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	liberty_n	parliament_n	4,708	5	6.3048	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96838	Sober sadnes: or Historicall observations vpon the proceedings, pretences, & designs of a prevailing party in both Houses of Parliament. With the resolution of all loyall subjects, and true Protestants of the Church of England thereupon.	Womock, Laurence, 1612-1685.	1643 (1643)	Wing W3352; Thomason E94_28; ESTC R8232	37,456	54

obstruct the way to our peace and happinesse they have brought the businesse to this Dilemma His Majesty must either treat and that face to face too with a grand Rebell in all probability imployed on purpose to give a defeat to the whole Treaty or else must expect to have the Odium of refusing peace cast upon Him Well! to draw a conclusion from these but too true and too sad premises If neither the gracious Messages and Invitations of His Majesty nor the sorrowfull prayers and supplications of the distressed as well in England as Ireland nor the earnest perswasions of their owne discouraged or relenting party nor the frequent returnes unto their alleagiance of such as are daily undeceived amongst them If neither the bleeding miseries actually ruinating in two Kingdomes at home nor the invied dangers threatning from abroad If none of these can or if all these with our Religion Lawes Lives and Fortunes likely to be buried in the ashes of this imminent destruction cannot prevaile one whit upon these fierce spirits to soften their hard and hitherto unrelenting hearts and incline them to thoughts of Peace and Accommodation what can the inference amount unto lesse then what we promised to make good in the beginning viz. That the firebrands of this pestilent faction are in a desperate travaile for the birth of some monstrous designe which cannot be ushered into the world but by confusion We all know whose expression it was I hate the name of Accommodation and the spirit of contradiction and dissention was not raised in them as they raised it in the people by the conjuration of Plots and Conspiracies under-ground workes which no body could discover but their owne Artists that invented them to imbitter the minds of men against His Majesty But all this was the fruit of that Spirit of contention which they first brought with them to the service though it had proved the disservice of the Kingdome witnesse that prodigious Omen that long agoe presaged ourapproaching ruine When that potent Gentleman put Moderation into the Catlogue of his vices he left us to expect nothing else but those bitter fruits of violence which we have since too sufficiently tasted Now the said accounts of Warre have taught the people the price of Peace what doe they oppose to stop the current of their solicitations 1. They make speeches in the House in disgrace of Peace and from that common sense a sense must be derived unto the whole Kingdome Till they have spilt all the blood of the ungodly or malignant as they tearme them they plead an impossibility of enjoying peace with her due investitures as if because they have begun such a Warre they could not conclude any other Peace but what is a stranger unto truth and righteousnesse The Lord Brookes and others have made great use of their talents this way to their great honour amongst the bretheren of the Separation When these prevailed to thrust peace out of the Houses there was anot her plot to cut the throat of it in the Citie A multitude as they had found by long experience is good at a dead lift and if they be set upon 't to have all matters tryed by club law there is no appealing from them Well! such forces must be levied as offer up their prayers unto both Houses by an implicite faith in a language they understand not thinking any thing a blessing that ●uch a heavenly man as Doctor Burgesse invites them to petition for and so poore fooles are earnest suitors to be wedded to the miseries of a civill warre from which other Nations long to be redeemed If shame or discretion or conscience makes men backward to this hellish designe then the Pulpit must be turn'd into a Mount Ebal from whence the Emissaries of the House of Commons curse them Lest sedition should not thrive fast enough they suborne these Preachers and obtrude them upon almost every Parish to sow the seeds thicker and these men though not of so long a standing have improved their stocke of impudence beyond the Devill himselfe He came whiles the servants slept but these disperse their tares in the field whiles they looke upon them These are the Bellowes to this fire the Trumpets to this warre that boggle nor at blasphemy to perswade the people that God is ingaged in their conspiracy against his Anointed and to this end their prayers are of a more saguine complexion then Esaus pottage These are they that have taken this advantage of stirring up the people to spoile and rapine that they may this way root out a regular Ministry and be planted in their places Insomuch as one of them tells us in his Plaine English He hath a great deale of reason to be confident that scarce any considerable man he speakes of the Clergy who hath beene engaged in this quarrell on the Parliament part if he retaines his integryty he should have changed that word for sedition dares abide the issue of a present Accommodation Certainly there can be nothing but their owne guilt that should move them to distrust the protection of that Law which they have beene bred and borne to These men can have no fishing but in troubled waters and therefore when they have done sweating in the persecution of Peace in the Pulpet they assault her in the Presse and in both they have a great advantage for they wrestle at liberty whiles the Champions of Peace have their hands tyed behind them They speake plaine English whiles the other have their tongues clipt or if they speake out are imprisoned So that Peace is first awed into silence and then by these men prest to death because she doth not plead to her endightment These are the instruments so destructive to our peace so industrious in fomenting this execrable Warre These are the very Becons that being set on fire themselves with their prodigious blazes have raised so many Countries in Armes to their owne ruine These are the grand Projectors to raise men and money making their Ministry but a Pander to Rebellion Their stratagemes have beene to awaken them by sounding this Alarm in their eares That Gods cause the Protestant Religion Lawes Liberties Properties Priviledges of Parliament yea their lives with the lives of their deare wives and children ly all at the stake They went a step higher in the beginning perswading them they were to fight for the defence of the Kings Rights and to rescue His Sacred Person from the hands of the Cavaliers so in a disgrace they termed His Majesties Illustrious Nephewes with the chiefe Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdome who as they said had surprized Him When they were supplied with men animated by these devices what course did they leave unattempted to raise money to maintaine them Under the name of the publike faith a chest that is bottomelesse and insatiable they have erected a new lotterie to cheat our faith and begger the publike From hence the adventurers were sure to

carry away nothing but blankes the prizes being designed for themselves and the Officers that were neere them some of which are not ashamed to sound the Trumpet for it When the free Contributions were exhausted from Voluntiers men came to be prest to these prodigall expences After they had lent some they were justly paid the use by having the rest taken from them Men were not onely forced to part with their own but to disburse others money also or committed to prison for their refusali This was I angherne and Vivians case who were committed to Colchester Goale for denying to pay 2000l which was due to the Prince from them and yet the Receiver plundred of the money These men are no lesse carefull for the maintenance of the Kings children then of his Majestie provided it may be done by taking away their Revenues and thus all the Rights as well of King as People have beene secured by an Antiphrasis of Parliament When the Merchants were in dispute about the la●ing of the Ship called Sancta Clara these charitable men that love no strife betweene brethren umpir'd in the businesse and to reconcile the difference seized upon the goods which must not be redeemed to the use of the right owner under the loane of 20000l I pray God they have not this trick to comprimise all the differences of the Kingdome To raise m●ney they have robbed both the Church and the Spittle six thousand pounds being collected for the repairing of S Andrewes Holborne were fetcht away by the Earle of Manchester and others in the night If this Church fall they have ingaged themselves to build God a new house in bloud We reade of Hezekiah that he gave all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord to make his peace with a forreigne and idolatrous King but for subjects to take Gods money to wage Warre against a pious Prince we beleeve this may be made one of the first precedents They have not beene more favourable to the mysticall then to the materiall Temples of God A great collection was made for the reliefe of the poore Protestants in London Derry and besides those vast summes raised by Subsidie for the Armies there this was all converted to the use of this bloudy War whilest those our miserable brethren are ready to perish as many that went before them in their distresses To recompence them from this wrong they have imployed their Preachers to advance another collection for them which comming into the same hands we suspect will be conveighed the same way They tooke like care for the disposall of that collection made for Brainceford for the poore of the Parish have not beene a farthing the better for it hitherto and we beleeve the Spring will have so well recovered them that their Physitians will thinke it needlesse to administer what was so long agoe provided for them Whether these men that would have no summe passe by their owne bagge care more to relieve the poore then Judus did may appeare by diverse instances amongst the rest they brake into the Hospitall at Gilford in Surrey and tooke 400l from them and a fine device was lately set on foot to raise another summe There is a pretence for poore children to be sent over to get good breeding in New-England a collection must be made for them and this must be committed to the hands of their trusty and well-beloved Alderman Pennington which is like to be imployed to the use for which it was pretended as faithfully as those summes gathered for London Derry and Branceford were Now lest the peoples zeale should wast with their purses they keepe them warme by a continuall breathing of reports upon them If Letters come that speake but upon heare-say they first expunge so much of the relation as might tend to the discouraging of their party and then publish them as the History of some great defeat and if need be as there is need enough they have their Observatour to write Commentaries upon them lest the people should mistake the rare passages of Gods providence on their side Another while they declaime against the Kings Army as Popish forgetting that their good wroke is supported by men of any Nation or Religion and that the Lord Say and the Lord Brookes two leading Cards of that faction have often protested they would dispence with all sorts of Religions though now they make an exception of the true Protestant so they might exercise their owne freely and that such a generall Toleration ought to be granted is their avowed opinion and indeed their independency cannot consist otherwise for if I be accountable to none I will use what Religion I please without controule It hath been well observed that when there hath beene any businesse of consequence to be debated in the Houses they have still had the good fortune to be encouraged by the newes of some strange successe or exasperated by some great provocation suggested by such as made the discovery for advantage But they have beene so provident as to lay reports of this nature at a considerable distance that they might not be confuted before the present turne were served Thus wee were made beleeve whilest His Majesties Army was in Yorkeshore and in those remote parts that they consisted of none but Papists and Delinquents but this mist cast before the peoples eyes to blind them was soone dispelled by the rayes of our Soveraignes piety as He drew neare us And however the Earle of Newcastles Forces lie all under the same scandall now yet as great a cloud as this hath vanish'd into nothing and 't is possible they may draw so neare us that notwithstanding their duty and alleagiance have brought some Papists into that Army we may distinctly understand that the Masse which they say is so commonly used will prove no other then the Booke of Common-Prayer With these jugling and slight-of-hand trickes wee have beene long amazed but they bave beene plaid so often over that every man who is not wilfully blinde discovers them and now they serve for no use but for wise men to lament and boyes to laugh at we may justly wonder what springs they move by that drive them on so furiously against the stteame of truth law and reason and yet we may cease to wonder for we have beene sufficiently informed that some of this violent party are spurr'd on by the law of their owne necessities A Captaines pay per annum is More money then five of their prime Instruments were ever owners of The Honest Letter hath told us on which side the beggerly Lords and Gentlemen are of and 't is easily conclude● 〈…〉 consider who they are that take the present pay out of a publike stocke whilest their Cure is served by their under-officers and who they are that serve in their owne persons and besides the hazard of their residence raise and maintaines Forces at their owne charges Others we know pursue this designe out of