Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	ecclesiastical_a	governor_n	supreme_a	3,829	5	8.9454	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60954	Twelve sermons preached upon several occasions by Robert South ... ; six of them never before printed.; Sermons. Selections	South, Robert, 1634-1716.	1692 (1692)	Wing S4745; ESTC R13931	201,576	650

Theory and Speculation of things is free and open to any one whom God has sent into the world with some ability to contemplate and by continuing him in the World gives him also opportunity In all that has been said I do not in the least pretend to Advise or Chalk out Rules to my Superiors for some men cannot be Fools with so good acceptance as others But whosoever is call'd to speak upon a certain occasion may I conceive without offence take any Text sutable to that occasion and having taken it may or at least ought to speak sutably to that Text. I proceed now to the second thing proposed from the Words which is the Means assigned for the Discharge of the Duties mentioned and exhibited under this one short Prescription Let not man despise thee In the handling of which I shall shew 1. The ill effects and destructive Influence that Contempt has upon Government 2. The groundless Causes upon which Church-Rulers are frequently despised 3. And lastly the just causes that would render them or indeed any other Rulers worthy to be despised All which being clearly made out and impartially laid before our eyes it will be easie and obvious for every one by avoiding the Evil so mark'd out to answer and come up to the Apostle's Exhortation And first we will discourse of Contempt and the malign hostile Influence it has upon Government As for the thing it self every man's Experience will inform him that there is no Action in the Behaviour of one man towards another of which humane Nature is more Impatient than of Contempt it being a thing made up of these two Ingredients an undervaluing of a Man upon a belief of his utter Uselesness and Inability and a Spitefull endeavour to engage the rest of the World in the same Belief and slight Esteem of him So that the immediate Design of Contempt is the shame of the Person contemned and Shame is a Banishment of him from the good Opinion of the World which every man most earnestly Desires both upon a Principle of Nature and of Interest For it is Natural to all men to affect a good Name and he that despises a man Libels him in his Thoughts Reviles and Traduces him in his Judgment And there is also Interest in the Case For a Desire to be well thought of directly Resolves it self into that owned and mighty Principle of self-preservation For as much as Thoughts are the first wheels and motives of Action and there is no long passage from one to the other He that Thinks a man to the ground will quickly endeavour to Lay him there for while he Despises him he Arraigns and Condemns him in his Heart and the after-Bitterness and Cruelties of his practices are but the Executioners of the Sentence passed before upon him by his Judgment Contempt like the planet Saturn has first an ill Aspect and then a destroying Influence By all which I suppose it is sufficiently proved how Noxious it must needs be to every Governour For can a man respect the person whom he Despises and can there be Obedience where there is not so much as Respect will the Knee bend while the Heart Insults and the Actions Submit while the Apprehensions Rebel And therefore the most experienced Disturbers and Underminers of Government have always laid their first Train in Contempt endeavouring to blow it up in the Judgment and Esteem of the subject And was not this method observed in the late most flourishing and successfull Rebellion for how studiously did they lay about them both from the Pulpit and the Press to cast a slurr upon the King's person and to bring his governing Abilities under a Disrepute and then after they had sufficiently Blasted him in his Personal Capacity they found it an easie Work to dash and overthrow him in his Political Reputation is Power and consequently to Despise is to Weaken For where there is Contempt there can be no Awe and where there is no Awe there will be no Subjection and if there is no Subjection it is impossible without the help of the former Distinction of a Politick Capacity to imagine how a Prince can be a Governour He that makes his Prince despised and undervalued blows a Trumpet against him in mens Breasts beats him out of his Subjects hearts and fights him out of their Affections and after this he may easily strip him of his other Garrisons having already dispossess'd him of his strongest by dismantling him of his Honour and seizing his Reputation Nor is what has been said of Princes less true of all other Governours from Highest to Lowest from him that Heads an Army to him that is Master of a Family or of one single Servant the formal Reason of a thing equally extending it self to every particular of the same kind It is a proposition of Eternal Verity that None can Govern while he is Despised We may as well imagine that there may be a King without Majesty a Supreme without Soveraignty It is a paradox and a Direct contradiction in practice for where Contempt takes place the very Causes and Capacities of Government cease Men are so far from being Governed by a despised person that they will not so much as be taught by Him Truth it self shall lose its Credit if Delivered by a person that has none As on the Contrary be but a person in Vogue and Credit with the Multitude he shall be able to commend and set off whatsoever he says to authorize any Nonsence and to make popular rambling incoherent Stuff seasoned with Twang and Tautology pass for high Rhetorick and moving Preaching such indeed as a Zealous Tradesman would even Live and Die under And now I suppose it is no ill Topick of Argumentation to shew the prevalence of Contempt by the contrary Influences of Respect which thus as it were dubbs every little petit Admired person Lord and Commander of all his Admirers And certain it is that the Ecclesiastical as well as the Civil Governour has cause to pursue the same Methods of Securing and Confirming himself the grounds and means of Government being founded upon the same bottom of Nature in both though the Circumstances and Relative Considerations of the Persons may differ And I have nothing to say more upon this Head but that if Churchmen are called upon to Discharge the parts of Governours they may with the highest Reason expect those Supports and Helps that are indispensably Requisite thereunto and that those men are but Trapann'd who are called to Govern being invested with Authority but bereaved of Power which according to a true and plain Estimate of things is nothing else but to mock and betray them into a Splendid and Magisterial way of being Ridiculous And thus much for the ill Effects and destructive Influence that Contempt has upon Government I pass now to the 2. Thing which is to shew the Groundless Causes upon which Church-Rulers are frequently Despised Concerning which I shall premise

it so 2. The reason of the assertion why and whence it is so 1. For the truth of it It is abundantly evinced from all Records both of Divine and Prophane History in which he that runs may read the ruine of the State in the destruction of the Church and that not only portended by it as its Sign but also inferred from it as its Cause 2. For the Reason of the point it may be drawn 1. From the Judicial proceeding of God the great King of Kings and supreme Ruler of the Universe who for his commands is indeed carefull but for his Worship Jealous And therefore in States notoriously irreligious by a secret and irresistible power countermands their deepest projects splits their Counsels and smites their most refined Policies with frustration and a curse being resolved that the Kingdoms of the world shall fall down before him either in his Adoration or their own confusion 2. The reason of the doctrine may be drawn from the necessary dependence of the very Principles of government upon Religion And this I shall pursue more fully The great business of government is to procure obedience and keep off disobedience the great springs upon which those two move are Rewards and Punishments answering the two ruling affections of man's mind Hope and Fear For since there is a natural opposition between the Judgment and the Appetite the former respecting what is honest the latter what is pleasing which two qualifications seldom concurr in the same thing and withall man's design in every Action is delight therefore to render things honest also practicable they must be first represented desirable which cannot be but by Proposing honesty cloathed with pleasure and since it presents no pleasure to the sense it must be fetcht from the apprehension of a future Reward For questionless duty moves not so much upon command as promise Now therefore that which proposes the greatest and most sutable rewards to obedience and the greatest terrors and punishments to disobedience doubtless is the most likely to enforce one and prevent the other But it is Religion that does this which to happiness and misery joyns Eternity And these supposing the Immortality of the soul which Philosophy indeed conjectures but only Religion proves or which is as good perswades I say these two things eternal happiness and eternal misery meeting with a perswasion that the Soul is immortal are without controversie of all others the first the most desirable and the latter the most horrible to humane apprehension Were it not for these Civil government were not able to stand before the prevailing swing of corrupt nature which would know no Honesty but Advantage no duty but in Pleasure nor any Law but its own Will Were not these frequently thundred into the understandings of men the Magistrate might enact order and proclaim Proclamations might be hung upon Walls and Posts and there they might hang seen and despised more like Malefactors than Laws But when Religion binds them upon the Conscience Conscience will either perswade or terrifie men into their practice For put the case a man knew and that upon sure grounds that he might do an advantageous murder or Robbery and not be discovered what humane laws could hinder him which he knows cannot inflict any penalty where they can make no discovery But Religion assures him that no sin though concealed from humane eyes can either escape God's sight in this world or his vengeance in the other Put the case also that men looked upon Death without fear in which sence it is nothing or at most very little ceasing while it is endured and pobably without Pain for it seizes upon the Vitals and benumbs the senses and where there is no sense there can be no pain I say if while a man is acting his will towards sin he should also thus act his reason to despise death where would be the terror of the magistrate who can neither threaten or inflict any more Hence an old Malefactor in his Execution at the Gallows made no other confession but this That he had very jocundly passed over his life in such courses and he that would not for fifty years pleasure endure half an hours pain deserved to die a worse death than himself questionless this man was not ignorant before that there were such things as Laws Assizes and Gallows but had he considered and believed the Terrors of another world he might probably have found a fairer passage out of this If there was not a Minister in every Parish you would quickly find cause to encrease the number of Constables And if the Churches were not imployed to be places to hear God's law there would be need of them to be prisons for the breakers of the laws of men Hence 't is observable that the Tribe of Levi had not one place or portion together like the rest of the Tribes but because it was their office to dispence Religion they were diffused over all the Tribes that they might be continually preaching to the rest their duty to God which is the most effectual way to dispose them to Obedience to man for he that truly fears God cannot despise the Magistrate Yea so near is the connexion between the Civil state and Religious that heretofore if you look upon well regulated civilized heathen Nations you will find the Government and the Priesthood united in the same person Anius Rex idem hominum Phaebique Sacerdos Virg. 3. AEn If under the true worship of God Melchisedech king of Salem and Priest of the most high God Heb. 7.1 And afterwards Moses whom as we acknowledge a pious so Atheists themselves will confess to have been a Wise Prince he when he took the Kingly government upon himself by his own choice seconded by Divine institution vested the Priesthood in his brother Aaron both whose concernments were so coupled that if Nature had not yet their Religious nay their civil Interests would have made them brothers And it was once the design of the Emperour of Germany Maximilian the first to have joyned the Popedom and the Empire together and to have got himself chosen Pope and by that means derived the Papacy to his succeeding Emperors Had he effected it doubtless there would not have been such scuffles between them and the Bishop of Rome the civil interest of the State would not have been undermined by an Adverse Interest mannaged by the specious and potent pretences of Religion And to see even amongst us how these two are united how the former is upheld by the latter The Magistrate sometimes cannot do his own office dexterously but by acting the Minister hence it is that Judges of Assizes find it necessary in their Charges to use pathetical discourses of Conscience and if it were not for the sway of this they would often lose the best Evidence in the world against Malefactors which is Confession for no man would confess and be Hanged here but to avoid being Damned hereafter Thus