Mixture of Scholastical Divinity with Practical Part 2, Treatise 2 · Excerpt 2
Former Edition.
If we are not, secondly, nostri juris, but restrained; and determined by authority, we must … disobey that to … Brother; transgresse duty, to expresse charity: So to please men, we should displease God. So we should doe evill, that good might come thereof. When the Obligation of two precepts … lyeth upon us at the same time, and impossible for both to be at once obeyed, in such a case, because there is no clashing between Gods …, neither doth God by them impose upon his creatures any necessity of sinning, therefore one of … precepts must give place unto the other; to wit, that which … a lesse duty, unto that which prescribes a more weighty and pressing one. Now the … of Justice (as a learned Inconformitant, even Amesius himselfe, med: …. lib. 2. cap. 16. §. 62, 63, will tell us) are of stricter obligation … those of charity. We are more bound to pay our debts then to distribute Almes. He that hath trespassed against another, is more strictly … to sue for reconciliation, then the party who hath received the injury. Now to hinder the scandall of the weake, is a duty of Charity; to obey the lawfull commands of authority, a duty of justice; and therefore of the greater obligation and …, unto it then the other must give place. I would have travelled farther in this argument, but that I am anticipated by the learned, and … Professors of … in their Duplies to the second answers of the Covenanting ministers, who from pag. 65. unto 75. have … discussed this very question, whether the precept of obedience to Superiors, or the precept of eschewing scandall be more obligatory, and have there proved by many unanswerable arguments, that the former precept, that of obedience to Superiours is of the twaine more Obligatory. Those then that desire larger satisfaction concerning this matter, I shall … unto the perusall of them. How ever in the meane while … it not be thought troublesome, if I insert, what I judge in them, if not most, yet very remarkeable. 'Tis this, Debitum obedientiae, the debt of obedience, which we owe unto superiours, is (say they pa: 74) not only debitum morale, a debt or duty unto which we are tyed by morall honesty, and Gods Commandment: but also debitum legale, or debitum justitiae, (quod viz: fundatur in proprio jure alterius) a a debt grounded upon the true and proper right which our Superiours have to exact this duty of us, so that they may accuse us of injury, and censure us, if we performe it not. There is a great difference betwixt these two sorts of debts, & the last is farr more obligatory than the first; as for example: A man oweth … to the poore by a morall debt, but to his Creditour he oweth them by legall debt, or debt of justice: and therefore he is more strictly obliged to pay his creditor, than to give almes. So by morall honesty, and Gods precepts also, a man oweth to his neighbour a pious car fulnesse to hinder sinne in him, by admonition, instruction, good example, and by omission, even of things lawfull, when he foreseeth that his neighbour, in respect of his weaknesse will be scandalized by them. But his neighbour hath not such a right to exact these things of him, neither can he have action against him for not performing of them, as our lawfull superiours have, for our due obedience. Thus they.
Hence then may we shape an answer unto that same frequent clamour of some tumultuous spirits, that our … for sooth, is wondrous offensive to many of our weake brethren.
First, suppose it be so, better they without thy fault be offended, scandalized at thee, than that the Magistrate be with thy fault disobeyed by thee. It is no safe course to provide for the peace of thy brothers conscience, by wounding thine own with the sinne of disobedience against authority, to which for conscience sake thou … to yeild subjection: we must not, to comply with mens humours, resist the ordinance of God, despise the voice of the Church, rather than a weake brother should be offended, scandalized: we may, and sometimes must part with our own right; but we ought not to rob the … of hers, by … her of her power, by denying her our obedience. Nay farther, I confesse that rather than a weake brother should be scandalized, we may pro hic & nunc in some particular times and places, pretermit what superiours prescribe, provided they take no distast thereat, and others by our example be not encouraged to contemn their persons, callings, commands: for so a greater and more pernicious scandall will be incurred, than was declined. But we are not upon occurrence of any scandall whatsoever, taken by whomsoever, either absolutely to deny, and utterly refuse obedience to the lawfull injunctions of our publique governours, whether temporall, or ecclesiasticall: or so much as contemptuously and scandalously for a while omit the practise of what they enjoine. And omission of what they require, is than contemptuous, when they … urge the practise of it, then scandalous when it heartens others to a contempt of their authority. To grant any of these lawfull, what were it, alasse! but to licence confusion both in Church and …?
Secondly, I demand whether or no the offence given to, or taken by a Magistrate, who is a brother, and withall a magistrate, be not greater than that which is given to, or taken by one, who is only a brother? An impartiall Judg will soone determine, that the double relation of brother and magistrate, weigheth down the single and naked relation of a brother. Howsoever I am sure, that the whole exceeds the parts severally considered: the relation of mother exacts more at our hands than that of brother, and therefore, in warding a blow from my brother, I am to take care, that thereby the same stroake light not upon the head of my mother the Church. Whereupon, as Paul exhorts to give none offence, neither to Jew, nor Gentile, so he(r)Bishop …. adds in a further specialty nor to the Church of God, 1 Cor. 10. 37. The Jewes and Gentiles were but parts, the Church of God the whole, they but brethren, she the mother.(s)Si … sit vel pusillum quempiam scā dalizare, & praestiterit alligata collo mola … demergi quempiam in profundum, Taris quamscan dalizare unum … … …: … est horrendum … & quam atroci supplicio vindicandum scandalizare eos, quorum unius offensio magis … quā aliorom multorum, &c. Forbesius …. pag 405. If then it were better to be thrown into the bottome of the sea, with a mill-stone about ones neck than to offend a little one, a poore and illiterate artizan, what expression shall we then find answerable to the hainousnesse of a scandall given to a pious Magistrate, to a religious Prince, to a Parliament, and Convocation, to a whole Church and Common-wealth?