Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	charles_n	great_a	king_n	4,015	5	3.8638	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46377	A just and modest vindication of His Royal Highness the Duke of York in observations upon a late revived pamphlet, intituled, A word without doors, wherein the reasons and arguments of that author, are considered and examined.		1680 (1680)	Wing J1222; ESTC R16770	11,050	16

plain they did it for that reason and offer it for their reason to Samuel of their request for it was that they might have one to judge them like other Nations that he might go before them and fight their Battels that is defend and save them from their Enemies to whom the old age of Samuel and the ill government of his Sons exposed them so often When then may a people expect to change a Government lawfully if the Jews in this case did not Surely if ever an alteration by a people might be justified or excused it should be here where they desired to bring in a Government which had before been determined in the secret Counsel of the Almighty they should one day have and which for special reasons and purposes must of necessity have been one day imposed upon them yet because their intention was not to serve God's great and hidden purpose but their own inclinations it was criminal in them but in their next generation a just duty to own and obey that power their Fathers had wickedly introduced for when a people innovate in the Government they do ill but the next generation may and ought to continue it as well for that they know no other as for that to discontinue it were in them another Innovation What has been said of the Jews is true of the Romans and all other Nations God often permitted them to alter the Government but it does not therefore follow that it was lawful so to do though our Author seems to justifie them because they prosper'd in it which is a strange argument I was yet to learn that matter of Fact was an argument or proof of matter of right that is to say that the successful event of things was to be the rule and measure of our judgments as to the equity and justice of them true it is the world judges so but the wise learned and honest have ever exploded it and surely with great reason For what a world should we soon have if it were once granted that a thing is lawfully done because luckily effected at that rate he that called himself a Dog as deserving that name if he could be capable of those Evils the Prophet told him he should do and which he trembled to hear might have triumph'd after the execution of them Ahab too was surely an honest man and had good right to the Vineyard because he got it surely if our Author had well consider'd the consequence of this Argument he would have left it out he has forgot no doubt it was the very Argument made use of within the memory of man by a number of as great Villains as ever lived on Earth for the justifying of as great a wickedness as saving one story ever told or people heard of But let us now look upon the Examples he cites and the Reader will then find I do not wrong him in charging him with the last Argument His first Example is Jeroboam who being displeased with the King with five sixth parts of the people set up a new Kingdom indeed he has been so kind to set down the answer to it it was by particular approbation from God Reluru every man to his house for this thing is of me saith the Lord. It was lawful till then for Rehoboam to raise an Army for the reducing the Rebel to his duty but after such a declaration it had been the highest impudence folly and impiety to have thought of it If the late Tyrant that made such a noise in the world could have shewed the same warrant how unjustifiable had then been all the honest and dutiful Endeavors of so many loyal and saithful Subjects for his ruine It was never doubted sure but that the Will of God over-rules and justifies the Acts he wills without such a command it had been a sin in Jehu to kill his King the Royal Strumpet knew so much and could tell him so Had Zimri peace that slew his Master No but he alone that commanded the Fact could justifie it I do think therefore our Author concludes ill in his 5th page That since God did permit and allow this in his own Commonwealth which he says was to be a pattern for all others no doubt he will approve the same in other Kingdoms whenever his service and glory or the happiness of the Weal Publick shall require Is not this to argue à particulari ad generale because once God for special Reasons permitted a Rebellion which without his Declaration to have approv'd it had been a sin for Jeroboam and all his Followers to continue it therefore without any such evidence of his good liking no doubt for the future in other Kingdoms the like may be practised if the people shall judge God's glory and their own good to require it that is the plain and necessary inference of his Argument The next Example is that of the Children of Don Alonzo Prince of Spain who after their Father's death were set aside by consent of the States and the King their Grandfather for their great Uncle but this is no more than before is granted that the King and Parliament may declare and appoint a Successor The third is of Hugh Capel chosen to the prejudice of Charles which no doubt was an injurious Act though done in a full Assembly of the States and though he seemed to have forsaken them by forsaking the virtues and customs of his Countrey to adhere to its ancient Enemies the Germans yet the comparison those States made of themselves to a Pilot is not according to the wisdom of so great an Assembly for though Men ought to get an able Pilot yet if the Master of the Vessel be not such in your esteem they ought not to thrust him out for another without compounding with him for the right he has to the Vessel and what composition shall be given to a Prince what shall be given him in lieu of a Kingdom Our Author is now come to Home-Presidents which will be the clearer because we suppose our Countreymen to be better read in their own Story The first is the 2d Son of the Conqueror getting the Crown by Assent of Parliament his elder Brother being then busie at Jerusalem and 't was indeed a pretty return for a Christian State to rob a Prince of his Right because he was exposing his life to enlarge the bounds and to increase the glory of Christendom a very excellent President Next He cites Henry the younger Brother who having no right God did so prosperhim as to beat his eldest Brother therefore he concludes it was lawful to disinherit him God suffer'd him to pull out his eyes too but I dare not therefore believe he approved the cruelty Another he brings of receiving Stephen to the prejudice of Henry the 2d of that name but that it seems thrived not so well surely God gave visible proof of his disliking it since he suffer'd it to be a means to well nigh ruine

the Kingdom which was at last preserved by a Parliament restoring all to right and declaring young Henry Successor which Stephen was forced to join in to the Exclusion of his Son and had it not been better never to have wrong'd him than for your own sakes to be forced to do him right And these are our Author's Examples which how much they make for his purpose whether they are of sufficient authority to determine so great and so important a matter as a Right to a Crown I leave to the judgment of every impartial Reader The thing he first desires to have granted is the lawfulness of altering Government by the King Lords and Commons and that was never a question as I know or have heard yet whether ignorantly or designedly I know not He mentions no Presidents save that of the Spaniard onely to that purpose the rest are ill Presidents of Princes injuriously and causlesly disinherited by the States onely and not by King and States out of which a reflecting spirit might conclude That though he colour his design with the specious title of King Lords and Commons yet that he would gladly persuade the people that they alone may do it because by many ill Examples it appears they have done so and this we might have more reason to believe for that in his 8th page he says Thus did the Parliament dispose of the Crown in those days so that the authority and assent of the King is but for fashion-sake Now though it appears that either he has set down a Maxim never questioned and therefore not to be proved in laying such power in the King and His two Houses or else disguised another which with all his Examples he has not made out so that I might very well end here I yet do think it not amiss to set down some Examples of as good Authority I am sure and nothing less to the purpose of the other side to prove That how though a people stir and torment themselves never so much God who neither can do nor will suffer wrong has still brought things about and either made right take place again or if for hidden causes he has suffer'd them for a time has yet at last by heavy judgments convinced the world that he does not approve all that he permits and that he will surely be avenged on them who injure even the Divine Majesty by stamping their own wicked deeds with a pretended approbation from Heaven Begin we with the greatest Man that perhaps ever lived Julius Caesar one to whom the State was as much bound to as any man one attended with continual and wonderful success whil'st he obey'd the Government he was born under no sooner had he alter'd that scarce warm in his ill gotten Empire while he was yet imagining those vast Enterprises of compassing the world with his Armies met the reward of his unjustice in that very place and from those very men where and with whom he had all the reason in the world to think himself most secure If ever people had or could have cause to remove a Prince sure the Romans might have done Nero yet what vengeance follow'd him that serv'd them in it Galba how sad and sudden was his destruction the Histories of that great people do sufficiently inform us Innumerable are the Examples abroad but let us see at home The Conqueror himself though he died possest of the Crown which he had won was yet for the many alterations he made in the Church and State so perplext at his death and had so strange a sense of it that he durst not bequeath it to any of his children believing that divine vengeance would follow them for his Crimes and so it did as we shall shew anon and yet who if a Conqueror may not who then shall venture upon Innovations His Sons for the wrong done to Robert their elder Brother or rather Henry for William had it from his Father escaped not justice from Heaven and dyed a violent death And no less evident was that justice when a King must disinherit his own beloved Son and join with a Parliament to acknowledge and pay a young Boy his Right to which natural affection and thirst of Empire must give way The Parliament at the request of Henry afterwards the 4th of that name deposed Richard the 2d and what was Henry's and that Kingdoms reward a life in continual jeopardy always fearing always troubled continually in War Rebellions great and frequent that shook the very Crown of his Head and by whom did Heaven do this by those very men who had lifted him to the top of his ambition and power with the forfeiture of their duty and conscience making them also to perish in the action giving them the reward of Traytors for their first villany But ere we leave this Prince I shall observe what opinion he himself had of his Right though he had an Act of Parliament joined with his nearness of blood for 't however living he carried it at the approach of death he begins to question whether he had done well that is whether the people of England could remove his Cousin and give him the Crown and owns his just doubt to his Son with grief and no doubt with much concern and perplexity of mind Now though he dyed in his Bed and his Son after him yet was his Sons life short the first part filled with follies and the latter with troubles in the very entrance upon the Throne hardly escaping a violent death which however reacht his Son after him who was the visible unfortunate Object of God's justice for the sins of his Grandfather for being full of virtue goodness and piety we cannot imagine his own sins pulled on his head so many judgments a long and miserable life despised and neglected at home conquer'd and thrust out of all abroad still in War because he loved Peace always a loser in every thing unfortunate and those losses coming upon him by degrees till from one to another like Job's calamities the last save his own was the loss of his Sons life more than once deposed twice imprisoned and at last murdered The Parliament impowered Henry the 8th to appoint a Successor by will if he had no Issue by his third Wife by the same power his two Daughters were disinherited yet God in due time made way for both and what was the end of those men who by a Will of Edward the 6th would have set them aside yet had they much colour for so doing for they had been so already by Act of Parliament past 228. of Henry the 8th which Act was indeed repealed by a subsequent 35 of the same King but the latter Act was full of Proviso's Conditions and Limitations and the Interest and Estate of the two Princesses in the Crown made subject to the last Will of that King or his Letters Patents add to this that the colourable pretence of saving Religion which same to necessitate their actions and therefore if it not justifie might at least help to palliate and excuse them Their end was violent Northumberland and his Party fell by the Sword because they would not know and follow the waies of Peace and Right and what was unhappy though most just with them perisht the Lady Jane Grey and her Husband who had no other fault but that of too great an obedience to their Father's wills and pleasures and in the punishment of that most excellent Princess surely God taught the world that not even the glorious pretence of Religion which must needs and did perish when the right Heir gotten though strengthened by a disinheriting Act of Parliament and the Will of a just departed Monarch could justifie their Rebellion Many more presidents I could cite but I shall conclude with this one the Restauration of our present Soveraign which by how much more it was the wonderful effect of an immediate providence not assisted by the arm of flesh so much more it is remarkable to prove our purpose and our position which we laid down a little before That whatever a people may do God will do justice and right to them that suffer wrong The latter part of our Author's Book being an Answer to a Pamplet I never saw I can say nothing to and now if we must end we will do it with a line of his own Book which he sets down as a false but we as a true Principle That Monarchy is of Divine Right and that Princes in England succeed by nature and generation only and not by authority admission or approbation of the people For further Information I refer the Reader to Sir Robert Philmer's Political Discourses And now before I conclude I would have no man to think that I do in all this design to lessen or disparage the Authority of a Parliament I have for those two Houses the highest veneration imaginable and own them joyned with Majesty to be my lawful Governours Nor would I have any man believe that I ether profess or affect the 〈◊〉 Catholick Religion There 's no man does more ardently desire to see the same Religion now establisht by Law continued and secured to us and our posterity together with the King's Person and the establisht Government than my self and it is that which will be worthy of the cares and pains of a Parliament to provide for by the most effectual means alwaies provided they be such as may neither disparage the grave wisdom nor swerve from the High Justice of that great and August Assembly for surely a good end must be compast by like means else all is naught there being nothing more sure than that the unlawful means corrupt and destroy that good end which they lead to and this is that which a Parliament may and I hope will look to when they sit which no doubt they had long since done if by the unreasonable malice of some and mistaken measures of others fears and jealousies had not been carried and fomented to that degree that the interest of our King and his People seemed not to be the same it ever was and I trust ever shall be a good understanding betwixt both Which that it may be increas'd and for ever continue ought to be the prayer of every good English man FINIS