Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A43991
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The history of the civil wars of England from the year 1640-1660 / by T.H.; Behemoth
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Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.
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1679
(1679)
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Wing H2239; ESTC R35438
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143,512
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291
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own use What said the People to that A. What else but that it was legal and to be paid as being Imposed by consent of Parliament B. I have heard often that they ought to pay what was imposed by consent of Parliament to the use of the King but to their own use never before I see by this it is easier to gull the multitude than any one man amongst them for what one man that has his Natural Judgment depraved by accident could be so easily cousened in a matter that concerns his Purse had he not been passionately carried away by the rest to change of Government or rather to a Liberty of every one to Govern himself A. Judge then what kind of men such a multitude of Ignorant People were like to elect for the Burgeses and Knights of Shires B. I can make no other Judgment but that they who were then elected were just such as had been elected for former Parliaments and as are like to be elected for Parliaments to come for the Common people have been and always will be ignorant of their Duty to the Publick as never meditating any thing but their particular Interest in other things following their immediate Leaders which are either the Preachers or the most potent of the Gentlemen that dwell amongst them as Common Souldiers for the most part follow their Captains if they like them If you think the late miseries have made them wiser that will quickly be forgot and then we shall be no wiser than we were A. Why may not men be taught their Duty that is the Science of Just and Unjust as divers other Sciences have been taught from true Principles and Demonstrations and much more easily than any of those Preachers and Democratical Gent. could Rebellion and Treason B. But who can teach what none have learned or if any Man hath been so singular as to have studied the Science of Justice and Equity how can he teach it safely when it is against the Interest of those that are in possession of the Power to hurt him A. The Rules of the Just and Unjust sufficiently demonstrated and from Principles evident to the meanest capacity have not been wanting and notwithstanding the obscurity of their Author have shined not only in this but in forreign Countries to men of good Education but they are few in respect of the rest of men whereof many cannot read many though they can have no leasure and of them that have leasure the greatest part have their minds wholly imployed and taken up by their private businesses or pleasures so that it is impossible that the Multitude should ever learn their Duty but from the Pulpit and upon Holy-dayes but then and from thence it is that they learned their Disobedience and therefore the light of that Doctrine has been hitherto coverred and kept under hereby a cloud of adversaries which no private man's reputation can break through without the Authority of the Universities but from the Universities came all those Preachers that taught the contrary The Universities have been to this Nation as the Wooden-Horse was to the Trojans B. Can you tell me why and when the Universities here first began A. It seems for the time they began in the Reign of the Emperour Charles the Great before which time I doubt not but there were many Grammar Schools for the Latine Tongue which was the Natural Language of the Roman Church but for Universities that is to say Schools for the Science in general and especially for Divinity it is manifest that the Institution of them was recommended by the Pope's Letter to the Emperor Charles the great and recommended farther by a Council held in his time I think at Chal. sur Saone and not long after was erected an University at Paris and the Colledge called University Colledge at Oxford and so by degrees several Bishops Noblemen and Rich men and some Kings and Queens contributing thereunto the Universities at last obtained their present Splendor B. But what was the Pope's designe in it A. What other design was he like to have but what you heard before the advancement oâ— his own Authority in the Countries where the Universities were erected There they learned to Dispute for him and with unintelligible Distinctions to blind mens Eyes whilst they encroached upon the Rights of Kings and it was an evident Argument of that Design that they fell in hand with the work so quickly for the first Rector of the University of Paris as I have read some where was Peter Lombard who fiâ—st brought it to them the Learning called School Divinity and was seconded by John Scot of Duns who lived in or near the same time whom any Ingenious Reader not knowing what was the design would judge to have been the most egregious Blockhead in the world so obscure and senseless are their Writings And from these the School-men that succeeded learnt the trick of Imposing what they list upon their Readers and declining the force of true Reason by verbal Forks I mean distinctions that signify nothing but serve only to astonish the multitude of ignorant men as for the understanding Readers they were so few that these new sublime Doctors cared not what they thought these School men were to make good all the Articles of Faith which the Pope from time to time should command to be believed Amongst which there were very many inconsistent with the Rights of Kings and other Civil Soveraigns as asserting to the Pope all Authority whatsoever they should declare to be necessary in ordine ad Spiritualia that is to say In order to Religion From the Universities also it was that Preachers proceeded and were poured out into City and Country to terrify the People into an absolute Obedience to the Pope's Canons and Commands which for fear of wakening Kings and Princes too much they durst not yet call them Laws From the Universities it was that the Phylosophy of Aristotle was made an Ingredient to Religion as serving for a Salve to a great many absurd Articles concerning the Nature of Christs Body and the State of Angels and Saints in Heaven which Articles they thought fit to have believ'd because they bring some of them profit and others Reverence to the Clergy even to the meanest of them for when they shall have made the People believe that the meanest of them can make the Body of Christ Who is there that will not both shew them Reverence and be Liberal to them or to the Church especially in the time of their sickness when they think they make and bring to them their Saviour B. But what advantage to them in these Impostures was the Doctrine of Aristotle A. They have made more use of his Obscurity than his Doctrine for none of the Ancient Phylosophers Writings are Comparable to those of Aristotle for their aptness to puzzle and entangle men with words and to breed Disputation which must at last be ended in the Determination of the Church
might compose a body fit to Act according to their Counsels and Resolutions A fourth That they endeavoured to put the King upon other courses of Raising Money than by the ordinary way of Parliaments Judge whether these may be properly called Accusations or not rather spightful Reproaches of the King's Government B. Methinks this last was a very great fault for what good could there be in putting the King upon any odd course of getting Money when the Parliament was willing to supply him as far as to the security of the Kingdom or to the honour of the King should be necessary A. But I told you before they would give him none but with a Condition he should cut off the heads of whom they pleased how faithfully soever they had serv'd him and if he would have sacrificed all his Friends to their Ambition yet they would have found other excuses to deny him Subsidies for they were resolv'd to take from him the Soveraign Power to themselves which they would never do without taking great care that he should have no Money at all In the next place they put into the Remonstrance as faults of them whose Council the King followed All those things which since the beginning of the King's Reign were by them mis-liked whether faults or not and whereof they were not able to judge for want of knowledge of the Causes and Motives that induced the King to do them and were known only to the King himself and such of his Privy-Council as he revealed them to B. But what were those particular pretended faults A. First The Dissolution of his last Parliament at Oxford Secondly The Dissolution of his second Parliament being in the second year of his Reign Thirdly The Dissolution of his Parliament in the fourth year of his Reign Fourthly The fruitless Expedition against Cales Fifthly The Peace made with Spain whereby the Palatine's Cause was deserted and left to chargeable and hopeless Treaties Sixthly The sending of Commissions to raise Money by way of Loan Seventhly Raising of Ship-money Eighthly Enlargements of Forrests contrary to Magna-Charta Ninthly The Designment of Engrossing all the Gun-powder into one hand and keeping it in the Tower of London Tenthly A Design to bring in the Use of Brass-Money Eleventhly The Fines Imprisonments Stigmatizings Mutilations Whippings Pillories Gaggs Confinements and Banishments by Sentence in the Court of Star-Chamber Twelfthly The Displacing of Judges Thirteenthly The Illegal Acts of Council-Table Fourteenthly The Arbitrary and Illegal Power of the Earl-Marshal's Court. Fifteenthly The Abuses in Chancery Exchequer-Chamber and Court of Wards Sixteenthly The selling of Titles of Honour of Judges and Serjeants Places and other Offices Seventeenthly The Insolence of Bishops and other Clarks in Suspensions Excommunications and Degradations of divers painful and learned and pious Ministers B. Were there any such Ministers Degraded Depraved or Excommunicated A. I cannot tell But I remember I have heard threatned divers painful unlearned and seditious Ministers Eighteenthly The Excess of Severity of the High Commission-Court Nineteenthly The Preaching before the King against the Property of the Subject and for the Prerogative of the King above the Law and divers other petty Quarrels they had to the Government which though they were laid upon this Faction yet they knew they would fall upon the King himself in the Judgment of the People to whom by Printing it was communicated Again After the Dissolution of the Parliament May the 5th 1640. they find other faults as the Dissolution it self the Imprisoning some Members of both Houses a forced Loan of Money attempted in London the Continuance of the Convocation when the Parliament was ended and the favour shewed to Papists by Secretary Windebank and others B. All this will go current with common people for Mis-government and for faults of the King 's though some of them were Misfortunes and both the Mis-fortunes and the Mis-government if any were were the faults of the Parliament who by denying to give him Money did both frustrate his Attempts abroad and put him upon those extraordinary waies which they call Illegal of raising Money at home A. You see what a heap of Evils they have raised to make a shew of ill Government to the People which they second with an enumeration of the many services they have done the King in overcoming a great many of them though not all and in divers other things and say that though they had contracted a Debt to the Scots of 22000 l. and granted six Subsidies and a Bill of Pole-money worth six Subsidies more yet that God had so blessed the Endeavours of this Parliament that the Kingdom was a gainer by it and then follows the Catalogue of those good things they had done for the King and Kingdom For the Kingdom they had done they said these things They had abolished Shipâ— money They had taken away Coat and Conduct-money and other Military Charges which they said amounted to little less than the Ship-money That they supprest all Monopolies which they reckoned above a Million yearly sav'd by the Subject That they had quell'd Living Grievances meaning Evil Councillors and Actors by the Death of my Lord Strafford by the flight of the Chancellor Finch and of Secretary Windebank by the Imprisonment of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and Judges that they had past a Bill for a Triennial Parliament and another for the Continuance of the present Parliament till they should think fit to Dissolve themselves B. That is to say for ever if they be suffered But the summe of all those things which they had done for the Kingdom is that they had left it without Government without Strength without Money without Law and without good Council A. They reckoned also putting down of the High Commission and the abating of the Power of the Council-Table and of the Bishops and their Courts the taking away of unnecessary Ceremonies in Religion removing of Ministers from their Livings that were not of their Faction and putting in such as were B. All this was but their own and not the Kingdoms business A. The Good they had done the King was first they said the giving of 25000 l. a month for the Relief of the Northern Counties B. What need of Relief had the Northern more than the rest of the Counties of England B. Yes In the Northern Counties were quartered the Scotch Army which the Parliament call'd in to oppose the King and consequently their Quarter was to be discharged B. True but by the Parliament that call'd them in A. But they say no and that this Money was given the King because he is bound to protect his Subjects B. He is no farther bound to that than they to give him Money wherewithal to do it This is very great Impudence to raise an Army against the King and with that Army to oppress their Fellow-subjects and then require that the King should relieve them that is to say be at the Charge of Paying the Army that was