Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A55348
|
Subjection for conscience-sake asserted in a sermon preached at the assizes held at Ant-hill in Bedfordshire, March the 11th, 1682 ... by Tho. Pomfret ...
|
Pomfret, Thomas, d. 1705.
|
1682
(1682)
|
Wing P2801; ESTC R3968
|
12,996
|
40
|
themselves out of breath and the Laws out of countenance with words and tricks The second thing should be to produce plain and evident Texts of Scripture to which our Laws are contrary Our duty that is made easie and familiar and nothing can be said with more authority or plainness than what St. Paul has taught in the 13th of the Romans to establish our Duty but disobedience is wrapt up in notions and noise and amusements for the Teachers are afraid they shall lose their Herds and therefore they keep up Conscience in a continual Ferment for if they once depart from that word a fair way is made for Obedience and the Dagon of the Separation is fallen and the craft by which they get their wealth is discover'd for they know too well that the same strings do both open and tye up mens Consciences and their Purses But the People are all this while abused and the whole thing is a question of Dominion Whether the Laws or these Preachers must govern the Conscience and the quarrel is not so much between Conformity and Conscience as between their Leaders and the Government And yet if the pretence be Conscience we should doe well to give over our Revilings and suppose at least thus far in favour of the Magistrate That he may think his Conscience as rightly instructed to require obedience as they think their Consciences directed to disobey Certainly the Prince must have as much Right to use his own measures in prescribing to the Conscience of his Subjects as to practice as they can have to set up their practices against the Law and no Magistrate can with safety or satisfaction guide his own mind that shall compose his Laws to fit only with other mens And if the humour of any one Party shall be a license for their disobedience all disagreeing Persuasions will put in for the same Privilege and so the Magistrate shall make Laws to be obey'd by who will and he must alter his Determinations as oft as a new Conscience shall be started Some men are of short understandings and others lye under great prejudices they have weak heads and strong necks and some play upon you with the word Conscience but design and interest are under the disguise Now if the Magistrate's conscience must be condemn'd to observe all the humours of hot and crasy heads you may as well make him the Master of the Hospitals and the Bedlam and bid him let all his people run to leprosie and madness without controul or cure And for the other the designing and intriguing conscience if the Prince must not molest that he delivers up his people to craft and violence and such men as have no consciences of their own shall ruine a State and Church by working upon other mens And therefore it is better that the Magistrate keep his own conscience and look to the Government for certainly mens persuasions are not to be let alone to doe mischief and destroy the peace And if they will injoy their consciences let them doe it without calling the people into Conventicles and making seditious Orations to bring the Laws into contempt and the people into suspicions to trouble mens minds to dishonour the Wisedom of Parliaments and destroy both our quiet and our obedience Some mens opinions and other mens interest is the conscience they so much talk of and then it is no wonder at all they cannot for their hearts obey when they themselves are setting up for superiority But to those lastly that are seduced the Magistrate would be patient and the Laws tender supposing that they remain at home and are humble and willing to be instructed but if they will remain ignorant and stubborn the Laws are not to be suspended because some men want wit and others modesty and will think as they list and do as they please The Prince must not be Lord over our minds but I hope he may restrain our actions nay though they have upon them the pretence of Religion for we have known heretofore what practices have assum'd to themselves the title of God's Cause These I hope are not to be used with the same tenderness and caution This puts me upon the third and last Particular of my Text. III. To consider how far tenderness of Conscience ought to be admitted There are a sort of people that have no great matter to say against the Laws but they have a great many scruples against Obedience These are such as are pleas'd to give themselves the Character of men of tender minds To these people I shall only say that first if tenderness of mind does proceed from not understanding the true nature or just limits and adequate rules of Conscience then these sort of men are to look upon the Laws as their best Guide and Christian Princes as their fairest Instructors Children are not to choose their duty but to obey their Parents and of all things in the world ignorant people are not to be left to themselves not to set up scruples against Obedience but taught what they are to doe and kept out of harms way But in the second place if tenderness of mind does proceed from the ill disposition of it and men cannot reconcile their duty with their interest why then indeed our State-Physicians must cure it as they can by gentle Application or severer Remedies as the distemper is not so hurtfull or as it is ulcerous and inveterate But some mens tenderness is shrewdly to be suspected when it shall be consider'd that most of those things for which they so earnestly contend against the Laws do evidently serve the ends of money and ambition and have greater designs upon riches and power than heaven or the souls of their Proselytes And let the indifferent and unconcern'd part of the world determine when men shall cry out tenderness of mind against the Prince's Laws and have no tenderness at all for his Person when they shall scruple his Commands but make no scruple to invade his Rights when they themselves cannot kneel at the Communion and yet shall make their King kneel to a Block when they shall indeavour to set up Christ's Kingdom only as a pretence to pull down Caesar's and make way for their unlimited Usurpations when it shall be no Treason to fight against the King nor no Sacrilege to make themselves rich with Church-Plate and Church-Revenues every man in these cases can see with half an eye that tenderness of mind can have no good meaning and the Laws must not be over-born by such men of craft and violence And in fine because on all hands it is agreed that true tenderness of mind does consist in two things To scruple the least sin and not to give the least offence It should be consider'd in the first place that we have no law in the obedience to which we can be said to transgress any Divine appointment and therefore it must not be said that any man disobeys out of
SUBJECTION FOR Conscience-sake Asserted in a SERMON Preached at the ASSIZES Held at ANT-HILL in BEDFORDSHIRE March the 11 th 1681 2. Printed at the earnest Request of the Right Honourable the Judges the Right Worshipfull the Sheriff and the rest of the Justices of the Peace for the said County By Tho. Pomfret A. M. Vicar of Luton in Bedfordshire and Chaplain to the Right Honourable ROBERT EARL of AILESBVRY LONDON Printed for Joanna Brome at the Gun at the West end of St. Paul's MDCLXXXII TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFULL George Abbot Esq High Sheriff of the COUNTY OF BEDFORD SIR I Did not expect when by your Command I had preach'd this Sermon of Obedience from the Pulpit to have had the Point of my own Arguments turn'd so far upon my self as to be oblig'd also to send it to the Press in perfect submission to your Authority and my own Doctrins But I was loath to enter a Protestation against my self and be the first that should resist a Person so much above me and that ought to have an absolute Power over me having pass'd such great obligations upon me I shall not be so unreasonable as to beseech you to protect what you have been pleas'd to bring forth nor indeed am I much solicitous what fortune I meet with being satisfied that no man can hinder me from acquiring that end I propounded in the Publication which was onely to testifie what deference I bear to your Commands and that by a more solemn notice I might declare how much I am SIR Your most humble Servant THO. POMFRET ROMANS XIII 5. Wherefore ye must needs be subject not onely for wrath but also for conscience-sake THE Purity of our Religion and the Excellency of our Government together with the apparent reasonableness and utility both of our Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws are so visible to any Subject who shall consider them with an humble and honest mind that one would think the supreme Power should receive no farther trouble after the preparing such wise and wholesome constitutions But then if to the goodness and wisdome of our Governours in prescribing such usefull and equal measures we consider that they are inthron'd by God's appointment and govern by his Power their commands receive from thence all that force and veneration that Religion can possibly adde because not onely the fear of the Prince but of God too becomes their Sanction For we must needs be subject not onely for wrath but also for Conscience-sake In a Christian Common-wealth therefore where it can but rarely if at all happen that we must disobey the Laws of Princes in obedience to the Laws of God it is the oddest thing in all the world to hear men pretending Conscience against their Duty and think to satisfie the Law by grievous out-cries and seditious Pamphlets teaching the Magistrate how he should govern when he is directing them how they should obey not considering that it is more like Christians to doe their duty and obey the Laws rather than to be full of talk and argument to create scruples and fill the heads of their followers with objections against them Thus mens minds are perplex't and the Government is disturb'd and Conscience which is the greatest Obligation in all the world to obedience as it is order'd is made the greatest Objection For you must obey for Conscience-sake says St. Paul but if you have any Conscience you must not obey so say our new Apostles To determine therefore this great Case I shall indeavour three things I. To settle obedience to humane Laws upon the two sanctions of the Text the fear of Wrath and the obligation of Conscience II. I shall give what answer I am able to some of those objections which are usually offer'd to deliver the Conscience from that Obligation III. I shall consider tenderness of Conscience how far it ought to be admitted I. Our first undertaking must be to settle obedience to the Laws upon the proper Sanctions of it mention'd in the Text the fear of wrath and the obligation of Conscience The one is man's the other is God's Fear of wrath is that band of Obedience which humane Power adds to the Law For though there is a baseness in disobedience which all good men hate and all wise men condemn because it is an enemy to order and destructive of peace and Society Yet this being not strong enough to oblige of it self because some people lay aside all natural goodness and justice therefore to all Laws it is necessary there should be a punishment annex'd the fear of which is to restrain men from doing against the Law I must confess those men are no very good Subjects who obey onely to avoid the penalty therefore it is made the character of a base disposition to forbear transgressing onely out of a slavish apprehension of the consequent evil but St. Paul said that the Law that is the threatning was made not for the righteous but for the wicked For so long as men lov'd goodness and took delight in doing well and had no designs against common honesty and justice there was no need to forbid any thing upon the account of fear for a good man will abstain from all unrighteous practices though there were no penal Laws in a Common-wealth But then some men having ras'd out all natural Principles Governments were forc'd to superinduce the dread of punishment not that the Laws intended to doe any evil but that Princes themselves and their Subjects should not suffer any evil by the disobedient and unjust For that by fear the malice of ill men be restrain'd and mischief prevented to communities is the end of all penal Laws and the purpose of authority So that wicked men making penal Laws necessary they are just too upon the same account because without compulsion it is no Law and without Law there could be no society men having laid aside all ingenuity and goodness and would be herds of Wolves and Tygers but for a power above them I need not therefore spend time to prove either that the Magistrate has a power to make Laws penal or that it is lawfull to execute them when made St. Paul having determin'd both these cases in this Chapter of the Text most clearly For having first resolv'd Magistracy to be the ordinance of God he then affirms the supreme Power to have a sword in his hand which he does not bear in vain but it is in vain if the Prince can make no Laws to restrain or has no power to punish evil and therefore he adds because of that power of punishing he that transgresses the Law which he calls doing evil ought also to fear And of himself when he was accused of a capital crime he declares that if he had done any thing worthy of death he refus'd not to die he never question'd the power nor spake evil of the Government but onely protested his innocency This being evident I shall leave it to stand by its