Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	king_n	law_n	people_n	3,485	5	5.2685	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25517	An Answer to a late pamphlet, entituled, A character of a Popish successor, and what England may expect from such a one		1681 (1681)	Wing A3307; ESTC R19980	23,175	18

any Prudence he would have burnt his Book and sav'd the Hang-man a labour But stay let us be as favourable to him as we can let us try if we can excuse him his ill treatment of the Virtues perhaps he rail'd at them only to bring in his Quibble and because Cardo is Latin for a Hinge therefore the Cardinal Virtues were to be the Hinges to open the Gates to Popery or what if his Picque against them be their having some Name-sakes in the Church of Rome since his Friend Merry Andrew in that excellent piece of Smithfield Drollery The Rehearsal Transprosed has been pleased to call them The Red-hatted Virtues Well whatever his quarrel be I am sure His Royal Highness has reason to be not a little satisfied to see that the defence of the Duke of York and of Virtue it self is the same cause and that whoever opposes the Justice of his Succession must forfeit his Morality as well his as Allegiance But then the Notion of such a Popish Successor such a one as shall maintain the Constitution of the present Government and in that the publick Worship of the Church of England is included without any alteration puzzles the Gentleman strangely Nor can he make it consist with reason no not he nor with the least shadow of possibility And where is the difficulty where is the unreasonableness Why forsooth he must suppress the potent and dangerous enemies that would destroy the Protestant Worship Peace and Interest And the Wisdom of several successive Monarchs and a whole Nations unanimous prudence has declar'd Popish Priests to be these potent and dangerous enemies Have they so then there are Laws to secure us against them then why are we in such fear Then what is left to any Monarch that succeeds but to execute the Laws he finds derived down to him to maintain and preserve together with his Crown and Dignity And since by the prudent zeal of both our Kings and People our Religion has so strong a fence built round about it since this Vine is so hedged in that neither the Wild Boars out the of Wood can root it up nor the little Foxes devour it why do we torment our selves with any further disquiet why do we not rather sit down under the shadow of it and bless him whose right hand has planted it But alas under the Reign of an English Papist the case will not be the same But we shall be in much greater danger by reason of the multitude of their Roman Emissaries and those too embolden'd by hopes of Connivance and Mercy and if ever the Protestant Religion want a Defender it will be then Truly I am so far from thinking that the Reign of a Popish King can be any way advantagious to the designs of the Jesuitical Instruments that I rather believe it will of necessity be the greatest occasion of their destruction especially since it is in the Power of every Subject in the three Kingdoms to be a Defender of the Protestant Religion if it want it And if people shall think so as naturally then they will to be sure no Information no Conviction of Recusants no Administration of Tests or Oaths to the least suspected shall be wanting no diligence spar'd which is backt by the Laws of the Land which then more then ever will be waken'd against them and which can't be dispens'd withal must needs be effectual to the utter ruine of the whole party This our Author himself seems to be sensible of and to allow and this is one of his pretty Chimara's and mismatched incongruous Ingredients as he elegantly Phrases it that must go to make up the Composition of a Popish King and can He then or the most violent opposers of the Church of Rome desire any thing beyond this to gratifie their utmost malice upon the Members of that Church than to be assured that a Prince of that very Religion shall be the cause of their destruction suis ipsa Roma viribus ruet For indeed all this a Popish King must do or suffer to be done and all his Apology to them must be what the Phamphleteer says We must expect to be made to us He cannot help it p. 20. He cannot help it that is if the Law will have it so his duty is to see that the Law have its course and whatever his private opinion may be whatever tenderness he may bear to the very persons he shall punish yet to remember his obligation to the publick so far as to give them up to the hands of Justice with the same constancy of mind with the same applause of the present and commendation of all succeeding Ages that the immortal Brutus deliver'd up his darling Sons to the Rods and Axes of the Lectors This had our Author consider'd he would not have so far betrayed his Morals as to have stil'd a Prince in every thing else brave to admiration abject and deplorable Coward for not daring to undertake either unlawful or impossible exploits nor been so out of his Politicks as to call governing by Law sneaking on a Throne But alas good man he has a fit of kindness on the suddain come upon him he is infinitely concern'd for that Scene of war and restless inquietudes such a Prince must have within himself who to spare a Fagget at Smithfield must walk on hot Irons himself and have only Good Friday entertainments on a Throne and with such like no doubt prevailing pieces of Rhetorick would perswade us that a Crown to him would be so uneasie a thing that he had better be without it Alas he would not have the Duke undergo that torment for all the world not he but this is only a flourish of his stile in imitation I suppose of a Brother Sir Formal of his who Laboured as much as he could to prove that the Bill was for the Duke 's good and undertook by dint of Argument to make it appear that the Exclusion of his Royal Highness was an act of Grace Let us come now to an Argument of some moment and consider what weight so solemn a Protestation and so sacred an Oath as a King of England is obliged at his Coronation to take is likely to have with a Prince that has any sense at all either of Honour or Religion Why truly our Characterizer says none at all and tells us That some can give us smart reasons for it He gives us but one which we will examine and try if we can produce as smart ones against it If he keeps his Oath says he we must allow that the only motive that prompts him to keep it is some obligation that he believes is in an Oath Yes we will allow it there is a double obligation of Nature and of Religion Well what then But considering he is of a Religion that can absolve Subjects from their Allegiance And are you sure he is of such a Religion We hear the Roman Catholicks Protestations against that

remember they told you so already in the second page of your Pamphlet and indeed I am of opinion that it ought then to have been considered for till you had remov'd this great bar of impossibility out of the way I see but very little hopes of making any further progress that you could reasonably have This argument lay before you just as you set out and being sensible that this must be o're-passed before you could proceed in your journey you came on indeed with very great briskness and assurance as if you design'd to have leapt the Ditch but your heart fail'd and made the Cowardly Rhodian buggle just upon the brink But now since you are forc't to it and necessity has given you courage to take the leap it is some pleasure to the standers by to see you fallen in the midst of it and so plung'd in the mire as not to be in any visible likelyhood of getting out But let us see how the poor founder'd Jade struggles to work it self out of the Bog If he 's a Papist that says so he knows he belies his Conscience For our late Hellish Plot is a plain demonstration that their whole party believed it possible Now the sport of it is this flouncing does but make him stick the faster For what if he that says so be as good a Protestant as the Author as I am sure a great many are that both say and believe so too why then they may e'en say so and believe so still for all him He has nothing to say to the contrary unless they are Papists that say so and for them mark how shrewdly he is provided First he gives them the Lie and justifies it thus Their whole Party believed it possible and therefore it was possible for so he must infer if he means to prove any thing against the foregoing Argument And is it so then Mr. Characterizer because they believ'd it possible therefore was it so Come come you are a dangerous Man and I wish people knew you that they might have a care of you You forsooth under the notion of running down a Popish Succession are proving the verity of the Popish Faith and asserting every thing to be true that 's believed by a Papist Well I am glad I have found out our Scribler for none could sure have written such stuff but a disguised Priest or at least a Papist in Masquerade But after all granting the Belief of a Roman Catholick that the introducing of Popery was so feasible according to our Author's opinion to be a certain argument that it was so and that this was once the Belief of the whole Party yet how does it follow that it is so still If they be that cunning and politick People as he soon after says they are I am sure they have very little reason to think that that Design which was in so hopeful a forwardness as never since Queen Maries days could be boasted of carried on with all the Art and Contrivance all the Secrecy and Cunning of a most diligent and active Party favoured by several of the greatest Persons of the Kingdom and those most eminent for their Riches and Interest to support the Cause the universal security of the whole Nation that then not so much as dreamt of the Mine that was ready to take Fire conspiring together with those Sons of darkness in the great work of our Destruction and yet after all this was brought to nought should ever at all or at least in this Age be effected when all their measures are broken and all their wicked contrivances laid open and the whole Scene of that Religious Villany displaid to publick view when the whole Nation is still kept awake with continual Fears and fresh Allarms against them while the very meanest of the people are as diligent in this cause as the great ones that descend to joyn with 'em in it and when to prevent any surprise from the Pope or the Gaul there 's not a Goose but cackles for the preservation of our Capitol Alass such projects as these when once discover'd are for that age defeated and when so great a design is to be hatcht anew it ripens as slowly as China does that must be buried an Age under ground before it come to perfection and then too is very often as brittle as that and as easie to be dashed in pieces Thus we see how impossible a thing it is that in the temper which now runs quite through the whole English Nation that Idolatrous Superstition should ever be here re-established which by so unanimous a consent of so many of our wisest Princes and all our people has been rooted out from among us But is not the people of England highly beholding to our Author that in this seeming difficulty has found an expedient for the introducing of it again This Sir Pol of ours is a notable Head-piece let him alone and we shall see as shrewd a piece of contrivance as the bringing over an Army that shall cross the Narrow Seas dry-foot by the help of Cork-shoes Let us see this project of setting up Popery Why first the Foundation of it must be laid o' my word that 's but reasonable and the first Foundation of Popery is Arbitrary Government Ay marry Sir now he says somewhat only make this an Arbitrary Government a small piece of business a trifle that and then Popery follows as naturally as the Fox's body did when he had got his head in at the hole But how must this be done Why Wou'd be shall tell you If a Papist reign we very well understand that the Sheriffs Justices of the Peace and all the judiciary Officers are of the King's Creation Yes and are they not so when a Protestant reigns Yet even such a Prince whose Religion does not in the least render him obnoxious to his people but whose consent with them in the first and chiefest duty of humane Life the Divine Worship should rather make both Prince and People of one Soul and one Mind Let him have all the advantages not only which a Papist must of necessity lose but which a Protestant may wish or imagine would find it so difficult a task to set up for this Arbitrary way of Government which our Author makes so easie a piece of business that I shall not need to tell the consequence of such an Attempt since the impossibility of succeeding in it will never suffer it to be made If then Arbitrary Power be the Foundation of Popery there is very little fear of ever seeing that great Idol rear'd whose Basis can never be laid And of this we shall be so much the surer under the Reign of a Popish King by how much less opportunities he will have to set up this new Model and by how much greater opposition and indefatigable diligence and watchful suspicion the whole Nation will employ lest this vast Trojan Horse Arbitrary Government big with Popery and our utter Destruction