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A37480
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Compulsion of conscience condemned wherein is plainly demonstrated how inconsistent it is with Scripture, the fundamental laws of England, and common equity &c. / by Tho. De-Laune ...
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De Laune, Thomas, d. 1685.
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1683
(1683)
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Wing D890; ESTC R8872
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35,062
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47
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if they Preach not his Gospel 1 Cor. 9. 16. 3. Rewards and Promises are promised to Preachers Matth. 10. 41. and 25. 21. and 5. 19. James 5. 20. 4. God's Law allows Preaching in Houses Streets Fields c. Yea to great multitudes with promised Mercies to the owners so receiving them Act. 20. 20. and 28. 31. Luk 13. 26. Matth 3. 1. and 10. 40 41 42. 5. God's Law denounces wrath to such as abuse his Preachers and beat their fellow Servants 1 Thess 2. 16. Matth. 24. 48 49 50. 6. God's Law injoyns Men to Assemble together in order to his Worship Heb. 10. 25. and 3. 13. Act. 2. 42. Mal. 3. 14. 16. Yea Thousands at a time John 6. 10. Act. 44. and 2. 41. c. much more to the same purpose may be quoted Now I appeal to all sober Christians whether any Law that contradicts this Divine Law or by coercive means and riged penalties keeps Christians from these Duties ought not to be relaxt and forborn to be put in Execution because all humane Laws are to give place to the Law of God as our very National Laws assert and whether the Dissent of a peaceable Consciencious People from meer Ceremonies not enjoyned by the Statute Law of Heaven deserves so rigorous a Treatment as a great many have felt and still feel c. SECT VIII BEsides the Law of God and the Law of the Land which sweetly harmonize together when the latter is not stretched beyond its meaning by some whose Charity appearsonly in the Ruine of their poor honest Neighbours I would urge that great Magna Charta of Nature a Law so just and comprehensive that no Man can deny it unless at the same time he devests himself of Humanity and assumes the shape of a barbarous and more then bruitish Cruelty It is this in few words Do as you would be done unto This Golden Text Reverenc'd amongst the very Heathens whose Precept it was Quod tibi non vis alteri ne feceris might administer a Copious Theme but I shall be brief And content my self to ask two Questions of those Gentlemen that are so busie in putting these Penal Laws in Execution But still letme repeat the Caveat I have so often mentioned that I plead not the Cause of Seditious Meetings or such as contrive or design any evil against the State but only such as Dissent purely out of Conscience and manage their separation with Piety towards God and Loyalty to the King together with a Christian becoming Deportment towards their Neighbours 1. Whether they that is such as prosecute the Protestant Dissenters would be so dealt withal themselves viz. to be Imprison'd Fin'd Depriv'd of their Goods Banisht from their dearest Relations Wives Children c. forc'd from their Trades and Callings when they live by the Labour of their their hands or the faculties they were brought up to have their Families beg or starve and in a word utterly ruin'd as to this World and that meerly because they cannot Conform to what they are not convinc'd of to be of Divine Institution Or being Men of Conscience will not be led by any Implicite Faith If not methinks they should use the same tenderness to others or else they violate this Law made Sacred Matth. 7. 12. 2. Whether if it had been their Lot to live in a Country where Popery or Presbyterianism is the publick Religion would they look upon it to be just and fair dealing meerly for their Conscientious Dissent to be forc'd to a Hypocritical Compliance or be ruin'd in their Estates if not Lives SECT IX THe Grand Topick which the little mercenary Pasquillers use to justifie their Invectives against Dissenters is the late dismal Rebellion and the horrid Murther of His Majesties Royal Father c. This is a Subject which I would not touch upon but that I am forc'd by the dayly Clamours of these Pamphletters to speak a few words to it And 1. If I know my own Heart I can truly say That I do from my very Soul abhor and detest all Principles that tend to Rebellion or Disturbance of the publick or private Peace and all such wicked persons as Imbrue their hands in the Blood of any Man Woman or Child much more any such Traytors as practice against the Sacred Life or Person of the Lord 's Annointed for such persons are so far from deserving any favour or protection from the Government that they ought to be rooted from off the face of the Earth as the most execrable of Misereants And therefore let the Authors of our late Calamities and the unparallel'd Murther of that Great and most Excellent Prince be branded with everlasting Infamy for me 'T is not for Traytors but for my Innocent fellow-Christians that I beg the favour and pitty of such as are intrusted with the Execution of Penal Laws for Religion 2. How far the Papists did Influence those fatal Convulsions and whether the Nation ows not all its Calamity to their black and mystical Stratagems the judicious unbyass'd Reader will soon determine if he peruses Mr. Care 's History of the Plot reprinted 1681. from p. 42. to 71. I have not Room to transcribe it and therefore would advise any that doubts it to peruse it there Intire 't is worth his while 4. 'T is Diametrically opposite to Justice to punish the Innocent for the Crimes of the Guilty And admitting that a great many under the Vizard of Religion had a main hand in these lamentable and too too deplorable mischiefs before mentioned there is no equity in the World that their Villanies shall be chargeable upon and their punishment extend to such as were never concern'd in them The best Religion in the World cannot secure it self from Hypocrites that disguise themselves till they have an opportunity to serve some Devilish turn or other That Arch-Traytor and Informer Judus got in among the very Apostles and many false Brethren crept in among the Primitive Saints the Devil himself will sometimes come Masqueraded as an Angel of Light Why is the Christian Religion ever the worse for this No no Divine Truths are still such though the Sacred Profession of it is prophan'd and abus'd by such Hypocritical Wretches to their own Damnation What I aim at is this viz. that we are to examine the Principles of such as profess Christianity under any form declared in their publick Confessions of Faith and the Writings of such as are own'd and approv'd by them and if we find them pernicious to the Government or tending any waies to the disturbance of the publick peace such are without Dispute to be suppress'd and punisht as Enemies to the State But if their Principles be in all Articles of Religion suitable to the Word of God and in Fundamentals to the Establisht Religion it will unavoidably follow That the miscarriages or wickedness of some that creep in amongst them are not to be charged upon their Christian Profession which allows no such
like Divine School-Masters teaching their Spiritual Pupils and with servent Prayers recommending the success to God the Converter of Souls So that Catechising is no more than a Christian endeavour or expedient for the begetting of Faith not an aid and conduct of Faith as the Paper words it because the persons Catechis'd were supposed to be yet unconverted Besides to make formal Catechising a positive means of Salvation is to Damn all that have not the opportunity to Learn it by Heart and yet that there are many such in the World that are nevertheless saved is undoubtedly known to this Author who seems to make Christianity consist in External Forms and a Moral Deportment or Conversation 2. As to the Second viz. A good and well Composed Form of Prayer to discharge their Devotion It sounds so different from Praying with the Spirit and Vnderstanding that I cannot but marvel at it I do not at all blame such as use Forms of Prayer for they may for ought I know Pray with the Spirit likewise considering the Form prescribed by our Lord Jesus himself Matth. 6. But this is as clear as the Sun that neither in all the New Testament nor the First Three Hundred Years there can be produced any Record of known Credit that any stinted Forms were Imposed And good Reason for all the Children of God can represent their grievances to their Heavenly Father And though their Petitions are expressed in Lisping Notes or by the unutterable groans of the Spirit yet they are not for all that rejected any more than a loving Father would deny his hungry Child a piece of Bread because he cannot speak plain or uses not a Formal Address for it But for this Author to make a Form of Prayer necessary to Salvation is to Damn such as will not or do not make their Applications to the Mercy Seat in the stinted and Composed Conceptions of others which possibly may not reach their Case or as he calls it discharge their Devotion 3. As to the Third thing necessary to Salvation viz. To hear Learned and Good Men Preach to revive and quicken to Duty I say That to attend the Sacred Dispensations of the Word of Truth in order to growth in Grace and Spiritual Edification is a Christian Duty And that the Preacher ought to be Learned in the Scriptures and a Good Man that is of such Goodness as the utmost pressing after it can arrive at If the Author means by Learning and Goodness what may be meerly attainable by School Faculties and that which the Philosophers call Morality abstracted from the Influences of Converting and Evangelical Grace I must Dissent from him till he proves that Christianity and Morality are one and the same thing Or that Morality is that Grace by which we are saved through Faith If he proves that it will follow that the coming of Christ to Plant an Evangelical Religion in the World and by his Death to save Mankind was unnecessary because Salvation might have been attain'd by the Philosophy of Plato and the rest of the Heathen Moralists This Authors Divinity seems to look this way For his fourth thing necessary to Salvation is for Men to Square and Regulate their Lives by Moral Precepts or the Law of Nature To which I say That Christians ought to do not only this but more too so that Christian Duty terminates not here It is not confined to practical or speculative Morality which is only a Branch or Species of Christianity and is as much in degree below that Faith and Spiritual Grace that saves the Soul through the Efficacy of the Blood of Christ as the Body is below the Soul The one is exercised in Principles of Common Equity betwixt Man and Man comprehended in that saying Do as ye would be done unto The other is exercised in a Spiritual Commerce with the Divinity by Faith Prayer and other Gospel Graces which Natural Philosophy meerly consider'd as such can no more perform than a Man stark Blind can judge of Colours or Lazarus could get out of his Grave before the All quickning power of the Mediator rais'd him The Gospel represents such as were Naturally Alive to be Spiritually Dead And Philosophy without Grace is Character'd by the Apostle to be a vain seducing thing Before I touch upon the Reasons of this Authon in justification of Nonconformists taking the Sacrament after the manner of the Church of England give me leave to put in this Caution That I do not in what I write directly or indirectly dispute against the Lawfulness of the Administration of this Ordinance as us'd in the said Church but my Scope and Intention is to shew how unreasonable it is for this Author to represent the Nonconformists as such silly Sectaries because they hant so wide a Throat as he to swallow what they cannot Digest and consequently that such of them as Dissent out of pure Conscience though they suffer such Penalties as this Gentleman it seems does not care to be concern'd in are to be born withal whilst they behave themselves peaceably and dutifully towards the Civil Government And to give him a hint that if he be one of those wellineaning Dissenters that has Conversed well near 30 Years amongst them as he says p. 1. then either he saw their folly and groundless scrupulosity as he angerly calls it before the present juncture or not If he saw it before and would not make discovery of it in order to his full and firm Vnion as he Baptizes his Pamphlet how can he clear himself of Vnfaithfulness if not Hipocrisie in not beginning this Blessed Atchievement sooner that he might prevent the jealousie of the Government and the sufferings of so many Poor Families as he talks of But if he be but a new Proselite to the Church of England and is Converted on a suddain as on the one hand people will be apt to suspect him because he chuses a time of suffering to forsake his Old Brethren and think him a Temporizer so on the other hand he will be lookt upon as a Novice in Reformation and Old Experienc'd Men will hardly be perswaded to Learn their Religion from the little pedantick subtilties of such variable Dissenters who move with the State Compass These things I speak not from any prejudice against the Author whoever he be but to put him in mind in a Spirit of meakness that it would better become him rather to exercise Charity towards his forsaken Brethren if he has been a Dissenter and since he has freed himself from the lash of suffering that he would not add to their burthen at so Licentious a Rate as he does in this Pamphlet If they are in an Error let him leave them to God as they are willing to leave him quietly to the happiness of the secure Station he has chosen In p. 4. he begins his Proofs which the Judicious and Conscientious Nonconformist will look upon more subtil then solid All that I shall remark