Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A28565
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The justice of peace, his calling and qualifications by Edmund Bohun, Esq.
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Bohun, Edmund, 1645-1699.
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1693
(1693)
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Wing B3458; ESTC R18572
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84,020
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203
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more to govern them and they that have not had the happiness to meet or imbrace this should do well not to Expose their unpolished Humours and Manners to the Contempt of others who yet may be very useful men in other Places SECTION IV. I Have hitherto considered the Justice of Peace no further than as a Man and a Gentleman But Blessed be God for it England is a Christian Country and one of the best Parts of the Catholique Church too and therefore not only the Natural and Civil Capacities and Qualifications of Men are to be considered when Magistrates are to be chosen but their Religions too and most Especially By this I do not mean in this place whether they are Protestants or Papists Phanaticks or men who love the Church tho I shall Consider of this in due time but whether they be good Christians For many men account it an honour to them and a piece of good breeding to Express no more reverence for God and Religion than they do for a forsaken Mistress to whom they pretend to have made Love only out of Ignorance in their Youth for want of understanding better things I do not intend neither in this place to make an Exact Description of the several parts of Devotion and Religion but I only consider those parts of it which fit a man for Government which I humbly Conceive are these 1. A Due Veneration of God 2. A Love for his Service in himself and others 3. A Good Esteem for his Ministers 4. An Earnest desire of the Salvation of all under his Care and Charge As God is the Fountain of all Power and the Author of all Government So he is the Supream Governour and Preserver of it and by his Providence disposes the hearts of Men as he thinks fit and in his Justice and Mercy makes Retribution to them according to their Deserts but especially his Eyes are ever upon Princes and Magistrates to Reward them if they do well to Punish them if they do amiss and abuse the Power which he hath given them for the good of Men and his own Glory And those men that have this Sense of him deeply imprinted in their hearts will ever have a great Veneration for him and as occasion serve express it by due consideration that not only their Actions which are visible to men but the most secret Motives of them that lie out of the reach of their Eyes are open to God Almighty Those who Thus Reverence God shall be sure to have his Providence watching always over them to protect them in all dangers and direct them in all difficulties And he will by it strike that aw and fear of them into the hearts of the People that shall keep them in better Obedience than all the force in the World will do without it and this will render their Government Easy and their Actions Prosperous But on the Other side how can any man have the impudence to expect either Protection or Assistance from God when he knows at the same time that he hath not any respect in his heart for him Nor in truth do this sort of men do it but trust wholly to their own Wit and Power which always in the End deceives them and leaves them to the Scorn and Contempt of the World God in his Justice making this frequently the Punishment of their Impiety against him All men that have any Sense know it so necessary that the People should have some Religion and a great Opinion that their Governours are Pious and that without it there will be no possibility of Governing them that they who have expressed no inward Veneration for it have owned a belief that it was a Crafty Invention Juggled up betwixt the Priests and the Princes of the World to Keep the Multitude in aw which tho it is false yet it shews at the same time that these men are of opinion that it would be difficult if not impossible to keep the People in a due Subjection without it And Machiavel would not have his Lewd Prince without the opinion of Piety however wicked he really was Now if this base Hypocrisie be of so great use in Government which is destitute of the blessing of God and liable to be looked thro Every moment of what Use must solid sober Piety be which will shine forth in all that a man doth or speaketh and procure at once the Love and Favour of God and Man 2. This Reverence of God is to be expressed by a great and constant Care to Serve and Worship him both Publickly in the Church and Family and Privately in the Closet for God is so great a Being that Nothing we can do but this is of any use to him he stands in no need of us nor of our Service any further then as it tends to our own good here and hereafter and therefore it is ridiculous to pretend to believe there is a God and live Wickedly without any regard to his Service nay prate Foolishly and Atheistically in all Companies as some do But the Justice of Peace of all men is to be most religiously Careful to perform his Duty because the Eyes of all are upon him and they will be sure to follow his Example if ill and the Inconvenience will not end there neither they will within a While revenge all their Piques against him which will be many with Stories of his Impiety and Negligence and from thence argue That he is a man of no Religion the Consequence of which is That he is not Master of any honour or honesty and so this dishonour will at last fall upon himself and end in contempt Nor doth his Care like that of Private men end in his Family tho it were well if some extended it but so far but he must take care that all under his Jurisdiction do it For so much is England degenerated from its Ancient Devotion by reason of the Divisions amongst us that without this not onely the Conventicle but the Ale-house will be better furnished than the Church if Care be not taken by them that are in Authority to Prevent it by a Severe Search and Punishment of these Miscreants Nay to that height of Impiety are we grown that if We trust to the Oaths of them that are to inform us even Perjury shall be imploy'd to delude us and the Law a strange Religion this is in the mean time to make use of the Worst of Crimes to protect them who pretend to be the Children of God from Temporal Punishment and with them and for their sakes all that will run into Debauchery But so it is and nothing but the Care of the Magistrate can prevent it and if he be not diligent to do his duty herein he must answer it to God and Man It is not many Years since a War raised by these Religious men on that pretence destroyed our King and brought our Gentry into the basest Slavery that ever fell upon them
these reliques of Popery are not in any Capacity of doing us any great mischief if we do not contribute to it by our own folly they being few in Number and generally hated Secondly That the Dissenters are never a Whit better than the Papists in many of their Opinions or Practices especially those that relate to Government and that tho they have ever declaimed most furiously against Popery yet they have always maintained under-hand a Correspondence with them and they have mutually helped one another to destroy us And even when the Dissenters knew it not have they been influenced by Popish Emissaries in disguise who inflamed their fiery Spirits during our late Rebellion and drove them to that height of Fury that they Murthered their Prince and an hundred thousand of their fellow Subjects with unheard of Barbarity and yet in the mean time little thought whose Agents they were and now the Secret is discovered they pursue the same design and lay all that is past to these Papists tho not one of a Thousand was so as all the World knows It were more ingenuous to Confess their Error and forsake all those Courses and Principles which gave the Jesuits opportunity and encouragement to push them on to such Lewd and Wicked Practices Before I was aware of it The Puritane Faction I am fallen upon the second Faction which is the Puritane this was at first all of a piece and all Pure Presbyterians but in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth began to subdivide and in the Late Rebellion they Crumbled into so many that they have now no common Ligament to Unite them but their hatred to the Religion by Law Established and Presbytery which gave them all life is now one of the smallest and most Contemptible amongst them The Rise of this was owing to the Marian Persecution for many of our Country-men especially the Clergy were by the fury of it forced to flee into Germany where some of them settled at Geneva Zurick and other Places which had imbraced Calvin's Method of Discipline and so became in Love with the Novelty of it others stuck to that which had been setled here in England in the Reign of Edward the 6th and this Caused a sharp Bickering betwixt them at Franckford in the Year 1554 in which they that stood for the English Liturgy at last prevailed Queen Mary dying soon after these too got the start of the Genevists in their return and the Queen who understood her own Interest very well Settled the Religion as now it stands Knowing that Presbytery was Calculated for Common-Wealths and destructive of the Rights of Soveraignity and Monarchy Yet She Advanced many of these men to Deanaries and inferior Dignities in the Church and they again so far Complyed with the Religion Established as not to make any open separation from it tho they were ever and anon Complaining of Ceremonies and humane Impositions The reason of their Compliance was because they had no great Party in England to back them and the Reasons why the Queen bore with them were the Want of Learned men to supply those Places their Zealous Preaching against Popery which was then the only Faction that was feared and the hopes many men had that in time they might become wiser In the first 9. Years of the Queens Reign the Papists as well as the Dissenters frequented our Churches and Liturgy and they began the Separation both at once and it is now apparent that Hallingham Coleman and Benson three of the first Puritan Separatists were Roman Priests in disguise As is undeniably proved by Dr. Stillingfleet in his Preface to the Vnreasonableness of Separation c. from that Pamphlet I lately mentioned called Foxes and Firebrands which was Published by Dr. Nalson and is in his First Voll of Historical Collections reprinted so that it is probable if these Romish Priests had not pushed things forward of Purpose to ruine us by Divisions this Faction might have expired with those men that brought it out of Germany But however there were two things recommended it The design of Extirpating Episcopacy made all those men favour it who had a mind to the Bishops Lands and had any hopes to possess themselves of them which were then Courtiers under the Queen and some Country Gentlemen Secondly The inferior Clergy who were ambitious and well conceited of their own ability were highly pleased to be infranchised from the Jurisdiction of the Bishops and with the Assistance of two Lay Brothers to govern all at their discretion and many of the Laity had a mighty conceit to be tampering with Church Discipline which the less they understood the better they thought they could manage it And Scotland Reforming at the same time the Queen who preferred any Religion before Popery suffered Presbytery to be settled there tho she might perhaps have prevented it at first And the intercourse that from thenceforward was betwixt the Scots and Us increased very much the Number of Our English Dissenters Having thus won Over in time a Considerable Number of the English to joyn with them and finding there was no probability to perswade that Queen to unsettle the Church again to introduce their Discipline and Perceiving they got small Advantages by Preaching they fell a Printing Libels against the Bishops and Church-Government and Ceremonies insolent Petitions to the Parliament and in Clandestine manner held great Meetings of their Party and in them resolved to set up their Discipline without Law and against the Queens Will and some of them attempted to raise Insurrections in London and were hanged for it and the rest prosecuted in the High Commission and other Ecclesiastical Courts So they got small Advantage during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and not much more in King James his time his Majesty being perfectly well instructed in their Principles Practises and Tempers in Scotland by the Experience of what he and his Mother had suffered by them so dispairing of Prevailing by Art upon the Crown they Moulded themselves into a State Faction and by recommending their disciples and favorers to the People for Good-Commonwealth-men hoped in time to Force the Crown to vail to the Scepter of Jesus Christ as they Blasphemously call'd their Discipline by getting them into the House of Commons by which means they plagued King James and at last ruined his Son But these Good-Common-wealth-men when they had got what they aimed at had no more mind to submit to Presbytery than the King before them and there were such a powerful Quantity of Under-Suckers sprung up that it was not safe in the Uncertainty they were then in to disgust them so Presbytery was laid aside first and then persecuted in England and totally ruined in Scotland and Independency reaped the Crop of Advantage which Presbytery had sown in blood and by the Help of a general Toleration there was as great a Swarm of several Religions in England as there was of Lice and Frogs in Egypt till at last