Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	ordinance_n	power_n	resist_v	4,907	5	10.4011	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65358	The saints guide, or, Christ the rule, and ruler of saints manifested by way of positions, consectaries, and queries : wherein is contayned the efficacy of acquired knowledge, the rule of Christians, the mission and maintenance of ministers, and the power of magistrates in spiritual things / by Iohn Webster ...	Webster, John, 1610-1682.	1654 (1654)	Wing W1213; ESTC R17627	36,008	50

Augmentations cease and there be no wages nor maintenance allowed by law ●how should we live what shall maintain our families who will then preach the Gospel The people are hard-hearted and will give us little or nothing if no publick maintenance no Gospel Are not all these the complaints of an evill adulterous and unbelieving generation that preach faith to others even of things high and spirituall and yet themselves dare not trust God for food and raiment Do not the heathen seek after all these things and have you no more faith then they Then those that are the true Ministers of Christ know that the necessity of preaching the Gospel is laid upon them and will preach in season and out of season whether they have any thing or nothing nay will not cannot in conscience take any thing carnall from any man to whom they have not sown spiritual and not that neither but according to the free-will-offering of their minds to whom they have ministred spirituall things and in this point by their fruits ye shall know them Queries Didst thou who callest thy self one of Christs Ministers when Christ called thee and sent thee forth if ever he did so make a bargain with him what thou shouldst have for thy labour without which thou wouldst not do thy work or but negligently and with murmuring Did ever Christ teach thee to clamour and cry to the Magistrate to settle thee some maintenance by a law or to exact it from the poor labourer who never yet received a spiritual benefit from thy teaching nor hath no heart to give thee any thing but against his will Canst thou ever make it appear to be a duty incumbent upon the Magistrate to settle thee wages by a law or it lawfull for thee to take it If thou canst it is high time to produce thy strong reasons lest thy god Dagon fall to the ground rise no more and with the rest of thy brother Craftsmen to shout high lest your shrine-making be mar'd for ever Will not thy Trade be as long-lived as the world if Academies can give thee qualifications men an Ordination and the Magistrates maintenance But Babel must fall Concerning the power of Magistrates in spiritual things That the Magistrate hath power both coercive and punitive against al evil either in words or works whether it be against a privat or a publick interest is manifest Because all men even as men have this impressed in them by the light of Nature principles suckt in by education or a light from God upon their spirits That the end of being is its own preservation and as this is ingrafted in one so it is in all individuals and as they would not be willing that any other should hurt or destroy their being nor hinder the meer necessaries of its conservation so it is contrary to natural justice right reason to hurt or destroy the being of another or to hinder them of meer necessaries for their conservation And all Laws were at first intended and should be exercised to preserve unto every Numerical person as far as possible these grand priviledges of Natures universall Charter and therfore what acts or words soever may tend to the obstructing or frustrating of this end is in the Magistrates power to restrain and punish And for this purpose the Apostle bears witnes that the Gentiles who had no external Law given of God were a Law unto themselves which did shew the work of the Law written in their hearts their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another The Scriptures make this clear commanding every soul to be subject unto the Higher powers because there is no power but of God The powers that be are ordained of God And whosoever resisteth the powers resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shal receive to themselves damnation And these are the Ministers of God for the defence and praise of those that do well and for the punishment of those that doe evil for they bear not the sword in vain And therefore the Apostle concludes that the Christians should be subject unto these Ministers though Heathens not only for wrath but also for conscience sake and for this reason was Tribute to be paid unto them because they were the Ministers of God attending upon that very thing continually And thus were al the Saints commanded to obey every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether of Kings or others and that prayers and supplications should be made for Kings and all that were in authority that they might lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty But now the grand scruple is what power the Magistrate hath in those things that are called spiritual And by things spiritual I understand those things that the Apostles other Saints taught and practised as Christians for as men they were in their words and actions as is proved before under the power of the Magistrate And in all those things that they held taught or practised I finde evidently these two 1. They never required any thing of the Magistrates as they were Christians but only liberty to speak out the things that Christ had manifested unto them and quietly to meet together to break bread pray baptize edifie or communicate to the wants of one another 2. Nothing that they spoke o● did as Christians was any 〈…〉 contrary hurtful or obstructive to the Civil Laws 〈…〉 Jews or Gentiles I never read that they desired of the Magistrate honour or riches Lordships or dominions nor to be called Doctors Masters Rabbies or to have the pre-eminence and chief seats one above another as ours now-a-dayes that call themselves Christians must have a Law to make them Masters Doctors and Batchelors of Divinity as they are pleased vainly to stile them and that not had but with a vast expence to the Commonwealth in allowing such large Revenues of Lands and Tithes to maintain an hive of Drones Wasps and Hornets in their Monkish Cells which might be better employed for enabling men in Arts and Sciences to fit them for Civil employments and not to paint up a blader-blown Clergy another fals title they have assumed to themselvs with such idle Terms and vain Epithites It is true that the Disciples being but earthly and carnal had much ado among themselvs Who should be greatest but our Saviour tels them That the Kings or Rulers of the Nations did bear rule over their people and were called gracious Lords but it should not be so among them but he that would be greatest should become least and he that would be master should become as a servant And Zebedees children being of the same carnall principle with the rest could desire to sit the one at his right hand and the other at his left in his Kingdom but he told them they knew not what they asked And