Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	great_a	king_n	people_n	9,166	5	4.4099	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50940	Pro populo adversus tyrannos, or, The sovereign right and power of the people over tyrants, clearly stated, and plainly proved with some reflections on the late posture of affairs / by a true Protestant English-man, and well-wisher to posterity.	Milton, John, 1608-1674.	1689 (1689)	Wing M2164; ESTC R432	21,897	27

by any Alteration as they shall judge most conducing to the Publick Good. We may from hence with more ease and force of Argument determine what a Tyrant is and what the People may do against him A Tyrant whether by wrong or by right coming to the Crown is he who regarding neither Law nor the Common Good Reigns only for himself and his Faction Thus St. Basil among others defines him And because his Power is great his Will boundless and exorbitant the fulfilling whereof is for the most part accompanied with innumerable Wrongs and Oppressions of the People Murders Massacres Rapes Adulteries Desolation and Subversion of Cities and whole Provinces look how great a good and happiness a Just King is so great a Mischief is a Tyrant as he the publick Father of his Country so this the Common Enemy against whom what the People lawfully may do as against a common Pest and destroyer of Mankind I suppose no Man of clear judgment need go farther to be guided than by the very Principles of Nature in him But because it is the Vulgar Folly of Men to desert their own Reason and shutting their Eyes to think they see best with other Mens I shall shew by such Examples as ought to have most weight with us what hath been done in this case heretofore The Greeks and Romans as their prime Authors witness held it not only lawful but a Glorious and Heroick Deed rewarded publickly with Statues and Garlands to kill an infamous Tyrant at any time without tryal and but reason that he who trod down all Law should not be vouchsafed the benefit of Law. Insomuch that Seneca the Tragedian brings in Hercules the grand Suppressor of Tyrants thus speaking Victima haud ulla amplior Potest magisque opima mactari Jovi Quàm Rex iniquus There can be slain No Sacrifice to God more acceptable Than an unjust and wicked King But of these I name no more lest it be objected they were Heathen and come to produce another sort of Men that had the knowledge of true Religion Amongst the Jews this Custom of Tyrant-killing was not unusual First Ehud a Man whom God had raised to deliver Israel from Eglon King of Moab who had conquered and ruled over them eighteen years being sent to him as an Ambassador with a Present slew him in his own Hoase But he was a Forreign Prince an Enemy and Ehud besides had special warrant from God. To the first I answer it imports not whether Forreign or Native for no Prince so Native but professes to hold by Law which when he himself overturns breaking all the Covenants and Oaths that gave him Title to his Dignity and were the Bond and Alliance between him and his People what differs he from an Outlandish King or from an Enemy For look how much Right the King of Spain hath to govern us at all so much Right hath the King of England to govern us Tyrannically If he though not bound to us by any League coming from Spain in Person to subdue us or to destroy us might lawfully by the People of England either be slain in Fight or put to Death in Captivity what hath a Native King to plead bound by so many Covenants Benefits and Honours to the wellfare of his People why he through the contempt of all Laws and Parliaments the only tye of our Obedience to him for his own wills sake and a boasted Prerogative unaccountable after unspeakable Damages done by him to the People of Great Britain for these many years and being now fled to our greatest Enemy should think to scape unquestionable as a thing Divine in respect of whom so great a number of Christians destroy'd should lye unaccounted for polluting with their slaughtered Carcasses all the Land over and crying for Vengeance against the Living that should have righted them Who knows not that there is a mutual Bond of Amity and Brotherhood between Man and Man over all the World neither is it the English Sea that can sever us from that Duty and Relation A straiter Bond yet there is between Fellow-subjects Neighbours and Friends But when any of these do one to another so as Hostility could do no worse what doth the Law Decree less against them than open Enemies and Invaders Or if the Law be not present or too weak what doth it warrant us to less than single Defence or Civil War and from that time forward the Law of civil defensive War differs nothing from the Law of Forreign Hostility Nor is it distance of place that makes Enmity but Enmity that makes distance He therefore that keeps Peace with me near or remote of whatsoever Nation is to me as far as all Civil and Human Offices an English-man and a Neighbour but if an English-man forgetting all Laws Humane Civil and Religious offend against Life and Liberty to him offend and to the Law in his behalf though born in the same Womb he is no better than a Turk a Saracen a Heathen This is Gospel and this was ever Law among Equals how much rather then in Force against any King whatsoever who in respect of the People is confess'd Inferior and not Equal to distinguish therefore of a Tyrant by Outlandish or Domestick is a weak Evasion To the second That he was an Enemy I answer what Tyrant is not Yet Eglon by the Jews had been acknowledged as their Sovereign they had served him eighteen years as long almost as we our William the pretended Conqueror in all which time he could not be so unwise a Statesman but to have taken of them Oaths of Fealty and Allegiance by which they made themselves his proper Subjects as their Homage and Present sent by Ehud testified To the Third That he had special Warrant to kill Eglon in that manner it cannot be granted because not expressed it is plain that he was raised by God to be a Deliverer and went on just Principles such as were then and ever held allowable to deal so by a Tyrant that could no otherwise be dealt with Neither did Samuel though a Prophet with his own hand abstain from Agag a Forreign Enemy no doubt but mark the reason As thy Sword hath made women childless a cause that by the Sentence of Law it self nullifies all Relations And as the Law is between Brother and Brother Father and Son Master and Servant wherefore not between King or rather Tyrant and People And whereas Jehu had special command to slay Jeboram a Successive and Hereditary Tyrant it seems not the less imitable for that for where a thing grounded so much on natural reason hath the addition of a command from God what does it but establish the lawfulness of such an Act. Nor is it likely that God who had so many ways of punishing the House of Ahab would have sent a Subject against his Prince if the Fact in it self as done to a Tyrant had been of bad Example And if David refused to lift his