Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A25572
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The Answer to the appeal expounded
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L'Estrange, Roger, Sir, 1616-1704. Answer to the Appeal from the country to the city.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing A3385; ESTC R16973
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34,388
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37
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according to the ordinary course of humane affairs to disappoint the danger as Mortality Survivorship change of thought c. or can the Appellant prescribe us any Remedy that is not worse then the disease shall a man cast himself from the top of Bow for fear of tumbling down stairs shall we destroy Protestantism for fear of Popery or a Good Government for fear of a bad One shall we run the hazzard of Damnation for fear of Oppression Nay what if our present apprehensions were Gratify'd New ones would yet succeed into their places For the Rage of Jealousy is boundless and Incurable And so we found it in the Late Rebellion which was built upon the same Foundation Never so mean and so despicable a slavery as that which we then brought upon our selves for fear of slavery Never was any Papacy so Tyrannical and so Ridiculous together as that Persecuting and Non-sensical Presbytery which we had in Exchange for the best temper'd Ecclesiastical Government upon the face of the Earth Were not Those blessed days when our Divines had Salesmen and Mechaniques for their Tryers and the Laity a supercilious Company of Classical and Congregational Noddies for the Inspectors of our Lives and Manners When Tone and Lungs without either Learning or Honesty were the distinguishing Marks of a Gifted Brother Methinks the very Memory of these servile and profane Indignities should put the bare thought of the Second part of it out of Countenance And he seems as much out in the pretended Cause of our Calamities as he was in the Calamities themselves There were no Princes Educated abroad in the Late Kings time and yet the same clamour to a Tittle But if the Appellant had been so minded he might have given us a much more Rational account of our misfortunes then he has done He might have charg'd them upon those people who in truth first sent the young Princes into Exile and then kept them there and have at present a design upon the Exercise of the same Arbitrary power again which they would be thought to fear They began with a cry against Popery but they concluded in the Murther of the King the dislution of the Monarchy and the perpetual Exclusion of the Royal Family as may be seen in their Proclamation of Jan. 30.48 for Inhibiting any person to be King Whereas Charles Stuart King of England say they being for the Notorious Treasons Tyrannies and Murthers committed by Him in the Late Unnatural and cruel Wars condemned to Death c. It is remarkable that though they possest the people against his Majesty as a Papist there is not one word of Religion in the Reasons of their putting him to death The Appellant comes now to shew his Reading in two passages out of Philip de Comines with an application of his Observations upon them The former concerning certain English Pensioners which Lewis the Eleventh of France kept in Pay Now though I cannot agree the hundreth part of those Persons to be Pensioners which out of an envy to the Government the Common people are instructed to call so yet I shall never differ with him upon this point that the Money of Lewis the Fourteenth may perhaps have been current in England as well as that of Lewis the Eleventh was The other story is that of Lewis the Eleventh to Charles Duke of Burgundy in the Case of Campobache The French King advertizes the Duke of Burgundy they being then in hostility that the Count Campobache was a Traytor to him But the Duke would not believe it And there was one Cifron also who was of the Plot with Campobache This same Cifron being taken prisoner by the Duke before Nancy and condemned to dye gave the Duke to understand that he had a most Important secret to communicate to him But the Duke neither giving admittance to Cifron nor credit to the King lost his Life afterward and his Dominions by being too incredulous The Appellant applies this to his Majesties Case in Language so course and scandalous that there is no repeating of it And what does all this amount to but that a Prince may as well be undone by believing too much as too little If he had Trusted either less to Campobache or more to the King it had come all to a purpose He will have his Majesty in danger for not believing enough of the Popish Plot But his Royal Father was Ruin'd on the other side by not believing enough of the Presbyterian Plot. And God grant that his present Majesty may only believe so much of that Plot over again as may stand with his honour and safety But it appears in this place by the coursness of the Appellants Expressions and by the byass of the whole Libel throughout that he is not so much concern'd for the Kings believing or not believing as to fasten a scandal upon his Majesty by perswading the People that the King does not believe it and consequently to possess them that his Majesty is a favourer of Popery though never any Prince in Christendom gave more Convincing and Irrefragable Proofs of the contrary This passage of the Duke of Burgundy he says Fol. 4. may be very much to our purpose to shew you that when God designs the destruction of a King or People he makes them deaf to all discoveries be they never so obvious And having Levelled the Application in particular he speculates in general terms toward the bottom of the leaf upon the whole matter There are four several Arguments he says which many times prevail with Princes to be incredulous of all pretended Conspiracies against themselves The First is drawn from their being in or made privy themselves to Part of the Plot but not to the whole The Second from their own good nature and Clemency The Third from the nature of the Evidence And the Fourth from the nature and Interest of the pretended Conspirators To begin then with the First when the Prince hath been made acquainted with a Design of Introducing a New Government or a New Religion but not with the Design of taking away his own life this sometimes hath prevailed with him not to believe that the same party with whom he himself is in a Conspiracy should have any such other Plot against his Life But this I hope is not Our Case For c. And then he Reasons that his Majesty could get nothing by it Fol. 3. We shall put him together now and make English of him First he makes the Duke of Burgundies Case in his Deafness to Discoveries to be the Kings Secondly He infers from that Deafness that God has Design'd his Majesty to Destruction Thirdly he takes upon him to Philosophize upon the Reasons of Princes Incredulity in such Cases and very fairly represents his Majesty as a Party in-the Conspiracy and consenting to the Introduction of a New Government and a New Religion though not privy to the Plot of taking away