Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n
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A47994
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A letter from a gentleman in the city to a clergy-man in the country
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Gentleman in the city.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing L1387; ESTC R9507
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23,794
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42
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should rather appear the more deform'd as 't is the Rarity that makes the Monster Besides Queen Mary had that Plea to make for what were 206 Protestants even by Foxes Muster-Roll burnt for Religion in her five years Reign to the some millions of Protestants in those days when half the Kingdom was of that Persuasion an infinite larger number to cull out so many Sufferers from than all the Popish Priests that Rome has sent over these 130 Years past or shall do in as many more to come To return therefore to His Majesties Proposal of Abrogating these Laws 't is a greater Duty upon the Church of England to abolish 'em than in the Dissenters themselves for as 't is a Yoke imposed upon their weaker Brethren in it self wholly unjust the Sufferer under that Yoke in endeavouring to break it only acts by the Motives of Self-defence the common Principle of Nature But the Imposer of that Yoke is tyed by the Obligations of Religion it self to repeal and repent his own Act of Injustice Besides if all Arguments of Conscience cannot prevail and Policy not Equity though Heaven forbid so uncharitable a Thought is our Churches Guide yet even then too What do's she yield up in abolishing those Laws Why truly nothing For whilst the Government continues in the Hands of a Prince of the Romish Religion those Statutes will utterly lye dead for the Royal Indulgence a Prerogative in the Crown will never put them in execution And if abolisht however the next Protestant Prince has the power of Resumption if his Conscience shall think fit to give them a Resurrection What reason therefore has the Church of England for her Nonconcurrence to a Proposal so equitable when she has not so much as the least Pretext even of meer Interest it self for her Refusal But this I am sure as the Church of England can have no solid Reasons to oppose their Repeal the State has very substantial ones to inforce it For as TRADE is the greatest support and strength of a Kingdom I know no Politicks so conducing to the Commerce and Wealth of a Nation as Liberty of Conscience What greater Encouragement to Naturalization And England that is not overloaded with People can have no fairer Inlet to bring in whole Families and Estates and indeed the Wealth of the World besides the opening that Current of Commerce even amongst our present Natives which the late Restraint of Worship had so much shut up than Liberty of Religion Nor can I better instance the Effects of this Policy than in the growth of the Dutch Greatness and the decay of the Spaniard from their different Extreams of National Conduct in that Point I am certain His Majesty resolves to eternize his Glory by being the truest Pater Patriae of all the Crown'd Heads since the Conquest nor has He a fairer Prospect of making His Kingdom a true Paradise of PEACE and PLENTY but by taking this Pattern at least from the first Paradise that is by making the Lyon and Lamb lye down in Peace together our long Disunions being no otherways to be reconciled and our Enmities husht but by this only Vniversal Pacification I shall only add this last Consideration The execution of our Penal Laws and the restraint of Conscience has been the greatest Blow that ever was given to the Hereditary Right of the Subjects of England their natural Properties and Immunities given and sealed to them by Magna Charta it self For who can call his Liberty or Estate his own whilst a Superiour Opinion in POWER shall seize our Persons and confiscate our Estates for no other cause but difference of Worship and Faith and neither Person Estate or Liberty redeemable under a less Composition than renouncing of God for Conformity of Worship absolutely against Conscience is little else And all this Capital Offence so unfixt and so undeterminable a sort of Transgression that a Man has only a meer Lottery to be in the Right or the Wrong For the blackest Criminal in one Reign has been the whitest Saint in the next and so vice versâ over again witness the Reigns of Edward the Sixth Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth where the Protestants were the Devils one while and the Papists another Nay in the Reign of Henry the Eighth both Papist and Protestant were at one time in the wrong For 't was remarkable in his Reign that in the same day have Papists been hanged for Traytors for disowning his Church Supremacy and Protestants burnt for Hereticks for denying of Transubstantiation Thus in their turns have all Religions and Opinions lain under the Scourge of the severest of Laws and all for want of that Obedience to a Law which Humanity it self is utterly unable to pay For though our Breach or not Breach of all other Laws either Humane or Divine lyes in our own free will and choice To conform or not conform to this or that Belief is wholly above the power of Man Faith only being Irresistible And if our worldly Well-being and all we enjoy in this Life depends upon such caprichious Decrees of Law certainly the Great Charter of our Liberties and Estates that confirm'd 'em both under no such Condition or Restriction is not a little invaded by the Penalties of such Laws And I cannot tell what greater or more glorious Design His Gracious Majesty can undertake than by repairing so deep a Breach wrought through the very Fundamentals of his Peoples original Freedom and Birthrights Nor is there or has been a greater Friend or Patron of the Church of England than His present Majesty who himself alone tenders Her the Means and Opportunity to wash off those long Stains and Blots which either the petulance or remissness of Her Protestant Defenders of Her Faith through these Penal Statutes have cast or left upon Her and so to restore Her to Whiteness and Innocence Having made this fair Inquest into the Penal Laws I shall take a little Search too into the TEST and lay down those Reasons that equally oblige us to concur with His Majesty in a Repeal of that too In order to which it behoves us first to sum up all the great and popular Arguments if I may so call 'em tho in reality rather the Language of Fears and Jealousies than the Voice of right Reason daily urged for the Preservation of the Test viz. That the whole Defence of the Protestant Religion relyes on that Basis If the Test were once abrogated the Church of England would soon be blown up when all Offices both Ecclesiastical and Civil and all Power and Authority both in Church and State shall be lodged in Roman Catholick Hands and what not To answer which hideous and formidable Outcry we 'll begin first with the pretended Dangers threaten'd the Church of England by Repeal of the Test Not to insist upon His Majesties reiterated WORD and HONOVR His inviolable Engagements to maintain the Church of England as now by Law establisht in her uninterrupted
so considerable a Church Regalia so dear an Ensign of Ecclesiastick Sovereignty as their Tormenta and Flagella their Tests and Penall Laws and so sensible a Diminution of their GRANDEVR their Diana GRANDEVR threaten'd by the Relaxation of those Laws might be so near a Concern to them that seing the Royal Indulgence to Religious Liberty daily more and more gaining upon the Hearts of the People and to stop the Carreer of so General a Compassion the Fatal Effects of so growing a Contagion their Denial of Reading so Pacifick a Declaration might possibly be one of the most exquisite Artifices to stiffle the generous Product of it into Abortion Their very Refusal being really no more than purposely to Court Sufferings to gain Proselytes as well fore knowing upon the least Punishment for it tho' ever so much their Due to have their Condoled and Pittyed Cause seen through those Popular False Opticks as should turn even Justice it self in Persecution And so by Alaruming the Old Ignorance into New Jealousies they might so harden that present too Universal popular Lenity towards Tender Consciences and more than probably so affect the Frightned Populace and thereby so far influence the next Election as to defeat the whole Royal purposed Clemencie and gain their own Point I should be sorry to be mistaken in this Suspicion but truly the shallowness of so Weak-reason'd an Obstinacie against so Innocent a Command of the King looks so very like some such sort of Ecclesiastical Polity that I am affraid the Consciencious stumble at so Diminitive a Gnat will at last be found a meer artful Piece of Priest craft to keep their Dagon from falling And what that Dagon is let the World judge for excepting the Engines of their Tyranny and the supporters of their Pride I know no strength the Penal Laws or Tests either have or can yield them But above all things that the Illegality of the King 's Dispensing Power should be a Specter that appeared so dreadful to their Lordships yet walks invisible to every Mortal Eye-Sight else is not a little surprising The very Straitest-laced Prerogative Men never denied the King his Dispencing Power in Cases of Offence only against himself Absq Damno alterius and wherein the bare Exercise of Religious Worship is or can be alterius Damno their Wisdoms would have been kind to inform us Or wherein any Minister or Officer qualified or not qualified by the Test in any Civil or Military Station for His Majestie pretends to no other Dispensation can be Damno Ecclesiae would be another piece of Discovery as kind as the other Wherein what has our Church or our Nondispensing Church-men suffered by all this Toleration Have they lost the least Particle of their Government Discipline Rights Priviledges or Possessions whatever Is there any of our Nontested Magistrates or our Vnpinion'd Dissenters in all this Freedom has wrongd our Church of so much as a Sprig of Mint or a Corn of Cumminseed that she can challenge Hers. Is she denyed either Law or Justice for so much as the claim of a Tythe Egg And that this Dispensing Power may not look altogether so hidious What is the King 's Dispensing Power in Penal Laws really any more than his pardoning Power The Transgression of those Laws incurrs such a Penalty or Punishment and the Royal Clemencie is Graciously pleased to remit the Forfeiture And indeed what does his Declaration amount to more than a Noli prosequi only a more universal one the Common and daily Plea of the Crown His Majesty by his unquestion'd Right can pardon and what 's his Declaration truly more than that he will do it Our Great Crown-sticklers have to a very fair purpose so long Preach'd up our King's the Vizegerents of GOD to come at last to the denying them any part of the brightest Prerogative of the Divinity MERCY And as to the backing the Credit of their Assertion by their Parliamentary Authority of 72 c. I am sorry to hear our Divine Gamalels lay hold of so Weak a Handle as to set np a Transient Vote against a Fundamental Prerogative And as to their Insinuation that upon our conceding a Dispensing Power in the Case of the Penal Laws and Tests it must therefore follow that we should open an Inlet to lay aside All Laws both Ecclesiastick and Civil 't is an Ergo sequitur so strangely far stretch'd that they might e'ne as well have said and the Consequence have hung as well together too that because some of our Severe Fathers of our Church have Reasons of Conscience and Policy to support Laws for the depopulating of Kingdoms therefore the Gentler FATHER of our Country ought to have the same Reasons too I hope their Lordships if for nothing but the Reputation of their Wisdom and Learning did not tender these Petitioning Reasons to His Majesty as intended for Convincing ones For truly by the strength both of their Alledging and inferencing this part of their Petition if not all of it I am affraid looks more like Written for the Reading of the Rabble than of the King But to conclude As the fore-mentioned are all our Dangers from their Repeal wherein are His Majesties Demands unreasonable in asking the Repeal of the Penal Laws in which almost the whole Vox populi Witness the late Numerous Adresses joyns with him and the Principles of Nature Humanity and Conscience plead for him Or in asking the Repeale of the Test for the asserting of his own Honour and the Recovering the Birth-Right of a King by endeavouring to shake off the most shameful Vassalage that Monarch ever truckled under And why must his Endeavours of doing his People so much Right in the first and Himself so much Right in the last be so poorly mis-interpreted by the unnatural Surmises of his Vngrateful People But let us Blush and mend and by giving up these Laws do Equity in Return of Clemenoie and MERCY FINIS