Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A51081
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A modest account of the present posture of affairs in England vvith particular reference to the Earl of Shaftsbury's case, and a vindication of him from two pretended letters of a noble peer / by a person of quality.
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Person of quality.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing M2349; ESTC R10406
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8,134
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18
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away the Gueses in FRANCE Cut Our throats and condemn us after since we will not quietly be condemned first and hanged after I am sure this is the next step can reasonably be expected from Men of your Conscience and from the Principles and Interest you are carrying on Neither let any one blame me for minding you of it for I believe it hath been long in your mind and often in your thoughts and therefore I thought it more necessary to warn others of what you are most likely to do And since you talk so much of Loyalty and Love to Your Prince I pray God preserve the KING and keep him out of your and all Papists bloody Hands I beg to know to what purpose your Lordship recites That my Lord Shaftsbury was Lord Chancellor do you quarrel at any of His Decrees or Actions then or wherein did he not execute that Office as a Great and Good Man should and what doth your Lordship mean by the certain strict Test for the Discovery of Popery opposed by that Lord in Parliament the Test that was passed against Popery which every Officer is obliged to take is notoriously known was principally promoted by Him If your Lordship mean the other Bill of the Test which He opposed 't is the same with what Somebody hath passed lately Somewhere and is a Great Step to the Destruction of the Protestant Religion The Truth is there are so many of these downright Popish Touches in your Paper That I sometimes doubt whether it be Your Lordships or no since You are but a young Convert and yet they say young Proselytes are the fiercest But this Paper must come from a PAPIST or Voted Enemy to the King and Kingdom since you tell us that you would have the Days of DISSOLVING the Two last Parliaments kept Festival Anniversarily in Commemoration of your Deliverance from those Great and Apparent Dangers wherewith you were encompassed whilst they were in SESSION None but such Fellows and their Faction being then in Danger But I find your Lordship extream angry at the Word FACTION since you will please to have it that your Worthy ABHORRERS and ADDRESSORS are not a FACTION but the Total of the Kings Subjects who Conscientiously respect their own Duty and the General Welfare pray my Lord let us examine this Excellent Position of your Lordships setting aside your Heat and Railing Does your Lordship think that the choice of SHERIFFS the great care in returning select Men for Grand Juries The Arts that were us'd to draw many of them into these Abhorrences are not well known to All the Nation We never doubt but you have choice of Gentlemen to make SHERIFFS fit for your TURN and they if they prove ill MEN may find Rogues to make Under-Sheriffs in every County Neither is it doubted that Seventeen or Eighteen Men may be found in most Counties for your Turn although in some and those great Counties too you could not find above Thirteen and in several other Counties you have failed absolutely and yet all this will not speak your PARTY The Hundred Part of the Nation Hath your Lordship found out another way to make a Distinction between the SENSE of the Nation and that of a Dangerous PARTY than that of the House of Commons Will you tell Me That a PARLIAMENT chosen against all the Opposition Industry Power and Money of the COURT is not the SENSE of Greatest Part of the NATION Will your Lordship affirm That this is a FACTION and your Lordship the PAPISTS the D. of Y. and his Creatures are the only Loyal Subjects to the King and Government And what fort of People these make up may be guess'd by what you prosess your self for A Government infinitely worse than that in Turkey wherein the Law shall be of no other Use if it may be as your Lordship would have it but as a Mask to the Princes worst Actions and Tyranny Our Religion Estates Lives and Liberties your Lordship would have to be Subjected to the Will of the Prince who being a Man is as capable and lyable to be extreamly Ill as any other tho blessed be God for our Good King besides what Law you allow to this King who is an Excellent and the Best of PRINCES as your King must be allowed to the next though He be the worst in Nature And yet You will find out a Way Your self to Name to the KING Judges Sheriffs and JURIES and so then all things shall certainly go as the Court and Great Men order 't is already so compleat in S where the Proverb is Show me the Man and I will tell you the Cause This is a Way that no Sober or honest Men were ever for in any Country The Zeal of your Lordship to preserve the Greatness of your Duke his Zeal to get a Crown and of the PAPISTS to introduce their Religion hath out-gone by many Degrees all that ever went before you I Acknowledg it the Kings Prerogative to CALL Parliaments but Edward the III. tells us He was sworn by his Coronation-Oath to provide Remedy in Parliament upon Great Emergencies And our Laws have been very careful to Fix the Frequency of them And 't is that only COURT that can keep all the rest useful to the King and People They are brave Spirits indeed and blest with a Torish Humility or rather stupid Folly if not wicked Villanous Designs that are unconcerned when a PARLIAMENT should be called and leave it to the PRINCE whether He please to have any or no without affording Him their Advice The LAW hath given us a Right nay 't is our chiefest Birth-right and without which we have nothing left us but are meer slaves to PARLIAMENTS within such a distance of Time The Prince hath the Prerogative of appointing the Day and Dissolving when the Business is done But the Prince some think is obliged that we have Parliaments within our Time and continued so as may be of effect to provide Remedies for the Emergent Evils His Prerogative of Appointing the Day we hope will not deprive us of our Right of having them in such a Time Neither will His Power to DISSOLVE them we hope Render them USELESS to Us. I am heartily sorry your Lordship is so ill instructed in the Protestant Religion That you ask what it is but you profess That Your self and your Fellow-Addressors and Abhorrers are zealous for the Religion by LAW Established in the Church of ENGLAND so then you do not know the Protestant Religion but Religion by LAW Established you are very well acquainted with What security will your Lordship give That when your Army is compleated and your Militia Abhorrers and Addressors Mustered That you will not tell Us The Religion Established by LAW in the Church of England is the Old Popish Religion setled by Magna Charta which is not Repealable by any future Act. For this Good Old Cause your Lordship and Friends hath nurst up the King of France to
this height He is now in Christendom and all Europe is abundantly in your Debt for it Quantum Religio potuit suadere Malorum I Own my self a Friend to the Dissenting Protestants until your Lordship can find out an Infallible decider of points of FAITH I can give men leave to differ from me in opinion whilst they live soberly and honestly by me There are none I know so inconsistent with Government as the PAPIST who owns a Forreign Jurisdiction and disolves all Natural Religion to introduce his Own And though your Lordship is pleased to add the word Rebel to the Name PROTESTANT yet it will agree much better with the Papists whose Religion is Rebellion and 't is impossible to find one true Subject of them in the World to any but the Pope if they believe their own Religion I find your Lordship is very kinâ— to Court Converts and will very freely pass over the Blackness of all their former Tiansactions and you have great Reason since you are so lately One your self But be not deluded the Papists think not as you think they never forgive Past Offences Argile cannot be forgiven the being his Fathers Son Nor the Duke of L will not be forgiven the having brought the COVENANT into England Tw will find hereafter that 't will be remembred he sat in Olivers Parliaments And I should tell your Lordship that you may suffer hereafter by a string of some bodies providing but that my skill in Astrology hath told me a Garter of your own useing c. The jealous Churchmen that Govern the Popish Interest never forgive especially Men capable of thinking and judging other things then they would have them Your Lordship is extreamly out when you tell us that the Associations in Queen ELIZABETH'S time were entred into with her Consent and Privity when the Queen her self in her Speech to the PARLIAMENT in the tweâ—ty eight year of her Reign Did protest before God that she never heard or thought of such matter being wholly ignorant of it till a great number of Hands with many Obligations were shown her at Hampton Court signed and subscribed with the Hands and Seales of the greatest in this Land But you are pleased to call the several PARLIAMENTS that about that time so extreamly opposed the SUCCESSION of Mary Queen of Scots a PURITAN GANG and have found out a Clergy Nobility and Gentry in the Clouds that were of another opinion no question there were some and great store of PAPISTS in those days but I am sure the PARLIAMENT were violently against her Succession as appears in the Rolls nay and against her life too for it was then daily experienced that the Queen was not safe whilst the Head of so desperate and bloudy a Religion as the PAPISTS was in being Pray My Lord let me ask you freely is not this the very Case now 'T was the Opinion of our PARLIAMENTS and the truth appears every day more and more Pray let us hear your Lordship make a difference between the Case of Queen ELIZABETH and her POPISH SUCCESSOR Mary Queen of Scots which your self have so wisely Instanced in and brought upon the Stage and our Case at this present juncture Have the PAPISTS appeared less Bloudy in their designs since that time Have they less Passion for introducing their Religion Did the Queen of Scots discover more Ambition for the Crown of England than 〈◊〉 She was a Prisoner in the Queens hands and in custody and had not the 〈◊〉 of the opportunity hath whose French 〈◊〉 possesse many of the Governments 〈…〉 To say no more but Some bodies Loyalty is not to be disputed Though I remember the tiâ—…e when but hold I must not run the Parallel too far least by making too great a Resemblance I provoke I could else say much more but leave it to your LORDSHIP to make it out But now let us have one Word about the D. We are all Witnesses of the KINGS Marriage by the Advice as was reported of the Dukes Father in Law to a LADY of great Birth but such as it is said the Spanish Embassador then undertook to prove could have no CHILDREN And immediately upon this Marriage we are all Witnesses to our unspeakable sorrow what followed which I will not here Perticularize His unparrallel'd love to his Prince appears in all this and in nothing more then the Civil Treatment the KING at this hour receives from him and his Party the throngs that tend the one whilst the Other walks the streets with two or three Pages of his back-stayres Our KING is the first instance that ever I read off that hath by those about him been perswaded to be so willing to settle indubitably the TITLE of his Presumptive Heir But undoubtedly his MAJESTY hath better Reasons for it then we know of Our King is not only an excellent well bred Gentleman but a man of great Abilities and Courage Three things One that looks High wants When ever the King desires it He will not want Hundreds of Thousands to dye at his Feet Multitudes do adore him that hate and fear the Religion and Temper of Pray God bless the King and give him yet more and more the Spirit of discerning his Interest and Friends and the Courage to deliver himself from the hands of all unworthy base TRAYTORS as would encompass Him Shall ever be the hearty Prayers of Yours c. THE POST-SCRIPT ONE Thing I had almost forgot which is this that it shews in my Opinion very mean and degrading for a Person in your Lordships Station to be continually troubling the Press with little Pamphlets as if your Lordship had nothing to do but to vent every conceit and quaint Notion that comes into your Head in Letters to your Friend The General Conduit-pipe that conveys VVhim and Fancy now a days through the Nation That many Great Statesmen have been famous for cherishing and encouraging the Fomenters of Distraction and Dissentions as their several Interests by affect them the Stories of their Lives declare however then they always stood behind the Curtain and played least in fight themselves But for your Lordship to turn Paperwaster and thrust your self among the Throng of Town-Sâ—…bleâ—…s shews an eagerness of appearing among the Rabble mis-becoming your Grandâ—… It looks like Nero among the Fidlers But your Lordship gives some Reason for your Condescension For 't is plain from your Writings That your Counsels have been 〈◊〉 that is no say have proved unfortunate therefore in point of HONOUR you can do no less than defend the Natural Issue of your Brain and therefore it is that you cannot chuse but fume and fret to see a PLOT so well laid prove so ineffectual But whether you have done either politickly or prudently to lay your self open to the World by venting your Peaks and dissatisfaction against the Darlings of all true English Men that value their Lives and Liberties I mean JURY-MEN of Integrity and Conscience your Loâ—dship best knows However your Lordship's Moral Philosophy seems to fail you very much since your Lordship cannot but know how odly and capriciously Fortune behaves her self in this World The Mischief oâ—t is and that which grieves me most that your Lordship the only Eminent Lord in England for putting Pen to Paper unless the Lord Castlemain should be no less unfortunate in your Argument than in your Counsel by Undertaking to Cavil with Conscience which let your Lordship say what you can is that which must Govern the Peace and Tranquility of this unruly Sublunary Spot Had it been a Thesis in Philosophy concerning the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea or in Mathematicks concerning the Probability of the Flying Engine it had been but manners to have granted your Lordship the point But where the National Concerns of Life and Liberty are at stake we cannot bate your Lordship an Ace Your Lordship would do well to consider that you Live in an Abbey and therefore if You do not like it you had better sell it than sit contriving ways to have it taken away Certainly Ambition was never at a greater height than now while men aspire not only to Outwit one another but to Outwit themselves the Impulse of Jesuitical Sublimity putting them upon the fond Toyle of Endeavouring to surpass Humanity and to spin out the Thread of Politicks to that Invisibility till it snap with its own Fineness These are the Snares which the cunning Jesuits have laid for Us Englishmen whose duller Apprehensions as they believe not being able to reach their Seraphick Acuteness they laugh to think what sport they shall have to vapour over out unwary Politicians when hampered in the Vulcans Nets of their own framing But if your Lordship who has the applause of being a Divine as well as a Polititian would but consider how easily Tricks and Subtleties are obviated by a Noble Generous and Magnanimous honesty the best of all Policies in the world we might then by your good Counsel hope to see a siting Parliament again which is only dreadful to the conscious like General Councels to the Pope where your Lordship might sit safe for what your Vertues not your Failings deserve FINIS