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conscience_n liberty_n papist_n protestant_n 1,212 5 9.6046 5 false
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A77411 A brief collection of some memorandums: or, Things humbly offered to the consideration of the members of the great convention and of the succeeding Parliament. 1689 (1689) Wing B4555A; ESTC R173274 9,364 15

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Swearing Cursing and Blasphemy scarce ever filled the Air of any Climate as here The Devils believe tremble and have such presages of the great day of Judgment that they deprecate their being Tormented before the time so far are they from imprecating their own damnation 3. Drinking Healths hath filled all places with vomit and sometimes with Bloud-shed and slaughter the effect of Drunken Quarrels I enlarge no farther as were easy to do and nothing could excuse for saying so much of this in an intended Breviate but that certainly there is nothing so Necessary to the Nations welfare as Repentance and Reformation see if you please Luke 13.3 5. and Jer. 18. verse 6 7 8 9 10. c. For remedy against the Debauchery which has been apparently encreasing almost these Thirty years the things next mentioned are heartily and humbly wished 1. That there may be appointed solemn humiliation Fasting and Prayer throughout the Kingdom And what if the Ministers such as are able might in so extraordinary a case and duty be allowed the use of their own gifts without being limited by some new Collects 2. That the Court may be exemplary for Sobriety and Vertue If Whoring Healthing Swearing and Cursing c. be discountenanced there it will be a signal and publique Blessing Regis ad exemplum totus c. And so if the Nobility and Gentry would follow the good example of a temperate and vertuous Prince how happy might we be 3. Good Justices of the Peace and inferior Magistrates of all sorts What Heart can a Drunken Swearing or Whoring Justice have to punish or with what face can he punish those Vices in others 4. Good Ministers of which somewhat before 5. Good Laws made and executed against the Vices of the times without such little Penaltys annexed as rather encourage to them than deter from them 6. Some Law for ejecting Justices of Peace and inferior Magistrates for common Swearing Drunkenness Whoring and other gross Debauchery's if commonly practised upon conviction by a Jury 7 Some like remedy for scandalous Ministers 8. Some wish for a Law against lend profane and lascivious Plays If any of these seem to any to be points of too high a Reformation for the present season in faece Romuli to him who humbly Offers them to consideration it shall be sufficient to have willed and wisht them And they must be waited for until we come nearer to the time of the new Jerusalem for it 's hoped that by that time or before it The Kingdoms of this World will become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ c. 8. Laws against Protestant Dissenters as such and the severe Execution of them as some think have been and ever will be of an apparent tendency both to Popery and Slavery and to every thing else that 's naught Papists as since appears industriously promoted some of them The Design of this Paper allows not long discourse about Liberty of Conscience Books have been written Pro and Con. Christs Doctrine abhors Persecution for Religion and Persecution of Protestants by Protestants for Non-conformity to things which the one part confesses in their own nature indifferent the other believes and avows judging onely for themselves without censuring others to be uninstituted and sinful is most unnatural as well as Vnprotestantly A Dog they say will not eat of a Dog Laws intended against Papists have been interpreted and executed against Protestants together with other Laws expresly made against Dissenting Protestants Peaceable and Religious meetings beyond all express Laws and to eek them out as not sufficiently severe have been arbitrarily punished as Riots Do these things please God because they please wicked or superstitious men Scarce any Law as some think has made a more direct invasion upon Magna Charta than those against Conventicles as in other respects so in the way appointed for conviction by any one Justice without a Jury And who knows but Himself or his Wife may be a Dissenter before they die and his Children be such after him The Liberties Estates Trades Dwellings Country yea Lives of good and peaceable Subjects are by one or other of these Laws exposed to loss for worshipping God in the best manner they can because of some inconformity to the common mode Tantum Religio potuit c. A worthy House of Commons in Parliament I think two of them in the latter end of the Reign of King Charles the Second after the Discovery of the Popish Plot Voted against the Execution of the Penal Laws against Protestant Dissenters But alas they were Abhorred for it one of the most disingenuous actions of a people towards their own Representatives and such wise Senators that have been seen My Lords the Bishops have as is reported not only by former but later promises put their Fellow-Protestants the Dissenters in Hope of a due Liberty which must be full and without any ensnaring Condition or else it will not be accounted due For although the Dissenters thankfully receive Liberty to worship God according to their Light as an Almes from the Government yet they suppose it in its full Latitude their Due by Christ's Law And they Hope that this Great and Wise Prince whose Heart God has touched with such a Zeal for the Protestant Religion will be under God a great Instrument of breaking every Yoke and letting the Oppressed go free and thereby unite all Protestants to a chearful and unanimous Defence of their Countrey and Opposition to Popery That no Protestant Dissenter may say Wherefore were the former days better than these And alas that Papists should deal better with us than Fellow Protestants like the old Lamentation Heu quod praestet infidelitas quod non praestitit fides If Popery give Liberty to Protestants is not Popery in this become Protestantism and if Protestants persecute Fellow-Protestants is not Protestantism in this become Popery I allude to Rom. 2.25 26 27. Now in this matter there is a two-fold Wish and Petition 1. To the Great Convention which although it consists of the same Lords which usually constitute the House of Peers in Parliament and of the same Commons for number and manner of Election which usually constitute the House of Commons in Parliament Yet being the Representative of the whole Kingdom gathered together in an extraordinary case and manner and for extraordinary ends it seemeth to be something greater and of greater power than a Parliament If the whole Nation thus assembled shall deliberate about and settle a New Government as if they were to begin the World again this seemeth to be a Transcendent Extraordinary and Original power beyond what they could exert as a Parliament And they who can do this what can they not do cui licet quod majus est ei id quod minus est non debet non licere And though this great Convention may think fit to leave the repealing or altering of particular Statutes to the ordinary legislative