Selected quad for the lemma: enemy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
enemy_n	advantage_n	great_a	part_n	1,014	5	3.9894	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79847	A letter from a true and lawfull member of Parliament, and one faithfully engaged with it, from the beginning of the war to the end. To one of the lords of his highness councell, upon occasion of the last declaration, shewing the reasons of their proceedings for securing the peace of the Commonwealth, published on the 31th of October 1655.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1656 (1656)	Wing C4424; Thomason E884_2; ESTC R207305	35,184	70

their dependance upon and devotion to you there needs no evidence beyond the Book lately written by Mr. White a Romish Priest and dedicated to your Favourite Sir Kenelm Digby entituled The Grounds of Obedience and Government in which he justifies all the Grounds and Maxims in your Declarations and determines positively That you ought to be so far from performing any promise or observing any Oath you have taken if you know that it is for the good of the People that you break it albeit they foreseeing all that you now see did therefore binde you by Oath not to do it That you offend against both your Oath and Fidelity to the People if you maintain those limitations you are sworn to and sure what you do must be supported by such Casuists Lastly we know very well how far you are from confiding in your own Army how jealous you are of many of the Officers and more of the Common Souldiers and therefore that you raise those several little Armies in the several Counties with which you hope to suppress or controul the standing Armie upon any occasion when the sense of their own and their Countries miserable condition shall render it less devoted to you And we likewise know how in distrust of the whole English Nation you are treating to bring over a Body of Swisse to serve you as the Janizaries do the Turk and in order to controul your own Army as well as to reduce the People to an implicit obedience to your Government That most of the Money which was collected amongst us for the poor Protestants of the Valley of Lucern is returned and applyed to the carrying on those Levies and that many are already landed in England and are now about London upon pretence that they are to be sent to plant in Ireland whereas they are kept for the compleating those Regiments which are every day expected to arrive and then you have compleated your work and brought the onely lasting calamity upon the Kingdome which you have hitherto forborn to do and with which odious reproach you charged the Counsels of the former times onely for intending to introduce forreign Forces I cannot end this Discourse without taking notice of your so frequent mention throughout this Declaration and indeed upon all occasions in your ordinary conversation of the continued assistance and presence of God in whatsoever you have gone about of his gratious dispensations and his visible hand manifested in your successes and of his more than usual care and kindness towards you whereas if you would soberly revolve what is passed and dispassionately consider and weigh your present condition it may be you would finde your Case so rare and wonderfull that there have seldome been a People in the World who have had more reason to believe themselves to lye under the signal and terrible displeasure of God Almighty and against whom his vengeance is more manifestly threatned than you at present have You have had all the advantages and all the successes which you could ever propose and hope for and some greater than you could hope for and your perplexities and insecurity remains greater than before you have not an Enemy in the three Kingdomes who stands in opposition of your power or who indeed is Owner of a Sword to resist you and yet you avow and discover such a proportion of fear that new Armies must be raised for your defence you have gotten all the Wealth of the three Kingdomes into your hands and enjoy none your wants and necessities being so great when you had little credit and less interest to do good or harm you had many Friends and few who hated you and now it is in your power to make great whom you please and to destroy all whom you are angry with your Friends leave and forsake you and you are grown so universally odious that you may say to those who adhere to you as Catiline did to his Army Neque locus neque amicus quisquam teget quem arma non texerint All your safety is in your Army and yet you fear that little less than your Enemies How many of those who bore parts with you in your darkest Designs have laid violent hands upon themselves out of the conscience of their own wickedness And is not that Curse in Leviticus fallen upon the rest And upon them that are left alive of you I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword and they shall fall when none pursues Can there be a greater slavery than to be afraid of those whom you have subdued And hath not God delivered you as he did those of Judah and Jerusalem to trouble to astonishment and to hissing as you see with your eyes So that in truth setting aside the peace and tranquillity of minde which must prepare the joyes of the next World for us and considering meerly the delight and pleasure in this into which some degree of reputation the affection of some Friends and the fidelity of those we trust are necessary Ingredients I had rather be the most undone man that this Declaration hath preyed upon than my Lord Protector or any one of his Councel in whose names it is published To conclude As it is manifestly destructive to all the liberty and property of the People and to the Laws of the Kingdome by observation whereof alone those liberties and that property can be preserved so to common understanding it must be the most fatal Instrument against your own interest and security and make all men see how inconsistent theirs is with the Government you have erected You have pulled up Parliaments by the roots which are the onely natural security the Nation can have against Oppression and Tyrannie and which we thought we had exactly provided for by the Triennial Bill and which will at present authorize the People to assemble and make their Elections You have cancelled all Obligations of Trust and taken away all possible confidence from all men that they can ever enjoy any thing that they can call their own during this Government and having so little pleasure left them in life they will preferre the losing it in some Noble Attempt to free their Country and themselves from the bondage and servitude they live under to the dying ignobly in some loathsome Prison when you please to be afraid of them Do not value your selves upon the terrour you infuse into the People by your frequent Sacrifices of Blood and exposing their Friends to them on Scaffolds and on Gallows Remember that it is recorded of Ann de Burg who was burnt in France in the year 1559. upon matter of Religion That the death and constancy of a man so conspicuous did make many curious to know what Religion that was for which he had so couragiously endured punishment and made the numbers increase exceedingly Trust me you have gotten nothing by those Spectacles and men return from them more confirmed in their detestation of you than terrified from any of their purposes towards you And when the despair you have put them into shall make them consider that as the misery calamity servitude and infamy under which the three Kingdomes suffer proceed entirely from you so that they will be determined with you That the general hatred and detestation of you is such that it is very probable that those Noble Patriots whose spirits shall be raised to destroy you shall not onely reap unutterable Honour from it but finde safety in it either from the Confusion that must instantly attend or from the abhorring your Memories in those that shall survive you If they shall perish in or upon their Attempt what a Glorious Fame will they leave behind them what a sweet Odour will their Memories have with the present and succeeding Ages Statues will be erected to them and their Names recorded in those Roles which have preserved the Bruti the Horatii the Fabii and all those who have dyed out of debt to their Country by having paid the utmost that they owed to it their Merits will be remembred as those of the Primitive Martyrs and their Children and Kindred will be alwayes looked upon as the Descendants from the Liberators of their Country and esteemed accordingly their Fate will be like his in the Son of Syrach If he dye he shall leave a greater name than a thousand and if he live he shall increase it And all the Peace Tranquillity Splendor and Glory which the Kingdomes shall hereafter enjoy which will be the greatest that any Nation in Europe hath been possessed of in the awe and dread their Enemies will have of them in the reverence of their Friends and the full veneration of all the World will still be imputed and attributed to those Heroick Spirits the Authors of this first deliverance And besides the preventing that Deluge of Blood with which the Land will be otherwise overwhelmed by this means the Nation will be restored to the Honour it hath lost by freeing it self without any forreign help from that miserable Condition into which we are fallen by our own meer Folly and Madness And they that come after him shall be astonished at his day as they that went before were affrighted Job 18. 20. FINIS Matth. 13. 29. Deut. 21. 50. Joseph lib. 17. c. 3. 2 Sam. 23. 3. Full Ho War ●… 41. Pag. 21. Cooks Pleas of the Crown fol. 23. Salust Pag. 14. Plut. vitâ Timol Liv. li 7. Cooks Pleas of the Crown fol. 9. Liv. lib. 1. Grot. de Jure Bel. Pacis Wisdom 17. 12. Cant. 8. 6. Plutar. vitâ Sol. 1 Kings 20. 24. Lo. Cook jurisd. of Co. fol. 42. Hist. Conc. Tr. fol. 396. Vit. Phil. Pag. 38. Pag. 89. Salust Lev. 26. 36. 2 Chron. 29. 8. Ecclesiastic 39. 11.

I saw a great Army of that Nation ready to enter the Kingdome upon those unworthy Conditions on our part that ought never to have been submitted to I was in that perplexity that I thought of nothing but casting my self at the Kings feet I was ashamed that having so long reproached the King with designs of calling over forreign Forces as if the affections of his People should fail in any thing that was just for him to attempt and having prevailed so far upon the People by those reproaches we our selves should call in a forreign Army to help us and after we had pretended to ask nothing of the King but what the People would not be contented without and therefore because the Kingdome generally did desire and expect it that we our selves should draw in an Army of Strangers of which there could be no need if it were not to impose that upon the Kingdome which it did not desire I called to minde that Plutarch seemed to commend Lysander for having thought it less dishonour and reproach unto the Grecians to be overcome by other Grecians than to go slatter the barbarous people and seek to them that had gold and silver enough but otherwise no goodness or honesty I remembred what a costly Visit they had made to us two years before and did truly believe that what we could suffer from one another could be nothing to the lasting Calamity they would bring upon us who I was confident could never be a means of restoring Peace and Happiness to the Kingdom In a word I thought of nothing more than of renouncing those who had so apparently renounced their Professions and of cordially joyning with the King's Party Whil'st I was thus resolved I heard of the cold reception they had who were already gone to Oxford and that the Court there carried it self as if it could do its business without help and thought themselves losers by passing by any thing that had been done amiss The anger and indignation I contracted hereupon made me change my purpose and to revolve that if others should be of the same minde I had been and desert the Parliament there would be none left to make reasonable Conditions for them who had been engaged in the Quarrel which I perswaded my self would at some time be done And I was sure that though we might have exceeded our Jurisdiction and done many unlawfull things our being together was still lawfull and whil'st it was so we should at last upon good or ill fortune be Parties to such an Agreement as would secure our selves who staid which was more than they could promise themselves who went away Hereupon I was fixed never more to think of quitting the Parliament but to run its fortune and accordingly I proceeded to the end of the War and never left the House notwithstanding the several Factions and Animosities and the Violence and Tumults which I much disliked untill I was with the m●jor part of the House of Commons kept from thence by the Army and used in that scornfull manner as is notorious enough because after the Treaty at the Isle of Wight I desired that an Agreement should be made with the King I have troubled you with this short recollection of my part in this business that you may see how far I have been from favouring Cavaliers by whom I have had the honour to be thought so considerable that I was alwayes excepted from pardon in those Proclamations and Declarations which then issued out Whil'st there was a War carried on by the Parliament I ventured my life and lost my blood in that War and whil'st there was a Parliament I continued in the service of it and since that time I have enjoyed my self in as much peace and tranquillity as the Calamities of the time would suffer me and without further opposing the present power than in my heart not submitting to it or taking it to have any colour of Law or Justice or Religion or Reason to support it And as I do heartily ask God forgiveness for the ill I have been guilty of during the War so I do humbly thank his Divine Majestie for preserving me from the guilt of the ill that hath been done since and I hope the remembrance of the former or apprehension of any thing that may be the consequence of it shall never work upon me to approve the latter And so I come to your Declaration it self the several parts whereof I shall speak to without observing precisely the order they are in but taking the liberty to marshal them according to my own way and method Let me then begin with complaining that you assume to your selves throughout the Declaration the stile of the Best Affected of the Nation of those with whom the Honour and Interest of the English Nation is deposited and indeed of the Nation it self and reckon all who are not pleased with the Government you have so manifestly usurped Enemies to the Nation which you must give us leave who have sweat and bled more than any of you for the interest and liberty of the Nation and are sure a more considerable part of it both in weight and measure to take very ill of you We cannot we must not endure to have it believed that the English Nation is shrunk into my Lord Protector and his Highness Councel who all together had not the interest of one common Village when these Troubles began you may be such a Nation as God threatned his chosen people withall in Deuteronomy A Nation of fierce Countenance which shall not regard the person of the old nor shew favour to the young The Latine Translation renders it Gentem impudentem an insolent sort of people that cared neither for God nor Man The Grammarians give the stile usually to Sects or Professions of Men Natio Philosophorum Natio Poetarum and among the Jews the Sect of the Pharisees was frequently called the Nation of the Pharisees you will finde in Josephus a very lively description of them who he sayes were so much addicted to self opinion and boasted themselves to be the exactest Observers of the Law in all the Country to whom the women were very much addicted as to those who were much beloved of God as in outward appearance they made shew to be These were such as durst oppose themselves against Kings full of fraud arrogancy and rebellion presuming to raise War upon their motions of spirit and to rebel and offend their Princes at their pleasure and whereas all the Nation of the Jews had sworn to be faithfull to Caesar and to the Estate of the King those onely refused to take the Oath so far he And if you please this Nation you may be except you choose rather for you bear great love and affection to the Jews to be of their fourth Sect which the same Author tells you was founded by Judas of Galilee and accorded in all things with the Pharisees but that they were so

power how exerorbitant soever that we thought only related to them You know the wise answer given to him that asked what City he believed to be best governed Solon said That City where such as receive no wrong do as earnestly defend others to whom wrong is offered as if the wrong and injury had been offered to themselves And that Generall was worthily extolled qui aliquid esse crederet in hostem nefas Our too little circumspection and tenderness of that hath brought the Case to be our own If the Royall party will change their interest that is keepe their old Monarchicall Principles and apply them to the support of your interest they shall be received entertained and preferred by you you have manifested it enough to them by trusting none more than those who have done so They are onely in danger of whom you are afraid in respect of their conversation of their intentions towards the present Government and of their interest not to submit to that Government which you say is established and they believe or know to be but usurped And we shall the better finde who they are and make some discoverie of the number of them and consequently of the danger that is threatned from them if we take a short view of the Government by what degrees and by what Authority it is imposed upon us and how far the severall interests of those who have at least equally with your selves opposed the common Enemy are secured and provided for and we shall thereby the more easily judge how far we are obliged in conscience or discretion to submit to it of whom you are most like to be afraid and so who are most probably in the end to be charged with the maintenance of those forces which you will finde necessarie to secure that Government and your feares that it will not be secure What is become of the Parliament and the Parliament partie that first undertook that war and pursued it till they were without an eneny is too melancholick a question to expect an answer to You cannot take it ill that I say this is not the Government we then undertook and engaged to preserve and defend and you will give me leave to observe that there is not one officer in all your Armies that in the beginning of that warre was above the degree of a Captaine so far are you from being the People who bore the heat of the day or who deprived the enemy of of their armes Nor is there one person amongst you who had then interest or reputation enough to engage ten men in the quarrell nor is one of those who had in any credit now with you or trusted in any part of your Government So that you may reasonably conclude that as they cannot hold themselves obliged to submit to it so much lesse engaged to support it and consequently amongst that number of which you have reason to be afraid After you had by bringing your Army to London and imprisoning the major part of the Commons and dissolving the House of Peeres extinguished Kingly Government erected your selves into a Commonwealth and insteed of one set up as many Kings as you had left members of your Parliament all who were uncontrolable and above the reach of Justice and exercised what kinde of Power and Tyrannie they pleased upon their fellow subjects The people were universally engaged to maintain and defend that Government of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England All Princes and forraigne States taught to make their addresses to it Warre and Peace declared by it The Keepers of the Great Seal of England the Judges and Ministers of Justice appointed in the same manner and the whole Administration of Justice throughout the Kingdome was in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England The Army professed it self entirely at the obedience of the Parliament and absolutely to be disposed by it and well it might do so there being so many Officers of the Army Members of Parliament that they had reason to believe all Commands would be suitable to their own desires if they desired no more than what they hitherto professed the support of that Government which not onely every person who had the least trust share or benefit in it had sworn to defend but whosoever sued for favour or Justice from it were bound to subscribe to In this manner all things were ordered Ireland reduced to perfect obedience and our enemies there to perfect slavery Scotland as your own Poet sayes was preferred by Conquest to serve us So that we were not only without any visible Enemy and so sufficiently revenged of our friends that they could be of use to none but our selves The Parliament now thought it high time that they who were in truth the Conquerors the People at whose charge alone the warre had been carried on should receive some benefit from their Conquests That when they had no enemy at all they need not have so great an Army and therefore they betook themselves to councels of good husbandry and to thinke of preferring them who had taken so much paines in their service to ease and plenty to give those Estates to them which they had taken from others and by these gratuities to disband some part of their Army But that was a Jurisdiction you never intended they should exercise you were well enough contented that they should have the Soveraigne power to raise money for the payment of the Armies but when they presumed to speak of disbanding those Armies you wisely remembred how insecure you should be without those forces which had raised you to the height you were at you remembred how many former orders you had disobeyed how you had triumphed over the long Robe and the Priviledges of Parliament and albeit Acts of Prdon and Oblivion had been passed for your Indemnity you concluded if the Government should once fall into those peaceable hands they would find ways enough to avoid the observance of any promises they had been cōpelled to make against their wills and hereupon for the good of the people you resolved to take the Government into your own hands and according to the advice given by the Servants of the King of Syria Take the Kings away every man out of his place and put Captains in their roomes You brought armed men into the house of Parliament forced the Members with many opprobrious speeches to leave their places locked up the doors that there might be no more resort thither and appointed a select number of the Officers of the Army to provide for all that King or Parliament used to do and here was an end of your Commonwealth which Government all were so solemnly engaged to defend nor is there any person who adheres to the Principles of a Commonwealth in any trust or esteeme with you Nay it is very observable and notorious that of all that select number which helped you to be free from Monarchy by sitting

est Regem esse summons them into his presence with the highest and sharpest language reproaches them for disputing his Authority by whom they were called together requires them to renounce and disclaime that liberty before they proceeded to further consultation and to that purpose delivered an Instrument without subscribing to which the Band of Souldiers which guarded the door of the Parliament house would not suffer any man to enter whereupon a Major part of the Parliament departed to their houses and they only went in who submitted to the conditions which many afterwards did who in detestation of the violence at that time had forborne to subscribe Thus he who without the consent or privity of a dozen persons had assumed to himself the title and stile of Protector of three Kingdomes and therefore found a generall submission because he had bound himself within a short time to call a Parliament that might settle the Government when it was now met and possessed of the power it was to have because they came together upon his call would not suffer them to question any thing he had done or what he should do hereafter their submission as he said to his Authority of summoning them being a tacit acknowledgement of his power which he would not endure to be argued against without calling to minde besides the practice of these last ill years that by the express letter of the Law any restraint from altering or revoking an Ordinance or Act of Parliament it self is voyd being against the jurisdiction and power of Parliament When he had thus reformed his Parliament he gave them leave to sit together to consult how they might contribute to the support of that power they were not able to impair and to lay new burthens on the People the envy whereof they should rather bear than himself But as the Pope Paul the 4th complained in the Consistory of those who reported he could make but four Cardinals in regard of that which he had sworn in the Conclave and said That this was to binde the Popes Authority which is absolute That it is an Article of Faith that the Pope cannot be bound and much less can binde himself and that to say otherwise was a manifest Heresy So he took it very ill that they should believe upon any Articles in the Instrument of Government to which he had so solemnly sworn before he assumed the Title that they might lessen his Power or the Army by which it is supported and therefore when he saw they betook themselves to those Counsels which might lessen the insupportable burthen the People undergo for the maintenance of as numerous Forces and greater indeed than were ever on foot when the Common Enemy had Towns and Armies to oppose and that they presumed to speak of disbanding part of them he sent for them and after he had stylo Imperatorio reprehended their presumption and checked them in sharper language than ever King gave himself leave to use to his Subjects in Parliament contrary to his Oath and before the time was expired which was assigned for their sitting he dissolved them and takes upon himself Authority with the consent of such whom he pleases to make of his Councel to make and repeal Laws to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the People and which is the highest expression that can be made of his Tyrannie to publish this Declaration whereas it is notorious in the Law That to commit the power of Parliament to a few is against the dignity of Parliament and no such Commission can be granted even by the Parliament it self You know how strange soever it be that all this is true and you may then easily compute of what rank or kinde of men they must be who are delighted or in their hearts not opposite to your present Government how very few there are in your Councel or Army who were for King and Parliament and how those Principles have been asserted by you is known to all men what affection they have for you who with so much hazard and infamy served you in the extinguishing the Monarchy and what indignities they receive at your hands is likewise within your own view What is become of those two swelling names which for so long time filled our mouths and under the shelter of one of which all men took Sanctuary the Presbyterians and Independents Is there one man of either party who without renouncing the Principles of his party is in credit or trust with you and do they not both every day expect from you the exemplification of that memorable Judgement of Philip of Macedon who upon the hearing a difference that was fallen out between two men of very seditious and turbulent natures determined That the one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and the other should run after him as fast as he could You see then how very few there can be in the three Kingdomes except those who possess great Offices and Estates from you and even of those many think themselves disobliged by seeing others of less merit than they think themselves more obliged who are without malice and revenge in their heart and such a leaning and adhering to their several old interests that nothing is wanting for the discovery thereof but a fitting opportunity and you have declared that propension and disposition in them to be Crime enough to forfeit all that they have and you cannot wonder if upon so fair warning they prepare as well as they can and at least good resolutions for their own security Alas Sir we know how little confidence you have in any of your old Friends who you believe will never heartily submit to a Government they never intended to erect and who have not sacrificed their wealth their blood and their peace to suppress a Royal Family accustomed by a succession of so many hundred years to command and to be obeyed and to invest another inferiour to most of our selves in the same interest and power and so to use your own expression to entail the quarrel and prevent the means to reconcile Posterity You say you will not in express tearms lay to the charge of the Royal Party the swarming of those Jesuits which are now croaking amongst us turning themselves into all forms and shapes to deceive and seduce men from the Truth I wish we had not all too much reason to charge you in express tearms with what you will not and no doubt cannot charge them What liberty the Priests and Jesuits take how far they prevail upon the People what countenance they receive from this Government is apparent enough by not proceeding against them in Justice as if no Laws were in force for their punishment Your private Negotiations with the Pope and your promises that as soon as you can establish your own Greatness you will protect the Catholicks and the insinuations that you will countenance them much further are sufficiently known and understood And of