another come and it comes to another do this and he doth it If God have the Heart the Tongue will shew forth his praise the Ear will be open to his Word the Eye will be turned away from Vanity and behold the wonderful things contained in his Law the Hand will do the thing that is good and the Feet will run the way of his Commandments Even as it is with the great Wheel of a Clock or Watch Like the great Wheel of a Clock if that be at fault the rest cannot be regular in their motion if that be right the rest will answer it so if God hath this or have it not he hath either all or none at all Its Attendants as it refers to the second of these Objects the King And so it is with this Fear of the King where this is seated in the heart all other duties will accompany it they will be subject to his Laws loyal to his Person make a charitable construction of his failings and infirmities pray for him and pay unto him what is legally charged upon them for the support of his Grandure and to defray the charges of his Government Of all which in their Order First Subjection They will submit themselves to those Governours that are set over them in the Lord and honour them by performing all dutiful obedience to them according to that general rule given by the Apostle to all that are under Government Rom. 13.1 Let every soul be subject to the higher Powers the original word signifies an orderly subjection or the placing or setting one thing under another in due order As amongst the Elements the Water under the Earth the Earth under the Air and the Air under the Element of Fire In the Body Natural the severai parts of it under the Head and each of those parts one under another In the Family the Wife under the Husband the Children under their Parents Chrysost in Polycrat Tunc totum Reipublicae corpus vigebit si singula quaeque loca teneant membra si fuerit officiorum non confusio sed distributio the Servants under their Masters In the Common-wealth which is a Body Politick the Subjects under their Princes The whole Body of that Common-wealth will then flourish when every one of its Members acts vigorously within its proper sphere when there is an orderly distribution and not a wild confusion of Offices The Seeds of which Subjection the God of Order hath sown among those Creatures which are without Reason Bees Cranes Fishes c. which have one above them under whose conduct they go forth to feed and so return And although it be no Miracle yet it is a wonder which is noted of the Pismire Prov. 6.6 Chap. 30.27 which hath no Guide nor Governour and of the Locusts which have no King and yet go forth all by Bands flying in Troops some turning one way and some another like divers Squadrons of an Army and men may be as well sent to them to learn Concord as to the Ant for Industry and discreet Providence Yet this is no disparagement to Government which the sad effects of the want of it commends and cries up for necessary and that among rational men who have Reason to guide them yea among those men which were acted by a higher principle then that Judg. 17.6 Chap. 18.1 Chap. 21.25 viz. Religion When there was no King in Israel every one did that which was good in his own eye How doth Piety and Religion languish Idolatry and Prophaneness flourish And if there be confusion as there must be when there is no order The Scripture tells us what will follow upon it every evil work God hath ordained Government and Governours as a Hedge James 3.16 Government a Hedge or Fence to keep men secure in their Religion Lives Liberties Estates and Proprieties And the blessed Apostle exhorting to pray for Kings gives this as a chief Argument to enforce it 1 Tim. 2 1 2. that under them we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty That pulled up all goes to ruine This Hedge being once removed all goes to rack It hath been sufficiently observed by several sad experiences where God hath suffered the Enemies of it so far to prevail and those who have designed to prey upon either or all of these have levelled their Batteries against Magistracy as the chiefest fortress of their security What a bloudy Tragoedy doth Germany and some parts of the Netherlands present us with Exemplified by the Anabaptists proceedings in Germany c. acted by the Anabaptists in their several Scenes of Mischief To which this was preached by their Ring-leaders as the most proper Prologue and that pretended as a Revelation from Heaven too that the Empire and Principalities of this World were to be extirpated and that the Sword of Gideon was put into their hands to be employed against all Tyrants for the assertion of true Liberty and the restauration of the Kingdom of Christ by whom Religion it self is brought upon the Stage in a strange disguise and made to act her part in what was most contrary to her nature J. D. his Epistle to his Apocalypsis or History of the Anabaptists imbruing her white and innocent hands in Bloud and Massacres What strange pretences are here as if those had not been Christians to whom St. Paul gave that precept yes certainly they were so and he in that doth as certainly imply they being such that nothing in Christianity ought to be pretended or made use of to give any man immunity from his obedience to the Higher Powers In the Kingdom of Christ this is wonderful Their grosse Error refuted Zaâ—ch Misc Epist Dedic saith a learned Author that he wills and commands all Princes and Potentates to be subject to his Kingdom and yet he wills and commands likewise that his Kingdom that is the Subjects of his Kingdom be subject to the Kingdoms of the World intimating that their spirirual freedom which they have and do enjoy under him from Sin Satan and Damnation is not repugnant to the corporal subjection due to them and that the same person may be both a Christian and a Subject as well as a Christian and yet notwithstanding a Wife and must be subject to her Husband a Child and must obey his Parents a Servant and so consequently must do service to his Master Yea further Subjection an essential part of the Christian Religion Their obedience and subjection is a part of their Religion and so essential a part that he that is not a good Subject cannot be a good Christian And however all that go under that name are not subject as they should be I must tell them that neither Christ neither any good Christians can account them so but spots and blemishes of that glorious Profession exorbitant persons that make themselves a Dispensation and take liberty to
of persons or that a Gift will blind his eyes and cause him to pervert Justice if any were so wicked as to offer it yet God is more righteous then to accept it If you would know his mind in the Case you must have recourse to his infallible Oracles the Holy Scriptures which judge it for Solomon condemning the other for injuriously detaining his right These will tell you how unanimously the holy blessed and undivided Trinity concur in that Decision that God the Father hath given us a Law God the Son hath set us a Pattern and God the Holy Ghost hath inspired the Prophets and Apostles in the Times of the Old and New Testament to call upon all Subjects to pay this duty to their Princes I. God the Father 1. I suppose few unless they be professed Atheists will dispute the Divine Institution of that Law which Moses received on the Mountain to deliver to the People but subscribe to its Preface as a truth which they are very well satisfied in that God spake all those words and if all then those Honour thy Father and thy Mother which in order in our common account is the fifth but in St. Pauls the first with promise that is Ephes 6.2 with a particular promise or promise made to the obedience of that particular command The second hath a promise annexed but that is more general not restraind to that single precept but is extended generally to the obedience of the whole Law shewing mercy to thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandments We usually reckon it the first of the second but Philo the Jew the last of the first Table Philo Jed As though men had never performed their whole duty to their Father in Heaven unless they give the honour there required to their Fathers here on Earth which bear his Image therefore he joined them both together in the same Table as Solomon doth God and the King in the same precept here in the Text. But some perhaps will be apt to question Quest what a King can challenge from his Subjects by virtue of that Command now under consideration wherein neither King nor Subject are so much as named These are to consider Answ that the word Father is not of so narrow a Construction as they would seem to conceive yet that it may be too large for their duty too but it is to be understood of all who are called by that name Natural Fathers or which for their Fatherly care deserve to be so called Besides Natural Fathers from whom we have our being of Nature Spiritual Fathers there are which are so called in a Spiritual sense that is Ministers from whom under God we have our being of Grace without which it would be better if we had never been at all Saint Paul tells the Corinthians which is not a syllable more then what another Minister may say of any where his labour hath found the like success though you have many Instructors yet ye have not many Fathers 1 Cor. 4.15 for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel Oeconom Fathers Moreover there be Oeconomical Fathers such as are Masters to their Servanâ—s Father if the Prophet had commanded thee some great thing 2 Kings 5.15 wouldst thou not have done it say Naamans Servants to their Lord when they heard him dispute so passionately against the means of his cure Fathers by Age. 1 Tim. 5.12 There are also old men whom for their Age we ought to reverence as Fathers In former Times those persons were looked upon with an eye of respect by all who pretended to civility although their outward condition were never so mean who had outlived the sight of their eyes or the taste of their palats on whose head the Almond Tree did flourish and on whose foreheads Age had plowed her deepest furrows It was noted as an ill Omen and a sign of great confusion when the Children presumed against the Antients Isa 3.5 Lament 5.12 and when the faces of the Elders were not had in honour Shall these and several others be thought for more particular care Fathers of their Country the Father of his Children the Minister of his Flock the Master of his Servants the Tutor of his Pupils the Schoolmaster of his Scholers c. worthy and do not Kings much more deserve it if faithful in the discharge of their trust that have the care of all their Subjects incumbent upon them Adrian Non mihi seit Populo Rexâ—… Adrian the Emperour was wont to say he was a King not for himself but for his People conceiving himself obliged by virtue of his Office to mind more the common good of his Subjects then the particular good of himself Such mens honours are not if deserved without their burdens Honos Onus and though the outsides of their Crowns be set with precious stones which make a glorious shew dazling the eyes of their Spectators yet they sit very uneasie upon their heads being lined with the pricking Thorns of those daily cares which do attend them Neither are their temples so compassed with the one as their minds are besieged with the other That King in Homer complained that great Jupiter in that respect had made but little difference between him and a Prisoner accounting his Cares his Prison Augustus And it is storied of Augustus a Roman Emperour that hearing of a Roman Knight who was imprisoned for debt and yet slept as sweetly as if he were at liberty and owed no man the value of a penny he sent after his death to buy his Bed conceiving there must be something more then ordinary in it If so Princes more then any have need of such Beds because they of all men have most cares And the same Author relates a saying of the same Emperour to his Livia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dio. Cass Numb 11.12 Had we not businesses and cares and fears above any private persons we should be equal to the gods their breasts are as the Ocean whereinto the cares of private men do empty themselves And their affection is excellently exprest by that Phrase of carrying their Subjects in their Bosome and little do they know the tender bowels there are in their Governours towards them borrowing time from their own rest to plot and contrive for their good if they did they would value them at a higher rate then most of them do When Julius Caesar had overcome Pompey Julius Caesar at that fatal Battle fought between them in the Pharsalian Fields and had pursued his Victory so far as Egypt whither he fled and where he was basely murdered his two Sons Sextus and Cneius heirs of their Fathers Valour and Misfortunes one of them being slain at Munda in Spain the other forced to shelter himself in Celtiberia Sextum fortuna in Celtiberia abscondit Florus de Gest Roman in so much that an end
colour for their unnatural neglect of the other Saint Paul the Doctor of the Gentiles Mat. 15.4 5. and one of the same Sect according to his own account which he gives of himself while in the state of his unregeneracy lived a Pharisee Acts 26.5 Philemon v. 18. He when in his Epistle to Philemon he pleaded for the reception of his runnagate Servant Onesimus as light it seems of finger as of foot as appears by his expression where he sweetly mitigates his shameful escape by the name of wrong and his theft by that of debt among other Arguments minds him of the obligation of his Conversion which he owed next under God to him and for that himself Philemon v. 19. And S. Bernard sweetly contemplating the mercy of God to him both in respect of his first and second birth thankfully acknowledged him as the principal efficient of both but withal that his obligation is the greater from the latter saying Si totum me debeo pro me facto quid debeo pro me refecto nec enim tam facile refectu quam factu in primo opere me mihi dedit in secundo se Bernard de diligendo Deo If I owe my self to God for making me what do I owe to him for renewing me or making me a new creature when I had marred my self there was more concurring to the work of my Redemption then to that of my Creation in the one he gave me to my self in the other he gave himself to me therefore I owe my self for the one and if possible more then my self for the other Alexander Alexander the Great would commonly say he owed more to Aristotle that taught him then to Philip that begat him Gracchus Tu solum novem mensibus me gestasti in utero haec vero me tribus annis integris in ulnis amplexibus fidelissime nutrivit negasti id mihi quod Planta ramis quod Simea catulis non negavit Jun. Rusticus lib de Educatione And Gracchus shewed more respect to his Nurse that fed him with her brest then to his Mother that bare him in her womb opposing the carefulness of the one to the carelessness of the other who denied him that that sensless Plants afforded to their tender branches and the brute Creatures to their shiftless young Is there not then as much or more honour due to Kings both for their Government and Protection without which the one could not do their duty nor the other receive the benefit When Jeremiah in his Lamentations Lam. 4.20 stiled Josiah the breath of his Subjects nostrils he gave them thereby to understand that they were indebted to him for that common benefit of the Air to breath in and that the breath which they drew they drew in a sense through and by him Except Ex Mâ—sculo But probably these will except against what hath been said to clear these several interests in that precept and oppose the authority of Musculus a man pious in his life and eminent for his Learning publick Reader of Divinity in the City of Berne in Helvetia who in his Common Places treating of the fift Commandment saith it needeth no declaration who are meant by Father and Mother it being known to all men that they be our Parents of whom we are born and bred and accounting the including in them the Magistrates and Ministers c. a Vulgar Errour affirming that there is nothing there commanded of them and that there are other places in the Scripture which admonish us to honour our Governours Civil and Ecclesiastical Ministers Tutors Masters and Elders Answ There are so indeed Concess and withal this liberty granted to prove all things 1 Thess 5.21 which implies a Rule by which they are to be tried To the Law Isa 8.20 and to the Testimony Whatsoever that commands is a duty and whatsoever that forbids is a sin though never so curiously flourished over by the sleights of a subtle adversary that lies in wait to deceive us E contra Nothing is a sin but what is there forbidden nothing is a duty but what either in express terms or by direct inference is there commanded otherwise that Sweet Singer of Israel had gone a Note above Elah as the Musicians say when he gave this Epithite to this very Law perfect Psal 19.7 which it cannot be said to be if any thing be wanting And it this and those other several Callings should not in that Precept be understood the Law should be defective in omitting many principal duties David indeed had ground sufficient for that expression from those words of that great God who was the Law giver Deut. 12.32 which requires so exact a compliance to that Law so given as that a man can neither fall short nor fold over do either less or more then it injoins without sin Therefore whatsoever I command you take heed you do it thou shalt put nothing thereto nor take ought therefrom Rom. 1.1 So that if when St. Paul commanded subjection to the Soveraign Powers giving to them those impowered by them Verse 7. Tribute Custom Fear Honour when he will to double their honour to those that rule well especially if they labour in the Word and Doctrine 1 Tim. 5.17 or that they think them worthy of double honour when he would have those that are Servants to obey their Masters according to the flesh they had asked what ground he had for so doing without all question he would have referred them to this precept which injoins all to honour their Parents Concess It is confest a Subject might well dispute his Princes interest in that fear which the Text calls for were he bound to look no further then into the Letter of the Law where is no mention made either of the one or of the other But as he cannot be a good Lawyer who never studied the meaning of the Law in the Commentaries of such as are learned in the Law who have taken much pains for their own satisfaction and their Readers profit so that man can be no expert Christian that doth not search the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles which are authentick Comments upon that Law and allowed Interpreters of the same So then whatever we read of Fear c. it is upon the account of that command Honour thy Father The King is a Father so called not only by man but by God himself who made him a King therefore he must be honoured so runs the Precept he must be feared so saith the Text. In a word 't is worth your observation that this King calling upon his Subject for it speaks unto him as a Father to his Child My Son as if on purpose by that endearing appellation to lead him as it were by the hand to that very commandment that so he might convince him of the necessity of the Duty 2. God the Son II. God the Son when