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A42479
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A discourse concerning publick oaths, and the lawfulness of swearing in judicial proceedings written by Dr. Gauden ..., in order to answer the scruples of the Quakers.
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Gauden, John, 1605-1662.
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1662
(1662)
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Wing G352; ESTC R542
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50,247
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68
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to choak that good seed of Religion which is sown by the publick Ministry and fenced by legal Authority As I would have that Religion only setled in its Doctrinals Devotionals Discipline and Government which is by publick consent according to the word of God and Catholick prudence judged to be the best for Truth Sanctity Order Decency which blessed be God is in England so I would have It and It only to enjoy all publick countenance and encouragements by the injunction and protection of the Laws by the favour and example of the Prince by publick maintenance and honour by the use of publick Churches and Oratories To the Preachers and professors of this publick Offices and Employments of honour and authority foraign and domestick ecclesiastical civil and military should be chiefly appropriated of these advantages dissenters should be generally deprived because they are the proper honoraries of those who most serve the publick Peace by their due observance of the Religion and Laws established from which whoso openly vaâ—ies and dissents layes the foundations as of distraction and division so of destruction and confusion With these outward advantages added to that internal power of truth holiness which are in the established Religion it may as I think not only be happily suppoâ—ted but easily prevaile in a short time by Gods blessing against all factious and feeble oppositions unless the scandal negligence levity and luxury of its Ministers Bishops Presbyters and Professors overthrow it by casting such immoral disgraces upon it as make people dissbelieve and abhorre both it and them as was in the case of Eli's Sons But I confesse I would not have this legal and avowed Religion of the Nation so rigorous sharp and severe as Sarah to Hagar by the suddain over-awing or violent overlaying of all other different perswasions in peaceable men as not to let them breath in the same common Air or not to enjoy their lives civil liberties and estates with their dissenting consciences in all modest privacy and safety I abhorre as much as I dread all racks and tortures of mens souls or those cruel no less then curious scrutinies of mens consciences which covet first like God to search mens hearts and then like the Devil delight to torment them in their Estates and Liberties only because they are not so wise or apprehensive as themselves but as honest perhaps and sincere in the sight of God True I think that some little pecuniary mulct as one or two Shillings to the poor for every Lords dayes absence from the publick Church or Assembly may be justly laid as a mark of publick dislike upon Dissenters and Separaters from the established Religion not for their private difference in judgment which possibly is not their fault but for their publick deformity in practise to the scandal of the established Religion and to the endangering of the publick welfare whose strength and stability consist in unity and this in uniformity to the setled rule and in conformity to outward practise yet still no Inquisition to be made into free mens Consciences nor any great penalty laid upon them for their perswasions further then their words and actions do discover their Principles Opinions Correspondencies and Adherencies to be contrary and dangerous to the publick Peace Order and Justice which all are founded in and flourish by our setled Laws and Religion Thus permitting sober men not a declared toleration or publick profession by way of open rivalry to the established Religion but only such an arbitrary connivence and conditional indulgence as gives them no trouble for their private and untroublesome Opinions while they are kept in their breasts and closets or in their private houses and families to which all dissenters ought in reason to be confined on the Lords day without any convention of strangers to them though perhaps on the week-day they may have their meetings allowed yet so as to be kept within parochial bounds or to such a number of persons and families as shall be thought safe But for Dissenters to have multitudinous Conventicles as it were musterings of their forces when where and as many as they please cannot be safe for thereby they not onely affront the established Religion but confirm each other in their opinions yea and as Charcoals in heaps they more kindle and enflame each other by their numbers to such proud animosities and rebellious confidences as may hope to set up their Faction supream not only in the repute of Religion but in civil power which is the ambitious aim of all parties except that which is purely Christian wholly resolved into suffering principles All others we see whether Papists or Presbyterians or Anabaptists or Independents affect summam Imperii as Diotrephes to have the preeminence as Lucifer and Antichrist to exalt themselves above all and therefore they must by wise and vigilant power as well as by good preaching living be kept as fire within the hearth of their private opinions and parties left they prevaile by popular Arts against the publick established Religion which is the Palladium or Conservator of civil peace and prosperity and never to be rashly changed or rudely contemned while it is authorised The great Charity to which includes even a charity to all those which differ from its present settlement who commonly are more miserable in the riotous mutations which their folly and rudeness affects then in those sober restrictions of which they are so impatient that from different perswasions they break out to petulant oppositions by Tongue and Pen thence they are betrayed to seditious projects and at last these must be brought forth in tumultuary and violent actions which are so intolerable that the very first sparks of their insolent and seditious Expressions especially in Pulpits and Presses ought by great penalties to be suppressed there being nothing more unreasonable then for any man rudely to blaspheme and reproach that Religion which his Prince and Countrey professe unless he be so impudent as many are to blaspheme that also which himselfe owneth as the true Religion with them This tenderness moderation and indulgence I bear only to humble modest and innocent dissenters upon the account of Christian Charity which ought in all things becoming humanity to exceed all other men as Tertullian well observes To which Christian Charity of mine towards sober dissenters besides the confidence I have of Truth and its prevalency perhaps my native temper and candor may contribute something which abhors after the genius of Primitive Christians all severity or rigors only upon the score of Religion farther then is necessary for the cure of offenders and the conservation of the publick Peace I know the roughness or smoothness of mens educations and complexions like Esaus and â—acob's have much influence upon their opinions and conversations yea and upon their consciences too If this may seem to some too great a facility and gentleness in me yet it is an error on the right hand
A DISCOURSE Concerning Publick Oaths AND The Lawfulness of SWEARING in Judicial Proceedings Written by Dr. GAUDEN Bishop of EXETER In order to answer the scruples of the QUAKERS 1 Cor. 13. 2. Without charity I am nothing 2 Tim. 2. 25. In meekness instructing those that oppose Ne putemus in verbis Scripturarum esse Evangelium sed in sensu non in superficie sed medulla non in Sermonis cortice sed in rationis radice Hieronym in Ep. ad Gal. LONDON Printed for R. Royston Book-seller to the Kings most Excellent Majesty at the Angel in Ivy-lane 1662. To the truly Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Esquire Son to the Earl of Cork c. SIR SUch as have the happiness to know you need no more then the mention of your Name to put them in mind of your merit upon man-kind whose learned industrious and pious accomplishments have as with the greatest modesty and civility so with the least austerity or reproach given the Nobility Gentry yea and Clergy too of these three Kingdomes at once to see in your studious and vertuous example the best way of proportioning their lives and manners to the eminency of their Names and Stations thereby to preserve or redeem themselves from that Civil war and sad captivity to which idleness fermented by inordinate passions or vain and vicious affections is prone to expose not only their estates healths and honours but their religion consciences and soules while men of Noble birth good breeding ingenious parts and generous estates do miserably debauch their Dignity and squander away those noble advantages they have above other men to do well and worthily As if one should cut out goodly Timber-trees into Loggs or Chips and instead of stately Pillars or Beams make only Bed-staves or Cat-sticks or Tooth-picks of them So degenerating from all true sense of honour becoming Gentlemen and Christians as to glory in their shame I mean their sin and folly and to be ashamed of their true glory which is to be as rationall and religious as they can be in this state of mortality Your Nobleness will excuse me if I venture to offend you by telling the world what I have many years longed to do how high a value I have for you of whom I have so pleasing and complete a prospect not more for your rare endowments of Nature and Art then for your rarer Ornaments of Grace and Vertue while you neither superciliously fancy Learning to be any diminution to your Noble Birth nor yet Piety to be any disparagement to your great Learning I must not now in my maturer years compare you to our so famous Sir Philip Sidney whom I heretofore valued very much nor do I yet undervalue him because I think you have out-vied his Eloquent Valour and Heroick Romances with greater Essayes and more useful Atchievements both in Philosophy and Divinity The more retired and solid grounds of the first Philosophy you are daily searching and discovering with your generous Associates by accurate and real Experiments which are the Anatomies of Nature and the Keyes to her Cabinets opening a Door to the true prospect as of the causes so of the virtues operations and efficacies of things and by them to the Creators glory which is much eclipsed by that occult conjectural and sceptical Philosophy which is rather imaginary then real a parturiency without birth a meet abortion as to knowledge indeed a kind of Legerdemaine in Learning and Sophistry rather then Science verified by Experience The fountains also of the second that is Divinity your selfe have lately cleared in vindicating by your Pen the Sacred yet unaffected style of the Scriptures with a most Eloquent and Learned Zeal against some mens profane and Atheistical cavils who are so wittily wicked as to disdain even salvation it selfe in that plain but sure way which the wisdom of God sees fittest for humane capacities whereas few I believe of those curious Gallants would be so foolishly morose as to refuse a faire Estate which were setled upon them in the ordinary legal way of Deeds because it is not conveyed to them in such oratorious Harangues and flourishes of speech as they most fancy I have dedicated this little Piece to your great Name because it covets a resemblance to yea and hath an emulation of your candor and humanity toward all persons that are not wholly profligate in their opinions or desperate in their actions The design of this Tract is to correspond as much as I may with your principles and genius who have the happiness to render the severest vertues amiable and to confute the grossest Errors with the gentlest Truths I confess both in Religion or Charity and in reason of State or Policy I am not for inflicting at first dash sharp Penalties on seduced or simple people meerly upon the account of their Opinions modestly dissenting in some lesser things from the Religion or Laws established yet without any rude blaspheming or opposing them as to the main of Faith Morality and Civil subjection until such rational and charitable means have been used to convince them of their errors as may at once discharge those duties of Humanity and Charity which we owe to all men specially to our Country-men and fellow-Christians The Cudgel and Sword Prisons and Banishments Plunderings and Sequestrations were the late cruel and flagellant Methods of our most tyrannous times which had nothing of Reason Law or Religion to support them but these are not in my judgment either the first or the fittest means to confute the falsities of mens private opinions or to rectifie the obliquities of their inconform but innocent actions flowing from them upon the account of Conscience and plea of Religion Although it may be as just as necessary to repress by legal coercions and penalties those petulant obstinacies which do resist all softer applications and endanger the publick tranquillity by giving affronts to settled Religion or obstructions to the proceedings of Justice by established Laws I am indeed for cuncta prius tentanda those Divine Essayes and Appeals first which render men most unexcusable quid amplius poteram what could I have done more c. using lenitives before lancings fomentations before incisions or amputations until there be no other remedy then rigor and severity to some parts becomes the greatest Charity to the whole where not the scratch of a petty opinion but the gangrene of an obstinate and rebellious humor forceth the abscission of one part to prevent a deadly contagion to others yea to the whole Body Not that I think it any Religion to have an indifferency to that true Religion which is once established by publick consent and Law as best and fittest for the Nation nor is it any part of Mercy alwayes to suffer publick Justice to be baffled by the refractoriness of any persons or parties No I am far from a tame permitting Tares to be openly scattered by the bold and evil hands of any men who seek as enemies