Selected quad for the lemma: act_n
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A52330
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Reflections upon Coll. Sidney's Arcadia, the old cause being some observations upon his last paper, given to the sheriffs at his execution.
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Nalson, John, 1638?-1686.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing N114; ESTC R7343
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10,497
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16
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of Crowned Heads should indeavour to spread the Poyson wherewith his very Soul was infected and with his Expiring Words convey the Contagion unto others but like the Viper the most Noxious and Poysonous Animal whilest living there is an excellent Counterpoyson to be found in this Dying Speech For the very End Scope Aim and Drift of this odd Address to Men Brethren and Fathers Friends Country-men and Strangers is first an appeal ad Populum that Soveraign Tribunal of all People Kindreds Languages Tongues and Nations which his crazed Imagination had set up in his Fancy as the dernier resort the last High Court of Justice from which like that whereof he was a Member there was no Appeal being the ultimate Authority of Mankind in Nature 2 ly It is an Arraignment of the Justice of the Nation as pressing the Innocent and denying Justice which is in Effect a most severe Charge against the King who is the Fountain of Justice and a calling upon the People with the powerful Voyce of a dying Martyr for their Cause to re-asume their Soveraign Power of judging their Soveraign for the Breach of that Fundamental Contract which he wildly talks of Thirdly It is a magnifying of the Old Cause to make the People inclinable to it An Enthusiastick Incentive to a new Rebellion upon the Old score of Reformation And what is the Result of all this but to set us all together by the Ears to Embroyl these Nations again in all the Calamities of a Civil War and to reduce us to those deplorable Extremities of unavoidably falling either under Tyranny or Anarchy the two greatest Mischiefs that can possibly happen to any People Indeed he makes a mighty flutter about those Treasonable Papers found in his Study as being only some private things written in Answer to Sr. Robert Filmer's Book which yet remains unanswerable and lays down that wild Position of the Soveraignty of the People as the Foundation of all Governments which is not only in it's own Nature perfect Non-sense but destructive of all Government For it confounds the Relata of Governors and Governed making the Governors and Governed the same which is an Error contrary to the most easie and natural Logick For I may as well be said to be my own Father and my own Son too as that I or the Collective Body of People or Nations can be said to be at the same time the Sovereign Power and yet Subjects to that Soveraign Power And besides this lays an eternal Foundation for perpetual Changes and Alterations in Government for by this Position which how true a Protestant soever Mr. Sydney was is the perfect Spawn of Bellarmine and the Popish Doctors all Governments ought to be Elective and there can be no such thing as any Heriditary or successive Right to Crowns and Governments And then there will never fail to be as many Aspiring Pretenders to the Delegation of this Sovereign Power as there are Popular and Ambitious Men who will not have the Patience to attend the Regular and common Course of making a Vacancy in the Throne but will indeavour to remove the present Possessor by all ways per fas nefas to instate themselves in the Sovereign Authority This we see in the declining State of the Roman Empire when the Military men undertook this Sovereign Power of chusing and creating Emperors which is exactly the Case before us and in this Principle as in the very Materia Prima the Mother Cause is to be found the Root of all the Rebellions Plots Conspiracies Faction Sedition and Disorders with which this Anti-monarchical Faction have of those late Years so miserably distracted these three Kingdoms which if there were no other Arguments to confute it is certainly sufficient to render it detestable not only to Sober Wise and judicious Persons but to all Degrees Estates and Conditions of Men who must of necessity feel the Dismal Effects of this Horrid Principle wherever it prevails But after all this Popular flourish of Mr. Sidneys and tickling the People with their imaginary Sovereignty over their King after all his mighty Care for settling the Title of Kings upon the sure Basis of being the willing Nations and Peoples Trustees and Slaves to their Subjects and after all his Traversing his Ground and fencing off the Treason while he tells us that what was said in his Book of Nero Domitian c. That it was applyed to him by Invendo's he very fairly slurs his false Die upon the Credulous and tells us not a Word of what was proved upon him at his Tryal out of the same Papers and concerned the King without an Invendo viz. That the General revolt of a Nation from its own Magistrates is not Rebellion that the Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not in the King Tryal of Algernon Sidney Esq Pag. 26. Here 's the King dethron'd and no way to help himself for this Revolt of the People he says can never be called Rebellion here 's Treason by Whole-Sale without Inveâ—â—do's or Constructions at which he seems to be so much offended as contrary to the stat 25. Ed. 3. Sidneys Paper pag. 3. And if this be not plain down right Treason without any straining or Construing and Writing it an overt Act and far beyond Compassing or imagining which that Act makes Treason truly People may both do and say what they will break the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy without Perjury call Parliaments without the Kings Writ continue them against his Will and not dissolve them but at their own Pleasure they may shake off all Obligations of Obedience Associate Covenant Arm Fight against him Subdue him Dethrone and Murder him if they prosper in the Attempt and yet be no Rebels for all this is included in this Teeming Expression of Peoples Revolting from their Magistrates which he saith can never be called Rebellion and by consequence is no Crime but on the contrary Lawful and Commendable Nay this is not a Fiction a Story of a Possibility of such Consequences from this Principle but a Series of sad Truths all which were to the Everlasting Infamy of the Actors of which Mr. Sidney was no small one having from his Youth by his own Confession been ingaged in them Acted here in these Nations upon the late King and his Loyal Adherents by those Bloody Rebels Traitors and Regicides this Gentlemans Confederates and Accomplices in the late Execrable and dreadful Rebellion In the next place the Paper aims chiefly at his own Vindication which he indeavours by lessening the Reputation of the Witnesses the Jury and his Judges Now though the Printed Tryal is a sufficient Vindication of the whole proceeding which was Managed with much Coolness and Temper as any Tryal I have seen yet it is worth our while to observe that such as were Saints whilest Traytors and Conspirators become Devils and Perjured when once they become Discoverers and Witnesses and that Point of the Lord Howard so much
insisted upon both in this and the Lord Russel's Tryal and attested by so many Witnesses is so sufficiently answered by himself in the Lord Russel's Tryal and is so natural for any Person to conceal his own Guilt by Vouching the Innocency of his Accomplices that it looks like a very great Weakness in Mr. Sidney to repeat a thing which so easily brings its own Answer and is a greater Weakness or however wilfulness in those who will believe it lessens any thing of the Truth of the Lord Howard's Testimony For let any Person put himself under the Lord Howard's then Circumstances and his Heart will tell him he would have done the same thing in all Companies and not have run to the Earl of Bedford and before so many Witnesses have proclaimed his own Guilt when as yet he did not hear he was accused or his Name brought upon the Stage But Mr. Sidney forgot the most Material Witness against him which was himself his whole Life his Words his Actions his Writings evidence sufficiently his Guilt for 't is no wonder to see him in a Conspiracy who thinks a Revolt from the Magistrates cannot be called Rebellion and who hath Actually set in Judgment upon his Natural Liege Lord and Soveraign and helped to bring his Sacred Head to the impious Stroke of the Executioner And for the Bench which he saith was filled with such as were Blemishes to the Bar. I think the Tongue of Traytor not the least Slander and it is their Glory not their Shame that their Faith and Loyalty to their Prince and Country in opposing such as Mr. Sidney and his Common-wealth Faction when they began to be so Rampant as to be thinking of a Revolt from their Magistrates and hatching this Conspiracy are those Blemishes which Mr. Sidney is so much offended at and which have deservedly removed them from the Bar to the Bench. But that Period as before was intimated was intended through the Judges Coif to strike at the Crown For saith he lest the means of Destroying the best Protestants in England should fail the Bench must be filled c. Every Body knows who fills the Bench and 't is easie to Guess the meaning of this Malicious Paragraph but the barking of the Dogs does not hurt the Moon nor the Fools or Mad-man's throwing Dirt at it blacken the the Sun but returns upon the Face of him that throws it But if Mr. Sidney and such as he are the best Protestants bless me God! what a sort of People are the worst If Traitors Rebels and King-killers come to be the only Saints we are e'en in a fair way to set up the God of this World and the Moloch of the Old Cause for the Object of Religion for the Devil was the first Rebel against Monarchy and a Murderer from the beginning and truly the Old Cause is as like him as if She had been spit out of his Mouth And by the last Prayer of this Paper which is the third thing Considerable one would think this Idol of the Old Cause was the Object of Mr. Sidny's Religion for he may be a Turk a Jew or a Papist for any Account he here gives us of his Faith or Religion which is usual for dying men to do Protestant is a large Denomination for there are Presbyterian Independent Anabaptist Quaker and a matter of a hundred and fifty more sorts of People that call themselves so certainly he was not of the Church of England but it is to be supposed he was one of the best Protestants who were therefore as he tells you to be destroyed so that from hence we may infer that Traitors are Mr. Sidney's best Protestants which being as the Logicians say simply converted is that Mr. Sidney's best Protestants are Traitors Now let which of the dissenting Brethren like him upon these Terms take this Martyr for the Old Cause into the Calendar of their Church and much good may the Reputation they will get by it do them But because he prays so heartily for this Old Cause that he forgets to forgive or pray for this Enemies the King and Government as Christianity Commands and the true Martyrs always did Let us see the true Visage of this sweet Mistress of his Soul which he so Zealously recommends to God and the World praying God to defend his own Cause to defend those that defend it stir up such as are Faint direct those that are Willing confirm those that Waver And that we may take a short survey of it This Old Cause in which he was from his Youth ingaged was that Pretence of Reformation of Religion Defence of the Liberty of the Subject and Priviledge of Parliament which the Puritan Faction had been so long hamering in the latter end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth the whole Reign of King Iames and which being accoutred with all her Formalities was set up in the Reign of King Charles the First like Nebuchadnezar's Golden Image in the Plain of Dura and all people Commanded to fall down and Worship 'T was this that taught the Scottish Presbyterians first to rebel or as they called it to Petition their King with Swords in their hands It was the Old Cause which with the Hypocritical Promises of making him the most Glorious King in Christendom wrought upon the most excellent Temper of King Charles the First to pass the Act for perpetuating the Factious Parliament of November the 3 d. 1640. It was the Old Cause which by popular Tumults brought the Noble Earl of Strafford to the Block It was the Old Cause that inspired the Schismatical Rabble to those Insolencies and Tumults which first banished the King from the City of London It was this Cause that seized the Kings Navy Forts Magazines and the Militia of the Kingdom that wrested the Sword out of his hands and then turned the point of it against his Royal Breast It was the Cause that purged the two Houses of all their Loyal Members and that inspired the remaining Dregs of a Parliament to raise Arms Men and Money against the King It was the Cause that led those brutish Rebels into the Field where with flying Colours Drums beating Trumpets sounding Cannons roaring they fought with their Soveraign It was this Old Cause that taught these Rebels to enter into Protestations Vows Covenants Confederacies and Associations contrary to their repeated Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy It was the Cause that under Pretence of Reformation abolished the Apostolical Government of Episcopacy turned St. Paul's Cathedral into a Horse-Guard robbed and defaced Churches turned the Lawful Pastors out of Doors and Committed the poor Sheep to the Care and keeping of the Wolves of Sectaries Schismaticks and Hereticks It was this Cause that first brought up those Taxes Excise Monthly Weekly Assessments before wholly unknown to us and our Ancestors It was this Cause that set up the Bankrupt publick Faith to pick the Pockets of the Nation to maintain this Bloody and unnatural Rebellion It was this Cause that murdered the admirable Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury and so many of the Nobility and Gentry and in Conclusion that Illustrious Martyr King Charles the First before the Gate of his own Royal Palace of White-Hall It was the Cause that sequestred plundred oppressed the whole Nation with free quarter Military and the most Arbitrary Government of the Sword that consumed Forty Millions of Treasure and above two Hundred Thousand Lives that subverted Monarchy and Parliaments Church and State that set up a Democratick Common-wealth that rolled us from that to the absolute Tyranny and Slavery under the Usurper Oliver whose Will was the only Magna Charta and Law of the three Nations It was this same Old Cause that banished our present Soveraign and the whole Royal Family that Bandied the Government from Pillar to Post till we were all in Confusion from which Providence rescued us by the Miraculous Restauration of his Sacred Majesty under whose Auspicious Raign how happy were we till this Old Cause began again about Coll. Sidney's return into England in the Year 1677 to Discompose the Peace and Tranquility both of Church and State and by this happily detected Conspiracy to indeavour the Ruin of them both In short this Old Cause of Mr. Sidneys is the Daughter of the old Serpent who was for a Reformation in Heaven made the first Conspiracy against the Almighty Monarch She is the Mother of Sedition Hypocrisie Perjury Rebellion Murder Rapine Sacriledge War Slaughter Tyranny Oppression Slavery Confusion and Ruin and if these Qualifications and all that can be said that is Wicked and Impious on this side Hell which may litterally to a tittle be Justified against Her be not sufficient to recommend this Old Beldam to the Eternal Detestation of all Mankind Lucifer Belzebub Satan and all the Infernal Crue may in due time hope too to be recommended to the World for certainly they are the Great Patriots of this Old Cause For let Men call themselves by what Names they please best Protestants or true Protestants or what other Titles of Reputation they can Coin to gain Popular Applause the Rule of the Eternal Son of God will be of perpetual Truth and Conviction which assures us from what Stem we ought to derive the Pettegree of all such vaâ—â— Pretenders to Sanctimony and this Old Cause That most infallibly they have the Devil for their father who do his Works FINIS