Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	king_n	prince_n	subject_n	3,995	5	6.4954	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28223	Prosecution no persecution, or, The difference between suffering for disobedience and faction, and suffering for righteousness and Christ's sake truly discussed and stated in a sermon upon Phil. I. 29, preached at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk on the 22th of March, 1681, being the time of the general assizes there held / by Nath. Bisbie ...	Bisbie, Nathaniel, 1635-1695.	1682 (1682)	Wing B2983; ESTC R18612	20,745	38

nay Si fractus illabatur orbis Though they should murther their King again and pull the Foundations of the earth about your ears yet hold your own and let it be said of you in the Transcript as of the Philippians in the Original That to you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake My second advice is Secondly To add Obedience to your Faith that especially which is due to your King the Defender of your Faith It is observed of the defection made by the ten Tribes from the two whereby Judah and Israel came to be two Kingdoms that all the Levites all the Land over as also all the well-affected and good men who were not for the High places and for the Devils and for the Calves which Jeroboam the Rebellious and Factious Usurper had set up clove to the House of David and to Rehoboam their Natural and Lawfull Prince 2 Chron. 11. 13. And it may be observed further to the eternal Honour of their Loyalty that small or no interruptions were made by them or by their Posterity as to the Lineal descent of their Kings so long as they remained a Nation though in Israel seldom above three of the same Stock continued in a direct Succession Nay further Judah had but two Tribes to ten for the support of their King and Government and yet Israel that were ten to two were long destroyed and captivated before them Loyalty being certainly a most sure and lasting Bulwark against all Desolations And in good sooth if any thing keeps up our Religion so that Jeroboam his High places his Devils and his Calves do not utterly devour us it must be our Integrity and Loyalty to our King Loyalty the unquestionable duty of all good Subjects and of all the sincere Worshippers of the true God Loyalty the fondling and darling of Princes which will make us be beloved and defended by our Kings and at last will prove the surest Preservative to our Church against Confusion and the likeliest Remedy to restore it and give it a Resurrection if it should ever happen to be overlaid It is always prosperous and victorious it hath the favour of Kings here and the reward of the King of Kings hereafter It gives us Crowns because we love the Crown and it will make us Kings in another World for being good Subjects in this Think not then that Loyalty will hurt you or that your being and continuing faithful to your King and his rightful Successors shall ever endammage your Religion A Religion so eminent for its Allegiance and so hitherto unattainted that God's Vicegerents as long as they love their Regality cannot will not suffer it to be oppress'd If you aim at a Scotish Presbytery saith King James it agreeth as well with Monarchy as God and the Devil then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and censure Me and my Council I may thank you my Bishops that these men plead for my Supremacy But if once you were out and they in I know not what would become of my Supremacy for NO BISHOP NO KING One of the greatest faults some men found with the COMMON-PRAYER BOOK saith King Charles the Martyr was this that it taught them to pray so oft for Me to which Petitions they had not Loyalty enough to say Amen No Church in the World saith our present Sovereign hath Taught and Practised LOYALTY so Conscientiously as the Church of England hath done Experience hath shewn saith the present Heir the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bugbear to a sort of Mungrel Protestants That the Members of the Church of England are the best Supporters of the Crown insomuch that if it fall to Him to be concerned he will ever countenance and preserve Them and It. Wherefore let remoter Fears keep remoter off and as we are bound by the 37th Article of our Religion to give that Prerogative to our King which was given to the Godly Princes in Scripture Let us likewise give the same Loyalty as they did such I mean as Judah and her Brethren gave to their Kings and Princes and I doubt not but by so doing if ever we go into Captivity our King must with us And so I have finished the first branch of their commendation viz. their Faith Pass we Secondly To the other part thereof and that is their Fortitude their disposition and resolution to suffer the worst of Evils for this so well-grounded and established Faith To you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but also to suffer for his sake We live in an Age that talks much of Suffering and with this noise and clamor the Jesuite and Enthusiast the one on the behalf of his devout Catholicks the other on the behalf of his Schismatical Anticatholicks endeavour to run down the Church of England making the truly Orthodox and Loyal Members thereof the only Opposers of Christ and themselves the only Confessors Us the Martyrers and them the Martyrs But all Sufferings neither give Commendation nor Consolation to them that Suffer neither do all that Complain really and truly Suffer for Christ's sake There is a difference between Punishment and Persecution That an act of Justice This of Malice That for our Ill deeds This for our Good It is not what we Suffer but why that will justifie our Sufferings not the Blood but the Cause that will make a Martyr For were it otherwise Then would Cromwel and his bloody Myrmidons Bradshaw and his band of Halberdiers notwithstanding their Bodies have been mangled and quartered for their Bloodshed and Villany be found still Riding in the Host of Heaven and admitted once again to be Judges and Sentencers of Kings Then would Clement the Monk who stab'd Henry the Third and Ravilliac who did the like to Henry the Fourth instead of being justly punished for their Murdering Tucks be rewarded with Triumphant Palms Then would Heaven above as well as Earth below be fill'd with Regicides Traytors Covenanters Associators and little or no room left in that Glorious Palace for the Honest Peaceable and Loyal good man Wherefore upon this account it will be fully requisite to describe the true Nature of those Sufferings that are the good Will and Gift of God unto his Church and thereby distinguish them from those other Sufferings that are the due Retributions and just Punishments of Faction and Sin And the only Sufferings that are justifiable must be either First For Righteousness or Secondly For Christ's sake First For Righteousness sake 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for being Righteous and Just that is for not Violating either the Laws of God or of Man the Eternal and Natural Laws of the one the Prudential and Alterable yet Just Laws of the other And such Sufferers as these our blessed Saviour afore ever he discovered the Necessity of Suffering for his sake pronounceth Blessed Blessed are they which are persecuted for

righteousness sake If ye do well saith St. Peter and suffer for it this is acceptable to God But what glory is it if ye be buffeted for your faults If your endurance arise for your Faction Sedition Treasonable Practices If for violating Oaths and Promises Duty and Allegiance If for trampling the Laws of the Land under foot and for making a ridicule of the Laws of the Church this is no ways thank-worthy Let none of you saith the same Apostle suffer as a murderer as a thief or as an evil-doer Wherefore let neither the Jesuite nor the Phanatick cry out henceforth of Persecution but rather let them know that their yoke is made heavy for the untameableness of the Beast and the hand of Authority weighty not for their Religion but Faction not for their Righteousness but Unrighteousness not for their Conscience but Conspiracy I have joyned them together but not one Cockatrices Egge more like to another than these two Serpents are I use that Appellation because they are both given to gnaw the Entrails and to eat through the Bowels of their Parent For what if the one be for murthering his Lawful King for breaking all Oaths and Promises and for entring into Covenants against him for Lying Equivocating Forswearing Doth not the other Teach Write and daily Practise the same things And what if that other out of Zeal to his Protestantism be for disinheriting and proscribing Lawful Heirs for that he foresees they will not by reason of a contrary Religion be propitious to to him or his Is not the Jesuite as Zealous in that very particular for his Popery Whosoever shall give his help consent or assistance towards the making of a King whom he judgeth or believeth to be faulty in Religion is a most grievous and damnable Sinner saith Parsons and again It is not enough for a man to be next only in Blood thereby to pretend to a Crown but other Circumstances also may concur which if wanting the bare propinquity or ancientry of Blood may be rejected and he that is first second third fourth fifth or last may lawfully be preferr'd before the first The choice of the People so far prevaileth saith Becan that though there be a Lawful known Heir to whom the Kingdom rightfully belongs Tamen si populus praetermisso legitimo haeredo yet if the People think good to set by that Lawful Heir and appoint another that other is and must be their Lawful King And thus Reynolds warneth the French Will ye proclaim Navarre the Calvinist King of France what is this but to advance a Dog to Lord it over Men to prostitute the Temple of the Living God to the Devil to let a most salvage Bore to depopulate the Vineyard of the Lord This I speak only to shew That they are a kin have the like Principles of Government and both alike made up for mischief at leastwise to shew who make the Firebals and by whose hands they are thrown For my part I do wish as well to my Religion as any or either of them do to theirs and Pray as heartily for the continuance of it and will by the grace of Almighty God as to my ability and the Post where I am placed defend it as much as they shall do theirs But to put by my Lawful Prince because I suspect he will call me to an account for my Religion and thereby make me worthy of Suffering for Christ nay Blessed This my Duty my Conscience my Oaths my Religion will not Suffer me to do However if at any time it shall so happen that I have either a Romish or a Phanatick Prince my resolution firmly is to be as quiet as they will let me or as possibly I can be and to take up with the Primitive Christians practise mentioned by Tertullian Nos precamur pro omnibus imperatoribus vitam prolixam imperium securum domum tutam exercitus fortes populum probum orbem quietum Secondly These Sufferings that are truly the gift of God and rewardable by him must be for Christ for that Religion superadded by Christ to this former Righteousness and brought more openly into Belief and Practise by his coming into the World And the Sufferings here also are then only justifiable when they are First Purely for Christ's sake or Secondly On the behalf of Christ in and relating to those things that more immediately and intimately concern him his Precepts his Doctrines his Institutions First They must be Sufferings purely for Christ's sake I mean for him and for the Religion brought by him into the World whereby we confess him on the one hand against all Opposers to be the Eternal Son of God and the only Saviour of Mankind and profess our selves on the other hand to be Candidates and Expectants through his Mercy of a Remission of our Sins of a Resurrection of our Bodies and of a Life Everlasting And I dare boldly say that if you turn all the Scripture over you shall find the Apostles and the Disciples suffering upon no other account And I am no less confident if time would permit me to make it out that all the Ten Persecutions which made so many Martyrs in the World that as St. Jerome saith there was no less than five thousand for every day in the year New-year excepted were upon this account and this alone namely for confessing with their mouths that Jesus was the Christ and that there was no other Name nor no other Religion under Heaven but that of Jesus by which they could be Saved I look unto the Scripture only and shall begin with the prediction of our blessed Saviour foreshewing what should befall his Apostles and Followers for owning and publishing him in the World to wit That they should be delivered up to the Councels and Scourged and purely for his sake and for giving testimony of him to the Jews and Gentiles Matth. 10. 18. 22. Pass we thence to their real Sufferings Acts 5. 26. Then went the Captain with the Officers and brought them and set them before the Councel and the high Priest asked them saying did not we straitly command you that you should not teach in his name whereupon Peter and the rest of the Apostles answered and said We ought to obey God rather than Men shewing what it was they had in command from God to Preach and to Suffer for and that was purely this Ver. 31. That Jesus whom they had Crucified was risen and that God had raised him up to be a Prince and a Saviour to give Repentance to Israel and Forgiveness of Sins A quotation much in repute amongst our disorderly Conventiclers to patronize and justifie their Disobedience and Sedition but they should first prove that the Name of Jesus is forbad to be preach'd or call'd upon and they purely punished for Preaching of him and the Doctrines belonging to him and consequent to his coming into the World for that and that only was the case of the Apostles there as Ver.