Selected quad for the lemma: prince_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
prince_n	law_n	power_n	sovereign_a	3,887	5	9.6410	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48200	A letter to a member of the convention of states in Scotland by a lover of his religion and country.	Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1689 (1689)	Wing L1684; ESTC R30992	4,534	10

A Letter To A MEMBER Of The CONVENTION of STATES In SCOTLAND By a Lover of His Religion and Country Printed in the Year MDCLXXXIX A LETTER to a Member of the Convention of States In SCOTLAND SIR I Had fully Determined not to encrease the number of these Scriblers who now a dayes fill the Press with every little Product of their Empty Brain And lov'd better to please my self with Reading other Mens Opinions than hazard my own to the Censure of the World. But when I consider the great Heats and Animosities among all sorts of People and the Vast Pains that some Violent Men are at to throw us back into a Thousand worse miseries than these from which GOD has most Graciously delivered us The Duty I owe to my Religion to my Country and the particular Freindship I bear to you will not suffer me any more to be silent You are now called together Sir by his Highness the Prince of Orange to Consult and Deliberate what Methods will be most proper to secure Our Religion Laws and Liberties in order to which the first thing that will fall under your consideration is the setling the Soveraign power I take for granted that you are fully convinced that K Iames the 7th by his many Violations of the Fundamental Laws by his endeavouring to establish a Despotick and Arbitrary povver and introduce Popery tho he himself had confirmed all the Laws that were enacted in Favours of the Protestant Religion has thereby subverted the Constitution and that our Miseries might have no Redress from him has left us in a time when we needed his Protection most The Eyes of all Europe are upon you and it is in your Power to make your Selves and your Posterity either Happy or Miserable by making a choise either to call back the same King Iames and hazard once more all that Men account Dear To his Mercy or to settle the Government on some other under whom you may live Quiet and Peaceable Lives without the perpetual Terror of being swallowed up by Popery and Arbitrary Government which all good men hoped were now quite banished and yet behold a new Off spring is sprung up which plead Eagerly for both tho' under the mistaken Names of Duty and Allegiance It 's strange that any Man can so far Degenerate as to prefer Slavery to Liberty and that they should be so much in Love with Chains that when they were Fairly shaken off they should run Furiously to be Fettered again as if the Ottoman and French Government were so charming in our Countrey that we cannot not live without it tho' we have so lately groaned under the Dismal Burden of it And it might have been supposed that even these who had been Instrumental in Enslaving their Fellow-Brethren and were grown Fat with sucking in the Nations Blood would have taken another Method to Reconcile themselves than by perswading us to purchase their Safety at so vast an expence as the Ruine of more than three parts of the Nation will necessarly Amount to Do but a little Reflect Sir on the Motives which these Men blinded by self Interest make use of to Delude the Nation into a security that wanted very little of proving Fatal to it and compare them with the Strong Reasons we have to disswade us from being so imposed on and they will be found so Weak and Impertinent that you must Judge it next to Impossibility to suffer our Selves to be Twice Deceived But if the Experience of our former Miseries so lately hanging over our Heads the very thoughts of renewing which make all good Men to tremble has not made us Wiser and be not of Efficacy enough to deterr us from venturing another Shipwrack and exposing all again to the Discretion of a Roman Catholick It 's more than probable that GOD has abandoned us and given us up to believe strong Delusions First Sir they will endeavour to perswade You that Kings are Eximed from Punishments here on Earth and nothing they do can be Quarrelled by their Subjects which indeed might with some Reason be urged among the Turks who reserve nothing from the Power of their Sultans and where its Death to Dispute his Commands tho' never so Arbitrary and Tyrranical But with what Impudence can such Stuff be imposed on us who never admit our Kings to the Government till they swear to Rule us according to Lavv and no otherways The Lavvs are the only Security we have for our Lives and Properties which if our Soveraign subvert Subjects cannot be blamed for making use of the Ordinary Means to preserve them and since that cannot be done without withdrawing Obedience from such a Magistrate as goes about to destroy them such an Act cannot properly be said to punish him because we take nothing from him to which he has a just Claim but do only shun the occasion of making our selves Miserable The Speculative Doctrine of passive Obedience has done too much Mischief among us and what has befallen the King may be justly imputed to it for the believing that without Opposition he might do what he pleased encouraged him to take such Measures as have drawn all these Misfortunes on him Secondly Others are so Fond as to believe that we may be secure in calling the King back providing they so Limit him that it will not be in his Power to hurt us These Men do not Consider how small a Complement this is to a Man of the Kings Temper from an Absolute Prince as he was pleased to Fancy himself to Content himself with the bare Title of a King and how insupportable the Change must be if from being Master of all he must force himself to comply with a Thousand Masters and see his Throne become his prison But how Airy is it to fancy that any Restrictions of our Contrivance can bind the King. For 1 st It 's most certain they can never be Voluntary and what is constrained and done by Force is by Lavv declared to be Void and Null to whose Assistance the popes Dispensing Power being joined would quickly blow off these Samson-Cords and the Royal Power would again revive with all its Vigour and Lustre Secondly The King is of a Religion that has in a Famous Council decreed that no Faith is to be kept with Hereticks much less with Subjects whom he looks upon as so many Rebels and will not miss to treat them as such when ever they give him the Opportunity of doing it for his greatest Admirers do not runn to that height of Idolatry to imagine him so much Angel as not to take all Methods to Revenge so great an Affront and secure himself at our Cost from such a Treatment for the future the Apprehension of which Resentment will strike such Terror in Mens minds that nothing will be capable to divert them from offering up all for an Atonement and popery and Slavery will be thought a good Bargain if they can but save their Lives Then