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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	king_n	law_n	limit_v	3,744	5	10.3160	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46942	An argument proving, that the abrogation of King James by the people of England from the regal throne, and the promotion of the Prince of Orange, one of the royal family, to throne of the kingdom in his stead, was according to the constitution of the English government, and prescribed by it in opposition to all the false and treacherous hypotheses, of usurpation, conquest, desertion, and of taking the powers that are upon content / by Samuel Johnson.	Johnson, Samuel, 1649-1703.	1692 (1692)	Wing J821; ESTC R2049	28,065	64

AN ARGUMENT PROVING That the Abrogation of King Iames by the People of England from the Regal Throne and the Promotion of the Prince of Orange one of the Royal Family to the Throne of the Kingdom in his stead was according to the Constitution of the English Government and Prescribed by it In Opposition to all the false and treacherous Hypotheses of Usurpation Conquest Desertion and of taking the Powers that Are upon Content By SAMVEL IOHNSON Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit Horat. LONDON Printed for the Author 1692. TO THE COMMONS of ENGLAND in Parliament Assembled THE favourable Acceptance which my Bounden Services to my Country as I ever accounted them though they were always difficult and upon the Forlorn have heretofore found in your Honourable House hath caused me to bring you this small Offering In former Days an Appeal to the Parliament was a removal of the Cause from White-Hall but it is our peculiar Happiness in this Reign that we live under a Prince who had no other Business here but to restore the Constitution which as his Declaration speaks was wholly overturned in the former Reigns and who lay under a happy Necessisty of assisting the People to assert their Rights before he could secure His own Right and Remainder in the Crown This Subversion and Overturning of the best Frame of Government in the World was very artificially managed and began at your House which has been run down as an Innovation and no Essential Part of Parliament a Mushroom sprung up in the 49th of H. 3. and founded in Rebellion as if You had no deeper Root in the Government than Corn has upon the House top This scurvy Pedigree of the Commons in Parliament drawn up by Dr. Brady was so well liked by the Loyal Clergy and particularly he was so applauded by Jovian that Mr. Petyt found the Tide so strong against him as not to venture on a Reply though to my knowledg he was furnished with a very good one But that is not so material when you began as what you are and of the two it is better to be an Upstart Authority than a silly Cypher and thus you have been represented to all the degrees of Insignificancy Your Precarious Being was told you by a wonderful Statesman who did not spare to inform you That as the King had Created the House of Commons by his Power so he would Preserve it by his Goodness but then come some of the Clergy and say what little Creatures both you and the House of Lords are Dr. Hicks lodges in the King the whole Legislative or the Power that makes any form of Words a Law He says The Sovereign Power may indeed be limited as to the Exercise of this Legislative Power which may be confined to Bills and Writings prepared by others but still it is the Soveraign Authority who gives Life and Soul to the dead Letter of them Now this is so contrary to the Constitution as nothing can be more For not only King Charles the First acknowledged that the Laws were jointly made by the King Lords and Commons though the Houses insisted upon more but also in every Act of Parliament that is made it is expresly said in the Enacting part that it is made by the Authority of them all whereas by this Doctrine the two Houses have only a Ministerial Office of preparing a Form of Words and furnishing Bills and Writings as the King's Printers use to do you with Pen Ink and Paper And in short the King alone makes Laws and the two Houses only find Stuff Now if this sort of Paradox had been advanced concerning the Parish-Chest of Barking where the Parson has one Key and each of the Church-wardens one they could soon have Mathematically shewn him that his Key had but one Third of the Chest-opening-Power and such a Mistake would only have made a Iest But in a Case of more Consequence than all the Land in the Nation if it were now to be sold is worth such false Positions are very Dangerous For if the Legislative were once contracted in one single Hand it were as absurd to say it could be limited in the Exercise of it as it is to say that your House has not Power over your own Orders to recal and alter them as you think fit What shall hinder the whole Legislative At this rate the Saying of which my Lord Lauderdale has had the Honour would have been true that he hoped to see the King's Edicts to be Laws and above the Laws for all New Laws are always too hard for the old ones And the Arbitrary Proclamation to forbid the Nation to Petition for a Parliament had been a Law if the whole Legislative Authority was in it for the L. C. I. North found it very easy to supply the place of both Houses in drawing up the Form of Words However this is very civil Usage to what you have had from other Hands for in this way you have still left you the Honour of being Clerks and of drawing up a Form of Words But Dr. Womack in his Short Way to a lasting Settlement printed by Robert Clavel the chief Design of which was to out the two Houses from having any share or Authoritative Hand as he calls it in making the Laws and was shortly after made a Bishop for the Service has this very insolent Expression The Houses you say have a hand in the Legislation So hath the Beggar in my Almes As soon as I saw this Odious Comparison I knew it was falsly applied for even the Coronation-Oath acknowledges that the Laws of England are of the Folks choosing and it is certain that Beggars are no Choosers But I humbly beseech both Houses upon this Occasion to have a special care how they suffer this sort of Men to have the Ascendant who treat them in this manner because we have a very harsh English Proverb concerning Beggars In the Year of Jovian 83. wherein these Doctrines were published and rung all over the Nation some of the Honourable Beggars that were for a Bill of Exclusion of the Duke of York in his First Desertion and were for keeping him out when he was out after their Lives had been long hunted by these Men fell into their Nets Which Bill had given us this happy Reign several Years sooner and had saved the Lives of more than an Hundred thousand Men whose Blood lies at their Door but it was then their Hour and the Power of Darkness Let that Year be blotted out of Chronology These Doctrines I conceive are Destructive to the Nation because they undermine the Power and Authority of Parliaments who represent the Nation and are the Conservers of our Liberties if we had any but those are all taken away by another of their new-adopted Church-Doctrines of Passive-Obedience which I therefore look upon as the worst of them because it lays waste all your Laws after you have made

them or worded them or begg'd them or however you came by them The former Doctrines do immediately destroy you only in the Quality of Legislators but this makes you Slaves too and will not leave you to be so much as English Freemen You must be just such defenceless Wretches under the irresistible Powers of the Sovereign and his Forces as the Roman Slaves were under the Soveraign and Unaccountable Power of their Masters You must be Slaves as to this particular you must trust your Lives and Liberties with your Soveraign And therefore the Passive Behaviour taught by St. Peter to the Roman Slaves is your Duty So that if the late Soveraign being enraged at your Address 17 Novemb. 85. which broke all his Measures had sitting the Parliament sent his Forces to murder you you ought to have submitted as the Thebaean Legion did in which Army of Martyrs you would have made a goodly Regiment You were to have suffered it patiently with your Swords by your sides and Passive Obedience even unto Death had been your Duty by virtue both of the Imperial Laws and the Laws of the Gospel The Thebaean Legion would not Sacrifice and you would not come to which was a like Case or rather yours was the more provoking Disobedience to an Arbitrary Prince and so you were bound in Conscience to fare alike Nay if without any incompliance on your part he had only had a mind to kill Five hundred Kings at once as King James the First called the Parliament for so Dr. Womack relates it from Dr. Heylin but whether in way of Jear or otherwise he cannot tell the Soveraign's Forces had been Kings of Kings and Lords of Lords For the Chaplain of the Thebaean Legion would have charged you in Christ's Name by virtue of his own Saying He that useth the Sword shall perish by the Sword not to resist under the specious Pretext of Self-defence though I think in that Case the specious Pretence had been very much in Earnest And if you had thus sinned against the Laws Imperial or the People had rescued you by force from the Soveraign's Forces he would have pronounced concerning you both Well let them do so at their Peril they may be legally Hanged for it in this World and without Repentance will be damned for it in that which is to come This is Passive Doctrine to a Tittle and as you like it you may cherish that Party which has enslaved the Nation by it and to whom is owing all the Oppression of the last Reigns For if the Doctrine of Defending our Rights when they were Invaded had not been Burnt Martyr'd and Stigmatiz'd and the Clergy had not expresly promised King James to inculcate Passive Obedience upon all his Subjects and thereby to bind the Nation Hand and Foot and to leave nothing but suffering Souls in his whole Kingdom he would never have ventured to think of Dragooning us nor have begun with his Preparatory Oppressions in order to it But after they had made him believe that they were Passive to the Death and Loyal to the Death when the Burden of their own ill-contrived Oppression came home to themselves and touch'd but one of their Fingers they soon let him understand that they had given him only a Spiritual Kingdom and not a Kingdom of this World For if his Kingdom had been of this World then would his Servants have fought for him But so they Deluded and Parted with their Passive-Obedience-King For Passive Obedience is calculated only for Tyranny suffering under Arbitrary and Illegal Commands and Orders cannot take place in a Legal Government neither is there room for any such thing Till Passive Obedience has either found or made a Tyranny it can never be a Duty nor then neither for Tyranny is not Government but the Destruction of it And therefore the two Histories Passive Obedience and the brisk Sermons that have been Preached upon that Subject in this Reign are Contraband Goods for we live under a Prince who within these few Years raised the whole Posse of England against this Doctrine and by his Declaration invited and required all the People of England of all Ranks to Assist him against the Soveraign and his Forces to prevent the Nation 's being kept under Arbitrary Government and Slavery We were under Arbitrary Government and Slavery then and we may thank Passive Obedience for it and I am humbly of Opinion that we ought never to come under it more And therefore I think it worthy your great Wisdom and Iustice that as you have annexed that Princely Declaration to the Crown and made the Pursuance of it a Principal Point in the Confidence and Trust you reposed in the King when you Invested him So you would provide that all those who began continued and ended that Glorious Expedition under the Prince of Orange which had been a blew one if Passive Obedience had been believed as it was constantly preached for Gospel may not in this Reign at least be represented as Rebels and Traytors but by some Temporary Act may be Relieved from the Aspersion of Delivering their Country That one Vsurping Priest in his Pulpit may not call for Pontius Pilate's Bason of Water to wash his Hands clean from the Sin of this Revolution and another Conquering Priest may not Represent those who Invited in and Assisted this present King as Men not afraid of the Power as they ought to have been and another Deserting Priest may not make King James's Forfeiture to be his going away which was the Best thing that ever he did and thereby leave all Men to be Rebels and Traytors who had invited joined or were prepared to join the Prince of Orange before the 10th of Decemb. 88. when our Deliverance was compleated These wretched Inventions of Usurpation Conquest and Desertion were found out merely to cover the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and to keep that safe and sound notwithstanding the Prince and the whole Nation had engag'd in Resisting Oppression and Defending their Rights And furthermore That King William's coming to the Crown might not be enquired into and be found to be to the Prejudice of Non-resistance there is one has likewise found out another Invention That you are not to trouble your Head whether the King 's Title be right or wrong but you are to Swear to whatever is Vppermost whether he be a Rightful Prince or an Vsurper which is the Primitive Doctrine of the Pastoral Letter And this is such a Scorn put upon a Free Nation as never was in the World as if the Subjects of England were to engage their Allegiance Blindfold and were to venture their Lives and Fortunes in behalf of a Title which is to be unsight unseen at that ridiculous rate as no Countryman will buy a Pig Now all these Hypotheses have but these two small Faults in Common to them all First That they Vndermine the King's Throne as if he had no Legal Right to

very Reign And though this should be Scare-Crow-Doctrine to the Passive-Obedience-Men yet it is the Tenor of all Antiquity It is the Doctrine of the Mirror in very many places It is the Doctrine of the Sevententh Chapter of King Edward the Confessor's Laws It is the Sense of King Alfred's Stile Dei gratia benevolentia West-Saxonicae Gentis That he was King by the Favour of God and the Good-Will of the English Nation It is the Doctrine of the great Lawyers since the Norman Times as particularly Bracton Rex autem habet Superiorem Deum Item Legem per quam factus est Rex Item Curiam suam videlicet Comites Barones qui Comites dicuntur quasi Socii Regis qui habet Socium habet Magistrum ideo si Rex fuerit sine fraeno i. e. sine Lege debent ei fraenum ponere nisi ipsimet fuerint cum Rege sine fraeno tunc clamabunt subditi dicent Domine Ihesu Christe in chamo fraeno maxillas eorum constringe ad quos Dominus vocabo super eos gentem robustam longinquam ignotam cujus linguam ignorabunt quae destruet eos evellet radices eorum de terra a talibus judicabuntur quia subditos noluerunt juste judicare in fine ligatis Manibus Pedibus eorum mittet eos in caminum ignis tenebras exteriores ubi erit fletus stridor dentium Bracton Lib. 2. cap. 16. Sect. 3. The King hath three Superiors God and the Law by which he is made King and his Court namely the Earls and Barons because they are called Comites as being the Companions of the King and he that hath a Companion hath a Master and therefore if the King shall be unbridled that is Lawless they ought to bridle him unless they themselves with their King shall be unbridled and lawless too and then the Subject shall cry out and say Lord Jesus Christ hold in their Jaws with Bit and Bridle to whom the Lord shall say I will bring in upon them a Robustious and Foreign and unknown Nation whose Language they shall not understand Which Nation shall destroy them and shall pluck up the Roots of them from the Earth and by such they themselves shall be judged because they would not justly judg the English Subjects And in conclusion being bound Hand and Foot the Lord shall throw them into a Furnace of Fire and outer Darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of Teeth So that if the Parliament of England neglect to do their Duty in this Case in not restraining their King from Lawless and Arbitrary Courses They do it at their utmost Peril for they are threatned with Destruction for it in this World and will dearly answer it in the next I have here quoted a knocking Sentence of a Lord Chief Justice of England in the Time of Henry the Third four hundred and fifty Years ago whose Authority hath been so far valued by both Sides as to be strove for The Prerogative-Men quote such Sayings as these Rex non habet Parem in Regno suo quia Par in Parem non habet Imperium Nemo de Factis ejus praesumat disputare multo magis contra Factum ejus ire And in the very Context of the former large Quotation Item nec factum Regis nec Chartam potest quis judicare ita quod factum Domini Regis irritetur Now these and the like Sayings which are often to be met with in Bracton are to be understood concerning the ordinary Administration of Justice and not to limit the Transcendent Power of Parliaments which he has so fully display'd in this place and his Rule in other places where there is a new Case or any thing too weighty for the Judges is this Respectuetur ad Magnam Curiam which is the Key of Bracton's whole Book This Doctrine is agreeable to Fortescue who says That the People are the Fountain of Power in that Expression Rex à Populo Potestatem Effluxam habet And in another place he says That an Arbitrary Power to oppress the Subjects could not proceed from the People themselves and yet if it had not been from themselves such a King as the King of England could have had no manner of Power at all over them For the truth of it is it is a Contradiction to deny that all Civil Power is Originally in the People For what is Civil Power in English but the City's Power and derived from the Community And this either limited or enlarged as they please The Intention of the People as Fortescue tells us is the Heart-Blood of the Government and is the Primum Vividum in the Body Politick as the Heart is in the Body Natural And it is impossible to be otherwise The Nation must make their King for I am sure the King cannot make the Nation And as Sir William Temple very well observes The Basis of Governmen● is the People though the King be at the Top of it and to found the Government upon a King is to invert the Pyramid and set it upon the Pinacle where it will never stand This Doctrine is agreeable to the Original Contract which is in the Mirror of Iustice fol. 8. upon the Election of the First English Monarch which Contract is still continued in the Coronation Oath and the Oath of Allegiance Which Oath of Allegiance doth depend upon the King's taking the Coronation Oath first which was ever practised till the Reign of Henry the Fifth to whom Homage and Allegiance was sworn before he was Crown'd which was a singular Courtesy and done on presumption of the Goodness of his future Reign I might speak of the Curtana Sword the Power of the Lord High Steward and other great Officers of the Kingdom and draw all the Lines of the Government to this Center But I have been heretofore forc'd to destroy all the Reading of my whole Life with my own hands and have not since had Health enough to retrieve it and now a late Calamity hath fallen upon me that I can do nothing Only I must answer one Objection and that is That our Ancient Statute is not practicable for the King having the Prerogative of Calling and Dissolving Parliaments will never assemble them nor suffer them to sit for such a purpose But such an Objection as this betrays great Ignorance of the Constitution of English Parliaments We will allow that the King hath a Prerogative of Calling Parliaments but he hath no Prerogative of Not Calling them For not to mention our Right of having Stationary Parliaments not only Annual but Anniversary which sat down constantly at the Calends of May as appears by the Laws of William the First It is plain likewise that they were not dissolvable at Pleasure but that even as low as Henry the Fourth's Time Proclamation used to be made to know whether there were any Petitions that were to be answer'd in Parliament The first Abusion of