Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	england_n	king_n	lord_n	4,602	5	4.1139	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75396	An answer by an anabaptist to the three considerations proposed to Mr William Penn by a pretended Baptist concerning a Magna Charta for liberty of conscience. Allowed to be published this 10th day of September, 1688.		1688 (1688)	Wing A3275; ESTC R230112	11,228	14

An Answer BY AN ANABAPTIST TO THE Three Considerations Proposed to Mr William Penn By a pretended BAPTIST CONCERNING A MAGNA CHARTA FOR Liberty of Conscience Allowed to be Published this 10th Day of September 1688. London Printed in the Year 1688. An Answer BY AN ANABAPTIST TO THE Three Considerations c. YOU desire All your Dissenting Brethren to Consider and then Answer I have Consider'd but I cannot tell whether you suppose all Dissenters are your Brethren or that all are your Brethren who dissent from you If the first It seems probable to me that you have been either Educated in a strange Soyl or have forgotten your Brothers Dialect so that I cannot discern that you are any otherwise a Baptist then only in Masquerade and therefore am shy of owning the Relation But if all that dissent from you must therefore be reckon'd your Brethren then I am in that Number and because I think Mr Penn may not have so much leisure as my self at present to attend upon your Trifles I intend to be in the first Rank of your Respondents I consider also that though you have proposed but Three Considerations yet you have bolted out a Mulitude of Questions which administer an occasion for as many more to be retorted To your first Question Then What Validity or Security can any pretended or designed future New Law or Charter have when we see so many of the present Laws we already have may be and are by the Dispensing Power Dispensed with So many of the present Laws The Grievance then with you may lie rather in the Number than in the Dispensing Power His Majesty might with your leave perhaps have dispensed with some Persons and some Penalties too but not with so many altogether One would think by that you would not have Quarrel'd at the Dispensing Fower tho the Act for levying Twelve Pence a Week had never been Prosecuted so as the Twenty Pound a Month had been Levied nor if the Conventicle Act had been Dispensed with so as the Thirty fifth of Queen Elizabeth had been rigorously Executed I cannot tell how many but all the Laws that are Dispensed with are Penal Laws of a like nature for matters Ecclesiastical Uniformity Sacraments Oaths and Tests are the Subject of them all If this be your Grief you must be either a Conforming Baptist or such a strange sort of a Baptist as in my Forty Years Conversation among them I have never met with But to come more close to your Question What Validity can a New Law have seeing so many of these we have already are Dispensed with I Answer with a like Interrogation I grant that the King may do what his Royal Pleasure is with his own Does it thereupon follow that He may do so likewise with what is mine If I acckowledge and thankfully accept His Dispensing with a Penalty to which I am Obnoxious because I take a Liberty in matters of meer Religion which I am not allowed by Statute Laws Is it of necessary consequence that I therein acknowledge He may also impose a Fine upon me for lawfully using a Liberty when granted to me by Law It s hoped the designed New Charter for Repeal of such Penal Laws as are inconsistant with the Doctrines of Christianity will according to His Majesties Declaration both maintain the National Religion as it is now Established by Law and provide for such a Christian Liberty as may set at Ease and Secure the Consciences Persons and Properties of all that will Live Soberly Righteously and Godly in this present Age whether they be Conformists or Non-conformists to the National Religion And a Grant remains valid tho a Penalty may be dispensed with But what if the New Law should have no more Validity or Security then these Old Ones that are Dispensed with The Dissenters will yet be in so much a better Case by a New Law as that they will then be Secur'd by Law whereas till that be done they are always subject to be Ruin'd under colour of Law. But why are you so Querulous at the Dispensing Power in this particular case wherein it is Exercised The King declares his Opinion That Conscience ought not to be constrained nor People forced in matters of meer Religion This Principle is the ground of his Dispensation Have you not lately observed That divers Gentlemen who being in Commission would not Execute these Penal Laws and were therefore for a season laid aside are now returned again into their former Stations with Reputation and the Love of their Neighbours Have you not Read the Apology for the Church of England with relation to the Spirit of Persecution for which she is accused How their former Errors are extenuated by Instances pag. 4. That tho the Party in Parliament of the Church of England did not perform what had been promised by some Leading Men to the Dissenters in procuring them a Bill of Ease yet there was little or nothing done against them for about Nine Years but they had their Meetings almost as publickly as regularly as the Church of England had their Churches Do you not remember a Vote of the House of Commons in 1680. whereby it was Resolved That the Proseeution of Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws was at that time Grievous to the Subject Shall the Justices that did not Execute these Laws gain Esteem by it Shall the Church of England excuse her self from the charge of Severity by her not Executing these Laws for Nine Years together Shall the Commons in Parliament Vote the Execution of them a Grievance And may not the King extend his Compassion towards his Dissenting Subjects and say They shall not be Executed To make such a signal Act of Grace the ground of a groundless Jealousie and cause of Contention to say no worse of it is highly Disingenuous and discovers a very froward and perverse Disposition But let us consider your next knot of Questions Have we or can we have any higher Power here in England then King Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled The Laws that are now Dispensed with and rendred useless were they not made by that Power Can your New Charter be made by any higher or other Power Do you think there is any Temponal or Spiritual Power here in England above the Dispensing Power And can you make it appear to us To these Questions you desire Mr Penn would let his Brethren and you know his Mind honestly In his stead I answer We have no Law Makers but King Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled but yet we are in England as well as in other parts of the World under a Law to God and thereby each Man is obliged to preserve within his own Breast the Answer of a good Conscience from which no Law of King Lords and Commons can absolve him and hence it is that we have many Fundamental Maximes of Law grounded upon the Law of God and common Reason of Mankind as well