Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A56196
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Reasons assigned by William Prynne, &c.
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Prynne, William, 1600-1669.
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1649
(1649)
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Wing P4049; ESTC R5258
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44,280
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58
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forbear till I saw what their Officers would do who in stead of punishing any of them permitted them to play the like Rex almost in other places where they quartered since marching but three or four miles a day and extorting what moneys they could from the Country by their violence and disorders Now for me or any other to give moneys to maintain such deboist Bedlams and Beasts as these who boasted of their villanies and that they had done me at least twenty pounds spoil in Beer and Provisions drinking out five barrels of good strong Beer and wasting as much meat as would have served an hundred civill persons to be Masters of our Houses Goods Servants Lives and all we have to ride over our heads like our Lords and Conquerours and take Free quarter on us amounting to at least a full yeares contribution without any allowance for it and that since the last Orders against Free-quarter and warrants for paying in this Tax to prevent it for the future issued is so far against my reason Judgement and conscience that I would rather give all away to suppress discard them or cast it into the fire then maintain such graceless wretches with it to dishonour God enslave consume ruine the Country and Kingdome who every where complain of the like insolences and of taking free quarter since the 9 of June as above two hundred of Colonel Coxe his men did in Bath the last Lords day who drew up in a body about the Majors House and threatned to seise and carry him away prisoner for denying to give them free quarter contrary to the New Act for abolishing it Lastly this pretended Act implies that those who refuse to pay this contribution without distress or imprisonment shall be stil oppressed with freequarter And what an height of oppression and injustice this will prove not only to distrain imprison those who cannot in conscience Law or prudence submit to this illegall Tax but likewise to undoe them by exposing them to free-quarter which themselves condemne as the heighst pest and oppression let all sober men consider and what reason I and others have to oppose such a dangerous destructive president in its first appearing to the world Ninethly The principal end of imposing this Tax to maintain the Army and forces now raised is not the defence and fafety of our ancient and first Christian Kingdom of England its Parliaments Laws Liberties and Religion as at first but to disinherit the King of the Crown of England Scotland and Ireland to which he hath an undoubted right by common and Statute Law as the Parliament of 1 Jacobi ch. 1. resolves and to levy war against him to deprive him of it To subvert the ancient Monarchical Government of this Realm under which our Ancesters have always lived and flourished to set up a New republick the oppressions and greivances whereof we have already felt by increasing our Taxes setting up arbitrary Courts and Proceedings to the taking away of the lives of the late King Peers and other Subjects against the Fundamental Laws of the Land creating new monstrous Treasons never heard off in the world before and the like but cannot yet enjoy or discern the least ease or advantage by it To overthrow the ancient constitution of the Parliaments of England consisting of King Lords and Commons and the Rights and Priviledges thereof To alter the fundamental Laws Seales Courts of Justice of the Realm and introduce an arbitrary Government at least if not Tyrannical contrary to our Lawes Oathes Covenant Protestation a publick Remonstrances and Engagements to the Kingdom and forraign States not to change the Government or attempt any of the premises All which being no less then High Treason by the Laws and Statutes of the Realm as Sir Edward Cook in his 4 Institutes ch. 1. and Mr. St. John in his Argument at Law upon passing the bill of Attainder of the Earl of Strafford both printed by the Commons special order have proved at large by many presidents Reasons Records and so adjudged by the last Parliament in the cases of Strafford and Canterbury who were condemned and executed as Traytors by judgement of Parliament and some of these now sitting but for some of those Treasons upon obscurer Evidences of guilt then are now visible in others I cannot without incurring the Crime and Guilt of these general High Treasons and the eternal if not temporal punishments incident thereunto if I should voluntarily contribute so much as one peny or farthing towards such Treasonable and disloyal ends as these against my Conscience Law Loyalty duty and all my Oathes and obligations to the contrary Tenthly The payment of this Tax for the premised purposes will in my poor judgment and conscience be offensive to God and all good men scandalous to the Protestant Religion dishonourable to our English Nation and disadvantagious and destructive to our whole Kingdom hindering the speedy settlement of our Peace the re-establishment of our Laws and Government establishing of our Taxes disbanding of our Forces revivall of our decayed Trade by the renewing and perpetuating our bloudy uncivill Warrs engaging Scotland Ireland and all forreign Princes and Kingdoms in a just War against us to avenge the death of our late beheaded King the dis-inheriting of his posterity and restore his lawfull Heirs and Successors to their just undoubted Rights from which they are now forcibly secluded who will undoubtedly molest us with continuall Warrs what-ever some may fondly conceit to the contrary till they be setled in the Throne in peace upon just and honorable terms and invested in their just possessions And therefore I can neither in conscience piety nor prudence ensnare my self in the guilt of all these dangerous consequences by any submission to this illegall Tax Upon all these weighty Reasons and serious grounds of Conscience Law Prudence which I humbly submit to the Consciences and Judgments of all conscientious and Judicious persons whom they do or shall concern I am resolved by the assistance and strength of that Omnipotent God who hath miraculously supported me under and carried me through all my former sufferings for the Peoples publick Liberties with exceeding joy comfort and the ruine of my greatest enemies and Opposers to oppugne this unlawfull Contrbution and the payment of it to the uttermost in all just and lawfull wayes I may And if any will forcibly levie it by distresse or otherwise without Law or Right as Theeves and Robbers take mens goods and Purses let them doe it at their own utmost perill And I trust God and men will in due season doe me justice and award me recompence for all the injuries in this kinde and any sufferings for my Countries Liberties How-ever fall back fall edge I would ten thousand times rather lose life and all I have to keep a good conscience and preserve my native Liberty then part with one farthing or gain the whole world with the losse of either of them and
rather die a Martyr for our Ancient Kingdom then live a Slave under any new Republick or remant of a broken dismembred strange Parliament of Commons without King Lords or the major part of the Knights Citizens and Burgesses of the Realme in being subject to their illegall Taxes and what they call Acts of Parliament which in reality are no Acts at all to binde me or any other subject to obedience or just punishment for Non-obedience thereunto or Non-conformity to what they stile the present Government of the Armies modeling and I fear the Jesuites suggesting to effect our Kingdoms and Religions ruine WILLIAM PRYNNE Swainswick June 16. 1649. PSAL. 26.4 5. I have not sate with vain persons neither will I go with Dissemblers I have hated the Congregation of evill doers and will not sit with the wicked FINIS A POSTSCRIPT SInce the drawing up of the precedent Reasons I have met with a Printed Pamphlet intituled An Epistle written the 8th day of June by Lieutenant Colonel Iohn Lilburn to Master William Lenthall Speaker to the remainder of those few Knights Citizens and Burgesses that Col. Thom. Pride at his late purge thought convenient to leave sitting at Westminster as most fit for his and his Masters designs to serve their ambitious Tyrannical ends to destroy the good old Laws Liberties and Customs of England the badges of our Freedom as the Declaration against the King of the seventh of March 1648 pag. 23. calls them and by force of Armes to rob the people of their lives estates and properties and subject them to perfect vassallage and slavery c. who and in truth no otherwise pretendenly stile themselves The Conservators of the Peace of England or the Parliament of England intrusted and authorized by the consent of all the people thereof whose Representatives by Election in their Declaration last mentioned p. 27. they say they are although they are never able to produce one bit of a Law or any piece of a Commission to prove that all the people of England or one quarter tenth hundred or thousand part of them authorized Thomas Pride with his Regiment of Souldiers to choose them a Parliament as indeed it hath de facto done by this PRETENDED MOCK-PARLIAMENT And therefore it cannot properly be called the Nations or Peoples Parliament but Col. Prides and his Associats whose really it is who although they have beheaded the King for a Tyrant yet walk oppressingest steps if not worst and higher In this Epistle this late great Champion of the House of Commons and sitting Junctoes Supremacy both before and since the Kings beheading who with his Brother a Overton and their Confederates First cryed them up as and gave them the Title of The Supream Authority of the Nation The only Supream Judicatory of the land The only formall and legall Supream power and Parliament of England in whom alone the power of binding the whole Nation by making altering or abrogating Laws without either King or Lords resides c. and first engaged them by their Pamphlets and Petitions against the King Lords and Personall Treatie as he and they print and boast in this Epistle and other late Papers doth in his own and his Parties behalf who of late so much adored them as the only earthly Deities and Saviours of the Nation now positively assert and prove First that Commissary Generall Ireton Colonel Harison with other Members of the House and the General Councel of Officers in the Army did in severall meetings and debates at Windsor immediately before their late march to London to purge the House and after to Whitehall commonly stile themselves the pretended Parliament even before the Kings beheading a MOCK PARLIAMENT a MOCK POWER a PRETENDED PARLIAMENT NO PARLIAMENT AT ALL And that they were absolutely resolved and determined TO PULL UP THIS THEIR OWN PARLIAMENT BY THE ROOT and not so much as to leave a shadow of it yea and had done it if we say they and some of our then FRIENDS in the House had not been the Principall Instruments to hinder them We judging it then of two evils the least to chuse rather to be governed by THE SHADOW OF A PARLIAMENT till we could get a reall and a true one which with the greatest protestations in the world they then promised and engaged with all their might speedily to effect then simply solely and only by the will of Sword-men whom we had already found to be men of no very tender consciences If then these leading swaying Members of the new pretended purged Commons Parliament and Army deemed the Parliament even before the Kings beheading a Mock-Parliament a mock-power a pretended Parliament yea no Parliament at all and absolutely resolved to pull it up by the roots as such then it necessarily follows First that they are much more so after the Kings death as by their suppression of the Lords House and purging of the Commons House to the very dregs in the opinions and consciences of those now sitting and all other rationall men And no wayes enabled by law to impose this or any other new Tax or Act upon the Kingdom creating new Treasons and Penalties Secondly that these grand saints of the Army and Statesmen of the Pretended Parliament knowingly sit vote and act there against their own judgements and consciences for their own private pernicious ends Thirdly that it is a basenesse cowardize and degeneracy beyond all expression for any of their Fellow-members now acting to suffer these Grâ—nâ—eâ—s in their Assembly and Arms to sit or vote together with them or to enjoy any Office or command in the Army or to impose any tax upon the People to maintain such Officers Members Souldiers who have thus vilified affronted their pretended Parliamentary Authority and thereby induced others to contemn and question it and as great a basenesse in others for to pay it upon any terms Secondly he there affirms that d Oliver Crumwell by the helpe of the Aâ—my at their first Rebellion against the Parliament was no sooner put up but like a perfideous base unworthy man c. the House of Peers were his only white boys and who but Oliver who before to me had called them in effect both Tyrants and Vsurpers became their Proctor where ever he came yea and set his son Ireton at work for them also insomuch that at some meetings with some of my friends at the Lord Whartons lodgings he clapt his hand upon his breast and to this purpose professed in the sight of God upon his conscience THAT THE LORDS HAD AS TRUE A RIGHT TO THEIR LEGISLATIVE JURISDICTIVE POWER OVER THE COMMONS AS HE HAD TO HIS COAT UPON HIS BACK and he would pocure a freind viz. Master Nathaniel Feinnes should argue and plead their just right with any friend I had in England And not only so but did he not get the Generall and Councell of War at Windsor about the time that the Votes of no more