Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	king_n	law_n	parliament_n	7,403	5	7.2636	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38401	Englands hvmble remonstrance to their King and to their Parliament shewing the cause of this bloudy and destructive warre by the King against his Parliament and people.		1643 (1643)	Wing E2981; ESTC R20871	3,716	9

ENGLANDS HVMBLE REMONSTRANCE TO THEIR KING And to their PARLIAMENT SHEWING The Cause of this bloudy and destructive Warre by the KING against his Parliament and People O Lord let not the KING be unto thy People the rod of thy fierce wrath Printed according to Order London Printed for G. L. 1643. His Majesties Cause of this Warre is either just or unjust or dubious viz. partly just and partly unjust 1. WE will first suppose his Majesties Cause to be just that he has onely the defensive part and is necessitated to fight and that the Parliament as yet hath offered no termes of Accommodation to him but such as are more unjust then all the plagues of this calamitous warre This so being supposed makes him innocent but yet most unfortunate it makes him the first man that ever fortune pict out to ingage in such a wretched destruction of men and treasure without blame amongst all his Ancestors there will not appeare upon search one of them who was just and maintained a just cause and yet met with such generall opposition from his Subjects much lesse from the Lords and Commons assembled in a Parliament How triviall soever the Kings side accounts this there was not ever a worse prodigie in the World to amaze any State then this is if it be true that the orderly representative body of this nation has causlesly and unnaturally risen up against their righteous King to pursue him so farre as ours now is It is not to be denied but that some Parliaments have done some unjust things when they have beene wrought upon by the force and fraud of Princes but no Example can be shewed that ever any Parliament did such an unjust thing as this contrary to all motives and influences of a gracious and religious Prince Some of the Kings party have argued thus If Parliaments may erre when they are perfect having the concurrence of the royall State with them much more may they erre when the royall State recedes from them c. But this I hold a grand mistake for if I have any reason to make a right use of story Parliaments are repesented to me never lesse liable to error then when they receive least impressions from the King With what regret then ought the King to look upon this unprecedented disaster Certainly if he looke upon us with a naturall eye under such unparalleled sufferings or upon himselfe with a pious eye vnder such an unequall affliction it cannot but administer thoughts of honour to him bonus pastor ponit vitam pro ovilius so said that Prince of Peace in whom onely there was no sinne and in whose flocke joyntly and severally taken there was nothing else but sinne and yet his death sealed as much as his mouth affirmed Moses seemed to preferre the welfare of the obstinate Jewes not onely before all his temporall interests but also before his eternall diadem in Heaven and Saint Paul seemed to be rapt up with a species of the same Zeale The passions of some heathen and hereticall Princes towards their leige Subjects have beene almost above the pitch of humanity With what a wrange kind of hypochondriacall frenzie did Augustus Caesar cry out Redde mihi Legiones vare If the blood of his Subjects had been drawne forcibly out of his owne deerest Veins it could not have parted from him with a stronger resentment How did our Queene Mary even to to the death deplore the losse of one Towne in Picardie With what strange Instruments did griefe make incission in her heart whilst it would ingrave the name of Callice there The losse of all Kings in all wars uses to be very dolorous but native Kings in civill Warres when they looke upon such vast desolation as is now to be seene in England and Ireland must needs thinke that their owne interest their owne honour their owne safety is of lesse consequence 2 We will now suppose the Kings Cause to be unjust that the Parliament has had none but loyall intentions towards him and his royall Dignity nor has attempted any thing but to defend Religion against the Papists the Lawes of the Land against Delinquents and the Priviledges of both Houses against Malignants and on the contrary we will suppose that that private Counsell which the King has follwed rather then his publike owne has aimed at the Arbitrary rule of France and to effect the same has countenanced Popery and but pretended danger from the Parliament from the City of London and from the best affected of the whole Kingdome Qui supponit non ponit We will not assume but presume onely that the great Counsell of the Land is in the right rather then the King and his claudestine Counsell but see what will follow upon this supposition if it prove to be true as it is neither impossible nor improbable if this be true what a formidable day is that to be wherein the King shall render a strict account for all the English Protestant blood which has beene issued out and is to be yet issued out in this wicked and unnaturall quarrell Manasseh which filled Jerusalem with blood and made the Channels thereof flow with the pretious blood of Saints could not contract so blacke a guilt as he that imbrewes two large Kingdomes with blood and that with the blood of the best reformed Professors of our Saviours Gospell That blood of Protestants which has beene shed by Papists as in the Parisian Massacree that blood of Christians which has beene shed by Infidels as in Turkey that blood of Saints which has beene shed by Hereticks as in the Arian Emperours dayes that blood of strangers which has beene shed by conquering Usurpers as in Peru of late may admit of some colour or excuse as to some degree of hainousnesse and may plead for some kind of Expiation but this is beyond all thought or expression The goodly Kingdome of Ireland is almost converted into a Golgotha and the more goodly Kingdome of England is hasting to a worse point of desolation It must needs be therefore that he to whose cruelty and injustice so much confusion shall be imputed must be perpetually abominated as a plague of humane kind more monstrous and portentuous then any age formerly had the strength to produce The ripping up of a Mothers wombe the fiting of such a Metropolis as Rome was were but straines of vulgar narrow-hearted cruelty Antichrist himselfe may owne the depopulation and vastation of our Brittish Islands as acts worthy of his dying fury 3 But it remaines now in the last place that we suppose some doubt to be in the Case or some mixture of injustice in some circumstances as that though the King incline not at all to Popery himselfe yet he has favoured and enabled Papists too far to doe mischiefe and though he cannot with safety cast himselfe wholly upon the fidelity of the Parliament yet he has no cause utterly to reject their consent and approbation in the filling up of

all places of publike power and trust as the emergent necessity of the times now is nor to persist in this al-consuming war rather then to condescend to an Accommodation if we lay downe this for supposed we must needs conclude that the King has not punctually and duly discharged his Office so as that he can cleerly acquit and absolve himselfe before God of this lamentable effusion of Christian blood for there must not onely be a perspicuous justice in the Cause but an absolute necessity of the war when Kings take up the sword against such a considerable number of their Subjects as our King now fights against Though the Cause may be just yet the warre is not lawfull where the miserable consequences of it do too farre out-ballance the iniquity of the conditions offered and proposed by the assailed party Wherefore if the meere and cleere justice of a Cause cannot alwaies wipe off guilt how shall he be purged from offence whose Cause is not totally just nor undeniably evident in a warre of this nature If the King does not apparantly fight for Antichrist yet 't is most apparent that Antichrist does fight for the King the whole Hirarchy has declared their ingagement by publishing Buls and by sending supplies into Ireland and England out of severall Popish Countries On the other side if the Earle of Essex does not apparently fight for Christ yet it seemes very probable that Christ fights for him for our great Armies within the Circle of the last yeere have foure times met and still the King side hath gone off with losse and disadvantage Redding being begirt with his Excellencies Forces all his Majesties power could not relieve it yet Gloucester being begirt by his Majesties Forces his Excellency found meanes to relieve it And as for Edge-hill and Newbery though neither side was totally routed yet the mastery of the field was left to his Excellency and had not fraud done better service to the King then force scarce any other encounters in other parts had bin prosperous to his Popish Armies These things seeme to make the Kings Cause at lest dubious for it were strange if in these latter dayes Christ and Antichrist should be so farre reconciled in any one Cause as to unite their battels in the same Expedition or to pitch their Tents in the same field and grant any doubt in this Case and the King can never be capable of justification in prosecuting it so far with fire and sword for the King has already sworn to uphold and preserve in their intire vigor the Laws of the Land and the Priviledges of Parliament and we cannot deny but even this doubt might be decided by the Lawes in Parliament or by some other Judicatory out of Parliament if the King would referre it to such a decision if the King will admit of no Judicatory to determine this matter what are all our Lawes and Priviledges worth If he will admit of one but doubts what it is and will not be resolved by his Parliament in that doubt what will all his oathes profit us what will all his deepe professions of favour to our Lawes and Priviledges stand us in stead Nay when the King is not certaine of victory and yet hath by so many dreadfull oathes debarred himself from ill advantages by victory if this devouring war wherein so much losse is and no gaine at all to countervaile it be still protracted and preferred before a just Peace all these inexpiable mischiefes will be charged upon him and future ages must needs suspect that love of ruine and destruction and a perfect hatred to the very nature and being of man was the execrable cause of it Imprimat Ja. Cranford FINIS