Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	command_v	forbid_v	sin_n	4,155	5	5.7209	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A95748	Noli me tangere, or, A thing to be thought on. Scilicet, vox carnis sacræ clamantis ab altare ad aquilam sacrilegam, noli me tangere, ne te perdam.	Udall, Ephraim, d. 1647.; Marshall, William, fl. 1617-1650.	1642 (1642)	Wing U12; Thomason E133_4	22,793	48

right reason neither why hundreds and thousands by the yeare should be thought fit enough for an ordinary Gentleman or Citizen sometimes a Dunce and a sordid fellow too and suteable enough to the simplicity of Christ and his Apostles in them and that there should bee no suteablenesse in Ministers as wise as godly as charitable as other men unlesse they be kept downe in beggery and poverty It is a thing hath guld the world much in poynt of Church-government That the Apostles times and matters of fact incident to their condition under persecutors are accounted Rules for the Kingdome of Christ whereas Lawes be our Rule and their examples bind us no farther than the things they give us examples in be examples of morall Duties charged upon us by Divine precept the onely thing commands a duty Rom. 3 and forbids a sinne and makes it transgression sinfull It were therefore a worthy work and fitting a Parliamentary Reformation to thinke of restoring the Tithes to the proper owners for now they are in an improper hand rather than of taking away the residue of the Lands that having escaped the Talons of the Harpie remain yet to the Clergie especially considering That the Impropriations are one maine cause of scandalous and ignorant Ministers in many places of the Land which thing blessed be God the Parlament proposeth a redresse of and which how the impropriators will answer to Christ in the day of judgement when all the soules that have perished through want of sufficient maintenance for a sufficient Miniestry by reason of their Sacriledge shall bee required of them let them bethinke them The Lands of Cathedrall Churches are the Bequests of men dead long agoe with fearefull Imprecations made against those That should alter their Wills and Testaments Now the Apostle saith If it bee but a mans Testament Gal. 3.15 no man altereth it No man Why there be many men now set that way and they pretend zeale in Religion and a purpose of doing God service in so doing too Why then saith the Apostle No man altereth a mans Testament Surely his meaning is no man ought or no honest man will alter the Testament of a man that is dead his Will being made lawfully though haply not so wisely or conveniently as it might have beene nor to so good a purpose as hee might have bestowed his goods and Legacies or Lands for That which he might lawfully have done with his goods while he was alive there is no reason if he bequeathed them to the same purpose when hee dyes but his Will should stand and remaine to that use after his Death as intemerate as if he were now present and alive to dispose his Beneficence But you will say unto me They may bee better imployed in some other use as to mend the maintenance of preaching Ministers and that now they serve onely to support idlenesse And I say unto you if you phansie any thing better or know any other good worke either better in truth or better in your conceit and esteem on Gods Name give something of your owne to the maintenance thereof permitting them that bee dead to enjoy their owne Will and Desire in that in which they put you to no charges VVe know that Christ our Lord who was Wisedome and justice it selfe Matth. 20.15 in that Parable takes it for an undoubted Maxim that a man in a lawfull way may doe what hee will with his owne for giving a penny to him that laboured but one houre and a penny also to him that endured the heate of the Day when this man murmured that the former was equally rewarded the Master pleads his owne lawfull liberty for the disposure of that which was his owne contesting with the murmurer as a man of an evill eye at his goodnesse and bounty to the other and maintaines his owne displeasure in that hee had not injured the other by his liberality By force of which passage this is emergent That if men be disposed to honour some of the Clergy although not laboring so sweatily in the work of the Ministerie as others doe if the conferred honour bee of their owne charges there is no reason why any mans Eye should be evill at their goodnesse who by the common right of Nature and Nations that hold propriety against Anabaptisticall community may doe what lawfull thing they will with that that is their own even as others doe dayly who though they give nothing to the Clergy yet commonly leave estates of great amount to men that obtaining these estates give over all imployment laborious and profitable in the Common-wealth and live idly and like Drones and yet no man questions the gift of their friends nor their unprofitable life although they be but burthens to the Earth nor talke they of a better imployment of the things that have been bequeathed to them notwithstanding the Persons peradventure be Idiots Sotts debauched persons and such as be not onely idle and unprofitable but wicked and noxious to those among whom they live basely wasting and consuming in drunkennesse whoredome and riot that great substance thus befallen unto them many of which kinde of men we have that call themselves Gentlemen who are not of the worthy descended Gentry of the Land but a disgrace to that Name and Title and yet no man grudgeth them the fortunes left them by their Benefactors sometimes no kinne to them at all much lesse doth any of the people wish or once speak of the taking from them that that they possesse but think it both just and reasonable they should still enjoy that that was given to them and the contrary injurious both to the living and the dead Secondly this is that that makes men so barren in these daies in giving any thing to the Ministery or to other pious support of Gods service because they see no assurance the things they would should continue to the end of the World shall continue three Generations after them but on the contrary that the Wils of Men of former times be altered perverted reversed by succeeding times according as they phansie and to save their own purses or to enrich themselues and their posterity on the maintenance God cals his own portion Thirdly I say they gave their Lands to such and such a Church for such or such a service of God that in their darke times was most in use and in their intention and as they were instructed most honourable to God Now if we in times of greater light see better service may be done to God by the same Persons viz. Deanes Cannons Brebendaries in the same Churches thus endowed on Gods Name let us reforme those Persons and put them on such employment as is competent with the will of the dead in the same Churches which they endowed and not take away the maintenance that is consecrate to Gods service nor that service neither to which it was given but onely superadd some service to the former remembring

Heart unleffe it were more hard and sencelesse than the neither Milstone Of which nature also is the Propheticall curse of good old Jacob on the sacrilegious enemies of Levi against whom after he had described Levies Office To teach Jacob Gods Judgements and Israel his Law to put Incense before him and whole burnt Sacrifice on his Altar and then put up a Prayer for Levi thus Blesse O Lord his substance and accept the worke of his Hands he doth thus Prophetically denounce Judgement against his Enemies Smite through the Loines of them that rise against him and of them that hate him that they rise not againe And it is a thing to be thought on That many ancient Families as some intelligent men have observed who inherited the Lands of their Ancestors longa serie diducta a Majoribus when they took in some of the spoiles made in Tithes and Globe by the Statute of Dissolution their possessions quickly spued out of the old possessors of them as a loathsome thing the Bread of God proving as the Bread of deceit gravell in their Teeth and the Portion of Gods Ministers becomming like Antimony or some such poyson that dranke into the Stomacke provokes such a nauceous abhorrence in it that it never rests till it hath emptied it selfe both of the poyson that troubles it and of whatsoever else before lay quietly and inofsencively therein I could therefore wish That all our Gentry that would preserve their Inheritances without ruine to their posterity would beware they bring not any spoiles of the Church into their Houses lest they be spoyled by them for they are like the Eagles Feathers by which the Aegyptians in their Hieroglyphicks signifie pernitiosa potentia for they are said to consume all Feathers among which they be mingled as Pierius relateth of them And to preserve them from this sin That they would have a Tablet hang up alwaies in the Dining Roome where they ordinarily take their repast in which should be drawne an Altar with Flesh and Fire on it for Sacrifice with an Eagle ready to take wing having in her Talons a piece of Flesh with a burning coale at it and somthing beside it and higher than the Altar a tall Tree with an Eagles Nest in it and the Heads of her young ones discovered above the Nest and the Nest flaming with a light fire about them with this Infcription over the Altar Noli me Tangere ne te tuos perdam For things belonging to the Altar will certainely prove a snare to the devourers of them and like the Gold of Tholouse or Seius Horse as learned Master Selden saith in his Review ever fatall to the unjust possessors of them Concerning the increase of Preaching Ministers maintenance by these Lands as some would have it I say it is the shame of our Church and Nation That in all this time there is not one able Preacher in every Congregation of the Kingdome but that in many places the people sit as it were in darknesse and in the shadow of Death through want of preaching And also a shame and sin it is there is no better provision for them in many places where they be already for there ought to be an honourable maintenance for every Preaching Minister as a reward of the Gospel of Christ the Lord and Possessor of all the Earth And enough would be for them in every place but for the cursed plague of Impropriations together with the unjust and Antichristian customes prescriptions exemptions from Abby Lands and such like tricks of the Popes Legerdemaine which even men that in things of an indifferent nature cry out of Rome and Antichrist can here be content to treade the step the idle Monks and filthy Nunnes the crawling Vermine of the Pope did tread before them without any scruple of their conscience The Tithes are the most proper maintenance of the Miristery and it were fit every Cocke should transfer the Water of its own proper Cisterne and to endeavour some increase of Preaching Miuisters maintenance in every poore Vicaridge of the Kingdome that way were to doe it the right and proper way But while men talke of maintenance for able Ministers and think not of allowing any thing to that purpose out of the Tithes that have bin unjustly taken from them heretofore and are yet as unjustly and unconsionably detained from them in hands improper for them but thinke to mend them out of other Lands of the Clergie who will thinke this talke the talke of Men truely Religious and not rather an imitation of the Pharisees Hypocrites That lay heavie burthens on other Mens shoulders which they will not put forth one of their own fingers to touch Mat. 23.4 When A●ranah offered David his Threshing-foore to build an Altar on and diverse other things munificently for the Sacrifice David would not receive it of gift but would buy it and pay for it saying God forbid I should offer Sacrifice to God of that that costs me nougth 2 Sam. 24.24 And shall we thinke we have acquitted our selves well in Reformation by taking away the Lands and Glebe and Tithe given formerly by others or by giving part of those Lands to the maintenance of painefull Ministers that were well enough content with the Tithes and Glebe they had before if we could have let them alone and nor have gone on in the deformity the Pope had brought upon them but beene content to have taken them away from the Abbies in the Dissolution and have restored them to every Pastour and Vicar which was our dutie and the defect whereof will continue a Sin upon our Nation while the Impropriations continue which yet I doe not see any desires of amendment in For though we talke of nothing more then Reformation yet we thinke of nothing lesse than effecting any part thereof by any cost of our owne but of robbing Peter to pay Paul and in stead of making any restitution of that violently taken away before we bethink us of feizing into our hands the possessions left behinde that hitherto have scaped our fingers which other before us have bequeathed to the Service of God without any burthen of one penny to be laid on our shoulders A practice doubtlesse discovering no true and hearty good will to the Preachers of the Gospel but an evill eye at the prosperity of the Clergy which some expresse when they say If their Revenue were lesse they would be better and doe more Service to Christ and his Church Deut. 33.10.11 Whereas I know not why there should be supposed an inconsistence of Grace and a desire to glorifie God with riches more in a rich Clergie Man than in a rich Layman and Times and Histories and experience afford us examples of rich Ministers as painefull as any that be poorer and of as idle and wicked and proud poore as be any of the rich and of as ungodly rich men of all other conditions and as unprofitable as griping Usurers as vile