Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	age_n	church_n	time_n	2,142	5	3.6322	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28559	The doctrine of non-resistance or passive obedience, no way concerned in the controversies now depending between the Williamites and the Jacobites by a lay gentleman of the communion of the Church of England, by law establish'd.	Bohun, Edmund, 1645-1699.	1689 (1689)	Wing B3451; ESTC R18257	35,035	42

to whom his Duty is first owing for in this Case it is our undoubted Duty to obey God rather than Man. Art thou then saith Tertullian a Servant and Soldier to two to God and Caesar too certainly thou wilt not be for Caesar when thou owest thy Service to God even in common things I yield to the better or I believe thou wilt be for the better So far were they then from valuing themselves upon the score of their Loyalty to their Prince The Disloyalty of two other Parties have made the Church of England take into the contrary Extreme and as a Jesuit wished it might do her much good in Scorn So she had like to have paid too dear for the Pretence and they that would now again sacrifice her to their Interest and Reputation are to speak softly none of her best Friends They pretend we have not suffered enough for our Religion to justifie our Resistance Why according to their Principles we are never to resist whatever we suffer but to suffer on till there is not one Man left to resist Now did ever any Man before they complain That for the Elect's sake God had shortned those Daies If they think we have not suffered enough for our Religion they may be pleased to go for France or Ireland and there make up what is wanting But if they love Company and would needs have us suffer with them too I do not understand the Favour If they are Prodigal of their own Lives and Fortunes in this World they ought to be tender of other Men's Cruces nec colimus nec optamus We neither worship nor wish for Crosses said Octavius a Primitive Christian And it is madness to desire to be and to bring others into affliction and Trouble when God doth not willingly afflict or grieve the Children of Men and hath sent us a Deliverance before we expected it and sooner than some Men are well-pleased They have another Objection which is full as extravagant as this If say they King William has conquered King James why doth he not claim the Crown by Conquest Why he that has several Rights to the same thing may use his best and wave the rest Nemo juro suo quod cum damni periculo conjunctum est uti cogitur No Man is bound to produce an invidious Title Should King William have treated us as a conquered People they would have been the first that would have complaimed who now complain only because they have not that Case The truth is they would have him claim as a Conqueror that they might thence take occasion to ruine him but he has the Right of a Conqueror and the Right of a Lawful Successor too and tho' his own personal Right of Succession is more remote that of his Lady is immediate and by it be claims to our great Good and his immortal Honour And they in the mean time might if they pleased be as satisfied in the Right he has by conquest as the Saxons were when King William I. won the Crown in a Battle and wore it under the Pretence of an Election because he could lay no Claim to it by Succession And Henry VII twisted his Right by Conquest with his Descent from Lancaster and his Right by Marriage But these Men seem not to care which way our Ruine come if we may but be miserable we have not suffered enough under King James but he too would fain come in by Conquest and if ever he get the Crown again that way these Gentlemen will have no reason to complain of the Want of Sufferings Tertullian who wrote his Apology for the Christians in or about the Year of Christ CC. as Pamelius stateth the Time in his Annals of the Life of that Father saith in his first Apology c. 37. If we Christians would become your publick and declared Enemies or secret Revengers of our own Wrongs should we want Force and number to support it We exceed the Moors the Marcomans and the Parthians or any other one single Nation in the whole World we are but of Yesterday and yet we have filled all your Places your Cities your Islands Castles Corporations Councils Tribes Companies Palace Senate and Forum or Market-Place and we have left you nothing to enjoy alone but your Temples now we who so willingly lay down our Lives are we not thereby fitted and prepared do you think to manage any War tho' we were very much inferior in Number if our Religion did not oblige us rather to suffer Death than to inflict it we might without Arms or Resistance barely by disagreeing with you and the Envy of a Separation very much endager and disquiet you for if so great a part of the Empire as we now make should break it self off from the rest and retire into any remote Corner of the World it would certainly confound your Dominions to lose so many Subjects be their Quality what it will yea our very departure from you would be a severe Punishment the Desolation and Silence we should leave behind us would strike you with an Horror and Amazement as if the World were expiring you would be forced to seek for new Subjects to supply our Places and perhaps we should leave you more Enemies than Subjects or Defenders This Place has been often cited to prove the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and in truth it is a noble Testimony of the Faith and Patience of those Saints But then the Church continued after this under Pagan and Persecuting Princes one hundred and ten years and something more in which short time there is reckoned about twenty nine Emperors their times being short and their ends Bloody they almost all of them pershing by the Sword. Did any of the Primitive Christians in those days make any scruple to submit to the prevailing Power The same Author in this very Apology puts the Question to the Pagans Vnde Cassii Nigri Albini c. De Romanis nisi fallor id est de non Christanis From whence are all your Vsurpers Traitors and Rebels They were if I am not deceived all Romans that is no Christians Those very Loyal Pagans that Persecuted the poor Christians because they would not sacrifice for the safety of the Empire and Emperor Those Loyal Pagans who would swear falsely by all their Gods rather than by the single Genius of the Emperor they were the Men that so frequently deposed murthered and destroyed their Princes that in one hundred and ten years there was about thirty of them and scarce three in all that time that died a natural Death But where the Numerous body of Loyal Christians in the mean time who as he tells Scapula were so great a Multitude that they were almost the greatest part of every City and as he tells us in the other Apology they were fit to have undertaken any the most dangerous War though they had been inferiour in numbers who so stoutly and fearlessly suffered deaths that

and put our present King and Queen in the actual Possession of all those Legal Jurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authorities which he was formerly vested with and it is now the same Sin to resist them it was formerly to resist him There may possibly be some who will lightly regard what ever I or any other Man of this Age can say to them will they then vouchsafe to hear one of the most Noble and Royal Orators that ever spoke to men Constantine the Great in his Oration to the Holy Assembly Chap. 24. Of the calamitous Deaths of Decius Valerian and Aurelian three Emperors who persecuted the Church And now I ask thee O Decius who didst once insult over the Calamities of the Just who didst hate the Church who didst inflict such Punishments on those who lived most piously What art thou doing in the other World with what and how dreadful Circumstances art thou surrounded Yea the remainder of thy Life after it in this World and the manner of thy Death shew thy Felicity when thou and all thy Army fell in the Scythian Fields And the celebrated Roman Empire by thy Fall became after this contemptible to the Goths And thou O Valerian when thou didst enter into a bloody War against the Servants of God hast thereby made his Justice known to Men being taken Prisoner by the Persians and kept in Chains in thy Purple and Royal Robes After which thou wert flea'd being dead by Sapores King of Persia and thy Skin by his Order ta●●ed and kept as an eternal Trophy of thy Misfortune And thou O Aurelius the unjustest and most wicked Incendiary how much hast thou discovered his Justice whilst madly invading Thrace thou wert cut off in the Field and didst de●ile the surrows of the Publick Road with thy wicked Blood Chap. 25. Of Dioclesian who basely resigned the Empire and was struck with Lightning for persecuting the Church Dioclesian also after a wicked Slaughter and cruel Persecution condemning himself through distraction was reduced to a private Life and punished with the Restraint of a mean House What did he get by his War against our God Why that he was ever after afraid of Thunder and Lightning Nicomedia saith this and they who saw it will not be silent among whom I my self was one The Palace was consumed and his very Chamber burnt with Fire from Heaven and thereupon wise Men foretold what would follow for they could not conceal their Thoughts nor suppress their Resentments at the ill things were done but openly and publickly with assurance said one to another What madness is this what boasting in human Power for a Mortal to begin a War against God and injuriously to affront the most chast and holy Religion and without any Cause or Provocation to contrive the Destruction of so many just Men and of so numerous a People What a famous Master and teacher of Modesty to his Subjects will he appear How rarely he teacheth his Soldiers to take Care of their Countrymen Why they stab their fellow Subjects bravely who in Fight never saw the back of a beaten Enemy At last the Providence of God undertook the avenging this Impiety tho' not without the publick Hurt for so much Blood had been shed by him that if he had slain as many of the Barbarians as he did of his own Subjects we might have procured a long Peace by it But the whole Roman Army being then in the Hand of a mean-spirited Prince who had acquired it by Force his whole Army perished when God was pleased to think fit to restore the Romans to their ancient Liberty The Voices of oppressed Men who cryed to God for Help under their Burthens and begged the Return of their natural Liberty are not forgotten nor the Praises they returned when they had regained it and saw an end of their Calamities Did they not declare to all the World How much they admired the singular Providence and paternal Love of God to men when their Liberty and the Equity of their Contracts was restored That is when they were delivered out of the Hands of perfidious Tyrants and became subject to a Prince who would keep his Faith and Promise to them They may be pleased to consider How much of this was our Case and ask their Consciences If the self-same Divine Justice and Providence has not appeared in our Times also and whether we have not as much Reason as they to be pleased and thankful Having thus dispatched what I think fit for the present to be offered to the Friends of the late King I come now to that part of the Nation who being satisfied and highly pleased with the present State of Affairs may therefore be called in contradistinction the Williamists Many of these of late have appeared very pertly against the Doctrine of Non resistance and Passive Obedience and discoursed of it with a Contempt and Scorn as if it were one of the worst and most exploded Doctrines in the whole World and full as Antichristian as that of deposing Kings and disposing of their Kingdoms Now these two being directly contrary each to other in all probability one of them is true If we of the Church of England are not in the right with the Scriptures and all Primitive Antiquity on our side it is fairly probable They of the Deposing Church are for their Claim is older than the Peoples But the Mischief is the Devils is older than either for he pretended to our Saviour when he had shewed him all the Kingdoms of the World and made a conditional Tender of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All this Power and Glory is delivered into my Hands and I give it to whomsoever I will Now this was long before People or Pope put in any Claim and before the latter of these had any Being The Pope it is true claims under the People but the Devil in his own Right But I believe neither of them can shew their Charter though the Devil claimed by a Grant and so I shall leave him and them Pope and all in the intire possession of their several Rights if any they have The Doctrine of Non-resistance has been often proved the genuine Doctrine of the best Ages of the Church and that so fully and clearly that those who would not yield to the Force of the Proof have not been able to deny the Truth of it but have been forced to pretend it was only Temporary and doth not oblige all Ages which is hardly Sense or that the Church is now in other Circumstances than she was then which is not true neither for in some Places she is now under the same or worse Circumstances than she was in the three first Centuries and consequently they at least are under the same Obligations the Primitive Christians were and therefore this very Doctrine is of eternal Verity and will have its Use till the End of the World. The command is general the Examples of it are