Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	church_n	reason_n	time_n	1,573	5	3.5011	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63119	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor, and Court of Aldermen, of the city of London, at St. Mary le Bow, on the 29th of May, 1694 by John Trenchard ...	Trenchard, John, 1662-1723.	1694 (1694)	Wing T2114; ESTC R23483	18,711	37

Form of Government this which does eminently distinguish us from the Inhabitants of all the other parts of the World beside as having provided very amply for the greatness and glory of the Monarch for the dignity and authority of the Nobility and for the freedom and liberty of the Commonalty without intrenching upon or interfering with one anothers distinct Powers and Capacities which would be to the general Confusion and Detriment of the whole In a word A Government this which makes our Prince the truly greatest our Nobility the most Honourable and our Commons the freest and most happy of any in Europe The next Blessing obtain'd by the Restoration and which might well be insisted on as a very strong and pregnant Argument for our present Joy is the Resettlement of a True and Orthodox Religion among us in the room of the wild Phanaticisms the Enthusiastical practices and abominable Blasphemies of the late times I mean the Re-establishment of a Church that dispences the Holy Word and Sacraments of our Lord Jesus Christ with a Primitive Purity and approved Devotion A Church this is that whatever some of her Members have unadvisedly and unwarrantably done yet of Her self is not any whit uncharitable to those that shall differ from Her in Judgment provided mens scruples are truly Serious and really Conscientious Nor are Her Doctrines whatever indiscretions the heat of Times and prevalent Factions of a Court may have transported and betrayed some Persons into at all prejudicial to the ascertain'd Rights and Liberties of a Free People They were never designed however they might happen to be Preached up and applied by some particular Persons to advance the Arbitrary measures of a self-will'd Prince And it cannot be thought that this were intended to inculcate the Duty of a blind Obedience which supposes a servile Compliance with all Commands whatsoever without the least Reserve or Hesitation about the Reasonableness and Justice of them Nor to tye up the hands of a People when a Prince should Commission his Booted Apostles to Rifle them of their Goods to Dispossess them of their Estates and to rob them of their Lives in order to make them fit Converts for Popery and Slavery Alas it cannot in reason be thought That our Church whose Doctrines are all so Sound and Rational should ever intend such a Passive Obedience as this in cases where the Law and the King's Will do not joyntly concur to make up the just and indispensable Obligation of such a Bow-string Duty For 't is plain that our Church with respect to Civil Rights c. can require no other Obedience nor indeed does it than the State can or does lawfully require of us too So that the Obedience which is due to the Supream Powers is a Legal Obedience only and no more such I mean as subjects us to the Penalties of a known Law to which our own Consent was likewise had before it could have any force at all to affect or hurt us and not to the uncertain Capricio's and unforeseen Violence of any one single Person 's Will that shall happen to get the Administration and Execution of a National Trust into his Power And this I take it makes a wide difference betwixt us and Primitive Christians who lived under the Absolute Dominion of the Roman Emperors for with them to whom the Will of their Prince was an effectual and binding Law such a Notion as Passive Obedience in the rigid sense that some Men have talk'd and preach'd it up might be perhaps a very true and a sound Doctrine But to our everlasting Comfort the Case is otherwise here where the Law is the only Measure and Guide of our Obedience and where we are not to obey either Actively or Passively but as the Laws of the Land the Common Safety of the People and good Manners shall therein direct us To confirm the truth of this Notion I shall e'en refer ye to the whole Occasion Progress and Success of the late Revolution and to those many excellent and unanswerable Discourses that have been purposely wrote for the just Vindication of our Proceedings For seeing that our present King the Glorious Restorer of our violated Laws and Liberties was so generously invited into this Kingdom and afterwards so bravely assisted and accompanied in his Marches to this City and at length so unanimously voted to the Throne by those that were principally of the Church of England I mean by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and by all the Commons 't is therefore very violently to be presumed That they thought it high time to rectify or rather to reject a Notion which a little better experience had inform'd them was not the real Intendment nor the true Construction of the so much talked-of Doctrines of our most excellent Church In a word the restoring us to Order and Decency in our Church to good Discipline and Sacred Orders to able Pastors to discreet Rulers was a true Cause of abundant Joy to our Afflicted and once Miserable Zion and a good reason if we value the peace of Jerusalem that we should as yet rejoyce and return unto God our due Praises and Thanksgivings for the same And what tho the vicious Practices and licentious Indulgences of the late times which were but the natural and proper Effects of Plenty and Prosperity did somewhat obscure the Lustre of this day's Mercy and Restoration And what tho Foreign Politicks and a Foreign Religion which came over along with it were like to have Eclips'd our Light and to have brought in another Egyptian Darkeness and Slavery upon us yet God be thanked we are rid of those our just Fears and we have still notwithstanding all that is past a good and firm ground for our present Joy and Thanksgiving Because these present Times are in a great measure the product of that Revolution Insomuch that had not the Restoration of King Charles the Second preceded the late Revolution which we have all of us had our hands in either more or less a Revolution that is now our happiness and has proved to the advantage and satisfaction of all Europe beside had never come to pass To conclude and sum up all Had it not been for the Restoration we had never enjoy'd what now we have the best Constituted Government in the World nor had we been blessed with the very best King and Queen that ever lived in any Age before them A King that fights our Battels and exposes his own Person to all Dangers for the Religion Lives and Liberty of his Subjects And a Queen that takes all imaginable Care for the Eternal Welfare of our Souls that not only prays for them her self and that prescribes the model of a most Virtuous and Religious Life for us to Copy after but that in all her Promotions in the Church has taken an effectual Course to provide fit remedies for the importunate Evils of a loose and degenerate Age. I mean Persons eminent for Learning and