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	king_n	queen_n	5,035	5	7.0274	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46942	An argument proving, that the abrogation of King James by the people of England from the regal throne, and the promotion of the Prince of Orange, one of the royal family, to throne of the kingdom in his stead, was according to the constitution of the English government, and prescribed by it in opposition to all the false and treacherous hypotheses, of usurpation, conquest, desertion, and of taking the powers that are upon content / by Samuel Johnson.	Johnson, Samuel, 1649-1703.	1692 (1692)	Wing J821; ESTC R2049	28,065	64

Bishop of Lincoln Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in King James the First 's time assures us was so in his Answer to Dr. Cole Now to establish the Throne upon a Notorious Untruth is to establish it upon Mr. Milton's Vacuum where it must fall ten thousand thousand Fathom deep and know no end of falling The last Doctrine that we are to be subject to the Powers that Are or any thing that is Uppermost is at the first sight so wretched a Foundation of our Allegiance that I scorn to confute it For whereas a Rightful Title is as immoveable as the Pillars of the Earth on the other hand upon this Supposition that Obedience is only due to the Present prevailing Powers it is but shifting the Guards and in an Instant all the Peoples Allegiance bids their King Good-night Secondly All these Hypotheses besides their Vndermining the King's Throne as if he had no rightful Title to it have another Fault in them that they leave nothing of Liberty or Property in the Nation This Revolution had almost stunnied the Hierarchy and was so cross to their Pulpit-Doctrines of Passive Obedience Vnalterable Succession Indefeasibleness and Vnaccountableness of Princes and the rest of their Iargon That it was very much feared by some of their Disciples that they would not Comply nor Swear to this Government and so must leave their Places and that thereupon would be a Famine of the Word But there would be no miss of their Preaching to the World's End if it were such as is before us So long as People have a Bible they had better be without their false Glosses upon it Which the People of England have more reason to hate than King James had the Geneva Notes printed in Queen Elizabeth's Bibles for which Reason he forbad all Marginal Notes upon his Translation of the Bible In the Conference at Hampton-Court his Censure of those Notes is this That they were very Partial Vntrue Seditious and savouring too much of Dangerous and Traiterous Conceits As for Example Exod. 1. 19. where the Marginal Note alloweth Disobedience unto Kings c. But I think the Text allowed it before ver 17. But the Midwives feared God and did not as the King of Egypt commanded them but saved the Men-Chidren alive Was ever such an Exception taken against express Scripture And yet because of his Vnsensical Apothegm No Bishop no King repeated over and over again in that Conference and that Ecclesiasticus was a Bishop for which Reason the Puritans were against that piece of Apocrypha being read in Churches and such-like Clawing of the Clergy the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury said That undoubtedly his Majesty spake by the Special Assistance of God's Spirit So easy is it for those that call themselves the Church to make Men Inspired and Saints and Martyrs when they please Vpon the Prince of Orange's Invasion and all Honest Mens Rebellion as that Party do and must term it they could not for their Lives make both Ends meet and because they could not make their slavish Doctrine of Passive Obedience agree with the Revolution they have endeavoured to bring back the Revolution to them and to reinstate as just in the Condition we were in five Years ago It 's no matter for the Church of Rome's Infallibility Impenitency will serve their Turn as well and if they never repent they have never err'd Hereupon while I was a poor Prisoner and the Eldest of all those that lay upon a Publick Account in England tho I thought a Thanksgiving-Deliverance from Popery and Slavery would have reached me in the first place by Seniority but as I was saying while I was a Prisoner and before it pleased God that my Liberty fell into my Lap to which I was born and which I threw away with both Hands and with my Eyes Open for my Country's Service some Years before it was taken away from me was I sollicited to write upon the Desertion in Answer to King James's Claiming Letter at Rochester I challenge the piece of Prelacy who would have put me upon that Iob of under-journey VVork to Print the Letter which I wrote the next Morning upon that Occasion and to Answer it if he can In short I shewed that by the Law of England no Advantage could be taken of a King's withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been Voluntary as all the VVorld knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to Return again in forty Days and yet I guess the same Person had the confidence afterwards to write upon the Desertion and to found this Government upon it But I then in those early Days foresaw that their Design was to begin where the attoning Passive fag-end of the Lion and Vnicorn Sermon left off and that they intended to enslave the Nation over again with the only alteration of the Name of James into William Their Intent was that all things should run in the late Arbitrary Channel For which Reason the very mention of King James's Forfeiting his Remainder in the Crown by Vnqualifying himself for it before he had it and of his Abdicating the Crown when he had it by breaking the Fundamental Contract and by his Tyranny and Subversion of the Laws was Ratsbane to these Men and would have hurt their Passive Doctrine And therefore there was need of Slight of Hand to give a new Turn to the Peoples Delivering themselves and to call it King James's own Desertion Well then according to this Hypothesis of Desertion till a King runs away of his own accord which was not true in the last Instance nor ever will be to the end of the World the People of England have no Remedy against Oppression nor can ever be rid of a Tyrant which makes Ours and our Posterities Case worse than it was in K. James's Time For once in an hundred Years there may fall out some Vnhappy Occasion to Assert the English Liberties which never yet were so stinted as to lie at the Mercy of so Vnlikely a Case as a Prince's own Desertion We had better have been without our present happy Deliverance than have it upon those Terms for that would be selling a perpetual Estate of Inheritance for one Year's Purchase For though we have a good Prince at present yet there may arise such another Pharaoh as knew not Joseph But no doubt the Flattering Sir Politick foresaw that if one Prince might Forfeit for his Arbitrary Government another might and this would be no agreeable Court-Doctrine Yes verily it is even so For whoever acts King James's Part ought to have King James's Fate only I wish it him Earlier And I so far rely upon the Integrity and Sincerity of his Majesty's Publick Declaration that a Single Deliverance was the least part of his Care but his main End was to secure the Nation from Relapsing into the Miseries of Arbitrary Government any more So that if we should Relapse into the Miseries of Arbitrary Government which

AN ARGUMENT PROVING That the Abrogation of King Iames by the People of England from the Regal Throne and the Promotion of the Prince of Orange one of the Royal Family to the Throne of the Kingdom in his stead was according to the Constitution of the English Government and Prescribed by it In Opposition to all the false and treacherous Hypotheses of Usurpation Conquest Desertion and of taking the Powers that Are upon Content By SAMVEL IOHNSON Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit Horat. LONDON Printed for the Author 1692. TO THE COMMONS of ENGLAND in Parliament Assembled THE favourable Acceptance which my Bounden Services to my Country as I ever accounted them though they were always difficult and upon the Forlorn have heretofore found in your Honourable House hath caused me to bring you this small Offering In former Days an Appeal to the Parliament was a removal of the Cause from White-Hall but it is our peculiar Happiness in this Reign that we live under a Prince who had no other Business here but to restore the Constitution which as his Declaration speaks was wholly overturned in the former Reigns and who lay under a happy Necessisty of assisting the People to assert their Rights before he could secure His own Right and Remainder in the Crown This Subversion and Overturning of the best Frame of Government in the World was very artificially managed and began at your House which has been run down as an Innovation and no Essential Part of Parliament a Mushroom sprung up in the 49th of H. 3. and founded in Rebellion as if You had no deeper Root in the Government than Corn has upon the House top This scurvy Pedigree of the Commons in Parliament drawn up by Dr. Brady was so well liked by the Loyal Clergy and particularly he was so applauded by Jovian that Mr. Petyt found the Tide so strong against him as not to venture on a Reply though to my knowledg he was furnished with a very good one But that is not so material when you began as what you are and of the two it is better to be an Upstart Authority than a silly Cypher and thus you have been represented to all the degrees of Insignificancy Your Precarious Being was told you by a wonderful Statesman who did not spare to inform you That as the King had Created the House of Commons by his Power so he would Preserve it by his Goodness but then come some of the Clergy and say what little Creatures both you and the House of Lords are Dr. Hicks lodges in the King the whole Legislative or the Power that makes any form of Words a Law He says The Sovereign Power may indeed be limited as to the Exercise of this Legislative Power which may be confined to Bills and Writings prepared by others but still it is the Soveraign Authority who gives Life and Soul to the dead Letter of them Now this is so contrary to the Constitution as nothing can be more For not only King Charles the First acknowledged that the Laws were jointly made by the King Lords and Commons though the Houses insisted upon more but also in every Act of Parliament that is made it is expresly said in the Enacting part that it is made by the Authority of them all whereas by this Doctrine the two Houses have only a Ministerial Office of preparing a Form of Words and furnishing Bills and Writings as the King's Printers use to do you with Pen Ink and Paper And in short the King alone makes Laws and the two Houses only find Stuff Now if this sort of Paradox had been advanced concerning the Parish-Chest of Barking where the Parson has one Key and each of the Church-wardens one they could soon have Mathematically shewn him that his Key had but one Third of the Chest-opening-Power and such a Mistake would only have made a Iest But in a Case of more Consequence than all the Land in the Nation if it were now to be sold is worth such false Positions are very Dangerous For if the Legislative were once contracted in one single Hand it were as absurd to say it could be limited in the Exercise of it as it is to say that your House has not Power over your own Orders to recal and alter them as you think fit What shall hinder the whole Legislative At this rate the Saying of which my Lord Lauderdale has had the Honour would have been true that he hoped to see the King's Edicts to be Laws and above the Laws for all New Laws are always too hard for the old ones And the Arbitrary Proclamation to forbid the Nation to Petition for a Parliament had been a Law if the whole Legislative Authority was in it for the L. C. I. North found it very easy to supply the place of both Houses in drawing up the Form of Words However this is very civil Usage to what you have had from other Hands for in this way you have still left you the Honour of being Clerks and of drawing up a Form of Words But Dr. Womack in his Short Way to a lasting Settlement printed by Robert Clavel the chief Design of which was to out the two Houses from having any share or Authoritative Hand as he calls it in making the Laws and was shortly after made a Bishop for the Service has this very insolent Expression The Houses you say have a hand in the Legislation So hath the Beggar in my Almes As soon as I saw this Odious Comparison I knew it was falsly applied for even the Coronation-Oath acknowledges that the Laws of England are of the Folks choosing and it is certain that Beggars are no Choosers But I humbly beseech both Houses upon this Occasion to have a special care how they suffer this sort of Men to have the Ascendant who treat them in this manner because we have a very harsh English Proverb concerning Beggars In the Year of Jovian 83. wherein these Doctrines were published and rung all over the Nation some of the Honourable Beggars that were for a Bill of Exclusion of the Duke of York in his First Desertion and were for keeping him out when he was out after their Lives had been long hunted by these Men fell into their Nets Which Bill had given us this happy Reign several Years sooner and had saved the Lives of more than an Hundred thousand Men whose Blood lies at their Door but it was then their Hour and the Power of Darkness Let that Year be blotted out of Chronology These Doctrines I conceive are Destructive to the Nation because they undermine the Power and Authority of Parliaments who represent the Nation and are the Conservers of our Liberties if we had any but those are all taken away by another of their new-adopted Church-Doctrines of Passive-Obedience which I therefore look upon as the worst of them because it lays waste all your Laws after you have made

the Crown And if he has not what has he to do with it For my part I will never pay Allegiance to him as an Vsurper he ought rather to be told daily by his Chaplains that are of that mind that he ought to make Restitution It is not Lawful for thee to have thy Father Iame's Crown or else they are no St. John Baptists A Revelation sent on purpose from Heaven cannot oblige us to be Subjects to an Vsurper under that Notion because it is a Notion of Wrong and God himself cannot make Wrong to be Right And then shall any Wretch bid us in his Name to Swear to be Faithful to acknowledged Wrong and to be False to acknowledged and unextinguished Right In short an Vsurped Crown is a Stol'n Crown it is Blood 's Crown It is true indeed that God can give Kingdoms to whomsoever he will I know it He can make them a New World on purpose for them or take the Forfeiture of the Old and dispose of his own Creation as he pleases But then it must appear to his Will and he must send a New Revelation into the World along with such a highly Favoured Prince to every Man that is to be his Subject For I am not bound to do what God would have me do till I can certainly know that he would have me do it Promulgation is of the Essence of a Law And this Extraordinary Revelation ought to be as clear and as distinct as Abraham's was for the Sacrificing his Son for it is as contrary to all the settled Rules of Right to dethrone a rightful King as it is to destroy an only Son And yet that Command was only intended for a trial of Abraham's Obedience neither would God suffer it that there should be a Precedent of an Humane Sacrifice in the World though at his Own bidding Is it not enough for an Vsurper to wrong a Prince of his Crown but this must be Hallowed by false Prophets and said to be done in God's Name And this proved by no better Argument than Mahomet's Miracle of Success and Settlement If therefore a pretended Prophet tells me that I am to own an Vsurper as God's Choice and by Divine Right and therefore he is no Vsurper I must needs Answer that the Title is far fetch 't and comes a great way and therefore I must desire to see some proof in point and shall always call for Miracles for what is said to come from Heaven And if I had but one half of the Sense which God has given me I should never be satisfied with the Mahomet an Miracle of Success and Settlement That Impostor's Come-off when he was call●d upon for Miracles was this That God had sent Moses his first Prophet with Miracles when the belief of them was worn out and the Iews were degenerated he sent Iesus the Son of Mary with more Miracles which did good for a time but his Followers likewise degenerated and altered their Books And then he sent Mahomet his last Prophet not with Miracles which had failed and miscarried twice before but with the Mouth of the Sword You ask for a Miracle says he Did not we Sack the City Tauris the other day and put them all to the Sword There 's a Miracle for you I confess I have loved a Good Cause in my time better than my Life but never a crumb the better for Success But on the other hand the want of Success has made it the dearer to me Success is the new Weathercock upon the Banqueting-house at White-hall for when the Popish Priests saw the Wind Westerly then it was Deus pro nobis but when at last it stood Easterly to bring over the Prince of Orange then it was Deus contra nos And so God is made to be of all Sides at that rate What if this Settlement should be Vnsetled which God of his Mercy defends as I am bold to say it cannot stand upon King James's Rubbish no more than a new Pile of Building upon the Heaps which lay in the Stone Gallery Well what then Why then in that supposed Case though the Wind be against us will I venture a weather-beaten Life for his Majesty's Service but not an Hair of my Head if I can help it for several Ministers he has In short Vsurpation is of the Devil and at the rate that any Man alive shall prove by the Old standing Revelation we have that an Vsurper is a King by Divine Right will I prove that the French and Irish Massacres were by Divine Right and that every one of those three hundred and fifty thousand Souls which fell therein were well killed and that it was all the Lord●s doing For there is as plain and as legible Scripture 1 Sam. 2. 6. The Lord killeth and maketh alive to entitle Him to that bloody Business as there is to make him the Setter up of Divine Vsurpers Conquest is likewise another wicked False Title to unsettle the Throne This the Prince of Orange disclaimed with detestation in his Additional Declaration as the Horridest Calumny that could be invented against him and so Unnatural a thing for an English man to join in as if it had been to be Felo de se. If this Pretension had been set up when the Prince of Orange came he had never marched forty Miles in England though he had come five times stronger than he did And that which would infallibly have Barr'd him out of England then can never settle him in it now no not though it were preach't from the Clouds as it only is from the Pulpit which they have rendred by such means very insignificant For what is Conquest Why truly it is a Publick Enemy got within us It is the King of France not at Tingmouth but at White-Hall A Conqueror is one whom no after Treaties nor Consent can ever make a King for he must have the Consent of Slaves and Minors who have nothing to give who cannot make a Will though it were their last who cannot be Parties to a Contract for that is everlastingly impossible unless Men be sui Juris and their own Men at the same time In a word Conquest may perhaps extend to lawful Plunder and to Goods and Chattels which I never took the People of a Free Nation to be But if such a Prize-Office-Divinity must needs be set up that always supposes the Right of Reprizals Desertion is manifestly False for King James must needs go he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he Claimed as he Fled by the Rochester Letter And as for the Wonderful Mystery of dropping the Great Seal in the Thames if it was done purposely there was a very Wise Reason for it For if it had fallen into other hands the Broad-Seal of England might have been immediately employed in Proclamations and otherwise against himself As Queen Elizabeth made use of Queen Mary's Great Seal for a good while which the