Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	according_a	law_n	power_n	3,809	5	5.0020	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28812	The royal law, or, The golden rule of justice and charity a sermon at the anniversary meeting of the gentlemen, inhabitants of London, and others, born within the county of Worcester, at St. Lawrence Church, Nov. 29. 1683.	Boraston, George, b. ca. 1634.	1684 (1684)	Wing B3748; ESTC R9969	13,784	26

and knowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 3.19 urging and enforcing our love to one another from the consideration of this excessivelove of his to us Which that we may be in some measure able to perform and exercise he hath given us his Holy Spirit to excite and stir up to shed abroad that Love in our Hearts to multiply and make it perfect in us Which what effect that loving Spirit hath upon us how it is we behave and demean our selves in the performance of this peculiar command He in a signal manner takes special notice of and peculiar inspection awarding to us our final Doom and Sentence either of everlasting happiness or misery according as we have either conscientiously or negligently behaved our selves therein So that if his commands and example if the assistance and aids of his Spirit if the greatest rewards to the observers and severest denuntiations to the disobedient import any thing the Authority is most Sacred and the Sanctions most weighty And though it is so Sacred in its Authority though in its self so necessary to the welfare of mankind yet how miserably it is wrested and perverted will appear in the consideration of Thirdly Some irregularities and deflections from this Golden Rule whereby the right purposes and proper uses of it are perverted Some willingly claim an interest in the first part of the Rule but reject the latter would have all do well to them but themselves not obliged to do good to any Not unlike some narrow Factions in Religion who take all acts of Grace done to them as their due and therefore can never be thankful for any but when power is gotten into their hands can breath forth nothing but ruin Root and Branch to all that dissent from them Such is the Issue of that lewd Doctrine Dominion is founded in Grace Others live and act as if the Rule run All whatsoever ye would that do ye these do not bend their Wills to the Rule but bow the Rule to their Wills as if our Primitive State were indeed what Mr. Hobbs fancied it a State of War in which every one hath right to all things that Power only gives right and is the measure of Just and Honest and that Men were to live on the Land as Fishes do in the Sea the greater to devour the less and more helpless fry Some multilate the Rule or clog it with such a Proviso our great Lawgiver never intended they put out As ye would they should do unto you and read it as ye are done unto though never so unjustly and uncharitably They act not by the measures of just and regular appetites but of other Mens Evil demeanor towards them contrary to the true temper of the Law and Spirit of the Gospel which is so far from allowing the least revenge in case of injury and wrong received that on the contrary it not only commands us to forgive the Offender but also to oblige him to return him love for hatred Blessing for Cursing good Offices for despiteful usage Prayers and Intercessions for Mockery and Persecution St. Matt. 5.44 This is the Noblest the Best the only revenge allowed us best in regard of our Enemy whom by this means if by any we shall either convert and gain or mollify and sweeten best for our selves who by so doing shall become the Sons of God and resemble our Heavenly Father in his excessive goodness in his exuberant Beneficence in his unparallelled Philanthropy Again some leave out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all things whatsoever and put in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some things and to some sort of persons In lesser things they are contented to be exactly just and merciful but then they are not uniform in greater when some considerable damage may be avoided or advantage acquired they must be excused be the means never so indirect the advantages of the end and the great emolument and the goodly purchase they expect and hope for will according to their opinion and Gospel be sufficient to Sanctify the means be they never so unjust and uncharitable And as their Justice and Charity is thus narrowed and crampt to some things so also their huckstering kind of Love is confined to some Men that is Men of their own Party Some Mens Religion infects their minds with such a four leaven that they look upon the rest of Mankind as reprobates and will hardly allow their Christian Friends or Governors if they are not of their way and Faction a room in their Prayers This Partiality hath been the bane of the Churches Peace the chiefest cause of most of those Schisms and Differences under which Christendom hath from time to time and doth still groan this hath thrust the Flock of Christ into a far narrower compass than ever the Donatists did concluding the Communion of Saints only to their Sect or Party And no wonder this uncouth humor hath got into their civil commerce and dealings who if they do not think it their interest to Trade only with such yet think Mercy and Justice owing only to them So that a Pharisaical Corban shall evacuate those Duties towards all other Men and as they are apt to reckon it no Duty to exercise Justice and Mercy to them so they are no less forward to account it no Sin to defraud and over-reach them Among this latter sort of Men if we may judge of them by their practice I fear some reckon the King himself whose customs they dare so frequently steal without any conscience of the greatness of the Sin Though the King hath as undoubted a right to them as any Subject hath to the estate he possesses yea though our Lord himself for whose commands and example they profess so great a reverence was at the charges of a Miracle to pay Caesar his Custom from whence we may safely infer he would never have given his Vote to disenable Caesar to pay his debts But let such Men be assured the Righteousness of Christ though of infinite Vertue and Value to penitents will never serve their turn nor answer for this or any other act of Injustice without restitution according to their ability You have heard what this Law is with some of the principal measures and proportions of it the sacredness of its Authority and the miserable perverting of it to ill purposes from its proper uses What now remains but that as we esteem and look upon the Creed as a short Summary comprehending the Fundamental Articles of our Religion in reference to our Faith in like manner we take this Royal Law as a brief Compendium for the direction of our Practice That we by no means allow our selves in any course or action which this Golden Rule disallows that we be at all times so far from invading other Mens Rights whether in their Lives Liberties Reputation or Estates that we rather account it our happiness as it is our Duty to be sensible of their Distresses and stoop to their Necessities

The ROYAL LAW OR THE GOLDEN RULE OF Justice and Charity A SERMON AT THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE Gentlemen Inhabitants of London and Others Born within the County of Worcester at St. Lawrence Church Nov. 29. 1683. By George Boraston M. A. Rector of Hever in Kent LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in St. Paul's Church-yard 1684. To my Worthy Friends the STEWARDS for the present Year John Jolliffe Francis Wright Thomas Twittey Thomas Clifford John Harris Richard Boraston John Cooper Thomas Thornbury John Butler William Bacon William Jefferyes Walter Bowyer Gentlemen THIS Sermon Preach'd at your Feast is now at your request made Publick and presented as an acknowledgment of your undeserved Respects to me and your kind Apprehensions of the Discourse it self It was not any opinion of the performance to the weaknesses of which I am not a little conscious that hath made me comply with your desires to Print what I then Delivered but an earnest desire and hope of Contributing in some measure to your Love Veneration and Practice of the Duties therein recommended which so nearly concern the Vitals and Honour of Religion and all the great Interests of Mankind which great ends if these Papers shall any ways promote either in you or others as you will have no cause to repent in desiring so neither shall I in consenting to the Publication of them especially since thereby I have the opportunity of Publishing to the World how much I am Gentlemen Your Humble Servant and Affectionate Countryman George Boraston MATTH 7.12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that Men should do unto you do ye even so to them for this is the Law and the Prophets TO the performance of all those Duties we owe to God or Man we have no surer Guides than those natural notions interwoven in our make and constitution and revealed Religion designed by infinite Goodness and Wisdom to assist us against those Weaknesses and to repair those Ruins we have contracted by our vitious Education our Evil customs our Corrupt inclinations our Imperfect and false reasonings Between these two there 's so fair and necessary a correspondence that it is to all considering Men no slender support of their Faith in things revealed that they are so agreeable to the common notices implanted in them by Nature And yet in this unhappy age we have a sort of Men Christians I may not call them who are as fond of Sacrificing Christianity to their Lusts as ever the Primitive Christians were Zealous to Sacrifice their Lusts to the Laws of Christianity and their Lives for the Testimony of its Truth and Excellency Men who desire to be known by the name of Deists which is but a disguise for an Atheist since by it they well enough secure the effects of Atheism even when they are ashamed to own the principles of it Hence it is they not only Quarrel and Affront but Burlesque and make Sport with the Holy Scriptures and if they durst speak out would call the Gospel a contrivance and our Lord an Impostor What else means that cried up assertion that the Scriptures have no Authority but what the Civil Power gives them What else the revival of late of that long since baffled attempt Philostr life of Apollon by which Apollonius Tyanaeus that Impostor and Magician is made a Corrival if not an Overmatch to our Saviour both in Miracles and Sanctity of Life And what is the drift and secret tendency and design of all this But under the great respects they would seem to pay to the Law of Nature to undermine and justle all revealed Religion out of the World and to set these two in direct opposition and contradiction the one to the other that so they may thereby evacuate the Christian Law and gain the greater Liberty and Scope in gratifying their Lusts to which they imagine that to be a severer Enemy and to lay greater restraints on them than the Law of Nature does But by this as well as other reasons it is evident that it is not any strength of reason or conviction of their understandings but a kindness to their beloved Lusts that prevails over their minds and influences their Faith and makes them believe those things which are contradicted by common sense and plain demonstration For our Blessed Lord never designed to cancel the Laws of Nature but every where supposes and owns them and superstructs Christianity on that Basis and Foundation He intends not to divest Men either of the principles or passions belonging to Human Nature by converting them to Christianity or to deprive them of such helps as either right reason affords them or former Revelation had furnished them with but to improve and heighten both The Law and the Prophets were given by God as a fuller and plainer description and delineation of these natural Notions and Duties which he hath Written and Engraven on our Hearts which our Lord was so far from effacing or blotting out that his design was to fill up and compleatly finish that ruder draught and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so to furnish us with a perfect Picture of Virtue in its full proportion in its lively Colours in its goodly and beautiful lineaments that so it might have that effect upon our minds which Plato affirm'd Virtue drawn to the life would have if it could be seen to wit that it would kindle and enflame our affections and ravish our Hearts with its loveliness This our Lord affirms of himself toward the beginning of this best of Sermons St. Matth. Chap. 5.17 Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets I am not come to destroy but to fulfil that is by adding other instances by explaining it more fully and intelligibly in many things and in more things rescuing it from those corruptions which the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees had mixt with it 'T were easy to instance several Precepts in this Sermon in which he directs his hearers and in them all Men what to do as Men and as Christians by advancing Moral and Political Virtues into Spiritual Graces Of all which my Text may justly challenge the precedency being the abbreviature of the Law of Nature the Scope and Design of the Law and the Prophets the most comprehensive Rule not only comprizing all those Duties that are useful for the conduct and happiness of Human Society but also sufficiently directing us to those Duties which we owe to God himself For when we consider his goodness towards us and his kind usage of us sparing us even when we deserve punishment and treating us with the affections and indearments of a most indulgent Parent so that we our selves cannot desire or wish that he should do to us any otherwise then he has done his beneficence to us and the good things he hath prepared for us exceeding not only our greatest hopes but even the conceptions of our Hearts I say when we consider