Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	allegiance_n	king_n	law_n	1,738	5	5.0572	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56735	An answer to a printed letter to Dr. W.P. concerning non-resistance and other reasons for not taking the Oathes with some queries to the non-swearers in a postscript.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.	1690 (1690)	Wing P895; ESTC R1141	15,859	42

necessary to speak to those Cases and to show the unlawfulness of private Persons Resisting or Rebelling either in the Case of meer Religion or the Case of Legal Rights when we might justly complain with the Primitive Christians in Tertullians Apology that some of those were taken from us and yet still suffer patiently or in the Case of Natural Defence which is not so allowable to private Persons against the Government as against one another and the Otherwise Remediless Case by the encroachment of Princes who are not to be Resisted for every encroachment But in all these Cases there may be several degrees which you do not consider and which it was not so proper for me to do at that time However in all of them there is not that great but one would think unlikely and therefore unthought of Case of a Princes Destroying the Community and overturning the Government and Ruining the greatest part of his People concerning which I desire you to consult Dr. Falkner and see what he says about it who has yet spoken as fully for Non-Resistance in all Cases as I or you your self can do and I think now you find that true which you quote out of my Sermon and which might have deserved another sort of remark from you though it was spoke without the Spirit of Prophecy namely That Gods Providence and Government of the World is the best Security in this and all other Evils we are subject to that the great Patron of Justice will set bounds to the Power and Injustice of Princes and as far as is necessary for the good of the World and for his wise designs so far they shall go and no farther that he will take the matter into his own hands satis est quod Deum expectent ultorem who will not therefore strike them immediately and miraculously with Thunder from Heaven but raise up Instruments and find out means in his Wise Providence to Deliver a people by those who were under no manner of Obligation from the Doctrine of Non-Resistance The Clergy who have taken the Oathes were no more concerned in Resisting K. James while he was their King nor in adhereing to any that did so in this particular than any of you who refuse the Oaths and for that sin of Omission in not Assisting him which is a duty we are ordinarily bound to by our Laws and by our former Oaths that if it be one is a common Crime we are both equally responsible for and the same reason by which you unloose your selves from part of the Oath of Allegiance which was to defend and assist the King and which made you not think your selves bound to keep that when the Prince came because it tended to your manifest destruction might have unloosed you from the whole even if you please as Sampson did his wit hs and we think our selves now fully unloosed by his not being King I wonder therefore and can hardly think you in earnest when you bring such frivolous and unconcluding Reasons for your not taking the Oaths or non-compliance with the present Government which can satisfie no body and if they expose any 't is those who bring them as for example because ye would not be like a kind of Weather-glasses by having your obedience to Governors higher or lower according to the temperature or variation of outward Affairs This fancy of Weather-glasses has had great Honour and Credit done to it by several of your party and particularly by the Wise Publisher of the History of Passive Obedience who was pleased to put it into his Preface as the only piece of Wit there and if any of you stand in the same need of it and it be further serviceable to you the Owner of it will still allow you the free use of it but then pray take this with it and all that belongs to it That none may be so malicious as to think we Calculate our Sermons meerly for the present Circumstances as if the Pulpit were a kind of Weather-glass wherein the Doctrine of Obedience to Governours is higher or lower according to the Temperature or Variation of outward Affairs I challenge Malice it self to name the Pulpit where this Doctrine has faln so much as half a tenth since the late Revolution or where the contrary Doctrine to wit the Lawfulness of Resisting has ever bin Preach'd by any unless perhaps by a Nonswearer so that I see no danger hereby of our rendering our Ministerial endeavors useless and ineffectual or becoming a great Scandal and Disturbance to such as have known our former Doctrine and manner of Life and bringing a reproach upon the excellent Religion we profess If any thing of this be it is owing more to those who stand out who thereby furnish some weak Persons with Scruples and some discontented ones with Pretences against the present Government but which of us do hereby render their Ministerial endeavors more useless and ineffectual let the Body of the Nation judge and let any of your selves judge by the small number of those whom you can bring to be of your Minds in your own Parishes if you come to consider Consequences as ye thus object to us upon our coming in to the Government what are those upon your standing out but the Ruin not only of your Country but of the Protestant Religion here and all over Europe and the serving a Cause and joyning in an Interest that no Honest Englishman or Hearty Protestant though he may suffer for it in Conscience yet can in Conscience wish well to you need therefore be as Cautious against those as you are you say against Treason because you have bin told and I hope you would have bin so if you had not bin told that Treason has stood so long in this Nation in the late times that it has run to seed and scattered its principles c. and that it is a Disease which though it be not like the Sweating Sickness of old a Malady peculiar to Englishmen yet the plenty and luxury of our Country may perhaps make us more subject to it than others I would therefore have your Party have a care of it for I do not believe this Government will be more a friend to it than any other but I think no man is exposed by a thousand such like Quotations either against Treason or for Non-Resistance which will hold as long as there is any Government i' the World and I am of Opinion that Treason is as great a Crime under K. William's Reign and Non-Resistance as much a Duty as it was under K. Charles's I can easily grant you all that either I or others have said much better upon that Subject while they have kept to the Laws and to the Constitution and not run into such Notions and Schemes of Government as destroy both and nothing will follow or be concluded from it that shall in the least injure K. William if he be our true and proper Sovereign or

AN ANSWER To A Printed Letter TO Dr. W. P. Concerning NON-RESISTANCE And other REASONS for not taking the OATHES With some Queries to the Non-swearers in a POSTSCRIPT LONDON Printed by J. R. for Brabazon Aylmer at the Three Pigeons in Cornhil over-against the Royal Exchange 1690. Licensed September 16. 1690. AN ANSWER To A Printed Letter TO Dr. W. P. SIR IT was too great a Favour that you should present me particularly with those Reasons which our dissatisfied Clergy may have to offer for themselves for their not taking the Oaths when you were pleased to lay the chiefest stress of their not doing so upon the Doctrine of Non-Resistance that you should single me out among all my Brethren who were as much Preachers of it as my self and put me upon the hard Task as you thought no doubt of reconciling that with the present Government and the present Oaths or of renouncing the one or the other The Pains which some of you have taken in the History of Passive Obedience shows that this is not the singular Doctrine of some few men but of Most if not All Divines so that if it were a mistake and a man had bin i' the wrong he has a great deal of good Company with him and need not be much ashamed of being call'd out to do Penance alone or be taken to task for such a General Error But however some of late are pleased to be very Angry or very Pleasant with the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance Rediculing and Exposing it as the flattering Heresie of the late Clergy and talking against it at such a rate as if they would have St. Paul's words quite blotted out of the Bible They that resist shall receive to themselves damnation and when they are Friends to the present Government yet do so far discredit it as to be of their mind to think it inconsistent with that Principle yet I am perfectly of another Opinion and think that as true a Doctrine now as it was in St. Paul's time and that we are no way bound to recant it in order to our taking the Oaths and joyning with the present Government or that it is necessary to give up either the one or the other That this is a Christian Doctrine in the general as much as not Revenging or not Killing St. Pauls words set it beyond all dispute though there may be Limitations and Exceptions to them all in extraordinary Cases and it requires great Prudence and Caution when we come to the particular stating of this and run into nice Discourses about Government which many a good Divine may no more understand than Matters of Trade and therefore may be apt to mistake in some Cases of both and commit great oversights in going out of his Province and applying general Rules to some particular Cases that will not bear them The way of rightly stating this Doctrine I have always thought was according to the Form and Constitution of our Laws and Government whatever they are we are to be passive to them and ought not to resist that Legal Power and Constitution which is the Ordinance of God which he has set over us But to make it an Instrument to destroy our Laws and our Constitution by advancing Prerogative above Law and setting up I know not what Imperial Power above the Political and requiring such a Loyalty to the Prince in Conscience as is no way due by the Law of the Land which is the true Rule and Measure of our Duty this is to state it wrong and to squeeze and wring a great Error and Mischeif out of a Real Truth and whether this hath not bin done by a great many who have thereby brought an Odium and Discredit upon the Doctrine it self I leave you to judge but there is not the least colour of charging this upon any of my Sermons where I lay the matter very much upon our own Constitution and allow expresly the other Provision in the German Empire and in the Capitulation of Spain and the Low Countries pag. 25. Serm. 2. But if the Unlawfulness of Resisting upon any pretence whatsoever was a slavish Doctrine in England as some inconsidering Men throw out against the Clergy 't was more owing to the two Houses of Parliament who made that a Legal Declaration then to any of the Clergy who Preached it up I doubt not but that as general and absolute as it was carried in it the Supposition of the Legal Constitution and was not designed to alter or overthrow that but there may some extraordinary Cases happen which no positive Laws can provide against or ought indeed to suppose but when they do happen the plain Reason and Necessity of things will provide against them and there cannot be certain and standing Rules made for them but they fall under the Equity and Reason though not the Letter of the Constitution I am fully of the mind that it is more for Publick Good and the Peace of the World to teach People the Doctrines of Obedience to Governors and Non-Resistance Generally and Absolutely then to open a door to unquiet Spirits to disturb the Government they live under upon all occasions but yet the greatest Divines who have Conscientiously done this and particularly Dr. Falkner among our own when they have bin unwilling to allow any particular and practical Cases of doing otherwise because they do but seldom and extraordinarily fall out yet when they do must and cannot but allow an exception to a general Duty as he particularly mentions the case of Antiochus and of a Princes design to destroy and ruin a considerable part of his People contrary to the establish'd Laws to which some think ours comes up under King James and yet he still vindicates that General Declaration of not Resisting upon any pretence whatsoever because that is ordinarily and generally true and the exception to it is so rare and extraordinary as ought not to be taken in and supposed and as no way hinders the Truth of such a general saying as when holy Scripture declare that Wives and Children must obey their Husbands and Parents in all things and whom God hath joyned together no man must put asunder These Declarations how general soever and how Exclusive they may seem of doing otherwise upon any pretence whatsoever yet still are not without some Exceptions in extraordinary Cases which all Divines do allow Some Cases may fall out in Government though they ought not to be supposed nor can well be provided against As if a King shall endeavor to destroy his People to change the Constitution to turn a Legal Government into an Absolute Empire if he shall put a stop to Justice and shut up Westminster-Hall and give out no Commissions to Judges and Sheriffs and appoint either none or other Officers then the Law knows if he shall fall into Lunacy and Madness or the like incapacity if he shall voluntarily Desert and Leave the Kingdom without any Government if the