Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	according_a	law_n	nature_n	1,115	5	5.3946	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33089	Rome's additions to Christianity shewn to be inconsistent with the true design of so spiritual a religion in a sermon preached at Edinburgh, in the east-church of St. Giles. Feb. 14. 1686 : to which is prefixt a letter, vindicating it from the misrepresentations of some of the Romish-Church / by James Canaries ...	Canaries, James.	1686 (1686)	Wing C421; ESTC R11810	26,945	42

am I never rais'd any more odious consequence against Popery than this is against us But we never thought that any who pretend to be his Majesty's Subjects would have dar'd to do him so ill service as to drive the affair to this height For at this rate they render it Leasing-making and Lese-Majesty to speak against Popery at all Because no Protestant can speak against it but he must call it such a Religion as is not the safe way to Salvation Otherwise he behov'd to embrace it and be Papist himself Since there is but one Religion that as such can lead one to Heaven and he is obliged to be of that But according to that Authour the charging Popery with any odious thing beyond which nothing can be more so than what is damnable tends to alienate the hearts of his Majesty's Subjects from him and to beget in them a hatred of his Person And sure to do any thing that has such a tendency is as horrid a Treason and Villany as is imaginable Wherefore I do appeal to all the World if ever there was any thing of a greater tendency to alienate the hearts of his Majesty's Subjects from him than for the Papists thus to scrue up the quarrel about Religion till it become one of the Crown and to muzzle up our Mouths from uttering one syllable against Popery whatever the busie Emissaries of Rome should say in behalf of it For if the fears of Popery be very apt to produce the greatest mischiefs as certainly they are then questionless the drawing such consequences from our owning our Religion and shewing how false that great Rival Popery is which necessarily we must do if we own our own Religion must be very apt to produce these evils there being nothing more apt to engender those fears than thus to carry the matter to so dreadfull an event But blessed be God we know abundantly that these pragmatical Gentlemen do run without a Commission and that his Gratious Majesty himself has no such thoughts of us as they have And we hope there is no ground for any to have them For the reason why that Gentleman imagines that the hearts of his Majesty's Subjects are thus alienated from him is because they cannot love the Person whilst they hate the Religion of the Prince Truly I would not have thought that any Papist should have been so little considerate as to own and declare that Principle That the People cannot love the Person whilst they hate the Religion of the Prince For this is a plain confession and not Auricular either that since Queen Mary's days there has not been a Prince among us loved by his Popish Subjects and that in all times coming no Protestant Prince can ever expect any of their affection or kindness And it is certain that as the Priests and Jesuits have made it their business to render Protestanc as yodious and abominable as it was possible for them to doe so they will always continue to do so What then has become of all the Popish Loyalty that has been so much talkt of And are not Protestant Kings in a brave and glorious condition when they have Popish Subjects But what if Britain were as much Popish as now it is the contrary and a Protestant King were ruling over it would he not have a pretty Tenure for his Crown And would these Gentlemen speak so in such a case Indeed too much fondness without any ground at all has made them very far alter their Dialect of late Though at least Policy and Prudence should restrain them from such Arguments For we hope they will not be so bold as to say but that their present circumstances may be changed and that Britain may have a Protestant Prince again although it is our Prayers as fervently and zealously as 't is any Papists that we may enjoy our present Great One reigning over us till he shall have out-gone all his Predecessours as much in Years as in Glory But moreover I would ask these Gentlemen whether or no they think that the Primitive Christians were but very cold to their Princes nay that they went so far as even to hate their Persons because they were not of their Religion Sure I am they will not say but that it was their Duty to do otherwise And if it was their Duty sure they will be so charitable to them as to think they did not prevaricate in it So that Christian Subjects not onely ought to love the Person of their Prince even out of mere Duty whatever be the difference of Religion between them but we must presume that they have actually done so there being nothing to recommend those Princes unto them but onely that they were such But when we have a King whose Personal Excellencies are as vast as his Title is and whose Goodness to us and especially manifested in allowing us the free exercise of our Religion according to the full extent of all the Laws we have in the behalf of it is as great as either And so when the Ingenuity of our rational Nature and the most pressing gratitude together with the highest Duty ties us as with a threefold cord that cannot easily be broken to love and admire him and to devote our Lives and Fortunes to His Service His Protestant Subjects and these are all the three Nations almost must be first represented as worse than Canniblas and Devils before they can be imagined to be guilty of the contrary And the Ministers must be lookt upon as the basest and ugliest Monsters that ever deserved that Name before they can be supposed to design the preaching them into the being so Wherefore notwithstanding all that these Gentlemen can doe or say we will love him as our Happiness as our Glory as our Defence as the very breath of our Nostrils and as the Anointed of the Lord and as much as they for their Hearts and Souls can do though we have reason to con them our Thanks for having extorted this competition from us But Sir their mistake in all this lies here that it is supposed that whatever is charged on the Religion as it is abstractly considered is likewise directed to the Persons of those who profess it And as nothing can be more malitious than to suggest this so neither could any thing be more unjust For whoever among us said that all of the Church of Rome will inevitably incur those consequences whereof we challenge the Religion it self God forbid that we should And I am very certainly persuaded that there are many good and just vertuous and devout persons in that Communion and that those circumstances which I presume they do invincibly lie under are not prejudicial to that sincere intention for the Manner and those fundamental Doctrines and Laws for the Matter of their Piety which they may enjoy in that Church But yet we must say that all this good comes not by virtue of any thing of Popery as such And that