Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	faith_n	reason_n	word_n	5,359	5	4.6154	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46946	A confutation of a late pamphlet intituled, A letter ballancing the necessity of keeping a land-force in time of peace, with the dangers that may follow on it	Johnson, Samuel, 1649-1703.	1698 (1698)	Wing J825; ESTC R24417	24,726	39

for a Year first and then we are like to have them for ever for they ought not to cease while the Reason of them continues And Lastly This Annual Army is to depend upon the Regulation of an Annual Parliament but our Act is Triennial and not overeasily obtained However in a Parliament when it sits the Land Force will come into consideration in order to be either encreased lessened or quite laid aside as they shall see cause There never will be cause to the end of the World to lay it aside if not now for now we are farthest off from an Invasion having just struck up a firm and fast League and made a sincere and lasting Peace which if it be not the best at first is worse than a new Broom and differs from all other things in the World which are always the worse for wearing We were lately told that once there appeared but one speck of Blue in the whole Horizon whereas now it is all Blue and there is not one speck of a Cloud This Preface likewise says England is now the wonder of the World and it would be a greater wonder if it should just now be invaded and I challenge any Man to name any imaginable State of Affairs when it shall be fitter and safer and more necessary to lay aside an Army than now And therefore to say it is now indispensibly necessary to our Preservation and that it is present and certain ruin to be without it and yet talk of laying it aside hereafter shews that he neither means good Faith nor vvrites good Sense His next words are these I will not argue with you so unfairly as to urge much the Reasons that we have of trusting the King for how much soever may be said on this Head either from his Temper his Circumstances his Interest and the course of his past Life either with relation to the United Provinces or to us here in England and with how much reason soever this might be prosecuted yet I will not lay much weight on it for it is not just to press an Argument that puts another Man in Pain when he goes to answer it I know it may be said That Men are but Men so that we make a dangerous Experiment of their Virtue when we put too much in their Power and that what is done to one King who deserves it and will manage it faithfully will be made an Argument to do the same for another King that has neither Merit nor Capacity to entitle him to so entire a Confidence To say all in one word if we were in the same Condition in which we and our Neighbours were an Age ago I should reject the Proposition with horrour But the case is alter'd the whole World c. We will talk of Plowden's Saying and the Alteration of the Case by and by in the mean time we will dispatch the former Paragraph He says with a seeming Candour that he will not urge much the Reasons we have of trusting the King The Nation has already trusted the King with all that ever they had to trust him with all the Rights of an English King and the Imperial Crown of this Realm with all the Dominions Jurisdictions Prerogatives and Preeminences belonging thereto And when the Parliament invested His Majesty with this Regality he was pleased to accept of it as the greatest Trust they could repose in him But the new Trust this Letter insists upon is an Army which can overpower and conquer the Nation For it is to be such a Force as can withstand an Invasion which all the Nation besides is not able to do that is to say it can beat those that can beat us and therefore it can much more beat us So that it is a Force which commands all our Lives Liberties and Estates and this Power is to be put into the King's Hands and consequently the whole Nation is to beat his Discretion This is the Trust. Now never trouble your Head more about it nor about extolling the King nor be in pain for your Answerer how he will get over the Argument of the King's Merit to have this Trust and entire Confidence put in him For we have higher thoughts of the King than you have and particularly this honourable Notion of him which you have not that he despises and scorns all your little Flatteries and yet we believe that he does not deserve this Trust nor can manage it faithfully that he has neither Merit nor Capacity to entitle him to so entire a Confidence No not if he had all the Perfections upon Earth as he has a great many nay if he were an Angel he were not fit for this Trust. For such an absolute Resignation of our selves is only proper to be made to God Thus the great Coligny rendered up himself to God when the treacherous Guards broke in upon him Here I am do with me as thou pleasest It is an Act of Worship to commit our selves and all that we have to a Discretionary Power and therefore it ought to be paid to nothing but a being of infinite Goodness which is also under the Conduct of unerring Wisdom This Trust is too big for the Port and Capacity of a Man or of any thing that is finite and fallible This Author says p. 4. in an arbitrary Government all depends upon the Will of the Prince How could he have otherwise described the State and Condition of Creatures in reference to their great Creator That all should depend upon that Sovereign Will which brought us into Being is highly reasonable but that a Nation 's All should depend upon the Will and Pleasure of a Man of their own setting up is flat Idolatry and beneath the Popish Worship of Saints and Angels For what is this Will of the Prince that All depends upon Is it essential Goodness and Righteousness No it is nothing less it is Arbitrariness it is Self-will we will because such is our Will and Pleasure the most arrogant and senseless Will in the World God never assumed this to himself but he always acts by eternal Right and Reason and his Throne is established in Righteousness And therefore when Princes affect to be Arbitrary they affect a proud monstrous blind and brutish Power which is neither fit for Heaven nor Earth The first rude and unexperienced Age of the World fell into the admiration of some great Personages whom they chose for their Kings and were governed by them at discretion for they idolized and worshipped them both alive and dead But they soon found their Errour they saw that to live by one Man's Will became the cause of all Mens Misery and this constrained them to come to Laws as Hooker's words are Now to relapse into this Folly and Idolatry would be unpardonable after the World for so long time has known better Neither could Mankind after such Wrecks on the Shore and such Warnings of Mischief ever fall into the like again