Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	body_n	soul_n	union_n	7,019	5	9.6724	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85513	The grand case of conscience concerning the Engagement stated & resolved. Or, a strict survey of the Solemn League & Covenant in reference to the present Engagement.		1650 (1650)	Wing G1486A; Thomason E589_10; ESTC R206308	16,478	22

not in rerum natura which I ingaged my self unto or if it have a being yet is under another form and shape different from the first reason and ground of my Obligation and no man can be obliged unto that which he never thought of or when he doth think of abominates therefore its unlawful and most deregatory unto Reason that any man should bind himself to all eases and circumstances come what will come or notwithstanding what ever may fall out for in the most peremptory and absolute obligations wherein there is scarce a condition through love and modesty conceived yet men are not bound to all emergencies casualties circumstances but only so long as the Special and formal reason remains intire and whole and only unto these cases unto which the Foundation will extend Thus some Obligations are made absolute not because there may not possible be an excepted case but because the very mention or supposal of the Condition may create suspicion and jealousie and seems to be so much against nature that no ingenious or modest heart will admit the thoughts of them therefore they are utterly omitted As for example Man promiseth simply and without condition never to depart from his wife as long as he lives which yet contains a secret condition if she behave her self as a wife the expression of which condition that love and endearedness to her would not admit no not of the thought and the very apprehension of it would be a temptation and most contrary to the unprejudiced and single thoughts of lovers and most dissonant to that simple individual union between man and wife among whom there should be but one Soul in two Bodies or one body acted by two united Spirits and yet if any wife should commit Adultery or seek to destroy her husband things that the pure and chast intentions of love durst not suppose yet may be possible in corrupted nature he is free from all other Obligations to her she having unnaturally and beyond expectation dissolved the union by destroying the main ends of marriage which are communion and mutual comfort and preservation and so having acted contrary to the Fundamental reason of that Obligation hath ipso facto put her self into another condition and discharged by her own act all former Ingagements The like may be said as hereafter between King and people Hence therefore its demonstrative that if any through ignorance or overactings of a design should not foreseeing the nature of things or forecasting events ingage himself to two things imcompossible or which through any necessity of divine acting or in the order of natural and moral affairs should prove inconsistent by some special emergence he is bound to omit that which is less principal and perform that which is most positive and necessary As suppose one in taking the degree of Doctor in the Popish Dominions as it s used in the form of their Oaths doth solemnly bind himself to embrace the Doctrine of Christ and as much as in him lies to promote the Doctrine of the Church of Rome which is really contrary to Christ doth not sound Reason as well as Christianity teach us That he is only bound to do the one and neglect the other And though the thing we swear to perform be not in it self unlawful but magis bonum morale impediens hindering a more special good as Grotius lib. 2. de jure Belli pacis p. 245. well observes the Obligation ceaseth from that and is necessarily contracted on that which is most necessary and best to be done If this were not so in the multiplicity of humane transactions most men would be bound only to one act and so be kept from performance of all other duties which did not depend on that or were not Subordinate to it and by one ingagement though it may be hastily entered into a man must be for ever unuseful in matters of higher and more peculiar importance and have no remedy no not of repentance and better thoughts for his suddain surprizal And as no man is bound thus to any thing less considerable or opposite to a Common and publique good so neither can there be any Obligation to any medium which any man hath bound himself unto if by that means he cannot most effectually obtain the principal end as if the Hebrews had by Covenant ingaged unto Pharoah that they would use no other mid-wifes but the Aegyptian women the edict being proclaimed of killing all the Male children they were disobliged from any necessity of obeying it it being contrary to principles of nature which must be first served whereby all men are taught to preserve by the best ways they can themselves and what is properly their own and had they kept such an ingagement they had been not only witnesses of but legal completters in the murther of their own children By all this we see as it falls out many times That even Scelus est sides the very swearing is sin as Seneca lib. 2. expresseth it so as Ambrose saith off 1. c. ult. est contra officium nonnunquam solvere promissum juramentum custodire it 's sometimes against a mans duty to keep his promise or perform his Oath and in the most solemn ingagements especially about temporary and controvertible things the first grounds and reasons must be most weighed omitting prejudice and accidents and what is most positive and humane insisted on and adhered unto By all this I may seem but to waste paper and take up time but I hope the application will make amends for the defects in the doctrine haveing laid this general foundation let us now come particularly to see how far we are ingaged by this Covenant unto the Kings Person and his Posterity and Monarchichal Government in them and how far we are free and disingaged from them and at liberty to imbrace any other form of Government To this purpose let us as warily view the Covenant as we have done the nature of Obligation and consider the matter and ends of it and we shall finde in the Preface and Contents these formal Reasons positively exprest The honour of God the safety of the two Nations in the preservation of Religion and Liberty which were first in the eye of the imposers and the golden apples cast before us to allure us unto the ingagement and are as the vital spirits that run through every vain of it without which it were but an unnecessary and dead ceremony And these being as Fundamental to the Obligation of the Covenant as the form in Phisicals to the constituting of a distinct being the whole strength of the Obligation lies on it and only unto the performance of these things which are most apt to effect these ends and if any thing we have ingaged our selves unto shall be found either not fit to promote these or destructive to them though at first they have seemed never so convenient and plausible they must be removed out of the way as

diseases in the body which hazard the dissolution of the union This being laid as the Primum mobile of the ingagement and set in the Covenant as the common centre many lines were drawn towards them on every side in order to an union in the first principle and many Articles proposed as mediums thought most sutable and necessary to advance these ends And as these ends or first reasons were of two sorts viz Religion and Liberty the means were proportioned as was then thought fit for the happier effecting both Religion being chief it was first proposed and the preservation of it taken care for more expressely in the first and second Articles against the Common enemy who was then well known and as in order to that we ingaged to a Reformation of it in Doctrine and Discipline according to the word of God and the best Reformed Churches to extirpate Popery Heresie Episcopacie with all its attendants that being unto Religion as the suckers to the tree which diverts the moisture from the natural branches and by this we thought Religion sufficiently provided for in its preservation and Reformation The next in order was the just Liberty and Freedom of the Nations and the advancement of it as mediums unto that the Covenant in the third and fourth Articles as most absolutely necessary to preserve the Priviledges of Parliament and because we would let nothing out that might be probable though ex suppositione remota and from a strain'd charity we ingaged to preserve the Kings person yet with a wary Salvo in the preservation of Religion and Liberty And lastly to prevent any design against both we ingaged to discover and bring to condign punishment all Delinquents and Incendiaries that acted contrary to these proposed ends Thus you have the whole Covenant anatomized the two great pillars on which its Obligation stands which though of different Natures yet are inseparably united to the preservation of each other Now if any thing without should oppose either Religion or Liberty or any thing in any Article exprest should afterwards prove malignant to either or both or interfer with any other Article which hath more of the efficacy of a medium to these ends the Obligation to that ceaseth because it will destroy the Formal Reason by which I am obliged Thus it will follow That if the Kings person which we are engaged to preserve take him in his best capacity shall set up Popery and Prelacy contrary to Religion and advance Malignancy and Tyranny contrary to Liberty we have no Obligation by the COVENANT to preserve him seeing be is destructive to these absolute Ends for which and in the PRESERVATION of which we engage to preserve Him But that we may deal plainly and freely in a Case of Conscience let us a little compare the King and his actings more particularly with the Convenant and we shall finde at last that we are not onely not engaged to preserve him but bound by the strength of the Covenant to cut him off as a dead member that is gangrened I have often wondered out of what sort of charity or design the Kings name was inserted in the Covenant as distinct from the Common Enemy against whom we were first sworn seeing he was the Head that gave life and motion to every part of that Body without whom they were but as a great Body without Soul or animal Spirit they onely fought under his Banners for his Interest in opposition to the first grounds of the Covenant to distinguish the Head and the Members in one Common Cause and to swear against the one and swear to preserve the other was too great a Criticism to be put in an Oath that must binde the Conscience For my part from the first I saw that name there considering the state of Affairs then I looked upon him as SAUL among the Prophets or as in superstitious times they set up stately Images to draw men to Church and more to reverence the place or as sugar put on bitter pills to make them down the better with less scruple of the palate or nauseousness of the stomack And if I may use the words of Learned Calvin in another case which you shall finde in his Epistle prefixed to his Commentary on the Corinthians having been forc'd to change the Dedication and alter the Title of it which was in the first Impression he to whom it was first dedicated proving an Apostate Vtinam saith he quo primum tempore in lucem prodiit hic Commentarius vel mihi ignotus vel saltem probe notus fuisset ille cujus nomen huic paginae hactenus inscriptum nunc delere cogor It had been happy for ENGLAND that we had either not known him or known him better as we had Reason and either wholy let out his name or had better reasons to have put it in for he ever stood as the great errata in it and we might easily have fore-seen what end he was designed to make which had such a beginning But however though through hope and charity his name was inserted yet now Reason and Conscience yea the COVENANT it self hath given just grounds to blot him out he being the onely obstacle to attaining all the honest and necessary Ends of it Let us but without prejudice view how that one name and the preservation of it stands opposite to all the other Articles and expressions in the COVENANT and makes them all useless and of no consequence that there is an imcompossibility of keeping our Engagement to him and to keep the others First for Religion and these Articles which are sworn unto in order to its preservation the preservation of the Kings person would directly be the overthrowing of them we had absolutely sworn to extirpate Popery and Prelacy without any limitation which could not possibly be done with the preservation of his Majesties person for Popery though I cannot tax him with the profession of it yet many correspondencies have been between him and Rome and Spain even from a childe his QUEEN a profest and Jesuited PAPIST who not onely lay in his bosom but ruled and guided most of his counsels that you must have either left him a Husband without a Wife and have divorced him from his own Soul and Self and from her whose he was eternally or else grant at least a TOLERATION to POPERY after we had sworn against it Besides his MAJESTY was in Debt and so far in Arrears to the Popish party in England and Ireland for their faithfull services to him that he could not be free of regall promises and Covenant-Engagements to them which must have been remembred upon every advantage neither could he in honour or ingenuity have consented to extirpate them who had so great an influence to his affairs and ventured so hard for his Prerogative thus the King and the first and second Article are become incompetible cannot stand together and be both preserved The next thing we ingaged in order to