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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A25201 A sermon preached at the assizes held at Leicester for that county on the twenty third day of March, 1681/2 by Nathaniel Alsop. Alsop, Nathaniel. 1682 (1682) Wing A2904; ESTC R23629 20,188 36

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ever provided for them at hand but instead thereof asked Meat for their Lusts It was not enough to satisfy their natural Appetites and real Wants but their wandering Fancies and their various Dissenting Pallats must be humoured also and upon such distates like these they fell into frequent Mutinies and Associations against the Lord and against his Vice-gerent insomuch that Moses was forced to declare freely in that his Farewell-Oration which Josephus hath left penned unto us in the Fourth Book of his Antiquities That he was more often in hazzard of his Life from them than from any other of his Uncircumcised Enemies I shall not stay to adjust the Circumstances nor set the Members of the Comparison in joint but only to shew how far we have sunk from the Rule of our Duty and still are falling give me leave to point you back up as far as to the Source and Fountain of all Political Sanctions the Basis of Government the Cement of Societies the Princes heavenly and unforfeitable Charter comprehended in this short Precept Honour thy Father and thy Mother c. In which Words I shall observe no more Particulars than what are obvious unto every Eye As 1. The Stile or Title here given to the Supream Magistrate of a Parent 2. The Debt belonging unto him Honour 3. The enforcement of the Duty by a Promise but with the implication of a severe Threat that thy days may be long upon the Land c. 1. The Stile here is a Name full of Obligation and Endearment we find God himself often calling his People to reflect upon it to hold them fast to their Duty for I am a Father to Israel saith God Jer. 31.9 he pitieth as a Father Psal 103.13 with all the bowels and tenderness that can be shewed he corrects as a Father Prov. 3.12 alwaies within measure and less than our Offences deserve and upon the same score he also claims the observance of Sons Mal. 1.6 And no doubt but this Title here given to Kings and Sovereign Powers is very apt to move Obedience to becalm the strivings of the People and to smooth the Yoke of Government which some Belialites will always spurn at but what doth Moses then or rather the Lord himself thus speak unto us meerly because of the hardness of our Hearts Doth he condescend to such mean Artifices to treat us by the Popular courses of Ambition which is wont to stroak and sooth the Beast which she designs to ride No I suppose the soft and endearing stile here used is more than a Colour of Rhetorick and shall therefore take the occasion which is fairly offered to reflect upon the Original of Civil Government and the rather because if it shall appear to be founded in the Natural Right of Paternal Authority as the most judicious do affirm it will prepare the way for that which follows and the Duty of the Text will be inferred by a necessary Logical deduction The stile of the Text being a Name of Nature and Authority too suggests unto us in all our researches after the Rise and Birth of Dominion to have one Eye to the Order and Course of Nature so that to understand the Original of Civil Power we must ascend to the true Original of Mankind and this Method will bring us to acknowledge the Truth of that Aphorism of St. Irenaeus Cujus jussu nascuntur homines hujus jussu Reges constituuntur There have been perhaps as many Opinions concerning the Origine of the World as concerning the Origine of Government and all of them wide of Truth But then as Tatianus from a malicious Adversary of Religion confesseth himself to have been converted to the Faith of the Holy Scripture by that satisfactory and consistent account which it gives of the Creation of the World so the beginning of Civil Power and Dominion which the same part of Holy Writ accounteth for also if duly considered may as well convert the seditious underminers of Government and turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just when it shall appear that it was neither blind Chance nor steep Ambition nor prevailing Usurpation nor Pacts and Covenants nor any happy Occurrence nor the longest Sword nor most Voices which made the first distinction betwixt King and Subject That the first common Parent of Mankind was invested with a Soveraign Power and acted as Monarch of the World there are few will question that will not also call in question the History of Moses When Adam who had Dominion given him by God over all the Creatures disposing of his Sons to one committed the Tillage of the ground to another the care of the Flocks and Herds where then was the Equality of Persons where the Community of Goods And if the World was at length peopled by the Offspring descended from this Stock it will be difficult to conceive how and when such a state of Natural Freedom should be introduced The great Master of Politicks Aristotle saw this without his Bible and although for want of the Divine Oracles he was forced to wrap his head in the dark and inextricable Clouds of Eternal Successions yet he saw a necessity of asserting a Natural Subordination where there was a Natural Succession and came at length to conclude that the greatest Kingdom in process of time grew from a single Family as a large spreading Branch shoots from a slender Stock It may be the stile of Royalty was not heard of 'till the World was well on towards 2000 years old that came in with the other Trappings and Ornaments when Monarchy became magnificent and pompous in the Eyes of the People but if we look after the Essentials of Power we shall find them lodged in the first Parent of Mankind and transmitted as an Inheritance by the First-born of the Family And to deduce this there is no better Clew than the Sacred History it self which leads us down from Adam the Universal Monarch by the Patriarchal Line unto the first Plantation of the World after the Flood when several Colonies were led out by their respective Heads and became distinct Kingdoms whereof the Sons or Grand Children of Noah were Kings by a Fatherly-Right Right as appears at large from Gen. 10. and among Humane Authors most accurately from that barbarous Writer at the end of Eusebius's Chronicon whom for the sake of the Subject which he handles the great Scaliger thought worthy to be joined with those renowned Pieces of Antiquity If we follow the Abettors of this Hypothesis and travel farther by the same Thred of Scripture History into the Land of Canaan we shall find there in a Country of no great Compass above 30 Kings at one time in that little Land And at this day they tell us if we look into the state of Affairs in the Indies and those Countries of late and new discovery where they live by the Dictates of simple and untaught Nature without the invented Models of Policy we