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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	call_v	great_a	reason_n	1,745	5	4.4249	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25517	An Answer to a late pamphlet, entituled, A character of a Popish successor, and what England may expect from such a one		1681 (1681)	Wing A3307; ESTC R19980	23,175	18

as amiable as it is Great If all this be true as none of his Adversaries can deny and some of his most inveterate Enemies have been forced even to confess I hope I shall be excused by my Readers if I have so just a value for them as to think that it would be an Affront in me to suspect their Judgments so much as to spend time in evincing to them how improbable a thing it would be how contradictory to reason and common sense that the difference of a mans Opinion about some few disputable matters of Faith and not very material Ceremonies of Divine Worship should on a suddain ruine and efface all those good Characters of Magnanimity and Justice of Generosity and Goodness not slightly traced but deeply engraven in his breast so early engraven by Nature it self that like Letters cut in the tender Bark they have not been worn out but rather enlarged by the growth of the Tree nor are ever likely to disappear till the Trunk it self that they adorn shall be no more And yet if we will be pleased to believe our little Impertinent Rhetorician all this and much more must necessarily follow When Popery has got the Ascendant and Rome has once stamped him her Proselyte For what then signifie all the great past Actions of a Princes Life And how little an Impression will all the recorded Glories leave behind them p. 2. No track of 'em it seems is left all his Virtues are fled or which is worse if they still remain There is not one of 'em that shall not be a particular Instrument of our Destruction Now in the name of all that is good what does our Scribler mean do Virtues themselves turn Vices in a Roman Catholick And do they become so really even in contradiction of our senses and experience that tells us to the contrary This is such a Miracle as would stagger even a Popish Faith such an absurdity as would make a Priest Blush and which equals if not outgoes even Transubstantiation it self the Scripture therefore has a peculiar denunciation of Judgment against the Coiners of such false notions and loudly cries out Wo unto those that call evil good and good evil But to espouse a while the cause of the injur'd Virtues all which our false witness is ready to Swear into the Plot of our destruction let us examine whether we have not much greater reason to rely upon them as our only Bulwark and defence when they are placed in that Prince to whom he is pleased out of his excess of bounty to grant them all because he could not deny him one than to look upon them as dangerous and pernicious and as his own Evidence against them runs The Instruments of our destruction Let us therefore allow him Fortitude that which is the first in the ranck of all the Virtues and which stands there boldly in the front as if design'd for the Protection of all the rest and without which a Prince is as contemptible in himself as he is useless to his People Can a Nation be more blest than in the security which the matchless Valour of such a Prince ought in all reason to create or can any man that has the least share of understanding entertain so vain an imagination as to think that that invincible Courage which he has so often and so eminently exerted in the defence of the English when they were his Fellow-Subjects and when but his own single share of Glory redounded to himself should otherwise imploy it when advanced to a Throne when all those that he protects are his own people when all the Renown shall be wholly His when every Subjects Honour that he vindicates shall increase the lustre of his own and every English-man he saves add to the largeness of his Empire But because our Author maliciously suggests that this Virtue may be imploy'd in making him more daring for the Cause of Rome I would advise him to consider whether the Virtue of Fortitude in his Ethicks if he has ever read any be not as equally distant from Temerity and Rashness as from Fear and Cowardice and then whether the attempts of an impossible thing which as yet by his silence he has allowed the introducing of Popery to be don 't wholly overthrow that Virtue on which this very Supposition is built He might also have been informed that all the Virtues have so close an Affinity between themselves and so near a dependance upon each other that not one can act without the allowance of all the rest so that whatever is against Justice cannot be the object of Fortitude If then he be a Man of Justice this still should produce in Us the greater assurance that his Courage shall be no otherwise exercised but for their Safety and Honour to whom all his endeavours by all the Laws both Humane and Divine are most due This will make him maintain the Just Rights of his people to which by his Oath he will then be most solemnly and strictly obliged much more inviolably than that imaginary Right of the Pope which none can be certain that he allows and to which it is most certain he has no such obligation or ever was Sworn Then if he be a Master of Temperance what is that but a bridle upon all his Excesses a perpetual bosom Monitor that will withhold his hand and allay his heat that will curb the very first motions of Cruelty or Revenge which the malice of his opposers might else have some grounds to fear This is that Vertue to which we owe Pardons and Acts of Oblivion This is that which will make him ascend the Throne though never so much injur'd with the same Moderation and Clemency as did his Brother before him Lastly if he has Prudence that will teach him not to exasperate a people of so stiff a neck not to lose the hearts of his Subjects for their difference of Opinion that will lay before him the many useful examples of those Princes that have unhappily strove to change the ancient Laws of their Government who endeavouring to remove the Old Land-Marks have lost their whole Possessions who striving to alter the building of the State to their own Humour have brought down the whole Fabrick upon their heads and perished in the ruine of their falling Kingdoms Thus I think I have in some measure justified the four Moral Virtues from the severe charge of their being Instruments of our Destruction not without some wonder and indignation too that any man should speak so ill of things he did not understand or treat strangers so uncivilly For indeed such they are to our Author Had he any Courage he would have scorn'd to insult over the present misfortune of the bravest of Men had he any Justice he would not have appear'd so earnest against that Succession which is grounded upon all the Laws of God and Man had he any Temperance he would have spar'd his Malicious Invectives and had he

any Prudence he would have burnt his Book and sav'd the Hang-man a labour But stay let us be as favourable to him as we can let us try if we can excuse him his ill treatment of the Virtues perhaps he rail'd at them only to bring in his Quibble and because Cardo is Latin for a Hinge therefore the Cardinal Virtues were to be the Hinges to open the Gates to Popery or what if his Picque against them be their having some Name-sakes in the Church of Rome since his Friend Merry Andrew in that excellent piece of Smithfield Drollery The Rehearsal Transprosed has been pleased to call them The Red-hatted Virtues Well whatever his quarrel be I am sure His Royal Highness has reason to be not a little satisfied to see that the defence of the Duke of York and of Virtue it self is the same cause and that whoever opposes the Justice of his Succession must forfeit his Morality as well his as Allegiance But then the Notion of such a Popish Successor such a one as shall maintain the Constitution of the present Government and in that the publick Worship of the Church of England is included without any alteration puzzles the Gentleman strangely Nor can he make it consist with reason no not he nor with the least shadow of possibility And where is the difficulty where is the unreasonableness Why forsooth he must suppress the potent and dangerous enemies that would destroy the Protestant Worship Peace and Interest And the Wisdom of several successive Monarchs and a whole Nations unanimous prudence has declar'd Popish Priests to be these potent and dangerous enemies Have they so then there are Laws to secure us against them then why are we in such fear Then what is left to any Monarch that succeeds but to execute the Laws he finds derived down to him to maintain and preserve together with his Crown and Dignity And since by the prudent zeal of both our Kings and People our Religion has so strong a fence built round about it since this Vine is so hedged in that neither the Wild Boars out the of Wood can root it up nor the little Foxes devour it why do we torment our selves with any further disquiet why do we not rather sit down under the shadow of it and bless him whose right hand has planted it But alas under the Reign of an English Papist the case will not be the same But we shall be in much greater danger by reason of the multitude of their Roman Emissaries and those too embolden'd by hopes of Connivance and Mercy and if ever the Protestant Religion want a Defender it will be then Truly I am so far from thinking that the Reign of a Popish King can be any way advantagious to the designs of the Jesuitical Instruments that I rather believe it will of necessity be the greatest occasion of their destruction especially since it is in the Power of every Subject in the three Kingdoms to be a Defender of the Protestant Religion if it want it And if people shall think so as naturally then they will to be sure no Information no Conviction of Recusants no Administration of Tests or Oaths to the least suspected shall be wanting no diligence spar'd which is backt by the Laws of the Land which then more then ever will be waken'd against them and which can't be dispens'd withal must needs be effectual to the utter ruine of the whole party This our Author himself seems to be sensible of and to allow and this is one of his pretty Chimara's and mismatched incongruous Ingredients as he elegantly Phrases it that must go to make up the Composition of a Popish King and can He then or the most violent opposers of the Church of Rome desire any thing beyond this to gratifie their utmost malice upon the Members of that Church than to be assured that a Prince of that very Religion shall be the cause of their destruction suis ipsa Roma viribus ruet For indeed all this a Popish King must do or suffer to be done and all his Apology to them must be what the Phamphleteer says We must expect to be made to us He cannot help it p. 20. He cannot help it that is if the Law will have it so his duty is to see that the Law have its course and whatever his private opinion may be whatever tenderness he may bear to the very persons he shall punish yet to remember his obligation to the publick so far as to give them up to the hands of Justice with the same constancy of mind with the same applause of the present and commendation of all succeeding Ages that the immortal Brutus deliver'd up his darling Sons to the Rods and Axes of the Lectors This had our Author consider'd he would not have so far betrayed his Morals as to have stil'd a Prince in every thing else brave to admiration abject and deplorable Coward for not daring to undertake either unlawful or impossible exploits nor been so out of his Politicks as to call governing by Law sneaking on a Throne But alas good man he has a fit of kindness on the suddain come upon him he is infinitely concern'd for that Scene of war and restless inquietudes such a Prince must have within himself who to spare a Fagget at Smithfield must walk on hot Irons himself and have only Good Friday entertainments on a Throne and with such like no doubt prevailing pieces of Rhetorick would perswade us that a Crown to him would be so uneasie a thing that he had better be without it Alas he would not have the Duke undergo that torment for all the world not he but this is only a flourish of his stile in imitation I suppose of a Brother Sir Formal of his who Laboured as much as he could to prove that the Bill was for the Duke 's good and undertook by dint of Argument to make it appear that the Exclusion of his Royal Highness was an act of Grace Let us come now to an Argument of some moment and consider what weight so solemn a Protestation and so sacred an Oath as a King of England is obliged at his Coronation to take is likely to have with a Prince that has any sense at all either of Honour or Religion Why truly our Characterizer says none at all and tells us That some can give us smart reasons for it He gives us but one which we will examine and try if we can produce as smart ones against it If he keeps his Oath says he we must allow that the only motive that prompts him to keep it is some obligation that he believes is in an Oath Yes we will allow it there is a double obligation of Nature and of Religion Well what then But considering he is of a Religion that can absolve Subjects from their Allegiance And are you sure he is of such a Religion We hear the Roman Catholicks Protestations against that