Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A48040
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A Letter from an absent lord to one of his friends in the convention
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1689
(1689)
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Wing L1442; ESTC R43389
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8,759
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4
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wool as there is in them But I will stop a little at the New Oathes which you substitute in place of those which are appointed by Law. You my Lord have taken the Oaths of Allegiance Supreamacy and the Test as well as your Neighbours Do you believe those Oaths oblig'd you to perform what you swore and ty'd you to the King to whom you swore or do you not In likelyhood you do not since those Oaths notwithstanding you thought your self free to take up Arms against your King and to joyn with His Enemies of necessity then you must either be Perjur'd or believe there is no regard to be had to Oaths as indeed you were no Slaves to yours We must be confident Men to reproach the Papists longer with their Lyes and their Equivocations to which abundance of them are no greater Friends than we when your Convention not only teaches but orders us to make such May-Games of our Oaths Besides they were Enacted by Parliament the bare dispensing with which in favour of Papists is a principal part of your Out-cry against His Majesty with what face can you take them quite away and pop in others in their room you who by changing your Convention into a Parliament acknowledge you have not the Authority of a Parliament How could you do what you make a Crime in the King who at worst has an Authority which you have not Zeal I suppose for Protestant Religion will be pleaded for your Proceeding and your strange Votes against the King. And yet it would puzzle the most Religious Man of quirk among you to cite the Article of Protestant Religion or Act concerning it which justifie your Zeal There is none which enables Subjects to dispose of the Crown in case their King profess not the Protestant Religion On the contrary the last Act of Vniformity formally detests the Doctrine of those who teach that Subjects may take up Arms against their King. And tho' some Law had made the Profession of the Protestant Religion necessary to be King of England it were to be understood of the Protestant Religion Established by Law yet you take the boldness to declare the Throne Vacant whatever you pretend to in reality because the King is of the Romish Religion and at the same time set up a Man who has always been of a Religion contrary to Law as well as the King since the Prince of Orange is a Protestant Dissenter for the Law is against Protestant Dissenters as will as Papists But I see you take upon you to do what the Fanaticks have so often demanded and no Legal Parliament yet would ever grant to take away the Penal Laws from Protestant Dissenters and leave them still in force against Papists Where I ask again what Authority you have to alter the Laws and what pretence to Dispense with them when you fall out with the King for Dispensing Turn it which way you will these Proceedings are unmaintainable and as you are no Stranger to our Laws you will I make no doubt acknowledge that there is no speaking of them and your Votes the same day And then the King is traduced with designing Arbitrary Power when the Arbitrary Power of the Convention has subverted more in a week than our Kings in a hundred years It has subverted the Fundamental Law of Succession all that have been made for the security of Kings and the State those of Supreamacy of Uniformity in Religion and so many other that there will hardly remain more than just to keep Nisi prius es going For in what concerns Criminal matters all Laws have been laid aside by the illegal Proceedings against divers Papists and others Peers as well as Commons Imprison'd against Law and this at the very time in which complaint was made of bringing one into the Kings-Bench who ought to have been Try'd in Parliament Peers are priviledg'd Persons how then can you take upon you to Arrest even Popish Peers you who neither had the Authority nor Name of a Parliament The Law allows the meanest Man in the Nation his Habeas Corpus and by it his Liberty upon Bail and yet you refused it to Peers The Chancellor is the Third Man in the Kingdom and has the priviledge not only of his Peerage but of his Office which makes the usage he has received Treason And yet you have put and kept him in Prison notwithstanding that even tho' you had been a Lawful Parliament all you could do is to Address to the King to punish him for Male-administration if he be guilty But I will enlarge no farther upon your irregular doings whereof I do not think it possible to pack a greater number into one Vote I will only tell you that to my thinking your Convention has outdone the long Parliament it self in bare fac'd contempt of the Laws Those Seditious Paricides stumbled not as you do at the Threshold They demanded and tho' by very bad means obtained a Parliament They acknowledged the Kings Power when they met they sought and to his and the whole Nations misfortune got his consent to an Act for not Disolving or Proroging them without their own consent They then kept at least some measures you keep none and they were a Parliament you are not I know you ill if you will always be content the World should think something better of the most execrable Paracides that ever were and take you for the less modestly wicked of the two For what concerns your new King he has nothing but Force to trust to the only thing which can silence the Laws and preserve him But I am persuaded that you who are his Favourites will be the first to repent the trusting your Liberty in such bad hands Those Brutes of Hollanders are far from the Free-men which he found them He persuaded them to rid themselves of their best Patriots as he has persuaded you to rid your selves of your King and is like to make you sensible one day that your great Liberty which you found it seems uneasy will bid fair to enslave you If persuasions will not do there are other expedients in the World which may and if we will believe malicious Tongues have been thought of I for my part am resolved to stay at home till I see which way matters are like to go Whatever you Write I cannot but think them wondrous tottering still tho' he has appeared in his Robes perhaps suspecting that if he had stay'd his Coronation day he might never have worn them Between you and me the Description you make puts me in mind of Kings in old Tapestry with their Crowns and their Mantles always on even in Bed. 'T is like that day he went to Bed with his to expose the Raree-Show a while longer But let him Reign over those who find him and his ways to their mind happen what will I will not taint my Family and my Credit no not with Treason if sure to be pardoned and the Infamy