Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	law_n	sin_n	transgression_n	2,243	5	10.5323	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34735	The counter-plot, or, The close conspiracy of atheism and schism opened and so defeated and the doctrine and duty of evangelical obedience or Christian loyalty thereby asserted / by a real member of this most envy'd as most admired, because, best reformed Protestant Church of England.	Real member of this most envy'd, as, most admired, because, best reformed Protestant Church of England.	1680 (1680)	Wing C6522; ESTC R10658	41,680	44

ne ipsa delet iniquitas as St. Aust speaks that Law written in mens hearts which sin it self could not blot out This was that Law to which a penalty was annext in case of Transgression to be taken upon the verdict or testimony of Conscience i. e. that reflection the Soul makes Conscience what and the judgment which by that reflection it passes upon it self according to Law without which Law as there could be no guilt so without guilt there could be no Conscience Therefore if the Law makes not distinctively good or evil we can neither do well or ill or have either comfort or regret in the sense of one or other Conscience can never act without respect to a Law and to the Maker and Judge of that Law Its reflexion would be an useless and idle thing if all other things were indifferent because the sense of guilt would be incompossible with the praeclusion of Law and therefore every mans experience as it feels the one so it proves the other Witness the perplexity that haunts the Soul of the most cautious and closest sinner Witness the lashes that the Monarch feels from the hand of Conscience though freed from the touch of any other patiturque suos mens conscia manes Witness the fears and horrors of dying men who are then most afraid of this when they are nighest out of the reach of all other punishment But besides the testimony of Conscience we have the universal consent of Mankind there having never yet been any Nation so barbarous that believed every thing naturally alike or that had not some Principles and Practices too of Morality And indeed were it not thus were not good and evil made such by nature distinctly and antecedently to humane Laws these Laws could signifie nothing for were there no antecedent obligation to obey those Laws Rebellion would presently be as lawful as obedience is necessary Vain names of Oaths of Allegiance or Promises of Fidelity if it be not first a duty in it self to keep ones word I wonder who would then be a Subject that could hope to better himself by being otherwise Besides were it not thus how should humane Laws bind as we see they do in those places where Revelation has not yet been if the Obligation of Conscience to Obedience in such places be not resolv'd into the Law of Nature enjoyning Obedience as due to Governours Yea precluding the Law of Nature I speak now with becoming reverence how could God himself bind us to obedience by any Positive Law for unless it be first my duty to believe God because of his Veracity I am after the clearest Revelation left at my liberty to believe whether the Law be from God or no and if I should be so kind as to believe him yet if nothing be good or bad in it self then to despise the authority of God cannot be evil and therefore I may chuse as an indifferent thing whether I will obey him or not Yea why may not men if they please invert the very frame of all moral things and turn Vice into the place of Virtue So absurd as we have seen is this false and dangerous Hypothesis so directly thwart to the first Principles of Reason and to the common sence of mankind so plainly effective and introductive of all the evil and misery that can be done or suffer'd in the world that if it could be reasonably believed that the Author a man I doubt not eminently Learned should not be aware of what so follows thereupon it might also be charitably hop't that he would have denyed himself upon the first sight of such mischievous consequents were it not that we see many other and some not unlearned men who while they abhor the Principles in terms yet embrace those inferences which must needs come from them in course Tell the Schismatick there is no God oh Abominable that 't is abominable and the Atheist shall feel his arm but tell him Kings are not or obedience due to them is not Gods and you may shake his hand Suum euique tribuaere Tell him there is a natural or original Law of justice c. out upon these Atheists he 'l say so too tell him right reason is that instrument by which we discern this Law to be given to our natures still he 's content but tell him that therefore Obedience is both rational and natural and he begins to start what do you mean Sir Tell him that therefore it is due to man as Governour i. e. as the Ordinance of God you amaze him what though he be a Papist where by the way we cannot but acknowledge this same though Modern Papist or Infidel c. to be so much the more considerable as it carries with it an Emphasis of the loudest and harshest sound Papist in our English Reformed Translation being in a manner the same reading with Infidel or Mahometan but whilst I think it the severest I may also suspect it for the unjustest too as being a supposition however made at first God knows not I yet since that time manifestly as enviously urg'd and improved by some to such a popular height that it now seems more than probable they had rather suppose it though false than truly not suppose it and that they would not quit their advantage or exchange the pleasure of fixing the guilt and odium for my comfort in or my hope of the improbability of that imputation Their busie floating upon the top or surface of common fame will not let them sink to the depth and bottom of such humble reflexions as supposing what they suppose would certainly help us more and become us better for whether is more Evangelical think we the language of Ashdod or the speech of Canaan that roaring clamour he is Popishly affected and shall never Reign c. or that still remorseful voice righteous art thou O Lord and thy judgments are true and as we sin'd by thrusting out as we did a Protestant King and Nursing Father so shouldst thou punish us by bringing in the contrary yet still righteous art thou O Lord c. But besides that we may be jealous of this jealousie as seeing no more sufficient ground than we think they have good cause for it and that we are not to suspect rashly without such ground or tumultuously and irreverently with it methinks we have this good reason against it that it got no higher than a Supposition there where we doubt not it would if it could have been lifted up to an Assertion and I know some very near the subject of this praedicate that know no more of it than I do and I now thank God that thus I do not know it and thence may infer my duty not to believe it my duty I say and the rather because I believe verily such a Supposition can hardly be well made of any man or Christian without making another of the ignorance or unsincerity of the same man

no incorporeal substance for that it would be a contradiction and so impossible there should be any as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were nothing akin to Entity Leviathan p. 214. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which we all know 't is nearer allied than to matter or corporeity but as we also know they are some kind of deformities in our bodies which make us most asham'd of being stript so it must be some such cause that makes us so afraid of a separate existence If I should say as I need not the disciple of the Leviathan is mad the Reader knows what I mean and I speak intelligibly or if I say he is besides himself I am allowed to speak pertinently and he could he come to himself again would grant me to speak as truly that he was not himself and that he was when he was not so how then can he confess the lesser Separation which is in Lunacy whilst he cannot so much as conceive that greater Divorce which is in Ecstacy whenas it is manifestly repugnant to know any thing in kind which we cannot also apprehend in degree to know any thing to be actually at a lesser which we cannot imagine to be possibly at a greater distance So then 't is not any contradiction in the terms of incorporeal substance that can be the cause why there is none such What then why truly this or nothing and this less and worse than nothing because if there were such a substance then there must be a Spirit and that would put the hook into this Leviathan for then there will be a God whereas otherwise the Monster were free to take his pleasure and pass time for there could be no God and so no Religion and then no good or evil but as forc't and made such by our selves For that supposing God is or may be he must be infinite and indivisible and therefore also must be incorporeal because otherwise he must have parts and so be divisible and so finite Diogenes Laertius reports of Pyrrho In vita ejus that he denyed any difference between good and evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 other than what Positive law or custom had made and I think Seneca tells as much of Epicurus Besides these two I am not presently aware of any third till Mr. Hobbs will needs be teaching ubi nulla respublica p. 72. de Cive c. 12. c. nullum injustum c. nihil absolute bonum aut malum c. Natura est ad mandatum relativa omnis actio suâ naturâ adiaphora c. that there 's nothing good or evil in it self or naturally just or unjust but all so or so in reference to the Magistrate being otherwise and in themselves indifferent c. But this Gentleman hath forgot what yet he must needs have learnt from one of his great Masters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that there is an Eternal Law every way inclining us to that which is just and equal Aristot de mundo c. 16. and that as the Being of God must needs be infinite as we have shewn already so must it by the like necessity of his Nature be infinitely holy because the perfections of God are not Adjuncts but Essential to his Nature wherefore he cannot act but agreeably to them he cannot approve or disapprove any thing but suitably to these so that to imagine one thing to be as congruous to him as another good as evil must needs be Blasphemy and contradiction to boot and make God both to be and cease to be what he is because that God abhors evil is rather from the Sanctity of his Nature and Essence than from the determination of his Will and therefore whatever is properly and essentially good must rather be so by its resultanco from this Holy Being than by any positive Sanction or precept of Law and therefore also 't is in respect of its Sanctity rather than Soveraignty that the Will of God becomes the measure of good and evil which is not such because his Will is Arbitrary but because it must be agreeable to his Holiness Though we are not born with congenit Notions of good and evil yet we are born with such Faculties as duely exercised between acts and objects will make us necessarily apprehensive of congruity or incongruity in this or that whilst yet this apprehension ows it self not only to the moral but to the connate and essential rectitude of those Faculties which shew us by consideration such a manifest proportion between some and disproportion between other acts and their objects that without repugnancy and doing violence to those powers we cannot judge otherwise of them than that they are right or wrong equal or unequal from that proportion or disproportion we thus perceive in them and have thereby as certain rational Principles of Moral practice as any we can have of Science and know as well that we are to give every one their due as that two and two make four and therefore two taken from four leave two still and those certain determinations which the Soul makes in this rational exercise of comparing acts and objects are those very issues which Philosophers call common Notions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. the Rudimental innate or ingrafted Principles of Rational nature whereby we find our Intellectual Faculties to be as much affected with moral evil as our Sensatories are by the most incongruous or ingrateful Objects Rhet. l. 1. c. 14. Rom. 12.17 Thus we find some things as Aristotle observes right or wrong by nature or in St. Pauls language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 just or honest in the sight or esteem of all men q. d. no rational creature can possibly esteem them other than such because the faculties wherewith he judgeth are created by God who hath made man with such Faculties as make him necessarily judge so and so and therefore this judgment of his must be Gods too and so must be a Law from God given to man which man as rational cannot depart from it being the Law written in his heart or wrought into the essential frame or composition of his reasonable nature What imaginable account can there be given how the Gentiles who had not the Law could be a Law unto themselves or do by nature the things contained in the Law c. if there were not a Law in and to that nature abstracted from and antecedent to all other Sanctions and Precepts whatsoever They had not the Law written or revealed to them what Law had they then but this in their nature which was born with them They could have nothing but that Natural light or the dictates of right reason by whose conduct notwithstanding they did those things which were also commanded in the Law of God or as the Poet words it sponte suâ sine lege fidem rectumque colebant This was that Lex scripta in cordibus hominum quam