Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A41817
|
Two letters written to the author of a pamphlet entituled Solomon and Abiathar, or, The case of the deprived bishops and clergy discussed
|
Grascome, Samuel, 1641-1708?
|
1692
(1692)
|
Wing G1579; ESTC R37402
|
44,307
|
44
|
about if they be not sensible already I doubt not but they will in a little time And now Sir if you will give me the same liberty to put together which you take I cannot learn from all this how our old Laws and Oaths binds us to your new Allegiance but that rather our Constitutions and Oaths binds us to King JAMES and not to William though the contrary hereto is your shameless conclusion from your wild Premises All along you make Dyscheres by whom you represent us to give up the cause as far as you go which disingenuous dealing we have too much cause to complain of but the better to detect it I must follow your steps and now comes such a tremendous Objection that I wonder your Joynts did not tremble and your Hand shake when you set Pen to Paper it is to this effect That when the violence is essentially unjust unnatural and contrary to the moral and eternal Laws of God and Righteousness no Human compacts can ratifie such wrong or justifie and confirm what is essentially injurious nor ought the Priests of the most High God to consecrate and confirm such Rapes by Oaths and Religious Sponsions If there be any such thing as this and such I fear we shall find there is if there be any such thing as God's Commandments we had need have a care what we do That Man's wit is ill bestowed on him who argues himself out of his own Soul But here you think to slip your Neck out of the Collar by telling us That the internal Immorality of all actions must be carefully distinguished from the civil Consequences of them Well be it so we will do this for you too as fairly and carefully as we can and what then Why then suppose say you p. 6. A Son by fraudulent Arts gets Judgment in Law and seizes his Father's Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this Man's Immorality is damnable Is it so I think this is a bone for some body to pick which may hold him tug tho' his Teeth were as long as his NOSE But Sir what if a Daughter should do thus Will not this Womans Immorality be damnable If not pray next time you write give us a reason of the difference But it seems if they should be both damned Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so whilst they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law but if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers make themselves Parties and join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an evil act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawfull Arts then their being Officers of Law will rather encrease than deminish their guilt And so for your Robbers and Pirates a Man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it but if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawfull if you say they require a just right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually join with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge Much such another instance is your Lord of a Mannor let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lord's Tenants conspire against their lawfull Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him you Sir may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your Honesty for it But now let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset There are a sort of Protestants who I think are resolved by making away the Fifth Commandment to be even with the Papists for suppressing the Second and indeed according as some Men act and write unless it be to furnish pretence and to shew our fine Cloaths and eat roast Meat on Sundays I see not what occasion they have for any Commandments and so they might make Religion a Law of Liberty or a Liberty from all Law and I do not perceive Sir that you much mend the matter you say That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge K. W. with Subjection to King JAMES c. p. 7. If by this you mean that we cannot thence prove him to have been his Subject I do not know that ever any Man attempted such a thing but does a Nephew and a Son-in-Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the right The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say That she is in Duty bound to follow her Husband's Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and this with a more plenary consent if she judged her Husbands Cause to be just I do not think either her or your judgment worth a farthing unless the Cause be just in it self Sorry Arguments will serve to persuade Ambitious persons that they have right to a Crown though unconcerned persons at the same time plainly see the fallaciousness of them But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is bound thus to follow her Husband through thick and thin I grant that she ought to be the Partner both of his Joys and Sorrows but let her have a care how she becomes Partner in his Sins nor doth the relation of a Wife take away the relation of a Child as you seem to intimate tho' you are ashamed plainly to say it they may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent but yet the great end of these relations is to strengthen and support not to destroy each other as you closely insinuate Besides your reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there would rise another relation and then he in these Dominions must follow her Fortunes not she his for according to our Constitutions she would be his Queen and here he must be her Subject It is true the Name of King would be allowed but the Power by our Constitutions would be lodged in her and he would be liable to offend against her Laws to Treason against her Person and to be tried by her Authority
pervert the State of the case Had you given your self the small trouble to read over the Oath you could not for shame have put this interpretation upon it for the express words of it are Lawful Successors which follow the word Heirs by way of limitation or restraint to shew that none shall succeed but the Legal Heir And thus Sir the Words of the Oath instead of admitting plainly and peremptorily exclude your extraordinary Successors and extra lineal Kings Thus your new invention hath added a fresh absurdity instead of being a remedy to those many others which your Party run into upon discourses of this matter and though you mince the matter yet you might as well have been so bold to say The Oath requires Allegiance to unlawful Successors as what you have said for whilst there is One in Being and claiming to whom the right really belongs What can your extraordinary Successors be but Tyrants Usurpers such as rob others of their right and live by injustice and rapine To tell Men that they ought to assist a Tyrant against their Lawful Prince and to preach up the Obligation of Obedience and Allegiance to a known Usurper would look like very odd Doctrine but do not call them by those buggish Names of Tyrants and Vsurpers only say they are extraordinary Successors or extralineal Kings and then you may say all this and more and be thought a zealous Saint for it too Is not this a very pretty trick to catch Dotterils and gull poor People out of all Truth and Honesty with new-coyn'd Phrases You might have suffered Dyscheres to say as much as all this but instead of that you onely put this faint Question in his mouth which being neither clear nor full may be liable to various Exceptions Can he be legal that thrusts out the legal King or legal Successor p 5. I doubt not but you will strain a point to make him so and indeed in your way of arguing I do not understand how any King or any thing called a King can want a good Title who has actual Possession but let us see your fine Art of proving Right Wrong and Wrong Right Your Discourse of Kings thrusting out Kings is a direct thrusting out right and an encouraging and justifying ambitious Persons in embroiling the World in perpetual Wars and Confusions But I shall not expose it as it deserves because it is nothing to the case of a plain known right and no right and if you would make a fair Answer here you ought to give a direct Answer to this Question If a Person really having no right doth disclaim any right to a thing and by publick Declarations doth profess that he makes no Pretensions to it nor hath any design to disturb another in his right I say if this person nevertheless shall by ill arts seize it Doth this notwithstanding all his Protestations and Declarations to the contrary even against all right and reason create him a right whether he will or no If fo then I find right will be always on the strongest and cunningest side and so generally will be fitter for Knaves than honest Men. Your Instance in the Houses of York and Lancaster come not up to so plain a Case as this Where things are obscure and dark as that Title was and perhaps still is to most men great allowances are to be made Lancaster had the more obvious York the better Title though of late the learned Dr. St by a modest bastardizing the onely Daughter of that heroick Prince Lionel Duke of Clarence so many Ages after her death has rendred the rights of those two Houses more intricate than ever which if he had done in the days of Henry VIII who laid so fast hold on his Mothers Title derived from that traduced Lady that 't is thought the Apprehensions of it hastened his Father's End that resenting Prince in all likelihood would have preferred him to some thing else than a Bishoprick But what means this preaching up Confusion The Nation then weltered in Bloud and Gore till an undoubted Title put an end to that Quarrel But you would have us obstinately maintain a bad Title that our Miseries might have no end a rare Example of Justice and Love to your Countrey As for the Cession you mention you would do well to prove it a little better before you thus run away with it for granted you know we deny it and have given our Reasons for it to which I know no Answer returned unless it be Gaols Fines and Pillories and Threatenings to help it with Hemp. But you say the hereditary Succession was not violently broken but altered by Consent of the next Heirs He had need of a case-hardened Face who will undertake to defend this With your leave Sir it was broken with a Witness for there were then four before your Idol and now there are six and will you say there was no violence when our native Prince was close confin'd in his own Kingdom in the midst of his own Subjects to their eternal Shame by a foreign and a pitiful parcel of tattered beggarly Rapescallions whom the Boys of the City of London might have pelted to death with Stones if the Sense of our Countrey 's Honour as well as our Christian Loyalty had not been utterly stifled But you will needs persuade us that this was done with Consent Now you would have done well to have produced the Consent of King James and the Prince of Wales who ought to be served in the first place And then as for the two Princesses whom certainly you mean by those whom you falsly call the next Heirs they may dispose of their own as they please but they ought not cannot give away another's right Onely as to the Princess Ann of Denmark if she have given up her right it will concern her for her Safety to make it as publick as she can but if she have not given it away it then perhaps may concern her to make as much haste after her Father as may be and to carry her Son with her out of Herod's Clutches for if her Sister should dye 't is ten to one it proves too late But the neatest Fetch is when we are told that all this was done That a Prince of such mighty Conduct might be a Wall of Defence as well to the Royal Heirs as to the Religion Rights and Liberties of the People Has he not actually ravished away the Rights of all the Royal Heirs in being and call you this their Defence So Robbers are a Defence to Travellers and Wolves to Sheep Pray next time you write be pleased to furnish us with a parcel of white Crows or green Jackdaws or persuade us out of our Christian Names What a Defence your Hero hath been to Religion the miserable condition of the Church of England and the growth of Atheism and Fanaticism are sufficient witnesses and then for the Peoples Rights and Liberties how strongly they are wall'd