Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	king_n	law_n	power_n	9,684	5	5.3760	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88699	A letter written to a member sitting at Westminster	L. L.	1660 (1660)	Wing L42; ESTC R179223	4,241	8

A LETTER Written to A MEMBER Sitting At WESTMINSTER E R 〈…〉 LONDON Printed in the Year 1660. A LETTER Written to a MEMBER c. SIR OUt of that great service and high esteem I have for you both as a Gentleman and Christian I presume to give you the trouble of this paper which I beg of you most ingenuously to peruse as a Person of Reason and Civility which I hope as yet you have not wholly cancelled And therefore I take the freedom to present you with the Scene of their publick transactions as a Member of the House desiring you would be pleased to treat your self with the serious consideration of the Admirable dispensations of Divine providence and justice clearly evidenced to a common apprehension in that true Lex Talionis The House of Commons at the beginning of their Sessions having by their fair pretences gained a good opinion with the Vulgar did raise and foment great Tumults as a means when they could not convince by Arguments to over-awe with power of those who by their clamorous insolence so violently assaulted the late Kings sacred person that they forced him for his own defence to a retirement from Westminster Not many years after those very Contrivers the greater part of the House though they highly caressed Cromwell and the Army at Triploe-Heath near Cambridg promising them by Skippon an Act of Indemnity and their Arrears were beaten notwithstanding with their own weapons every Regiment crying Justice Justice which was the same language which the Tumults first used against the King by their connivance and instigation and afterwards was ecchoed by the Army against themselves to their seclusion in 1648. When these present Members the minor part of the House designing to make themselves absolute and to divide the large Revenues of the Church and Crown among themselves and their Adherents as a poor petty reward for their greater service to the Kingdom did fear the greater and honester part of the House would spoile their game in voting the concessions of the late King at the Isle of Wight to be a ground of a firm peace and being out numbred could not carry on their design by a Vote courted the Army into a compliance with their unhandsome sence which was to keep out the greater part of the House by force because they would not submit to their Judgments to their too too partial Interest I wish I could not call these proceedings Arbitrary which have no other Basis but the dictates of their own Will which would have been happily buried in their first conception without any farther product had they not received birth and sustenance from a military power good Physick in time of great distempers but an ill constant nourishment It had been better their Resolves had merited their value from a due number of Votes then from the unequal balance of an unjust weight of Arms But may be they will reply the least part of the House was the best the greater as they pretend was acted in principles destructive to the Kingdom This is the one sense if they may decide the dispute But they are not competent Judges in their own Case For they being the lesse ought to be governed by the greater part of the House and so Major pars signodi est tota the Major part of the convention is the whole and the lesse is to subscribe to the greater Else farewell all order and due determination of Controversies in publick or private Assemblies If the worsted party may be permitted to dispute every man is so much a kin to his own Judgments as part of himself that he will never acknowledg himself to be constious of error alwayes attended with the sad consequents of guilt and shame Therefore when the lesse considerable part of the House could not protect themselves by the reason of Law they over-powred the greater by the Law of the Sword in some cases a good hand of Justice but alwayes an ill head of Law of which the Souldiery is little versed in the Theory and therefore too much in the Practick being unfit Arbitrators of it although the unhappy differences of this unsober Age have too often made them so Now the Minor part of the House having created themselves sole Masters of the House of Commons did farther act the Polititians and did by Ragione di stato contrive a way to lessen the power of the Crown the Fountain of Honour by taking away the great stream of it the House of Barons who had a high obligation to serve him who had conferred their Honour upon them The surviving Fraction of the lower House did by an insolent Ordinance pull down the upper which was much more Antient and Honourable than their own This Action exceeding all rules of reason and sobriety did not give bounds to their Arrogance and Ambition setting their Feet on the Necks of the Lords that they might more easily strike at the head of the King when contrary to all Law Religion their Protestation League and Covenant and Oath of Allegiance by a pretended Court of Justice and their omnipotent power they Arraigned Sentenced and most inhumanely Murdered And afterward Banished the just Heir of the Crown and his Royal Relations making them first hear the Subject of their own Malice and abroad the Object of others Charity What English Heart that hath either sense of Humanity Loyalty or Religion but must highly resent thes● unheard of Barbarismes with no lesse a●●onishment than indignation All which they have committed that they might h●●…hthen themselves above all Law no body on Earth as they conceived being in a capacity to call them to an account for their Violations of Humane and Divine Laws But they were highly mistaken This illegal deportment towards their Fellow Members the House of Lords and our late most Gracious Sovereign chaulked out the way to their Servants that were Commissioned to fight for them to turn their Masters they constituting the Souldiery first Moderators between them and their Fellow Members devolved a power on the Army after the House had most Barbarously taken away their Head that most pious Saint and Martyr the King and when they had sate so long and expended so much Blood and Treason and done so little good for the Nation Cromwell by the power of the Sword did deem it a peice of Honour to himself and Justice to the Kingdom to take them out of the House they having so unnaturally destroyed their own Heads were no better than dead Members in Law as the Masters of that faculty do affirm When they had by the cursed insinuations of the Jesuits ever pernicious Counsellours to this Nation given that fatal stroke which at once determined our Royal Soveraign and themselvs and the Glory Happiness of these then three flourishing Kingdomes I wish they did travel abroad that they might be better educated and then their Ears would ring and their hearts I hope relent to hear the sad Character the World