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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	king_n	lord_n	person_n	2,832	5	4.9191	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41194	Whether the preserving the Protestant religion was the motive unto, or the end that was designed in the late revolution in a letter to a country gentleman as an answer to his first query.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1695 (1695)	Wing F766; ESTC R35674	40,307	48

Conspiracy of Rulers and Priests in order to govern the Mob and the better to squeeze Money from the credulous Yea there are some of them who deride a Deity and value themselves upon the believing no other Being or M●des of one but Matter Figure and Motion And though I do not know whether many o● any of them went into the Revolution themselves and afterwards drew in others with a purpose to expose and lampoon our Religion yet this I am sure of That what we have done against the King and in the involving the Kingdoms into a bloody and expensive War upon so little Cause and Provocation as was administred is more adapted to render Persons An●i-scripturists and Atheists than all the Arguments in Hobbs's Leviathan or in his Book de ●ive are Was not the late Lord Lovelace who could not speak without an Oath Blasphemy or Execration Or the surviving Fleetwood Sheppard whose whole Wit is employed to burlesque the Bible and mock at an invisible Being and who had the blasphemous Audacity to say to Two Bishops who desired leave of him to pass thro his Lodgings to see the Raree Show exhibited the other day at Whitehall That he would not grant it though the Virgin Mary were there with her Child at her Back to beg it of him and which they had not the Zeal and Courage for God and their Religion as to rebuke him for lest they should have offended the Man at Kensington who is fond of him for his Piety and Vertue quem pro Jove habent I say were not those I have mentioned very likely Persons to have engaged to assist in the Revolution upon Motives of Religion or in order to preserve and defend the Reformed Doctrine and Worship Can any Man think that Secretary Trenchard can be under the Influence of Religion in any Busi or Undertaking or can make it the Motive or End of what he does who concerted with the Prince of Orange how to betray and ruin the King and became engaged to him to use all means he could to do it and this at the very time when he was suing for a Pardon and who after the Grant and Receipt of one came over and made his Majesty all the Promises Words could express of his serving him with Loyalty and Fidelity so long as he lived But as there is no necessity now of telling which of these Promises he has performed whether those made at the Hague or those given at Whitehall that being sufficiently declared by a long and ample Series of Actions so I think it will be easily granted that this Man could act under no Impression of Religion nor upon the Motive or to the End of saving or serving it who could come under two such opposite and contradictory Obligations at the same time as the yielding an unchangeable Fealty and Obedience to the King and the undertaking to betray and divest him of his Royal Power were Or is it possible we should believe that my Lord L and the honourable Speech-maker and Haranguer of the Mob at Norwich and Lyn could embark in promoting the late Change out of any Concernment for the Protestant Religion or in order to protect it who though they profess to be Protestants when they are Well and in Health yet who at every time when they are Sick or when they have apprehensions of Dying do constantly send for Romish Priests to administer unto them all the helps and give them the assistances appointed by that Church for Men in their last Hours I am loath to multiply many Instances in confirmation of what I have affirmed and the chief Leaders and Actors in the Conspiracy for dethroning the King are so well known that I need not do it Even they whose Character should oblige us to believe that the preserving the Protestant Religion was the chief if not the only Motive upon which they acted in the late great Turn that was made in this Kingdom were as far from having it in their Eye or Aim as any other were Nor will any that know the Men allow that either Jack Boots or Cambrick Sleeves embarked in dethroning and driving away the King out of any Regard unto or Concernedness for the Reformed Doctrine and Worship but that they did it out of Pique and Revenge and upon the Motives of Ambition and Covetousness in the one to get a Bishoprick and in the other to preserve one For not to speak of the Rings and Seals which the Doctor through an Hypocrisy peculiar to himself that weareth Cambrick Holland Scots Cloath Sleeves instead of Lawn boasteth of as Pledges of the Kindnesses of Ladies for the Services he has done them can that Man live in the practical Belief or be under the awe of a Deity and much less act upon any sincere Motives of serving Religion but meerly to serve himself upon it who when he was dipt in all the Councels and Conspiracies for commencing and compassing the Revolution could yet at the same time in his Letters to the Earl of Middleton not only make solemn Protestations of his Loyalty to the King but have recourse for Proof and Evidence of it to the Sermons full of Duty and Fealty to the King which he had preached at the Hague as well as at London And as those Letters are in print to remain Records and Registers of his Irreligion and Hypocrisy so I am mistaken in the Rules of Phisiognomy if the Punishment that waits for him and which he hath so much deserved and whereof he hath had advertisment in Dreams be not legibly written in his Forehead Nor could any true Church of England Man whether Ecclesiastick or Laick have accession to the Invasion and to the deposing of his Majesty or he gained over to approve them without renouncing all the Doctrines and Principles of that Communion which relate to Civil Government and the Duties of Subjects to their Rulers And that may serve sufficiently to shew that they acted not in these Mat●●rs upon Motives of Religion because the very Things they did plainly interfered with the whole Religion which they professed and owned And there was such an outragious Rape committed by it upon their Principles and such an open deflouring of the Chastity which their Church had hitherto preserved in point of Allegiance to Lawful and Rightful Monarchs that were it not that great Multitudes of that Communion both preserved their own Innocency and have loudly condemned the Crime of their quondam Brethren and Fellow-members their whole Church would for ever lye under the same Blot and Infamy which those very Men namely your Tillotsons Burnets and Sherlocks c. have used heretofore to cast and fasten upon others And as for those called Whigs which were the warmest Promoters of the Revolution and are supposed more than others to have acted in it upon the Motive of Securing our Religion I will make bold to say of many of them and that both with Truth and Justice That they have

Consciences and Exiles here for the Religion which he himself professed Now can any that live not in an avowed enmity to Truth and good Sense either be perswaded themselves or hope to impose upon the Faith of others That a Prince who had designed to root the Protestant Religion out of his Kingdoms would do a Thing so inconsistent with and obstructive of it as this was And yet there are some whose Malice against the King hath so distorted their Understandings as that they will not only undertake to reconcile his forementioned Behaviour to the French Refugees with the Conspiracy he was embarked in for extirpating our Religion but will make use of his Kindness unto them as a Topick of argumentation whence and whereby to prove and confirm it But we must beg those Men's Pardon if we cannot hinder their insolent Flippency yet to claim the Liberty of exposing and controuling their foolish and ridiculous as well as false and slanderous Dictates For can any thing lie in a directer Opposition to a Purpose of subverting our Religion than for a Prince who harbours such a Project to do all that lies within the Circle of his Wisdom and his Power to encrease and multiply the Numbers whose Principles will oblige them to the use of all Lawful ways and means at least if they use not worse to oppose it and whose Interest and Safety consists in hindering it Surely the great Body of native Protestants were enough if not by far too many either to have been wormed out of our Religion by Fraud or to have it wrested from us by Force that there was no necessity for encreasing the Honour of the Conquest or raising the Glory of the Triumph to have added to our Number and Strength by the Reception and Entertainment that was given to Foreign Protestants Nor is it credible that if his Majesty had been embarked in such a Design as he hath been slandered with that he would have given Encouragement to those Reformed which fled hither from France to have planted and settled in all parts of his Dominions where they pleased when he could not but know and believe that their very Presence among us and our daily Sight of them would awaken our Jealousies of what some Roman Catholick might think Lawful to be done in prejudice of our Religion and who would daily tell us what had been practised for the Extirpating it elsewhere But the good King being conscious to himself that he had no sinister Intentions to the Legally established Doctrine and Worship he envied us no means that might quicken and provoke our Care for the Preservation of them And though he regretted and was infinitely sorry that there was cause any where administred of publishing how poor People professing the Reformed Religion had not only been decoyed into the Catholick Communion by the little and mean Arts of Missioners and and bribed and bought to be Converts to the Romish Faith by those that managed a publick Treasure to that end but had been dragooned into the Church by armed Troops yet he was willing we should have such resident in our several Neighbourhoods who might relate and confirm those Things unto us and he hoped that by his receiving and countenancing such Persons in his Dominions as would daily entertain us with Accounts of this Nature which we could not hear without Scandal and Indignation we should have been satisfied and assured that it lay in an Antipathy to his Nature to imitate any such Examples But no means how proper and convictive soever in themselves which the King could use for laying and extinguishing our Jealousies and Fears of his harbouring Intentions against our Religion could be of efficacy to operate upon us with any Success after our having through Plenty Pride and Wantonness grown weary of Tranquility and Ease and thereupon had imbibed Prepossessions and Prejudices against his Majesty's Person and Government and suffered our selves to be wrought up and exasperated by a few Demagogues and Boutefeuxs who were bribed by the Prince of Orange and instigated by his promising them the Spoils of the Crown Kingdom and Church to the highest ferment of blind brutal and godless Rage Nor has the compassionate and merciful King been requited as he ought and deserved by the French Refugees to whom he made his Kingdoms both an Asilum and a Sanctuary and his own Treasure and the Wealth of his People a Fund of Succour and Subsistance when they knew not where with safety to hide their Heads nor how to get Bread to preserve them from Starving But notwithstanding all the Hosannahs they gave him at first they were many of them in a little time the forwardest to cry Crucify him And contrary to all the Measures of Discretion and Prudence as well as of Thankfulness and Gratitude they have been some of them the warmest Inflamers of the Rebellion and have taken Arms in great Numbers for supporting the Usurper But Sir allow me to subjoin a third Matter of Fact by which the King gave all the Evidence and Assurance to his People that the most Incredulous and perversly Obstinate among them could have desired or needed to convince them in what opposition unto and remoteness it lay from his Thoughts to injure us in the Possession of our Religion and much less to rob us of it and that was by his refusing those Ships of War as well as Land Troops which were offered him by the French King for withstanding the Invasion of the Prince of Orange and for enabling him to suppress those that might sly to Arms and rise in his own Dominions to disturb his Reign or to joyn with the unnatural Invader in case he Landed For setting aside a few Things which the Judges told him he might do according to Law and some inconsiderable Triffles wherein his treacherous Counsellors misled him by telling him it was to renounce the Prerogative which the Constitution had vested in him to decline asserting them so conscious was he to himself of having neither done nor designed any Thing whereby his Protestant Subjects might be tempted to withdraw with any Shadow of Reason and Justice their Allegiance from him that no allarms of Conspiracies against or suspected Treacheries unto him at home nor the fullest and most uncontroulable Certainty of Ships being prepared and Forces ready to embark upon them abroad to make a Descent into his Dominions and hostily to assault him could prevail with him to accept those Succours which a Neighbouring Monarch offered him as well in Friendship to himself as in Kindness to his Majesty It ever hath and always will be found true That whosoever hath been Designing though never so secretly an Injury or Mischief to another he will be constantly Suspicious of the Person against whom he intended it and will use all the Precautions he can and lay hold upon every Mean that offereth to put him whom he had contrived to wrong out of a Condition to avoid the Blow and