Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	know_v	speak_v	word_n	2,857	5	3.9757	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45126	A case of conscience whether a nonconformist, who hath not taken the Oxford Oath, may come to live at London, or at any corporate town, or within five miles of it, and yet be a good Christian : stated briefly, and published in reference to what is offered to the contrary, in a book intituled, A friendly debate betwixt a confirmist and a nonconformist : together with animadversions on a new book, entituled, Ecclesiastical polity, the general heads and substance whereof are taken under consideration : as also a peaceable dissertation, by way of composition with some late papers, entituled, Liberty of conscience, in order to the determining the magistrates power in matters of religion.	Humfrey, John, 1621-1719.	1669 (1669)	Wing H3673; ESTC R16379	28,077	32

ad humanum modum non si onus injungant quod à ratione natura plane abhorreat If you ask at last How this Sheet comes out thus alone without the rest against this Debate with it I must say What shall a man do when the Press is become so like the Hedge-hog's Den that when they have one door open still for themselves they will be sure to stop the other where the least wind can but blow upon them FINIS The Animadversions HAving written out the foregoing sheet and left it at the Press there is that Book newly come forth entituled A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity wherein the Authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Conscience of Subjects in matters of Religion is asserted containing eight Chapters which require this fresh labour The first is Of the necessity of an Ecclesiastical Power or Soveraignty over Conscience wherein he supposing a competition between the Power of Princes and the Consciences of the Subject gives a superiority to the Power of the Prince above Conscience The very Title of this Book as the flourishing stile does shew him a young man that writ it The Conscience of man is a judgment on his actions in relation to God that is a judging whether that which he is about to do is agreeable or not to his will and it is impossible that any mortal can have an authority over that judgment that the subject should do any thing against it That the Commands of the Magistrate for the peoples good do by vertue of the general Institution and fifth Commandment bind the Conscience so that if they are bound to the King by the Law of Nature or Word of God before this adds a new Obligation and if they be not this brings one on them will be confest I think by the most judicious and sober in this point but that the Authority of the Magistrate must take place of the Authority of Conscience when they stand in competition is a determination I suppose that is strange and unheard-of in the Orthodox VVorld Every single person sayes the Author is subject to two supream powers the Laws of his Prince and the Dictates of his Conscience and therefore if the supream power of the Prince must give place to that of the Conscience it ceases upon that score to be supream because there is a superiour authority that can countermand all its laws and constitutions And who is there that understands himself that does not know the sense of this spoken in modest and right terms as it ought is what is most true and what all are to assert The Supremacy of the King I hope is over the Subject as to their Persons and their Causes not over their Consciences If we were to conceive indeed of men that they might chuse what Consciences themselves pleased and then plead them against the Magistrate as the face of his words do carry it that which he sayes here would have reason and of all Villains the ill-meaning not the well-meaning Zealot as he speaks would be the most dangerous But when the Conscience that man hath is no other then what God hath placed in him and he hath no power himself over it which is and must and will be whether he will or no conclusive with him according to the Light of Nature and the Word of God there is no danger to the Migistrate though some of his Commands sometimes may not actively be obeyed in yielding that authority which is due unto Conscience And how indeed shall a man be subject to the Magistrate for Conscience sake if the command of Conscience had not in it a superiour and more prevalent Power than his It would be for his own sake and not for Conscience sake if his authority were greater than it I remember being discoursing with some about the Title of this Book presently after I had it a little Boy about ten years of age being carried belike to a Play that week which being never at one before had made some impressions in his mind Why Mother sayes he to her standing by Lacy hath confuted this Book for he acting the Tyrant said in the Play That Conscience was a greater King than he I will take this note from hence It is pity that Religion should be brought as it were on the Stage and made Comical in the Friendly Debate and that the Stage should speak more truly and tenderly of Conscience than this Book of Ecclesiastical Polity His Second Chapter is a more particular account of the Magistrates Power in the Affairs of Religion the extent whereof he endeavours to shew to be the same with his power over the Conscience in matters of Morality But this Person hath received no long information into his understanding I believe of these matters for he may be pleased to know that some perhaps of the best that have wrote on this subject will grant him freely that the Magistrate hath the same Power in matters that are Religious as in those that are Moral when there is none will say that that power is over the Conscience in either This very daring as accomplished young person too presuming on his own parts must be acquainted therefore That it is one thing to grant the King his Authority in matters Ecclesiastical as well as Civil and another to grant him any Authority over the Conscience in the least thing in the world If the Magistrate command any matter of Morality or of Religion or of Civil Affairs which are good for the People that which is commanded does oblige as well in the one as in the other But if it be evil which he commands that is if it be against the Word of God in Religion against vertue and honesty in Morals against the common good in Civils such things are to be forborn though Commanded and what or who can be judge if it be so but a man 's own Conscience And how irrational consequently as well as presumptuous are such kind of speeches That Princes may with less hazard give liberty to mens Vices and Debaucheries than to their Consciences unless the acts of men were to be bruitish and performed without judgment His Third Chapter is of the subject-matter of the Magistrates Power that is not the inward acts of the mind but the outward actions from whence he would state the Liberty of the Conscience to lye altogether in the freedom of a man's thoughts judgment or opinion and that Religious worship which is internal when as for his outward actions or practises in the Service of God as of all things else he would have men not so shy of granting the Magistrate power to use still his own language over their Consciences But this really is short of what here is to be said that is a few first thoughts taken into the Pen and written away glibly For though this distinction of the inward and outward acts of men is one thing requisite to the determining the Point in hand