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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
reason_n	day_n	law_n	sabbath_n	3,352	5	9.6183	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31179	The case of the Quakers relating to oaths stated wherein they are discovered, to oppose prophetical, to pervert evangelical, to falsifie ecclesiastical, and to contradict their own doctrine.	J. S.	1696 (1696)	Wing C1151; ESTC R3580	36,928	45

in the 23. of S. Matthew where he refels that Pharisaical glosse which made void the Law of God and in the 5. of S. Matthew he decries the custom of their Proselites grounded upon that glosse nay indeed the general custom of the Jews in our Saviours time for the Pharisees being reputed the Puritans of that time the strictest sect amongst them it cannot be otherwise deem'd in reason but their doctrine and the Disciples practise had a general influence upon all that would seem nicely religious and made this disease of common swearing by heaven earth temple or any creature but the Corban in a manner Epidemical and we finde the Scribes and their Scholars as deep in this mire as the Pharisees for our Saviour joyns them both together in preaching up this nice distinction betwixt swearing by the temple or altar and swearing by the gifts of the temple or gifts upon the altar this last form of swearing they accounted binding but the first as nothing to swear by the temple they said was nothing they taught that that was not swearing by God and therefore did not make him that swore a debtor by oath to the performance of his word That Epidemical practise I say of such customary swearing by Gods creatures without any respect to God as if this had been no appeal to the Creator and as it were a pawning of those invisible things of God of which the meanest of his handiworks bears the impression which this doctrine drew after it is that to which Christ administers a remedy in this prohibition wherein he forbids swearing in our ordinary converse by the meanest creature and by consequence much more by the name of God himself though he mention not that form of swearing because the Jewes never sware by that name but solemn oaths but not a reverentiall swearing when we are lawfully thereunto called For the evincing the truth and sutablenesse of this applying Christs prohibition to common and not solemn swearing I shall produce arguments taken from those very passages in both the forementioned texts which the Quakers wrest to the favoring of their contrary opinion Arg. 1. That Christ prohibits oaths in common speech onely is manifest from the kinde of oath that that law speaks of which Christ clears from the false glosse of the Scribes and Pharisees Mat. 5.33 out of Levit. 19.12 and Deut. 5.11 Thou shalt not forswear thy self he shalt perform unto the Lord all thy oaths For swearing by non-performance of an oath speaks the oath here mentioned not to be assertory but promissory Now in all Judicatures the Jews were daily called upon to make assertory oaths touching matter of fact for the decision of controversies but as to solemn promissory oaths such as Moses administred when he made all Israel avouch God for their God such as Joshua took of the Israelites when he made them renounce the Gods of Canaan and Caldea and swear to serve and adhere to the God of Abraham such as some religious Kings of Judah and Ezrah made the Jews take when they swore them to the Covenant they were so rare and extraordinary as the last of that binde that we reade of was that which Nehemiah administred to them that had married strange wives Neh. 13.25 I made them swear by God c. which was near 400. years before Christs Incarnation and therefore there could not be at the time of Christs preaching any one Jew living who had transgrest the law of God in solemn swearing to a promise and not performing his Oath Yea the Jewes were by the favour of the Romans exempted from taking the military oath because the taking of it in the gentile form and the keeping of it in some cases as marching or fighting on the sabbath day was deemed contrary to the law of God as Dolobella writes in his letter to the Ephesians Joseph Ant. 14.17 and Josephus tells us that upon the like reasons the Jewes procured of Lentulus a dismission from the wars Religionis ergo esse immunes a militia pronunciavi c. Autiq. Jud. l. 14. c. 17. I have past this sentence from the tribunall this the Jewes be exempted from the military oath upon the account of their religion Dolobella in his decree of discharging the Jewes pleads the example of the Roman Generalls his predecessors The first time that the Roman Emperours forc't the military oath upon the Jewes was upon occasion of a vagrant Jew with his confreers abusing the piety of Eulvia a Roman Matron near the expiring of the reign of Tiberius and the government of Pilate when the Emperor banisht them the City and the Confulls listed 4000. of them for the wars the greatest part of whom chose rather to suffer death then take the military oath Joseph Autiq. l. 18. c. 5. Breifly no people upon earth were more scrupulously tender of taking solemn promissory oaths then the Jews were at that time that our Saviour gave them this prohibition and taxed them for not performing to God their oaths And therefore to apply Christs discourse here to such kinde of oaths is as preposterous as the laying of a plaister to the toe when the head is wounded but the applying of it to their stipulations by oath in their private contracts betwixt man and man in their common converse and mutuall trading was so proper and seasonable as nothing could be more for in this case they were lavish of their oaths and regardlesse of performing them beyond all humane belief and if our Saviour had not read the riddle and told us what shifts they had to baffle the law and pave their own consciences so as they could without straining swallow such camel-oathes as by beaten by Jerusalem and make no bones either of taking or keeping them It could hardly enter into our mindes to conjecture at what door this conceit entred into theirs that those kinde of oaths were not the oaths of God and therefore did not binde the votaries to pay their rowes unto the Lord but might be broken without the guilt of perjury 2. The applying of Christs prohibition to solemn Oaths either promissory or assertory or to any but common discourse-Oaths makes Christ himself a transgressor of the law I tremble at the thought of this consequence which as naturally flows from the Quakers hypothesis as light from the sun if we consider at what time Christ preacht his sermon in the Mount to wit while that sacred polity of the Jewes which God himself erected was yet standing while those municipall laws under obligation to which as well as the ceremonial Christ was born were yet in force while Jerusalem was yet the City of the great King and the Jews under the government of God establisht by Moses at God's command in order to the keeping of peace and execution of justice wherein God had instituted Judicatories greater and lesser and prescribed rules for the Judges to walk by in their administrations amongst which this was one that all

them that drop from their lipps 3. Sincerely with a purpose to lay as great an Obligation upon thyself to keep thy promise and swear truly as thy making oath imports to thy neighbour when thy minde and words are both of a colour and the impressions of thy soul correspond with the expressions of thy mouth when thy conscience can tell thee that thou speakest before God in thy heart what thou utterest to thy neighbour a words All these conditions concur'd in our Saviours and S. Pauls asseverations and therefore though they were more then these yet they proceeded not of evill but from a good and honest heart and were all wanting in those Pharisaicall oaths which our Saviour condemns wherein they had neither reverentiall thoughts of God for they conceited they did by those forms swear by God nor weighed the matter and ponderated circumstances but upon every slieght upon no occasion bolted out fruitless oaths nor did they intend to binde themselves to a performance of their word for they accounted themselves as sree after such oaths as if thoy had never made them Such kinde of additions to our yea and day are of themselves evil and therefore forbidden But the ground and reason of Christs prohibition does not reach the other sort of additions 9. That I may make the two Testaments kisse one another at partting and bring the ends of my discourse together Let it be considered from the prophesies before-quoted That to interpret those Evangelical texts as prohibitions to Christians to swear in any case draws after it these blasphemous consequences 1. That Christ who came to accomplish and seal prophesies to fullfill what was spoken by the mouth of the prophets which have been since the world began did contradict by his precepts and prohibit the accomplishment of those prophesies that foretold that under the Gospel when Gods name should be great in all the earth his elect and chosen servants should swear by the God of truth as an evidence of their conversion to him from idols 2. That S. James was by the Holy Ghost which Christ promised should leade his Apostles into all truth to forbid that viz. to learn to swear after the way of Gods people the Lord liveth under pain of falling into condemnation or at least into hypocrisy which the Spirit of Christ in the holy Prophets perswades Christians to do under pain of utter destruction in case of neglect and by the promise of being built up in the midsts of Gods people in case they would dilligently learn to swear by his name which the same spirit commends to Christians as a signe of their sincere and cordiall acceptance of the true God for their God 3. That if the Christian Church does not perform homage to the God of truth by swearing as well as blessing in his name If their tongue does not as well swear as their knees bow to him then the Christian people are not the people of the Messias the Messias is not yet come but still to be expected then the blessed Jesus is not that Christ of whom the prophets speak but as the Jews at his arraignment and their posterity blasphemously stile him a deceiver and a counterfeit For by the prophets it was foretold that at his exhibition and vocation of the gentiles to the knowledge of the true God the gentiles called by his name should swear by the God of truth throughout the carth c. Yield but this much to a Jew or Pagan that the Christian law forbids worshipping of God by swearing by his name forbids any other confirmation of what we affirm but yea yea nay nay and you do not only deprive the Christian Cause and Church of one of her strongest bulwarks of one of those demonstrations of the spirit the spirit of prophesy in the holy men of old whereby the Champions of the Christian faith have inrefragably proved against all assailants that Jesus is the prophets Christ viz. because since his calling of us gentiles by his gospell we have worshipt the true God by swearing by his name but also administer to Infidells an unanswerable argument for them to prove that that Jesus whom we Christians worship for the Christ is not indeed the very Christ viz. because he hath forbid that worship to be exhibited which the prophets foretold men should learn to tender the God of truth at the coming of that Christ whom they speak of It is not possible to imagine any thing more unlike or opposite to one another then that Christ and his disciples which the prophets describe are to what this glosse of the Quakers presents Jesus Christ and his disciples to be In the reign of the Prophets Christ Gods chosen ones of the Gentiles are to do him homage to acknowledge their subjection to him dependance on him awe of him and his dreadfull attributes by swearing by his name But in the reign of the Quakers Christ the world indeed may take its own course but they whom God hath called and chosen out of the world are not to swear at all The people of the Prophets Christ at what time he should publish his royall law and men should be taught of God were to learn to swear the Lord ●●veth and to be made to ply this lesson with a promise to be built up of they learn'd it diligently with a threat to be plucked up if they did not But the people of the Quakers Christ are taught of God that they must not learn this lesson and are terrified from their book with demouns against it as evill as leading to destruction c. For the opposition is so palpable as I need not illustrate it with more Instances It can now therefore be a matter of no great difficulty to determine whether exposition and practise grounded upon these expostions is more justifiable That of the Christian Church in all ages which so expounds Christs words as not prohibiting her to give to God the honour that 's due to him by a reverentiall invocating of his great name in sacred and solemn oaths to the end that the sayings of the prophets may be fulfill'd our Jesus demonstrated to be the Christ or that of the Quakers whose glosse defrauds God of his due homage robs the King of Saints of one of the prime Jewells of his crown presents the ever-blessed Jesus in the form of an Impostor and false Christ leads directly to the gulf of grossest infidelity and denial of Christ and sets the Old and New-Testaments the Prophets and Evangelists at greater odds then the Manichaeans did making the Gospel to contradict those holy Prophets to whose testimony our Saviour constantly appe al'd for the decision of that great question whether he was that Christ that was to come putting it to this issue that he would forego the claim and give them leave to call him deceiver if he did not exactly answer that model which the Prophets had drawn of him that was to come if they could discern