Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	good_a	king_n	lord_n	4,716	5	3.8323	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70973	A declaration of the Commissioners for Visitation of Universities and for placing and displacing of ministers in Scotland, against praying or preaching for the pretended King of Scotland with some reasons given by some of the ministers of Edinburgh why they cannot in conscience omit to pray for him : together with an ansvver to the said reasons ... / by a friend to the Commonwealth.	Scotland. Commissioners for Visitation of Universities and for Placing and Displacing of Ministers.; Friend of the Commonwealth. Answer to a paper intituled Some reasons why the ministers of Christ in Scotland ought not to be troubled for praying for the King.	1653 (1653)	Wing S1001; ESTC R14453	13,157	18

pillars of this your practice of praying for the King whereby you offer to prove that it is your duty Which being not yet done we will put you into a way for the future by cutting out your work for you and laying open the true state of the controversie before you in a very few words If ever you wil prove therefore that it is your duty to pray for the King and no duty to pray for the Commonwealth you must prove these two things 1. That every subject ought not only to look at the visible existence but to be satisfied in his conscience about the title of the Magistrates that rule over him before he pray for them or yeeld subjection to them But contrary to this it hath been already proved from the Word of God that it is warrant enough to any mans conscience to pray for Authority and quietly to submit himself thereto if that he hath sensible assurance of his being in the hand thereof The Apostles word is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} which signifies the powers that are in being But secondly when you have done this which in this Paper you do not once attempt which was a strange oversight you must also prove 2. That the King hath a just title to Authority here and that the Parliament hath no just title Now for this there are four allegations usuall 1. His birth-right 2. Acts of Parliament for him 3. The pretended injustice of the War against him 4. The Solemn League and Covenant These are the most usuall weapons of defence in this Cause But each of these must be maintained and made good by that un-erring rule of the written Word of God before they will overcome the understandings and convince the consciences of conscientious men Therefore if you have any thing to offer from the Word of God for the maintaining of them produce your cause saith the Lord bring forth your strong reasons saith the King of Jacob The Lord now calls you to bring it forth which till it be done we conceive 1. That birth gives no title to Magistracy That every beggars brat in the high-way upon that single consideration of his birth hath as much title to the Kingdom of Scotland as the children of Charles Stuart This conceit of a birth-right unto Magistracy unless that God confer a title upon such or such a family as he did upon David's is one of the blind principles of tyranny nourisht in mens consciences through Popish darkness and now that God is discovering the mystery of Antichrist and unravelling that whole web of Iniquity which is woven and made up of two threeds twisted together viz. civil and spirituall slavery he hath begun to discover this also If some families in the World had the faculty of begetting wise children and fit for government there were some colour of reason why their birth should give them a right viz. because it gives them a fitnesse to govern But we see that wise men beget fools But you will say Parliaments may intail the Crown and give a title to such or such a family though God by immediate designation do not But then you must prove this And then we add 2. That it may be proved both from the Scriptures and from common sense that it is both unlawful and impossible for any Parliament to make such an Act as shall bind the hands of their successors And the reason is this Because that no Humane wisdom is able to foresee all the future Inconveniences that may arise and therfore no Humane Constitution can be or ought to be unalterable The next Power may disannul it Therefore the King hath no title upon this accompt For the Commonwealth hath repealed those Acts. But if you say The Commonwealth doth not lawfully succeed your Parliaments then 3. You fall upon the business of the War which if you will undertake you have many difficult things to prove and that under the heavy disadvantage of a contrary testimony from Heaven whereof one is this that that man had some rights in England For this was part of the quarrell whereas we know that he had no Rights there neither by the Word of God nor by the Laws of our Land And therefore the War was just For the English Army did not march a step against you though there were other just provocations till your Commissioners had patcht up the businesse with him at the Hague asserting I know not what pretended Rights of his in England But 4. If you will needs be tryed by the Solemn League and Covenant a weapon at which you seem to be very expert we must then cut you out some more work viz. 1. To prove that your sense is the true sense of it 2. If you prove that then you must prove that the Covenant it self was a lawfull thing when you have justified your disobedience to Authority by the Covenant you must then justifie the Covenant it self by the Word of God We perceive that many who talk much of the Covenant understand it no better than those Highlanders who having summoned a Castle and being asked in whose name they summoned it they answered In the Name of the Solemn League and Covenant And truly they seem to us to understand it little better who say We are tied by the Covenant to resist the Power that ruleth over us to inforce your Presbyterian way upon the whole Nation of England to preserve from justice that grand Delinquent who slew with the edge of the sword so many thousand innocent persons For he shed innocent blood very much till he had filled the streets of Jerusalem from one end to another and the whole Land therewith in all the Cities and Coasts thereof besides his sin in building up again the high places in rearing up altars for Baalim But by this time you see your work and what you must prove if every you will justifie your present wayes before God or men And yet we must tell you once more That when you have proved all the rest you have proved nothing if you leave out the first as you have done in this your Paper And now to proceed to the rest of it That one passage only seems worthy of most particular Animadversion where you think fit to mention your peaceable and quiet deportment and that you have in no wise stirred up the people to tumults and seditions which if it be a true and sincere profession fame hath done you very much wrong But are not prayers for the King under that name and notion of King under such designations of him and in such expressions and petitions for him as may insinuate your respect towards him to the people for else why did you alleadge your Oaths and Covenants which you say bind you to him as your King if you put up only such modest and innocent petitions for him as may suit any wicked man in affliction And are not complaints of a strange power in your

Word of God for such Covenants Can you promise that any man shall have power whether God will or no All your Oaths and Covenants were conditionall For such Covenants for the maintaining of any power upon earth wherein there is no condition neither exprest nor understood concerning giving way to the all-disposing power and providence of God are no better then confederacies against God and therefore horrible snares and not to be defended but repented of lest you be found fighters against and resisters of the mighty Hand of God Suppose a quarrell arise between me and my neighbor which of us shal be master and he saith and swears that I shall never be his master and I say that he shall never be mine If hereupon we fight till that I have laid him f●at upon his back and bound him hand and foot if now when my sword is upon his brest and his life is at my mercy if I shall ask him whether he will yeeld now and he shall refuse is it not an unparaleld piece of pride and stubborness But suppose he shal say that his conscience is so tender that he cannot yeeld to me because of his oath will not every one say that his oath binds no longer but whilst he was in a capacity to resist but by my prevailing over him the obligation ceaseth For now God puts him under me so determins the case on my side Therefore though you have made a Covenant and bound it with an oath for your King and against the Commonwealth yet now God hath cut that knot in pieces by putting you in another capacity from what you were then And you may remember what solemn appeals were made to Heaven both by you and us when we came first amongst you for our most just and necessary defence wherein the Lord hath been pleased to give a gracious and favourable testimony to the sincerity of the desires of his poor servants and will you not rest in his arbitriment to whom you have so often referred the cause to whose determination both you and we did with joynt consent refer it And the Lord that righteous Judge hath been pleased to judge between us Though much may be argued against the works of God when considered singly and alone yet when the works of God are superadded testimonies to the truths revealed in his Word and when they are answers of the prayers and appeals of all his people on both sides and favourable smiles upon the actings of some of them following him in untroden paths of difficulty and danger the same dispensations being also distinguishing rebukes and frowns upon others under these and the like circumstances they will argue very much And though it is hard for man and it may be too hard for us to manage this argument to the compleat conviction of opposers and gainsayers and to improve it to the utmost in all the conclusions which it will reach unto yet to those who observe the Name of God in his works are not byassed with the guilt of former actings to this or that interest it will reach to conclude the present question and abundantly praeponderate to the purposes and resolutions of men if laid in the ballance with them 4. Whereas you are pleased to mention The securities which the King gave you for the Interest of Christ and Religion It will be hard to demonstrate to any rationall understanding how there could be any reall safety to Religion in receiving him to reigne with his former principles and with his unchanged heart amongst you The World took notice in your treaties with him at the Hague here too how litle trust you had in him and how you held him off at first but how you could afterwards unless a mouthful or two of Court air wil make wise men mad dispense with your consciences to soder with him when you saw no reall change of heart and self-abhorrence in him for his former wicked ways how the emitting of a feigned forced Declaration upon minatory importunities could be just incouragement for the admitting of a blood-thirsty and blood-guilty man for so in that Declaration you have made him to confesse to reign over you you will find a time to consider all these things Your 3. ground is this As it is a great sin to countermand that which God hath commanded and to give order that a precept of God shall not oblige so when such a command is given out it is then casus confessionis then to adhere to the authority of divine precepts is a necessary restimony to the truth But if ever these words afford a Ground and Warrant of conscience to walk in that practice of praying for the King your assumption which you seem to understand and beg must be proved viz. That God hath given you such a command to pray for him which the Declaration countermands but till then this Proposition will not reach the Conclusion aimed at If you be Confessors what truth of Christ do you suffer for name it Is it not this that Charles Stuart ought to be King and will you indeed stop your own mouths from preaching the blessed Gospel of Christ rather then be silent about that mans interest Wil you not preach Christ unless you may preach up Charles Stuart also Now the Lord lay not this sin to your charge You wil suffer upon the lowest and most uncomfortable account that ever men did For you suffer clearly upon the Royall interest not for the testimony of JESUS not for any truth of Religion but as witnesses to the Kings Interest Your 4. ground is this That Ministers of the Gospel receive their Commission from Jesus Christ which earthly powers cannot alter nor limit For if in one duty then in more and if they may prohibite a duty they may command that which is no duty And here still you take it for granted That it is a duty to pray for that Titular King but you should have proved that when you were made Ministers Christ did put this into your Commission and then you had said somthing Surely a Popish exemption of the Clergy from under the arm of the secular power is not that which you drive at For then you would never have alledged Statutes and Acts of Parliament as oblieging you in conscience to the King But this is certain that that which formerly was or which now is a duty may cease to be a duty not through any humane prohibition but through a providentiall alteration of the state of things The woman saith the Apostle is bound by the Law to her husband so long as he liveth but if her husband be dead she is freed from that Law Rom. 7. 2 3. And therfore your selves also upon this account of the revolutions of providence do find a present freedom of conscience to desist from some former actings to which you thought your selves formerly obliged by the Covenant And this may suffice for the removall of the grounds and