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	speak_v	2,685	5	4.1963	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88759	The free mans plea for freedom, against the arbitrarie unwarrantable actions and proceedings of the apostate associates, commonly called by others, Levellers. VVherein is briefly discovered how unsutable they walke to common right and freedom, being more arbitrarie and tyrannicall then any they oppose, wanting only a power to exercise their crueltie. / By R.L. a member of the army.	R. L.	1648 (1648)	Wing L54; Thomason E443_10; ESTC R204716	10,769	15

Courtisies from a man they will not hurt him but will admit of much familiaritie with him and I have some time heard that the favour of a Lyon may be won by courtesies By the way you may take notice of that common story of the traveller loosing his way in the wildernesse found a Lion who had caught a thorn in his foot which he pulled forth for which courtesie the cruell beast was so gratefull as to become his protectour till he brought him past all danger and how unworthily ungratefull many of you have been and still are to particular persons and whole societies of men who hath made your condition their own who hath and do still tender many of you as pieces of their own flesh whose hearts and affections desires your good as their own who would joyfully live or die in any righteous cause with you if y●● would prosecute it only in a righteous way and put more trust in God in the use of lawfull meanes and lesse in your own subt●●ty and craftinesse yet these are the men whom the sharpest of your arrowes are shot against whose blood you lie in waite for as a Lion doth for his prey it being your meat and drink to heare and devise falshoods against them to speak and print evill of them that they may justly take up that complaint against you which David used against some such ungratefull friends of his Psal 35.12 False witnesses did rise up they laid to my charge things that I knew not they have rewarded me evill for good so in Psal 109.4 For my love they are my adversaries and they have rewarded me evill for good and hatred for my good will and as you are naturally ungratefull so are you as eminently malicious and revengefull which is another principall branch of tyranny I never being able to finde the least inclination in many of you to put up or forgive the least personall wrong or injury but rather to rest unsatisfied as a bear robbed of her whelps to be revenged and have full reparations and as you are thus ungratefull malicious and revengefull so are you as ambitious proud and haughty esteeming highly of your selves in your own things he being a man not worth the calling a fellow-commoner that hath not exalted his arrogant resolute pride and haughtinesse above his sence reason and judgement that hath not resolved to maintaine any cause with resolution if he be once ingaged in it be it good or bad that is not able to speak great swelling words and look mighty big looks in the face of any Authority he comes before though for the most scandalous offence that can be committed and if these be your vertues the best part of you what kind of things are the worst can we expect from such a corrupt fountaine as this wholsome waters Doe men gather grapes of thornes and figs of thistles Matth. 7.16 Sirs be not deceived God will not be mocked For wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy selfe for thou that judgest doest the same things Rom. 2.1 Thou hypocrite first cast the beame out of thine owne eye and then shalt thou see clearely to cast out the mote out of thy brothers eye Matth. 7.5 A POSTSCRIPT To those private souldiers of the Armie which hath been deceived by these mens delusions FEllow Souldiers I having had the happinesse to be a spectator of those great things God hath done for you and by you I am invited by that affection and duty I owe and beare to you to represent these things to your consideration well knowing there is not only a spirit of zeale but of judgement in many of you able to discerne betwixt good and evill while you acted in the way of God to accomplish the worke of God God then dwelt among you his glory was upon you you were then a comfort to your friends and a terrour to your enemies but if you forsake his way he will owne you no longer in his worke Will you doe wickedly for God and talke deceitfully for him Job 13.7 Let not men which make lies their refuge falshood and deceit their strength be our leaders into evill wayes for when the blinde lead the blinde then both fall into the ditch and how wilfully blinde those men have been which hath endeavoured to lead you into irregular wayes to the great dishonour of that God who hath so much honoured you is visible What is become of the great designe your Officers had to advance the kings Interest and thereby procure their owne greatnesse Is Lord Generall Cromwell made Earle of Essex yet or Captaine Generall Ireton Field Marshall Generall of Ireland Is the King at White-Hall yet without giving satisfaction to the Kingdom is the Armie or any part of it disbanded without sufficient indemnitie present pay and security for Arreares Doe but review those delusive lying pamphlets intituled Putneys projects a Call to the Armie an Alarm to the Head-quarters the grand designe c. And take notice with what confidence and boldnesse they accused the Parliament and Armie in generall with many particular men who hath been eminently faithfull to the Kingdomes Interest of treachery and basenesse of spirit declining their principles c. and all grounded upon their under hand compliance with the King their carrying on His Designes by private conferences with Him c. All which suggestions doth plainly appeare to all that hath not willingly given up themselves to beleeve lies to be false and scandalous slanders yet these and such like are the only truths that pretended infallible spirit revealed to these men at the time of the Randezvouzing at Ware and did I not yet discover the same spirit raging in the same men with as much boldnesse and confidence as if they had never been the authour of all these lies I should have forborne any testimony against them and rather have judged what they then did might proceed from rashnesse or mistake and not done plotting or designingly but it hath since appeared the contrary they continuing to this very day by the same evill meanes to prosecute the same things which is to set you one against another and every man else against you all endeavouring to make you odious to the Kingdome and the Parliament and your Officers odious to you First they Print petitions in the name of the People and make you whom God hath used to be the instruments of their deliverance the cause of all their oppression and miseries c●●ing out of oppression violence taxes free-quarter c. all which they charge equally upon you as you are an Armie making the miscarriage of one man among a thousand to reflect upon all on purpose to render you odious making you the cause of the decay of trading and of that deareness and scarcity that is in the Kingdome as if they would have the Kingdome rise and cut your throats to save your victuals and make corne cheape and yet when the Parliament is using all possible meanes to pay you off and disband you and the Generall with your officers using the utmost of their interest to obtaine honourable and satisfactory conditions for you both Parliament and Generall indeavouring to their utmost to ease the Kingdome of their burdens and requite you for your faithfull services then are they of another minde then are they sending their Emissaries among you to stirre you up to disobedience telling of you you ought not to divide nor suffer your selves to be divided nor disbanded c. so what they would have you to doe is worth your enquiring after for they would not have the Countrey either pay you nor give you victuals neither would they have you to disband nor suffer your selves to be disbanded they have only left you these two things to chuse one either to continue in your warfare upon your own charges or else to live upon the spoile and ruine of the Kingdome the former I feare you cannot doe and the latter I am confident your soules abhorre to thinke therefore consider God hath placed you under men that have preferred your wel fare and safety above their owne they trampled upon great gifts and high places and were willing to stand with you nay to fall with you rather then to stand themselves and see you fall and therefore let it never be said that an Armie of men so principled so regulated whom God hath so honoured under the conduct of men so eminently faithfull honourable and successefull should be disobliged from their obedience by false and scandalous suggestions of men wh● make it their businesse to vent their rage and their passion against all that are not approvers of their disputable if not evil actions And since you have found the power and presence of God so visible among you while you every one acted in the same place God hath called you to in the worke he laid before you Waite upon God there still It was the counsell Moses gave the people in the greatest straight that ever they were in to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord and they did take his counsell and God did save them and by the same hand ruined their enemies And if you doe waite for the salvation of the Lord in the use of lawfull meanes he is able and faithfull to doe you good and to make the sea of all those dangers and difficulties that stand before you to become a wall on the right hand and on the left unto you and to make those things you most feare to be most subservient unto his end which is his glory and to your ends which I hope is the settlement of this poore distracted Kingdome in a safe and well-grounded Peace Which that you may be instrumentall in is the constant prayers and earnest desires of your faithfull servant R. L. FINIS

and no probable meanes left to prevent its present ruine but a christian sober friendly compliance of all the honest interests distinguished among us by the names of Presbyterie and Independency c. and no such visible meanes to ruine and destroy it as the further adding to increasing of the divisions and distractions already in it how is it possible for any man to judge you desire the life of the Kingdome that are such utter enemies to the health of it That you desire the liberty and freedome of the People that are such grand enemies to the peace and safety of them unlesse you can convince us the nearest way from Yorke to London is by Barwick Quaerie 9 If you affirm that the way to stop the Gangrene of Englands distractions and divisions and so consequently its ruine is to propound some generall heads to be agreed on by the People containing the fundamentall rights and liberties of the Nation we agree with you To propound present such things according to the fundamentall rights and freedomes of the Nation is good which is an orderly Parliamentary way but for you to propound the fundamentall rights and liberties of the People and to prosecute the evident ruine and destruction of the People is a strange way to demonstrate your good intentions as thus if our Brethren of Scotland should march with an Army over Tweede and should tell us they came for our good and to help us against the common enemy to the Covenant and cause which formerly they have assisted us in and in their march should p●●nder and spoile us of our goods ●●●rison and destroy our friends fight with and oppose our Armies c. we should have very little cause to ●●leeve them or thus if any of your houses were on fire about your eares ●●d a company of People should come with empty buckets and pretend they wo●●d indeavour to quench the fire and in the interim plunder and spoile you of your goods and in stead of water cast on pitch or combustible matter to increase the flame you would have very small cause to thank them And thus friends while you are proposing to us good things and filling our eares with many good words consider what your actions have been Judas could crie Haile Master when he betrayed him You have been telling us of a free representative of the people in Parliament in order to which you have used all possible meanes to bring this present Parliament under force to put conditions upon them by prescribing rules and setting bounds to them vilifying reviling and reproaching of them to their faces in such an audacious and uncivill manner as few that have either conscience or prudence would doe their servants nay hardly their dogs if they were capable of receiving a reasonable reproofe calling them the supreame authority of England to day and deny there is any such thing as authority remaining in them another day as in Major White his book Stile them the honourable house of Commons one day the degenerate unjust arbitrary tyrannicall Parliament another day Print papers intituled An humble petition to the supreame authority of England the honourable house of Commons on the top of the sheet appeale to the People against them charging them with falshood lies tyrannie injustice ruling by their crooked wils and damnable lusts in the bottome of the same sheet as you may see in a petition delivered to the house of Commons presently after the rendezvous at Ware in the behalfe of the Agreement of the People Colonell Ayres and Captain Bray c. is this a demonstration of your great affections to the Peoples representatives is it the freedome of the Peoples representative to be taunted reviled reproached and scandalized and that publickly in Print to their faces in such a manner as the meanest man represented would not indure nor put up without reparation But the People and the representative may expect both to drink in one cup the representative will but swallow down the top the People shall be sure enough of the dregs These carriages differ much from Pauls spirit who said it is written thou shalt not sp●ake evill of the ruler of the people Acts 23.5 and so in Tim. 5.1 Rebuk● not an elder but intreat him as a father But the Scriptures and M●gna Charta are both of one authority which most of these men onl● the latter for the present is most in request another ge●●●●●● good which they have held before our eyes to humble us with hath been the easing of the Kingdome of or from those sad oppressions and burdens which they lie under as Excises Taxes and free-quarter c. and in order to this they have indeavoured to prevent and stop all meanes used for that end the greatest visible burden which lay upon this Kingdome being the Soldiery especially before the disbanding supernumeraries and taking them off from free-quarter and ever since the Parliament hath been about that worke they have been indeavouring by all possible means to prevent it both by perswading the Countrey from paying their money without which the worke could not be done and telling the souldiers they ought not to disband nor suffer themselves to be disbanded nor divided c. And if God had not prevented their attempts in opposition to this worke the Kingdom would have sunk under the burden of free-quarter by this time or else have broken its owne back by indeavouring to shake its burden off by force and the souldiery whom they have so much indeavoured to delude by their plausible pleadings for their rights have been wholly frustrated and prevented of all those things which by their moderation and patience God hath inabled the Parliament to do for them in order to their Accounts Arreares pr●●nt pay indempnity c. so that what reall pity or affection you have towards the Peoples ease from their burdens let themselves and the world judge And thus if it were either worth the reading or my penning it is observable through your whole course you have pretended one thing and done another cried up the Peoples liberties with your mouthes and destroyed them with both your hands Quaerie 10 If it be the liberty of the People you would so faine be fighting and wading in blood for what People are they if for the whole Kingdom when did they chuse you if for the Major part how should we know it if for the Minor part where will you leave the finall judgement for if it be lawfull for you as the Minor part of this Kingdom to force those things you judge to be just on the Major part without controversie it is more lawfull for the Major part to defend themselves and oppose you if they judge the same to be unjust therefore if this be the liberty of the People to fight with and destroy one another upon every apprehension of a just ●ause you may spare your paines in procuring a safe and well grounded p●●ce for according