Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	aaron_n	office_n	slay_v	12	3	9.5064	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62128	XXXVI sermons viz. XVI ad aulam, VI ad clerum, VI ad magistratum, VIII ad populum : with a large preface / by the right reverend father in God, Robert Sanderson, late lord bishop of Lincoln ; whereunto is now added the life of the reverend and learned author, written by Isaac Walton.	Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663.; Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.	1686 (1686)	Wing S638; ESTC R31805	1,064,866	813

weeping and therefore his blood warmed with an holy zeal he starteth up forthwith maketh to the Tent where these two great Personages were and as they were in the act of their filthiness speedeth them both at once and naileth them to the place with his Javelin And the next thing we hear is God well-pleased with the zeal of his Servant and the Execution of those Malefactors is appeased towards all his people and withdraweth his hand and his plague from them And of that deliverance my Text speaketh Then stood up Phinees and executed judgment and so the Plague was stayed The Person the instrument to work this deliverance for Israel was Phinees He was the Son of Eleazar who was then High-Priest in immediate succession to his father Aaron not long before deceased and did himself afterward succeed in the High-priesthood unto Eleazar his Father A wise a godly and a zealous man employed afterward by the State of Israel in the greatest affairs both of War and Embassy But it was this Heroical Act of his in doing execution upon those two great audacious Offenders which got him the first and the greatest and the lastingest Renown Of which Act more anon when we come to it In his Person we will consider only what his Calling and Condition was and what congruity there might be between what he was and what he did He was of the Tribe of Levi and that whole Tribe was set apart for the service of the Tabernacle And he was of the Sons of Aaron and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Family and Linage of the High-Priests and the Priests Office was to offer Sacrifices and to burn Incense and to pray and make atonement for the People Neither Levite nor Priest had to intermeddle with matters of Iudicature unless in some few causes and those for the most part concerning matters either meerly or mixtly Ecclesiastical but neither to give sentence nor to do execution in matters and causes meerly Civil as by any right or virtue of his Levitical or Priestly Office The more unreasonable is the High-Priest of Rome to challenge to himself any temporal or Civil Iurisdiction as virtually annexed to his spiritual power or necessarily derived thence Templum and Praetorium the Chair and the Throne the Altar and the Bench the Sheephook and the Scepter the Keys and the Sword though they may sometimes concur upon the same person yet the Powers remain perpetually distinct and independant and such as do not of necessity infer the one the other Our Saviours Vos autem non sic hath fully decided the controversie and for ever cut off all claim of temporal Iurisdiction as by any virtue annexed to the Keys If the Bishops of Rome could have contented themselves to have enjoyed those Temporalities wherewith the bounty of Christian Emperours had endowed that See whether well or ill whether too much or no I now inquire not but if they could have been content to have holden them upon the same terms they first had them without seeking to change the old tenure and to have acknowledged them as many of their fellow-Bishops do to have issued not at all by necessary derivations from their spiritual Power but meerly and altogether from the free and voluntary indult of temporal Princes the Christian Church had not had so just cause of complaint against the unsufferable tyrannies and usurpations of the Papacy nor had the Christian world been embroyled in so many unchristian and bloody quarrels as these and former ages have brought forth Yet the Canonists and they of the Congregation of the O●●tory like downright flatterers give the Pope the Temporal Monarchy of the world absolutely and directly as adhereing inseparably to his See and as a branch of that Charter which Christ gave to Peter when he made him Head of the Church for himself and his successors for ever The Iesuites more subtil than they not daring to deny the Pope any part of that Power which any other profession of men have dared to give him and yet unable to assert such a vast power from those inconveniences which follow upon the Canonists opinion have found out a means to put into the Popes hands the exercise of as much temporal power as they bluntly and grosly give him and that to all effects and purposes as full and in as ample manner as they yet by a more learned and refined flattery as resulting from his spiritual Power not directly and per se but obliquely and indirectly and in ordine ad spiritualia The man himself though he pretend to be supreme infallible judge of all Controversies yet heareth both parties and taketh advantage of what either give him as best sorteth with his present occasions and suffereth them to fall foul each upon other these accounting them gross flatterers aud they again these wicked Politicians but dareth not for his life determine whether side is in the right lest if he should be put to make good his determination by sufficient proof both should appear to be in the wrong and he lose all which whilst they quarrel he still holdeth It is a certain thing The spiritual Power conferred in Holy Orders doth not include the Power of Temporal jurisdiction If Phinees here execute judgment upon a Prince of Isarel it is indeed a good fruit of his zeal but no proper act of his Priesthood Let it go for a non sequitur then as it is no better because Phinees a Priest or Priests son executes judgment that therefore the Priestly includeth a Iudicatory Power Yet from such an act done by such a Person at least thus much will follow that the Priesthood doth not exclude the exercise of Iudicature and that there is no such repugnancy and inconsistency between the Temporal and Spiritual Powers but that they may without incongruity concur and reside both together in the same Person When I find anciently that not only among the Heathens but even among Gods own people the same man might be a King and a Priest Rex idem hominum Phoebique Sacerdos as Melchisedec was both a Priest of the most high God and King of Salem When I see it consented by all that so long as the Church was Patriarchal the Priestly and the Iudicatory Power were both setled upon one and the same Person the Person of the first born when I read of Eli the Priest of the sons of Aaron judging Israel 40 years and of Samuel certainly a Levite though not as some have thought a Priest both going circuit as a Iudge itinerant in Israel and doing execution too with his own hands upon Agag and of Chenaniah and his sons Izharites and Hashabiah and his brethren Hebronites and others of the families of Levi appointed by King David to be Judges and Officers not only in all the business of the Lord but also

with vain pretentions 28. But the more apt we are by nature to justifie our selves by causeless excuses the greater ought to be the care of every good man the only use I shall now make of this point to examine the truth and the weight of those excuses which he pretendeth in his own defence Whether they have justae excusationis instar and will bear a good and sufficient plea or be but rather shifts devised to serve a present turn more for outward shew than real satisfaction within Which is that judicium cordis the judgment of the heart whereunto Solomon as I told you referreth over this pretention Behold we knew it not to receive its first and most immediate trial Doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it What the tongue pleadeth is not a thing so considerable with God as how the heart standeth affected 29. For the approving his heart therefore in this business before him that knoweth it perfectly and is able to ponder it exactly let every Magistrate and other Officer of justice consider in the fear of God First Whether he hath been willing so far as his leisure amidst the throng of other his weighty imployments would permit to receive the petitions and with patience to hear the complaints of those poor Men that have fled to him as to a Sanctuary for refuge and succour Iob professeth himself to have been a father to the poor and he is a very unnatural father that stoppeth his ears against the cries of his children or so terrifieth them with his angry countenance that they dare not speak to him Solomon in the twenty ninth of this book distinguisheth a righteous Man from a wicked by this that the righteous considereth the cause of the poor but the wicked regardeth not to know it He that rejecteth their complaints or beateth them off with bug-words and terrour in his looks either out of the hardness of his heart or the love of ease or for whatsoever other respect when he might have liesture to give them audience if he were so minded and to take notice of their grievances cannot justly excuse himself by pleading Behold we knew it not But I must hasten Let him consider secondly Whether he have kept his ear and his affection equally free to both parties without suffering himself to be possessed with prejudices against or to be carried away with favourable inclinations towards the one side more than the other He is too little a judge that is too much either a friend or an enemy Thirdly Whether he hath used all requisite diligence patience and wisdom in the examination of those causes that have been brought before him for the better finding out of the truth as Iob searched out the cause which he knew not without shuffling over business in post-haste not caring which way causes go so he can but dispatch them out of the way quickly and rid his hands of them Fourthly Whether he hath indeed endeavoured to his power to repress or discountenance those that do ill offices in any kind tending to the perverting of justice as namely Those that lay traps for honest Men to fetch them into trouble without desert Those that sow discord among neighbours and stir up suits for petty trespasses and trifles of no value Those that abet contentious persons by opening their mouths in their behalf in evil causes Those that devise new shifts to elude good Laws Lastly whether he hath gone on stoutly in a righteous way to break the jaw-bones of the Lyons in their mouths and to pluck the spoil from between their teeth by delivering them that were ready to be slain or destinated to utter undoing by their powerful oppressors without fearing the faces of Men or fainting in the day of their brothers adversity He that hath done all this in a good mediocrity so far as his understanding upon power would serve tho he have not been able to remedy all the evils and to do all the good he desired may yet say with a good Conscience and with comfort Behold we knew it not and his excuse will be taken in the judgment both of his own heart and of God who knoweth his heart whatsoever other Men think of him or howsoever they censure him But if he have failed in all or any the premisses though he may blear the eyes of Men with colourable pretences he cannot so secure his own conscience much less escape the judgment of God before whose eyes causeless excuses are of no avail Which is the last of the three points proposed whereunto I now proceed 30. The judgment of a Man 's own heart is of greater regard in utramque partem than the censures of all the Men in the world besides Better the world should condemn us if our own hearts acquit us than that our hearts should condemn us and all the world acquit us This is our rejoycing the testimony of our Conscience saith St. Paul The approbation of Men may give some accession to the rejoycing the other being first supposed but the main of it lieth in the testimony of the Conscience This is the biggest Tribunal under Heaven but not absolutely the highest there is one in Heaven above it St. Paul who thought it safe for him to appeal hither from the unjust censures of Men yet durst not think it safe for him to rest here but appealeth from it to a higher Court and to the judgment of the great God 1 Cor. 4. It was a very small thing with him to be judged of man's judgment So long as he knew nothing by himself so long as his own heart condemned him not he passed not much for the censures of Men. Yet durst not justifie himself upon the acquittal of his own heart He knew there was much blindness and deceitfulness in the heart of every sinful Man and it were no wisdom to trust to that that might fail He would up therefore to a higher and an unerring Iudge that neither would deceive nor could be deceived and that was the Lord. I judge not mine own self saith he but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Even so here Solomon remitteth us over for the trial of our pretended excuses from our mouths to our hearts and from our hearts unto God If thou sayest Behold we knew it not doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it c. As if he had said No matter for the words look to thy heart If thou pretendest one thing without and thy conscience tell thee another thing within thou art 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cast and condemned by the sentence of thine own heart But if thy heart condemn thee not the more indeed is thy comfort and the stronger thy hope yet be not too confident upon it There is an abyssus a depth in thy heart which thou canst not fathom with all the line thou hast Thou hast not a just ballance wherein to weigh and to ponder thy own