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A57807 A sermon preach'd before the King and Queen at White-Hall, on the 28th of December, 1690 by George Royse ... ; printed by the King's special command. Royse, George, 1654 or 5-1708. 1691 (1691) Wing R2164; ESTC R36795 9,562 33

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men this will amount to a very fair proof that the Laws of Religion are nothing else but the common Principles of our own Reason for 't is plain there is scarce any Government in the World but what has approved of the matter of these Laws by incorporating them into their respective Polities and establishing them as a part of the Civil Constitution And the more any State have emproved their Reason and civilized their Tempers the higher in proportion they have advanced the Principles of Religion as particularly under the Roman Government Now 't is altogether unaccountable how these religious Rules should meet with such a general establishment unless they did approve themselves to the general reason of Mankind To Worship a Supreme Being to be sober and temperate as to our selves and to be just and honest to our neighbour are the main substance of what our Saviour commands and yet all these we know have had the good luck to meet with a favourable suffrage and entertainment even from those that never discern'd any stamp of Divine Authority upon them But how the whole World should conspire in the approbation of these Laws cannot well be accounted for unless we own they have a strong foundation in Humane e●●s●on The Atheist indeed tells us that these are the bare positive Decrees and arbitrary Constitutions of the Civil Power but then at the same time he can't explain how these should come to be the publick Constitutions of so many different Ages and Countries unless we allow that the best reason of all Nations and Times have approved the great excellency and reasonableness of them And this shews that these Laws are eternally and intrinsically good in themselves antecedently to any positive Constitution whatever because the general reception of them in the World can be ascribed to nothing else but to that inherent goodness and excellency that recommended them There is one Objection indeed against what I have urged viz. That there have been several Governments in the World that had so little sense of these Laws as not only to approve but to reward those very Vices that carry a flat contradiction to them and consequently there is not that reason and excellency to be found in those Laws for which we are pleading But this is no fair way of concluding what is the best sense and reason of Mankind by the particular corruption and degeneracy of the worst of men Should there be several monstrous Births produced in the World no one I hope would conclude this to be the regular shape and proportion of a man but an accidental derivation from it In all these cases we must try things rather by the general consent and standard than by any particular exceptions to the contrary for there may be Monsters in Morality and Religion too as well as in Nature but neither of them do conclude against the unalterable Laws of Nature and Reason And that we may discern further the Reason and Excellency of these Laws I shall shew in the third and last place That the Laws of Religion are not such Fetters and Shackles upon Humane Nature as to destroy its true Liberty and Freedom That Liberty does consist in an exemption and freedom from Laws is a Doctrine as false as 't is popular For to speak properly a Law in general is not so much a tye and confinement as the direction of a reasonable creature and it serves rather to maintain and enlarge than to destroy our freedom And this is true whether we respect either our Civil Liberties as we are Members of a Government or else the Inward Liberty and Freedom of our Minds As to our Civil Liberties 't is certain what Tully affirms the Laws are Fundamentum Libertatis the Foundation and Spring of all Civil Liberty and in all Governments whatever where there is no Law there is no Freedom For Civil Liberty is nothing but a freedom from the Violence and Restraint of other Men and this can never be enjoy'd where every one shall be permitted to live at his own swinge and pleasure for then to be sure I shall be soon ravish'd of my Liberty where every one is left free to invade it And as our Civil Liberties are rather preserved than oppressed by Humane Laws so the Inward Freedom of our Minds is far more advanced than impaired by the Laws of Religion For the true Freedom does not consist in an absolute indifferency without any regard to good or evil as some imagine God and the good Angels are the freest Agents in the World and yet they are not free to do evil and when we our selves come to be translated to the same happy state we shall no longer be so indifferent to either such an indifferency of the Will to good or evil is rather an imperfection of our Natures or at best but a relative Perfection accommodated to our present state and serving the ends of our probation here but the true perfect Liberty does consist in acting up unalterably to the Laws of our best Reason For the clearing of which we may consider that Liberty is nothing else but a Power to act thus or thus according as our best Reason shall determine and therefore as the true Liberty is founded in Reason and lodged only in reasonable Creatures so the right exercise of it does consist in living up to the Principles of Reason and consequently to chuse Evil is as great an abuse of true Liberty as 't is a want of Reason and Discretion From whence we may conclude the absurdity of that Position That there can be no Freedom where a man is determin'd by Laws Now this is the same thing as to affirm That wise Men cannot be free because they are determin'd by wise Councils and Advices and at this rate none but Fools and Madmen would be free because none but these refuse to be determin'd by wise Proposals and this is such an odd sort of Liberty that no man in his wits can ever plead or contend for It being allow'd then that 't is no abridgment of true Freedom to be determin'd by wholsom Laws all that remains is to shew that the Laws of Religion do rather maintain our Liberty than destroy it And the reason of this is plain and obvious because these Laws have a natural tendency to free Mankind from the Dominion of those Lusts and Passions which put the World into a true condition of slavery for slavery as it relates to the mind is nothing else but an unnatural subjection of it to the dominion of sin by which 't is put quite out of its own power and hindred in the free exercise of its reason And this is no other Notion but what Tully and the wiser Heathens have all along taught the World and therefore he describes it thus Obedientia fracti abjecti animi arbitrio carentis suo from whence he concludes that all wicked men are slaves because being bound over to work drudgery to