Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	according_a	earth_n	nature_n	2,088	5	5.3262	4	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

more learned and this so much the rather if it be well considered that however Christians ought to serve one another in love yet obedience to inferiours is grievous and not without some excuse for being so whereas that of Superiours as of Christ who according to his humane nature was a subject to Caesar is a most noble natural and necessary duty as that which supports the whole Fabrick of the Church and of all the Kingdoms upon earth and in Heaven too that which is so equally essential to Policy and Religion that 't is plainly impossible either for Saints to be Schismaticks or Rebels or for such to be Saints without making our Faith our Scriptures our Religion vain without a downright welcome to Anarchy and farewel to all Society The contempt of Authority linked with an obstinate contumacious and seditious humour is so very a monster that it makes an error of judgment which might otherwise have been venial in it self a diabolical and damning quality So that if Schism were no such sin as it is yet it were worth the parting with for the purchase of publick peace of which rightly improved piety and prosperity strength and safety are the genuine and precious fruits It was for this that our Lord himself complyed in some things both with Jews and Gentiles that he might gain both It was for this that we find the like complyances of St. Paul of whom we should all be followers as he was of Christ yielding to circumcise Timothy Act. 15.28 29. and refusing again to circumcise Titus To gain the Jews he denyed himself the use of his Christian liberty and resum'd it again to gain the Gentiles It was for peace and to unite dissenters that the Apostles made that conciliar establishment of things indifferent by a Law whereby they induced a necessity à parte post upon things indifferent à parte antè And this Apostolical practice as it plainly informs our judgments in the true subject matter of humane Laws and whereabout they are properly conversant and as plainly directs our practice of obedience in such cases so will it never be made to serve their purposes who by binding the whole force and weight of it upon their Governours shoulders so as they themselves may not touch it so much as with one of their own fingers would make it a ground of exception from the general rule of submission and a warrant to dispute at least and as it constantly follows to deny at last that obedience which they pretend according to this practice should not have been commanded as if the condescension and indulgence of Governours were not to the ignorance or frowardness to the intellectual or moral infirmities of dissenters as if the Jews had not been culpable in their tenaciousness of the Law of Moses when St. Paul purposely stoopt to them and approved its observance by his own practice as if the bowels and forbearings of any injur'd and incens'd Parent did not make it more the childs duty to love and honour him and should not make it more his shame and grief to displease him more his sin and guilt to disobey him as if not presently to take the forfeiture were reasonably to avoid the debt or cancel the debtors obligation or as if it were equally of duty as it is of power in the Prince to suspend the execution of a known Law for some weighty reasons of State and upon the prospect of publick benefit and to tolerate a practice against Law and without hope of any common good and not without just apprehensions of the greatest experience of the contrary and therefore against all the reason in the world but that of his own courtesie and meer pity 'T is true indeed when Kings are said to be Gods we best understand how they are such when they are said also to be nursing Fathers and therefore without fear either of contradiction to sense or of courtship against reason we can say they are humane Gods their deity best asserted by their humanity and both by a joynt supremacy of power and goodness and we cannot chuse but wonder at the Anti-supremacy of Schism that our ready obedience should not confess the one as irresistible as our rebellions have prov'd the other 'T is as true that there is no such mirrour so clear and true to look in no such optick or perspicil to see with as is the Crystal of the Word of God a glass of such virtue that it not only most perfectly discovers the object but also disposes the medium and directs the faculty a glass that will never suffer us to behold any thing with or through prejudice or base interest or without Christian charity and meekness a glass that never shews us the spots of others but by reflexion upon our own in this glass we can neither behold the virtues or vices of our fellow-subjects with envy or without pity nor the blemishes or beauties of our Governours without a reverence becoming both a reverence I say as being a mixt affection of fear and love by which I fear the power whilst I love not the fault of the person and love the person whilst I fear the evil whether sin or punishment of the fault In this glass we see what we must piously bewail yet may not proudly censure in our Superiors what we must reprove with caution and without arrogance in our equals and what we must judge and condemn impartially positively absolutely and irrespectively to any though more scandalous sins of others in our selves St. Paul was the greatest of sinners with the greatest assurance of Salvation and the Publican was a sinner with more comfort than the Pharisee was not a Publican In this glass the most absolute Soveraign Prince may best see himself in the fullest proportion he sees by and for whom he reigns absolutely and without whom he reigns not independently he sees that his Government is arbitrary as that is supream and unquestionable by man but not as any way unaccountable but as every way most strictly and most especially accountable to God for he sees him that is properly and originally King of Kings under whose most supreme and comprehensive Title and by vertue of whom he sees himself constituted and authorized and accordingly to which he is to be directed limited and subordinate and therefore by no means to intrench upon the Prerogatives Royal of his Lord Paramount and therefore not to govern by his own Will which is Gods peculiar a rule to himself and a Law to the Sons of men the root and source of all Government which so spreads and runs it self through the whole nature of man that it makes Government not more divine in it self than connatural to us and as effective of our well-beings in Societies as of our social and conjugal propensions and therefore as old as Paternity it self or the First of the First-born making every man naturally sociable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Supremum medium

without amendment that sin is not forgiven before committed or before repented and that therefore repentance must be in time and justification which follows it as well as pardon must be so too Some look down so brutishly upon one extreme The Separatist and Debaucher or Anti-hypocrite that they never can advert to the other one is so wholly intent upon his jealousies of Tyranny and Popery that he never sees or fears Rebellion and disobedience whilst another in avoidance of this Hypocrisie rushes into a worse extream of Debauchery and is so resolv'd an anti-hypocrite that he will not endure so much as a form of godliness but rather than seem religious will proclaim his sin as Sodom rather than hypocritically abstain from the appearance of evil and not from the evil it self as the other doth he will abstain impudently both from good and from its appearance and though a Professor of Christianity will vye with the effronteries of the most shameless Heathens in disclosing those pudendous enormities which he hath done and that he may not be out-done in boasting of more than he ever had the appetite or if that yet possibly the strength to perpetrate thus he hates hypocrisie worse than the other loves it and by glorying in his impiety not only displeaseth but as the more horrid Devil of the two even despiseth God It would be endless to remark upon the numberless divisions and subdivisions of Sectaries yet all equally pretending to be and how ill soever or awry they look to be lookt upon by us as our reformers all equally dissenters from Reformers without and Vsurpers against authority all equally admirers of themselves and despisers of their Superiors Now what a monster think we were that Church like to be whose formation or reformation were thus effected that were to be lickt into shape and feature by the poysonous slavering tongues of all these or what can we imagine would look liker the abomination of desolation All this while the Holy Humble Sincere-hearted man that trembles at the word of God and is afraid of his judgments or in other words the truly Loyal and Christian subject he looks directly with ease and pleasure into the perfect Law of liberty his magna charta indeed where he finds his priviledge in his duty and his liberty in his obedience his fear is not taught him by the Traditions or practices the policies or prosperities of men He has learnt whom to fear and for whom the Lord for his own sake and the King for the Lord's sake both or neither He measures his whole Religion by his adequate obedience to God and man and his whole obedience by the Law of God whether bidding him semper obey his Rulers c. or forbidding him ad semper to worship Idols c. Both are alike his duty alike conducible to his Salvation alike when transgrest threatned with Damnation and therefore reckons that he must needs be subject not only for fear of wrath or hope of profit for fear of hell or hope of Heaven but for Conscience towards God and our selves for that this precept of obedience is not only consequentially good as every positive Law is but simply good and so antecedently obliging as a part of the Law of Nature without any relation to the written Law which here serves only to make disobedience more unexcusable and under a greater condemnation Wherefore he still reckons on that no form of godliness can be more than so without common honesty no common honesty without giving all their dues nothing more due than what the subject owes to the Soveraign whereupon he concludes that dishonesty as such is ungodliness and disobedience as scandalous as drunkenness or adultery Thus the good subject has review'd himself but cannot go from the glass without a dutious filial reflection upon his Prince let us attend him in this posture also and mark what he reports from his own eyes He tells us he once saw in this glass that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that exemplar and ornament of Royalty the First CHARLES of England so like as only not equal to his Prince and Saviour in his Solitudes a Prophet in his Sufferings both King and Priest or according to that new name receiv'd at his second Baptism the ROYAL MARTYR in the circumstances of his Apprehension and Arraignment in the matter of his Charge and Defence the manner of his Death and Burial in the glorious Resurrection of his Name and Memory a name embalm'd with spices of its own in his living to do good and dying to do more yea in dying expresly to save his Peoples Liberties and Properties he hath so reviv'd the history of the Cross that he can see Christ in this his Principal member Crucified again He can point to the Council to the Souldiers to the Judas to the Pilate to the Golgotha c. He bids us remember we had Alas that we had such a Prince of Piety to that degree as was alone sufficient to add the excess to our iniquity and fascination to the Rebellion of his people and were not Oblivion enacted into duty he could never forget Exit Tyrannus Regum ultimus So dy'd that worst of Tyrants and last of Kings that ingrain as engraven Inscription of our Antiplastical Protector Exeo Martyr Populi Behold I dye the Martyr of the People that innocent and Heroick expiration of the Royal Sufferer However he 'l be sure to remember to pray that Ne sit Martyr in populum his bloud might not be a witness against these Nations might not be upon us and upon our children may at last be the merciful sentence of the supreme Avenger Amen Amen He now sees in the same glass by a providence as full of mercy as wonder another CHARLES a Second from the First there 's a specialty of mercy and a Second to that First there 's the wonder Such a Second to such a First must needs demonstrate the wisdom and goodness of God to be alike infinite For what but a most unparallel'd and stupendous clemency in such a Son could ever have qualified him to forgive did I say nay to forget a like impiety against such a Father what but such a Miracle of Magnanimity or Christian patience in the one could have pardoned even to Oblivion the guilt of those who so eminently were self-condemned by the Piety and Innocency of the other A Royal temper indeed enough at once to put us out of doubt why or how 't is said that Kings are gods and into doubt again whether there be not a better medium of Government than Fear whether the * Tacitè permittitur quod sine ultione prohibetur Tertul. Fathers Assertion that what is not congruously punished is tacitly allowed might not now be put to Problem in its own defence And indeed were there as much force as there is reason in goodness to oblige the doubt were over there being nothing in the world that should so reasonably