Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	great_a	king_n	parliament_n	3,205	5	6.3516	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36630	His Majesties declaration defended in a letter to a friend being an answer to a seditious pamphlet, called A letter from a person of quality to his friend : concerning the kings late declaration touching the reasons which moved him to dissolve the two last parliaments at Westminster and Oxford.	Dryden, John, 1631-1700.	1681 (1681)	Wing D2286; ESTC R180	23,921	20

taking up Arms during ten Persecutions But we have no Text no Primitive Example encouraging us to rebel against a Christian Prince tho of a different Perswasion And to say there were then no Christian Princes when the New Testament was written will avail our Author little for the Argument is a Fortiori if it be unlawful to rebel against a Heathen Emperor then much more against a Christian King The Corollary is this and every unbiassed sober man will subscribe to it that since we cannot pry into the secret Decrees of God for the knowledge of future Events we ought to rely upon his Providence for the Succession without either plunging our present King into necessities for what may never happen or refusing our obedience to one hereafter who in the course of nature may succeed him One who if he had the will could never have the power to settle Popery in England or to bring in Arbitrary Government But the Monarchy will not be destroyed and the Protestant Religion will be preserved if we may have a Protestant Successor If his party had thought that this had been a true Expedient I am confident it had been mentioned in the last Parliament at Westminster But there altum silentium not one word of it Was it because the Machine was not then in readiness to move and that the Exclusion must first pass or more truly was it ever intended to be urged I am not ashamed to say that I particularly honour the Duke of Monmouth but whether his nomination to succeed would at the bottom be pleasing to the Heads of his Cabal I somewhat doubt To keep him fast to them by some remote hopes of it may be no ill Policy To have him in a readiness to head an Army in case it should please God the King should die before the Duke is the design and then perhaps he has reason to expect more from a Chance Game than from the real desires of his party to exalt him to a Throne But 't is neither to be imagined that a Prince of his Spirit after the gaining of a Crown would be managed by those who helped him to it let his ingagements and promises be never so strong before neither that he would be confin'd in the narrow compass of a Curtail'd Mungril Monarchy half Commonwealth Conquerors are not easily to be curbed And it is yet harder to conceive that his pretended Friends even design him so much as that At preset 't is true their mutual necessities keep them fast together and all the several Fanatick Books fall in to enlarge the common stream But suppose the business compassed as they design'd it how many and how contradicting Interests are there to be satisfied Every Sect of High Shooes would then be uppermost and not one of them endure the toleration of another And amongst them all what will become of those fine Speculative Wits who drew the Plan of this new Government and who overthrew the old For their comfort the Saints will then account them Atheists and discard them Or they will plead each of them their particular Merits till they quarrel about the Dividend And the Protestant Successor himself if he be not wholly governed by the prevailing party will first be declared no Protestant and next no Successor This is dealing sincerely with him which Plato Redivivus does not for all the bustle he makes concerning the Duke of M. proceeds from a Commonwealth Principle he is afraid at the bottom to have him at the Head of the party lest he should turn the absolute Republick now designing into an arbitrary Monarchy The next thing he exposes is the project communicated at Oxford by a worthy Gentleman since deceased But since he avowed himself that it was but a rough draught our Author might have paid more respect to his memory than to endeavour to render it ridiculous But let us see how he mends the matter in his own which follows If the Duke were only banished during life and the Administration put into the hands of Protestants that would establish an unnatural War of Expediency against an avowed Right and Title But on the other hand exclude the Duke and all other Popish Successors and put down all those Guards are now so illegally kept up and banish the Papists where can be the danger of a War in a Nation unanimous I will not be unreasonable with him I will expect English no where from the barrenness of his Country but if he can make sense of his Unnatural War of Expediency I will forgive him two false Grammars and three Barbarisms in every Period of his Pamphlet and yet leave him enow of each to expose his ignorance whensoever I design it But his Expedient it self is very solid if you mark it Exclude the Duke take away the Guards and consequently all manner of defence from the Kings Person Banish every Mothers Son of the Papists whether guilty or not guilty in particular of the Plot. And when Papists are to be banished I warrant you all Protestants in Masquerade must go for company and when none but a pack of Sectaries and Commonwealths-men are left in England where indeed will be the danger of a War in a Nation unanimous After this why does not some resenting Friend of Marvel's put up a Petition to the Soveraigns of his party that his Pension of four hundred pounds per annum may be transferred to some one amongst them who will not so notoriously betray their cause by dullness and insufficiency As for the illegal Guards let the Law help them or let them be disbanded for I do not think they have need of any Champion The next twenty Lines are only an Illustration upon his Expedient for he is so fond of his darling Notion that he huggs it to death as the Ape did her young one He gives us his Bill of Tautology once more for he threatens that they would not rest at the Exclusion but the Papists must again be banish'd and the Dukes Creatures put out of Office both Civil and Military Now the Dukes Creatures I hope are Papists or little better so that this is all the same as if he had been conning over this ingenious Epigram There was a man who with great labour and much pain Did break his neck and break his neck and break his neck again At the last to shew his hand is not out in the whole Paragraph when the Duke is excluded his Creatures put out of Office the Papists banished twice over and the Church of England-men delivered to Satan yet still he says the Duke is the great Minister of State and the Kings Excellent Qualities give his Brother still opportunities to ruine us and our Religion Even excluded and without Friends and Faction he can do all this and the King is endued with most excellent Qualities to suffer it Having found my man methinks I can scarce afford to be serious with him any longer but to treat him as he