Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	great_a	king_n	5,512	5	3.6764	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A83680	A declaration of the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, expressing their reasons for the adnulling and vacating of these ensuing votes. 15 Januarii, 1648. / Ordered by the Commons assembled in Parliament, that this declaration and votes be forthwith printed and published. H: Scobel, Cler. Parl. D. Com.	England and Wales. Parliament. House of Commons.	1649 (1649)	Wing E2560; Thomason E538_23; ESTC R206053	8,378	17

of Heaven and in despite of God himself bring the King home with Honor Safety and Freedom did notwithstanding proceed to make such Propositions to the King at the Isle of Wight for a safe and well-grounded Peace as if they had been granted kept of which there was no probability would but have returned the people again to their former slavery forasmuch as by these Propositions neither this Parliament nor any succeeding one was put into a capacity of ever being able to make any good Laws the King being still suffered to continue his Negative Vote so long opposed and so strongly Voted and Declared against by this Parliament thereby leaving still in his power a check to any just Desire of the people Which Personal Treaty thus carryed on without any one previous Proposition for the honor of the Treators or security of the things treated for both which were once thought necessary by those very men who now gave way to this as it could not chuse but abundantly satisfie and delight the disaffected party of the Kingdom so the good and honest minded people thereof who had ventured their lives and fortunes with us in the common cause did apprehend it with much horror even trembling to consider That whereas they expected a happy Peace should have been the price of their blood and the reward of their labors a peace thus concluded would have proved but the beginning of their future miseries and did not stick to complain That hereby we had left them in a far worse estate after all their Victories then when they undertook the Wars with us in our lowest condition Which we cannot condemn them for when we remember withal That this Treaty was entertained upon such Propositions as the King himself also should make which was formerly held to be so destructive to any well settled peace as neither the Houses of Parliament nor the Commissioners for the Kingdom of Scotland did think it fitting to admit when he was in his greatest height of power Neither can we believe That any Agreement we could have made with the King in the Isle of Wight in the condition he was then in would ever have been observed either by himself or any of his Party For setting aside the bare name of Honor Safety and Freedom which the Treaty did pretend unto neither the King nor any of his did ever hold him in any other condition then that of a Prisoner For clearing whereof besides that in His Message sent to both Houses October 2. He proposeth to have liberty to come to Westminster and to be restored to a condition of absolute Freedom and Safety which can import no other then that he judged himself at that present being in the time of Treaty to be deprived of both And His Letters to a prime Magistrate of the City of London declare That he held himself at that time as great a prisoner as ever And the Prince in his Declaration made at Goree sayes plainly That the King in truth is still in prison and invites the Earl of Warwick to joyn with him to rescue his Father from his unworthy imprisonment And since inforced Oaths are in many mens judgments not necessary to be kept what assurance could we have That He who so often had failed of his promises made to us when he was free and at his own disposal would make that good to us when he came to be re-established in His Royal Power which he had obliged himself to do when he was in durance and a prisoner And since hardly any example can be produced either Forraign or Domestick of any Prince once ingaged in a War with His Subjects that ever kept any Agreement which he made with them longer then meer necessity did compel him thereto The examples whereof to the contrary are so many and so manifest and the late bloody violation of the Peace betwixt the Crown of Spain and those of Naples is so fresh in our memories as we cannot expect any Propositions agreed upon at the Isle of Wight should binde the King more then the Fundamental Laws and Coronation Oath besides his often Protestations and Ingagements in the Name of a King and of a Gentleman which He hath so often violated And if we had disbanded our Army is there any thing more probable upon earth then that the King would have raised another Which if he should have done and we not endevored to do the like what were that neglect but an apparent betraying of our Cause and Trust Giving up that without a stroke which we had acquired and made good by so many victories And if we should have taken up Arms what were it but putting of the Realm again into a new Combustion Wherein whether God would bless us as before since we made no better use of his former mercies as it is onely in his Divine Wisdom to determine so it would be little humane providence or policy in us if it be not a bold temptation of God to put it any more to the tryal And notwithstanding that it pleased God so to harden the Kings heart that he would not abolish Episcopacy but onely suspend it and consented that the Bishops Lands should be let for a long term onely the old Rents being still reserved for their maintenance whereas we had sold the said Lands out-right and the old Rents were all that many had bought of the Bishops Estates yet so willing were these men to comply with the King as they were not onely contented that the Buyers who adventured upon the Publike Faith of the Parliament should be defrauded of their Bargains some of them wholly all of them in part but that Episcopacy it self which they had Covenanted to extirpate should yet remain in the root and a more then probable conjecture that it might recover it self again And whereas the King would not consent to the capital punishment of any one Delinquent there being onely one offered unto him namely David Jenkins the rest being beyond the Seas and out of our Power yet contrary to their Covenant and contrary to the main if not onely end of making this War which was to bring Delinquents to condign punishment they did in this also acquiesce in the Kings Answer Which in plain terms was to decline the cause of the people and to assert that of the Kings betraying thereby our own Cause and justifying His making that good by this onely action which our greatest adversaries have ever constantly upbraided us withal which was That we had no Justice on our side because we durst never bring any of them to judgment Which Actions of theirs being apparently contrary to all that which the Parliament had from the beginning of their troubles held out to the People and which were the onely Motives to induce them to undertake this War So as by this means Episcopacy remaining still in the Root wanting onely a little warmth of fair weather to make it bud forth again and in the interim no care taken at all for the constant settlement of Religion And on the other side for want of justice upon the Capital Offendors all good men discouraged and even repenting that they had ever undertaken the Cause which would have been by this Agreement so vilely and unequally stated as if the Kings party should be an hundred times beaten they must be an hundred times indempnified But on the other side if the Parliaments Party should happen to be at the loss but once all the godly people in the Land should have been destroyed for the present and the very cause of Liberty and Religion it self indangered to be lost irrecoverably for the future And whereas God having so eminently owned this Cause that the Enemy could never prevail against it either by open force of Arms or any secret machination of their own devising Hereby through the treachery of some unto whose Trust the defence thereof was committed the Cause should not onely at this time be utterly lost but all Posterity for ever discouraged to take up Arms or joyn with a Parliament again Against whom if for the King any should get the Victory all Honors Profits and worldly Felicities would consequently offer themselves to be the reward of their labors and if they should happen to be overcome there would be no Tribunal on Earth whereby to punish them or call them to account for their Actions Wherefore unless we should deny the goodness of our Cause which God hath adjudged on our side by the gracious blessings of so many signal Victories Unless we should betray our Friends who have engaged with us upon our Votes of Non-Addresses to the hazard of their Lives and Fortunes Unless we should value this one Man the King above so many Millions of people whom we represent and prefer his Honor Safety and Freedom before the Honor Safety and Freedom of the whole Nation Unless we should scorn and contemn any Peace which the great God of Heaven and Earth our assured help in our greatest distresses hath given us and that we must relie onely upon such a Peace which the King a mortal Man and our implacable Enemy shall allow us Unless we should give our selves up to the slaughter and suffer our own Members to undermine the Parliament and the Kingdoms Cause Unless we should stake All which we have to the Kings Nothing and Treat with him who hath not any thing to give us and after God hath put us in Possession of All and more then we asked then we must Treat with the King whether we shall have it or no. Lastly Unless we should value the blood of so many Innocents and the Army of so many Martyrs who have dyed in this Cause less then the blood of a few guilty persons by what Name or Title soever stiled We could do no less then repeal those Votes before specified as being highly repugnant to the glory of God greatly dishonorable to the proceedings of Parliament and apparently destructive to the good of this Kingdom Yet we are resolved by Gods assistance and that speedily so to settle the Peace of the Kingdom by the authority of Parliament in a more happy way then can be expected from the best of Kings FINIS