Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	according_a	king_n	law_n	3,633	5	5.0197	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43507	Aerius redivivus, or, The history of the Presbyterians containing the beginnings, progress and successes of that active sect, their oppositions to monarchial and episcopal government, their innovations in the church, and their imbroylments by Peter Heylyn ...	Heylyn, Peter, 1600-1662.; Heylyn, Henry.	1670 (1670)	Wing H1681; ESTC R5587	552,479	547

disobedience against them but rather is to be accounted for a just obedience because it agrees with the Word of God 42. The same man preaching afterwards at one of their General Assemblies made a distinction between the Ordinance of God and the persons placed by him in Authority and then affirmed that men might lawfully and justly resist the persons and not offend against the Ordinance of God He added as a Corollary unto his discourse That Subjects were not bound to obey their Princes if they Command unlawful things but that they might resist their Princes and that they were not bound to suffer For which being questioned by Secretary Ledington in the one and desired to declare himself further in the other point he justified himself in both affirming that he had long been of that opinion and did so remain A Question hereupon arising about the punishment of Kings if they were Idolaters it was honestly affirmed by Ledington That there was no Commandment given in that case to punish Kings and that the people had no power to be judges over them but must leave them unto God alone who would either punish them by death imprisonment war or some other Plagues Against which Knox replyed with his wooted confidence that to affirm that the people or a part of the people may not execute Gods Judgments against their King being an offender the Lord Ledington could have no other Warrant except his own imaginations and the opinion of such as rather feared to displease their Princes then offend their God Against which when Ledington objected the Authority of some eminent Protestants Knox answered that they spake of Christians subject to Tyrants and Infidels so dispersed that they had no other force but onely to cry unto God for their deliverance That such indeed should hazard any further then those godly men willed them he would not hastily be of counsel But that his Argument had another ground and that he spake of a people assembled in one Body of a Commonwealth unto whom God had given sufficient force not onely to resist but also to suppress all kinde of open Idolatry and such a people again he affirmed were bound to keep their Land clean and unpolluted that God required one thing of Abraham and his Seed when he and they were strangers in the Land of Egypt and that another thing was required of them when they were delivered from that bondage and put into the actual Possession of the Land of Canaan 43. Finally that the Application might come home to the point in hand it was resolved by this learned and judicious Casuist that when they could hardly finde ten in any one part of Scotland who rightly understood Gods Truth it had been foolishness to have craved the suppression of Idolatry either from the Nobility or the common subject because it had been nothing else but the betraying of the silly Sheep for a prey to the Wolves But now saith he that God hath multiplyed knowledge and hath given the victory unto Truth in the hands of his Servants if you should suffer the Land again to be defiled you and your Prince should drink the cup of Gods indignation the Queen for her continuing obstinate in open Idolatry in this great light of the Gospel and you for permission of it and countenancing her in the same For my assertion is saith he that Kings have no priviledge more then hath the people to offend Gods Majesty and if so be they do they are no more exempted from the punishment of the Law then is any other subject yea and that subjects may not onely lawfully oppose themselves unto their Kings whensoever they do any thing that expresly oppugnes God 's Commandments but also that they may execute Iudgement upon them according to Gods Laws so that if the King be a Murtherer Adulterer or an Idolater he should suffer according to Gods Law not as a King but as an Offender Now that Knox did not speak all this as his private judgement but as it was the judgement of Calvin and the rest of the Genevian Doctors whom he chiefly followed appears by this passage in the story It was required that Knox should write to Calvin and to the Learned men in other Churches to know their judgements in the Question to which he answered that he was not onely fully resolved in conscience but had already heard their judgements as well in that as in all other things which he had affirmed in that Kingdom that he came not to that Realm without their resolution and had for his assurance the hand-writing of many and therefore if he should now move the same questions again he must either shew his own ignorance or inconstancie or at least forgetfulness 44. Of the same Nature and proceeding from the same Original are those dangerous passages so frequently dispersed in most parts of his History By which the Reader is informed That Reformation of Religion doth belong to more then the Clergie and the King That Noblemen ought to reform Religion if the King will not That Reformation of Religion belongeth to the Commonalty who concurring with the Nobility may compel the Bishops to cease from their Tyranny and bridle the cruel Beasts the Priests That they may lawfully require of their King to ●ave true Preachers and if he be negligent they justly may themselves provide them maintain them defend them against all that do persecute them and may detain the profits of the Church-livings from the Popish Clergy That God appointed the Nobility to bridle the inordinate appetite of Princes who in so doing cannot be accounted as resisters of Authority and that it is their duty to repress the rage and insolency of Princes That the Nobility and Commonalty ought to reform Religion and in that case may remove from honours and may punish such as God hath condemned of what estate condition or honour soever they be That the punishment of such crimes as touch the Majesty of God doth not appertain to Kings and chief Rulers onely but also to the whole body of the people and to every member of the same as occasion vocation or ability shall serve to revenge the injury done against God That Princes for just causes may be deposed That of Princes be Tyrants against God and his Truth their subjects are freed from their Oaths of obedience And finally that it is neither birth right or propinquity of bloud which makes a King rule over a people that profess Iesus Christ but that it comes from some special and extraordinary dispensation of Almighty God 45. Such is the plain Song such the Descant of these Sons of Thunder first tuned by the Genevian Doctors by them commended unto Knox and by Knox preached unto his Brethren the Kirk of Scotland In which what countenance he received from Goodman and how far he was justified if not succeeded by the pen of Buchanan we shall see hereafter In the mean time the poor Queen must needs be in

into the hands of the Presbytery in reference unto crimes and persons and the unhandsome manner of proceeding in it for power was given unto them by the Rules of the Discipline not onely to proceed to Excommunication if the case required it against Drunkards Whore-masters Blasphemers of Gods holy Name disturbers of the peace by fighting or contentious words but also against such as pleased themselves with modest dancing which was from henceforth looked on as a grievous crime and what disturbances and disquiets did ensue upon it we shall see anon Nor were they onely Authorized to take notice of notorious crimes when they gave just scandal to the Church or such as past in that account by the voice of Fame but also to inquire into the lives and conversations of all sorts of persons even to the private ordering of their several Families In reference to which last they are required to make a diligent and strict enquiry whether men lived peaceably with their Wives and kept their Families in good order whether they use constantly some course of morning and evening Prayer in their several housholds sit down at their Tables without saying Grace or cause their Children or Servants diligently to frequent the Churches with many others of that nature And to the end they may come the better to the knowledge of all particulars it is not onely permitted by the Rules of their Discipline to tamper with mens Neighbours and corrupt their Servants but to exact an Oath of the parties themselves who are thereby required to make answer unto all such Articles as may or shall be tendred to them in behalf of the Consistory which odious and unneighbourly office is for the most part executed by those of the Laity or at the least imputed wholly unto their pragmaticalness though the Lay-elders possibly have done nothing in it but by direction from their Pastors For so it was contrived of purpose by the wise Artificer that the Ministers might be thereby freed from that common hatred which such a dangerous and saucie inquisition might else draw upon them And yet these were not all the mischiefs which their submitting to that yoak had drawn upon them by which they had enthralled themselves to such hard conditions that if a man stood Excommunicate or in contempt against the censures of the Church for the space of a twelve month he was to suffer a whole years banishment by Decree of the Senate not otherwise to be restored but upon submission and that submission to be made upon their knees in the open Church 8. These melancholick thoughts had not long possessed them when an occasion was presented to try their courage Perinus Captain of the people and of great power in that capacity amongst the multitude pretends the common liberty to be much endangered by that new subjection and openly makes head against him in defence thereof Ten years together did it struggle with the opposition and at last was almost ruined and oppressed by it For whereas the Consistory had given sentence against one Bertilier even in the highest censure of Excommunication the Common councel not onely absolved him from that censure under their Town-seal but foolishly Decreed that Excommunication and Absolution did properly belong to them Upon this he is resolved again to quit the Town and solemnly takes his leave of them at the end of one of his Sermons which he had fitted for that purpose but at the last the Controversie is reduced to these three questions viz. First after what manner by Gods Ordinance according to the Scripture Excommunication was to be exercised Secondly whether it may not be exercised some other way then by such a Consistory Thirdly what the use of other Churches was in the like case And being reduced to these three questions it was submitted to the judgement and determination of four of the Helvetian Churches to whose Decree both parties were obliged to stand But Calvin knew beforehand what he was to trust to having before prepared the Divines of Zurick to pronounce sentence on his side of whom he earnestly desired that they would seriously respect that cause on which the whole State of the Religion of the City did so much depend that God and all good men were now inevitably in danger to be trampled on if those four Churches did not declare for him and his Associates when the cause was to be brought before them that in the giving of the sentence they should pass an absolute approbation upon the Discipline of Geneva as consonant unto the Word of God without any cautions qualifications ifs or ands and finally that they would exhort the Genevian Citizen● from thenceforth not to innovate or change the same Upon which pre-ingagement they returned this Answer directed to the Common council of Geneva by which their judgement was required that is to say That they had heard already of those Consistorial Laws and did acknowledge them to be godly Ordinances drawing towards the Prescript or Word of God In which respect they did not think it good for the Church of Geneva to make any innovation in the same but rather to keep them as they were This caution being interposed that Lay-elders should be chosen from amongst themselves that is to say ten of them to be yearly out of the Council of two hundred and the other two for there were to be but twelve in all to be elected out of the more powerful Council of the five and twenty 9. Now for the quarrel which he had with Captain Perine it was bri●fly this as he himself relates the story in his own Epistles Dancing had been prohibited by his sollicitation when he first setled in that Town and he resolved to have his will obeyed in that as in all things else But on the contrary this Perine together with one Corneus a man of like power amongst the people one of the Syndicks or chief Magistates in the Common-wealth one of the Elders for the year who was called Henricus together with other of their Friends being merry at an Invitation fell to dancing Notice hereof being given to Calvin by some false Brother they were all called into the Consistory excepting Corneus and Perinus and being interrogated thereupon They lyed said he most impudently both to God and us most Apostolically said At that said he I grew offended as the indignity of the thing deserved and they persisting in their contumacie I thought it fit to put them to their Oaths about it by which it seems that the Oath Ex officio may be used in Geneva though cryed down in England so said so done And they not onely did confess their former dancing but also that upon that very day they had been dancing in the house of one Balthasal's Widow On which confession he proceeded to the censure of all the parties which certainly was sharp enough for so small a fault for a fault he was resolved to make it the Syndick

Authority over rhem Knox goes to work more cautiously but comes home at last For having first approved whatsoever had been said by Willock he adds this to it That the iniquity of the Queen Regent ought not to withdraw their hearts from the obedience due to their Soveraign nor did he wish that any such sentence against her should be pronounced but that when she should change her course and submit her self to good counsels there should be place left unto her of regress to the same honours from which for just cause she ought to be deprived 19. So said the Oracle and as the Oracle decreed so the sentence passed for presently upon this judgement in the case a publick Instrument is drawn up in which the most part of the passages in the course of her Government were censured as grievances and oppressions on the Subjects of Scotland to the violating of the Laws of the Land the Liberty of the Subjects and the enslaving of them to the power and domination of strangers In which respect they declare her to be fallen from the publick Government discharge all Officers and others from yeilding any obedience to her subscribing this Instrument with their hands requiring it to be published in all the Head-Boroughs of the Kingdom and causing it to be proclaimed with sound of Trumpet Thus they began with the Queen Regent but we shall see them end with the Queen her self their annoynted Soveraign This Instrument bears date on the 23 of October a memorable day for many notable occurrences which have hapned on it in our Brittish Stories Of all these doings they advertised her by express Letters sent back by the same Herald who had brought her last message to them and having so done they resolve immediately to try their fortune upon Leith in the way of Scalada But the worst was the Souldiers would not ●ight without present money and money they had none to pay them on so short a warning Somewhat was raised by way of Contribution but would not satisfie And thereupon it was advised that the Lords and other great men should bring in their Plate and cause it to be presently melted to content the Souldiers But they who had so long made a gain of Godliness did not love Godliness so well as not to value and prefer their gain before it And therefore some had so contrived it that the Irons of the Mint were missing and by that handsome fraud they preserved their Plate 20. It was not to be thought that the Scots durst have been so bold in the present business if they had not been encouraged underhand from some Friends in England which the Queen Regent well observed and prest it on them in her Declaration as before was noted To which particular though the Confederates made no reply in their Anti-remonstrance at that time yet afterwards they both acknowledged and defended their intelligence with the English Nation For in a subsequent Declaration They acknowledge plainly that many Messages had past betwixt them and that they had craved some support from thence but that it was onely to maintain Religion and suppress Idolatry And they conceived that in so doing they had done nothing which might make them subject unto any just censure it being lawful for them where their own power failed to seek assistance from their Neighbours And now or never was the time to make use of such helps their Contribution falling short and the Plate not coming to the Mint as had been projected In which extremity it was advised to try some secret Friends at Barwick especially Sir Ralph Sudlieur and Sir Iames Crofts by whose encouragement it may be thought they had gone so far that now there was no going back without manifest ruine By the assistance of these men they are furnished with four thousand Crowns in ready Money But the Queen Regent had advertisement of the negotiation and intercepts it by the way The news of this ill Fortune makes the Souldiers desperate some of them secretly steal away others refuse to venture upon any service so that the Lords and others of the chief Confederates are put upon a necessity of forsaking Edenborough The French immediately take possession of it compel the Ministers and most of those who profest the Reformed Religion to desert their dwellings restore the Mass and reconcile with many Ceremonies the chief Church of the City I mean that dedicated unto St. Gyles as having been prophaned by Heretical Preachings But the abandoning of Edenborough proved the ruine of Glasgow To which Duke Hamilton repairing he caused all the Images and Altars to be pulled down and made himself Master of the Castle out of which upon the noise of the Bishops coming with some Bands of French he withdraws again and quits the Town unto the Victor No way now left to save their persons from the Law their Estates from forfeiture their Country from the French and their Religion from the Pope but to cast themselves upon the favour of the Qeeen of England And to that course as the Lord Iames did most incline and Knox most preached for so there might be some probable Reasons which might assure them of not failing of their expectations 21. No sooner was Queen Mary of England dead but Mary the young Queen of Scots not long before Married to the Daulphin of France takes on her self the name and title of Queen of England the Arms whereof she quarters upon all her Plate some of her Coyn and upon no small part of her Houshold-Furniture Which though she did not as she did afterwards alledge of her own accord but as she was over-ruled in it by the perswasion of her Husband and the Authority which was not in her to dispute of the King his Father yet Queen Elizabeth looked upon it as a publick opposition to her own Pretensions an open disallowing of her Title to the Crown of this Realm She had good reason to presume that they by whose Authority and Counsel she was devested of her Title would leave no means untryed nor no stone unmoved by the rouling whereof she might be tumbled out of her Government and deprived also of her Kingdom Which jealousie so justly setled received no small increase from the putting over of so many French distributing them into so many Garrisons but more especially by their fortifying of the Town of Leith at which Gate all the strengths of France might enter when occasion served And then how easie a passage might they have into England divided only by small Rivers in some places and in some other places not divided at all But that which most assured her of their ill intentions was the great preparations lately made by the Marquiss of Elboeuf one of the Brothers of the Queen Regent and consequently Uncle to the Queen of Scots For though he was so distressed by tempests that eighteen Ensignes were cast away on the Coast of Holland and the rest forced for the present to return

knowing of what consequence that imployment was and how destructive of his Interest to the Crown of England commanded them by publick Proclamation to avoid the Kingdom But withal gave them day till the last of Ianuary that they might not complain of being taken unprovided Which small Indulgence so offended the unquiet brethren that they called a number of Noble-men Barons and Commissioners of Burgly without so much as asking the King's leave in it to meet at Edenborough on the sixt of February to whom they represented the Churches dangers and thereupon agreed to go all together in a full body to the Court to attend the King to the end that by the terror of so great a company they might work him to their own desires But the King hearing of their purpose refused to give access to so great a multitude but signified withall that he was ready to give audience unto some few of them which should be chosen by the rest But this affront the King was forced to put up also to pass by the unlawfulness of that Convention to acknowledg their grievances to be just and to promise a redress thereof in convenient time Which drew him into Action against Maxwel and some others of the Popish Lords and for the same received the publick thanks of the next Assembly that being no ordinary favour in them and was so far gratified withall as to be suffered to take Mr. Patrick Galloway from his Charge in Perth to be one of the Preachers at the Court. Of which particular I had perhaps took little notice but that we are to hear more of him on some other occasion 37. The next fine pranck they plaid relates to the Crowning of Queen Ann with whom the King landed out of Denmark at the Port of Leith on the 20 th of May 1590. aud designed her Coronation on the morrow after None of the Bishops being at hand the King was willing to embrace the opportunity to oblige the Kirk by making choice of one of their own Brethren to perform that Ceremony to which he nominated Mr. Robert Bruce a Preacher at Edenborough and one of the most moderate men in a whole Assembly But when the fitness of it came to be examined by the rest of the Brethren it was resolved to pretermit the Unction or Annointing of Her as a Iewish Ceremony abolished by Christ restored into Christian Kingdoms by the Pope's Authority and therefore not to be continued in a Church Reformed The Doubt first started by one Iohn Davinson who had then no Charge in the Church though followed by a Company of ignorant and seditious people whom Andrew Melvin set on work to begin the Quarrel and then stood up in his defence to make it good Much pains was taken to convince them by the Word of God That the Unction or Annointing of Kings was no Iewish Ceremony but Melvin's Will was neither to be ruled by Reason nor subdued by Argument and he had there so strong a Party that it passed in the Negative Insomuch that Bruce durst not proceed in the Solemnity for fear of the Censures of the Kirk The King had notice of it and returns this word That if the Coronation might not be performed by Bruce with the wonted Ceremonies he would stay till the coming of the Bishops of whose readiness to conform therein he could make no question Rather than so said Andrew Melvin let the Unction pass better it was that a Minister should perform that honourable Office in what Form soever than that the Bishops should be brought again unto the Court upon that occasion But yet unwilling to prophane himself by consenting to it he left them to agree about it as to them seemed best and he being gone it was concluded by the major part of the Voices That the Annointing should be used According whereunto the Queen was Crowned and Annointed on the Sunday following with the wonted Ceremonies but certainly with no great State there being so short an interval betwixt Her Landing and the appointed day of Her Coronation 38. It was not long before that they had a quarrel with the Lords of the Session touching the Jurisdiction of their several Courts but now the Assembly would be held for the chief Tribunal One Graham was conceived to have suborned a publick Notary to forge an Instrument which the Notary confessed on Examination to have been brought to him ready drawn by one of the said Graham's Brethren Graham enraged thereat enters an Action against Sympson the Minister of Sterling as one who had induced the man by some sinister Practises to make that Confession The Action being entred and the Process formed Sympson complains to the Assembly and they give Order unto Graham to appear before them to answer upon the scandal raised on one of their Brethren Graham appears and tells them That he would make good his Accusation before competent Judges which he conceived not them to be And they replyed That he must either stand to their judgment in it or else be censured for the slander The Lords of the Session hereupon interpose themselves desiring the Assembly not to meddle in a Cause which was then dependent in their Court in due form of Law But the Assembly made this Answer That Sympson was a Member of theirs That they might proceed in the purgation of one of their own number without intrenching on the Jurisdiction of the Civil Courts and therefore that their Lordships should not take it ill if they proceeded in the Tryal But let the Lords of the Session or the Party interested in the Cause say what they pleased the Assembly vote themselves to be Judges in it and were resolved to proceed to a Sentence against him as a false Accuser In fine the business went so high on the part of the Kirk that the Lords of the Session were compelled to think of no other Victory than by making a drawn Battel of it which by the Mediation of some Friends was at last effected 39. The Kirk is now advancing to the highest pitch of her Scotch Happiness in having her whole Discipline that is to say their National and Provincial Assemblies together with their Presbyteries and Parochial Sessions confirmed by the Authority of an Act of Parliament In order whereunto they had ordained in the Assembly held at Edenborough on the 4th of August Anno 1590. That all such as then bore Office in the Kirk or from thenceforth should bear any Office in it should actually subscribe to the Book of Discipline Which Act being so material to our present History deserves to be exemplified verbatim as it stands in the Registers and is this that followeth viz. 40. Forasmuch that it is certain That the Word of God cannot be kept in the own sincerity without the Holy Discipline be had in observance It is therefore by the common consent of the whole Brethren and Commissioners present concluded That whosoever hath born Office in the Ministry of the