Selected quad for the lemma: law_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
law_n	john_n	sin_n	transgression_n	6,343	5	10.8416	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47306	Of Christian prudence, or, Religious wisdom not degenerating into irreligious craftiness in trying times	Kettlewell, John, 1653-1695.	1691 (1691)	Wing K378; ESTC R28756	189,905	358

all of Almighty God It overthrows as all the Rules so all the Design of Religion and the Grounds of good Practice It can come into the Thoughts only of worldly-wise not of truly Religious Persons who never urged a Temporal Necessity against a Spiritual Duty being not men of this World but of a better There can never be any Necessity of Sinning to him that dare suffer And he who is resolved against Suffering may think himself a worldly-wise man but God will account him no good Christian. But this now is otherwise in the Wisdom of this World Necessity it thinks a Reason not to be argued or disputed And what it calls Necessary is what is necessary to one who is resolved to keep this World not to one who can part with it What is necessary not to one that would set God and Religion above the World but that sets the World uppermost and so makes a God of it If it talk of any thing being necessary for the Interest of God and Religion it means only for the worldly things about them It looks not what is necessary to keep Innocence for other things it accounts more necessary than that but what is necessary for carnal worldly Convenience It is more for things necessary to present Safety than for those which are necessary to good Hopes of Eternity And to make men safe here by affording visible Humane Securities not by ingaging the Protection of God and the Guard of an unseen Providence 2. Secondly Spiritual Prudence will never allow us to justifie any Breach of Duty by the Plea of Providence This is the way of worldly-wise men who are ready to catch at any thing as a good Argument of a way 's being approved by God and pleasing to him if it profits them If God give Success when they use unlawful ways and Expedients especially if in bringing that success about there are any surprising or remarkable Circumstances they cry up the Hand of God and think his prospering it so signally is his approbation God himself here say they is willing to become a Party and such Success is his Testimony But Spiritual Wisdom teaches us to take the Morality of Actions and the goodness or illness of things from Laws not from Providence It is the Laws of God in Nature or Scripture that must teach us our Duty and tell us what will please God or what will offend him Sin is the Transgression of a Law as St. John says and Obedience is the keeping of them And these Laws are publish'd in the Nature of things and the Word of God which are a plain and sure Promulgation of them But as for Providence its Design is not to be a Publisher of Precepts God's Providence is not an Act of his Legislation but of Judicature and Execution It s part is not first to shew and promulge Laws but supposing those promulged before to supervise the Carriage of those they were promulged to and execute their Sanctions Or to recompense Actions by suitable Events according as they have either transgressed or kept them The Judgments of God according to his Will before promulged we may read in the Events and Issues of Providence But what his Will is the Observance or Breach whereof Providence thus rewards or punishes we must read in the Moral Nature of Things and the Holy Scriptures 'T is a bad Use therefore of Providence to make it take off our Eyes from the Morality of Things and the plain Voice of Laws and look for what is pleasing to God and according to his Will only in the Events of Actions Which is like leaving the clear Light of the Sun to go to read by that of a Glow-worm 'T is to go read our Duty where it was not intended to be writ and Neglect or over-look the perusal of that where it is writ And 't is worse when we see both to make Providence carry against plain Laws and the Moral Nature of Things which is to turn the Signification of Providence not only against the Laws but against it self For the use of Providence is to be a Government according to those Laws and the Morality of Things It is to be a Maintainer of them by just Retribution and so is only to back and strengthen but never to oppose them And therefore Providence must never be urged in Favour of an ill and unlawful thing For since its right use is to be a Retribution of Laws and to reward Dutifulness all its right Signification and all our right Remarks thereupon must be only for Encouragement to keep our Duty but not to transgress it It must never be pressed against Laws but always for them and must only draw us to trust and depend upon God in a good thing but never in an ill one which Nature or the Holy Scriptures have forbidden Indeed as Providence is the Administration of God's Judicature here on Earth and he permits or disposes of Events of things or Actions in way of Government and Justice there is a Signification of his Liking or Disliking in these Disposals But 't is hard and unsure to fix this on Persons and Actions to say from these Issues of Providence alone who or what he is Pleased or Displeased withal For in the same Issues and Events Providence is Concerned with a Number of Persons of the most contrary Qualifications they are fatal to one and favourable to another But yet since therein he has an Eye at both from the Event alone we cannot say which God likes and which he dislikes whether the Success is to Reward the Actors Righteousness or to punish the Sufferers Wickedness Nay oft-times in the Justice of Providence God makes some Sinners the Executioners of others and punishes one by anothers Offences making them Grind each other to Pieces So that here on which side soever the Shew of Favor or Success falls it doth not Signifie that God is pleased with either He will speed one to punish another when he is offended with both The Assyrians Success was only as the Rod of God's Anger to scourge the wicked Nations Which once done he and his Ways being no more pleasing to God than the others were he was to be broken himself and fall under like Judgments Is. 10.5 12 16 c. The wicked who in their Course of Wickedness are far from being pleasing to him yet says the Psalmist are a Sword of thine and so long find Success therein Psal. 17.13 Yea as the Thriving of some is not always to shew Favor so the Sufferings of others in Events of Providence is not always to shew Displeasure For many times their Sufferings are not Designed to punish the Sufferers but only to try their Patience and refine and manifest their Virtues and rowze a sluggish World with the Sight of brave Examples Such was the meaning of David's Sufferings and Persecutions under Saul Such was the Signification of Providence in the Sufferings of Job of the holy Prophets of

we live in a time when to the greatest Numbers Popery that is indeed a very Corrupt Religion seems more formidable than any other thing And to call a way Popish sounds worse in the ears of the Populace than to say it is Unchristian And therefore to conclude this Subject I shall note in the last place how all the foresaid Methods of the Worldly Wise which I have taxed before are no better than Popish Corruptions There are Popish Morals as well as Popish Superstitions and Idolatries The Depravations of Good Practice and of Moral Honesty and Justice by a Number of their Casuists have been as scandalous and will prove as fatal to those Souls who are deluded by them as their Depravations in Matters of Faith and Devotion And the forecited Rules of the Worldly Wise are among those very ways whereby too many Papists have Corrupted Christian Morals Nay they are the Morals of Jesuits who are the worst of Papists and whose scandalous accommodations of Christ's Rules and Precepts to comply with Fleshly Passions and Interests suiting Religion to Self-Ends and basely bending Moral Duties to serve Corrupt Turns and Worldly Necessities are Condemned in these and such other Points by the sober Papists themselves And this I the rather note because I see so many Reverend and Worthy Persons who seem the strictest and truest Examples of Moral Integrity among us and stand out against all these Unlawful Compliances and Insincerities of the Fleshly Wise appearing as the Patterns and Confessors for Honesty and Morality in a Day of General Temptation and Defection are yet among other Marks of common hatred and scorn branded with the Name of Papists notwithstanding all the opposition they made to Popery and some of them most Eminently when the Day of Tryal was for these their brave and truly Christian oppositions of Popish Morals Yea and that by those who content with a Zeal against Popish Errors in Faith and Superstitious Devotions in the midst of all their heat against them are running into the worst parts of their Morality sucking in the rankest Poyson of Jesuitish Honesty unawares For as to the Points before mentioned such as these are the Jesuits Principles all Taught by some or other for God forbid I should Charge all therewith in that Order They are for Doing Evil that Good may come This is the meaning of that Grand Salvo so much magnified and made use of among them viz. The Right Direction of the Intention which affords them such wonderful help in an unlawful Thing Thus they clear men of the worst Crimes as Simony False Witness Thefts Duels and Murther it self Plead but Necessity and say there is need of it for Religion or the Church or their Society for the Publick or a Man 's own Private Good to preserve his Life Estate or Reputation and then the Breach of the Precept they make to be without Guilt if therein a Man ●oth but Direct his Intention aright permitting the Evil of the Action if the Actor doth but take care to purifie his Intention They are Notorious for Giving a Discharge of Relative Duties particularly towards Princes when those Duties grow Burthensom or Vnsafe under Impious or Oppressive Rulers For of all others they are the men that are foremost leading others and fullest in Asserting the Deposition and Dethroning of Kings the Absolution and Discharge of Subjects from the Obligation of their Natural Allegiance and the Lawfulness of Rising in Arms against Heretical or Tyrannical Princes There is scarce any one thing wherewith for so many years last past not only this Order of 〈◊〉 but the Church of Rome have been more ●earnedly Charged and more Shamefully Silent'd Yea 't is the Test of Popery by our Laws the Legal Conviction of Papists being by the Tender of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which were made to Secure and Defend our Princes against the Poison of these Tenets They are infamous for all Arts of Insincerity and Fallaciousness Having been the Pest of Humane Society by their Doctrines of Equivocation or using of Doubtful Words and Ambiguous Speeches which the Parties concern'd shall take otherwise than they mean them And of Mental Reservation Reserving in their own Minds some hidden and unexpressed Clauses in their Declarations or secret and unexpected Conditions in their Promises So to make their Speech a Truth to themselves though it be a Lye to others Of getting and compassing their Ends by Deceitful Suggestions or setting out so much Truth as to serve the turn and craftily hiding what would hinder it And instead of that Plainness and Simplicity which is prescribed by Religion studiously assuming all counterfeit Shapes and inventing and propagating all those Fallacious ways or Liberties of Dissembling which the Father of Lyes can suggest to their hearts whereby to overthrow the Faith of Men. Whilst they Reserve their Minds or inward Service for God they are for Giving the External Service or outward Appearance to any Wickedness expected from them Thus as the Author of the Provincial Letters observe● 〈◊〉 they allow'd the Chinese to worship a Chines● 〈◊〉 if they were careful to hide under their Cloaths an Image of Jesus Christ to which by a Mental Reserve they were to pay those Publick Adorations which in visible Appearance the Idol Receiv'd They are for Tempering their Duty to Circumstances of outward Convenience Doing so much as they safely may without Worldly Loss or Disadvantage Contenting themselves as they did in the Indies to Preach up a Glorified Jesus to those that would not hear of a Crucified Jesus And abating the Duties of Religion till they have brought them Down to the Pitch and Proportion the Wants and Worldly Necessities of those that consult them They are for Changing Doctrines as they Change Turns and Interests Not only in Different Turns of their own or their Societies Affairs but of their Disciples Having one Resolution for one man and at one time and a contrary at another By this looseness taking in all comers and fitting and reconciling all Times and Persons to their own Ends. They are for Holding and Maintaining what is once ill got And make Unjust Possession a Just Title to it And order Easie Amends and Restitutions for Wrongful and Evil-Deeds no more than can consist with the Offenders own Credit and Convenience They have invented Salvo's whereby men may keep innocent and yet Act in an Vnlawful Business and Minister and help other Men to Sin without Sinning themselves They vacate at their Pleasure and put by the Laws of Morality as they lye in their way rendring them insignificant and of little or no Force or Obligation Either by Interpretation of Terms or so expounding the Terms used in Prohibiting any Sins as shall exempt all or almost all their own Transgressions from coming under them Or by allowing the Thing not under the Name whereby it stands forbidden but the very same thing in another Form like to what they Resolved in the