Selected quad for the lemma: act_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
act_n	lord_n	parliament_n	sovereign_a	3,779	5	9.1772	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77431	A brief discourse of the present miseries of the kingdome: declaring by what practises the people of England have been deluded, and seduced into slavery, and how they have been continued therein, and by what meanes they may shake off that bondage, they are now enthraled under. / Written by a lover of his country, for the good of all such who are not contented to be slaves, but desire to live free-men.	Lover of his country.	1648 (1648)	Wing B4583; Thomason E467_24; ESTC R205268	21,615	31

contrary to the Oath He took at His Coronation Whether you gave them Authority to imprison Him c Aske them whether you gave them Authority to overthrow all Lawes according to their will and pleasure and to usurpe to themselves nay to exceede Regall power and to dispose of your Persons and Estates as they think fit Ask them for an account of all the Mony they have raised out of your Estates Ask them concerning all things that have been done amisse in the Kingdome during their raigne either by their command or tolleration and if they cannot give you very good satisfaction in all the particulars proceed against them as guilty of the breach of the trust you reposed in them and punish them according to their deserts or if in Clemency you think fit to pardon them at least remove them from their Rule and Government and let not those who have so ill behaved themselves in the discharge of their trust be any longer employed by you but humbly desire His Majesty to call another Parliament and desire that you may have free leave to chuse new Members in whose honesty you have better hopes This may be a way to re-setle the Kingdome and restore our Peace else we shall all be miserable for if these Parliament men continue to governe us who have designed themselves Princes and us their Slaves what can we expect but by our own consents to be made despicable It was the cunning of the Church of Rome when she intended to become Catholique rule over all her sister Churches when she introduced novell superstitions which she was taxed for and could not justifie She still maintained her errors by the power she invested her self withall which was that what the Church declared either in doctrine or discipline ought not to be contradicted or disputed for the Church of Rome was the sole interpreter of Scriptures and where they were not able by their glosses and interpretations to justifie and defend their Tenents they had un-written tradictions which on all occasions supported their doctrines Is it not so with the Parliament I meane the House of Commons for that usurpes the whole power of the Parliament the Lords being become no ciphers but blankes in their accounts doe not they invest themselves with a Soveraigne power apropriating sole dominion unto themselves and that nothing is Law but what they declare to be so and if any act of theirs be questioned to be done contrary to the knowne Law have they not an unknowne Law one of their unwritten verities which are as necessary and usefull as the Popish traditions to justifie them in their erronious proceeding have they not their Parliament priviledges which is their Catholocon a medicine for all diseases a principall help at Mawe by which they alwayes with the prize for by vertue of this mistery of iniquity they defend and maintaine all their illegall actions and are protected from all inquiry into their proceedings by telling the people it is a breach of their Priviledges But I wish the same course were taken with the Parliament that our Protestant Divines tooke with the Church of Rome to enquire when those superstructures were built in the Church so when these Priviledges were begotten in the Parliament and then it would appear that those priviledges were illegitimate begotten by Rebellious parents and nurs'd up in factious times and that the Law of the Land neither ownes them nor knowes them Let the Parliament be required to produce some good authors that have aunciently written concerning their fundamentall Laws which they so often mention and of their unbounded Priviledges which they so often make use of that the people may know that they are not their owne inventions that they are not fictions and chimaer as to delude the vulgar and to disguise the truth and bluster out their owne iniquities Let them shew how an Ordinance becomes a Law or is able to destroy the Law Let them declare where that priviledge is that protects a Parliament man to commit Fellony or Treason and that it is a breach of priviledge to indict him for it Let them produce Records that are authenticall that divdes the power from the Person of the King and incorporates that Power into the House of Commons Let them shew in any times that the House of Commons ever disposed of the Militia of the Kingdome usurp'd authority to make Peace or War and to contract leagues with forraigne States to condemne or pardon to make Judges to dispose of the Kings Revenue to Imprison the King Himselfe c. Nay was it ever heard or read of that a Speaker of the House of Commons an inconsiderable contemptible person for his birth and breeding should arrogate to himself and assume by the permission of that House the ensignes of Regall Authority and usurpe the Kings Chaire and cloth of State and give publique audience to Ambassadours Oh unheard-of arrogance never to be parallel'd by precedent or future presidents and cannot be exceeded unlesse by that of the Devill who attempted to be like the highest Let these exorbitances suffice to put the Kingdome in minde what pressures have been put upon them what usurpations the two Houses but especially the House of Commons have injustly arrogated to themselves and then let them consider how they are rob'd of their just rights and into what a slavery they are inthral'd and whether they have not slept those years past whilst the Devil and his instruments have sown these tares amongst their good corne and so spoil'd the plentifull harvest they hoped to reape by this Parliament and that they must be compell'd to hazard to pluck up the tares though therewith the good corne be endangered for the field must be clensed to sow and prepare for a new crop else in a short time the people of this Kingdome will be starved for want of Bread I could enlarge my selfe further on this subject for there is no want of matter to swell this discourse into a volume but I resolved not to make my Country-men more miserable by enumerating too many of their miseries or by paraphrasing on them Rhetorically argue them into too deep a sense of their Sufferings it shall suffice me if they become sensible of their present condition and thereby endeavour a Manumission from their Slavery that they remember what they were what they are and what they ought to be and as true borne English-men shake off their Fetters with the same hands they have imposed them depose the Tyrant Parliament and Re-inthrone their lawfull Soveraigne expell Rebellious Presbytery and establish moderate and limited Episcopacy provide for tender consciences who will conforme in obedience to Civill Magistracy and then no doubt we shall returne to a setled Government and Peace will be restored with plenty and we shall againe be a happy and united people as formerly under our gracious King whom God preserve FINIS

groane under but more of this in its due place The Parliament finding an inclination in His Majesty to reform all that is amisse and willing to comply with His Parliament in all that they can propose for the good of the people they grow fearfull that if His Majesty be suffered to comply with them so fast all that is amisse in the Common-wealth will be reform'd too soone and then there will be no worke for them but they must returne home and become private men againe which is contrary to their intentions for they resolve to Lord it over their fellow Subjects perpetually which they cannot doe unlesse they devolve the Kingdome into greater miseries and distractions by contriving a Civill War within the bowels thereof for the effecting of which they use all their art and industry to inslave the people by pretending that there is a Malignant party in the Kingdome of Papists and such as are Popishly affected who are machinating treacherous plots against them by destroying of this glorious Parliament which intends so much good to the Common-wealth and in the ruine of this Parliament to bury all hopes of future redresse of our grievances These feares and jealousies are fomented amongst the people by their active instruments who are especially those of the Clergy and these by their pretended sanctity of life easily gained credit amongst their simple auditors besides such as are divulgers of these reports are directed to insinuate that His Majesty hath a hand in these contrivances by which obliquity He must be represented as the object of the peoples fear who ought to be the protector of them and their Lawes and they the security of His Power and Person By this distrust of His Majesty being begotten and nourisht amongst the people His Majesties Person together with His Royall Consort and Children are exposed to all calumnie and reproach that so they may become contemptible Yet notwithstanding all these practises which were the contrivances of particular plotters in both Houses yet there was a party of honest able Gentlemen in the House of Commons and the Bishops and some Noble Lords in the House of Peeres that crost and thwarted the proceedings of this violent party How to remove these was now the great endeavour and the Bishops they must first be thrust out of the House of Lords and the better to effect this the people they must be stirr'd up to Petition the House of Commons that the Prelates who by their Votes in Parliament hindred the intended Reformation might by an Act of Parliament be excluded out of the House and their Votes taken away And to the end that these people might not erre in the forme or manner of Petitioning they had good friends in the Parliament that could penne their Petitions according to the sense of the House these Petitioners were commonly attended by a tumultuous rabble of the City and Suburbes who were summoned to meet together for that purpose and although they came together and flockt to the Houses more like an unlawfull assembly of riotous and mutinous persons who imperiously demanded rather then humbly Petitioned for what they desired and therefore for their manner of comming rather deserved to be reprehended then cherisht yet they were welcomed and thankt for their great care of the Common-wealth and encourag'd to draw together in such unlawfull assemblies The Bill being now formed for the excluding the Bishops out of the House they presse His Majesty to sign it and that they may worke Him thereunto they make use of all those Instruments about Him who are either afraid to be lasht by their exorbitant power or else are desirous to partake with them in their wayes and these who are truely the evill Councellors obtaine of His Majesty to passe this Bill I wish with my soule His Majesty had never been betrayed by these evil Instruments to doe so ill an act as to deprive the Church of that power next under Him should govern and protect it and by their consent to wholsome Lawes in Parliament preserve their flocks from the ravenous Wolves that have since devoured them I am no Lawyer to determine how essentiall a part of the Parliament the Bishops were but I believe they were one of the Estates that made up that great body and this I am sure is consonant to reason for if each Member of the Common-wealth be obliged to obey the Lawes made in that Convention because they consent unto them by those who are present at the making of those Lawes as being Persons chosen by them by whose Votes they oblige themselves I know no reason that the Clergy who are so eminent a part of the Common-wealth should not have fit persons by them chosen to sit and Vote likewise in the House by whom their consent unto all Lawes might be included And it will appear a strange irregular course in the opinion of foraine Nations and that which will be a dishonour and a disparagement unto this Kingdome that the doctrine and discipline of our Church is subverted and that we have in a manner a new Religion framed and no Clergy-man hath either an affirmative or a negative Vote in the composure an Assembly of Divines being pickt out and packt together by no lawfull authority and onely made use of to colour out and countenance the acts of those who are altogether Lay-men It will seem strange hereafter when these proceedings shall be maturely heard and debated that it should appear that a businesse of so high a nature as the dispossessing the Bishops of their just rights should be transacted and that those who are parties should be made their Judges to condemn without hearing those who are so eminently their Superiours both in degree and dignity but it is now too apparent to all the world what it was that provoked this violent and irregular prosecution the end being that these Reformers might rob the Church of that patrimony which the piety of their Auncestors had invested the Bishops withall And it will be well if the legislative power which these men exercise can secure them from being guilty of sacriledge and quit them at the dreadfull Tribunall from horrid impiety Those honest and able Noblemen and Gentlemen who were chosen and trusted by their Countries and whose tender consciences scrupled at these injurious and impious proceedings and according to the dictate of their reasons dissented from these unjust and irregular actions these were traduced amongst the people as members Popishly affected and not fit to continue in the Houses And to deter them the more the rabble scum of the people were brought down often to Westminster and there were taught to know those men that opposed their Faction and to revile them with scurilous and opprobrious language and so to menace them as they thought it not safe for them to stay longer in the Houses especially after they had with the like Tumults driven away His Majesty from White-hall the Protectour of them and