Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A37324
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A letter from a Protestant of integrity to a principal peer of the realm now sitting in Parliament by way of animadversion on a letter from a person of quality to the same peer of the realm : occasioned by the present debate upon the penal laws.
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C. D.
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1661
(1661)
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Wing D53; ESTC R26472
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11,502
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20
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occasioneth them to give it that name of Treason yet if this advocate had pleased to consider the Law he might have seen a proditorious appeal and subjection to and advancement of a forraign power and potentate over and opposite to the Soveraign Majestie of this Kingdom in every Roman Popish Priest and there is the Ratiâ— formalis of the Treason and makes it such quia malum in se as well as quia prohibitum But my Lord that which sticks in the stomack of these Romen Catholicks is the power of which their Priests are deprived He tells your Lordship The Priests were wont here in England to sit in the chair of Government and by their Oracles and Decrees the people of this Land were onely wont to he directed both in Chancery Rolls and Ecclesiastical Courts You may see my Lord to what pitch the Roman Catholicks would screw their desired liberty that the to esse of our Laws may depend on their Priests Anathema the places of trust and honor be by them possessed judgement be by them dispenced and all civil Offices be at their command to commend their sociability by executing the writ de Hereticus comburendis on the bare say of a Priest that this man is an Heretick My Lord all Lawyers that lay away this liberty are strange and irrational and desired to be repealed 2. My Lord the little reason of this Corrector of the reason of our Law is worth observation In his blinde passion he supposeth and suggesteth it to be made treason to be a Priest and manageth all his invectives against the Law as if it were against the name Priest which in its general nature and vulgar acceptation denoteth cui administrator of holy things between God and his people And so we know Moses consecrated a Priest Christ was and is a Priest our Church call Ministers Priests and every true Saint is a Priest and the Law must needs seem unreasonable that shall make it Treason for a man to be a Priest in so large a sense as he by an ignoratio Elenchi renders it but could his heat have admitted him to have cast an eye on the Statute he would have found the Traytors to have been Jesuits Seminary Priests or other Priests made or ordained out of the Realm or in the Realm by any power authority or jurisdiction derived challenged or pretended from the sea of Rome And so the Treason to consist not in their being simple Priests but in their being Roman Priests subjected to and advancing a Forreign Power and Authority above their natural Prince He may my Lord on enquiry finde Priests yea Popish Priests when converted from the Papacy have enjoyed the liberty of Subjects and not been judged Traytors though he profoundly fancieth the Treason to be in the general appellation and as such scolds at the Law as unreasonable and so runs into the third misdemeanor to be observed viz. 3. His inâ—olency in presuming to reproach the renowned Queen Elizabeth as illegitimate and an usurper of the Crown and so charging these Laws to have been the products of her fears and jealousies against Mary Queen of Scots whom he determined to have been the just heir of the Crown all which with a right Roman Catholick spirit he bottometh on the Popes declaring her illegitimate it is indeed true he doth mention our own Acts of Parliaments which did declare her such but my Lord his foundation is the Popes Sentence and Censure otherwise his argument were the same against Queen Mary as against Queen Elizabeth who also was declared illegitimate and he would have seen Acts of Parliament appropriating the Crown to her as well as they had sometime taken it from her My Lord come not the the Roman Catholicks with a very submissive spirit to supplicate their liberty thus to reproach our Princes and Laws and so demanding the repeal of Penal Laws against themselves as a matter due and just But if my Lord tha jealousies of Queen Elizabeth as an Vsurper were the onely reason and cause of those Statutes how was it that these laws did not cease with their cause after King James right heir according to this Advocates account come to the Crown These laws were not onely continued but renewed and rendred more severe as the Catholick insociability manifested by their bloody and barbarous conspiracies against him whom their Pope could not declare illegitimate had constrained My Lord I have made bold to confider the Argumentation of this Advocate for the toleration of Roman Catholicks The remaining part of his Book is but a Rhetorical swada in which there are many words and sentences obnoxious to exception but knowing that your Lordship is more judicious then to be courted by words without weight I will not trouble your Lordship with any observation of them but humbly commit the cause to your grand and pious consideration not doubting but your zeal to the Protestant Religion the interest of our Nation honor of our King and glory of our Church almost ruined by Scismaticks on a suspicion that it would strike hands with Roman Catholicks will prove more fervent then to be extinguished or abated by the water of these false suggestions furious expostulations or fair spoken perswasions and that your Lordship will never engage your self to indulge an interest directly contrary to our Laws Church Religion and Scripture duty In which confidence I commend your Lordship unto the Grace that is able and will establish you to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and rest My Lord Your Lordsships most devoted humble Servant C. D. July 8. 1661. FINIS
A LETTER FROM A Protestant of integrity TO A Principal Peer of the Realm now sitting in Parliament BY Way of Animadversion on a Letter from a Person of Quality to the same Peer of the Realm Occasioned by the present debate upon the Penal Laws London Printed for the Author A LETTER From a Protestant of Integrity unto a Principal Peer of the Realm c. My Lord I Purposed not by my lines to intterrupt your pursuit of the important affairs in which you are ingaged had not the unexpected boldness of a well-wisher to the Roman Religion occasioned these Your constancy in and zeal for the true Religion received and professed in these Nations will be your Lordships honour no less then your care and compassion to consciences pretendedly tender not onely differing in circumstances which love to truth may indulge but dissenting and diametrically opposite unto the substantials thereof such as are the Roman Catholicks for whom a pretended Person of quallity hath presumed to become an advocate beyond what your Lordships Disposition his Majesties Reputation or our Kingdoms present complection in which the restoring Prelacy is suspected and by some openly averred to tend to a return to Popery could dictate to men of any competent prudence My Lord publiquely to observe the Parliaments debates concerning the Penal Laws is no peice of Policy but this Gentlemans improvement thereof seemeth to be little short of folly suggesting a propensity to alter our established Religion and that the now falling Presbyter hath been and yet is the Papists onely opponent and obstruction in which that party will not a little glory as conceiving some thing of truth in their observation that our Litturgy and Prelacy is very consistent with the Mass and Papacy This Advocate representeth his Popish party by epithites which cannot but move pitty and in an estate which directeth duty for their releif and restoration if what he suggesteth be found a verity He calls them a poor distressed and deplorable party Pag. 1. and my Lord such indeed they do seem to be but wise men are not without fear that on liberty to uncase they will appear more considerable as those who under all our late differing formes have driven on the Catholiques design De propaganda fide fomenting our late tumults and commotions Latet anguis in herbis their beginning to hiss unto the defaming of our eminent Martyrs derision of our Religion and demand of the liberty of their own driving on in the late pamphlets boldly pressing into the World displeasure against and depression of the Presbyterians who have much more pleadable in their behalf to propose them acceptable then the present heat of our Revolutions will permit them to produce or the Peers and restored Prelates of our Realm to ponder are in my opinion no mean evidences thereof for it is well known affected poverty and voluntary affliction is not the least part of this peoples piety and devotion As to their Estate he tels us my Lord this last hundred years they have lain under a more bloody and inhumane persecution then any before was heaâ—d of among Christians I must confess present evil seems unparralelled and passion is a multiplying glass but Sir will not any ordinary observer see this advocate doth highly hyperbolize and in a sullen fret like a subtile â—apist labour to delude by lies My Lord admitting what principles of Justice cannot admit that their legal prosecution were persecution unjust is it not monstrous to cry out it is bloody and inhumane whilst by known and standing Laws declaring guilt and punishment and that making many gradations and slows process to the capital crime or shedding of their blood but the superlative words must appear superlatively false viz. That they have lain under the most bloody and inhumane persecutions that ever before was heard of among Christians for my Lord who that ever knew or heard of the Heathen rage against Christians Arrians against the Orthodox can give credit to this clamorous calumny yea who ever heard of the Popish persecution of Protestants the Waldenses and Albingenses the devastation of Merundal and Cabriers The fiery persecution in the days of Queen Mary the barbarous Rebellion in Ireland with many the like doleful Tragedies acted by the Papists themselves on no other cause but matter of opinion and Religion which they called Heresie and will not see for number and quality of patients nature and variety cruelty and severity of torments slightness of cause and universality of Execution without Law or regard of age sex dignity degree cutting down the tree with the fruit thereof falling in the very act of execution a persecution much more bloody and inhumane then what this person of quality complaineth of who may be boldly challenged to make good his comparison by making his paralel for numbers of sufferers bloody inhumane sufferings to square onely with the three Marian fiery years and can chuse but conclude our Advocate judged by the age of his patients not the kinds or degrees of their sufferings and sure my Lord this Gentleman was wholly a stranger to the clemency of King James and King Charles the first Witnessed by the easie compositions of Recusants and ordinary repreive and release of Priests and Jesuites and I am sure their reign will strike far into his hundred years complained of However my Lord an Hyperbole may be indulged in an advovate when it is so notorious as in this case it cannot but return to the dammage of the Client My Lord I cannot but wonder whilst toleration of Popery is the thing pretended that so great a liberty and on such a ground should be required and that as a duty not courtesie viz. That his Majesty like another Cyrus may be pleased to procure that Israel may return and build up their Tâ—mple and that because the building is perpetual where God layeth the foundation which whole request is my Lord grounded on a bold petitio principii for they call themselves Israel who on good ground have been accounted Sodom and Aegypt they challenge the priviledge of Syon who are obnoxious to the doom of Babylon and as such must expect Cyrus his opposition For the Kings of the earth must hate the Whore They pretend to be founded by God who make petrum petram beyond the tenure of the the Gospel Commission or scope of the Lords intention when those things are cleared which they but all others deny take for granted there will be a ground to pray not onely a liberty to use their Synagogile but as they Phrase it to build their Temple and restore their Mass and what is doubtless further in their intention ruine all that dissent from them for my Lord it is a Scripture Maxime and an Ecclesiastical axiome Sions rise is Babylons ruine What is urged by way of Swada to this desired liberty in the next Paragraph signifieth very little until Roman Catholicks are rendred tolerable by an Abjuration of intolerable principles