Selected quad for the lemma: reason_n

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
A60994	The case of the Quakers relating to oaths stated wherein they are discovered, to oppose propheticall, to pervert evangelicall, to falsifie ecclesiasticall, and to contradict their own doctrine / by J.S.	J. S.	1674 (1674)	Wing S48; ESTC R2531	37,570	48

the temple and gifts upon the altar were so sacred as whosoever did swear by them became thereby a debtor that is was obliged to performance and this was the onely form of oath wherein the name of God was not exprest which they esteemed binding as to all other forms whether by the temple or altar by heaven or earth or any creature in either of them men might bandy them at pleasure without the least regret of conscience or purpose of performing them From this doctrine their Proselites were drawn into an opinion that they might call heaven and all therein save God himself earth and all therein save Corban to bear witnesse of their sincerity in making oath by their names and yet still remain as free from obligation to perform those oaths as if they had not swore at all but onely past their bare word and from this opinion into a custome of larding their common discourse wsth all such oathes as if they had been no more then ornaments of speech then slowers of Rhetorick as if swearing by heaven had not implied swearing by him that dwells therein Jurejurando supplentes orationem Philo Jud. de decalogo quasi non satius esse mutilam relinquere Sceptram non putat esse Deos as the Poet speaks of a perjur'd King He did not think that swearing by his scepter was swearing by God who put the scepter into his hand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Apollonius in Philostratus l. 6. censured Socrates He did not think that when he sware by a cock or goose and such creatures he sware by their Creator but did purposedly choose to swear by such things that he might not bring himself under an obligation to keep his oath as he conceived he must have done if he had sworn expresly by God 4. This being the state of the malady the great Physician of souls applys himself to the confutation of the opinion which bred and fed it in the 23. of S. Matthew where herefels 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 cleats 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 but 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 Judch and Ezrah made the Jews take when they swore them to the Covenant they were so rare and extraordinary as the last of that kinde 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 tribintall that 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 fore't the military oath upon the Jewes was upon occasion of a vagrant Jew with his confreers abusing the piety of Fulvia 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 Consulls li●ted 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