Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A57089
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A Return to the letter of a noble peer concerning the addresses
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1682
(1682)
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Wing R1184; ESTC R36780
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8,467
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4
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would make it seem between the Prince and a Faction but between the King and all his Subjects who conscientiously respect their own duty and the general Welfare We never think or call that a Faction which compelled by the Fear of God honoureth the King but you who of all Men living have the greatest Provocations to admire and love regal Clemency and Bounty do most wretchedly after all the strictest Engagements to Loyalty turn back like a Dog to his Vomit and are pleased no otherwise but during your Respect to that vile Excrescence of Government which hath been spued out and abhorred as your beloved Association is now chiefly for it's Tendency toward the same After you have made a Citation of a Loyal Gentleman's words you will needs insinuate from them a parity of His most Excellent Majestie 's and that basest of Usurper's Oliver's Cause and do in effect deride all that out of Devotion worship the true God because some out of Fear or Illusion have worship'd the Devil Usurpers conscious to themselves what Hatred their ambitious and tyrannical Invasions merit study Popularity and are forc'd to fawn upon the worst of men whom they interest to impose upon others and always rule by Arts contrary to the Prescriptions of Legal and just Monarchy They either affright or corrupt men to obsequious acknowledgments These with Majestical but Gracious Countenance receive the due Tributes of voluntary Obedience and encourage Fidelity to the shame and terrour of such as associate and consult by their Kings to disturb the Publick Peace Because some unduely flattered Oliver once your Master therefore you will allow none to give our Lawful King those proper Eulogies and Thanks which his wise and excellent Government challenges from all whom God hath blessed with Judgment to see and rejoyce in their happiness by and under him But this with your Lordship is a base and destructive Design a strong Affirmation which you would have received although you have forgotten to tell us the Reason And so in truth you have the Sense which should direct us to what you mean in saying It would have been some Argument of the Addressors Candour and sincerity of their Intentions in what they did before if they had forborn their late Applications till they had found that they were not mistaken in the grounds upon which they think to vindicate themselves for what they then did Something your Lordship did here conceive but being ill Midwiv'd is spoil'd in the production As to what you said a little before you are as unfortunate in your expressions and reasoning For these Addressors are not sick of your Lordships Megrims and distempers of Brain that giddily rave and anticipate the Fruits of Royal Counsels before maturity They as all brave Spirits are blessed with Humility and meddle not with the King's Prerogative neither take upon them to instruct him when a Parliament will be most seasonably called but leave it to his Wisdom from which by God's blessing upon it they hope to reap the satisfactory Effects of these and their former Addresses while your Lordship and your Factious Adherents shall sit in melancholick postures and enviously assist your tormenting Angels in your own vexation How you call Mr. Groyâ—'s Oath a bare suggestion I understand not neither what credit you gain by saying this Association was for what appears only feigned and imaginary Those few words upon this account before spoken may I think suffice for all your scrupulous artifice will neither cover nor colour that Villany You may as well call in question Whether that Noble and Loyal Peer was accused and indicted as whether that Paper was seized in his Closet or any where promoted by Associators you may as well question Whether that Lord ever was Lord Chancellor and afterward made good his own words in his Speech to L. Treasurer and found His Majesty a Prince under whom the unfortunate fall gently Whether afterward in the House of Peers he made any Speeches in opposition to a certain strict Test for the discovery of Popery promoted in that House Whether he was since at Oxford and afterward committed to the Tower Your Lordship thinks it congruous that the Addressors testifie their detestation of the many Sham-Plots whereby Loyal and innocent Protestants have been endeavoured to be destroyed and what is more evident than that they do this abhorring both the real and Sham-Plots which bold and bloody-minded Factions under the name forsooth of Protestants were engaged in to the destruction of the King Religion and Government This you are fierce and zealous to have done yet being done you dislike and complain of it and what 's the reason but because while you cry out of Popish Plots and Popish Sham-Plots onely these Addressors the true Friends of the Protestant Religion and Peace of these Kingdoms see you involved in the same Plots which you cry out against and engage to defend the King and establish'd Religion against all Conspirators whatsoever whether Popishly Scismatically or Heretically affected But when all of you make such a dinn about Protestants and name the Protestant Religion why do you not set forth what this Protestant Religion is that we may know it before we engage to defend it The Religion establish'd in the Church of England we are sure you would destroy not preserve for this the Addressors promise and desire to preserve which promises onely give you these Galls and Disturbances Neither will you own the Presbyterian to be the onely Protestant nor with the Presbyterian the Independent for then the other younger Brethren Anabaptist Brownist Quaker Fifth Monarchy man and all the rest of this large Family will take it very ill to be rejected as Spurious and unprovided of Protestant Portions If you take all into your politick Ark whether feathered or naked cloven-footed clawed or hoofed this Conjunction will make England in the next Generation surpass any part of Africa for monstrous Issue when those of Baxter's Vincent's and Jacomb's holy Protestant Herds shall mingle with Protestant Muggletons Protestant Quakers Protestant Ranters and your Honour 's which is Protestant Atheists Considering then the impossibility of such pretended Union in different Opinions knit together in one Band of Religion and yet that if any one or more Part or Opinion be rejected the Project is that way inconsistent with what it throws out and would seem because there 's a Rupture made with the Muggletonian or Ranter or whomsoever this Holy League receives not who yet hath as good a title to that Vocabulum of Protestant as Jack Presbyter Jack of Leyden George of Munster or Hugh Peters when he came from New England So that in time I find the League hits not upon the score of Religion but all these are Protestants as protesting against Monarchy and the whole present frame of Government and that can no otherwise come under one name of Protestant than by joyning with it the word Rebell and then Protestant Rebell speaks all