Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	christian_a	part_n	religion_n	984	5	5.7580	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85861	A remonstrance presented to O.P. Feb. 4. 1655. By J.G. D.D. A son, servant, and supplicant for the Church of England: in behalf of many thousands his distressed brethren (ministers of the Gospel, and other good schollars) who were deprived of all publique imployment, (as ministers, or schollars) by his declaration, Jan. 1. 1655.	Gauden, John, 1605-1662.	1660 (1660)	Wing G365; Thomason E765_7; ESTC R207143	30,772	35

whole stock and patrimony of most Ministers and Scholars whose trading for wisdome commonly marrs their market for all other gain further than what the Churches Patrimony and the States Munificence may afford them § Compassion no Conspiracy Whose Tragique terrors and impending miseries so imediately and inevitably menacing them I cannot but Remonstrate with a charitable fervour yet with all due respect to your Highnesse Not as hereby symbolishing with or abetting any of these my Brethren in any wayes mis-becoming Pious and Prudent men but only as sympathising with such deserving persons in their undeserved consternations which they conclude to be sad fore-runners of such dreadful distresses as must needs drive them and their whole Families upon the rocks and precipices of utter ruine unless the mercy of God by your Highnesses Benignity be pleased so to interpose as to preserve them and theirs from these multi-forme miseries which are in the face of Famine and those necessities which attend that extreme poverty with which they are threatned § Upon what account Ministers are thus afflicted anew All which cannot but be the more grievous to learned grave and ingenuous Ministers by how much they were now lesse expected or upon any new account as they humbly conceive deserved by them As for the old score of Malignity imputed to them either for their adherency to the Constitutions of the Church of England or their Loyalty to their Soveraigne they justly hoped that the many difficulties already susteined by them the infinite diminutions which not in the way of Law but of Armes and force have exhausted them The Iliaedes of miseries which for many years have oppressed them upon that account or Cause Their former great sufferings upon the old account of Malignancy in which they were not active or militant but onely passive and constant to the perswasions of their Consciences which yet exposed them to the spoiling of their goods to the sequestring of their Estates to the losse of their Libraries which were their Mines and Treasuries to the charge and squalor of Imprisonments to long Absentments from their nearest Relations or upon their Releasemen to the sad spectacles of their Families and their own innumerable Calamities even to extremities of want Horrors sufficient God knowes to cast ingenuous and tender mindes into such Agony's of dejection and despair as nothing but an Angel from Heaven or some special measure of Grace was capable to preserve them from cursing the day of their Birth and the way of their Breeding yea from Blaspheming God and dying as Jobs wife most unadvisedly advised her afflicted Husband when she saw his Integrity was no security from extreme and undeserved miseries § Their former imputed faults may seeme expiated by their past afflictions Those innumerable distresses which have formerly pressed upon most of these Ministers ever since they applyed themselves to that cause or crosse rather on which they have for some years past been nailed and crucified those they hoped might even in the rigour and extremity of justice have sufficed to have expiated any former Offences or Jealousies taken up against them during the heat of the late unhappy Warre which made them criminals or guilty rather by prejudices providences and preventions than by any depravednesse of mindes or immorality of manners ever proved against them § What ever just blame Their Plea as to the point of Malignancy imputed to them or sinister censure they had thus incurred upon those former seores yet they presumed since their punishment had been greater than their iniquity all would now in the coole of the day have been looked upon as many wayes venial and excusable in them Considering First That the cause whereto they adhered 1 In their Consciences and for which they suffered was adopted by them without any perverse Principles or sinister ends onely following bona fide that light of Conscience which seemed to them most clearly to shine from Gods Word from the practice of Primitive Christians and the Lawes of the Land All which taught them Loyalty as a part of Christian Religion and non-resistence of lawfull Soveraigne Power as an indispensable duty of Christian subjects only they had not been Catechised in such Salvoes and State-distinctions as afterwards were found out by other men who seemed no lesse tender and solicitous for their own Consciences Secondly 2 As to their patience and silence Since God saw fit to confute their secular confidences of any cause and to teach them higher wisdome by afflictions which in the justest cause of men can never be injust as from the hand of God they have onely behaved themselves as humble and silent sufferers patiently enduring and devoutly undone Not bitterly querulous nor pragmatically perturbing the publique tranquillity living in wayes many of them though very able and ample men as little to be envyed as much to be pittied taking great pains for small gain contented with such poor pittances as are the refuse of others lately their inferiours but now possessed of their livings out of which they hardly allow to their sequestred Brethren their miserable Fifts Only their humility and content made every condition a competency yea they rejoyced in their obscurity as hoping it was accompanied with lesse envy and more safety § Their Plea for the benefit of the Act of Oblivion Yet after all these meritorius miseries so modestly endured after the noises and tumult of warr so much allayed after an ACT of OBLIVION happily passed which they say owed much to your Highness's equanimity and policy after other men of all sorts have been permitted to enjoy the benefit of Composition and restitution to their estates except only Ministers to their Ecclesiastical livings Their Sequestrations proving Deprivations for the most part and their Purgatory is become an Hell After the Storme was well over and the bitternesse of death seemed past after these poor Ministers had gained some little planck or rafter possiblely a little refuse living or a Curateship or a School or a Lecture or some Chaplains place in a Gentlemans house by which to save themselves from utter shipwrack and sinking yet still beyond any other ranck of men of the same perswasions they are now alarumed a fresh exposed to new conflictings with that armed man forced to undergo again the heat and burthen of the day as to mans wrath and jealously whose very mercys may seem cruelty and their sparing of their lives thus long great severities Their Distresses more bitter than Death while they are now brought not to the Tarpeian Rock whence by a sudden principitation an end might be put to all their miseries with their lives But like Prometheus they are bound alive with fatal Chains to the mountain Caucasus where condemned to be idle the vulture of famine all worldly calamities must be ever preying upon the bowels of themselves their Wives and Children being only suffered to survive their miseries as