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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	act_n	law_n	sin_n	1,487	5	5.2539	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44620	How the members of the Church of England ought to behave themselves under a Roman Catholic king with reference to the test and penal laws in a letter to a friend / by a member of the same church.	Member of the same church.	1687 (1687)	Wing H2961; ESTC R6451	60,453	228

which they would have grounded an Indictment of Treason And whoever considers all the Arguments of the Exclusionists will find they were bottom'd upon the severe Laws against Papists So that if his Royal Brother had been wrought upon to have consented it had been easie by the force of the penal Laws against Roman Catholics not only to have deprived our Sovereign of his Right of Succession but of his life also Since therefore it is so evident that the penal Laws against Roman Catholics as they now stand in force are not only destructive to the Subjects property but endanger as much the Rights of Hereditary Princes In my Judgment the King hath sufficient reason to require their repeal and all Lovers of our Monarchy reflecting upon the hazard his Majesty was in from them have reason to use their utmost endeavours to have such abrogated Surely we cannot but reflect how things were pushed on after the credit given to that perjur'd Man's Plot. How a traiterous party designed the late Kings Murther the overthrow of the Monarchy or at least the utter secluding of our Gracious Sovereign and never rested till they had formed the Rebellion in England and Scotland So that when we consider how these Laws were obtained in a time when the Affrights Heats and Ferments of the Nation were so great and the drift of the Enemies to Monarchy and the Kings person were not sufficiently discovered and when we consider that those so fair-blown Blossoms so delicately striped with the beautiful Colours of Religion and Property and Priviledges were succeeded by the most poisonous Fruits And that those men who pretended so much care of the Protestant Religion manifestly designed the Eclipsing at least if not the overthrow of the Church of England by their Bill of Comprehension whoever I say considers these things deliberately cannot think the King hath any reason to be in Love with these Acts which were made so Diametrically opposite to his Regality and which would so manacle his hands that he might have no power to bestow Places or Offices upon his Catholic Subjects Having premised these things in Gross I shall now proceed to give you some of the many reasons why I think the King hath just cause to insist upon the Repeal of these Acts and all other Sanguinary Laws Reasons why the Test ought to be repeal'd 1. That it chargeth the King and all Catholics with the detestable sin of Idolatry First If there were no other reason why he should earnestly endeavour the abolishing of them This one thing seems to me sufficient in that all his Subjects who are capacitated to serve Him must solemnly declare the King or the Church he is in Communion with Idolaters than which sin I think no Christian can be guilty of a greater except that of the so inexplicable sin against the Holy Ghost If I were a Military man I should be very diffident of success or that God would prosper my Arms while I fought a Princes quarrel whom I judged an Idolater And if I did not believe it as their whole Church so solemnly denying any properly Divine Worship to be given by them to any but God methinks should hinder me and yet were obliged so solemnly to declare it I should think I scandalized my Prince in the highest degree mocked God and gave a lye to my Conscience So that however useful it might be to deter persons of the Roman Faith from taking it and so to incapacitate them yet I cannot see how a Catholic Prince can countenance or need it And how either the King himself or his Catholic Subjects can digest such publick avowing them Idolaters I leave to any rational man to judge And especially the King being I doubt not throughly convinced in his own Conscience that he is no Idolater for I think gestures only without some kind of intention of paying Divine Honour to something that is not God will not make a person guilty of that damnable sin It cannot but concern him in Conscience to prevent as much as in him lies his Subjects averring so scandalous an untruth in his Majesties own belief at least and which assertion carries with it another ill consequence that every one is not aware of For the Ordination of our Bishops coming from the Church of Rome if that be Idolatrous it is no more a Church of Christ but a Synagogue of Satan And if it be no Damage I am sure it is no Credit to derive a succession from it Secondly 2 That one great end of the Test now ceaseth Another reason against the Test may be that now there is no use of the direct intendment of the Act because the end for which in great part it was made is now obsolete and totally ceaseth which I hope will be clear to them that consider that the power of the Militia and the disposing either directly or indirectly of all the places of Service and Trust are in the King So that though it was but rational that those persons to whom Protestant Kings committed Arms and Offices should be assured of them in fidelity which the being of the same Religion induceth a Prince to confide more in lest their Persons or Government might be in danger from any armed with power that were Catholics So that it was but consentaneous to the Sovereign Power in disposal of the Militia and Offices that a Protestant Prince might refuse to be served by Catholics and lest any such might get into Imployments he might be willing to consent to the most effectual discriminating Test that could be invented to debar them But now the King is secure from any apprehensions of the least danger to his Person and Government from Catholics and can have no more doubt of the Allegiance of Catholics without such Oaths or Declarations than a Protestant Prince could have of his Protestant Subjects under the engagement of those Oaths Here we may en passant observe a considerable difference betwixt the method of our King and those of former times Now we repine and are greatly alarum'd as if all were lost because here and there a Catholic Officer is Commissionated whereas the King imploys treble the number yea some say Ten Officers that are Protestants for one Catholic and the Soldiers are generally Protestants whereas before not one Known Catholic was capable of any Imployment We might have indeed some reason to murmur and repine if the King should commissionate none but Catholics yet that would be but Lex Talionis turning the Tables Therefore since he hath the power of dispencing with that Law as appears by the Sentence in the King's Bench we have reason to be thankful to the King for the distribution of his favours so liberally to Protestants which hath been so long denied to Unfortunate Catholics who if their Religion did not incapacitate them as Englishmen Fellow-Subjects and Gentlemen are as fit for all sorts of Imployment as Protestants And I doubt not but now that

reputed such c. and every one of them to have hold and possess seat place and voice in our Parliaments Publick Conventions and Councils and of those of our Heirs and Successors within our Kingdom of England amongst other Barons and Barons of our Parliaments publick Conventions and Councils This having been the long used form of the Patents granted by our Protestant Princes it is not only an abatement of what the Sovereign intended for their well-deserving Subjects and a violating of that peculiar Right which was designed to be transmitted to their Posterities and thereby a degrading of Roman Catholic Peers of so importent a priviledge but it wrests out of the Kings hands a Royal Prerogative he hath Jure Coronae to make and create the Members of that most Honourable House which is his Supreme Court of Judicature The ill Consequences that may follow such Retrenchment being well worth serious Reflections and of the Kings Prerogative I having occasion hereafter to treat more largely shall add no more here but only hint to you the Resentments of some Parliaments when they have wanted their Members and close this Head with some short Reflections which with all due deference to better Judgments and those whom it may most immediatly concern I shall only offer to be considered Mat. Paris p. 885. Anno 1255. The Earls and Barons absolutely refused the King any assistance or answer at all to what he demanded because all the Barons were not at that time called according to the Tenure of Magna Charta Stat. 1● 114 So the Acts of the Parliament of the 21th of Rich. 2. and all the proceedings therein were totally repealed and nulled by the first Parliament of King Henry the Fourth because the Lords who adhered to the King were summoned by him to the Parliament and some of the opposite party imprisoned impeached and unsummoned Pryns plea for Lords Stat. 24. When King Charles the First sitting the Parliament confined but one Member the Earl of Arundel the whole House of Lords Remonstrated and petitioned the King to take off the restraint and to admit him to sit and serve the King and Common-wealth in the great Affairs of that Parliament So the Lord Digby Earl of Bristol being not summoned the Lords ordered his Admission to Sit as his Birth-right 4 Justit p. 2. from which he might not be debarred for want of summons which ought to have been sent him ex debito Justitiae as Sir Edward Coke affirms Pryn ut supra p. 145 146. When the same King Charles demanded the Five Members the Two Houses grew exceedingly disquieted at it and would meddle in no other Business but adjourned themselves to Guild-Hall London till the King should give them satisfaction in discovering the Authors of that Counsel The stress of whose Argument in their Messages to the King Nov. 2. 1642 was That by that means under false pretences of Crimes and Accusations such and so many Members of both or either House of Parliament may be taken at any time by any person to serve a turn and to make a Major part of whereby the freedom of Parliament would be destroyed which they say dependeth in a great part on this priviledge because without it the whole Body of Parliaments may be dissolved by depriving them of their Members by degrees some at one time and others at another Plea for Lords p. 414. The same mischiefs which they urged might happen to the Being and Constitution of Parliaments by the Kings depriving the House of five Members may happen upon the Houses excluding their Members by Vote against which Mr. Prynn makes so great an Out-cry and from this unparallell'd president except in the long Parliament of expelling Members for their opinion in Religion Some Reflections upon the whole All Lovers of the so excellently composed Constitution of the Two Houses may do well to consider what an Inlet it will make to the Imitation of the likely designing Men when they shall have any Intrigue in hand to expel Members of other Qualifications Qualifications and Recognitions during the Usurpation Surely we ought not to forget how much it prolong'd our miserable slavery under the Usurpers when no Members how duly soever chosen by the Freeholders were admitted to sit unless they were so and so qualified and made a Recognition to own the Usurped Government and to Act nothing contrary to the Model of it I think it no great Commendation in us to be in Love with such a Copy of the same tho drawn in Oyl-Colours and made more lasting and obliging by the Legality of it When Queen Elizabeth was in greatest danger from Roman Catholics even while her Rival lived she could not be induced to deprive the Roman Catholic Lords of their places in Parliament The ill consequences of Secluding the Bishops I think we ought to remember what dismal effects followed the Seclusion of the Bishops out of the House of Lords and that upon the Kings Restauration none appeared more forward and zealous to have them brought into the House of Lords again than the Roman Catholic Peers did which Action none I think will interpret to have proceeded from their Love to their Religion but solely to the tender regard they had to Justice and the true Constitution of Parliaments and if the Bishops and Protestant Lords had thought fit to have been as careful of the Birth-rights of those few Catholic Lords that were Members of their House in all probability our Religion had been in as little danger by their stay as it hath been better'd by their expulsion for they neither were then or are like to be so numerous in that House as to carry any Vote to overthrow or weaken the Exercise of the Protestant Religion What sort of Acts of Parliament least dureable It must be owned that Acts of Parliament are to be looked upon as Laws the Subjects ought to yield all Obedience to But it is likewise to be considered that such Temporary Acts which upon Emergencies and to serve a juncture have altered any Ancient or Fundamental Constitution of the Government robbed the King of any useful Prerogative or the Subjects of their Birth-rights as likewise all such as by Revolution of Time have the Causes for which they were made ceasing have been rarely found conducible to Publick Good or of any long continuance It is true our present Sovereign was personally excepted from the severity of these Acts but it is well known that some great Members of the Houses designed to have him presented by the Grand-Jury as a Recusant in order to his Conviction as a Roman Catholic and the Judges for discharging the Jury too soon as the designers alledged whereby an Indictment could not be brought in were severely censured by the House of Commons This was not all for the hottest Zealots were for proceeding upon the Statute against being Converted or Reconciled to the Church of Rome upon