Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	life_n	live_v	power_n	7,425	5	5.0486	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75434	An answer to the Lord Digbies speech in the House of Commons; to the bill of attainder of the Earle of Strafford, the 21th. of Aprill. 1641. Written by occasion of the first publishing of that speech of his Lordships. And now printed in regard of the reprinting of that speech.		1641 (1641)	Wing A3420; Thomason E198_3; ESTC R11361	12,154	27

abuse of the sword of Iustice without the use of any other on the Princes part if the Lawes of the land and of the Religion professed in it bind the people from drawing their swords in maintenance of their liberty and shall their obedience to God and the King and their Lawes leave them without hope or means of redresse by the same Lawes or what sufficient redresse and reparation can be made then if the result of a hundred such wicked judgements and Counsels shall be onely a great misdemeanour and a hundred misdemeanors cannot make a felony nor a hundred Felonies amount to a Treason according to the Lord Straffords position maintained publikely at his tryall I wish the Lord Digby had longer ruminated upon his ill digested judgement in this point before he put it over for good I proceed to the next words They are And this designe of force not appearing all his other wicked practises cannot amount so high with me Wherin if by this designe his Lordship meane the particular designe of bringing the Irish Army into England then is the consequence most inconsequent For sure if the Lord Strafford had not he might have had some other designe upon this Kingdome that would have amounted to hight treason in the Lord Digbies eye or if by this design his Lordship intend generally the designe of using force then sure it was made plaine enough to his Lordship at the tryall that the Lord Strafford did more then designe the using of force to the subversion of more then one of the fundamentall Lawes of England and Ireland having actually levied warre upon the Kings liege people to constraine obedience to his illegall summons and orders upon Paper-petitions and to raise moneys upon them against their wills But his Lordship saith Hee can find a more naturall spring from whence to derive those and all his other Crimes then from an intention to bring in Tyranny and to make his owne posterity as well as ours slaves As from revenge from pride from Avarice from passion from insolence of nature Is it possible that so sharpe a wit as the Lord Digbyes that can so quickly espy the mishap of any argument brought forth against the Lord Strafford should not see this misconception of his own in his excuse Shall no man be a Traytor that can find another more naturall spring from whence to derive his treasonable designes and actions then from an intent to commit Treason Then the Lord Strafford would not have beene a Traytor with the Lord Digby though hee had brought the Irish Army into England if that action had originally flowed from one of the foresaid Springs as I beleeve it would have done Then his Lordship may absolve many and I am sure will one of the Gun-powder Traytors whose son hath found so much Princely compassion and favour from his Majestie and the King his Father upon I beleeve a well-grounded opinion that the Fathers designe to have destroyed the King his Master proceeded not from any malicious mind to his sacred person but was derived from his zeale to his Religion a purer spring then any of those his Lordship hath found out to wash the Lord Strafford which certainly have beene the springs of all the fowlest treasons in the world And as for the Lord Straffords respect to his posteritie since the Lord Digby knoweth no man better that we are all deceived with a shew of good in every sinne we are drawne into by him who hee thinketh gave the Lord Strafford the application of his rare abilities And that not only many Ministers of State are easily engaged to bee Instruments of overthrowing the Common-wealth and glory of Kingdomes so they may advance themselves and their Families to riches and honour because that in so doing they imagine they get more in their private fortunes then they lose in their parts of the publike But even the wisest Princes themselves have by this deceit been drawne into the same errour as Philip the second of Spaine and Lewis the eleventh of France For an error it was in them and may bee demonstrated to have been so as farre as Politique matters are capable of demonstration Nay since the Lord Digby avoweth that the consideration of his posteritie did not hold the Lord Strafford himselfe from becomming the grand Apostate to the Common-wealth not only in opinions but by falling from them to practises as high as tyrannicall as any subject ever ventured on and such as made him the most dangerous Minister the most insupportable to free subjects that can bee Charactered I know not why his Lordship should esteeme it so sure a preservative against the Treason he hath suffered for I had almost said justly and so doth his Lordship For he doth not say but the Lord Strafford was worthy to dye and perhaps worthier then many a Traytor He doth not say but his words counsells and actions have beene proved to be such as may direct the King and Parliament to enact that the like shall be Treason for the future but only prayeth God to keepe him from giving judgement of death on any man or of ruine to his innocent posterity upon a Law made a Posteriori So that if his Lordship may be freed from this scruple of Conscience there is hope that hee may change his opinion and be brought a Posteriori to declare his agreeing in judgement with himself and the so much greater part of the House of Commons And that I shall now hope to doe by shewing him a fallacy in the second and last ground of his Argument The fallacy lyeth in this that his Lordship doth divide those things in his consideration which God hath joyned and in doing this will needs be wiser then the State and Lawes hee liveth under which no man ought to be unlesse they thwart the Law of God This hee doth where he faith There is in Parliament a double power of life and death by Bill a Judiciall power and a Legaslative that the measure of the one is what is legally just of the other what is prudentially and politiquely fit for the good and preservation of the whole but these may not be confounded in judgement we may not piece up want of legallity with prudentiall fitnesse And truly if his Lordship had but added these words Except some Case as yet wholly omitted or not yet sufficiently declared come to be judged in Parliament I should have fully assented to his whole discourse in this point But in either of those Cases to deny unto that representative Body the High Court of the Kingdome a liberty to doe any thing not unjust in it selfe though not as yet legally declared to bee just for the preservation of that greater body it represents when according to the sincere and dispassionate judgement of Prudence and Policy it cannot be sufficiently secured by Lawes already made is neither agreeable to the Law of Nature nor of the Land nor of God nor to a rule of

of his mercy and by his over-ruling power had not prevented it contrary to his Lordships prudentiall judgement who I perceive would else have found a wrong Father for those seared distractions of the Kingdome Or if all I have yet said bee not enough let this suffice that the Lord Digby himselfe not only in a former speech made before he altered his mind but in this very speech doth clearely allow of this very kind of proceeding which he would faine see me to disallow For after all the expression of his so nice tendernesse of conscience in this point even his Lordship notwithstanding moved that laying aside the Bill of Attainder the House would thinke of another such a one as might secure the state from the Lord of Strafford saving only his life Which under favour had not onely beene to condemne him a posteriori to worse then death That is either to have lived in perpetuall imprisonment or to have become an ignominious fugitive and vagabond after hee had beene branded by the House of Commons by his Lordship and by his most sacred Majestie in such a manner as might well have put the same thoughts into him that every-one that met him would have killed him which made Caine cry out That his punishment was greater then he could beare But for ought his Lordship hath expressed the Bill he moved for might have trenched as deep to the ruine of his innocent posterity as the Bill of Attainder Nay I pray tell mee how but by a Law a posteriori could his Lordship have condemned the Lord Strafford of high treason as he hath professed that hee should and might have done with Innocence if that of the Irish Army had beene proved to his understanding For I doe not know whether as the case may bee put those words touching the Irish Army had beene treason as yet declared by the Statute of 25. Edw 3. But it they be then I am sure the former words are a much vaster treason And to leave no lease of his Lordships defence unventilated his reason drawne from the marking of a house infected with the plague being the same in other words with the Lo. Straffords taken from a boy is of a little shew but no force at all For under favour these comparisons shew no more but that no action in it selfe indifferent such as that the old Rhetoricians make use of the going up to the top of the wals of a Towne of Garrison ought to bee made capitall to any man that had no knowledge of that Law which I allow to bee good reason But am sure his Lordship will not allow that the Lord Strafford was charged with any such slight Article and much lesse that the result of them all is a matter of indifference or such a one to which the Lord Strafford could plead ignorance of the hainousnesse of the crime For there is no man capable of committing the treason for which hee hath suffered but must needs know That as the safety of the people is the supreme Law so the attempting to introduce any new forme of government without their consents especially an Arbitrary and Tyrannicall one is the greatest wrong can be done and the highest Treason can bee committed against a State And sure Sir Thomas Wentworth who as the Lord Digby himselfe hath noted in his foresaid speech for the Trichniall Parliament was the man that whilome in the House of Commons first moved for the inserting of that clause in the Petition of Right And that your Majestie would bee also graciously pleased for the further conmfort and safety of your people to declare your Royall will and pleasure that in the things aforesaid all your Officers and Ministers shall serve you according to the Loves and Statutes of this Realme as they tender the honour of your Majestie and prosperity of this Kingdome was not ignorant of the greatnesse of this offence If the Lord Wentworth and the Lord Strafford were as indeed a man may well thinke they were that in their Story shall hereafter observe that they no sooner were admitted to the honour of being in the number of his Majesties Officers and Ministers but they began and so continued to bee the great transgressors and violaters of all the heads of the same Petition of Right in the Kingdomes of England or Ireland and of most of them in both I cannot observe any thing more in the Lord Digbies speech that without wrong to his judgement may be thought to have beene a ground of his so solemne Protestation that his vote went not to the taking away of the Lord Straffords life But I have observed two passages which may give a little light how his judgement so neat in other things came to bee corrupted in this The first is an ungrounded apprehension that neither the Lords nor the King would have passed the Bill and consequently that the passing of it in the House of Commons would be cause of great divisions in the State For there is no passion doth multiply faster or which in shorter time will raise a greater mist in the mind of a wise man then groundlesse feare The second is His Lordships having upon this occasion much inculcated to his owne conscience the height and weight of the Crime of committing murther with the sword of Iustice But for ought appeares in his Speech having quite forgotten to put in a due Counterpoyse thereunto from a no lesse serious consideration of that saying of the Wise man Hee that justifieth the wicked and hee that condemneth the just Even they both are abomination to the Lord. And the president made upon King Ahab recorded in those words Because thou hast let goe out of thy hands a man whom I appointed to utter destruction thy life shall goe for his life Wherein notwithstanding I would not be so understood as if I who am a private man did take upon me to judge of the Lord Staffords Cause For as I declared at the beginning my intention throughout hath beene only to vindicate the publike proceedings from scandall and to cleare that Lord Digby from his scruples The first of which now I have done with the zeale that became me I shall henceforth with aequanimity expect to see what grounds there was of the Lord Straffords hopes that hee may hereafter appeare lesse guilty of the death hee died then as yet he doth to me And though in the later I have used necessary freedome in expressing my present conceits of the Lord Digbyes Reasons yet I reserve a thought that the weaknesse may bee in my own understanding and that though of my selfe I am not yet by his Lordship I may be made capable of them being one that hath his eminent abilities in no lesse admiration then any other whatsoever FINIS