Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	king_n	kingdom_n	majesty_n	5,039	5	6.1083	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85885	An exercitation concerning usurped powers: wherein the difference betwixt civill authority and usurpation is stated. That the obedience due to lawfull magistrates, is not owing, or payable, to usurped powers, is maintained. The obligation of oaths, and other sanctions to the former, notwithstanding the antipolitie of the latter is asserted. And the arguments urged on the contrary part in divers late printed discourses are answered. Being modestly, and inoffensively managed: by one studious of truth and peace both in Church and state.	Hollingworth, Richard, 1607-1656.; Gee, Edward, 1613-1660, attributed name.	1650 (1650)	Wing G449; Thomason E585_2	84,100	90

proprio quantum vult remittere sed non potest quisquam de alieno iure quicquam demere ipso vel inconsulto vel invito si alterius cuiusquam intersit ex aliquo suo iure obligationem non solvi obligatio non solvitur Ibid. but the Covenant even in that part of it was not meerly or chiefly of a private or personall importance to the King himself but was and is of a publick interest to the Covenanters themselves and the Kingdoms the Kings refusall therefore and opposition to it could be no release from it we say on all hands the King is for the Kingdom as the means is for the end We have ten parts in the King said the men of Israel of David and at another time they said and sware Thou shalt no more go out with us to battell that thou quench not the light of Israel What portion have we in David and we have none inheritance in the son of Jesse the ten Tribes said when they made a revolt from and rebelled against Rehoboam The Introduction of the Covenant in laying down the concernments and ends for the making of it expresseth it self thus Having before our eyes the glory of God and the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ the honour and happinesse of the Kings Majestie and his posterity and the true publick liberty safety and peace of the Kingdoms wherein every ones private condition is included And a little afterwards We have for the preservation of our selves and our Religion from utter ruine and destruction resolved and determined to enter into a mutuall and solemne League and Covenant c. And Art 6. it styleth its cause This Common cause of Religion liberty and peace of the Kingdoms which cause it saith presently after so much concerneth the glory of God the good of the Kingdoms and honour of the King 2. The King never refused to agree to nor did he oppose the matter of this particular clause as touching this there could be no dissent on his part his prescribing and standing upon the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy wherein this clause is contained his avowing the difference and war on his part to be for the defence of his person and authority his putting forth Oaths to them that adhered to him for the preservation of these makes it as clear as noon-day that he refused and opposed not this branch Now upon this confideration the Remonstrancer hath not onely failed in his allegation but overthrown his own argument he saying in the place before cited Although the Kings refusing sets the Covenanters free from any further obligation by vertue of that Covenant 〈◊〉 to what concerns his interest and benefit therein yet the Covenant as to other matters concerning the right and benefit of the Covenanters one from another stands still obliging and in force I may by the same reason say the Kings refusing the Covenant upon exception against other clauses not this and his opposing other matters in the Covenant not this could not dis-ingage or release the Covenanters from this about which there was not the least dissent or reluctancy but a concurrence full enough on his part so that the Covenant must stand still obliging and in force as to this part 3. If the Kings said refusall and opposition could have discharged us from this member of the Covenant as to his own person and interest in the Authority yet with all your straining you cannot stretch them to our release from preservation and defence of the Kingly Authority in relation to his posterity who were in proximity to him interested in it and for whose interest therein the Covenant was also made e Having before our eyes the honour Happinesse of the Kings Majestie and his posterity and whose refusall of it nor yet a tender of it to them you do not cannot once plead I have done with the wrong glosse of the Remonstrancer endeavouring to impeach the obligation of this clause of the Covenant I finde another a deare friend of his tampering with it also to clude the tye of it and he offers it no lesse violence but in a more unhandsome and grosse manner It is that Polemick or Army-Divine Mr. J.G. in his Defence of the Honourable Sentence c. The man in that book undertaketh and bends his skill to a double unhappie and crosse designe to wit to varnish and guild over that which is very foule and to besmear and obscure that which is very clear In his prosecution of the latter he fals upon this sentence of the Covenant in dealing with which he correspondeth with the Remonstrancer and as this hath challenged to himself a prerogative to enforce men and Magistrates so doth he arrogate to himself to be a bold enforcer of words and Covenants a more strange and presumptuous perverting of plain words I never read nor heard then that which he useth to this clause when he saith page 51. Evident it is that those words in the Covenant in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and liberties of the Kingdoms import a condition to be performed on the Kings part without the performance whereof the Covenant obligeth no man to the preservation or defence of his Person or Authority And this condition he makes to be page 52 53. That he preserve and defend the true Religion and liberties of the Kingdom and of this his paraphrase of the words he saith If this be not the clear meaning and importance of them the Covenant is a Barbarian unto me I understand not the English of it The vast exorbitancy audaciousnesse and impietie of this his wresting and straining of these plain words I leave the Reader to take the measure of I shall onely endeavour to free them from this his distortion 1. Let the words themselves speak they do not say in his preservation and defence c. but in the preservation and defence c. plainly referring to the same preservation and defence of Religion and Liberties which is before promised and sworn in this and the preceding Articles and as evidently referring to the same persons preservation and defence of them here which are to preserve and defend them in the former clauses and which are to preserve and defend the Kings Majesties person and Authority in this viz the Covenanters If the Covenant had intended to pitch the preservation and defence in this clause upon another person or persons as the performers besides those to whom the same actions are referred immediately before it would have pointed them out distinctly but when it expresses no other ordinary construction will attribute them to the parties before nominated and no regular construction can put them upon any other This reading is plain English to him that knows the language and will understand and Mr. G. proves himself a barbarous dealer with the covenant in that he will have it either to admit of his antigramaticall sense or to be a Barbarian

least not to oppose the Usurpers Finally let them recollect before they enter that doore what they have sworn to his late Majestie his Heirs and lawfull Successors what to the Parliaments Power rights and priviledges and what to the Kingdom Et magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium tyranni si i● aliqua de re bona deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censea● mihi faciendum utque scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris consilii est M. T. Cicero epist ad T. Pomp. Atticum l. 10 ep 1. and Subjects lawfull rights and priviledges and deliberate how they keeping of those things and sitting down with these men will be reconciled I finde that even wise Heathens have scrupled at this without the supposition of such Oaths CHAP. IIII. The obligatorinesse of the Oaths and Covenant urged in the 2d Chap against obedience to Vsurpers made good against divers late Authors BEfore I take in hand to answer Arguments that are brought for the confirmation of those two opinions for obedience to Usurpation and against which I have argued in the preceding Chapters it will be convenient in this place to take notice of such allegations and Exceptions as are made against the obligation of the Oaths and Covenants before urged as binding out from that obedience sundry late Authors having pleaded that the Oaths and Covenant either are not now in force but expired or do not extend too and binde in the case to which they are applyed I begin with the Remonstrance presented to the House of Commons Novemb 20. 1648. which unto the clause in the Solemn League and Covenant Art 3. obliging to endevour to preserve and defend the Kings Majesties person and Authority in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and liberties of the Kingdom alledgeth divers things some of which concern onely the obligation to the preservation of the Kings person those are past consideration other reflect upon it in relation to his Authority as unto which I have urged it to be still in force and therefore shall examine what the Remonstrance saith for the invalidating of it as unto that bringing in onely so much of its argumentation as can be construed to tend to this purpose and of this nature I observe two Allegations 1. The words in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms are a restriction to the engagement for preservation of the Kings person and Authority so as to oblige them to no further nor in any other way then shall be consistent with the preservation and defence of the true Religion and liberties of the Kingdoms but if by reason and experience we finde the preservation and defence of his person to be not safe but full of visible danger if not certainly destructive to Religion or publick interest then surely by the Covenant itself the preservation of his person or authority is not to be endevoured so far or in such a way or at least the Covenant obligeth not to it but against it page 55 56. 1. It is not necessary nor proper to take the words in the preservation c. as restrictive to the engagement either way that is either for the preservation and defence of the Kings person and Authority on the one hand or of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms on the other It is not necessarie I say for those words in the Article in our severall vocations are an expresse and fully sufficient restriction taking in and binding to all lawfull and just wayes of preserving and defending each of them and excluding all unlawfull Neither is it proper in there being clearly conjunctive and as much as with and equally looking both wayes that is both to the preservation and defence of that which goes before and that which follows unto the preservation and defence of all which though they be not of equall worth or intrest so that one of them must come behinde the other in the order of our endevours of their preservation and defence yet the Covenant binds equally in regard of the firmnesse of the obligation yet if any shall still contend that clause to be restrictive in that manner which the Remonstrance saith I will not strive in a verball contention with him for the taking of it so no more lesseneth our obligation to the preservation of the Kings Authority then if it had not been inserted we being tyed notwithstanding it to all just wayes of preservation therof and no more had been involved if it had been left out 2. But the sinews of this Argument lyeth in the pretended or implyed inconsistency betwixt the preservation and defence of Religion and the Kingdoms liberties unto which I say 1. There is doubtlesse a fair consistencie non-opposition or agreement betwixt the safetie of every one of these the being of each of them may and can stand with the other it is a groundlesse surmise and grosse absurditie to imagine an inconsistency betwixt the just intrests of any of them our taking of them together into the Covenant yeeldeth thus much if there were any incoexistency amongst them we could not have sworn to their joynt preservation or if we did the Oath was of impossibles and so as to this branch both unlawfull and void or non-obliging in the making of it a Regula juris rei impossibilis nulla obligatio 2. An endevour to preserve the one and the other will well enough stand together a lawfull power indeed actually and effectually to preserve them all may happen to be wanting and any one of them may fall under danger and I may want just means to relieve it but an endevour which can onely import a doing what is within power and warrant may be yeelded still to the preservation of every of them 3. Seeing then that an inconsistibility either of the things one with another or of the endevouring their preservation cannot be pleaded as possibly incident or occurrent evident it is that there cannot at any time lye a necessitie of taking a way of any of them and that the obligation of the Covenant to the endevour of preserving every of them continually stands in force during their respective existence and consequently it bindeth out from intending seeking attempting or prosecuting the abolishing or destruction of any of them for that is indeed truly inconsistent with the said endevour and therefore a palpable violation of the Covenant It must here be granted that the lawfull and necessary defence and preservation of one of them sometimes may so imploy me that I cannot at that time by the same means act for the others safety ye● what I act for one may put the other in hazard and in the issue not onely be accompanied with but though against my will and endevours to the utmost of my lawfull capacity contingently and besides my intention prove the losse and

ruine of the other and this is incident not from any contrariety or inconsistency that is betwixt them but both because they are distinct and separable things and so cannot alwayes and by the same medium be concurrently prosecuted and because some of them are more worthy then the other which must therefore have the preheminency thus far that if they cannot altogether with my best endeavours be secured I am to prefer the security of the most precious and expose any of the other rather to danger then it As for instance it will I suppose be admitted to be agreeable to the Covenant for the Kingdoms rather to omit the safeguarding of their Liberties and put them to the hazard then the true Religion where both cannot be joyntly put out of danger but all this amounts not to a disobligement from the endevour of preserving them all nor to a liberty upon any emergency of active direct and purposed making away or removing of any of them though under pretence of securing the other I have read of one Alcon who finding his son fast on sleep upon the grasse and a Serpent creeping upon his breast he not apprehending how otherwise it was possible to save his son took his Bowe and shot at the Serpent upon the boyes breast which though to the manifest endangering of his life yet the chose rather to take that course then by suffering the Serpent to leave his life to a more certain destruction and either his art or good hap was such as that he prevented and slew the Serpent and preserved his Son b Ars erat esse patrem●cit ●tura pe●ic ●m Et par●er ●●venem somnoque mort● levavit Manilius li 3. those whom we are bound and most solicitous to preserve we may upon an extreame exigence put in some hazard that we may preserve them but there is a great difference betwixt this and a deliberate purposed declared prosecuting them to destruction 3. But how doth the Remonstrancer prove the Assumption viz The inconsistency pretended betwixt the endevour of the preservation of the Kings person and Authority and the preservation of Religion and liberty thus he saith By reas●n and experience we finde the preservation and defence of his person and Authority to be not safe but full of visible danger if not certainly destructive to religious or publick Interest If the one could be said to be certainly destructive to the other you would have said it without an if not but it seems you have not confidence to assever so much and yet they cannot be purely inconsistent without such a destructivenesse so that your own extenuation sufficiently discovers the weaknes of your proof all that you affirm is That there is no safetie but a full visible danger in the preservation which you impugne 1. The danger you pretend is in the disposall and use of the things to be preserved not in the nature of the things For instance the Kings Authority is politically and morally good the ordinance of God and if well used may be eminently advantagious if evilly used may be dangerous enough to Religion and liberties the like may also be said or the privileges of the Parliament and of the liberties of the Kingdoms in relation to Religion and to each other will you thence infer an inconsistency of these with Religion or a disobligement from the Covenant for preservation and defence of these 2. As there may be danger that way to the things specified so there may be danger and insecurity to the same things on the other hand viz in the destruction of the Kings person suppose it were undone and Authority and let impartiall Reason and Experience judge whether the preservation or destruction thereof hath more danger in it to Religion and the Kingdoms Liberty 3. But seeing there may be some danger on each side and in the preservation of the Kings Authority there is no more pretended but danger and that but of suffering not of sin it is apparent that as there is no such inconsistency as is intimated so the obligation of the Covenant to the preservation of the Kings Authority stands good and our safest way is to avoid the horrid sin and greater danger of Covenant-breaking by standing upon the said preservation 2ly The other thing which the Remonstrance alledgeth and is to be cleared is this Where severall persons joyning to make a Covenant do make a covenanting clause therein to the good or benefit of another person not present no party to the agreement but whom and whose Interest they would willingly provide for as well as for their own to the end be might joyn with them in the agreement and partake the benefit thereof as well as themselves if this absent party when it is tendered to him for his conjunction shall not accept the Agreement but refuse to joyn in and oppose it and begin prosecute and multiply contests with all the Covenanters about the matters contained in it Surely that person in so doing by his once refusing upon a fair and full tender sets the other Covenanters free from any further obligation by vertue of that Covenant as to what concerns his benefit or interest therein Now whether this be not your case c. 1. True indeed a releasement from Covenants and promissory oaths which concern matters betwixt man and man is granted lawfull some wayes But 1. this must be done by the party with whom the Covenant and to whom the Oath is made c Si is cui juratur ratum habuerit iuramentum veli● servari non potest ab alia quacunq tertia persona relaxari ratio est quia nemo potest ius alteri acquisitum nisi ipse consenserit adimere D Saunderson de iuram 1. rom oblig praelect 7. Sect. 8. but as the Remonstrancer acknowledgeth this Covenant was made the King being not present nor a party covenanting or covenanted with but a third person the persons covenanting and covenanted with mutually as by the Introductory part is manifest were the Noblemen Barons Knights c. in the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland it was it may be desired and hoped that the King and his Issue would afterwards approve and joyn in it but the Covenant was actually plighted and therefore did actually binde in every branch of it they not taking it and the parties with whom we covenanted not releasing us the pretended refusall of the King could be no discharge from it 2. A releasement can be made by the party covenanted with and sworn too onely where the Covenant is for the particular and proper interest of that party or so far onely as concerneth him but not to the prejudice of a third parties concernment without his consent d Dico sexto relaxationem partis valere ad vinculum juramenti solvendum quantum ipsius interest non tamen valere in praeiudicium tertiae personae Ratio est quia potest quilibet per actum suum de iure

to him I dare appeal to Mr. Gs. own conscience if it be not either speechles or a Barbarian to him whether when he took this Covenant he understood this clause in the meaning he would now thrust upon it or rather hath not played the Doedalus since in shaping and bringing forth this sense to serve his turn and defend what hath been since acted 2. In making this the importance of those words Mr. G. contradicts his friend or Patron the Remonstrancer in his expounding of them and takes away the very medium or ground of his argument before brought in out of his book page 55 56. and answered above For he page 55. takes those words either as a restriction to the engagement for preservation of the Kings person and Authority to wit as obliging no further then is consistent therewith yea he proposeth whether the said engagement may not be so understood as to be fulfilled in the preservation of Religion and Liberties neither of which senses can carry that clause to the King as the performer and in page 56 he explaineth this preservation and defence of Religion and liberties to be the Parliaments Covenanted utmost endevour to preserve them Let Mr. J. G. then leave endeavouring to reconcile the Covenant and his cause which are at too great odds to be reconcileable and go make the Remonstrancer and himself friends who differ so diametrically in their sense of these words 3. How will Mr. G. make this sense of his and the proceedings against the late King stand together for before the King was so proceeded against he had consented to all that was positively proposed to him for Religion at least for 3. yeers and for the privative part propounded to wit the Abolition of Episcopacy he had not denyed it but granted the present suspension and referred the utter extirpation of it to the deliberation of the Assembly and ordering of Parliament against whose consent he had agreed nothing should be done for the restoring of it and had granted fully the Parliaments overtures for Liberties Neither doth the Remonstrancer or any other as far as I have observed insist on the shortnesse of the Kings concessions in any particulars of either nature as the ground of those capitall proceedings but on the inexpiablenesse of his former facts and the unsafenesse of trusting him for future upon any tearms If then the King immediately before the fatall prosecution against him did as his present state would permit concur so amply in the preservation of Religion and Liberties they were bound that had taken this Covenant by vertue of this clause taken in Mr. Gs. sense whatever had been his former carriage then to endeavour the preservation of his person and Authority The Covenant in this branch is indefinite and unrestrained in regard of time it doth not say suppose Mr. Gs. meaning had been its words we shall preserve the Kings person and Authority if he shall within a yeer or two after this preserve Religion and Liberties but obligeth the Covenanters whenever the King should joyn in preserving Religion and Liberties as Mr. G. understandeth it to the preservation of his person and Authority Here then Mr. G. instead of weakning the Covenant as to the end it was urged by those whom he opposeth hath by wringing turned it against himself and that his adored cause which he would have defended and that with more strength then is in any of those reasons or rather shifts and colours brought by himself or any other Roscius for it 4. If that indeed were the sence of that clause which he would out-face us into the accepting of what can be said against the binding of it to the preservation and defence of the kingly Authority still though the then King be deceased it being before proved that this clause obligeth to it in reference to the Kings posterity against whom there can be Objection of a fail in this supposed condition it being unperformable without default whilest possession of the Authority is with-held and the Authority being with-held before either any refusal of the supposed condition by him that should perform it or any overture to him for the obtaining of it be made I have thus done with the exceptions made against the obligatorinesse of the Covenant in the matter in hand I now passe to the Examination of what is pleaded against the force of the Oaths of Allegiance amongst the impugners of them I le begin with him whom I had last to deal with Mr. J. G. who in the same book pag 58 59 60. thinks to discharge us from these bonds with a Reason framed as followeth In recitall whereof I shall rehearse as much of him as expresseth his Argumentation omitting those two hetorogeneous instances of keeping back a mad mans sword and of a States dis-engagement from league with another State that hath first broken league with it as impertinent both to his reason and our case Peter Martyr saith Mr. G. well observes concerning the promises of God that they are to be understood according to the present state and condition of things when they are made meaning that no performance of them is intended ●y God in case men shall decline from that integrity under which and in relation unto which such promises were made unto them so neither are the promises of men whether made with oath or without to be so understood as if the makers of them stood bound to perform the tearms of them under any possible change or alteration what soever in the persons to whom they are made Chrysostome writing upon those words Matth. 19.28 shews that Judas though the promise of sitting upon a throne was made unto him as well as unto any other yet by reason of that change which afterwards appeared in him through his wickednesse forfeited and lost his right of interest in that promise nor doth any promise though confirmed with an oath of allegiance obedience or subjection unto a King and his Successors or posterity binde any longer or otherwise either before God or men then whilest and as this King or his successors shall continue in the same deportment of themselves in the discharge of their trust and administration of their power whereby they commended themselves to us at the time when we sware such allegiance to them and in consideration and expectation whereof the same was sworn by us therefore the King being so notoriously changed c. evident it is that God himself by the tenor and importment of his promises and Jesus Christ by the like tenor and import of his fully and fairly acquits us from all engagements and tyes which the Oath of Allegiance at the time of our taking it layed upon us 2 Pet. 1.4 Psal 138.2 What and must the exceeding great and precious promises of God and his fidelity and truth therein which he hath magnified above all his Name be thus traduced must the honour of God which is so much concerned in taking and violated in