Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	henry_n	king_n	queen_n	22,548	5	7.7438	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54759	The character of a popish successour compleat in defence of the first part, against two answers, one written by Mr. L'Estrange, called The papist in masquerade, &c., and another by an unknown hand.	Phillips, John, 1631-1706.	1681 (1681)	Wing P2081; Wing S2671_CANCELLED; ESTC R23102	48,706	43

boiles highest And if so and Birth-right be still unforfitable then to the strongest Temptation here 's the least danger and the greatest Encouragement for gratifying that lust and accomplishing all such tempting desires So that upon this position who so arm'd for a Traitor as he that 's Born to a Crown and who so unsafe as he that wears it But surely 't is inconsistant with that particular care that God takes for the Preservation of Kings to entail that Ius Divinum upon them that places them infra statum Humanum However to give a little clearer light into this great point of Succession I shall trouble my Reader with one instance more It cannot be disputed but that either Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth did succeed to the Imperial Crown of England not by Divine Right of Succession since Queen Elizabeth was Born whilst Queen Katharine the Mother of Queen Mary was living but one of them must undoubtedly enjoy the Crown Iure Parliamentario if the latter as cannot be denyed and that Succession is Iure Divino then she was an Usurpess upon the Right of the House of Scotland and what then is the consequence of all this First it shakes and strikes at the Foundation of the Church of England which derives all its Power and Authority from the Crown which began in King Henry the 8ths and were more fully confirmd by Queen Elizabeth and therefore the Church of England was setled by a Princess de facto and not de jure insomuch that it undermines the very basis of the Hierarchy and Ecclesiastick power and the order of the whole Clergy who derive their Distinctions and Ordinations from that Queen 2ly It may call in Question all the Grants of that Queen which have not been confirmed by the Scottish Line and destroy the many and great Priviledges conferr'd on both the Universities 3ly According to the Rule of Ius Divinum it may raise a Question hereafter of what validity those Honors are which that Queen was pleased to confer upon several great and eminent Families Lastly it would well become many worthy and learned Men seriously to consider whether they do not labor to do the Work and Drudgery of the Church of Rome who assert so fatal a Principle whereby they make Queen Elizabeth an Usurpress and build the superstructure of the Protestant Religion the right of the Church and the Legality of the whole Clergy of England upon such a sandy and ruinous Foundation as the High and Mighty Ius Divinum But if we will allow that Princess our lawful Queen which I hope no Man will have the Impudence to deny then the disposal of the Crown by Parliament is just But if Ius Divinum that lay buried 44 Years together must make a Resurrection in our present Distractions of England and both Honor and Conscience render an exclusion Bill unlawful how came the proposition of making a Popish Successor but a Nominal Prince and setling the Administration in Protestant hands If that may be then here 's Ius Divinum quite laid aside for Divine Right of Birth entitles a Prince to the power as well as the name of a King and if that right be sacred and inviolable no one part of it more than another ought or can lawfully be alienated But if the greatest part of it be by the greatest Authority allow'd justly Alienable by Act of Parliament there 's an end of all Divine Right and a concession of the Iurisdiction of Parliaments insomuch that if they may legally take away the Kernel and leave only the Husk of Succession by the same Authority they may as well take away both and a total Exclusion is no more repugnant to Honor or Conscience then an Exclusion in part But if any Man has a curiosity to examine the Effects of Exclusions in part viz. Limitations and Restrictions that have been put upon the English Crown I will only advise him cursorly to run over the contests between King Iohn and the Barons Henry the 3d Edward the 2d and Richard the 2d and their Barons and the troubles of Henry the 6th and the several Agreements made between him and the D. of York and he 'le easily satisfie himself that notwithstanding the several Agreements Restraints and Limitations put upon the Crown and those confirm'd not only by Acts of Parliament but solemnly ratifyed in the Face of Heaven by many Oaths and dreadful Excommunications by the Church yet none ever held but so soon as those Parliaments were dissolved or the first opportunity or advantage happen'd those Kings by the ill advice of their Favourites and Minions broke all whereupon both parties flying to Arms the King accusing them of Treason and they Him of Perjury the rise of all those long and bloody Civil Wars had no other ground but this But to back his last six Arguments in defence of the Succession we find him for the next three or four Pages together corroborating his Opinion with the practice of the primitive Christians First he tells you 'tis a Gospel precept not to do ill that good may come of it such as the unwarrantable devesting of a Prince of his Birthright though for any safety or preservation whatever So that in the case of England supposing it would come at last to a down-right persecution under a Popish Successor yet to stand upon our Guards to prevent it would be more than ever the primitive Christians did under the ten Persecutions and we have not only their Example but their express Doctrine against it And therefore as he says in another place 't is our Duty to bless God for the Peace and Happiness we now enjoy and rather wait his farther pleasure with thankfulness and resignation then with murmuring and a●●trust to Anticipate future Evils and Prejudge Providences to come Now never was any thing more plausibly managed to so little purpose for the Correspondence between ours and the primitive Christians case is here so incoherently Ballanced that never were Arguments more Sophistical The primitive Christians preacht Obedience to Nero yes and they had forfeited their Christianity if they had done otherwise but what was that Nero an absolute Monarch and what those primitive Bishops not such as ours they were not a part of the Legislative Power of the Nation as our Prelates are If Nero invented Wracks Tortures and Gibbets for persecuting or murdering the poor Christians he did it by his own uncontroulable Authority nor were those primitive Bishops call'd to make Laws and therefore had not the lawful power of the least Vote in Moderation of Neroes Cruelty or in Redress of the Christians Torments I am sure if they had had any such voting or law-making Power and yet out of a base principle of cowardly Fear on one side and like fordid Sycophants out of a servile Flattery of Neroes barbarous Inclinations on the other side had neglected the means as much as in them lay of preventing those Persecutions they had been rather Wolves then

an Article of my Creed That he that denies their Authority and Power and not content with that only endeavors to perswade and seduce the rest of his fellow subjects to the same denial is not only a Traitor to his Country but from Christs own Sentence shall receive if possibly a double Portion of Damnation But now for his Sixth Observation on this Statute Mr. L. Lastly he brings instance here to prove that a Parliament may divert the succession but he shows withal that there can be no security even in that Exclusion showing that what one Parliament does another may undo so that now we are upon equall Tearms of security or hazard either in the exclusion of the successor or in restraining him for if he be tyed up by one Parliament another may set him at Liberty and if he be excluded by one Parliament another may take him in again Now certainly this is the most comical humor I ever met with to advise a Parliament to have a care of excluding a Papist for fear another Parliament restore him Perswade e'm to fear that once and make e'm Jealous of fancyes and Chimeras indeed But to dissipate all shadows of any such dangers there are some heads as wise as Mr. L'estranges no disparagment that are of opinion if one English Parliament once exclude a Popish successor we may safely defy Five Hundred Parliaments afterwards to restore him The disinheriting of a Popish successor being a kind of Limbus that if we have once got him into it 't is damnable odds that all the intrest of Rome with Ten Millions of Masses never get him out of it I must confess if we could have a Parliament of Mr. L'estranges particular choosing the Consistory of Cardinals for the House of Lords and St Omers Colledge for the House of Commons much might be but till then we are pretty safe in that point But amongst all Mr. L'estranges despicable thoughts of the Decrees and power of Parliaments in Henry the Eight's days he clearly forgets to answer that Act of Parliament of Queen Elizabeths mentioned in the Character in which 't was made Treason for any man to affirm that the disposal of the Imperial Crown of England lay not in the Queen and Parliament and indeed that Act comes so near the present face of the affairs in England that it was made upon the selfe same occasion that the Bill of Exclusion was endeavour'd by the late Parliaments viz. with an intention of putting by Mary Queen of Scots the then next Popish Heir from the Succession had not her Conspiracy against the Life of the Queen put an end to all farther care by the forefeiture of her head But these Six Objections with the help of Common Right and the Light of Nature may serve to answer both and truly Mr. L'estrange has given us the top of his Politicks and the utmost strength of his Reason for the defence of a Popish Successor in opposition even to the Supreme Authority of the Nation and against all the precedents of Laws and History But alas what signifies Supreme Authority Presidents Laws c. There 's nothing so sacred which stands in their way that the Champions of Rome must not endeavor to overthrow and when the Popish Interest cries Halloo they must Bark at least though they cannot Bite Now 't is plainly to be discovered at what Foundation he strikes by lessening and enfeebling the Legislative Power of the Nation and though he wisely lays the Scene at such distance as the remoter Age of Henry the 8th yet we understand where he aims the lash he gives and what Gall his Ink's made of But truly in his Remarks and Reflections upon the Capriches as he calls them of Henry the 8th with the weakness of his great Council the shallowness of their Debates and the invalidity of their decrees he chooses the safer Subject The Majesty he reviles and the Authority he ridicules being so long since inoffensive Dust and Ashes that he has this Reason for his Boldness and this shield for his Defence Nulli gravis est percussus Achilles But to answer those strait-laced Consciences that so vehemently maintain and assert Succession to be Iure Divino and cannot be alter'd by any human Laws I will put this instance Suppose a King has two Sons the eldest of which ambitious of a Crown and mislead by the ill Counsel of his Priests favourites or the like conspires to depose his Father and in Order thereunto confederates with some neighbouring Monarch who upon assurance given him by this Aspirer of resigning of some part of his Dominions to him or becoming tributary to him furnishes him with Money and Men by which assistance he flies out into an open Rebellion against his Father upon w ch the Father commissions his younger Son to fight this Rebel Prince who beats him and makes him fly out of his fathers Dominions to that confederate neighbours Protection upon which the King with the unanimous consent of his loyal Subjects passes an Act for a total Exclusion of the Elder son from the Crown and to place the Succession in the younger Now will any Man say that this is not warrantable and just both by the Laws of God and Man For if it be unwarantable and that this Rebel Prince must still suceeed then consider what follows Frst here 's a manifest obstructing of the distribution of the greatest Justice both human and divine For whilst this Prince continues safe by his Flight and his forreign Protection from any personal Sufferance for his Crimes and at the same time 't is granted he cannot suffer in his Birthright then this indispensable continuation of succession confers the greatest Earthly felicity and reward viz. a Diadem on the greatest of Criminals one Doubly a Traitor not only against the Lords anointed but even to the Fountain of his own Royal Blood and the Author of his being a Father Secondly it makes crown'd Heads the most miserable State of all man kind nay they are below the meanest Peasant in their Kingdoms For the vengeance of a Subject having the Power to disinherit shall persue a Rebel son even to the East Indies whilst a King who they say has or should have long hands shall notwith all his thunder reach the worst of rebels cross the next Sea or perhaps the next County So that where 's their boasting themselves to be Gods Vicegerents when they alone of all Men are most debarred that greatest Prerogative of a Diety REVENGE 3d By this means Majesty that should be most sacred and the person of it most religiously guarded and defended lies more exposed than all Mankind besides for if it be true that Filius ante diem patrios inquirit in annos And the lust of Inheritance makes the Blood of the Impatient Heir boil high for possession then 't is most true where the Inheritance is Greatest and the Temptation Strongest as in the case of a Crown that there the Blood