Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	bishop_n	clergy_n	king_n	3,253	5	3.7031	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77897	An enquiry into the measures of submission to the supream authority And of the grounds upon which it may be lawful, or necessary for subjects, to defend their religion lives and liberties.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1689 (1689)	Wing B5809B; ESTC R223572	11,388	16

cases a King may fall from his power and in other cases that he may fall from the exercise of it His deserting his people his going about to enslave or sell them to any other or a furious going abour to destroy them are in the opinion of the most Monarchical Lawyers such abuses that they naturally divest those that are guilty of them of their whole Authority Infamy or Phrenzid do also put them under the Guardian-ship of others All the crowned heads of Europe have at least secretly approv'd of the putting the late King of Portugal under a Guardian-ship and the keeping him still Prisoner for a few Acts of Rage that had been fatal to a very few persons And even our Court gave the first countenance to it tho of all others the late King had the most reason to have done it at least last of all since it justified a Younger brother's supplanting the Elder yet the evidence of the thing carried it even against Interest Therefore if a King go about to subvert the Government and to overturn the whole Constitution he by this must be supposed either to fall from his power or at least from the exercise of it so far as that he ought to be put under Guardians and according to the case of Portugal the next Heir falls naturally to be the Guardian The next thing to be Considered is to see in Fact whether the Foundations of this Government have been struck at and whether those Ertors that have been perhaps committed are only such Malver●atians as ought to be Imputed only to Humane Frailty and to the Ignorance Inadvertencies or Passions to which all Princes may be Subject as well as other men but this will best appear if we consider what are the Fundamental Points of our Government and the chief Securities that we have for our Liberties The Authority of the Law is indeed all in one Word so that if the King pretends to a power to Dispense with Laws there is nothing left upon which the Subject can depend And yet as if Dispensing Power were not enough if Laws are wholly Suspended for all time coming this is plainly a repealing of them when likewise the Men in whose hands the Administration of Justice is put by Law such as Judges and Sheriffs are allowed to tread all Laws under foot even These that infer an incapacity on themselves if they violat them This is such a breaking of the whole Constitution that we can no more have the Administration of Justice so that it is really a Dissolution of the Government since all Tryals Sentences and the Executions of them are become so many unlawful Acts that are null and void of themselves The next thing in our Constitution which secures to us our Laws and Liberties is a Free and Lawful Parliament Now not to mention the breach of the Law of Triennial Parliament it being above three years since we had a Session that enacted any Law Methods have been taken and are daily a taking that render this impossible Parliaments ought to be chosen with an intire Liberty and without either Force or Pre-engagements Whereas if all men are required before hand to enter into Engagements how they will Vote if they were chosen themselves Or how they will give their Votes in the Electing of others This is plainly such a preparation to a Parliament as would indeed make it no Parliament but a Cabal if one were chosen after all that Corruption of Persons who had pre-engaged themselves and after the Threatning and Turning out of all Persons out of Employments who had Refused to do it And if there are such daily Regulations made in the Towns That it is plain those who manage them intend at last to put such a number of Men in the Corporations as will certainly chuse the persons who are recommended to them But above all if there are such a number of Sheriffs and Mayors made over England by whom the Elections must be conducted and returned who are now under an incapacity by Law and so are no Legal Officers and by consequence these Elections that passe under their Authority are null and void If I say it is clear that things are brought to this then the Government is dissolved because it is impossible to have a Free and Legal Parliament in this this State of things If then both the Authority of the Law and the constitution of the Parliament are struck at and dissolved here is a plain subversion of the whole Government But if we enter next into the particular branches of the Government we will find the like disorder among them all The Protestant Religion and the Church of England make a great Article of our Government the Latter being secuted notionly of old by Magna Charta but by many special Laws made of late And there are particular Laws made in K. Charles the First and the late King●s time Ce●●secu them from all Commissions that the King can raise for Judging or Brenringing them If then in opposition to this a Court so condemned is issur●d which proceeds to Judge and Censure the Clergy and even to deisscte them of their Free bolds without so much as the Form of a Tryal tho this is the most indispensable Law of all these that secures the Property of England And if the King pretends that he can require the Clergy to publish all his Arbitrary Declarations And in particular one that stricks at their whole Scalement and has Ordered Processe to be begun against all that disobeyed this illegal Warrant and has treated so great a number of the Bishops as Criminals only for representing to him the reasons of their not obeying him If likewise the King is not satisfied to profess his own Religion openly tho even that is contrary to Law but has sent Ambassadors to Rome and received Nuncio's from thence which is plainly Treason by Law if likewise many Popish Churches and Chapels have been publickly opened if several Colledges of jesuits have been set up in divers parts of the Nation and One of the Order has been made a Privy Counsellour and a principal Minister of State and if Papists and even those who turn to that Religion tho declared Traitors by Law are brought into all the chief Employments both Military and Civil then it is plain that all the rights of the Church of England and the whole establishment of the Protestant Religion are struck at and designed to be overturned since all these things as they are notoriously illegal so they evidently demonstrate that the great design of them all is the rooting out this Pestilent Heresie in their stile I mean the Protestant Religion In the next place if in the whole course of Justice it is visible that their is a constant practiseing upon the Judges that they are turned out upon their varying from the Intention of the Court and if Men of not Reputation or Abilities are put in their places If an Army is kept up

in time of Peace and Men who withdrew from that illegal service are hanged up as Criminals without any collour of Law which by consequence are so many Murders And if the souldierie are connived and encouraged in the most enormous Crimes that so they may be thereby prepared to commit great ones And from single Rapes and Murders proceed to a rape upon all our Liberties and a Destruction of the Nation If I say all these things are true in Fact then it is plain that there is such a Dissolution of the Government made that there is not any one part of it left Sound and Entire And if all these things are done now it is easie to imagine what may be expected when Arbitrary Power that spares no Man And Popery that spares no Heretick are finally established then we may look for nothing but Gabelles Tailles Impositions Benevolences and all sorts of Illegal Taxes As from the other we may expect Burnings Massacres and Inquisitions In what is doing in Scotland we may gather what is to be expected in England where if the King has over and over again declared That he is vested with an Absolute Power to which all are bound to Obey without Reserve And has upon that annulled almost all the Acts of Parliament that passed in K. James l. Minority tho they were ratified by himself when he came to be of Age And were confirmed by all the subsequent Kings not excepting the present We must them conclude from thence what is resolved here in England and what will be put in Execution as soon as it is thought that the times can bear it When likewise the whole settlement of Ireland is shaken and the Army that was raised and is maintained by Taxes that were given for an Army of English Protestants to secute them from a new Massacre by the Irish Papists is now all filled with Irish Papists as well as almost all the other Employments It is plain that not only all the British Protestants Inhabiting that island are in dayly danger of being butchered a second time but that the Crown of England is in danger of losing that Island it being now put wholly into the hands and power of the Native Irish who as they formerly offered themselves up sometimes to the Crown of Spain sometimes to the Pope and once to the Duke of Lorrain so are they prehaps at this present treating with another Court for the sale and surrender of the Island and for the Massacre of the English in it If thus all the several Branches of our Constitution are dissolved it might be at least expected that one part should be left entire and that is the Regal Dignity and yet that is prostituted when we see a Young Child put in the reversion of it and pretended to be the Prince of Wales Concerning whose being Born of the Queen there appears to be not only no certain proofs but there are all the presumptions that can possibly be imagined to the contrary No proofs were ever given either to the Princess of Denmark or to any other Protestant Ladies in whom we ought to repose any confidence that the Queen was ever with Child that whole matter being mannaged with so much mysteriousness that there were violent and publick suspitions of it before the Birth But the whole contrivance of the Birth the sending away the Princess of Denmark the sudden shortning of the Reckoning the Queens sudden going to St. James's her no less sudden Delivery the hurrying the Child into another Room without shewing it to these present and without their hearing it cry●s And the Mysterious Conduct of all since that time No satisfaction being given to the Princess of Denmark upon her return from the Bath nor to any other Protestant Ladies of the Queens having been really brought to Bed These are all such evident Indications of a base Imposture in this matter that as the Nation has the justest Reason in the World to doubt of it so they have all possible reason to be at no quiet till they see a Legal and Free-Parliament Assembled which may Impartially and without either Fear or Corruption Examine that whole matter If all these matters are true in Fact then I suppose no Man will doubt that the whole Foundations of this Government and all the most Sacred Parts of it are overturned And as to the Truth of all these Suppositions that is left to every English-Mans Judgement and Sense FINIS