Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	authority_n	church_n	read_v	2,410	5	6.2469	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44226	A second defence of King Charles I by way of reply to an infamous libel called Ludlow's letter to Dr. Hollingworth ...	Hollingworth, Richard, 1639?-1701.	1692 (1692)	Wing H2504; ESTC R19193	31,943	63

you who had overturned the Government and violated all the Laws of the Land and I wish he had seen them before that he might have escaped those Punishments which made such a noise and turned to so bad an Account in the Kingdom and therefore I shall say no more upon this matter but this That the great mistake the Nation was then in and many are to this very day is that these three Men suffered for pure Religion for being severe Christians in their Lives and Conversations and standing up for the Cause of Christ whereas it appears throughout the whole Story it was for Libelling the Government and putting Indignities and Affronts upon the then Legal Administrators such as no Government that values itsself and its Honour upon the face of the Earth would bear without just Resentments and sutable Punishments Christian Religion teaches Men to be modest and peaceable and with all patience to suffer for well doing and to acknowledge God's Justice when his Rod is laid upon their Backs for evil doing And so much by way of Answer to that part of your Book by which you have endeavoured to blacken the good King's Reign and to run down the Reputation of Bishop Laud and to express your Indignation against me for saying other ways he was a good Man which I still say and have a very good Man to back me namely Judge Whitlock a Man of a clear Credit and sound Judgment who as his Son tells us in his Mem. said of him That he had too much fire but was a just and good Man And truly Sir I think it is more like a Christian to speak well of a Christian Bishop than to call him by such spiteful and reproachful Names as you have done in your scurrilous Book I come now to make some Reflections upon your Scotch Story which you have told with so much Venome and Partiality that you have every ways acted like your malicious and ungodly self and shewn you are a Man so resolved for a Party that rather than not serve it to purpose you will call Darkness Light and Light Darkness You begin with a Relation of Bishop Laud's composing a Common-Prayer-Book for them and tell us how the Mutinies and Disturbances in Scotland sprung from thence which truly I am very sorry for for I am sure it had been better for them and the Christian Religion professed amongst them if they had submitted to the Usage of the Book and continued it ever since The Worship of God would have been performed with Order and Decency and in a way suitable to his Divine Nature and Perfections and consequently could not have been exposed to the Contempt and Scorn of Men wickedly and atheistically inclined nor yet have been nauseous to the soberly wise and seriously devout part of that Kingdom as now it is by reason of those rude and undigested Addresses those extempore and unpremeditated Expostulations with God those bold and saucy Applications that for want of a good Book or a well framed Form of Prayer of their own before-hand and committed to Memory are so commonly made use of in their Pulpits too many of the Accounts of which we have lately since the Great Turn in Scotland received from very good Hands and undeniable Testimonies I but this bold-face says This Liturgy was not only composed by Bishop Laud but sent by him to the Pope and Cardinals for their approbation and this Story I must not dare to deny But with your good leave Mr. Modesty I will venture upon the piece of Confidence as to tell you I do not believe it and that because you assert it you whom I have proved already to falsifie and misrepresent every thing that you pretend written Authority for What! Bishop Laud send to the Pope and Cardinals for their Approbation of a Liturgy almost the same with our own Sure Sir you have forgot the hatred the Popes of Rome as well as the Dissenters have to our Church common-prayer-Common-Prayer-Book You have forgot the Bull of the Pope in the Tenth of Queen Elizabeth which commands all his pretended Catholick Children not to attend upon the Publick Liturgical Devotions of our Church and that under the severest Censure of the Apostolical Chair and you have also forgot but you have always a bad Memory for any thing that makes either for Monarchy or Episcopacy that the Papists upon that Account and by Virtue of the Authority of that Bull have declined our Publick Service ever since And therefore 't is very likely Bishop Laud should send a Liturgy to Rome for its approbation which hath so long stood condemned by the highest Authority that presides there In short Sir I cannot but conclude from this Story that you have got a Secret or else you would have blushed to have vented such an altogether improbable and yet so designedly a malicious Tale as this is and therefore notwithstanding your Marginal Caution I will say Leave your fooling and think not to abuse the good People of England with such Insinuations as will gain a belief from none but those who are resolved to believe all you boldly assert as Oracle against the clearest and brightest Reasons to the contrary Well Sir you say it was sent into Scotland pray let me ask you one Question In whose Name and by whole Authority was it sent Was it put upon them by a Rump Parliament an usurping Protector or by their lawful and undoubted Soveraign If by their Soveraign pray then Sir why if they did not like it did they not first submissively petition their lawful King and let him know how disgustful the Liturgy was to many of his Subjects in that Kingdom What must nothing serve these pure and refined Reformers but Fire presently called from Heaven must Clubs and Staffs and Old Womens Joynt-stools decide the Controversie betwixt their Soveraign and them Must they presently assault one of the Bishops the Earl of Traquaire the Lord Provost and Council of the City and threw down the Lord Treasurer going to the Council taking from him his Hat Cloak and White Staffe by violent Hands Good God! what dutiful what harmless and peaceable Subjects are these How much do they deserve such an Advocate as our Letter-Writer And what worst of things will not a Seditious Commonwealth's-man plead for when he will vindicate such Barbarities as these are But to go further with you Sir Must these Men of their own heads without any Warrant from the Legal Authority of the Nation enter into a Covenant without the King nay against his Will and Pleasure As they could not but know and that because they had entered into one with King Iames's Consent in 1580 to defend the Purity of Religion and the King's Person and Rights against the Church of Rome What are these two Covenants of one and the same Nature entred into by one and the same Authority a Covenant entred into by King Iames's Consent under his Hand and Seal and a Covenant entred

this I say upon the greatest deliberation of Mind without passion or prejudice to any Party of Men whatsoever and upon this score have I taken upon me the Defence of this Great Man not in the least wishing ill to or desiring the Oppression of any sort of Men who will live quietly and peaceably under Their Majesties happy Government nor any ways envying their Liberty of Conscience as long as they make a modest and thankful use of it My Lords and Gentlemen Desiring your candid Thoughts of this honest and well-designed Vndertaking I take my leave of you by subscribing myself Your humble Servant and Faithful Country-man Richard Hollingworth A REPLY TO THE Author of a Letter CALLED A LETTER from Ludlow to Dr. Hollingworth c. SIR I Have met with your Book without the Civility of your fencing me one but I quickly found reason not to wonder at that for upon reading you over I found Civility none of your Talent and tho' I am so far from being in the least concerned at your ungentile Behaviour and unhandsome Usage of myself that I think it really an Honour to be reflected on by a Person of your Principles and should have the worse Opinion of myself if I had the good word either of you or those of your Party yet Sir when I read over your barbarous dealing with that excellent Prince King Charles I. your dirty and Tinker-like Names by which you call him and those many undeserved Indignities you load his Sacred Memory withal truly Sir it makes my Heart ake and my Flesh tremble to think at this time of the Day and under such a Government there should be found so bold so impudent and so unmannerly a Person in the Kingdom that dares belch forth such leud such dishonourable and false Things against one who was the Lord's Anointed and your own lawful and undoubted Soveraign What Sir do not you know that the greatest part of the Nobility Gentry and Commons of England do to this very Day continue and preserve a great Veneration for the Name and Memory of King Charles the First Have you forgot when the Nation was restored to its Rights and Laws not over-awed by an Insolent and Threatning Army that they chose a Representative that presently expressed the Sence of the Nation as to that Prince and condemned by an Act of State all those who had any hand in his Murther and appointed a Day which you like yourself scornfully call a Madding-day for ever to bewail the Sin and thereby to prevent those Judgments which they thought that Horrid Act might be justly attended withal Cannot you further remember or have you not heard that Their present Majesties had two Sermons preached before them the last Thirtieth of Ianuary that both They and the rest that heard them might the better be engaged to renew their just Sence of as well as deep Sorrow for the detestable Fact And Sir did not the Lords and Commons appoint two Preachers to help their sorrowful Meditations that Day the one the Right Reverend Bishop Kidder and the other the Reverend Dr. Sherlock And have you not read those Sermons for which the two Houses thanked them and ordered them to be Printed for the Good of the Nation that the Memory of that Great Man might be kept alive and the Sence of his Horrid Murther preserved in the Breasts of the People Come Sir if you have not read them I will give you an Account of some Passages in them both and I beseech you for your Soul 's good to mind them for 't is pity any one Body in the Kingdom should not know them that so they may be preserved from the Poyson and Infection of such scurrilous Books as this of yours is Pag. 20 says the good Bishop On this Day it was that our Soveraign of blessed Memory fell by the Hands of Violence and Wickedness then was his Righteous Blood shed and tho' we gave no explicit Consent to this barbarous Murther and perhaps with the Iews have said That if we had been in the Days of our Fore-fathers we would not have been Partakers with them yet all this while we may deceive ourselves and others if we do not confess this Sin with great humility and abandon all propensity to so great a Wickedness And Pag. 22. says this good Man We may learn what cause we have to be humbled for our Fathers Sins and more particularly for the Wickedness committed on this Day then was the Nation stained with the Righteous Blood of an innocent and excellent Prince that Bloud God will require of the principal Criminals and Accessories also of the first Offenders and their Associates and as we would not be charged with it let us humble ourselves before God the Stain can be removed no otherways than by Tears of Repentance and the Blood of Jesus And truly Sir before I cite the next passage let me tell you here is very bad News for you and all your Adherents and therefore instead of vindicating thorough the hardness of your Hearts I pray you humble yourselves before God that so the continuance in this Sin may not be your Ruin Pag. 25. Speaking further of this Murther he says thus It will admit of no extenuation it was an Action foul and deformed barbarous and cruel without excuse or plea he must be lost to the Reason of a Man and the Tenderness of a Christian whom it strikes not with Horrour Pag 26. We are all concerned in this Day 's Work to bewail the Wickedness of Men and improve the amazing Providence of God And once more We have since this Fatal Blow was given suffered severely and what the Iews say of the Calf in the Wilderness That there is something of it in all their Sufferings may with as much Truth be said of the barbarous Murther of this Day Our Sufferings have been the Product of the horrid Sin of this Day for many of them they bear the Mark and Signatures of it And truly Sir let me tell you if the Bishop be in the right as all good Men conclude he is I am sure you are very much in the wrong and ought to repent and give Glory to God by confessing your great Fault in so villanously bespattering such a Man as this Great and Good King was If after this you look into the Sermon preached the same day before the Commons by that great and well-studied Divine Dr. Sherlock you will find pag. 5. these words The Sin we this Day lament I shall make no scruple to call it what you have this Day in your Publick Prayers to Almighty God confessed it to be the barbarous Murther of an excellent Prince And Pag. 10. If we add to this the Character of his Person and those Princely Vertues which adorned his Life such Vertues as are rarely found in meaner Persons nay which would have adorned even an Hermit's Cell it still aggravates the Iniquity of his Murther And at the bottom