Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	ireland_n	king_n	lord_n	18,305	5	4.0686	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34835	A vision, concerning his late pretended highnesse, Cromwell, the Wicked containing a discourse in vindication of him by a pretended angel, and the confutation thereof, by the Author.	Cowley, Abraham, 1618-1667.	1661 (1661)	Wing C6695; ESTC R17195	28,700	94

pleased but of great modesty to set to himself not abstaining from Rebellion and Usurpation even against his own Laws as well as those of the Nation Hold friend said his Highnesse pulling me by my Arm for I see your zeal is transporting you again whether the Protector were a Tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power we shall see anon it is requisite to examine first whether he were so in the Usurpation of it And I say that not onely He but no man else ever was or can be so and that for these reasons First because all power belongs onely to God who is the source and fountain of it as Kings are of all Honours in their Dominions Princes are but his Viceroys in the little Provinces of this World and to some he gives their places for a few years to some for their lives and to others upon ends or deserts best known to himself or meerly for his undisputable good pleasure he bestows as it were Leases upon them and their posterity for such a date of time as is prefixt in that Patent of their Destiny which is not legible to you men below Neither is it more unlawfull for Oliver to succeed Charls in the Kingdom of England when God so disposes of it than it had been for him to have succeeded the Lord Strafford in the Lieutenancy of Ireland if he had been appointed to it by the King then reigning Men are in both the cases obliged to obey him whom they see actually invested with the Authority by that Sovereign from whom he ought to derive it without disputing or examining the causes either of the removeal of the one or the preferment of the other Secondly because all power is attained either by the Election and consent of the people and that takes away your objection of forcible intrusion or else by a Conquest of them and that gives such a legal Authority as you mention to be wanting in the Usurpation of a tyrant so that either this Title is right and then there are no Usurpers or else it is a wrong one and then there are none else but Usurpers if you examine the Original pretences of the Princes of the World Thirdly which quitting the dispute in general is a particular justification of his Highnesse the Goverment of England was totally broken and dissolved and extinguisht by the confusions of a Civil War so that his Highnesse could not be accused to have possest himself violently of the antient building of the Commonwealth but to have prudently and peaceably built up a new one out of the ruins and ashes of the former and he who after a deplorable shipwrack can with extraordinary Industry gather together the disperst and broken planks and pieces of it and with no lesse wonderfull art and felicity so rejoyn them as to make a new Vessel more tight and beautifull than the old one deserves no doubt to have the command of her even as his Highnesse had by the desire of the Sea-men and Passengers themselves And do but consider lastly for I omit multitude of weighty things that might be spoken upon this noble argument do but consider seriously and impartially with your self what admirable parts of wit and prudence what indefatigable diligence and invincible courage must of necessity have concurred in the person of that man who from so contemptible beginnings as I observed before and through so many thousand difficulties was able not onely to make himself the greatest and most absolute Monarch of this Nation but to add to it the entire Conquest of Ireland and Scotland which the whole force of the World joyned with the Roman virtue could never attain to and to Crown all this with Illustrious and Heroical undertakings and successes upon all our forein Enemies do but I say again consider this and you will confesse that his prodigious Merits were a better Title to Imperial Dignity than the bloud of an hundred Royal Progenitors and will rather lament that he lived not to overcome more Nations than envy him the Conquest and Dominion of these Who ever you are said I my indignation making me somewhat bolder your discourse methinks becomes as little the person of a Tutelar Angel as Cromwels actions did that of a Protector It is upon these Principles that all the great Crimes of the World have been committed and most particularly those which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time and in my own Countrey If these be to be allowed we must break up human society retire into the Woods and equally there stand upon our Guards against our Brethren Mankind and our Rebels the Wild Beasts For if there can be no Usurpation upon the rights of a whole Nation there can be none most certainly upon those of a private person and if the Robbers of Countreys be Gods Vicegerents there is no doubt but the Thieves and Banditos and Murderers are his under Officers It is true which you say that God is the scource and fountain of all power and it it is no lesse true that he is the Creator of Serpents as well as Angels nor does his goodnesse fail of its ends even in the malice of his own Creatures What power he suffers the Devil to exercise in this World is too apparent by our daily experience and by nothing more than the late monsterous iniquities which you dispute for and patronize in England but would you inferre from thence that the power of the Devil is a just and lawful one and that all men ought as well as most men do obey him God is the fountain of all Powers but some flow from the right hand as it were of his Goodnesse and others from the left hand of his Justice and the World like an Island between these two Rivers is sometimes refresht and nourished by the one and sometimes overrun and ruined by the other and to continue a little farther the Allegory we are never overwhelmed with the latter till either by our malice or negligence we have stopt and damm'd up the former But to come a little closer to your Argument or rather the Image of an Argument your similitude If Cromwell had come to command Ireland in the place of the late Lord Strafford I should have yielded obedience not for the equipage and the strength and the guards which he brought with him but for the Commission which he should first have showed me from our common Soveraign that sent him and if He could have done that from God Almighty I would have obeyed him too in England but that he was so far from being able to do that on the contrary I read nothing but commands and even publick Proclamations from God Almighty not to admit him Your second Argument is that he had the same right for his authority that is the foundation of all others even the right of Conquest Are we then so unhappy as to be conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily rate like a