Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	city_n	king_n	lord_n	4,004	5	3.6249	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29193	Castigations of Mr. Hobbes his last animadversions in the case concerning liberty and universal necessity wherein all his exceptions about that controversie are fully satisfied.	Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1657 (1657)	Wing B4214; ESTC R34272	289,829	584

Reader by these few instances which follow to judge what the Hobbain principles are in point of religion Ex ungue leonem First that no man needs to put himself to any hazard for his faith but may safely comply with the times And for their faith it is internal and invisible They have the licence that Naaman had and need not put themselves into danger for it Secondly he alloweth Subjects being commanded by their Soveraign to deny Christ. Profession with the tongue is but an external thing and no more than any other gesture whereby we signifie our obedience And wherein a Christian holding firmly in his heart the faith of Christ hath the same liberty which the Prophet Elisha allowed to Naaman c. Who by bowing before the idol Rimmon denied the true God as much in effect as if he had done it with his lips Alas why did St. Peter weep so bitterly for denying his Master out of fear of his life or members It seemeth he was not acquainted with these Hobbian principles And in the same place he layeth down this general conclusion This we may say that whatsoever a Subject is compelled to in obedience to his Soveraign and doth it not in order to his own mind but in order to the laws of his Country that action is not his but his Soveraigns nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men but his Governour and the law of his Country His instance in a mahumetan commanded by a Christian Prince to be present at divine service is a weak mistake springing from his grosse ignorance in case-divinity not knowing to distinguish between an erroneous conscience as the Mahumetans is and a conscience rightly informed Thirdly if this be not enough he giveth license to a Christian to commit idolatry or at least to do an idolatrous act for fear of death or corporal danger To pray unto a King voluntarily for fair weather or for any thing which God onely can do for us is divine worship and idolatry On the other side if a King compel a man to it by the terrour of death or other great corporal punishment it is not idolatry His reason is because it is not a sign that he doth inwardly honour him as a god but that he is desirous to save himself from death or from a miserable life It seemeth T. H. thinketh there is no divine worship but internal And that it is lawful for a man to value his own life or his limbs more than his God How much is he wiser than the three Children or Daniel himself who were thrown the first into a fiery furnace the last into the Lyons denne because they refused to comply with the idolatrous decree of their Soveraign Prince A fourth aphorisme may be this That which is said in the scripture it is better to obey God than men hath place in the Kingdome of God by pact and not by nature Why nature it self doth teach us that it is better to obey God than men Neither can he say that he intended this only of obedience in the use of indifferent actions and gestures in the service of God commanded by the commonwealth for that is to obey both God and man But if divine law and humane law clash one with another without doubt it is evermore better to obey God than man His fifth conclusion may be that the sharpest and most successfull sword in any war whatsoever doth give soveraign power and authority to him that hath it to approve or reject all sorts of Theologicall doctrines concerning the Kingdome of God not according to their truth or falsehood but according to that influence which they have upon political affaires Hear him But because this doctrine will appear to most men a novelty I do but propound it maintaining nothing in this or any other paradox of religion but attending the end of that dispute of the sword concerning the authority not yet amongst my Countrymen decided by which all sorts of doctrine are to be approved or rejected c. For the points of doctrine concerning the Kingdome of God have so great influence upon the Kingdome of man as not to be determined but by them that under God have the soveraign power Careat successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat Let him evermore want successe who thinketh actions are to be judged by their events This doctrine may be plausible to those who desire to fish in troubled waters But it is justly hated by those which are in Authority and all those who are lovers of peace and tranquillity The last part of this conclusion smelleth ranckly of Jeroboam Now shall the Kingdome return to the house of David if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Ierusalem whereupon the King took councell and made two calves of gold and said unto them It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee out of the land of Egypt But by the just disposition of Almighty God this policy turned to a sin and was the utter destruction of Jeroboam and his family It is not good jesting with edg-tooles nor playing with holy things where men make their greatest fastnesse many times they find most danger His sixth paradox is a rapper The civill lawes are the rules of good and evill just and unjust honest and dishonest and therefore what the lawgiver commands that is to be accounted good what he forbids bad And a little after before empires were just and unjust were not as whose nature is relative to a command every action in its own nature is indifferent That it is just or unjust proceedeth from the right of him that commandeth Therefore lawfull Kings make those things which they command just by commanding them and those things which they forbid unjust by forbidding them To this adde his definition of a sin that which one doth or omitteth saith or willeth contrary to the reason of the commonwealth that is the civil lawes Where by the lawes he doth not understand the written lawes elected and aproved by the whole common-wealth but the verball commands or mandates of him that hath the soveraign power as we find in many places of his writings The civil lawes are nothing else but the commands of him that is endowed with soveraign power in the commonwealth concerning the future actions of his subjects And the civil lawes are fastned to the lips of that man who hath the soveraigne power Where are we in Europe or in Asia Where they ascribed a divinity to their Kings and to use his own phrase made them mortall gods O King live for ever Flatterers are the common moaths of great pallaces where Alexanders friends are more numerous than the Kings friends But such grosse palpable pernicious flattery as this is I did never meet with so derogatory both to piety and policy

He fancieth that God reigneth by pact over Adam and Eve but this pact became presently voide And if it had stood firm what Kingdom of God by nature could have been before it But he reckons his Kingdom of God by pact from Abraham from him the Kingdom of God by pact takes its beginning But in Abrahams time and before his time the World was full of Kings every City had a King was it not better for their subjects to obey God than them yet that was the Kingdom of God by nature or no Kingdom of God at all Sometimes he saith the Laws of nature are Laws whose Laws such of them as oblige all mankind and in respect of God as he is the God of Nature are natural in respct of the same God as he is King of Kings are Laws and right reason is a Law And he defines the Law of nature to be the deictate of right reason Where by the way observe what he makes to be the end of the Laws of nature The long conservation of our lives and members so much as is in our power By this the Reader may see what he believes of honesty or the life to come At other times he saith that they are no laws Those which we call the Laws of nature being nothing else but certain conclusions understood by reason of things to be done or to be left undone And a law if we speak properly and accurately is the speech of him that commandeth something by right to others to be done or not to be done speaking properly they are not laws as they proceed from nature It is true he addeth in the same place That as they are given by God in holy Scripture they are most properly called Laws for the holy Scripture is the voice of God ruling all things by the greatest right But this will not salve the contradiction for so the Laws of nature shall be no Laws to any but those who have read the Scripture contrary to the sense of all the World And even in this he contradicteth himself also The Bible is a Law to whom to all the World he knoweth it is not How came it then to be a Law to us Did God speak it viva voce to us Have we any other warrant for it than the word of the Prophots Have we seen the miraoles Have we any other assurance of their certainty than the authority of the Church And so he concludeth That the authority of the Church is the authority of the Common-wealth the authority of the Common-wealth the authority of the Soveraign and his authority was given him by us And so the Bible was made Law by the assent of the Subjects And the Bible is their only Law where the civil Soveraign hath made it so Thus in seeking to prove one contradiction we have met with two He teacheth that the Laws of nature are eternal and immutable that which they forbid can never be lawful that which they command never unlawful At other times he teacheth that in war and especially in a war of ast men against all men the Laws of nature are silent And that they do not oblige as Laws before there be a Common-wealth constituted When a Common-wevlth is once setled then are they actually Laws and not before He saith true religion consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants and in giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenancies shall ordein Which Lieutenant upon earth is the supreme civill magistrate And yet contrary to this he excepteth from the obedience due to soveraign Princes all things that are contrary to the lawes of God who ruleth over rulers Adding that we cannot rightly transfer the obedience due to him upon men And more plainly If a soveraign shall command himself to be worshipped with divine attributes and actions as such as imply an independance upon God or immortality or infinite power to pray unto them being absent or to ask those things of them which only God can give to offer sacrifice or the like Although Kings command us we must ab stein He conefesseth that the subjects of Abraham had sinned if they had denied the existence or providence of God or done any thing that was expressely against the honour of God in obedience to his commands And actions that are naturally signes of contumely cannot be made by humane power a part of divine worship cannot be parts of divine worship and yet religion may consist in such worship is a contradiction He confesseth That if the Common-wealth should command a Subject to say or do something that is contumelious unto God or should forbid him to worship God he ought not to obey And yet maintaineth that a Christian holding firmly the faith of Christ in his heart if he be commanded by his lawful Soveraign may deny Christ with his tongue alledging That profession with the tongue is but an external thing And that it is not he in that case who denieth Christ before men but his Governour and the law of his Country Hath he so soon forgot himself Is not the denial of Christ contumelious to God He affirmeth that if a Soveraign shall grant to a Subject any liberty inconsistent with Soveraign power if the Subject refuse to obey the Soveraigns command being contrary to the liberty granted it is a sin and contrary to his duty for he ought to take notice of what is inconsistent with Soveraignty c. And that such liberty was granted through ignorance of the evil consequence thereof Then a Subject may judge not only what is fit for his own preservation but also what are the essentiall rights of Soveraignty which is contrary to his doctrine elsewhere It belongs to Kings to discern what is good and evil and private men who take to themselves the knowledge of good and evil do covet to be as Kings which consisteth not with the safety of the Common-wealth which he calleth a seditious doctrine and one of the diseases of a Common-wealth Yet such is his forgetfulnesse that he himself licenseth his own book for the Presse and to be taught in the Universities as conteining nothing contrary to the word of God or good manners or to the disturbance of publick tranquility Is not this to take to himself the knowledge of good and evil In one place he saith that the just power of Soveraigns is absolute and to be limited by the strength of the Common-wealth and nothing else In other places he saith his power is to be limitted by the Laws of God and nature As there is that in Heaven though not on earth which he should stand in fear of and whose Laws he ought to obey And though it be not determined in Scripture what Laws every King shall constitute in his dominions yet it is determined what Law he shall not constitute And it is true