Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	action_n	conscience_n	law_n	1,213	5	5.9851	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30414	The royal martyr, and the dutiful subject in two sermons / by G. Burnet.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715. Royal martyr lamented.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715. Subjection for conscience-sake asserted.	1675 (1675)	Wing B5869; ESTC R22925	37,186	94

shadows of Mortality and false appearances of Happiness which do now impose on our bewitched minds and seduce us into a thousand Errors and Follies And thus again we see how Conscience stifles the very first motions of disorder and teaches us to be subject 4. A fourth Occasion of disorder is a busie medling Temper that cannot contain its self within its own Limits and Sphere but will engage in things beyond its understanding and above its reach Some cannot stay at home and do their own business but must ramble abroad and insinuate themselves on all Affairs and Company and are ever gaping for some change hoping it may make way for their appearing in another figure These are ever sucking in ill Reports which they are sure to belch up again in all Companies not without additions They delight to asperse Governours and Government and either to find or make faults in every thing that is done and a volatile unfixedness of disposition makes them weary of established Laws and Customs and gape for Changes through a fond affectation of Novelty Now these Vermine creeping into all Companies must certainly weaken the Nerves and Sinews of Government and most attempts for repressing this humour make it boil with the greater vehemence But as the Wiseman instructed us of old To fear God and honour the King and not to meddle with those that were given to change and not to say Why were the former days better than these for we do not enquire wisely concerning that matter So the doctrine of the Gospel commands every man To do his own business to stay at home not to be a busie-body nor meddle in other mens affairs but to pay tribute to whom tribute is due fear to whom fear and honour to whom honour is due These being the Rules of Religion I may appeal all the World to shew anything can so settle Order and Authority as this which guards against the first appearances of Clouds and Storms But as Conscience doth meet the earliest beginnings of disorders in their less discernible and more plausible colours so it ties a man to that severe conduct of himself that he cannot embark in Designs which must be managed with so much fraud and dissimulation as the contrivers of wicked courses must needs carry along with them in all their practices Pretending the highest respect when they mean worst lying and forswearing and sometimes assassinating as it may serve their ends and never meaning what they say nor saying what they mean but shuffling and warping as Interest carries them Nor can wicked Projects appear at first barefaced lest they should be entertained with horrour by all to whom they are proposed but must go masked till they be so strong as to dare to throw off the disguise Nay Religion will be perhaps called in to serve a turn and Scriptures wrested to a favourable construction all this base and foul dealing will so wound a tender and sincere Conscience that it will either contract a hardness and callus and become proof against all these awakenings or pull a man out of these base Courses that must be carried on by so bad Methods for there is nothing so candid as Conscience and therefore S. Paul chargeth us not to lye one to another since we have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man for he that does all things as in the sight of God can do nothing that he fears should be seen or known of men And thus I have dispatched the First part of my Design that Conscience obliges us to Subjection by resisting all the first Motions that lead to Disorder or Confusion 2. Nor does it only put out of the way those dangerous Stumbling-blocks but it drives the sense of Duty deep into our Minds Law and Government can only watch over the Actions and Words of Subjects but can neither discover nor over-rule their Thoughts which a cautious man wrapping up within himself can reserve to a fit opportunity but Conscience insinuates the Duty we owe the Sovereign Power upon our secretest thoughts and Religion obliges us not to curse the King in our thoughts and has made the Duty we pay Authority a part of its self and of these returns of the holy Fear and humble Obedience we owe the great King of Kings But this must not be so far carried as if those who are vested with the Sovereign Power had Authority to command us to embrace whatever Religion they enjoyn according to the pestiferous spawn of that Infernal Leviathan who by this Assertion doth at once destroy both Religion and Government For that base Flatterer of Princes pretending to offer them more than was due to them hath struck at the Root of their Authority and at once robbed them of all their Rights For we are either bound to obey the Sovereign by some obligation the Law of God brings on us or not If not then all the Sacredness of Authority is gone and the Prince has nothing but Force to maintain his Right and every Usurper that Masters him shall have a better Right by how much more Power he has to strengthen his ambitious Pretensions But if we be bound by the Laws of God to obey the Supreme Power then these Laws had a prior Title to our Obedience and infer the Duties of Subjects as a particular Effect of their Doctrine Therefore these Laws having the first Right to our Obedience must oblige us Nor can we be allowed to pick out that one of obeying the Magistrate and leave the rest behind us for all the Laws of God being enacted by the same Authority must equally bind us and as no deputed Magistrate can void the Laws of the Supreme Power so neither can Princes void the Laws of God without sopping the Foundations of their own Authority But none of these magnifyings of Magistracy are necessary to make it great it being by God himself exalted to so culminating a height and the rendring to God the things that are God's does not prejudice Caesar in the things that are Caesar's But Religion ingages us to so full an Obedience to the Laws that our violating them when they contradict no Command of God's makes us guilty in his sight and though we disguise what we do with so much cunning that the Secular Power can fix no Censure on us yet our Consciences will accuse us before God for those secret Transgressions which no humane Care can discover There is a Tribunal set up by God for the Magistrate in all our Breasts which will pass Sentence severely and not be put off by the tricks of Law the boldness of Denials the cunning of Excuses or any other Arts that may impose upon or abuse such Judges who must proceed upon clear evidence and not on dubious conjectures But when a man is retired inward and his Conscience takes him to task then all these visors are pulled off and he must needs appear in

Israel for whom David had that respect that even when he was most unjustly hunting his life yet he would not stretch forth his hand against him seeing he was the anointed of the Lord. And in this our Royal Martyr was his Parallel since he was by a tract of an undisputed Succession that which Saul was by immediate Revelation the Lord 's Anointed And indeed he looked on himself as having his Authority from God as will appear from the following instances which before I mention I must preface with this that I will not enlarge on the whole field of that Murdered Princes Vertues for that were both endless they being so many and needless they being so well known But having by a great happiness seen not a few I may add hundreds of Papers under his own Royal Pen I shall only now offer divers passages drawn out of those that vvill give some Characters of his great Soul And as in the Indies the Art of Painting is only the putting together little Plumes of several colours in such method as to give a representation of vvhat they design vvhich though it be but coarse vvork yet the Colours are lively so I can promise no exact vvork but true and lively Colours I vvill offer being those mixed by our Martyr himself though perhaps unskilfully placed by me And as the Popish Legend tells of tvvo Pictures of our Saviour done by himself one particularly vvhich he left in Veronica's Handkercher vvhen he vviped his face vvith it so from the svveat of our Royal Martyr some Lineaments of his Face shall be offered And to return to make good the character of our late Soveraign he ovvned all his Authority to be derived from God and therefore in one of his Papers I find these vvords vvhen he is acknovvledging the great blessings and eminent protection he had received from the hands of the Almighty he adds To whom we know we must yield a dear account for any breach of trust or failing of our duty towards our People And in another Paper reflecting on the Demand concerning the Militia he gives the reason vvhy he could not consent to it as it vvas proposed Because thereby he wholly divested himself as he conceived of the power of the Sword intrusted to him by God and the Laws of the Land for the Protection and Government of his People thereby at once disinheriting his Posterity of that Right and Prerogative of the Crown which is absolutely necessary for the Kingly-Office and so weakening Monarchy in this Kingdom that little more than the name and shadow of it will remain In another Paper he expresses his zeal to preserve the Lavvs as became Gods Vicegerent in these vvords If we wanted the Conscience we cannot the discretion to tempt God in au unjust quarrel the Laws of our Kingdom shall be sacred to us we shall refuse no hazard to defend them but sure we shall run none to invade them And that Paper vvhich is very long he thus concludes God so deal with us and our Posterity as we shall inviolably observe the Laws and Statutes of our Kingdom and the Protestations we have so often made for the Defence of the true Reformed Protestant Religion the Laws of the Land and the just Priviledges and Freedom of Parliaments From these Evidences it will appear what severe thoughts he had of the Obligations he lay under to Almighty God from whom he had his power and to whom he knew he was to give account of his Administration 2. We find it is said of Saul that after he was anointed God gave him another heart and that meeting a company of Prophets he prophesied to the astonishment of those that beheld him How much of this Divine Spirit rested on our Blessed Martyr all those Meditations which were his Exercises in his retirement do abundantly declare If by Saul's prophesying be meant the foretelling what was to come I meet somewhat very near it from his Royal Pen Anno 1642 in a Letter wherein he writes these words I have set up my rest on the justice of my cause being resolved that no extremity or misfortune shall make me yield for I will either be a Glorious King or a Patient Martyr and as yet not being the first and at present not apprehending the other I think it now no unfit time to express this my resolution to you A very overly observer will see much in these words even without a Commentaty Or if by prophesying be to be understood an elevated way of trusting in God and adoring him then I shall add what I find under the same Sacred Pen when he was at Newcastle in a Letter to one of his Subjects Know that I rather expect the worse than the better event of things being resolved by the Grace of God and without the least repining at him to suffer any thing that injury can put upon me rather than sin against my Conscience And in another Letter Now for the sad consequences I know no so good antidote as a good Conscience which by the Grace of God I will preserve whatever else happen to me A third Character we have of Saul is that he was very careful to protect his Subjects when in danger as appears both by his haste to relieve Iabish-Gilead when sore pur to it by the King of Ammon and by his engaging against the Philistines with so much Personal danger to himself and his Family Now what our Martyrs zeal for protecting his Subjects was I speak not of his care in protecting the oppressed Protestants in Germany and France which I leave to the Historians I shall make appear from the following Evidences What vast Concessions he made to his native Kingdom every body knows and therefore he concluded a Paper he signed on his Pacification with them in these words And as we have just reason to believe that to our peaceable and well-affected Subjects this will be satisfactory so we take God and the World to witness that whatever Calamities shall ensue by our necessitated suppressing of the Insolencies of such as shall continue in their disobedient Courses is not occasioned by us but by their own procurement And in a Letter to one of his Commissioners there he writes But if the madness of our Subjects be such that they will not rest satisfied with what we have given you power to condescend to which notwithstanding all their Insolencies we still allow you to make good to them We take God to witness that what misery soever fall to that Country hereafter it is no fault of ours but their own procurement And in another Letter at that same time We take God to witness we have permitted them to do many things for establishing of Peace contrary to our own judgment How far he complied with their most unreasonable desires to the very great diminutions of his Royal Authority is well enough known When he saw them inclined to engage in the Civil War in this Kingdom he

great and just Glory of our most holy Faith that it is no less the Interest than the Duty of all men to embrace it and live according to its Precepts For if we examine either the Complex of the whole Christian Religion in gross or the several parcels of it and the Duties it enjoyns we must confess all the Laws of Solon and Lycurgus of Greece and Rome come infinitely short of the excellent provisions it gives for the Peace of Mankind and the Order of Societies So that it plainly appears the Author of it was a Lover of Men. What Rule of Justice can match that of doing to others what we would have others do to us which is so home so easily remembred and readily applied that no wonder the very Heathens admired it But not content with the strictest rigors of Justice our Saviour hath also obliged us to the supererogatings if I may so speak of Charity and hath commanded us to love one another as Brethren nor must our brotherly Love be confined within the narrow bounds of a Party but extend it self to all Men whom it takes within its Verge forgiving Injuries and loving Enemies And for the security of Order and Government what means are like those our Religion offers This is even confessed by its declared Enemies who charge it as the contrivance of designing men for securing their Power and Authority and indeed all the Arts of Statesmen the Cunnings of Policy the Closeness of Councils the Exactness of Intelligence the strength of Armies or Navies the strictness of Guards regular Fortifications great Treasures and vast Magazines are but Ineffectual Means compared to this which Religion offers for the security of a State by setting up Conscience as a Sentinel to watch in every man's Breast that shall not let pass through it one thought contrary to the Peace of the Society Wise Statesmen hold it for a Maxim That the chief security of a Sovereign is in his being Master of the Hearts and Affections of his Subjects which will draw with them their Hands and Purses as need shall require But Mankind being so subject to a variety of Passions which by an unruly vicissitude possess the Minds especially of the giddy multitude there can be no assurance in this unless somewhat that is more fixed and better grounded tye subjects to the Duty they owe the Sovereign Power And therefore those who have attempted God and designed to discharge Men of the sense of a Deity or the apprehensions of another Life are the greatest Enemies to Authority Their Bloud and Extraction may perhaps entitle them to Honour and a high Quality but their Maxims destroy all Honour and would quickly bring on a levelling of all Qualities He were by the confession of all highly criminal who would question the King's Title to the Crown or offer to void his Right and yet this is the Crime of those Insulting Hectors For if there be no God then that Sacred and Royal Reputation of Sovereign Power which Princes derive from him who is the Original of it by whom Kings Reign is out of doors This levels the Prince with the Subject and gives the Usurper as good a Title as the lawful Sovereign can claim I shall not now engage in a long discourse of Policy nor examine the Original of Power nor the Measures and Limits of it nor the Nature and Extent of the Subjection we owe Authority much less run out in a long Digression of the Obligation of Conscience but shall limit my Discourse to one single point That Conscience is the great security of a State the Spring of Obedience and the sure basis of Submission And in opening up this I shall 1. Shew that Conscience doth choak and stifle the occasions and causes of Commotions in their first Conceptions 2. That it drives the sense of Duty and the obligation to Obedience deeper on our Minds than any other consideration whatsoever 3. That it gives the strongest Arguments for convincing our Reason and the most engaging Motives for prevailing on our Affections to pay the Duties of Subjection to those God hath set over us And 4. I shall encounter and put out of the way a formidable Objection which may offer it self in prejudice of what I am to deliver For the first it is certain that as the great Diseases of our Bodies are not so much the Effects of outward Accidents as of bad Humours to which a crisis may be given by some foreign Impression which may put them in a ferment and so endanger our Health Thus the distempers of the Body Politick owe their beginnings and growth to some ill Humours in it and the real Causes of Commotions are seldom the same with these that are pretended for training in and engaging a Multitude for from whence come wars and fightings among us but from our lusts that war in our members I shall therefore consider some of those Lusts and distempered Affections from which Commotions may arise that I may shew how Religion and it only can secure Government from their bad Effects Time will not allow me to make good all I am to say from History but those who know Mankind will easily see the dependence of these Effects from the Causes I go to name and such as have read History will find the Confirmation of it so clear that I may well be excused the labour of adducing particular proofs in so plain a case 1. But to stand no longer on Generals One great occasion of Commotions is an unbounded and aspiring Ambition which makes many swell big in their own conceit and they measuring themselves by what they appear in the glass of their own inchanted Imagination which both multiplies and magnifies all that is eminent in them expect that all the World should court them with the same admiration which they pay themselves Now it is a hard thing to satisfie the pretensions of all these lofty Aspirers nor can any State be able to gratifie them all since nothing falls to which many several Competitors do not put in a claim And though there be many Corrivals only one carries the prize the rest being all big with a good opinion of themselves and provoked at the unjust preference as they imagine it do upon that think how to make themselves considerable at their cost who they judge consider them too little and set up for some pretence to draw a Party and make a Faction But those mighty men in their own conceits are not at quiet when they have gained what they did at first pretend to as that which would terminate their ambition but make use of it as a step to mount them higher and thus creep up through all Degrees and perhaps when they are as high as can consist with the character of a Subject do not rest there but when they are become first Ministers will next design to justle their Master from his Throne For Ambition is as the Grave