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
A54947	A private conference between a rich alderman and a poor country vicar made publick wherein is discoursed the obligation of oaths which have been imposed on the subjects of England : with other matters relating to the present state of affairs.	Pittis, Thomas, 1636-1687.	1670 (1670)	Wing P2316; ESTC R26884	111,578	274

and charge him too severely Ald. How Sir You were as good say that I am unjust Do you think I would offer to scandalize a man or to blame him that were not blame worthy Vic. Nay Sir I humbly beg your Worships pardon if my words have been rash or unadvised Ald. You do well to own your subjection to us and to submit with modesty where your words shall seem to carry any imputation or disrespect Vic. Sir If I could not mortifie and deny my self I were unfit to be a Minister in this Town And yet I hope you will pardon me if for my further information that I may be the better able to limit and bound mine own Actions I am a little inquisitive into the deportment of my Predecessour I suppose that when according to his duty he did not stay beyond the Canonical hour when the greater occasions of the Corporation would not permit them to be at Church so soon as usually he presumed your Worships would not come that time or else that the Congregation would attend no longer Ald. No Sometimes when we have chid him for not having more regard to the Authority of the Place and punished him with the loss of his Sundaies Dinner he has performed his Duty for all that Nay and when we have enjoyned him with the gravest Aspect and the most frowning Countenance Mr. Mayor could make and what is worse on pain of losing all our Gratuities Nay when some Chapmen expected us at home or some Parish Business was to be done in the Church or some Rents to be divided at the Town Hall and he has been commanded to cut off but half the Prayers this audacious and rebellious Person notwithstanding Mr. Mayors Order read all his Prayers and Preached too and conjectured in his ungodly and wicked heart that the Rules and Canons of the Church so called were to be observed notwithstanding Mr. Mayors not only discountenance but commands to the contrary Vic. Truly Mr. Alderman with humble leave first begg'd of your good Worship I conceive the Canons of the Church are to be obeyed non obstante Mr. Mayors counter Order both because they are established by Act of Parliament and the Duty of Obedience to the King and Church perswades us and lastly because we are sworn to their strict observation Ald. But Mr. Mayor represents the King and therefore may dispense with Penal Laws Vic. Although the King may dispense with Penal Laws and may suspend the inflictions due to Offendors it being his great Prerogative derived fom Heaven that makes him more properly a God on Earth to be able to pardon faults and the Executive Power of the Law being in him he may withdraw what he cannot abrogate Yet pardon me if I say that Mr. Mayor is not in this the Kings Representative unless he could exchange his Mace for a Scepter quit his Gown for a Robe of State turn Calve-skins into Ermins and bartar his Sattin Coife for a Crown Ald. Sir You are now grown a little too bold I shall be angry if you thus speak against Mr. Mayors Prerogative Vic. I hope you would nor have M. Mayor accounted a King and Majesty added to his Worship you have for several years made him Right Worshipful and been as I am told outragious with your Minister if he has not informed God Almighty of it once or twice every Sunday Ald. I hope your passion will not make you peremptory too and cause you to forget with whom you are discoursing Vic. I humbly beg your good Worships pardon 't was only zeal for his Majesties Prerogative that thus transported me I must still beseech your excuse if I conjecture a possibility of mistake in you to think that Mr. Mayor can dispense with Law as the Kings Representative Ald. Now you seem to relent for the misdemeanour of your words I can more willingly hearken to your Discourse especially when your Language is so placed that it does not affront but acknowledge Superiority Pray tell me why Mr. Mayor as the Kings Lieutenant and Representative cannot dispense with Law Vic. You know Law is not my Profession but yet I can exhibite Reason enough against such strange and if it might be pardoned I would say uncouth Positions Ald. Come then let us hear yours and the rest I shall enquire of the Town-Clerk Vic. First Because the King himself does not pretend to dispense with Law and therefore his Court of Chancery as I have heard does not judge contrary unto Law but either mitigate and abate its rigour or give relief where Common Law gives none that not the least oppression may be heard in our Streets And secondly supposing the King did dispense with Law yet Mr. Mayor has only so much power as is committed to him in a certain Charter which indeed gives the Corporation power to make by-By-Laws for the benefit of the Town but by no means liberty by themselves to violate Acts of Parliament or to permit the breach of them in others But as to what we are at present making our enquiry into viz. the Laws of the Church these are without the verge of the Corporations Power and they can neither protect us from the Penalties and Punishments due for such wilful Disobedience nor absolve us from the guilt by the default contracted Ald. Well but admitting then that Acts of Parliament are to be obeyed I would fain know how your second reason becomes argumentative and evinces your Obedience due to the Church notwithstanding our Injunctions to the contrary Vic. If your Worship please to suspend your censure of my discourse for a bold presumption I shall give you an account of that too Ald. I would not have you to think me so critical or captious but that I can hear Reason and Argument in any dress especially when you are so civil as to beg leave for the familiarity of your discourse Vic. I thank your Worship for your candour and condescension and shall give you to understand that I ought to be obedient to the Church not only as I am a Member or a Minister by vertue of which relations I am more especially obliged But as all Government does suppose Obedience and Submission due and we therefore combine in a Common Body for the preservation of Propriety as well as Society so the defect of sense of such an Obligation violates all the bonds of Authority breaks down the Pale by which Government and Rule is fenced and laies it open to every bold Usurper and Intruder Thus not only Empires and Kingdoms have been laid waste and made pastures only for Birds and Beasts of Prey but by this means the Wall both of separation and defense being once assaulted and in an hostile manner scaled and battered the Temple of God is not only left without its Bulwarks but invaded and shot at by its Adversaries until the structure becomes demolished and there is scarce one stone left upon another The Church you know is compared to

carnal I could easily from this demonstrate that they must offer violence to their own Faculties when ever they attempt an alteration or change Ald. Pray do it then for my use for it is no absurdity for the greatest Politician to hear advice though perhaps at last he will make use of his own that so I may not joyn with them again to the prejudice of my Faculties too Vic. You know Sir that your Worship who has been so good to me may command any thing from me again and therefore I shall not at all refuse to remember you of what it would be arrogance to pretend an information That whosoever attempts the alteration of any Government it is upon assurance or at least presumption that the constituting of another becomes his particular Interest and that it will be better with him under that Authority he endeavours to introduce than it is at present under that which has the immediate sway But now these persons that we are discoursing of cannot place themselves in those Circumstances wherein they shall be freer from trouble or enjoy themselves or their Estates with less noise or burden than in that Condition in which they now are and therefore it must needs be an unreasonable attempt for this Party to endeavour an alteration of Affairs Ald. I understand the general drift of your Argument and you know the old Saying A word to a wise man is enough But methought I heard you offering at something but now to prove to me that those three Oaths mentioned by you and taken by me and my Brethren do not oblige and I the rather mind you of this promise because Oaths are such burdensome things that though I shall not so far depart from my Religion as with the Anabaptist and Quaker to deny the taking of any Oaths I would be eased of the performance of them Vic. I guess that by your Worships actions and therefore shall by Gods Grace set your Worship at liberty from those three but perhaps that may make way for the Obligation of others Ald. Well Sir I am willing to adventure that though to tell truth I liked those three better than some that I have taken since Vic. I am sorry your Worship has yet any kindness for Bell and the Dragon which besides that they are now generally looked upon as Apocryphal have devoured the substance of three Kingdoms and than which I think there were never more impious and unlawful Impositions Ald. But how do they appear to be such deformed and affrighting Monsters Vic. To float in generals were to adventure your Worship in a broad and dangerous Sea in a little Boat without Sails or Oars and might argue me what I never was a cunning Sophister rather than a rational and fair Discourser I must therefore first single mine Adversaries that so encountering them I may with the greater facility prove a Conquerour Ald. If you perform what you promise truly you shall have my vote for a better living not only because the sight of you will alwaies put me in mind of my Guilt and so detract from the pleasure of my life but also for your own advantage that a contracted maintenance may no longer hinder the enlargement of your knowledge Vic. I thank your Worship for your respects both to your self and me and shall with your good leave immediately draw up an Indictment against the Covenant Ald. Pray Sir be as brief as you can or otherwise our Dinner may give an Interruption to your discourse Vic. I shall not then take it asunder although there is in almost every bush a Thief and under every hedge an Ambuscado but shall endeavour to rout the main body and then the smaller Parties will separate of themselves The Covenant then is not only to be renounced but abhorred by all the peaceable Professors of Christianity First Because it is quite opposite to our natural Allegeance to our King by vertue of which we are obliged to preserve his Royal Person against not only Private Insurrections at home but Publick Enemies abroad and not to make our selves Judges of his Actions so far as with limitation and condition only to defend and preserve his Royal Person and Authority so far as his shall conserve and defend the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms as in the third Article of the Solemn League For if this Latitude be given to the Subjects of any Prince his Religion and Actions must of necessity be arraigned at the private Bars of those Subjects that are most inferiour as well as those that attend more immediately upon the Throne and every particular must plead a lawful and sufficient excuse for withdrawing from the preservation of his Prince if he shall either through Ignorance or Interest conjecture that the King does not preserve the true Religion or the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom which what they are is sti11 left to the rashness or indiscretion of every ignorant and illiterate head This sets the Subject above his Prince and loosens and overthrows the very Foundations Nature it self and that Subjection which reason without the Obligation of an Oath sufficiently enforces must needs teach us the bold impieties of such an Oath that will banish Order out of the World and lay open Gods Anointed whom he has consecrated his Delegate to every bold usurping Traytor that will at any time adventure to drench a Crown in its own gore Ald. I easily see your first Pass made at the Covenant which seems to have given it some wound Let us see also your second assault Vic. I am glad to see your Worship so chearful at the wound of such a Friend I was afraid you would have wept for it now since I know you shed drops of bloud for it formerly Ald. That was in my younger years when bleeding was as necessary as my Victuals I did only a some are wont to do at the Universities when you have a great Creation of Graduates or when a multitude of Knights are Dubbed on a day set apart on purpose run in among the Herd But pray Mr. Vicar you promised some more reasons Vic. I thank you Sir for your recalling of a wandring thought The second Argument I have learned against the Covenant is That it is contrary to the Prerogative of Kings not only appropriate to them under the Old Testament but also as soon as they became Christian under the New that is to have the power of reforming Religion in their own hands and this was sufficiently expressed in the Oath of Supremacy which I question not but that you had before taken where the King's Majesty is acknowledged and under the most Sacred Obligation owned the Supreme Ruler and Moderator of the Kingdom governing all Persons and Causes Ecclesiastical and Civil And not only so but you added an Oath to confirm and make your promise Sacred and Inviolable to defend and preserve as much as in you lay his Jurisdictions Priviledges Praeeminencies and Authorities