Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	french_a	king_n	lewis_n	2,585	5	10.4886	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54191	A perswasive to moderation to dissenting Christians in prudence and conscience humbly submitted to the King and his great council by one of the humblest and most dutiful of his dissenting subjects.	Penn, William, 1644-1718.	1685 (1685)	Wing P1337A; ESTC R28423	35,496	61

the care of the Government for their safety they have no need of their Captains nor These any ground for their Pretences For as They us'd the People to value themselves and raise their Fortunes with the Prince so the People followed their Leaders to get that ease they see their Heads promis'd but could not and the Government can and does give them Multitudes cannot Plot they are too many and have not Conduct for it they move by another Spring Safety is the pretence of their Leaders If once they see they enjoy it they have yet Wit enough not to hazard it for any Body For the endeavours of busie men are then discernable but a state of Severity gives them a pretence by which the Multitude is easily taken This I say upon a Supposition that the Dissenters could agree against the Government which is a begging of the Question For it is improbable if not impossible without Conformists since besides the Distance they are at in their Perswasions and Affections they dare not hope for so good terms from one another as the Government gives And that Fear with their Emulation would draw them into that Duty that they must all fall into a Natural dependance which I call holding of the Prince as the Great Head of the State From abroad we are as safe as from within our selves For if leading Men at home are thus disappointed of their Interest in the People Forreigners will find here no Interpreters of their dividing Language nor matter if they could to work upon for the Point is gain'd the People they would deal in are at their ease and cannot be bribed and those that would can't deserve it It is this that makes Princes live Independent of their Neighbours and to be lov'd at home is to be fear'd abroad One follows necessarily the other Where Princes are driven to seek a forreign Assistance the issue must either be the Ruin of the Prince or the absolute subjection of the People not without the hazard of becoming a Province to the power of that Neighbour that turns the Scale These consequences have on either hand an ill look and should rebate Extreams The Greatness of France carries those Threats to all her Neighbours that politically speaking 't is the Melanchollist prospect England has had to make since Eighty Eight The Spaniard at that time being shorter in all things but his Pride and Hope than the French King is now of the same universal Monarchy This greatness begun by the eleaventh Lewis some will have it has not been so much advanced by the Wisdom of Richlieu and Craft of Mazarene no not the Arms of the present Monarch as by the assistance or connivance of England that has most to lose by him Cromwell begun and gave him the Scale against the Spaniard The Reason of State he went upon was the support of his usurp'd Dominion And he was not out in it for the Exile of the Royal Family was a great part of the price of that Aid In which we see how much Interest prevails above Nature It was not Royal Kindred could shelte a King against the Solicitations of an Vsurper with the Son his Mother's Brother But it will be told us by some People We have n●● degenerated but exactly follow'd the same Steps ever since which has given such an Increase to those Beginnings that the French Monarchy is almost above our reach But suppose it were true what 's the cause of it It has not been old Friendship or nearness of Blood or Neighbourhood Nor could it be from an Inclination in our Ministers to bring things here to a like issue as some have suggested for then we should have clogg'd his Successes instead of helping them in any kind lest in doing so we should have put it into his power to hinder our own But perhaps our cross Accidents of State may sometimes have compell'd us into his Friendship and his Councils have carefully improv'd the one and husbanded the other to great Advantages and that this was more then made for our English Interest and yet 't is but too true that the extreams Heats of some men that most inveighed against it went too far to strengthen that understanding by not taking what would have been granted and creating an Interest at home that might naturally have dissolved that Correspondence abroad I love not to revive things that are uneasily remembred but in Points most tender to the late King he thought himself sometimes too closely prest and hardly held and we are all wise enough now to say a milder Conduct had succeeded better For if reasonable things may be unreasonably prest and with such private Intentions as induced a denial Heats about things doubtful unwise or unjust must needs harden and prejudice Let us then create an Interest for the Prince at Home and Forreign Friendships at best uncertain and dangerous will fall of course for if it be allow'd to private men shall it be forbid to Princes only to know and be true to their own Support It is no more than what every Age makes us to see in all Parties of men The Parliaments of England since the Reformation giving no quarter to Roman Catholicks have forced them to the Crown for shelter And to induce the Monarchy to yield them the Protection they have needed have with mighty Address and Skill recommended themselves as the great Friends of the Prerogative and so successfully too that it were not below the Wisdom of that Constitution to reflect what they have lost by that constiveness of theirs to Cath●licks On the other hand the Crown having treated the Protestant Dissenters with the severity of the Laws that affected them suffering the sharpest of them to fall upon their Persons and Estates they have been driven successively to Parliaments for Succour whose Priviledges with equal Skill and Zeal they have abetted And our late unhappy Wars are too plain a proof how much their Accession gave the Scale against the Power and Courage of both Conformists and Catholicks that adhered to the Crown Nor must this contrary Adhesion be imputed to Love or Hatred but necessary Interest Refusal in one place makes way for Address in another If the Scene be changed the parts must follow for as well before as after Cromwell's Usurpation the Roman Catholicks did not only promise the most ready Obedience to that Government in his Printed Apologies for Liberty of Conscience But actually treated by some of their greatest Men with the Ministers of those Times for Indulgence upon the assurances they offer'd to give of their good Behaviour to the Government as then establisht On the other hand we see the Presbyteriens That in Scotland began the War and in England promoted and upheld it to Forty Seven when ready to be supplanted by the Independants wheel to the King In Scotland they Crown him come into England with an Army to restore him where their Brethren joyn them but being defeated They

will end these forregin Instances with a Prince and Bishop all in one and he a Roman Catholick too and that is the Bishop of Mentz who admits with a very Peaceable success such Lutherains with his Catholicks to enjoy their Churches as live in his Town of Erford Thus does Practice tells us that neither Monarchy nor Hierarchy are in danger from a Toleration On the contrary the Laws of the Empire which are the Acts of the Emperor and the Soveraign Princes of it have tolerated these three Religious Perswasions viz. the Roman-Catholick Lutherain and Calvanist and they may as well tolerate three more for the same Reasons and with the same Success For it is not their greater nearerness or consistency in Doctrine or in Worship On the contrary they differ much and by that and other Circumstances are sometimes engaged in great Controversies yet is a Toleration practicable the way of Peace with them And which is closest to our point at home it self we see that a Toleration of the Iews French and Dutch Churches in England both Dissenters from the National Way And the Connivance that has been in Ireland And the down-right Toleration in most of his Majesties Plantations abroad proves the Assertion That Toleration is not dangerous to Monarchy For Experience tells us where it is in any degree admitted the King's Affairs prosper most People Wealth and Strength being sure to follow such Indulgence But after all that I have said in Reason and Fact why Toleration is safe to Monarchy Story tells us that worse things have befallen Princes in Countries under Ecclesiastical Vnion than in places under divided forms of Worship and so tolerating Countries stand to the Prince more than upon equal terms with conforming ones And where Princes have been exposed to hardship in tolerating Countries they have as often come from the Conforming as Non-conforming party and so the Dissenter is upon equal terms to the Prince or State with the Conformist The first is evident in the Iews under the conduct of Moses their Dissention came from the men of their own Tribes such as Corah Dathan and Abiram with their pertakers To say nothing of the Gentiles The Miseries and Slaughters of Mauritius the Emperor proves my point who by the greatest Church-men of his time was withstood and his Servant that perpetrated the Wickedness by them substituted in his room because more officious to their Grandure What power but that of the Church dethron'd Childrek King of France and set Pippin in his place The miseries of the Emperors Henry the fourth and fifth Father and Son from their rebellious Subjects raised and animated by the power of Conformists dethroning both as much as they could are notorious 'T is as plain that Sigismond King of Sweedland was rejected by that Lutherain Country because he was a Roman-Catholick If we come nearer home which is most suitable to the Reasons of the discourse we find the Church-men take part with William Rufus and Henry the first against Robert their elder Brother and after that we see some of the greatest of them make Head against their King namely Anselm Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and his party as did his Successor Thomas of Becket to the second Henry Stephen Usurpt the Crown when there was a Church Vnion And King John lived miserable for all that and at last dyed by one of his own Religion too The Dissentions that agitated the Reign of his Son Henry the third and the Barrons War with Bishop Grosteeds Blessing to Mumford their General The Deposition and Murther of the second Edward Richard sixth Henry and his Son the Prince The Vsurpation of Richard the third and the Murther of the Sons of Edward the fourth in the Tower of London The civil War that followed between him and the Earl of Richmond afterwards our wise Henry the seventh were all perpetrated in a Country of one Religion and by the Hands of Conformists In short if we will but look upon the civil War that so long raged in this Kingdom between the Houses of York and Laneaster and consider that they professed but one and the same Religion and both back't with numbers of Church-men too to say nothing of the Miserable end of many of our Kings princely Ancestors in Scotland especially the first and third James will find cause to say That Church-Vniformity is not a Security for Princes to depend upon If we will look next into Countries where Dissenters from the National Church are tolerated we shall find the Conformist not less Culpable than the Dissenter The Disorders among the Iews after they were settled in the Land that God had given them came not from those they tolerated but themselves They cast off Samuel and the Government of the Judges 'T was the Children of the National Church that fell in with the Ambition of Absolom and animated the Rebellion against his Father David They were the same that revolted from Solomon's Son and cryed in behalf of Jeroboam To your Tents O Israel Not two Ages ago the Church of France too generally fell in with the Family of Guise against their lawful Soveraign Henry the fourth Nor were they without Countenance of the greatest of their Belief who stiled it an holy War at that time fearing not without cause the Defection of that Kingdom from the Roman See In this conjuncture the Dissenters made up the best part of that King's Armies and by their Loyalty and Blood preserved the Blood Royal of France and set the Crown on the Head of that Prince That King was twice assinated and the last time murdered as was Henry the third his Predecessor but they fell one by the hand of a Church-man the other at least by a Conformist 'T is true that the next civil War was between the Catholicks and the Hugenots under the conduct of Cardinal Richlien and the Duke of Roan But as I will not justifie the Action so their Liberties and Cautions so solemnly settled by Henry the fourth as the reward of their singular Merit being by the Ministry of that Cardinal invaded they say they did but defend their own and that rather against the Cardinal than the King whose softness suffered him to become a property to the great Wit and Ambition of that Person And there is this Reason to believe them that if it had been otherwise we are sure that King Charles the first would not in the least have countenanced their Quarrel However the Cardinal like himself wisely knew when to stop For though he thought it the Interest of the Crown to moderate their greatness and check their growth yet having fresh in Memory the Story of the fore-going Age he saw ' twaswise to have a Ballance upon occasion But this was more then recompenc'd in their first Adhesion to the Crown of France under the Ministry and Direction of the succeeding Cardinal when their Perswasion had not only Number and many good Officers to value it self upon but