Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	humane_a	law_n	positive_a	2,470	5	10.9031	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63916	A second representation of the hospitaller of St. Thomas Southwark's case in an humble address to the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Pilkinton, lord mayor of the city of London / by J.T.	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.	1689 (1689)	Wing T3316; ESTC R26335	41,508	50

not through a Glass darkly but in some competent measure as he is in himself full of his own Excellence and discerned by his own Light by transcribing and transplanting into the habit of our Minds the Image of those Attributes and Perfections we adore And in pursuance of the Reason of this Levitical Institution it was That in all Christian Nations from an high and remote Antiquity to this time there hath been a standing and immoveable Provision for the Clergy out of the Lands Profits and Demesns of Secular and Lay Persons by such and such stated Proportions which may be demanded sued for and recovered by Law as a Due and which are settled upon the respective Incumbents for their Lives if they do not of themselves relinquish their said Preferments or are not guilty of such scandalous and repeated Crimes as to incur Suspension à Beneficio or absolute Deprivation from the exercise of their Office and from the Profits and Emoluments accruing by it they are provided for with a present Subsistence that they may not be diverted by the importunity of emergent Cares from a present actual Attendance upon their Duty and this Subsistence of theirs was made perpetual and was much more competent in the smallest Livings in former Times than it is now that so they might be rendered easie in their Minds and void of an anxious Sollicitude for the future which though not so great an impediment to the discharge of their Office as present want and indigence must in Reason be yet in some lesser Proportion it will always be a Thorn of Vexation in their sides it will affect them more or less according to the different Persons they have to do with and upon whom their dependence relies it will have a great Influence upon some Tempers beyond what it will have upon others and lastly it will be a means of an unreasonable Subjection of the Clergy to the Laity and the occasion of many base Arts and most unworthy Compliances with the Humours and Interests of unreasonable People whereby to reprieve themselves from an impending Ruine and get some further momentany uncertain and despicable Respite in a slavish and arbitrary Dependence fit for none but such wretches as are capable of being molded into all shapes and of receiving all sorts of servile and mean Impressions from ill Men instead of being the happy Instruments of Amendment and Reformation to them by good ones of their own made boldly and frankly without Fear or Favour though not without a becoming Modesty and Discretion upon every fit and suitable Occasion Now the Reason upon which all those Laws were made is every whit as applicable to my own Case though in outward form and appearance I hold by another Tenure as it is to the rest of my Brethren of the Clergy who have a legal Freehold in what they enjoy for Tithes were no otherwise of Divine Right than as they were ordained by God upon an equitable and eternal Reason and are still continued by Men upon the same as to the substantial meaning of the Institution which was the support and maintenance of the Clergy or of that Order of Men as such there ought to be in every Nation that were dedicated and devoted to the Service of God though as to the minute Proportion of such a Maintenance as that is and as to the ways of Levying Collecting or Distributing the same it may admit of Change and Variation in different Times and Places The Law of Tithes obligeth not so much by virtue of that Humane Authority no nor of that Divine Authority neither that first establish'd it either among the Jews or in any other Nation for both of these Authorities as sacred as they are and especially the latter of them yet separate from Nature and eternal Reason they are at best but positive and changeable things but that which gives those Laws in the general considered which are made for the support and subsistence of the Clergy an intrinsick and essential Character of Obligation is the apparent Reasonableness Equity and Justice of them and that Equity appears as much in making the support perpetual as in giving it at all because the design of the one for Reasons that have been given would be defeated and disappointed without the other and if this be equally the Case of all Ecclesiastical Preferments whatsoever where a Subsistence for a Clergy man is appointed in Consideration of a Duty to be done the Tenure by which I hold though it be onely durante beneplacito will not evacuate the general Equity of the Case but all Men that have a Reverence to the Laws a due regard to Religion and the Ministers of it or a due sence of the great and fundamental Reasons upon which Bodies Politick and Societies are built and by which equal Justice is administred to all will never do any thing deliberately and of set purpose against the manifest Equity upon which those Laws are built whose Obligation they will and ought always to acknowledge to be valid and binding upon them even where the positive Letter doth not oblige If a Man keep a Chaplain in his House as his Domestick he may discard him when he pleaseth for no Reason at all unless it be that of retrenching his Expences because the Law doth not oblige him to retain such a Person in his House but yet it must be confessed to be very hard and by Consequence next kin to unjust to turn a Man of that Character out of doors without any other competent Provision after he had deserved well of the Family and his Patron for several years together but where the Publick hath allowed a Maintenance out of the publick Revenue there the Case and the Equity arising from it is plainly as strong and as clearly indispensible in one Ecclesiastical Promotion as in another all which if your Lordship will please candidly and impartially to apply to Mr. Hughes his Circumstances and mine that he was legally ejected for many and great Causes and that I was legally substituted in his Place that he can get nothing by his Restitution and that he hath as little Right to it as he can get profit or advantage by it and that I must only be a great and unreasonable Looser with little or no profit accruing and redounding to him besides many other Reasons which I hope your Lordship will some time or other take the leisure to consider I doubt not but you will recall the Sentence you have past and think it more for the Reputation and Interest of your Court to discard Mr. Hughes than to protect him any longer but if this be the meaning of an Arbitrary Dependence and such I acknowledge mine in some sence to be though by Reason of my Character and Function it be the least Arbitrary of any in this House that it is a dependence so perfectly and entirely holding of unaccountable Will and Pleasure that a Man may be ejected out of it for