Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A70003
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The Examination of the bishops upon their refusal of reading His Majesty's most gracious declaration and the nonconcurrence of the Church of England in repeal of the penal laws and test : fully debated and argued.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing E3725; ESTC R26702
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23,815
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44
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from an Ordinance of Forty eight much less an Act of Parliament But for our less Wonder at it we are to consider 't was Hatch'd in the same Republick Nest for no less than the great old Patriot of Three Names sate for the brooding of it I think I need not raise Arguments to prove how little those Gentlemen of Honour the Courtiers I mean of any Religion whatsoever in that innocent Station are or can be concerned in shaking either Church or State. It is enough to say that greater Indignity under the Sanction of a Law was never impos'd upon a Crown'd Head. The meanest Gentleman in England whilst this Test keeps Footing has a Prerogative above the King. For the choice of his Steward Bayliff Attorney or Solicitor c. are in his own free Election But these were Priviledges thought too large for a King and therefore he is Stinted and Bounded to such Elections as the more Imperial Wisdom of His Great Masters in Parliament judge fittest for him Monarchical Rule is said to be like that of Heaven where the Primum Mobile acts altogether by inferior Sphears and second Causes And so Majesty by its Officers and Ministers as so many Vehicles by which the Influences of the Royal Power are Convey'd to set the Great Machine a moving But truly this Ascendancy the late Law-makers judged too great for the King of England and therefore they found an Expedient to render the Monarchy little more than precarious making the whole Ministers of the State the Creatures of the Test and not of the King. Now I desire to know how in Reason we can imagine that a King in himself the Fountain of Honour and Original of Power though in his Nature the Mildest and best Temper'd of Princes though without the least Thought of Unhinging the Frame of the Government or Disturbing the Settled Church of his Kingdom to blast his own Glory and lose his Subjects Hearts for that would be all the Crop 't would yield him I wonder I say how we can imagine that the Best and most Gracious of Princes tho without the foremention'd Designs could nevertheless brook so Vnprincely a Yoke as the Test And truly to justifie his Majesties heartiest Endeavours against both Penal Laws and Test in not labouring to abrogate the first as they stand in Force against the Lives and Liberties and how unjustly has been proved before of the Members of his own Communion he would be the most unnatural of Men and in not labouring to repeal the last as standing so egregiously in force against the Right and Prerogative of His Crown and indeed originally forged in Affront to himself he should be the most Dishonourable of Princes Nor will it serve to object that His late Majesty whatever diminution to the Prerogative it might be by passing it into a Law has alienated that Power from the Crown For to answer that Argument we are assured that whatever Alienations of that kind the Easiness of the present Possessour of the Crown or any other Reasons may induce him to make are no ways truly binding to the Successor Now to come to the last Point the Qualification of Members in Parliament by the Test And first I shall not so much insist upon the notorious Invasion of the Birthright of the Peers by this Exclusion from Parliament as being a Point already so well handled by better Pens and never yet answered nor shall I so much insist upon the Illegality and Vnreasonableness of Tests in general of any kind as was once argued in Parliament by the Lord Delamere in opposition to a Test proposed by the Earl of Lindsey a Test which though not thought legal to be imposed as such contain'd no other than the highest Obligations of Loyalty that every Subject owes to his Prince But if the making of Tests in Parliament which with the Sovereign Consent as Kings are but Men and sometimes the Exigence of Affairs may extort the Royal Fiat lyes in the Majority so to do Suppose the Forgers of this Test for by the by they were none of the best Friends of the Church as now by Law establisht had follow'd their Blow and form'd a second Test to deny Episcopacy to be Jure divino a Dispute much bandyed in those days Here had the Bishops been thrown out of the Parliament if not the whole Hierarchy out of the Kingdom And so by Tests ad Infinitum how might the Basis of the whole Government been overturned and the very Houses of Parliament dwindled at last to the scandalous Dimensions of the old fashion'd Rump For if one Test to exclude a Score why not another to lop off a hundred And indeed how are our present Parliaments the comprehensive Body of the Nation when so many of the Peers not there by Representatives are shut out Nay how much is the Dignity of the Laws they make and the very Constitution of our later Parliaments themselves impair'd and lessen'd by such an Exclusion But to come to the main Business viz. to obviate the greatest and terriblest Clamour of Fear and Jealousie against the Repeal of the Test viz. If the Test were destroy'd who knows but Parliaments may be so managed as to turn out the Church of England and set up Popery even by Law it self This indeed is the Gorgon that frights half Man-kind out of their little Senses But where or how is this Popish Parliament to be gotten for a Protestant one will hardly be so Complaisant But to search out every Cranny that this imaginary Danger is supposed to creep in at Let us examine the House of Lords and try their Inclinations that way If the Test were laid aside and the excluded Lords restored what would their Number signifie At our last Parliament the Protestant Peers amounted to 160 and the excluded Romish Barons nor are they much increased since were not a Tenth of their Number So that here 's an absolute want of a Prodigious Creation of Romish Barons to rise to a Majority Nay and of so many Estates too to support the Grandure as possibly would stagger imagination it self to find a Treasure enough to purchase for so many New Dignifications especially of Gentry or Landed Men to start up Lords among so thin sown a Party would put 'em damnable hard to it But for once grant such an Extravagant Donation of Honour and such Golden Mines to maintain it might form a House of Lords capable of over-ballancing on the Popish side where shall the House of Commons be had for without both they do nothing They would go nigh to find such a Dead Weight in the Lower House as all the Tuggs of Rome would never be able to stirr and this stupendious Parliamentary Subversion of the Church of England a Phoenomenon only in Nubibus A Popish House of Commons too Alas they 'll tell you very easily Has not the King for instance got a new way of Regulating Corporations Nay has he not or will do before next
a Doctor of the Church all this while and his Treatise upon that subject call'd Liberty of Prophecying not yet answer'd or at least the Author under no small Ecclesiastick Fulminations if no other way to answer it for so terrible a Blow against the Churches long main Favourite Bulwark her Penal Laws 'T is true some People will object What are all these Laws to the CHURCH when enacted only by the Civil Power as an Expedient for its own Security and Defence and therefore warrantable and lawful nor in any respect are chargeable upon the Ecclesiasticks Alas this is such a feeble Objection that 't is scarce to be named without Blushing As if the Clergy did not act in Parliament by their Representatives nay the very Bishops sitting there in Person assenting to and undoubtedly little less than Original Founders of those Laws But grant it as they say the meer Establishment of the Civil Power The Clergy by owning the Justice and asserting the Necessity of such Laws for Defence of their Church the Lay-Power in this Case is little more than the Cats Paw to rake out the Chesnut Nor are the Civil Rulers and Temporal Power of a Christian Government any ways more authorised to outgo the Gospel Moderation and Clemency for any Politick Consideration whatever than the more immediate Oracles of Truth the Preachers themselves And this the great Legislators of those Penal Statutes very well knew and therefore as I told you before they cunningly converted Recusancy into High Treason and Non-conformity into Riots and Routs to find something tho but seemingly justifiable for the Fangs of their Laws to lay hold of and so boulster'd up their Penal Statutes to make them able to walk upright I 'le only put this one Question to all the Doctors of our Church With what Conscience can a Church that owns it self Fallible establish Laws to punish Dissenters in Religion when by her own Concession of Fallibility she neither has nor CAN have any Certainty or Assurance how strong soever she thinks or hopes her own Foundation but that she punishes those that possibly may be more in the Right than her self more especially in those Professions that found their Dissenting Doctrins on her own Basis the Scripture I cannot tell what Equity wiser Heads may find out for the Ordination of Penal Laws but truly in my Opinion the Great Prince of Peace that reprimanded the Drawing of that Sword that cut off but the Ear of the High Priests Servant tho in his own immediate Cause very little intended the raising his Church or the propagation of his Gospel by either Axes or Gibbets or Gaols or Dungeons And He that left us the Standard of Christianity in the Innocence of Doves never commission'd us the Rapine of Vultures and though we are conceded the Subtilty of Serpents I know no warrant that he gave us either for the Stings or the Poyson of them And tho my Zeal for Truth makes me thus plain in detecting the only Shame and Frailty of the Reform'd Church I hope she has Goodness enough to forgive the Boldness of a Blushing Son who is no otherwise solicitous than for her covering her own Nakedness And that I may truly term it such the Reformation that otherwise may boast her Purity and Principles only founded on Holy Writ and all the rest of her Doctrins and Practices derived from those sacred Oracles will be only found tripping here and in all her support of Scriptural Records in all other Points I am afraid must have recourse even to the exploded Authority of TRADITION only for her Penal Laws For I shrewdly suspect that Lollards Towers and Inquisition Houses let her mince it as she will will be found the only Precedents for the Estates she has confiscated the Families she has beggar'd the Gaols she has fill'd besides her sometimes loading of Gibbets and ripping up the Bowels even of her own Co-Disciples because Dissenting Professors of Christ and all by her Penal Laws Nor will it suffice for an Excuse to insinuate that the Establishment of Religion and Conformity of Worship on one side and the Preservation of Peace and Tranquillity of the State on the other side exact the necessity of such rigid Laws Though by the by the Peace of States is rather destroy'd then upheld by such Laws for what Civil War in almost all the Christian World that directly or indirectly has not had the Oppression of some Religious Party its greatest if not only Incendiary No to gain the first of these great Ends let the Teachers and Professors of our Establish'd Church live up to the heighth of their Profession and re-call the Wanderers and reduce the Strays into the Fold by their own convincing Examples of Christian Piety a much more commendable way of making Proselytes than the foremention'd rigid Arts of Conversion And for the second great End the Governments Security if her Temporal Fences are not strong enough let her make stronger and if any of her Dissenters are the disturbers of her Peace let her single out the Guilty from the Innocent and wreak her just Vengeance where 't is deserved and not punish the Dissent it self which as being meer matter of Religion is wholly uncapable of such Crime for the sake of any corrupted Members that either are of or Herd under the Covert of such or such a Congregation of Christians For to do that work by the undistinguishing merciless Hand of her Penal Statutes is so little conformable to the Evangelical Precepts that I am afraid the doing such notorious Ills that Good may come of it whatever Religious Security or Gospel Propagation may be intended by them these Penal Laws I say that can swallow the Estates Fortunes Liberties and Lives of their weaker Brethren and fellow Christians instead of being either Christian or Just or any ways related to 'em will at last appear much nearer of kin to that famous Rover that wanders round the World to seek whom he may devour insomuch that their Ordination will be found little less than borrowing Engines from Hell to help to set up Heaven Now to the Case of the Church of England if these are her Penal Laws for I shall not trouble my self with a tedious recital of the several Statutes of that nature as being all but Scions from the same Root I should gladly know what Beauties or rather invisible Charms the Church of England can find in these Statutes to be in the least solicitous for their preservation For alas maugre all her Volumes written upon the Unreasonableness of Separation from her Communion and her Justification of her zealous Indeavours for Conformity unless the Means and Methods used to obtain it as these Laws were intended for such be equally Justifiable her whole Pretensions fall to the Ground Nor will it excuse her to say that they were chiefly enacted in Terrorem as being but seldom put in execution as if a studied ill Deed were therefore more excusable because