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	law_n	moral_a	2,108	5	9.1759	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26998	The Protestant religion truely stated and justified by the late Reverend Mr. Richard Baxter ; prepared for the press some time before his death ; whereunto is added, by way of preface, some account of the learned author, by Mr. Danel Williams and Mr. Matthew Sylvester.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Williams, Daniel, 1643?-1716.; Sylvester, Matthew, 1636 or 7-1708.	1692 (1692)	Wing B1359; ESTC R1422	79,512	227

have of their own a Redundancy to save others But we all with thankfulness confess that God useth to bless the Houses of the Faithful the Children for the Parents sake and hath exprest this in the Decalogue and by many Promises Yea that he would have spared Sodom had there been but Ten Righteous persons there And a Potiphars House and a Prison may be blest in part for Josephs sake And when Parents are Dead this blessing may be on their Children through many Generations And God remembred Abraham when his Posterity provoked him David had a special promise for his Seed None of this is denyed by us But 1. There is no Merit in any mans Works but their Rewardableness by Gods free Grace and promise for the sake of Christs meritorious Righteousness Sacrifice and Intercession their Imperfection being pardoned through him and their Holiness amiable to God 2. No man shall be saved for anothers Merit or Holiness or Works that is not truly Regenerate and Holy himself The Eighteenth accused Point That no man can do Works of Supererrogation Ans Supererrogation is a sustian word of your own by which you may mean what you please 1. No man can perform to God more Duty than he oweth him It 's a Contradiction Duty is quod debetur 2. No man can profit God by any thing that he doth 3. No man save Christ lived wirhout all Sin And he that sinneth doth not all his Duty or keep all Gods Law perfectly And he that doth not all doth not all and more 4. There is no Moral good done by any man which was not his Duty and Gods Law commanded not For Gods Law is perfect and therefore obligeth to all Moral good And as Sin is the Transgression of the Law so Moral good is the conform Obedience to the Law 5. God hath not Counsels to Moral action which are not obliging Laws and make not our Duty For to keep them is Moral good and the Law were imperfect if it obliged not to all such good If the Counsel oblige ut norma officii it 's a Law If it oblige not it 's vain 6. But there are many actions that are neither Commanded nor Counselled nor forbidden But those are not Moral actions as being no objects of our Choosing or Refusing by Reasons Conduct The nictus oculorum our Breathing our Pulse the Circulation of the Blood c. are no Moral acts Commanded or forbidden but necessitated Man maketh it no act of deliberation and choice which Foot he shall set forward first or just how many Steps he shall go in a Day which of two equal Eggs he shall Eat and an hundred such These are neither Duty nor Sin Commanded nor Counselled nor forbidden neither virtuous or vicious 7. And there are innumerable actions that are not the Matter of any common-Common-Law or Counsel and so as such are neither Sin nor Duty which yet as Circumstantiated and Cloathed with Accidents are to this or that man either Duty or Sin This not understood maketh these Ignorant Casuists abuse the words of Christ and Paul about Chastity and Marriage And because Christ saith every man cannot receive this Saying and Paul she hath not Sinned He that Marrieth doth well and he that doth not doth better they gather that there are Moral actions which are not best and yet no Sin The true plain solution is from the two last Considerations 1. God hath made no Law commanding or forbidding Marriage or Celibate as such or in Common To Marry is no Sin considered meerly as Marriage 2. But God hath made Laws against hurtful and injurious Marriages and to guide men to know when Marrying is a Duty or a Sin 3. And if any ones case were so neutral as that it could not be discerned whether Marrying were a hurt or benefit it would be no Moral eligible or refuseable action 4. But to some it is a great Duty by accidents and to some a great Sin Therefore Paul never meant that it was no mans duty and no mans sin but only that simply as Marriage it was no mans duty or sin or the matter of a commanding or forbidding Law but only by accident it may be such to one more than to another That this is Pauls meaning the Papists must confess For 1. Do not they say that the Marriage of Priests Fryars and Nuns are Sin 2. If any one Marry an Infidel or utterly unsuitable Person without necessity against Parents wills or one that is impotent or hath the Pox or that he cannot maintain c. Is not this a hainous Sin What else signifie Gods Law and mans against unlawful Marriages And if one cannot live chastly without Marriage and Parents command it it is not a Sin to refuse The Law saith Let all things be done to Edification and whether ye Eat or Drink or whatever ye do do all to the glory of God And is it only Counsel and no Command to Marry or not Marry as it makes to Gods Glory or against it There are few actions of a mans Life that make so much to his hurt and utter misery as unwise and unmeet Marrying And is this on Sin May they not see Pauls meaning then if they were but willing It is hard to imagine a case in which so important an action as Marriage can be neither Sin nor Duty 2. But sometime men use the word Sin and Sinners for meer Wickedness and such Sin as is inconsistent with a state of Salvation And we easily grant that all Sins are not such Sins as these But Gods Law is perfect tho' man be imperfect and forbiddeth all Sin even the least 3. But see the Heresies of Popery This man here saith To do that which is Counselled is not necessary because one may nevertheless be saved But he who omitteth what is commanded unless he do pennance cannot escape Eternal pains 1. See here what a frivolous Counseller they make Christ when it 's not necessary to follow his Counsel 2. See here how they make Necessity to be only of that which a man cannot be saved without When Saul a Persecutor and Blasphemer an Infidel Murderer c. may be saved if he be truly Convicted Obedience hath it's Necessity tho' we knew that God would forgive Disobedience to the Convicted 3. See here how they damn themselves and all mankind every man living omitteth what is commanded many hundred times for which he doth not that which they call Pennance He is a Lyar that saith he hath no Sin specially of Omission Gods Law bindeth us all to Believe to Hope to desire Holiness and Heaven to love God and our Neighbours and our Enemies with a stronger degree of Faith Hope Desire and Love than we do Every Prayer and Meditation is sinfully defective Every hour hath some omission of improvement And all this is not remembred nor all confest to a Priest nor all known or observed by any Sinner And some omission we are guilty of at our very

Death by gradual defect of Faith Hope Patience Love Content and Joy And must all these go to Hell 4. Seeing by Penance they mean not bare Repentance but making God satisfaction by a task of Penalty laid on them by a Priest ye see how they damn themselves would be the Masters of all others Salvation by their Pennances 5. But it 's like that Purgatory is included by them in Pennances or else no man should go to Purgatory but all to Hell For all have many omissions of commanded Duty which they did no Pennance for in this Life 6. But you see of how little value they judge Christs Sacrifice and Merit that pardoneth no omission of a duty without Pennance and Satisfaction truly The Nineteenth accused Point That by the fall of Adam we have all lest our Free-will and that it is not in our power to choose good but only Evil. Ans Reader I must desire thee not to judge of all the Learned Papists by this Deceiver For if thou hast read the loads of Voluminous Controversies about Grace and Free-will among themselves it will remain doubtful to thee whether this mans stating the Protestants Doctrine prove him ignorant of it or a willing Cheater He tells you not that this is as much a Controversie among themselves as with the Prorestants He tells you not how Augustine and Palagius managed it and that their Pope Celestine took Augustines part He tells you not that the Thomists Dominicans Oratorians and most Nominals and Scotists say as much against Free-will as we do and we as much for it as they He supposeth that you never read what Lombaerd Aquinas Bradwardine Cajetane Ferrariensis Zumel Bannez Alvarez Aegedius Romi Capreolus and a Multitude more say as much and many more against Free-will than the Protestants He tells you not that even the Learned Jesuits Suarez Vasquez Bellarmine with Penottus and many such are as much against Free-will as most Learned Protestants The man takes you for a Herd of silly Animals that know not but that he saith true what falshood soever he shall tell you But the truth of the Controversie is this 1. The Protestants loath so silly a stating of Controversies as this chat of Free-will without distinction And so of Power 2. They know that Physical Moral and Political Freedom of will are not all one thing Physical Freedom or Power is that by which the natural faculty of the will can determine it self to act not without a superiour Cause but without any extrinsick or intrinsick Coactor or necessitating cause of Evil. Moral Freedom and Power is that by which the will is from under the overstrong Byas of a vicious Disposition or deceitful Argument 3. Political Freedom is when no Law of God or Man obligeth him to any Evil but all to good Prothestants hold 1. That Physical Liberty and Power is common to man as man That is that he wants not natural faculties to choose aright but a right Inclination And that he sinneth not for want of such faculties but for want of their right disposition and action 2. That all men have just so much and no more Moral Liberty and power as they have of Gods Grace to Relieve their vitiated wills and dispositions and to help them in the act No man is freed from vitious Inclinations further than Gods Grace freeth him which is much more where there is special Grace and strong than where there is but common Grace or weak And that the Thraldom or Impotency of the Vitious is but the disease of their wills and aggravation of their Sin e. g. Where the Drunkard or Fornicator saith I cannot forbear my Sin He is so much the worse and more unexcuseable 3. Every man hath not only Political Liberty to avoid Sin but much more even Gods urgent Precepts Promises and Threats God doth not only give us Leave but commandeth us not to Sin 1. It is the very Essence of the will to be a natural power of faculty of willing good and nilling evil as such as so apprehended by the intellect and commanding the inferior faculties some politically and some despotically some difficultly some easily some perfectly some imperfectly according to it's resolution and their receptivity 2. Libertas hominis when a man may have what he chooseth is more than Libertas Voluntatis which is but the Mode of it's self determination as without constraint it is a self determining principle of its own elicite acts considered comparitively Which is 1. Liberty of contradiction or Exercise viz to will or not will nill or not nill 2. Liberty of Contrariety or Specification of the Act viz. To will this or nill it 3. Liberty of Competition to will This object or That To nill This or That of which see Robert Baronius his Metaphysicks The will hath such various sorts of Liberty and the word Free-will is so ambiguous that it is a shame and irksome to read a pretended Teacher state a case thus indistinctly Whether we have Free-will or power to choose good and refuse evil He is no man that hath no such Free-will and power And no man hath all sorts of Free-will and power Nay as Liberty is opposed to Necessity every man is necessitated to will Good as Good and nill Evil as Evil and can do no otherwise And whenever he willeth Evil it is sub ratione bon● mistaking it for good And who-ever nillleth good doth it falsely sub ratione malt The will is free from Constraint to Sin God will not so constrain it Men Devils Objects cannot He that had read but their Pennattus and Gibi●uf only would see what a shame it is thus confusedly to talk for or against Free-will But that which Protestants deny is this 1. They deny that mans will in his unregenerate State is free from a Vitious Inclination or from the Conduct of an Erring Intellect or from the Byass and Temptation of Sensuality or vitiated Senses and Imagination or from the Temptations of Satan and the World 2. They deny that the will thus Vitiated and Tempted will ever deliver it self without Gods Spirit and Grace being rather inclined to grow worse 3. They deny that this Grace is perfect in any in this Life as without all defect in degree or totally freeth any man from all Sin and therefore they deny that any mans will is perfectly and inculpably free from every degree of vice and danger 4. And as that degree of common Grace which is in the unregenerate is but such as consisteth with the predominance or Reign of Sin so that will of every unregenerate man in that pravity is as a slave to it 's own vitious disposition and to Errour Objects and Temptations being not delivered as to the predominance 5. Yet we believe that common Grace is such that these men are not utterly void of all good Inclination and knowledge and therefore that in Moral Sence every man can do more good and less Evil than he doth And that men perish