Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	child_n	israel_n	moses_n	21,148	5	7.7333	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43269	A sermon preached before the University of Oxford, December 4, 1687 concerning the obligation of oaths / by Henry Hellier.	Hellier, Henry, 1662?-1697.	1688 (1688)	Wing H1380; ESTC R25426	17,892	36

money to save his life and swear to the payment of it shall not he be afterwards obliged because of his fear what would become of the oath of allegiance and some Tests if all men might be excused from keeping them who were induced to take them for fear of loosing offices and places of trust money or credit or in some places life it self Perhaps it will be said that this ought to be understood of a fear unjustly caused But who sball be judge ef that Besides injustice in the imposer will not excuse perfidiousness in the taker The passion is neither greater nor less for being unjustly caused And no man of a constant mind will suffer any force whether just or unjust to prevail so far upon him as to induce him to swear to that which he either cannot or will not perform And therefore if a man to save his life swears even to theeves and robbers to do any thing that is not otherwise unlawful his fear is no sufficient plea to recede from such an oath because it was not so great as to deprive him of the use of his reason or to hinder him from making a prudent choice And for the same reasons it is not lawfull because an oath is unjustly imposed to use equivocations or mental reservations which are as bad as downright falsehoods as will appear anon I shall say no mor at present of any other cases relating to the person that swears because the doubts which may arise from his erring about the substance or the causes or the consequences of his promissory oath are more sit to be placed under the 2 d. general head of this discourse when we come to shew in what sense an oath ought to be taken 3. A third sort of cases are taken from the person to whom the oath is made Perhaps he is an Idolater an Heretick a Rebel a professed Enemy a Perjured person or such like And these circumstances we need not consider apart but may give a general rule once for all that none of them can be a sufficient excuse for any man to break his oath Because by the Law of Nations oaths ought to be inviolable and therefore every one how false soever he is or may have been himself yet so long as he is partaker of human nature retains a right to be faithfully dealt withall by other men Otherwise indeed there could be no such thing as a Law of Nations there could not be any secure dealing either in time of War or Peace between so many Nations and people of different inclinations and Religions And if it should once happen that their quarrels break out into War it would be impossible ever to make articles of agreement It is not therefore enough for us to say that a perfidious person deserves no better usage then himself will afford to others unless we can also shew that we have a right to inflict such a punishment upon him And such right we can never obtain by reason of his breaking his faith with others with our selves or with God. Not because he hath broken his faith with others unless it will follow also that we may rob or steal from or commit any other trespass upon any man that hath ever done the like to others Nor because he hath broken his faith wiht us 'T is true indeed that if the promise be made to him under a condition and that condition be not performed the promissory oath can no longer oblige because no oath obligeth to more then it implies Other his perfidiousness cannot afford us any such privilege both because it is not lawfull to punish one sin by the commission of another and also because we have renounced all exceptions taken from his former faults by swearing to him and making a contract with him And if it be sufficient to allege that he hath broken his faith with God we may by the same reason pretend to a liberty of breaking our faith with any man that hath ever broken his Baptismal vow Concerning the oath of Josua and the Princes of Israel to the Gibeonites it is very well known that they held themselves with the greatest exactness bound to keep it though it was obtained from them by fraud that God himself shewed he approved the keeping of it in Josua by an eminent victory and revenged the breaking of it upon Saul by 3 years Famine and the death of seven of his Sons And yet these Gibeonites were Heathens Idolaters worshippers of Devils persons whom God had given the Israelites leave utterly to destroy For I call that leave and not a command of God to destroy the seven Nationr Deut. 20.17 and M r. Selden in his book de jure naturali gentium juxta doctrinam Hebraeorum says the antient Rabbins did so expound it Or if a command it was not absolute but conditional Which seems to be intimated in Jos 11.19 and 12. Where it is said There was not a City that made peace with the Children of Israel save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon all other they took in battle For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle that he might destroy them utterly and that they might have no favour but that he might destroy them as the Lord commanded Moses by which it seems that there had been no necessity of destroying the rest of those Nations had they offered themselves voluntarily to become Tributaries and Servants and had not their hearts been hardened to come against Israel in battle Moreover if Gods command had been absolute we must either suppose some private Revelation to recall it which is unlikely seeing it is not that but the oath that is in express terms insisted upon or else the oath of Josua and the Princes of the Congregation had been unlawfull as to the matter of it because contrary to the express precept of God and therefore ought not to have been kept by whatsoever means they had been induced to take it Whence it would follow that Josua in sparing them had been guilty of a greivous crime and that the destruction of the Gibeonites by Saul had been a commendable action which yet God Almighty was so displeased with as to punish it after the manner already spoken and that we may be assured it was for that and no other cause he saith expressly 2. Sam. 21.1 It is for Saul and for his bloudy house because he slew the Gibeonites Now the Gibeonites as if follows in the next verse were not of the Children of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites and the Children of Israel had sworn unto them It is not any conversion of the Gibeonites to the Jewish Religion or any revocation of Gods command if such there were but the oath only that is here and in other places mentioned as the ground of the obligation which the Children of Israel lay under to spare them Whereby the Scripture sheweth us that