Selected quad for the lemma: enemy_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
enemy_n	david_n	king_n	saul_n	2,955	5	9.9011	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26195	The arraignment of rebellion, or, The irresistibility of sovereign powers vindicated and maintain'd in a reply to a letter / by John Aucher ...	Aucher, John, 1619-1701.	1684 (1684)	Wing A4191; ESTC R14611	67,159	122

persecuting and pursuing the bloud of an innocent Subject whom he ought rather to protect and defend Yet this will give David no advantage of renouncing his Allegiance or rising up against the life of his Sovereign And therefore the Prophecy if Saul be the enemy intended in it is yet no command nor carries any the least shadow of allowance or dispensation with it to doe what is evil in God's Eyes Whereby it will be apparent that this great providence of God in the fulfilling and completion of this Prophecy and bringing Saul into his hands was but for a greater trial which God was pleased to make of his Faith and Loyalty to tempt and prove him as he did Abraham before whether he would make use of any indirect course for the bringing about pious and religious ends Or whether as he had received the promise of the Kingdom from God's mere favour to him he could now rely and rest himself wholly upon his power and wisedom even against all the seeming difficulties and impossibilities of flesh and bloud for the enstating it upon him Wherein he so piously acquits himself as notwithstanding the Prophecy they mention to him and this Providence before his eyes together with that carnal prudence which was questionless suggested to him he lets Saul escape Not onely refuses to be his judge not onely absents himself from the sentence and execution but urges and pleads and persuades with his Men not to meddle with him Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed and be guiltless Thus subduing the Kingdom and obtaining the promise by Faith as it is witnessed of him while he seems to undoe all to frustrate the promise and forfeit his claim to the Kingdom for God's sake or rather than be guilty of sin in the procuring of it And now let us look back a while and put your case in the same balance with David's and see if you fall not so much short of him in the premisses as you have wickedly out-dar'd and out-done him in the Conclusion David was elected by God and actually anointed by his holy Prophet to the Kingdom You were tied up under the Oath of God against it So far from any lawfull possibility of taking the Kingdom to your selves as you were obliged with life and limb to prevent the designs and Conspiracies of any other and to secure it to the King and his Heirs after him for ever David was an innocent injur'd person one that by Saul's appointment had done most eminent and almost miraculous service against his enemies beside many personal and particular obligations to Saul himself In reward whereof he is now bloudily pursued by Saul and all the power of Israel to take away his life Whereas you after many concessions and Acts of Grace from the King drive him away from his own house with Tumults and popular violence pursue him immediately with an Army imbitter the minds and mouths of the people with all the foulest and falsest reproaches that could be spit against him rob him of his whole revenue turn the deaf ear to all his desires of returning and maliciously prevent and frustrate his renued messages and petitions as I may so term them for peace and accommodation And then lastly for the Providence that signal providence of God in bringing the King into your hands which must be thought to supersede all this and not onely so take away the poison and malignity of this Coloquintida like stirring the water with the Unicorns-horn but baptize all these your trayterous and disloyal actions into just and necessary and religious Nay urge and engage you farther First to imprison and then to Murther your Sovereign For so the following of providence is made the onely via recta and wherewith you as easily silence and swallow up all arguments and objections brought against you as Moses's serpent did the serpents of the Magicians This case of Providence I say of all other runs widest from the parallel and wherein God did as plainly discriminate himself to you and David as David and you have differenc'd and discriminated your selves from each other in the contrary use and application of it For whereas Saul indeed was brought by God's providence according to his former promise into David's hands while he had never the least aim or design at any such thing but always declin'd it and was now in his flight lurking here in this Cave merely for fear and thereby to avoid him who was furiously now upon his March after him What was there of this I beseech you in your case Nay say if all things were not quite contrary For beside your no promise or prophecy for it how many precepts and penalties are urged by God against it Beside your not declining to get the King into your power as David did how many wicked arts and strategems are put in practice to bring it about And whereas you might have thought it something of Providence it may be to have kill'd the King at random or to have taken him prisoner in the field in any one of those great successes you had upon his party though 't is sure Where God is shut out of the cause and quarrel as in that of subjects against their Sovereign there can be no pretence at all of his providence in whatever he suffers to be brought about yet it is very observable and wherein it would well become you to take notice of God's providence That besides those Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance renued by you at your entrance into the Parliament or before you could sit there in any capacity to consult and carry on the war against him How did God provide for the King's safety when you your selves even of your selves without the King did engage your selves and the whole Kingdom First by a Protestation And Secondly your selves and your whole party even without and against the King's consent by a Solemn Vow and Covenant never to be forgotten to defend and preserve his Person and Honour And when all this could not get him into your hands how did God provide for the King again when all his party being slain generally and faln into your hands He yet carries him into the Scots army where you could not compass him at last but by fresh Engagements of safety and honour to his Person Nor is he yet in your hands your hands I mean of the Army who pretended at last to have power over him of which no other account can be given I think than that of Providence till by new Treasons and Rebellions you had plainly acknowledged the depth and desperateness of your former villany And by rising up against your own Masters and violently snatching the King from them once at Holmeby and again at the Isle of Wight by whose authority and Commission onely you were put into arms against him and whereby you did seem and seek to excuse your selves from the crime of Rebellion in so doing you did thereby

discouragement cannot therefore proceed from that God who has put the sword into his hand to execute wrath against them that doe evil And as it opens a gap to all falseness and confusion by taking away the ancient landmark as it were and boundaries of peace that onely which puts an end to all strife and contention can have no title nor pretence to that spirit of God who is not the authour of confusion but of peace as in all parts and places of the world so especially among Christians and therefore no cause of Christ no fulfilling of his Prophecies no pulling down of Babel can warrant us to it in all the Churches of the Saints Sir I have been the longer in this that I may be the shorter in the rest and cut off all farther pretensions to a Commission in any of you for the present change by proving you all uncapable of it that De Jure you cannot have it and therefore De Facto have it not Though supposing you capable and so in potentia for it your Arguments fall infinitely short of proving that actually you have any SECTION V. For first In order to your proof you suppose That Babel is to be destroyed in a warlike way by the people of God and this say you plainly enough Truely that De futuro it is to be so destroyed I conceive is not over plain For that men of singular Learning and Piety and not brib'd by any particular Interest have upon diligent search and enquiry otherwise concluded of it viz. Hugo Grotius Dr. Hammond and others Who have all proved and that perhaps plainly enough too that That Prophecy is already fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and Rome heathen But to give you scope here likewise and grant that Babel remains yet to be destroyed What passages are those in the Revelation which give you so plainly the length of the weapon too And from whence you conclude it must be in a warlike way Sir It is a saying in Philosophy Vnumquodque nutritur iisdem principiis ex quibus fit Every thing is to be propagated and preserved by the same principles by which it was planted Now This warlike way you mention was never chosen by our Lord we know for the bringing Christianity into the world And why then for the spreading and growth of it And being expresly and professedly disclaimed in the beginning how comes it now to be so pious and necessary in the conclusion The weapons of our warfare says St. Paul are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds c. And so speaking of this very Babel this Mass and man of sin to be destroyed Whom the Lord shall consume says he not with Sword or Spear but with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming i. e. by the powerfull evidence and illustration of his Holy Spirit in the Gospel The Babel to be destroyed is a spiritual Kingdom not the persons of wicked men but their lusts and spiritual fornications the Heathenism and Idolatry of Rome and not the Empire or Emperours of it The evil principles say you both in relation to Spirituals and Civils which ruled most eminently in it Which being spiritual is therefore shotfree falls not under the reach or power of a material sword to be wounded by it And therefore when we reade some expressions in the Revelation sounding generally this way as of warring and killing and the like we must remember that this Book is a Prophecy and so written in a Prophetical style Wherein Christ's Victory over the hearts and spirits of men is ordinarily describ'd in those military terms and as making use of such engines and instruments as Kings and Captains are wont to doe in the management of their wars But to retrench all this too and supposing it plainly and downright in a warlike way yet why must this be done by the people of God For so the people I presume you mean in opposition to Princes and Governours else it serves not at all to your purpose Whenas yet the ten Horns in the 17 th Chapter of the Revelation and 16 th verse who are manifestly said to be ten Kings in the 12 th verse of that Chapter are those that shall hate the Whore and make her desolate and naked c. And surely Sir I dare be positive in this whatever should become of the rest That no Prophecy or prediction in the whole Bible can secure subjects and private persons much less oblige them to such a war And herein 't will be worth your while to consider David's case and observe the judgment he makes upon it God had foretold and promised that the Kingdom of Israel Saul being now rejected should be Established upon David To which he was therefore actually anointed by Samuel Which highly exasperating the rage and madness of Saul against him after many private attempts in vain and without success he causelesly pursues poor innocent David and musters up all the Trainbands and Militia of his Kingdom to destroy him But David still shifting and flying for his life takes sanctuary at last in the sides of a Cave Whither Saul being in his march after him by chance turns aside from his Army for the easement of Nature and so falls singly and unawares into David's hands But David and his Men being all this while unseen or unperceiv'd by him were in Consultation what they had now to doe David was design'd by God and anointed to the Kingdom most unjustly persecuted and hunted as a Partridge upon the Mountains by this very Saul who is now in his hands So far from a Crown which yet God had promised him that as long as Saul liv'd and at liberty he could not but be every day in eminent peril of death To which he might hereafter be thought accessary himself as likewise of the frustrating God's promise to him concerning the Kingdom if he should let slip this present advantage and regardless of this signal providence of God in bringing Saul so strangely and unexpectedly into his hands should suffer him to escape And to this purpose his Officers mind him how this wonderfull piece of providence was exactly in answer to a former Prophecy Wherein God had promised to bring David's enemy into his hand that he might doe to him what seemed good unto him But all these arguments how fair and demonstrative soever they might seem to others David easily discerns to be fallacious God's anointing him to the Crown did not dispence with him from obedience to his Commands or privilege him therefore to be his own Carver He that spake it had ways enough of bringing it about though David continued still in his integrity He shall one day descend into the Battel says David and perish Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked but my hand shall not be upon him Though Saul be injurious towards him and forget his duty as a King in