Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A67831
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Ỳperēphanìaz Myzè̄rhion. Or, Machiavil redivivus Being an exact discovery or narrative of the priciples & politicks of our bejesuited modern phanaticks. By J. Yalden Esq;
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Yalden, John.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing Y6A; ESTC R218924
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61,310
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147
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Treachery comes in a crime so odious and ugly to the view that it hath been held all one to name and implead it Of this there are such crouds of Examples in Story that it would be impertinent to single out any especially in an Age that is fitter to furnish presidents for the future than to borrow of the past times But yet further to discover him amidst all his Cheats and Impostures we may be assured that there is no greater Index of Ambition than an affectation of Popularity which appears in meek Addresses to the people wooing and familiar condescentions bemoaning and bewailing their Sufferings and commending a more vigorous sense of their present and a necessity of resisting their future Calamities And all this covered with the specious pretence of the Common Good 'T is Friendship that is the Cement Friendship which onely really and effectually combines Mankind all other natural or civil Tyes take their greatest force from this And therefore we may observe that God reckoning up other Relations illustrates them by several notes of Endearment but when he comes to that of Friendship Deut. 13.6 't is the friend who is as thine own soul Nothing below the highest instance was deemed expressive enough of that Union What a Legion of Fiends then says a modern Author possesseth men that can break these Chains nay that can forge them into Daggers and shape their Friendship into the unnatural Engines of Ruine and Destruction This is certainly the blackest colour wherein we can view a Parasite As the Ape hath a peculiar deformity above other Brutes by that aukward and ungraceful resemblance he has to a man so surely our State-prodigie is infinitly the more hateful for being the ugly counterfeit of a Friend and that aggravated too by being abused not onely against particulars but also in the destruction of Kingdoms and Commonwealths In fine that which should 〈◊〉 the Balm our damn'd Impostor turns to the bane of all Mankinde PRINCIPLE III. He that aims at Soveraignty must be sure to beat down the Bulwark of Government the Prince's Credit by the powerful force of irresistible Calumny THis part was most curiously plaid by our subtle Gamesters of Forty One and from the Chronicles of that time our Polititian may furnish himself with the most effective Instances and Examples and besides that which is requisite for his purpose he may leave enough for the greatest Tyrants both to imitate and admire even to the worlds end First they fell upon the Kings Reputation So they begin now-a-days Witness the false News Libels c. then they invaded his Authority after that they assaulted his Person then seized his Revenue and in conclusion most impiously usurped the Supream Power by taking away his sacred Life It cannot easily be imagined of what singular importance the aspersing and blotting of a Prince is to boyl up popular Discontent and Faction to that height which is requisite for a Rebellion And therefore in our late times of Apostacy our then Reforming Bigots having extreamly discomposed the people upon the apprehensions of Popery and Arbitrary power and shaken them in their Allegiance upon a belief of a strong Designe in the Government it self to introduce it well knew how to build upon this foundation And first they inveigle the people into strange and unreasonable Petitions Popular Petitions which are the most compendious method of attempting a Commotion being the gentlest of political inventions for feeling the pulse of the people Protestations Associations and Covenants for the common defence of themselves for the safety and preservation of their Lives Religion and Liberties and into a favourable entertainment of any plausible pretext even to the justification of Violence it self especially the Sedition coming once to be baptized God's Cause and supported by the Doctrine of Necessity and the unsearchable instinct and equity of the Law of Nature And all this recommended to them by the men of the whole world Private Pastors upon whose integrity and conduct they would venture their very Souls Bodies and Estates How to make a Traytor lie a Martyr Our Polititian must further remember by art and eloquence to extenuate the crimes of such that have suffered by the stroke of Justice for the Cause and so cry out upon their hard measures and bewail their loss with an abundance of sighs and tears that by such tricks old Traytors may be propounded for new Martyrs This hath been the ordinary methods of Ambition as you may finde it noted by a great Scholar in these words Barclay contra monarch 30. Fuit haec omnibus Saeculis adhuc est ad occupandum Tyrannidem expeditissima via Dum summo se amore ac pietate in patriam esse simulant Principum vitia Populi miscriam apud suos primùm deinde palam quaeribundâ voce lamentantur Non quò Plebem cujus solius commodis inservire videri volunt ab illo Servitutis jugo asserant in libertatem sed quò populari aurâ subnixi additum sibi januam ad eam ipsam dignitatem nequiora aliquando ausuri patefaciant And therefore if the Prince be severe he gives him Nero's brand a man kneaded up of Dirt and Bloud if he be of Parts and Contrivance he calls it pernicious Ingenuity if he urge Uniformity and Decency in Divine Service he then rails at his Superstition and Idolatry And because there is no such equilibrious Vertue but hath some flexure to one of the Extreams he is very careful to publish the Extream alone and to silence the Vertue and his words are full of imbitter'd Sarcasms Methods to be used against Loyalty And if after all this he cannot utterly crush the power of his Prince's Reputation being too firmly rooted in the hearts of his Loyal Subjects he has a Remedy for this too either by Bribery with ready Money or promises of great Rewards and Preferment or else by subtle Insinuations expressed in a most seemingly sensible Zeal for their infatuations and want of sence to apprehend the danger and so most affectedly he seems to lament and bewail their senceless stupidity And if these means prove ineffectual to trepan them into the Faction he has yet others left which more powerfully does the work which is to draw the whole Party on their backs by putting on a Saint-like Indignation and giving them sharp and open reproofs for their wilful blindness And if after all this they prove inflexible he must then be sure to cry out against them as Enemies to God's Cause and haters of the common Good to combine in the horrid Conspiracy and so render them to be meet partakers in the same destruction which he has before determined to bring upon the Government 'T is a figure in Politicks to make every infirmity a fault and every fault a crime And because there have been Plots in France henceforward no Embassadour shall go without making the people believe that his
of this nature if they once come to be admitted and owned by Christians and I will then receive his Alcoran for Gospel When to receive the Alchoran for Gospel when I shall be convinced that temporal Happiness and Triumph are a true Index of divine Favour I am sure our Religion hath something more to invite our closure with it it proposeth a conveniency on Earth but the Garlands and Crowns are reserved for Heaven And yet how strangely opposite to the truth and purity of this excellent Doctrine of our blessed Saviour even to the scandal of the Gospel of Christ and to the glory of Mahomet and his Alcoran did our divine Rebels of the Late Times thunder out from their Pulpits with greater horrour to all good men than the roaring of their Parties Canon this damnable Doctrine of proving the Divinity of their Cause from the imaginary glory of their constant Success So strange and prodigious was the daring impudence of our late Usurpers The Motto of the Rebels Coy◠that at the Close of their many dreadful and bloudy Tragedics they usually cried out God with us And after their many Villanies repeated to accomplish the horrid Murder of the best of Kings here on Earth they raise their Gigantick sins to the very Throne of Heaven and there openly affront the Majesty of the King of kings by wresting the attribute of his Goodness to favour their hellish actions and so in abuse to the most holy and sacred Trinity as the Motto of their Coyn they stamp these three words God with us But Heaven knows 't was the justice of his Cause which so severely scourged us for our sins the Almighty did onely permit those Rebels to plague us as the Executioners of his provoked Vengeance It was not the Indulgence of Heaven to the Cause of our Usurpers that gave them success but it was our Rebellions against his divine Goodness that produced those heavy Judgments as the effects of his just indignation upon us The Cause of these Rebels was indeed no Cause but much rather an effect of punishment on us for our Iniquities they had no just power to warrant their pretended Reformation of the established Religion God used them onely for the reformation of mens manners by bringing his people to Repentance And I wish the miseries of those men to be no greater than their folly Wilful Slaves who look beyond their own freedom and liberties and shall make it their endeavours to bring themselves into the severest bondage and slavery that they may feel I say as well as their fellow-creatures the insupportable burthen of the Spanish Inquisition the Fanatick Sequestration Imprisonments and the like-dismal effects of an usurped licentious arbitrary Power that such and such onely may be convined of their Errours by fatal experience who will not so remember as to resist and avoid the miscrable Desolations Bondage Tyranny and Oppressions of our Late Times under which these Nations groaned for so many years together And that we may know from whence those monstrous Deviations came observe the Comparison which a late reverend Divine makes betwixt the Spirit of Popery and the Spirit of Foppery C. Meroz fol. 29. I know not says our Author which is worst they are both bloudy and dangerous the former by plotting but blessed be God their Plots come to nothing the latter by plotting and acting too God knows though the Papists might plot Rebellion and Treason yet the Fanaticks have not onely plotted but twice been up in Arms which the Papists never were twice I say in Arms and open Field-fights in Scotland where our miseries were first brooded and begun their rise but blessed be God as soon defeated which was God's goodness more than our deserts no thanks though to the Conventiclers and Field-meeters they shewed their good Will and their good Religion and their tender Consciences in the interim O true Church-Militant here upon Earth The Money-god in Aristophanes pretends a command from Jupiter to distribute as great a largess to the Wicked as to the Good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because if Virtue should once appropriate Riches that fair Goddess would be more wooed for her Dowry than for her native Excellence and Beauty Even so if Religion were accompanied and attended with those outward Allurements which most please the Senses we should be apt to follow Christ for the Loaves and overlook the spiritual Charms and more noble ends of Christianity There are many Vices which have their operation common with Virtue being distinguished onely by the intent which because it cannot be seen is very difficult to be judged and Opinions of men are not always without Passion it seldom happens that they judge without Errour The Heathen could say Faelix praedo mundo exemplum inutile Happy Pyracy is a thing of unhappy presidency fortunate sins may prove dangerous temptations But to say that the Almighty doth signally own and attest the actions of such a Person or the justice of such a Cause by suffering it to thrive and prosper in the world is such a deceitful falshood as deserves our serious abhorrency I leave it with Ovid's Wish Careat Successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat PRINCIPLE VI. Our Polititian must be sure to turn with the Tyde and change with the Times 'T Is the boast of a Dutch-man That he can sail with all manner of winds Our Polititian must never sing Tempora mutantur without a Nos mutamur in illis he must never fail to observe that quarter of the Compass whence the fairest and most propitious Gales of his interest and preferment blow and be sure to entertain them in the spreading Sails of his endless Ambition Nor indeed can the Compass breathe more variety of changes than the dexterous soul of our Polititian hath correspondent and suitable compliances He is most excellently well skilled even to perfection in those methods which Varro calls Versatile Ingenium a voluble Wit like the Changeling derided by Plautus as more turning than a Potters Wheel Rotâ figulari versatilier He is as the Heliotrope to the radiant beams of the glorious Sun of Honour and can endure no Shades He hath long since abjured his God Religion Conscience and all that should either interpose or skreen him from those beams that may ripen his Wishes and Aims into fruition And Satan-like if his projects be discovered under the bright appearance of an Angel of Light he can presently transform himself and appear in another shape and yet retain the same black hellish and devilish designe seeking whom he may devour And again he can assume whiteness for I often finde him wearing the Vail of Innocence to cover the horrid deformity and blackness of all his actions If Religion be in vogue you can scarce distinguish him from a Saint he doth not onely respect and reverence the holy Ministers but if occasion serve he can preach himself and if he fail in Method he