Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	know_v	speak_v	word_n	9,131	5	4.2861	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91254	A letter of due censure, and redargvtion [sic] to Lieut: Coll: John Lilburne: touching his triall at Guild-Hall-London in Octob: last. 1649. Wherein if there be contemper'd some corrosive ingredients, tis not to be imputed unto malice: the intent is, to eat away the patients proud, dead flesh, not to destroy any sincere, sound part.	Parker, Henry, 1604-1652.	1650 (1650)	Wing P405; Thomason E603_14; ESTC R205827	37,997	43

eight or nine dayes more to give in a new Answer but when you say t is impossible for you upon the sudden and without advice of Counsell to own or disown books you seem very dark to me I cannot dive into your meaning You come now to precedents and say first that Ju: Heath at Oxford allowed you Counsell before pleading The Judges Answers might give you full satisfaction herein For 1. Heath well enough understood that your charge was not Treason 2ly if it were Treason He understood as well that the Parliament had more prisoners of the Kings then the King had of the Parliaments and so the retaliation would turn to the disadvantage of the King 3ly The proceedings at Oxford are no fit rules for our Courts at Westminster nor is it congruous that you who then fought against Heath and his confederates for subverting Law should now cite his practise at Oxford for Law and bring us to relye upon him as a main pillar of Justice For another precedent you cite the Parliament in the Earl of Straffords Case who you say had Counsell assigned him before pleading but this is contradicted by Justice Jermyn and He better informs you that the Earl of Strafford before pleading had no Counsell granted Him and if He had the Parliament was not so subject to the common rules of Law as inferior Courts are Your 3d precedent alledges that Major Rolph had Counsell allowed him by the Lord Ch Baron Welde in a Charge of Treason before the Grand Jury had past upon Him But the Answers of your Judges clearly avoid the force of this allegation for first it is no more evident to this Court what was done by the Lord Ch Baron in Rolphs Case then upon what reason it was so done If Counsell was allowed it may be Rolph confessed the Charge or there might be some other difference in the Case and so the allowance of Counsel might be legall But 2ly suppose it to be illegall and then it has no obliging force upon this Court That Court which is ingaged to administer justice according to the form of the Common Law of England may not so safely follow one example varying from the old usage as they may a thousand keeping more close to the same In the 5th place you strive to invalidate the States witnesses saying there are none but single witnesses now produced against you and the validity of single witnesses is taken away by 2. Statutes of Ed 6. To this the Judges answer that the Statutes of Ed 6. are over-ruled by a later Stat: of 1. and 2. of P. and Mary That also by the Common Law of England where Treasons are triable thereby one witnes is sufficient especially when there are several facts of a Treasonable nature and severall testimonies given in to each respective fact But if single witnesses be not sufficient yet still in this case of yours besides a concurrence of circumstances and a triplication of witnesses to severall facts of the same nature and other strong presumptions there wants not the compleat number of 2. or 3. witnesses to one and the same matter and such as lie under no just or reasonable exception In the 6th place therfore supposing the books proved to be yours yet you say there might be Errataes either in the dating or Printing of them and you are not to suffer for other mens errors Here is a great weight hang'd upon a small threed you must not be admitted to be the Author of such and such treasons because there is a possibility a very remote possibility that you were not the Author of them You strike and wound a man that dies immediately and have nothing to plead for your self but a meer distant possibility that the man might have some other mortall inward disease of which he would have falne down dead at the same instant though your hand had not been upon him This plea will not hold good you are here the affirmant and the proof lies on your side you must make it appear by Chirurgions and Physitians that your blowe was not mortall and that there was indeed some other mortall cause or else your meer alledged possibility will advantage you nothing at all And if one possibility in that case will not acquit you how should you be acquitted in this Indictment where many seditious passages in many severall books are charged against you and you have nothing to ward them all but possibility upon possibility that all those seditious passages might be caused by so many several mistakes of the Printers You having no proofs nor colourable presumptions to offer that there were indeed any such mistakes He that affirms whether he be Plaintiffe or Defendant if the matter affirmed be very important must prove so far as he affirms this is a rule in Law and Logick not to be dispensed with And thereupon the Defendant if by good specialty it has been proved by the Plaintiffe that money was lent shall not avoid the Action by pleading payment and satisfaction given unlesse he prove and make the same evident Away then with these toyes of your Printers possible Errataes away likewise with the possible misdating of your books For the Act of July last did not so much make as declare your books treasonable and you know in my L. of Straffords Case when he insisted upon this that where there was no Law therewas no Transgression t was soon returned to him for answer That endeavours to subvert settled Government was against an internall Law if there were none written against it being malum in se not quia prohibitum and for that reason every man in such transgressions without written Law is a Law to himself It was also further pressed to him that after the Statute of the 25. Ed 3. wherein Treasons were specially enumerated the Parliament neverthelesse had attainted divers Delinquents whose Treasons were not enumerated in that Satute it was no relief to the offendors to plead that they had offended without warning and were made the first examples of publick severity There is nothing more notorious then this that the Peoples safetie is supreme to all Judiciall Laws as well in order of time as in order of Nature and that as it was the prime judiciall Law ingraven in our breasts at the Creation so it ought to be the most fundamentall Law inrolled in our publick treasuries The 7th prop of our cause is that you are only acoused and impeached for words and by severall Statutes you say of Hen 4. Q. Mary and Q. Eliz it is manifested that they in those dayes detested the making of words or writing to be Treason He that rightly distinguishes rightly delivers and teaches truth but you relying upon a contrary art an art of confounding things not of distinguishing render your self justly suspected that your aime is subtilly to infuse and inspire falshoods into your disciples not to hold forth or teach truths You cannot but know there is sometimes

a wide difference in words yea in the same words that some words signifie more then others and at sometimes sound forth greater matters then at others For example words in writing are more permanent then words spoken and words written are of a more transient nature then words printed forasmuch as they intimate lesse of purpose and premeditation and the same words spoken written or printed by a discontented man or at the point of death or directed unto persons aggrieved carry much more weight in them and use to make deeper impression then they would if they had been utter'd by another person upon another occasion unto men of another condition Therfore the Prophet who regards some mens words no more then the crackling of thorns under a pot or croaking of frogs in a pudle yet likens other mens words to sharp arrows and poyson'd darts yea and other mens counsels to the venome of asps and to the eggs of cockatrices Adonijah had a request to present to his brother Solomon and for the more reverence sake He would use the mediation of Solomons mother therein the matter also of his request was onely for a wife for a wife of ordinary parentage who in Law could have no pretension to the Crown Howsoever Solomon who found a great danger wrapped up in this plausible supplication distinguishes further neverthelesse and by the sentence of his oraculous breast that same designe which deserved death and was treasonable in his brother supplicating was simple and altogether inoffensive in his mother interceding Achitophel was onely of Counsell with Absolom we finde not that He furnisht Horses and Arms or raised men with his manifestoes yet doubtlesse his words were more pernitious to David at such a time then the swords of ten thousand other Revolters and David was more earnest with God to disappoint the inductions of Achitophels tongue then to rout and defeat all the other brigades and stratagems of his Son Absolom Tarquin when his Son consulted with him about the destruction of a neighbour State conveighed his fatall subversive plots by signes and dumb gestures for even by doing execution with his staffe upon the highest grown and fairest Lilies in the garden He sufficiently taught and instructed a young Traytor to despoil a Common-wealth of its most potent and most politick Grandees What Tarquin did without words or writings against a forrein Enemy may be practisde neerer at home by an intestine conspirator to the ruin of his own Countrey and shall we say that no Law ought to take hold of such a conspirator because his treasons did not amount to so much as words or writings Good Sir study the superior Laws more and the inferior lesse at leastwise when you have attained skill enough to render to every private man what is his due in chattels reall and personall make a further progresse and strive to satisfie your self in that which is the due of the whole State and concerns our generall preservation Mounsiur Du Bartas as He is Englished advertises well you may finde Law in verse sometimes as well as in Litleton Treasons are like the Cockatrices eye If they foresee they kill foreseen they dye The story of the Basilisk perhaps is not to be credited in Physicks yet it affords us this wholsome mythologie in Politicks that when we come within any neer distance of Traytors where their designs like poysonous beams of the eye may possibly reach us we must expect to surprize or be surprized to anticipate or be anticipated Away then with all your niceties in Law wherby you retard justice if our safetie cannot be provided for without some incommodity of yours nor the absolute Empresse of all Laws be served and obeyed without infringing some priviledge of yours you must give us leave to prefer the being of England before the well-being of any Englishman nay the well-being of England before the being of any Englishman whatsoever Two whole dayes are now consumed in one issue of yours whether such books were yours or no and 2. whole months had been consumed if all your Arguments of dilation and respite had been hearkned unto but if such a priviledge be indulged to every prisoner in cases of Treason what unprofitable uneffectuall things will justice and judgement become in England how will Treasons like Hydraes-heads spring forth whilest one Delinquent is upon his triall ten more will start up in his place and either there will not be found Judges enough or the Judges will not find time enough to arraigne any considerable part of them If words could not amount to Treason Achitophel and Adonijah would as easily purge themselves as you can and so will a thousand other delinquents but if you will grant that Adonijah might couch Treason in an humble Petition for a wife and Achitophel do the like in his advices to his Masters sons grant also that the Laws of England may be as severe against such Traitors as the Laws of the Jews were And for all your other subterfuges except you think your self a better pleader then that Gilonite was you may well think his would have been as legall as yours are grant him such a Triall as you claim and as much prolongation of time and he will make his cause as fair as yours nay leave him to be his own Judge as you in effect challenge to be and he will justifie Absoloms defeated Army and prove them as holy Martyrs as you do your Burford brethren Consider also that there is now more Law against you for seditious books then there was against Adonijah for petitioning his brother and consider withall that the Laws of England now are not therein more rigid then they were in former times You professe your self exact in all the body of our English Law except only in the practical formalities of it therfore I question not you have read Burtons Case in the 10th of H 7. the Duke of Norfolks Case in the 13. of Eliz together with Owens Case in the 13th of K James and you know these with divers others cited against the Earl of Strafford since the beginning of this Parliament do inform you sufficiently that many have suffered for meerly traitrous words even when no further traitrous act or intent was proved against them Correct therfore at last your own impudent arrogance by taking notice that there is nothing due to you but what is due to every man in England and that if every man in England shall baffle Law as you do and therefore accuse the present Government of Tyranny and usurpation because it refuses to be baffled there remains nothing but that we all dissolve into our first chaos of confusion Your 8th help or strength upon which you rest is the power of your 12 Jurors For you first pull down the Judges from their Tribunall as meer ciphers and as Clerks that have nothing to do but to cry Amen and then into their seats you promote your 12. men wherupon you grow confident