Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	great_a	life_n	see_v	3,300	5	3.3210	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A83946	Englands alarm from the north, vvherein the affaires of Scotland are represented, with the ominous aspect they have to England, to awaken all interests to consider of the nearest conjunction among themselves against the common enemie, who appears in a new disguize, yet as destructive as ever to our lawes, liberties, and priviledges.		1648 (1648)	Wing E2938; Thomason E434_24; ESTC R205279	15,178	23

the cause of the Covenant but have ever opposed Reformation to the utmost of their power and that you may ghuesse by the leaders which way the conduct is like to be you may take their names with their short characters too well known of them The first and great one who steeres most invisibly this Affayre is Duke Hamilton one who loves the Crowne better then the King and yet its thought he acts out of a different and peculiar end the Lord Traquaire a man formerly excommunicated both out of Church and State but now the great Favourite of this Faction the Lord Lanericke a younger Brother to the Duke who can no more live without the Beams of Majesty then the plant without the Sun who was so deare to the King as he made him his Secretary at Newcastle to supply the place of the Lord Digby who can no way exceed him in policy and malignancy the Lord Calender who hath been a Black-bander as secretly disaffected to the Covenant as any of the rest only ingaged by his Leiutenant-Generall-Ship and some particular discontents to Montrosse It s well known how often he hath been at Court within these few monthes I might adde many more But that you may know ex●pede Herculem Can any wise man imagine that these men should now begin to ingage on the interest of the Covenant which they never owned before with any affection and which is so diametrically opposite to their own private ingagements But how ever the Covenant must bear the name or again can we imagine that those who shall stand for the King joyn with the common enemy to set Him in His Throne who refuseth to take the Covenant or give any satisfaction to what is contained in it but only concerning his own Person will ever maintain the Covenant it selfe But let it be granted that there was a reall violation of the Covenant in some particulars and an ingagement should be for that cause as the principle yet it cannot be conceived that the taking in of the common enemy to the quarrell as Assistants will ever manage such an intention with any probable successe but it will rather endanger the whole cause by putting weapons into their hands who aime at the ruine both of the cause and Covenant Ye we know by sad experience many a good end hath been soon left or at least mistaken in the multitude and hurry of Affaires and those we have put much confidence in have found it very easy to dispense with their principles to further their particular and private occasions We began well in England and did set out so fairly as honest and plain dealing men thought every thing would be carried on uniformly in effecting one common end But Proteus never made so many faces and appearances as there hath been changes and alterations in our Affaires Let us now therefore be wise to know the meaning of pretences and principles and not to be terrified from looking after our own good with the name Covenant though spoken by the Scots themselves with never so much zeal and protestations remembring how you have been formerly deceived into a miserable warre by the Name King and Common-Prayer Book Religion is a blessed and happy mercy without which no Nations are secure but when it comes in the hands of Politicians to be made father to their designes you must only look upon it as in their glasse and you are in danger to have it represented in another forme then its own The Historian said of old Specie pietatis in ambitionem delabuntur and its true now men make Religion but the footstoole of some particular advancement they make designes for their own advantage and then intitle Gods name to it that it may be the lesse suspected and ingage mens consciences in it the more freely But that they may not want a sufficient vizard for their own ends they tell us of the increasing of Sectaries and Schismaticks which is both dangerous to the Covenant and State and the Parliament intends to tolerate them against whom they cannot but ingage by the Solemne league and Covenant this is yet a fairer pretence and seemes to be practicall either to good or ruine but if it be well weighed we may see a great fallacie whereby we may be easily deceived The truth is they have given us names and will make it a ground of quarrell with us for being call'd by them the most of these they call Sectaries are honest men who ventured their lives in this Cause and have been and are still faithfull to the State and if there be any difference its in some lesser points of judgement which yet they manage very modestly and peaceably and the wisest men can hardly determine the things themselves Thus strange formidable names are given to honest men that they may be thought to be some strange and desperate creatures not fit to live in this world But I hope English men will know how to call every faithfull man by his right name shortly I would faine know whether there be any Sect or Schisme now or hath ever been known to be like the Sect of the Malignants which yet the Scots do not only tolerate but intend to make use of to suppresse the Sects and Schismes in England Will any man be so mad to hazard his bloud and estate to punish the secred erronious speculations of another mans judgement or will the suppression of them take them in the worst sence countervaile the cost and charges and the hazards that must be run to effect it or can the Scots promise when these are supprest we shall have no more Sects nay can they free us from worse in the Church and State the truth is when they have supprest them they must thinke of dividing among themselves for interests make Sects men will create interests as fast as they see exigencies When the Scots have got the art to beat all mens braines to one noddle and all mens principles and ends to one interest we may happily have some hopes of being free of Sects in the meane while though an eye must be over them and those supprest which are absolutely destructive to the State yet a wary indulgence must be afforded to some lest we make more Sects by persecution of them then before We never had so many Sects untill this warre nor never such names to divide them before the Scots were pleased to baptize them so and we may feare on just grounds a multiplication of other kind of Sects if ever a new war should be promoted for though the ingagement be one at first yet the ends are different in the prosecution By this time I doubt not but you may see into the bottome of that pretence as of the rest English men looke about you a warre is threatned against you great talks there are at Edenburgh of the Parliament of England of the breach of Covenant of vindicating the honour of the King you

bring him by the force of their Papers against the Sence of both Houses of Parliament the Commissioners must go visit the King in the Isle of Wight and there protest against the Parliaments Propositions though only proposing the very substance of what we fought for and for what private conferences they had with his Majestie though we know not the words we may easily understand the sence by their carriages since and what is now doing in Scotland How strangely by these transactions we are divided and what hopes and expectations are in our common enemies we may feele before we are aware And that some ingagement hath been made between some of the Grandees of Scotland and the King is more then probable if there were no more presumption of it then that secret and clandestine proceeding of the Comissioners in the Isle of Wight But when we do consider of the modell of the Parliament of Scotland and how it is framed and patcht with Malignants and how they cry up the Kings Interest against the honest party in Scotland and England we may well suspect that we shall want nothing of the same designe but the name and the place from whence it is visibly to be acted And these things are not bug-beares though false Alarms are sometimes usefull some of their own godly Ministers the last Fast did publiquely declare the great plottings and contrivings in the Parliament to ingage against the honest party and did even so point out the Agents who were no mean ones that the same night a challenge was sent from the Treasurer Lord Craford Lindsey to the Marquesse of Argyle supposing the Marquesse had prest them to speak what they did the Lord Lindsey being one pointed out in the designe And that you may yet be certaine of the strenuous indeavours of these men to effect this work you have it declared by the generall Assembly in their late Declaration And besides all this that we may have demonstration upon demonstration the continuall concourse of Cavaliers from all parts especially of English with the cold entertainment of our Commissioners and the great neglect and contempt of Mr. Marshall for but endeavouring a peace between the Army and the City speak loud enough that any one who is not lost in the same designe cannot but be sensible of And if it be not yet time for us to awake and consider what we are doing we may feele before we fear our danger the great incouragement of this designe is our divisions upon which stock they graffe all their hopes O Populi ad servitutem non ad libertatem nati Is there not a spark of true gallantry and of English Spirits yet within you Have the sound of Drums and Trumpets made you quite deafe and slavery and faction quite put out your eyes Is there any Interest like to the Publique Is it not now high time to unite when others mean to unite against you Whom do you gratifie but your common enemy and shall your divisions give life againe to the dying hopes of those sonnes of violence Had it not been better you had peaceably laid down your necks at first then to have given ground for such cruell revenge I would these were but passionate expressions and that we had not too much ground to inculcate them in every English heart But we must take off a disguise or else we shall but lose our labour and speak to ingaged men There are many glorious and faire pretences which are urged and made the ground of a new quarrell though the truth is they are but made the veile and varnish of the old cause the setting up the Covenant and Presbytery contrary to Sectaries and Schismatickes But what ever is pretended nothing lesse is intended and if it be intended first I am sure it will be executed last after they have served their own ends upon England they may perchance serve that But that honest and well meaning men may see how they are cheated and that there can be no such quarrell with England either for the Covenant or for Presbyteriall Government let it be considered first that the Parliament have according to the advice of the Assembly stablished it and have declared their intentions concerning it that they have and will set it up as the Government of the Kingdome and have given it the great preeminence of and above all others by its publick stamp of Authority and maintenance so that there can be no pretence for that except they will quarrell about an unlimited power which the Parliament cannot with safety give them which can be offensive to none but those who hold that Principle Non dominari instar servitatis est who think they are slaves except they be rulers But suppose Presbytery should not be set up yet doth it deserve the hazard of all the blood and liberties of English men to purchase its establishment which is so new to us and of which we have such little experience yea whose name is not in the Covenant but as it referres to Scotland to whose modell we are not to be tide but as we judge it to be according to the word of God Must Scotland have needs Bellum Presbyteriale with us as the Bishops had Bellum Episcopale with them can nothing but warre make up our difference Let men but remember the event of the Bishops warre and then they will have little heart to ingage Nations for an unexperienced Church government Hath Presbytery been indeared to us for so many hundred years and hath it left such sure and happy pledges of its divine descent in the purest distillations of holinesse A peace that its impossible for us to keep God and our liberties together without it if so we should be glad to venture the choisest of our outward accomodations to obtain it and let me adde this That when Presbytery shall give us good testimony of her benignesse to England as Episcopacy hath of her malignity we shall be able to plead more for her But it s too common for men of no religion to beginne their most mischievous practises with that name I cannot understand how these men can be so true to that government which so often calls them to the stoole of repentance But to be serious that there is no such matter in hand as either Covenant or Presbyteriall Government but purely the Kings Interest Let us but consider first that the greatest Malignants which have been in Scotland are now taken into the very bosome of their Parliament as the Marquesse Huntly the Lord Traquaire with many others who have been the greatest Incendiaries of that Kingdome Secondly Who are the great Agents in this businesse and do carry the sway in this designe but men who have ever been opposite unto the Covenant as Mr. George Gellespy spake openly in the Pulpit at Edinburgh that there are now got up into the greatest places to sit at the helme men of strange faces who were never known to appeare for