal hath led you into and the many miseries it hath helpt to bring upon others and that for the remainder of your dayes you may redeem the time past and study to be quiet and to do your own business to this I shall encourage you and to live as unoffensively to others and as strictly to your self as you do intend and by God's grace added to your endeavours he shall make you able and daily to practise an humble peaceable piety so humble and peaceable a piety as may stop the mouths of all gain-sayers for such holy and quiet living will bring peace at the last And in this the Almighty give me grace to be like you Study to be quiet and to do your own business 1 Thes 4. 11. Your Affectionate Friend B. P. February the 18. 1667. FINIS