Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bishop_n	church_n	england_n	1,563	5	6.0318	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A94277	The Scotch souldiers speech concerning the Kings coronation-oath.	Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, 1612-1650, attributed name.	1647 (1647)	Wing S963; Thomason E387_2; ESTC R201491	10,572	18

THE SCOTCH SOULDIERS SPEECH CONCERNING THE KINGS Coronation-Oath Printed in the Yeare 1647. THE Scotch Souldiers Speech concerning the Kings Coronation Oath GEntlemen fellow Souldiers though as a Scotchman I may be plaine and a Souldier blunt yet I hope as a Christian I shall be honest and as a Subject loyall in the expression of that duty which by the Laws of God of nature of the Kingdome of gratitude and of humanity is due to one who is by Soveraigne Majesty our King by birth our Countryman by education a Protestant by profession and actions a most pious Prince and by his gratious compliance with us confident in our loyalty the confluence of which obligements hath made all the powers of heaven and earth to stand as it were in amaze being big with expectations to see how well or ill we deport our selves in this businesse of such high concernment Who knowes but that the divine providence hath sent his Majesty to us that we might be made the happy instruments of a well grounded peace and of restoring Religion to its purity the Church to its Rights the King to his Prerogative and Lawes to their chanell the Nobility and Gentry to their honours and estates and the people to their Liberties if we resolve upon these things we may crown our Nation with honour but if unworthy thoughts possesse our soules we may justly feare that although salvation may come some other way yet we and our party shall perish It is true that we have an hard game to play but having the chiefe triumph trump in our owne hands besides so many honours we shall prove but ill Gamesters if we be not gainers by the deale and give Religion and Justice their due besides the saving of our owne stakes but for the effecting hereof it behooveth us to looke with our owne eyes and not through those spectacles or prospectives through which others present matters unto us we have hitherto been made beleeve that the end and design of all this war was to fetch the King from his evill Councellour to his Parliament of England his Majesty very often yea even beneath the dignity of so great a Prince desired to comply with them but they instead of accepting his Majesty voted him a prisoner his Majesty having honoured us with his Royall presence there are now no evill Councellours about his there are no Armies to animate his non-compliance what is now the rock of offence beleeve it all the circumstances of this War considered we may justly feare that we have been made but a stale to the designes of those seditious Schismaticks who are now the obstacles of the Kingdomes peace and that they like the Ape made use of the Cats foot to plucke those Chesnuts out of the fire which themselves had designed for their owne palat It behooves us now duly to examine the businesse and we are bound according to the trust reposed in us by his Majesty to vindicate his Majesties Rights and to see her restored to all his legall Prerogatives but shall I tell you the true causes of this present difference and that which we may upon good grounds suspect to be the true occasion of this most horrid and unnaturall War His Majesty at his Coronation in England tooke an Oath in these words I will maintaine and preserve to you the Bishops and to the Churches committed to your charges all Canonicall privileges and I will be your protector and defender to my power by the assistance of God as every good King in his Kingdome in right ought to defend the Bishops and Churches under their government then laying his hand on the booke on the Communion Table He saith these things I have before promised I shall performe and keep so helpe me God and the contents of this booke Here is an Oath able to strike terrour and amazement into the hearts of all the due circumstances there of being considered as well as feare and reverence in his Majesty about the performance of the same it is taken by Gods Anoynted in Gods House at Gods Table upon Gods Booke tendred by Gods Ministers to defend Gods Rights in the presence of Gods people and that with the imprecation of Gods curses and forfeiture of Gods blessings so that if ever any Oath could properly by way of eminency be called the Oath of God this is it His Majesty therefore out of his Princely piety conceiving himselfe bound in duty to God in honour to the Church in Justice to His Subjects and in obedience to Christian principles to maintaine his Oath refuseth to consent to the root and branch bills against the Episcopacy but some whom I will not name forgetfull of his Majesties honour and conscience and resolving to execute their owne designes in altring the government of the Church have raised a Militia and called us into their ayd thereby to force a compliance from his Majesty and the Royall Party with them And now what soule is not astonished what heart doth not bleed whose eares do not tingle to heare that we unhappy we should under the pretence of holy Covenants be made the instruments of such horrid impieties What could the devill and all the fiends of hell have thought on more impious then perjury what more obnoxious to the Church of God then Sacrilege what more rebellious then by force of Armes to compell the King to both what more blasphemous to God and scandalous to Christianity then to do all these things under the name pretence of Religion what was God the God of truth when he gave us the Precept of performing all our Vows and is he now become the God of Perjurie did God detest the withholding of Tythes and Offerings as robbery done to himselfe and is he now become a Patron of Sacrilege did he enjoyn subjection to Superiours as to his owne Ordinances and that upon paine of damnation and is he now become a Generall to Rebels whereby to force the King against his Oath and conscience Heare ô heavens and hearken ô earth if ever any such thing were committed that a great Councell of a Kingdome of Christians of Protestants of Subjects of those that were sworn to defend the Kings rights should countenance tumults connive at assaults upon his Majesty examine the circumstances of his birth to prove Bastardy in him that thereby they might remove him and his Royall Posterity from the Crown raise a Militia against him vote him that he was seduced by evill Counsell that he sought the destruction of the Parliament to bring in Popery and to rule by an arbitrary way vote his Royall Consort to be guilty of high Treason for her loyalty murder his Nobility destroy his Gentry oppresse his Subjects wincke at the blasphemous hew-and-cries of Britannicus and vote his Majesty to prison because out of a pious and princely resolution he is fully bent to maintaine his Oath rather to part from his life and Crowne then from that Religion and Government

violating the Churches Rights and therefore it is expressed as a severall Article in the Coronation-Oath that the King should never assent to any Act that should trench upon their Rights and that howsoever the Kings conscience was at liberty to consent to the alteration of any other of the municipall lawes yet it should be bound as to this by the especiall and direct words of the Oath as likewise his Majesty is bound by the words of that Oath to doe justice to all and therefore by vertue of this Oath as well as of honour and Justice if the Houses tender any Bills which his Majesty conceives to be against common right or Justice his Majesty is bound not to give his Majesties Royall assent thereunto which cannot but strike amazement in all knowing men that any should be so impudently wicked as against all the lights of God of Nature and the Kingdome to trie the King with perjury because he will not consent to the root and branch bils against Episcopacy and the Royall party desires no other happinesse then to be admitted to a full and free disputation upon that point and that their reasons might be published in all Churches and declared to all the world for the justification of his Majesties and their innocencies in this cause Against this shall we plead the pride and arrogancie of the Bishops and Clergy but I feare this will be with greater pride suppose some Bishops and Clergy exalt themselves against some of Gods people must we therefore exalt our selves against God and Gods Anointed because some Bishops are proud must ye subjects therefore take up Armes to force the King to perjury and sacrilege let their insolencies be punished but let Gods and the Churches Rights remaine It is granted that some of the Clergy by the irregularitie of their actions and laying clogges upon mens consciences gave a great scandall to the Church but these might be legally proceeded against and what innovations they had brought in contrary to law might have been reformed but must therefore the function contrary to all the principles of Religion Law and reason be rooted out because there was a Judas amongst the Apostles did Christ take away the Apostleship because many Angels did rebell against God did God destroy the whole Hierarchy Suppose some Bishops sought to set themselves the one at the right hand of the King the other at his left as James and John did at Christs must their ambition cause all to be despised If God should root out all mankinde because some are most refractory wicked persons what would become of us the doctrines of rooting out all for the abuses of some are agreeable neither to the precept nor patterne of him who will have the wheat and ta●es grow together till the harvest and it hath formerly been accounted the wisedome of Parliaments to reforme abuses by regulating not by extirparton But yet what hath the righteous done whose eyes are so swelled with pride or blinded with malice that doe not see how many Saints of God there were both of the Bishops Doctors and other Clergy who willingly laid downe their lives for that Cause and Religion which his Majesty doth now maintaine and for us to say that if they had lived in these dayes they would have ended with us is a speech as full of arrogancie as ignorance and expresly against all their actions and how many are there of their successors who before this unhappy difference were men famous in their generations and have now none other fault but their constancy to their Religion and their loyalty to their King shall we then justice our Cause for that God hath gone along with our Armies ô poore miserable creatures if we have no better then such fig-leaves to cover our nakednesse because God doth often blesse the adulterous seed is he therefore either the cause or lover of adultery if we have nothing but the power of the sword for the justification of our Cause by this title the blasphemies of Mahomet in the Alcoran and the dotages of the Popish superstitions in the Legend may lay claime to heaven as well as we but what if God out of the heat of his wrathfull indignation towards us have as he useth to doe to those whom he gives over to a reprobate sence given us the victory thereby to obdurate us in our rebellion that through pride of heart and vaine conceit of a just Cause we might be made more uncapable of repentance and pardon It is true that God hath had a controversie with the English and we for their sinnes may be made the rod of Gods anger in punishing the King and all his Royall party but we know not how soone for our owne sinnes God may throw this rod into the fire Perchance you will say that the King in taking away the Churches Rights should doe no more then what he himselfe in part and his Royall Predecessors have formerly consented unto but who knowes not that his Majesty never willingly agreed to the abrogation of any of the Churches dues and if his pious heart smite him for cutting off the lap of their skirts must he be forced to strip them as naked as the yong man that left his linnen garment behind him and who knows not that all those Kings who have been regardlesse of their Oathes in taking away the Churches Rights have been pursued by the hand of Justice so that there is not so much as the name or posterity of any of them remaining and who knowes but that those acts of impietie might be amongst those crowdes of sinnes which have cryed so lowd for judgement against these Kingdomes But shall we say that this Oath is an evill Oath and so evill in the taking and worse in the keeping this were to cast dirt upon the face of the whole constitution of that Church State of that kingdom which appointed the tenure of this Oath to his Majesty But wherin I pray you doth the malignity of this Oath consist suppose that there were now a Parliament of Papists who would take up arms under pretence of a thorow Reformation and of voting all Protestants that should side with the King as evill Counsellers and of fetching the King from them to his great Councell should not we that are Protestants stand up in his Majesties justification should not we abominate the violating of these lawes of God of nature and of the Kingdome under the pretence of the power of the great Councell as Jesuiticall impostures is it unlawfull for the King to breake his Oath for any Votes Orders or Ordinances of Popish Parliaments and shall Protestants now doe that which they so much detest in Papists but if there be any that will plead for Baal let them stand up and produce their strong reasons let the case be truly stated to the Assembly of Divines and if they have any new Directories for the regulating of the Kings conscience against his Oath as well as