Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	absence_n	absent_a	council_n	36	3	6.7352	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61235	Salus populi suprema lex, or, The free thoughts of a well-wisher for a good settlement in a letter to a friend.	Stewart, James, Sir, 1635-1713.	1689 (1689)	Wing S516; ESTC R220613	8,028	9

SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX OR The Free THOUGHTS of a Well-Wisher For a good SETTLEMENT IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND By Iames Stewart Printed in the Year 1689. SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX OR The Free Thoughts of a Well-wisher for a good Settlement c. Sir THe settling of our Government in this extraordinary meeting of the Estates is a matter of that importance that I cannot but wish I were as able to assist in it as I am perswaded it is the duty of every man to contribute his best endeavours And seing it is like to be the grand Question Whether we should call back the present King or at least in his absence resolve on such a Regency as may consist with the continuance of his Right or rather plainly declare the Thron to be vacant and supply it after Englands Example You shall have my Opinion as free from passion as from particular intrest which I think is as little as any mans can be I therefore humbly Conceive that the Estates may and ought to declare the Thron to be vacant and at the same time supply it by setting up the Prince and Princess of Orange after the example of England without variation And my reason is one and most evident and demonstrative viz. Because the Thron is de facto vacant as being deserted and that God from Heaven presents to us and the Highest Necessity determines us to embrace their Highnessess as the only Persons that can and ought possess it I know it was the method of England first to take notice of the King's malversations and thereupon and upon his deserting to find that he had Abdicat and thereby rendered the Thron Vacant But tho' all good Men must perpetually regrate the King 's Fatal Addiction to the Romish Religion and the Excesses it hath caused him to commit and that now undoubtedly is the season to provide against these and all other Errors in the Government Yet seing that some may be ready to affirm that by our late Laws we have too amply impowered by our complyance too manifestly encouraged him in these very courses to make these his Majesties charge and that it is more becoming the Respect due to Soveraign Majesty in all events and likewayes more easie to our old and National kindness to the ancient Race and Line to forbear such direct and extraordinary accusations leaving these to others I rather choose and fix upon the medium of the Kings deserting as that which in our case is yet more palpable and clear then in that of England and abundantly conclusive of all I would inferr from it And that the King hath deserted the Thron and us is so apparent from that visible State of Anarchy under which we have Laboured these months by past That certainly all Considering men in place of making it a matter of doubt do rather Admire and Praise the good Providence of the Almighty who hath so graciously kept our peace and prevented these ruining Mischiefs to which such a Lawless condition Joyned to our former intestine Distempers and Divisions did exposeus Our Kings it 's true have of a long time resided in England Personally absent from us and some may say that his going to any other of his Dominions ought not to alter the case But the Desertion we speak of being not a simple non-residence and personal absence but a manifest abandoning leaving us far more negligently then he did England without all Cause Care or Concernment cannot be covered with this Pretence If upon that great and sudden pressure in England that moved him to take such surprising measures it had pleased his Majesty to give any account of them with what orders he might have thought necessary to his privy-Privy-Council in this Kingdom something might be alledged to colour the Dereliction But when nothing of this Nature was done but the Government quite given up in our greatest exigence to the Conviction and Amazement of his own Privy Council and all his Officers who only encreased the common consternation by following their Master's example the thing is but too certain And therefore I shall only sum up its evidence with these two remarks First that the King 's leaving us as he did in his and our then circumstances is so unaccountable in all other reasonings that it seems plainly to say that it was his Majestie 's good mind toward us that we should follow England's fate whatever it should prove And next that there appears so much of the Divine Soveraignty over-ruling the King in the course he took in his departure that it cannot but intimat to all Serious Observers that thereby God thought good to prepare the way for the happy choice that he now presents If then the King hath deserted the Kingdom and its Government the Thron is necessarly vacant And if the Thron be vacant nothing can hinder to Declare it to be so unless Men do prefer Confusion and Ruin to order and Safety But because the Oaths of Allegiance and Test with other Engagements seem to many to be still binding I shall resume the matter more particularly in order to their Liberation and Relief And therefore must and do affirm from the most obvious evidence of things that the Desertion we ly under is not only total and absolute but withall so causless or rather pretenceless beyond the case of England without the least shaddow of constraint or reason that a more notable and clear breach of the Fundamental Contract whereon all Government as well as ours Subsists can hardly be imagined I cannot here digress to prove the Beeing and Nature of this fundamental contract All Men of Sense do easily apprehend that Government is a matter of Trust and not of property or absolute Dominion and that tho' the ordinance in it self as also that of Marriage be of God yet the establishing of it in this or that form and upon this or that Person and Familie is after the parallel of the same Example of mans free choice and agreement It being Impossible to Imagine how either the Hostility of conquest should terminat or the vain old World pretence of Paternal power the presumptive force of Prescription or the true and genuine vertue of a Surrender take place to introduce Government without the supposition of this mutual Consent and Contract either implyed or expressed And thus indeed it is and no other wayes that the Powers which in the first Sense and in the Abstract are by the Apostle Paul truely said to be of God are yet in the second Sence and in the Concret Justly called by the Apostle Peter the Ordinances of Man. We have too long been inured by Men of Corrupt Designs and practices to a certain false Cant that the King holds his Crown immediatly from God Almighty alone But now Blessed be God all Men not wilfully blind do see and the very Authors of this Language begin to confess that it is otherways and that Government is founded in