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	king_n	parliament_n	2,699	5	6.9602	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A76758	Mene tekel, or, The council of officers of the Army, against the declarations, &c. of the Army. Wherein is flatly proved by the express words of the Armies declarations, that the sixth article of the * late address of the said council of officers to the Parliament, point-blank changeth the cause of liberty of conscience, from the good old one, to a bad new one; from that which at first, and all along the Army engaged in, and for, and declared to that which they engaged against. Moreover, that the imposition therein is agreeable neither to the Armies solemn declarations and engagements, nor to liberty of conscience, nor to the Scriptures of truth, but is contrary to them all ... Geo. Bishop.	Bishop, George, d. 1668.	1659 (1659)	Wing B3000; Thomason E999_13; ESTC R207833	40,890	51

MENE TEKEL OR The Council of Officers of the Army Against The Declarations c. of the Army WHEREIN Is flatly proved by the express Words of the Armies Declarations that the Sixth Article of the * May 12. 1659. late Address of the said Council of Officers to the Parliament point-blank changeth the Cause of Liberty of Conscience from the Good Old One to a Bad New One from that which at first and all along the Army engaged in and for and Declared to that which they engaged against MOREOVER That the Imposition therein is agreeable neither to the Armies solemn Declarations and Engagements nor to Liberty of Conscience nor to the Scriptures of Truth but is contrary to them All. DIRECTED To the said Council of Officers for their Convincement AND PUBLISHED For the Information of all who are concern'd in the Cause of Liberty GEO. BISHOP Heù quantum Mutat●sab illo For if I build again the things I destroyed I make my self a Transgressor Gal. 2. 18. LONDON Printed and are to be sold by Tho. Brewster at the Three Bibles by Pauls 1659. TO THE COUNCIL OF THE Officers of the Army FRIENDS HAving seen Your late humble Petition and Address to the Parliament and considered the Matter and Language of the Sixth Article I was grieved in my spirit for your sakes to see that ye should be so quickly removed from your Stedfastness to the Good Old Cause contained in your Declarations and engaged in a New as this more than seems to be and I shall shew it you by and by even that of your enemies in opposition to the former and so provoke the Lord to anger against your Selves whose loving kindness hath so tenderly visited you when ye cryed unto him because of your Oppression who heard and delivered you Therefore bear with me whilst in bowels of love I lay before you the one and the other to the end that ye may see your State and be recovered out of the Snare in which ye are taken captive by the subtilty of men who lay in wait to deceive and so repenting the judgment of God which is ready to break forth may be turned from you Ye know Friends that the Good Old Cause was chiefly Liberty of Conscience which being oppressed by the Bishops and that Generation cryed out so loud as raised the first War on the Bishops and Kings part to oppress and keep it under on the Parliaments to defend and deliver it and the Liberties of the Nation which with the Liberty of Conscience were bound up and joyned together as two lovely Twins that cannot be divided but with the mutual Suffering if not the Dissolution of each other The Bishops Yoaks of Wood being taken off some who but now Suffered under them rise up in their steads to oppress Conscience and these prepare other yoaks yoaks of Iron for the necks of their Brethren who Suffered in and with them and together fought for equal Liberty and nothing would serve these who Suffered themselves but yesterday as it were for Conscience but to bring the Consciences of all others to their size the Souls of all to their Diametre or square who differed from them or the Nations must swim in blood and peace be denied them as if the Cause engaged in had been that they might have Liberty and that it was so to be and as of right and the Consciences of all others made their Slaves and Vassals a more arrogant and unsufferable Usurpation in these than the Bishops by how much the more they cryed out against and opposed it in them Hence it came to pass that they so soon divided from the joynt prosecution of the common Cause of Liberty to the hazzard of the publick distinguishing themselves and others into terms and things and endeavouring the setting up their private upon it with such imperious Lordliness as no Age hath pararell'd and when as the most desired peace was trilling down the Mountains of Blood to the weary Inhabitans of these Nations who had tugg'd hard for it through the extremities of War it must all be turned back again and the Bloody issue again opened and the common Enemy joyned with after he was overthrown King and Irish and Scots raised up and assisted for that purpose against those of their Brethren who continued faithful and were blessed of God because they were so blest against their wills and endeavours to the contrary to the overthrowing of the common Enemy and never would they be at rest so strange was their itch at the Consciences of others and so insatiable their desires to be dealing with the Souls of men who yet injoyed the Liberty of their own raising and carrying on War after War till they were all vanquisht and their whole strength together broken down at Worcester which quickly ended the Wars in these Nations Thus Friends briefly as to the Cause or State of the Case in reference to Liberty of Conscience and the publick Contest thereabouts in which how deeply ye were concerned viz. in the former as Puritans Non-conformists and factious Fellows so called and persecuted in common with the rest in the latter as Hereticks and Schismaticks I shall not nor need I further to repeat These things I may well presume are engraven in you in an indeleble Charecter Nor shall I treat how honest men in these Nations joyned with and assisted you for this purpose as in a common Cause wherein they and you were so equally concerned as that One could not fall or miscarry without the dammage or the detriment of the Other how readily they flowed to you whilst that moved you to any extraordinary actions and what grief of heart it occasioned to them and sufferings when ye have at any time swerved therefrom is manifest the things are fresh and but of yesterday the late Revolutions speak them sufficiently but this I shall shew you plainly out of your own Declarations and in your own words how this Article changeth the Cause from the Old to a New from a good Old one to a bad New one from that in which at first and all along ye engaged for and in to another to that against which ye engaged And this I shall endeavour to do with as much brevity as the weight of the Case will admit not clogging ye with a large Recital of all that ye have said in this particular though what ye have taken liberty to speak ye should endure to hear But contracting the proof of what I have laid down to two of your Declarations as my two instances or witnesses viz. The great Remonstrance St. Albans Nov. 16. 1648. and your draught of the Settlement of the Nation Whitehal Jan. 15. 1649. Both drawn up by you and presented this Parliament upon two of the most weighty occasions ye then had met withal and the greatest Subjects The one the the bringing of the King to justice and changing of the Government into that of a free State or Common-wealth

you and your friends in the Nation and the Cause were fully satisfied and secured into which Engagement ye were necessicated at Triploe Heath resolved for the mutual preservation of your selves and the Cause and your friends which were engaged in it against this over-ruling Party in Parliament who rose up against it and them and you and ordered your disbanding for that purpose that ye and it and them might have been brought under at their pleasure So ye were no longer as an Army Commissionated by them but as a Body of people who upon inevitable necessity and manifest justice where incorporated in and with and among your selves and to and with your friends in the Parliament and Nation for the through Prosecution of the Cause of Liberty in which ye were at first engaged called out entrusted and assisted against all attempts to the contrary what and in whomsoever which was of God By vertue of which ye were in a capacity and did ease this present Parliament of those of their members who carried on a corrupt and unsafe closure with the King and with their obstructing Counsels as ye declare not onely hindred the Settlement of the Common-wealth but often endangered it after that the Speaker and those Members of the Parliament who were faithful to the Cause being forced by the tumultuous violence of Boyes Reformadoes to withdraw to you were by you notwithstanding the raising of London in Armes and endeavouring to do it through the Nation and Scotland by the remaining Party at Westminster put into their House again and secured in their Sessions and lastly brought this Parliament to sit again after six years interruption to the hazzarding of all in which capacity ye should still have stood and have been as heretofore the Honourable and happy Instruments of your Countries Liberties and its life reserve against all Tyrannical and intolerable oppressions in matters Civil and Religious had ye remained with God but it is now otherwise ye are bowed down ye are humbled as the case now stands your last is done your Locks are off ye are bound and ye have have bound your selves ye can work as now no more such deliverance in the Earth for your selves or Countrey as have been through your hands it must come now from another place ye are submitted and ye have submitted your selves ye are lower'd and have brought your selves low as now and your Friends and the Cause of Liberty of Conscience even to the ground to the dust Your Masters as they come may now put you to grind at their pleasures to disband to do as they will and if ye shall hereafter go out and shake your selves when affliction is on you as heretofore ye will find your Cause which whensoever ye brought it in your hand and could say in Truth Lord here 's the Cause he never failed to deliver you what ever were your straits and Difficulties I say ye will find your Cause your Locks your strength your power to be gone and your selves bound as with Fetters of Brass O! what will ye do then and wither will ye go when ye shall find it so and both your eyes out and night over you and the presence of the Lord removed from you and that he answers ye not neither by Dreames nor by Vrim nor by Prophet If ye go to the Wizards to those who have familiar Spirits to the false Prophets the Spirit that ye have cut off throughout all these Nations and desire that it Divine unto you and bring ye up him whom ye shall name who formerly was with you Samuel the Prophet of the Lord the Angel of his presence which went before you advised ye and delivered ye out of your straits and subdued all under you and the Witch to whom ye go the Spirit which ye had cut off and to which ye have promised that no punishment shall happen to it for what it shall do that it shall be protected shall bring up to you him whom ye name viz. an old man covered with a mantle the likeness of Samuel and ye stoop with your face to the ground and bow your selves and upon his saying why have ye disquieted me to bring me up ye say to him we are sore distressed and the Phylistians make Warr against us and God is departed from us and answereth us no more neither by Prophets nor by dreams and therefore we have called thee that thou mayest make known unto us what we shall do he will answer you wherefore then do ye ask of me seeing the Lord is departed from you and is become your enemy and the Lord hath done to you as he had spoken by me for the Lord hath rent the Kingdome out of your hand and given it to your neighbour even to David because ye obeyed not the voyce of the Lord nor executed his fierce wrath upon Amalek Therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto you this day Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with ye into the hands of the Phylistians and to morrow shall ye and your Sons be with me The Lord shall also deliver the Host of Israel into the hands of the Phylistians then will ye fall all along on the Earth and be sore afraid and no strength will be in you And then will ye remember that of these things ye were told and warned in the day of your deliverance And is it not just it should be so even that you who have so soon changed the Cause and thereby given up your power to the enemy should as soon have the case changed with you viz. that your power should be taken away by your friends that ye who have given up the Cause of Liberty of Conscience or rather betrayed it or rather are betray'd into it should be given up to an incapacity any more to relieve to secure it So that deliverance if it arise to consoience and arise it will when the great Hour is over which is at hand the like was never nor shall be after it in which the Lord alone will appear must arise from some other place ye have bound your selves and are bound and so how can it arise any more from you this is that indeed which the Enemy endeavoured thorowout the warrs and the Iate alterations since the warrs that it might have its end upon Conscience and you but could do never because ye held the Cause now the thing hath prospered against you because ye have not held the Cause but changed it to that of the Enemies And so is not the Word of the Lord which I wrote unto you from his mouth and called to the Heavens and said hear O Heavens and to the Earth saying give ear O Earth and be ye witnesses and all good men viz. If ye do not so and so as in your representation ye have said and as in that my letter is of it rehearst and exprest which ye have not done but the contrary ye shall not

upon which ye pretend to build now that ye are returned thither again The other your asserting after the then Wars and the Justice done on the King and the change of the Government thereupon what your selves and the People did expect and ought to reap of Liberty therefrom and Right as to All. First in the Sum of the Publick Intrest which had been the great Subject of the contest all along in the late Wars drawn up by you in your said Remonstrance and laid down as that which ye say the King had all along opposed to set up his and his posterities Will and Power and whereupon ye ground your charge against him ye assign nothing in the least of power in Parliaments that there was or ought to be any such or that it was any part of the Contest to impose in matters of Religion or Conscience but charge him with the opposing the Reformation intended and endeavoured by the Parliament as their proper work of what he had imposed in matters of Conscience and Religion For the proof of this see what ye have said Remonstrance pag. 14 15. The sum of the publick Interest say ye of the Nation in relation to Common Right and Freedome which hath been the chief subject of our Contest and in opposition to Tyranny and Injustice in Kings and Others we take to lie in these things following That for all matters of Supream Power or concernment to the safety and welfare of the whole the People have a Common or Supream Council and that the power of making Laws Constitutions and Offices for the Preservation and Government of the whole and of altering repealing and abolishing the same for the removing of any publick grievànce therein and the power of final Judgment concerning War or Peace the safety or welfare of the People and all Civil things whatsoevir here 's not a tittle of Religious without further appeal to any created standing Power and the Supream Trust in relation to all such things may rest in that Supream Council By this it is plain that to Settle or Create a Power in Parliaments to impose in matters of Religion or Conscience was no part of the publick Interest in contest in the Wars Now that the King had imposed in matters of Conscience or Religion and opposed the Reformation intended and endeavoured by the Parliament of what he had so imposed Here what ye also say in your own words The Matters aforementioned say ye * Remonstrance St. Albans page 18. to the Parliament being the main parts of Publick Interest originally contended for on our parts and them that engaged with you viz. the Parliament and thus opposed by the King for the Interest of his Will and Power many other particular or special Interests have fallen into Page 20. the contest on each Party As first on the Parliaments part to protect and countenance religious men and godliness in the power of it Who hath discountenanced and put such out of protection Now to the witness of God in you all I speak To give freedome and enlargement to the Gospel for the encreasing and spreading of Light amonst men Who endeavours to stop it now To take away those corrupted Forms of an out-side Religion and Church-Government whether imposed without a Law or rooted in the Law in times of Popish ignorance and Idolatry or of the Gospels dimmer light Who establishes such now whose light is dim now By means whereof chains and snares were laid upon conscientious and zealous men Who have laid chains and snares for such men now And the generality of the People held in darkness and superstition and a blind Reverence of persons and outward things fit for Popery and Slavery Who holds them so now and fits them for such And also to take away and loosen the dependance of the Clergy and Ecclesiastical affairs on the King Who hath put it on the Magistrate yea as the bottome of a Free State declared so now Which the craft of both in length of time had wrought for each other How crept it in and by whose craft hath it wrought it so and in so short a space now Which several things were the proper subject of the Reformation endeavoured by the Parliament Who hath pray'd the Parliament to do and at whose address and request have they done the contrary now Contrariwise on the Kings Party Whose Party is it now become and Interest Who is it now that hath laid a foundation for the following particulars The Interest was to discountenance and suppress the power of godliness or any thing of Conscience obliging above or against humane and outward Constitutions to restrain or lessen the preaching of the Gospel and growth of light among men To hold the Community of men in a darksome ignorance and superstition or formality in Religion with an awful Reverence of Persons Offices and outward dispensations rendring them sit subjects for Ecclesiastical and Civil Tyranny And for these ends to advance and set up further forms of Superstition or at least hold fast the old which had any foundation in the Laws whereby chains and fetters might be held upon and advantages taken against such in whom a zeal or Conscience to any thing above man should break forth and to uphold and maintain the dependance of the Clergy and Church matters on the King and greatness of the Clergy under him Who hath done and is doing all this now And in all these things to oppose the Reformation endeavoured by the Parliament Who hath set the Parliament now to oppose the very Reformation themselves endeavoured of which ye say it was the proper subject Read these things in the spirit of honesty in which ye wrote it and then read your selves and see how you are in a moment as it were beguiled and surprized after all and darkened into the Kings Interest as ye your selves have here stated it out of and from the Parliaments doing your selves the very things with which ye here charge him and for which among other things ye took him off The matters are so plain and obvious as they need no further demonstration Consider them seriously in the fear of God for it is no slight thing that ye are deceived into But that on which doth hang the guilt of all the blood that hath been shed in the late Wars ye have given Judgement against your selves in the Case in this your Judgment against the King I shall close this instance with your own words in the close of this particular pag. 21. In all or most of which respects say ye of what hath been repeated it hath been the great happiness and advantage to Parliamentary and publick Interest that it hath been made One very much with ●●e Interest of the godly or for the name whereof it hath been so much derided the Saints as on the other side the Kings one with their greatest opposites By occasion whereof God hath been doubly engaged in the Cause

viz. for that and the righteousness of it and to this indeed through the favour and presence of God therewith the Parliament hath cause to own and refer the blessing and success that hath accompanied their affairs which accordingly as they have held square and been kept close to this have prospered gloriously and wherein or so oft as this hath been thwarted swerved from or neglected in their mannage have suffered miserable blastings Read your Sentence thus pronounced by your selves and fear before the Lord and bear your shame and cast out the unclean black Spirit that bewitched you into this the Serpent that hath beguiled you least the anger of the Lord and his Jealousie Smoak against you and there be no remedy Thus much of my First instance my Second follows In your * See the Petition of the General and Army presented the Parliament Saturday Jan. 20. 1649. concerning the draught of an agreement of the people for a secure and present peace together with the said agreement Settlement of the People so called by your selves for a secure and present Peace upon grounds of Common Right Freedome and Safety as a fruit of their Labours Hazzards and Sufferings that have engaged in the common Cause as some Price of the Blood spilt and Ballance to the Publick expence and Dammage sustained in the War and as some due Improvement of that success and blessing God hath pleased to give them as are your words in the draught thereof Pag. 7 and in the Declaration thereunto annext Pag. 27. which ye presented this Parliament Jan. 20. 1649. and desired in the Petition wherewithal ye presented it Pag. 5 6. that whether it should be ●ully approved by them and received by the People as then it stood yet it might remain upon Record before them a Perpetual witness of your real intentions and utmost endeavours for a sound and equal Settlement and as a Testimony whereby all men might be assured what ye were willing and ready to acquiess in and their Jealousies satisfied or mouths stopt who were apt to think and say ye had no bottome I say in your said Settlement ye are so far from Assigning any Power at all to the Representatives of the People of Imposing in Matters of Religion or Conscience things Spiritual or Evangelical or granting it in the least to be any part of the Publick interest which had been the Subject of the contest that ye positively exclude and bar them from it for ever For this see what your selves have said and conclude your selves by your selves as it doth without controversie conclude you to have varyed altered changed the Cause Point-blank as I have charged upon ye in this the chiefest and most weighty part of the Publick Interest the main subject of the Contest in these words Settlement Pag. 29. Article 8. ye thus say That the Representatives have and shall be understood to have the supreme Trust in order to the preservation and government of the whole and that their power extend without the consent or concurrence of any other Person or Persons to the enacting and abolishing of Courts of Justice and Publick Offices and to the enacting altering repealing and declaring of Laws and the highest and final Judgment in all natural or civil things but not concerning things Spiritual or Evangelical Than which what can be more Emphatically or more Peremtorily exprest And yet how have ye in your late Humble Petition and Address pray'd the Parliament to take power which they have thereupon yea the Highest and Final Judgment concerning things Spiritual or Evangelical viz. What of the profession of things Evangelical or Spiritual shall be encouraged and protected and what not And this as and upon the Basis of a Government of a Free-State which destroys the nature of it even whilst ye spake thereof without a single Person King-ship or house of Peers who have taken upon them at your Prescription to be Kings and Lords of Conscience for where any take upon them to prescribe Laws and finally to determine what shall be and what not as is done in the case there such assume Superiority or Lord-ship this is irrefragable I say who have taken upon them to be Kings Lords of Conscience of which Christ Jesus is made of God Lord and King the one single and only Law-giver who is able to save and to destroy and hath saved you and others by you from those who had and would further have lorded it over your consciences or have destroyed you and hath destroyed them with a stroke reaching up to Heaven yea even by your hands whose Lording Spirit over Conscience after all these Wars and Desolations and presently upon your cry for your and your Countries Religious Rights or Liberty of Conscience that there was but a step as ye cry out in your * See the Representation April 6. 1659. Representation betwixt it and its Death and the most notable Revolution thereupon and Deliverance hath entred into you and from you into the Parliament into whom neither Swords nor Plots nor force nor Powers of Darkness could drive nor enter it before nor subjugate thereunto acting in and by and through you and them and seeking to bring to pass what it sought before but never could accomplish against Liberty of Conscience but was still even to astonishment and wonder dasht in pieces as often as in any sort of men it sought to attempt it by the Powerful presence and Arme of the Lord in you and them who will as certainly dash you in pieces in whom this Spirit so curst of God before your eyes and cut down by you is got and acts and lives as it hath done all of all sorts in whom it got liv'd and acted against you yea with a heavyer stroke and more furions rebukes because by you he hath executed his dreadful Judgments against such and delivered you from their cruelty and power as oft as ye called upon him in sincerity and truth in the dayes of your distress I say ye will be Dasht in Peeces except ye repent the Mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it for he is come and his day draweth nigh wherein for the Oppression of the Poor and the Sighing of the Needy I will arise saith the Lord and set him in safety from him that puffeth at him Now let the eye of honesty be open in you and with it see where ye are and whereto your high Priest and Doctor and his Brethren through whom arose this smoak of the bottomless pit hath led you viz. to betray your principle the good Old Cause as soon as ye are delivered thereby endeavouring to hasten the vengeance of God upon your heads For tell me whether ye having thus changed the Cause the Lord owned ye can expect otherwise than that the Lord should dis-own you and change his hard towards you viz. from that to you as his friends to that against you as his enemies Thus