Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	act_n	offence_n	peace_n	2,595	5	6.0850	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85861	A remonstrance presented to O.P. Feb. 4. 1655. By J.G. D.D. A son, servant, and supplicant for the Church of England: in behalf of many thousands his distressed brethren (ministers of the Gospel, and other good schollars) who were deprived of all publique imployment, (as ministers, or schollars) by his declaration, Jan. 1. 1655.	Gauden, John, 1605-1662.	1660 (1660)	Wing G365; Thomason E765_7; ESTC R207143	30,772	35

dares onely whisper to themselves or it may be with some hard speeches and odious reflections jealously suggest to your Highnesse that have I undertaken by Gods help freely and fully to represent to You that so your Highnesse may not be ignorant nor remorselesse as to their calamitous condition which is like to be such that of all Men they are indeed condemned to be the most miserable in this world if the want of all things can make those miserable who want not the continual feast of a good Conscience and the support of Gods Spirit to be patient § But because I know that great Statists and wise Polititians Two Reasons of State considered as grounds of the Declaration against Ministers do not lightly apply so publique and sharp severities in the method of Government but either they aime at First exemplary punishing former Offences Or secondly at preventing future Insolencies which may endanger publique safety For private Feuds and personal despights or revenges upon any men that are subject to their power are impotencies or passions most unworthy of great and valiant Spirits and not incident to them because much below them § Give me leave to Remonstrate to your Highnesse That the exercise of such Charity Clemency and Equanimity as is desired by me for such worthy Ministers and other Scholars can no way either First abate that Prudent Justice which must punish Offenders to preserve the Innocent in peace Nor secondly can it incourage for the future such licentiousnesse or presumption as may any way endanger that publique tranquillity which your Highnesse professed to me was your impartial and highest designe in Government in which all honest men of all Principles and Perswasions might enjoy themselves in peace § First As to the first point of punitive State-policy First as to punitive Justice for past Offences I humbly conceive it was not so much an Act of Justice and Legality as of Military caution and prevention while the Interest of Parties were sadly divided in Warre which at first inflicted so great losses and restraints as upon others so upon many Learned Grave and godly Ministers not as Penalties but Securities And certainly those principles or perswasions which first lead them to undergo so many Miseries by the improsperity of that Cause to which they chose to adhere holding themselves obliged thereto in Conscience by the Lawes of God and Man these can in no Justice of God or Man deserve to be alwayes so sorely punished However possibly in reason of State it might for a time be rather necessary than just that they should be restrained or weakned flagrante bello during the hot fits and Paroxysms of war not quia nocuerunt but ne nocere possint § Past Offences more than sufficiently punished Yet when this Rivalry jealousie and contest by Armes was once decided and publique Oppositions were reduced to publique Subjections certainly such as were at first sufferers onely by way of caution and prevention do not want very just Pleas now for their liberty and present indemnitie notwithstanding their supposed Constancy to their former Principles of which as no wise man is concerned to be curiously inquisitive so they cannot be injurious to any publique Power and Peace so long as they are modestly smothered and in-offensively silenced in their own Brests or Consciences whose Dictates your Highnesse knows are not under any mans Empire Whether mens private Perswasions are to be made publique Offences The ablest men cannot change their Opinions when they will nor will honest men pretend a Change where is none Since then their former Sufferings were made use of for the security of that side which now prevailes sufficiently over them as to the outward man Since their present Constancy proceeds not from Factious pertinacy which is soon either subdued or softned by sufferings but onely from Consciencious Integrity which is in Wise and Good men as a Diamond unmalleable and invincible Lastly since this is so modestly carried as no way either invades or affronts the prevalent Power or publique Peace and Safety Surely such men may well appear rather the Objects of just Indulgence and Remission than of any further renewed rigours and endlesse coercions especially since their Principles kept private as they are can do no hurt and their Ministerial abilities being made publique may do much good § Adde to this His Highnesse declared tendernesse as to Liberty of Conscience what your Highnesse hath highly pretended to and much sought to gaine beliefe in from the World That no man or Magistrate is more indulgent to reall liberty of conscience none more tender of making rude Scrutinies into mens hearts which are Gods Prorogative and reserve or of laying either rigid impositions upon mens Consciences or penaltys on their opinions when their Conversation is such as becometh the Gospell and our Lawes neither impious nor injurious neither idle nor Pragmatick All which being granted I cannot under favour see how it can confist with your Highnesses many other Declarations and Professions to preserve rational and Religious liberty unviolated How then I beseech you should the constancy of these mens private perswasions joyned with honesty and innocency of life in any equity render them so burthensome and intolerable to the Common-wealth as to exclude them for ever from all civil and Sacred Industry in such wayes of honest subsistence as are sutable to their education and abilityes § Who doubts but that in civill addictions and adherences His Highnesse approving of mens constancy to their Principles in his own Interest even your Highnesse doth passionately desire and highly approve such servants subjects friends and followers who are not upon sinister but sincere respects so devoted to your Safety Honor Power and Interest that they will not easily suffer themselves to be removed from them whereto they once have applied themselves not more with prudence which will onely hold in the Summer and prosperity of your affairs and family than with conscience love and gratitude which will last in Winter and adversity as the life and sap of Trees doth when their leaves are faln That virtue which is commendable in your Highnesses case cannot be blameable in anothers though an enemy because it is a virtue The Antiquated or obsolete Causes of many Ministers sufferings § Nor is it to be forgotten as to the examining of the point of Justice in many excellent Ministers and other Scholars past sufferings That long before the scene of our civill affaires was thus altered and setled as now it is under your Highnesses Government many of them were Silenced Sequestred and Ejected out of their Livings preferments and Fellowships meerly upon the score of I know not what Occasionall Covenants new Vowes and State Engagements which were but temporary Stratagems serving such various and Particular Interests as in their times were sometimes on foot and prevalent in their partyes and designes All which having been long since justly antiquated

thousand persons to each of which if we adde but four more which is but a small Family or retinue they cannot but exceed the proportion I have calculated § And here Plea from his Highnesses conjugal and paternal sense my Lord being your selfe reputed both a loving Husband and a tender Father I cannot but believe that you are as well as I am extremely sensible of these conjugal and peternal remorses which gnaw the very bowels and pierce the Souls of all ingenuous men in behalf of their nearest and dearest Relations when they shall see these involved in the same calamityes with themselves and for their sakes to drinke as deep of the bitter cup as their chiefes or principals A Gracious Christian may with generous courage encounter his own death as conclusive of his own miseries and his enemies malice but who can endure to be spectators of those lingring torments wherewith famine must kill their Wives and Children Hagar went away that she might not be a sad spectatrix of her Son Ismaels death for want of Food § As the Laws of humanity teach us to abhor such Dreadful Severityes God abhors dreadful severities on the innocent and the nocent that are numerous falling upon our Relations so the God of Mercy would have them avoided in the justest executions that not the Children and so not the Wives should beare the iniquity of the Fathers or Husbands yea Gods compassion pleaded against the passion and peevishnesse of Jonah for his sparing Niniveh though he had denounced his wrath and limited a day for protracting the Execution even from the many Innocent Children that were in that City who the lesse they can speak the louder they do cry by a silent yet potent eloquence to that God of whose mercyes we are assured by many Holy and happy Tantologies that they endure for ever § Such Pious parentall and pathetick motives here present themselves to your Highnesse as from others so from those whose Oratory is onely in their cryes and tears who as tender Branches must needs wither both as to feeding and breeding if the main root or stem of their Fathers be either barked round or stubbed up having nothing to do and nothing to enjoy I shall not need to adde that no argument will be more Odiously Bitterly The triumph of Papists over the Married Reformed and Impoverished Clergy and unanswerably urged by the Papists with their Priests and Jesuites against the reformed maried Clergy of England then this to see somany of them with their Wives and Children thus exposed to most sordid and shamefull necessities and indeed to perfect beggery for many such spectacles my own eyes have seen and my heart deplored And this in a land of plenty in a time of peace and after so many high protestations to maintaine the protestant reformed Religion and incourage the Ministers of it § Thus farre my Lord I have led on my Petition for your Highnesse Clemency by the limits of punitive civill Justice without making any unhansome breach or incroachment I hope upon its just power and proportions in regard to either the just offences or present merits of those learned Scholars and worthy Ministers for whom I have taken this boldnesse to plead and in them for their Wives and Children whose numbers and innocency are capable to disarme the rigors of justice although those had been actually deserved by their Husbands and Fathers whose offences for the most part have been and are more in their perswasions then their practises in other mens jelousies more then their own activities and so their punishments hitherto have been rather cautionary then expiatory § Nor in the second place will this my humble request Second reason of State urged for the care of future fasety and publique peace Answered any way I trust seeme lesse consistent with your Highnesse Vigilancy and Frudence for the future Peace and Safety of the Publique both which in all civil societies where men have any sense or enjoyment of things beyond Beasts and Slaves are best preserved as by justice so by equanimity and gentleness yea and they are soonest blasted by two great sharpnesse and severitys which drawing upon the very Lees or dregs of justice sowred with jealousies and revenges must needs savour much even of injustice For punishments are not more due to offenders for their malicious Trespasses against the publique welfare then some mercy and moderation are due to those common mistakes frailties and infirmities of life which oft overttake even worthy men not so much by their fault as by a kind of fate their misfortunes or afflictions being rather tentative of their virtues then Punitive of their Vices whose even finfull infirmities Rigorous severities enemies to publique tranquillitie many times complicated with their miseries God himselfe is pleased so far to consider as in the midest of judgement to remember Mercy and even to punish them more with the relentings of a Father then the exactions of a Judge mercy benignity and compassion being no lesse beams of Divine Glory and Majesty than are Justice Power and Soveraignty These are as the Rubies those as the Diamonds of that Crown which God wears and indulgeth to Rulers on earth as their Royal Coronets whose extremities and rigors of justice must never overlay or exclude their Christian charity and moderation The want of which St. Paul tels us is not the diminution but the annihilation of a Christian yea of a cheif Apostle For without Charity I am nothing § I know the grand Interest of publique peace and safety which seeme the chiefe ground and ends of that late Declaration are not in reason or policy to be neglected by such as seek the reputation of prudent statists and their own preservation But my Lord what wise man will so farr injure the opinion No publique danger from a few unarmed Ministers generally had of your Highnesses Potency and Vigilancy in Government as to think that neither your Highnesse nor the Common-wealth can be in a posture of Peace and Safety unlesse so many learned and unarmed men many of them Aged and every way as unapt for warr almost as their Wives and Children unlesse I say these be quite undone by being silenced and ejected from all kind of Ministeriall and Scholasticall imployments which are onely sutable to their breeding and ability and competent to maintaine them § If any man shall suggest that such methods of extremityes and despaires are the proper Antidotes if not to expell the poyson as they esteem it of opinions already diffused in some Ministers spirits and veines yet to stop at least the spreading and contagions of them in other men My answer is That even in this point of State policy a depth through which few men can well wade to Heaven I doubt not but your Highnesse with others hath observed That some either lesse seasonable and discrete rigors or more immoderate severities heretofore used against those Ministers whose