Selected quad for the lemma: power_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	king_n	law_n	supremacy_n	3,288	5	10.6148	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46843	King Charles I, no such saint, martyr or good Protestant as commonly reputed, but a favourer of Papists and a cruel and oppressive tyrant all plainly proved from undeniable matters of fact : to which are added Dr. Burnet's, now Bishop of Salisbury, and other reasons, against the keeping up any longer the observation of a fast on the 30th of January : as also short answers to these three questions, I, what is the occasion of the clergies pride and lording it over the laity, II, why they and many of the laity cry up this king for a saint, martyr, &c., III, what is the true reason that the generality of the clergy, and many of the laity, both lawyers and others, are constant advocates for kings, tho never so wicked, and sacrificers of the people.	D. J.	1698 (1698)	Wing J7; ESTC R444	18,954	30

factus est Rex ac Comites Barones qui debent ei Fraenum ponere The King of England hath for his Superiors both the Law by which he is constituted King and which is the measuring of his governing Power and the Parliament which is to restrain him if he do amiss Bracton l. 2. c. 16. Fleta l. 1. c. 17. That the King by his Coronation Oath hath a power to rule his People for their best advantage to administer to every man his just rights to confirm such Laws that the People make conducing to the Common Good c. And no other Authority can he with justice claim That it is against the Moral Law that a Kingdom should suffer it self to be unkingdom'd ruin'd and destroy'd having power in their hands to save themselves self-preservation being natural even to brute beasts when disturbed That God doth sometimes require that One should suffer for all but never that All should suffer for One. That Rebellion consists in resisting of just Governors in their just Government and not in defending legal rights against a Tyrant That it is unlawful to keep any Oaths Vows and Covenants to or for the King that are against the good of the Kingdom for the performing or keeping them would be an adding sin unto sin wickedness unto wickedness that is to do Evil as well as to promise the doing thereof He that covenants to do things unlawful covenants with Hell must therefore the League of Hell and Death be maintained These things one would think should have some weight with our Nonswearing Jacobites who choose rather to break the solemn Oaths they took to feed their Flocks than to comply with swearing Faith and true Allegiance to that Prince that Providence in a most miraculous manner raised up to deliver these Three Kingdoms from the Egyptian slavery it groaned under A Prince who by his own Merits and the Peoples Election can justly claim the best Title that ever any King of England had let the Fools and Knaves who madly dote on the Divine Right of Succession c. say what they will to the contrary That the Oath of Allegiance is not made to the King Warring or any ways Acting against the welfare of the Kingdom but to him as Governing for good according to the Laws of the Land That the Oath of Supremacy doth not allow him to be the Supreme Legislative Power of the Kingdom and that he is in all Cases the sole Judg and over all persons an absolute Lord unto whose Will and Pleasure the People are bound to be subject Actively or Passively for such a Power becometh only those that are perfect as God himself is perfect That all Oaths Vows Covenants and Compacts whatsoever are conditional reciprocal and mutual the King being as well bound to the People as the People to the King That the King 's voluntary and plenary breach of his Agreement with the People doth ipso facto discharge the People from their Vows and Covenants until such time as the Agreement and Compact between the King and People be again renewed and united The Nobility Gentry and Clergy have in their noble assistance in the late Revolution justified this Position to the height and also that Kings are accountable to their Subjects for their Male Administration That the People of England cannot give the Parliament a power to enslave themselves for thereby they would be Self-betrayers and in a degree Self murderers Neither can the People de Jure make Laws destructive to the Common-safety or give any Power to others to the making of such Laws That what King James the First told the Lords and Commons in the Year 1609. is certainly true viz. That he is no King but a Tyrant that governs not by Law That there is a very great and dangerous defect in the constitution of the Government of England if the same Power that gave the Coronation Oath cannot judg whether the said Oath be kept or not and call to an account for the violation thereof Bracton Fleta the Parliament of 1640. and the late Revolution seem clearly to allow Kings being accountable c. That Kings and all Magistrates ought to be Nursing Fathers not Bloody Tyrants to make their People miserable to reward Virtue and not to encourage Injustice Oppression and Vice That if they would answer the end of Government which is the Publick Good they ought to study the happiness and welfare of their Subjects equally with their Own Lastly That if they will not govern thus according to Law and Justice they must not think the People of England will be such Fools as to stay for their accounting in the other World for they do not love the Welshmans reckning which was to let her alone till the last Judgment and then her would account fairly for all her Rogueries c. I am very well satisfied let the wretched Advocates for Tyranny and Arbitrary Power say what they will to the contrary That these Doctrines or Maxims cannot destroy Government because they will not permit Governors to destroy the People Nay they will establish a Just Government by rooting out the Unjust The Throne will be established by Righteousness but ruined by Wickedness Those Doctrines that rectifie Governors in the administration of Common Right and Justice do fasten the Crowns of Government upon their Heads for by doing every man right their Throne is set up in every man's Heart and not only so but the promised Presence of an Infinite Power will ever secure and prosper such Administrations These pious Doctrines do not implead Government but the Evils thereof and are all included in this The Safety of the People is still the chiefest Lord Rule Reason and Law These Divine Truths will I hope be highly acceptable in this age of light and knowledge tho Laud Sibthorp Manwaring Mountague and other wicked Clergy-men of those and later times have unjustly esteemed them Rebellious I could produce many more Instances to inform the deluded part of mankind that this adored Prince was far from being a pious One but for the present shall give but one more clear Demonstration that is His causing a Declaration to be published and read in all Churches that all Sports c. whatsoever were lawful on the Sabbath-day How agreeable this most wicked Act can be to Religion I cannot conceive and I am of opinion it will puzle all those that in a blasphemous strain call him a Saint and Martyr to defend him from this horrid impiety See the Declaration at large printed in the Book called A Vindication of the Parliament of 1640. Neither can I see for what Reasons any of his adorers can make him a Martyr for the word Martyr in the Greek Martur signifies Testis a Witness In Ecclesia dicitur Testis Confessor Veritatis Verbo Dei patefactae singulariter autem ille qui propter Confessionem Evangelicae veritatis sustinet Afflictiones ipsamque adeo Mortem Our pretended Martyr God

King Charles I. No such SAINT MARTYR or GOOD PROTESTANT as commonly reputed BUT A FAVOURER of PAPISTS and a Cruel and Oppressive TYRANT All plainly proved from undeniable Matters of Fact To which are added Dr. Burnet's now Bishop of Salisbury and other Reasons against the keeping up any longer the observation of a Fast on the 30th of January AS ALSO Short Answers to these three Questions I. What is the Occasion of the Clergies Pride and Lording it over the Laity II. Why they and many of the Laity cry up this King for a Saint Martyr c. III. What is the true Reason that the generality of the Clergy and many of the Laity both Lawyers and others are constant Advocates for Kings tho never so wicked and Sacrificers of the People He that ruleth over men must be just ruling in the fear of God 2 Sam. 23.3 And Ahab the Son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him 1 Kings 30. And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the KING and the Priest Lam. 2.6 And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high and the Kings of the earth that are on the earth Isa 24.21 And I will come upon him while he is weary and weakhanded and will make him afraid and all the people that are with him shall flee and I will SMITE the KING ONLY 2 Sam. 17.2 But when his heart was lifted up and his mind was hardned with Pride he was deposed from his Kingly Throne and they took his Glory from him Dan. 5.20 ●or this Melchisedeck King of Salem Priest of the most high God who met Abraham returning from the Slaughter of Kings and blessed him Heb. 7.1 LONDON Printed in the 10th Year of our Redemption from Popery and Slavery 1698. To the good People of England who sincerely love and will maintain the Protestant Religion English Laws Liberties and Properties Honest Countrymen THE design of this Book is twofold First To give many and clear Demonstrations that King Charles the First was no such Saint or Martyr as he has been commonly reputed nor yet a true Protestant but on the contrary a great favourer of Papists and an oppressive Tyrant Secondly To vindicate the just Resistance the Parliament of 1640 and People were constrain'd for their own safety to make I foresee this Treatise will meet with two Objections First That it contradicts the old Maxim De mortuis nihil nisi bonum The second That it treats a crowned Head nay a pious Martyr's too with little respect To the first I answer That bonum here must be understood quasi verum that is do not wrong or belie the Dead for they are not in being to justify their own Innocency otherwise it will not only reflect on profane but sacred History nothing being more common in both than to record the evil Actions even of Princes themselves I find this Maxim sometimes highly insisted on by some of our Clergy and Laity especially in favour of King Charles I. At other times these sort of men make not the least scruple for sinister ends most unjustly to vilify as the greatest Villains imaginable the Parliament of 1640 and those worthy Patriots that join'd with it to prevent the then many apparent inundations of Popery and Arbitrary Power that King his Queen and evil Counsellors were bringing on the three Kingdoms To the second of respecting this crowned Head I must confess I have not treated him as I would a King 〈…〉 for the good of his People according to Law but as a Tyrant who cannot pretend to the least Love or Honour from any of his Subjects except those Papists and others that were his Favorites and were embarked in the same wicked Designs with him esteem it a great Sin to idolize and deify the best Magistrate on Earth but a much greater to adore a bloody and tyrannical Oppressor And if the same men will through custom simplicity or want of information no otherwise consider Kings than in the gaudy name of Majesty and admire them and their doings as if they breathed not the same Breath with other mortal men I thank God I have learnt better and plainly see with what a besotted and degenerated baseness of spirit imbastardized from the antient nobleness of their Ancestors they have not only in a religious but a civil kind of Idolatry idoliz'd this King and ador'd the Image and Memory of him who hath offered at more cunning fetches to undermine the Liberties of England and put Tyranny into an Art than any British King before him To make good my Charge against this Prince I shall first prove that the general course of his Actions c. were directly inconsistent with what a Saint doth and ought to do viz. 1. He was a proud Nimrod a hardened Pharaoh 2. A great Liar if he writ the Book call'd Eicon Basilike for amongst the many false Assertions against and Accusations of the Parliament he begins with this notorious one viz. That he call'd this last Parliament not more by the advice of others than his own choice and inclination when the contrary was well known both by the current of his own Actions and by the Favorites about him For further proof of this let any unbiassed Person but read his Promises Oaths Protestations and solemn Declarations to the Parliament and consider how little of truth was in them how the Parliament in many of their Petitions charged him with the breach of them and he will receive sufficient satisfaction ● He unhallowed and unchristianed the very Duty of Prayer it self by borrowing to a Christian use Prayers offered to a Heathen God What little fear had he of the true all seeing Deity what little reverence of the Holy Ghost whose Office is to dictate and present our Christian Prayers What little care of Truth in his last words or honour to himself or to his Friends or sense of his Afflictions or of that sad hour which was upon him as immediately before his death to pop into the hand of that grave Bishop who attended him as a special Relick of his saintly Exercises a Prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a Heathen Woman praying to a Heathen God and that in no serious Book but a vain amatorious Poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia a Book in that kind full of Worth and Wit but among religious Thoughts and Duties not worthy to be named nor read at any time without caution much less in time of trouble and affliction to be a Christian's Prayer-Book that thought no better of the living God than of a buzzard Idol by serving him with the polluted trash of Romances and Arcadia's A bold and irreligious affront to the Divine Being And in the 5th Chapter about Triennial Parliaments he hath this passage That the Tumults threatned to abuse all Acts of Grace and turn them into

Wantonness If they had turn'd his Wantonness into the Grace of not abusing Scripture it had been well this no ways became such a Saint as they would make him Herod was eaten up of Worms for suffering others to compare his Voice to the Voice of God But the borrower of this phrase gives much more cause of jealousy that he likened his own Acts of Grace to the Acts of God's Grace And in the same Chapter his letting some men go up to the Pinacle of the Temple was to cast him down headlong In this Simily we have himself compared to Christ the Parliament to the Devil and his giving them that Act of settling to his letting them go up to the Pinacle of the Temple this was a goodly use made of Scripture in his solitudes And in Chap. 8. on his repulse at Hull in his Prayer thus Let not thy Justice prevent the Objects and Opportunities of my Mercy Must this be imputed to his Folly or Blasphemy or to both Shall the Justice of God give place and serve to glorify the Mercies of a Man All other men that know what they ask desire of God that their doings may tend to his Glory But in this Prayer God is required that his Justice would forbear to prevent and as good as said to intrench upon the Glory of a Man's Mercy If God forbear his Justice it must be sure to the magnifying his own Mercy but here a mortal Man takes the boldness to ask that Glory out of his hand He hated all those that were esteemed Religious doubting that their Principles too much asserted Liberty this was plainly seen by his vehement prosecution of them He took a most bloody and treacherous advantage of the Parliament's Army near Colebrook whilst he was under Treaty at Vxbridg with them as he protested to prevent the shedding of Blood From the beginning of the War he would rather sacrifice the Lives of thousands of his good Subjects than deliver up those evil Counsellors that sought to enslave England or govern according to Law himself He admired encouraged and protected none but the worst and corruptest sort of Courtiers and the ragged Infantry of Stews and Brothels the spawn and shipwrack of Taverns and Dicing-houses were the Bravo's and Hacksters that attended him when he went in the most arbitrary and illegal manner into the House of Commons and that in his Army he had 1000 of blaspheming Cavaliers about him whose mouths let fly Oaths and Curses by the Volly that entertain'd and encouraged a most ignorant profane and vicious Clergy learned in nothing but their Pride their Covetousness and Superstition whose unsincere and levenous Doctrines corrupting the People first taught them Looseness then Bondage loosning them from all sound Knowledg and strictness of Life the more to fit them for the bondage of Tyranny and Superstition A Clergy that from the Press and Pulpit poisoned the People with the following abominable enslaving Doctrines of Passive or more properly Assive Obedience Non-resistance Obeying without Reserve That the Kings of England by being anointed Birds are absolutely unaccountable to the People That they have a power over the Lives Liberties Laws and Goods of their people and may do what they will with them That the King can do no wrong and many more such horrid Notions enough to corrupt the best Prince and enslave the freest people These devilish enslaving Doctrines are most prejudicial and ungrateful to any people that not only believe but know that they are Free-born Subjects That all Government was originally in the People for they were before Kings That all Kings c. came by their power Ex Pacto aut Scelere either by Compact Covenant c. with the People or by Usurpation That they did not like the Beasts in St. Peter's Vision drop down from Heaven with all their Dignities Power c. but had their Root and Foundation from the Earth If by Usurpation the longest Sword must decide the Controversy but if by Compact the People of England cannot harbour such hard thoughts of their Ancestors as to imagine they would make such ridiculous foolish and nonsensical Bargains as to sell themselves and as far as in them lay their poor Posterity for I may then with reason call them so to a vile miserable and lasting Slavery That if their Ancestors were such Fools Knaves or Madmen to sell their Birthrights as Esau did the people of England know better things than to stand to that blind Bargain it being against the Law of Nature which teaches Self-preservation Neither will the sensible part of Mankind any more believe that any Kings have such a Divine Right as will justifie their violating their Coronation Oaths breaking through all the Laws of the Land that are the Peoples chiefest security for they know and will preserve the undoubted privileges of free-born English Men. They are also well assured that when a King or Prince ceases to govern according to Law he turns Tyrant and therefore ceases to be King by which as the Scots wisely call it he forefaults his Kingdom That Salus populi est suprema Lex That the King was made for the Kingdom and not the Kingdom for him That the King doth not maintain the Kingdom but the Kingdom the King That the King and all Magistrates are the Kingdoms Ministers and Servants That it is their Duty and Glory to serve the Kingdom That Kings must not reign by their Kingdoms ruin nor be lifted up by their downfal That the End is greater than the Means Health better than Physick That the King was not advanced to debase and enslave his People That it is not the Ordinance of God that millions of men should be miserable slaves and vassals to One. That if the King be God's Anointed Jure Personae in the Right of his Person he is Man's appointed Jure Coronae in Right of the Crown and therefore tho' he is above every one singly yet not above All. For common safety is the sole Sovereign That if a King accepts of the Dignity of Government and by his Coronation Oath or otherwise covenants with his People he must submit to all such Agreements to the Rules Burdens and Troubles thereof That the end of the King's Revenue was not to make him able to destroy but preserve his Subjects That the King hath no Council above his Parliament That the foolish sensless and wicked Doctrines of Passive Obedience and Non-resistance if strictly observed are of dangerous consequence to any Nation for by these abominable Positions the Peoples hands being tied up and nothing but Prayers and Tears left One Armed Tyrant may if he pleaseth destroy all his Subjects and they like madmen be accessory to their own deaths Surely none but Turks Slaves or French Vassals can really admire or approve of such an Obedience That Bracton and Fleta who were eminent Lawyers were in the right in declaring That Rex Angliae habet superiores viz. Legem per quam