Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	justice_n	lord_n	mercy_n	3,687	5	6.4759	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51089	A modest apology for the suspended bishops with a brief vindication of the address which was signed in their favour by the Grand-Jury of the county of Gloucester, at the last Lent assizes / by a gentleman of the said Grand-Jury.	Gentleman of the said Grand-Jury.	1690 (1690)	Wing M2358; ESTC R38872	21,535	34

that therefore our Address ought rather to have been dedicated either to the Lords or Commons than to the King I must take the Liberty to assure the Managers of this bold but impertinent Cavil that they fail not of their usual Levity discovering as their gross Ignorance in the Customs of our Nation which entitle the King to be the Fountain of all Acts of Grace so likewise their profound Respects to his Majesty for by the Consequence of their Words they declare that the Duty and Intercourse between the Prince and People ought not to be reciprocal I need not tell them that neither of those honorable Houses had at that time given us the Cause I speak with respect to the first Dispatch and Draught of the general Pardon to return them those peculiar Thanks which made up the principal Frame of our Application to the King and that for this Reason they could not be the sutable and adequate Object of our Address but I answer that we addressed his Majesty in Parliament because he there challenges a supereminent Power and therefore if during the Session it is permitted to any private Person to petition either the Lords or Commons for a particular Redress shall it be accounted heynous that the Grand-jury who represented the Body of the County and faithfully delivered the true Sense and Desire of their Vicinage should make their humble Approaches to the King who is the Sovereign Head and supream Intendant of our Parliament This is in effect to declare that his Majesty hath a Chair of State placed in the House on no other account than that he may be curtail'd in Stature and appear less considerable than his many Servants who attend him Should any Dyet or Parliament in Christendom pursue the Latitude of this Doctrine and therefore refuse to attend a most Religious and Solemn Enterprize because the Prince doth first propose it to them they would be justly censured very positive and supercilious in their Determinations Examples of that Nature are very rare in well-disciplin'd Common-wealths and I know but one that doth exactly square to the Proceeding and this is related by * Euseb Histor Eccles. l. 2. c. 2. Eusebius out of an ancient Father of the Church and was a strange Violence against the standing Law of Moderation in great Councils the Story in short is to this effect After our Saviours Manifestation among the Sons of Men to whom by the exemplary Conduct of his triumphant Resurrection from the Dead he gave the most undeniable Proofs of his Divinity Tiberius in whose Time the Christian Name made its entry into the World communicated to the Senate an Account he had received out of Syria Palestine of this great Affair and having given his own Suffrage to Christ's Divinity he desired them to enact it into a Decree and to register him in the Catalogue of the Gods But the lofty Senate disdaining to be instructed in a Business which concerned the Exercise of their own Power rejected Caesar's Motion and would not place our Saviour in their Festival Calendar because they had not first approv'd the Matter before the Emperor perswaded them to it This you may say was a brisk Maintenance of Priviledge against the Torrent of Prerogative and I must I confess admit it but in a Sense that takes away the Authority not only from the Person but from the Doctrine of our Saviour and seems to render unto the People the things which are Caesar's and unto Sathan the things which are Gods and I hope the Example will have no tolerable Sway in the Christian World It is our Comfort that the English Parliament though they have a just Pretence to a great Power in conjunction with their Prince do not affect such an unseasonable Grandeur which would disappoint the Success of his Majesties Piety So that what Monsieur Talôn speaks in Flattery of the aspiring Lewis we may conclude most true of King William that to our August Monarch nothing is impossible especially when he endeavors the Intersts of Heaven I am sure his Favor to the Bishops will not lead him out of the way thither The Kings of England and this the express Words of their Coronation Oath contain are invested with a Power to execute Justice in Mercy and as they carry an High Court of Chancery in their Breasts so may they by their indulgent Grace and especial Favor abate some rigorous Extremities of the Law This has ever been one of the Flowers of their Prerogative to which no others can pretend and it is as truly annext to their Crown as the Royal Dignity to their Persons This Power hath been often exerted by them in a various manner when the Necessities of State or their own Royal Pleasure required it but it is then render'd more conspicuous when it is published for the common Benefit and Security of the Nation and does in order to the quieting the Minds of the Subjects dispense with the Frailties Errors and Miscarriages of the People Such an important Grant of Clemency is capable of a twofold Management for when the Prince doth design a general Amnesty he sometimes issues forth his gracious Declaration of Free Pardon or if he Judges it more necessary and expedient or more agreeable to some weighty Circumstances he recommends the Affair to the Consideration of his Parliament which in most submissive Terms doth either propose a Bill to his Royal Assent or else receives a Draught of Pardon from him with such Ceremony as is expressive of their Gratitude This latter Method hath been used by his present Majesty and by the whole Proceeding our Adversaries may be soon convinced what an Authority the Sovereign bears in the two Houses For when some Lords who were excepted in the Act of Grace did move in Parliament that they might be heard by their Council in order to give their Reasons why they should partake of the Benefit of the Act their Motion was not approv'd nor was their Request allow'd them I must not presume to render the Reasons which prevailed with the Honorable House to dismiss their Petition having not had the Oportunity to examine the Records but I suppose from the Information I have casually received from judicious Persons that those Noble Peers did not petition in the regular direct and customary Order for his Majesty who best understood his own Resolutions sent down his Pardon to the Lords House not to be alter'd or enlarged but to be passed into a Law so that the Petitioners ought in that case to have addressed the King who as he is the Life of Justice so is he the Fountain of Mercy I cannot therefore but pity the extream Weakness of their Judgments who pretend to maintain that our Grand jury did not pursue a right Course when they made their Application to the King in the Behalf of the Bishops for by this Assertion they seem to bare no Regard to the Authority of Presidents but speak against the Voice of

be profitable which is also good The Wisdom of the best Statesmen has still entertained this Moral Doctrine for a just Principle and certainly it doth afford the best interpretation to that memorable Expression of Vlpianus which he deliver'd as a great Law of Politics to the Romans In Rebus novis constituendis evidens utilitas esse debet ne recedatur ab eo quod diu aequum visum est and I cannot but believe it was also introductive as of the late Practices so of the present Sentiments of the Bishops who are not govern'd by a Peevish or Supercilious humor but mourn in Spirit for the Miseries of the Protestant Church and pray for the Prosperity of the English Canaan thô like Moses they are not permitted to enjoy an Inheritance in it This which some call Obstinacy Pride and Prejudice the three grand Enemies of prudential deliberations will appear as I hope no such dangerous and wicked temper when we have modestly considered it and charitably interpreted it I am confident the World need not be advertis'd under what a dreadful Hurricane our Nation hath lately laboured I shall not make a sorrowful research after a like Example into the Confusions of former Centuries when the Pagan or Popish Religion did bare a Regency in the Land It is most certain we have had nothing that Challenges the Affinity of an exact Parallel to those Troubles since our Blessed Reformation Our Bishops therefore who are professedly studious as of the Peace so of the Glory of that Establishment were loath immediately to admit the sharp and extreme Remedies which were recommended to them as necessary for their own Securities Many others and among them not a few who Flatter'd and Addrest the Abdicated Monarch into his Ruine did rejoyce and triumph in the Afflictions of that calamitous Prince but our Prelates scorn'd such an Unchristian Revenge for if in the Council of Arles under Leo the First it was condemned for an heathenish Barbarity to use Mirth in the House of Mourning and to sport in the view of the melancholy Incentives how could our Holy Primate and his Brethren be suppos'd to Laugh and Sing in the Agony of our Church and State as Samuel mourned for Saul's Abjection so did they lament the late Kings Misery and forgot his rigid Severities exercised on them They have in the great pangs of Spirit and in the anguish of their Soul often wept for their avowed Enemy and endeavoured with their holy Tears like the Sovereign Balm Tree to cure his Wounds who cut and mangled them In short they were Bishops of the best reform'd Church and were cautious how they intermedled in tumult and secular Tragedy And are they not now of the like unspotted Fame for their quiet resignation and peaceable deport under the present Settlement Are they not Sacred in their Majesties Register belov'd and pittyed by Men of exact Piety and highly admired by their greatest Enemies Let us not then furiously pursue them nor deride the loss of their former Stations for thô during their present Eclypse they are not crowned with the brightest Beams yet like the languishing Aecolampadius they clap their hands on their Breasts and say hic sat lucis hic sat radiorum To conclude let them be accounted worthy of the best usage now who were so unworthy of the harsh Treatment in the last Reign we well remember how religiously they then conform'd to the dictates of their Consciences and we are bound in Charity to believe they are not at this time directed by a different Rule The Obligations of Oaths and particularly those in which the Government doth concern its own immediate Interest and Security hath been in all Nations attended with Veneration and Respect The Romans stiled it their Sacrament the violation of which drew after it such a dreadful Chain of Infamy that exceeded the most heavy Penalties Hierocles speaking as from the Chair of Pythagoras pronounces that a great part of Religious Worship is contain'd in it and does plainly affirm that the unstable or timorous ought not to engage in the Solemnity of so Sacred an Act. Philo Judaeus doth admonish every one to whom an Oath is propos'd that he carefully consider all Circumstances and whether he hath a right Notion of what he is doing otherwise saith he the great God is blasphemed The Books of Christians and surely the Bishops have carefully perused them are full of the same Doctrine for they tell us that to avoid all Abuses in this Holy Service we ought to take Three Companions with us viz. Truth Justice and Judgment so that we must no● oblige our selves to a thing we know is false or evil in its Nature nor to that of which we entertain a dubious thought nor to what is unworthy the Majesty of the Holy God into whose more especial presence we do approach No Person who hath ever treated of the nature of Oaths and their Obligation doth on any account advise or allow the engaging in an Oath which doth raise an unanswerable scruple in the Mind and to which a Man thinks he cannot be exactly conformable without hazarding his Salvation Conscience is a Mark beyond the stretch of Human Power and bares a Sovereign Authority above the Arrests of Parliaments and the Edicts of Princes Nec per Senatum saith Lactantius nec per populum solvi hac lege possumus On this account all Earthly Potentates are excused their Exercise of Jurisdiction the King of Kings having by his Apostle published as the Statute Law of Heaven that whatsoever is not of Faith is Sin Nor do I think that any Monarch can be secure in the Fidelity of those Persons who have first broken their Allegiance with their God since therefore the Suspended Bishops are not yet satisfied in the perplexity of their doubt which so much affects them I suppose that for this Reason they refuse to Swear But truly when I consider the just Merit of these Prelates with the divine Spirit that reigns in their Breasts and the memorable Experience we have had of their former Gallantry I humbly conceive without any violence to the Rules of common Reason Religion and Policy or derogation from the Sacred Proceedings of the two honourable Houses of Parliament that their Parol of Honor to conform with Obedience to the present Government which they are studiously enclin'd to do might have been at first accepted by the Legislative Power as a sufficient Tye upon them without any more solemn Obligation We have Cases even in Pagan story which favor the Merit of Vertue for the Ephesian Judges in consideration of the sincerity of Hermodorus would not for a time permit him to give testimony nor be otherwised obliged by Oath And Cicero in his Oration for Cornelius Balbus reports of an honest Athenian how that when he approach'd to the Altars on the like performance the great Council did reclamare and would not suffer him to be sworn of whose Faith and Veracity the Gods