Selected quad for the lemma: friend_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
friend_n	answer_v	king_n	lord_n	916	5	3.9995	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A74854	Two treatises concerning the matter of the Engagement. The first of an unknown author, excepting against Mr. Dureus Considerations for the taking of the Engagement, to shew the unsatisfactoriness thereof. : The second of Mr. Dureus maintaining the satisfactoriness of his considerations against the unknown authors exceptions.	Dury, John, 1596-1680.	1650 (1650)	Thomason E615_12; ESTC P1074	53,095	64

This evasion to eye the end and not look at accidentall forms as you call them will facilitate a way to any Oath and as easily disobliege rendring the Oath vain as soon as it is entered Thus it had been safe to have entered the Canon Oath prescribed by the Convocation in the year that this Parliament did commence for the establishment of the Hierarchy in Arch-bishops Bishops Deans Deans and Chapters Chancellours c. Seeing we might have entered into it how opposite soever our judgements were against it and then have avoided it explaining our selves that we swore to the end namely Church-Government order for publick edification without respect to external forms which is accidental which Government being in our judgment best setled in an Independant Congregational way as some think or in a Presbyterial Classical way as others this Oath thus interpreted is so far from engaging to Prelacy that it engageth against it so far from binding to a non consent of the change and alteration of it which was the letter of the Oath that it binds us to a vigorous endeavour of change and alteration thus also all Covenanters are disobliged from the second Article in the Covenant which is to the extirpation of Prelacy as there explained in case they believe as many do that Church-Government is best settled and the Churches edification best provided for in such a constitution and so Covenanting against it in the letter of the Covenant they Covenant for it in the end which you say is onely to be heeded Neither can any State this way find any security in any Oath prescribed all may enter and then evade with this shift of the intrinsecal good of the Common-wealth of the Nation and plead that the necessity of the publick good calls to the transgression and contradiction of it Thus Zedekiah might have freed himself from his Oath of fealty to Nebucadnezar it being as he might have pleaded against the intrinsecal good of that Nation that strangers should rule over them and they be made a Province to Babylon his Oath to serve him would have strongly engaged to a revolt from him And the Oath of the Elders of Israel to the Gibeonites thus understood had been null in the very taking of it evidently tending to the publick dammage of which the Commons of Israel were very sensible as appears in their exceptions taken against the Elders for entring into it Saul in the act which brought a three years famine upon Israel if this divinity might take place had done a work singularly commendable seeing it was his zeal to the house of Israel and Judah which alone moved him against the letter of his Covenant to the slaughter of those persons even the publick good so evidently damnified and endangered by their abode in the midst of the people Sauls slaughter of these Gibeonites had been as praise-worthy as Davids his successors slaughter of the Jebusites the publick good being Sauls end the Holy-Ghost bearing witness as well as Davids and what good the present State can reap by this Engagement your interpretation being once admitted I believe you know not which way to demonstrate the engagers may say they will be true and faithful to the Common-wealth as now established without King or house of Lords in their endeavour to re-establish a King and house of Lords which they may think most tends to the honour and peace of it You go on to answer a further Objection of your friends that in the third Article of the Covenant he is sworn to preserve the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament amongst which this is one that therein should be a house of Lords distinct from the Commons and this another that all the Members of the Commons should sit and vote freely for when he swore he meant a Parliament so constituted and no other In answer of which you first confess and then endeavour to avoid and if you did avoid as clearly as you do confess ingenuously you would give more satisfaction you confess that these are Priviledges that the intention of the Covenant was to preserve these and that now such intentions cannot be prosecuted which confession alone is enough to create a bigger scruple in your friend then the whole force of all which yet hath appeared in your answer can wipe off Your way to avoid is that your friend did what in him lay when time and place was according to his Calling to prevent these breaches and so cannot be accused of the infringement thereof for when a fatal necessity of State as you say in the course of divine justice with a power irresistible not onely to men of private but to all that were in publick vocations did bring about that change upon the Parliament no particular mens engagements were considerable This no doubt is a clear justification of your friend one mans sin pollutes not another when by opposing and in his place withstanding he keeps himself from guilty participation But in this excuse of him from breach of Covenant in the infringement of Parliament Priviledges you do plainly charge that irresistible power which you speak of with it He is therefore innocent because he did what in him lay in his place to prevent this change those then cannot be innocent that being interested and obliged in the same Covenant did yet with such a power as you mention work it Neither can that supposed fatal necessity of State which your answer speaks of acquit that power from breach of their Covenant in such confessed infringement of Parliament-Priviledges The reason of the Kingdom as else-where you call it saw no such necessity as your Paper takes for granted but with high resolutions opposed when the power was at their doors and themselvs in imminent danger both Houses judged the way that they were upon to be the way most conducing to the States safety and it was their business and no other powers in such case to give judgement And in case this necessity had been real and not imaginary or pretended yet it were no sufficient plea for such a transgression Joshua and the Elders of Israel understood no such State-divinity to break Covenant on such grounds much less on such pretences Much might have been said by them to have necessitated a breach with those Gibeonites with whom they had entred Covenant Gibeon was one of their Royal Cities and of danger to be possessed by such an enemy or to have him still in their howels to lay claim to it the Land was Israels by the gift of God and too narrow for themselves in such multitudes to inhabit there was no reason that the fat and the sweet should be devoured and eaten up by strangers The arguments of Egypt against Israel might well here have been taken up by Israel when there falls out any war they will joyn unto the enemies These Reasons or the like of equal or greater strength Saul doubtless saw when he sought to slay them not out of

any private spleen but in his zeal to the house of Israel and of Judah but none of these did sway with those Covenanters and God himself acquits them from any mistake in the Obligation of that their Covenant in his proceeding against the house of Saul before observed when private men swear to their hurt they must not change when States swear they may not change there is no security without God from any danger it is more safe to keep with God though seemingly we run upon peri I then to quit the wayes of God deserting him for prevention to speak the fairest these reasonings come from unbelief You go on and say You see what pinches your friend He thinks that they that made the change broke the Covenant and if he engage under this change as is desired he thinks he breaks the Covenant also To which you answer First That they who made the change will plead for themselves that they are not guilty of any breach of Covenant notwithstanding the change But this you leave to them to justifie And seeing you will not justifie them I shall not stand to implead them your Reader being fully satisfied that your own pen in your former confession hath already done it Secondly you answer For the consequence your friends make from the taking of the Engagement to a breach of the Covenant it doth not at all follow to your understanding for the direct and plain matter of the Engagement binds him onely to procure the good of the Common-wealth as now it stands and because at all times and in all constitutions thereof he is bound to do this no less by the Covenant it self then by the Engagement therefore his taking of this to this effect can be no breach of that which you endeavour to make good by a comment upon the words of the Engagement for the negative words without a King and a house of Lords in the Engagement may as you say be properly and most obviously taken as an explication of the words now established immediatly going before and not an absolute abnegation of the things looked upon truly and as in themselves with more words to the same purpose which gloss of yours calls for some observation and well deserves animadversion First necessarily implying a high charge of such inconsiderateness in the heads of those that did devise and in the power of those that do impose this Engagement of which none can believe that they are guilty 1. They knew that all the Subjects of this Nation stood before engaged to the intrinsecal good of this Common-wealth as by the dictates of nature the obligation of reason self-preservation which each one knows is wrapt up in the publick so also by an oath prescribed by their power since they entred upon it reaching doubtless thus far and as some conjecture intended further that which was already done to their hands as you say by so many Oaths and Covenants which themselves also since their investiture in power had done they will not do over again in words not at all further obliging but onely perplexing amusing and insnaring 2. They know that the Engagement in this sense will nothing tend to their establishment as before hath been evidenced yea they know with this gloss upon it it hath a full tendency to their further danger not a few being perswaded how erroneously soever that the publick good is best provided for and consequently the Engagement answered in their opposition all of which is so clear to every eye that it could not be hid from those that imposed this Engagement so that none can think that they would trouble the consciences of so many thousands in such a needless way to their own non-benefit yea to their further peril If the Covenant mentioning Monarchy in a King do tye us to a republick in a State as you before affirm then the Engagement mentioning a republick without King or house of Lords may tye us to Monarchy by the same reason Secondly This gloss carrys a full contradiction in it self you say these words without King house of Lords may be properly and most obviously taken as an explication of the word as now established immediatly going before and not an absolute negation of the things themselves when as those words as now established do fully imply that abnegation of Kings Lords which you there mention now being an adverb of time the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Engagement must needs stand in full opposition to the face of things in former administrations it cannot look on the Common-weale abstractively as the same in all revolutions and junctures of times but as it now stands in a present different posture as now is a full contradiction to your sense as ever And I pray you consider whether the powers now established without King and Lords have not voted down both King and Lords as useless and dangerous and therfore now established is no other then an abnegation of Kings and Lords heretofore established therefore your friend being in this pinched is not yet eased You go on as discerning that what is said will not hold Suppose say you that in your apprehens●●● of matters this Engagement doth materially settle some thing in the Common-wealth which is contrary to the intention which you had in taking the Covenant yet I say that by giving your assent thereunto as matters now stand you break not at all your Covenant because your obligation to those matters by vertue of the Covenant was extinguished before you were called upon to take this Engagement now that which is extinct and made void cannot be said to oblige any more This supposition of yours is wholly yielded by others that it is in full opposition to the Covenant and other Oaths and so all your labour lost in endeavouring to reconcile them and this which you now bring is onely held out for a Plea to carry it in the affirmative that the Engagement may be entered malè res agitur cum tot opus est remediis is wont to be said for your Proposition that that which is extinct and made void can no more oblige must be acknowledged as truth with its just limitation provided that those concerned in the Oath have no hand in the extinguishing of it for their own disobligation David was bound by Covenant unto Jonathan and his seed after him had he consented to the death of Mephibosheth the Son of Jonathan the matter of the Covenant had then been extinct and yet David had been guilty of the breach of it for your assumption that the matter of the Covenant as to the third Article is extinct it being impossible in nature to preserve the Kings life now it is cut off and the house of Lords now it is put down I shall not stand upon that maxime the King never dyes and so though the man be cut off yet the King remains and may be preserved if you please to look into the Preface of the