Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	body_n	life_n	soul_n	5,160	5	5.5664	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85513	The grand case of conscience concerning the Engagement stated & resolved. Or, a strict survey of the Solemn League & Covenant in reference to the present Engagement.		1650 (1650)	Wing G1486A; Thomason E589_10; ESTC R206308	16,478	22

diseases in the body which hazard the dissolution of the union This being laid as the Primum mobile of the ingagement and set in the Covenant as the common centre many lines were drawn towards them on every side in order to an union in the first principle and many Articles proposed as mediums thought most sutable and necessary to advance these ends And as these ends or first reasons were of two sorts viz Religion and Liberty the means were proportioned as was then thought fit for the happier effecting both Religion being chief it was first proposed and the preservation of it taken care for more expressely in the first and second Articles against the Common enemy who was then well known and as in order to that we ingaged to a Reformation of it in Doctrine and Discipline according to the word of God and the best Reformed Churches to extirpate Popery Heresie Episcopacie with all its attendants that being unto Religion as the suckers to the tree which diverts the moisture from the natural branches and by this we thought Religion sufficiently provided for in its preservation and Reformation The next in order was the just Liberty and Freedom of the Nations and the advancement of it as mediums unto that the Covenant in the third and fourth Articles as most absolutely necessary to preserve the Priviledges of Parliament and because we would let nothing out that might be probable though ex suppositione remota and from a strain'd charity we ingaged to preserve the Kings person yet with a wary Salvo in the preservation of Religion and Liberty And lastly to prevent any design against both we ingaged to discover and bring to condign punishment all Delinquents and Incendiaries that acted contrary to these proposed ends Thus you have the whole Covenant anatomized the two great pillars on which its Obligation stands which though of different Natures yet are inseparably united to the preservation of each other Now if any thing without should oppose either Religion or Liberty or any thing in any Article exprest should afterwards prove malignant to either or both or interfer with any other Article which hath more of the efficacy of a medium to these ends the Obligation to that ceaseth because it will destroy the Formal Reason by which I am obliged Thus it will follow That if the Kings person which we are engaged to preserve take him in his best capacity shall set up Popery and Prelacy contrary to Religion and advance Malignancy and Tyranny contrary to Liberty we have no Obligation by the COVENANT to preserve him seeing be is destructive to these absolute Ends for which and in the PRESERVATION of which we engage to preserve Him But that we may deal plainly and freely in a Case of Conscience let us a little compare the King and his actings more particularly with the Convenant and we shall finde at last that we are not onely not engaged to preserve him but bound by the strength of the Covenant to cut him off as a dead member that is gangrened I have often wondered out of what sort of charity or design the Kings name was inserted in the Covenant as distinct from the Common Enemy against whom we were first sworn seeing he was the Head that gave life and motion to every part of that Body without whom they were but as a great Body without Soul or animal Spirit they onely fought under his Banners for his Interest in opposition to the first grounds of the Covenant to distinguish the Head and the Members in one Common Cause and to swear against the one and swear to preserve the other was too great a Criticism to be put in an Oath that must binde the Conscience For my part from the first I saw that name there considering the state of Affairs then I looked upon him as SAUL among the Prophets or as in superstitious times they set up stately Images to draw men to Church and more to reverence the place or as sugar put on bitter pills to make them down the better with less scruple of the palate or nauseousness of the stomack And if I may use the words of Learned Calvin in another case which you shall finde in his Epistle prefixed to his Commentary on the Corinthians having been forc'd to change the Dedication and alter the Title of it which was in the first Impression he to whom it was first dedicated proving an Apostate Vtinam saith he quo primum tempore in lucem prodiit hic Commentarius vel mihi ignotus vel saltem probe notus fuisset ille cujus nomen huic paginae hactenus inscriptum nunc delere cogor It had been happy for ENGLAND that we had either not known him or known him better as we had Reason and either wholy let out his name or had better reasons to have put it in for he ever stood as the great errata in it and we might easily have fore-seen what end he was designed to make which had such a beginning But however though through hope and charity his name was inserted yet now Reason and Conscience yea the COVENANT it self hath given just grounds to blot him out he being the onely obstacle to attaining all the honest and necessary Ends of it Let us but without prejudice view how that one name and the preservation of it stands opposite to all the other Articles and expressions in the COVENANT and makes them all useless and of no consequence that there is an imcompossibility of keeping our Engagement to him and to keep the others First for Religion and these Articles which are sworn unto in order to its preservation the preservation of the Kings person would directly be the overthrowing of them we had absolutely sworn to extirpate Popery and Prelacy without any limitation which could not possibly be done with the preservation of his Majesties person for Popery though I cannot tax him with the profession of it yet many correspondencies have been between him and Rome and Spain even from a childe his QUEEN a profest and Jesuited PAPIST who not onely lay in his bosom but ruled and guided most of his counsels that you must have either left him a Husband without a Wife and have divorced him from his own Soul and Self and from her whose he was eternally or else grant at least a TOLERATION to POPERY after we had sworn against it Besides his MAJESTY was in Debt and so far in Arrears to the Popish party in England and Ireland for their faithfull services to him that he could not be free of regall promises and Covenant-Engagements to them which must have been remembred upon every advantage neither could he in honour or ingenuity have consented to extirpate them who had so great an influence to his affairs and ventured so hard for his Prerogative thus the King and the first and second Article are become incompetible cannot stand together and be both preserved The next thing we ingaged in order to