Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	call_v	church_n	time_n	2,817	5	3.2368	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56579	A modest and peaceable letter concerning comprehension, &c.	B. P.	1668 (1668)	Wing P7; ESTC R7834	7,213	16

beg this mercy they be the Letany and Collects of the Church composed by those learned and devout men whom you and I have trusted to tell us which is and which is not the written Word of God and trusted to translate those Scriptures into English And in these Collects you may note that I pray for pardon of sin and for grace to believe and serve God absolutely but for health and peace and plenty for all these I pray conditionally even so far as they may tend to his Glory and the good of my Soul and not further and this confessing my sins and begging mercy and pardon for them I do by adoring my God and the humble posture of kneeling on my knees before Him and in this manner and by reverend sitting to hear some chosen parts of Gods Word read in the publick Assembly I spend one hour of the Lords day every forenoon and half so much time every evening And since this uniform and devout custom of joining together in Publick Confession and Praise and Prayer and adoration of God and in one manner hath been neglected the power of Christianity and humble Piety is so much decayed that it ought not to be thought on but with sorrow and lamentation And lastly for I am tedious beyond my intention whereas you and your party would have the Bishops and Cathedral-Church-Lands sold to supply the present necessities of the Nation I say first God prevent the Nation from such necessities as shall make them guilty of so many Curses as have been by the Doners of those Lands intail'd with those Lands upon those men that alienate them to any other use than of those that shall serve at God's Altar to which end the Priests Portion was kept with Care and Conscience till the dayes of King Henry the Eighth who is noted to make the first breach of those Oaths that were always taken and kept by his Predecessors and taken by himself too to preserve the Church-Lands and it is noted that he was the first Violator of those many Laws made also to preserve them out of which Lands he took at the dissolution of the Abbies a part for himself exchang'd a part with others that thirsted to thrive by the dissolution and gave the rest to be shar'd amongst the Complying Nobility and other Families that then were in greatest power and favour with him concerning which I refer you to a little Treatise written by the Learned Sir Henry Spelman called Do non temerandis Ecclesiis and especially to the Preface before it in which you may find many sad Observations of the said King and find there also that more of the Nobility and those other Families and their Children that shared in the Church-Lands came to die by the Sword of Justice and other eminent misfortunes in twenty years than had suffered in four hundred years before the dissolution for a proof of which he refers you to the Parliament Roles of the twenty-seventh of that King And to me it seems fit that the Observations of the ruin and misfortune of the other Families that were sharers of the Church-Lands made by that pious and learned Knight since the said twenty years are not also made publick but possibly they may pare too neer the quick and are therefore yet forborn I will say nothing of Queen Elizabeth but for King James I will say he did neither follow King Henry's nor her President and his Childrens Children sit this day upon his Throne And for his Son Charles the First who is justly called the Martyr for the Church He had also well considered the Oaths taken by all his Ancestors and by Himself too at his Coronation and therefore in his Book of Penitential Meditations and Vows made in his Solitude and Imprisonment at Holmby you may in that Chapter of the Covenant there find that at that time when he apprehended Himself near to death yet that this was then his Resolution The principal end of some men in this Covenant is the abasing of Episcopacy into Presbytery and of robbing the Church of its Lands and Revenues But I thank God as no man lay more open to the sacrilegious temptation of usurping them which issuing chiefly from the Crown are held of it and can legally revert only to the Crown with my consent so I have always had such a perfect abhorrence of it in my soul that I never found the least inclination to such sacrilegious reformings yet no man hath a greater desire to have Bishops and all Church-men so reform'd that they may best deserve and use not only what the pious munificence of my Predecessors have given to God and the Church but all other additions of Christian bounty But no necessity shall ever I hope drive me or mine to invade or sell the Priests Lands which Pharaoh ' s Divinity and Joseph ' s true piety abhorred to do I had rather live as my Predecessor Henry the Third sometimes did on the Churches Alms than violently to take the Bread out of the Bishops and Ministers mouths There are ways enough to repare the breaches of the state without the ruines of the Church as I would be a restorer of the one so I would not be an Oppressor of the other under the pretence of publick debts the occasions of contracting them were bad enough but such a discharging of them would be much worse I pray God neither I nor mine may be accessary of either Sir I have been longer than I intended for which I crave your pardon and I beg of God that you may at last see and well consider the many errors that your indiscreet zeal hath led you into and the many miseries it hath helpt to bring upon others and that for the remainder of your dayes you may redeem the time past and study to be quiet and to do your own business to this I shall encourage you and to live as unoffensively to others and as strictly to your self as you do intend and by God's grace added to your endeavours he shall make you able and daily to practise an humble peaceable piety so humble and peaceable a piety as may stop the mouths of all gain-sayers for such holy and quiet living will bring peace at the last And in this the Almighty give me grace to be like you Study to be quiet and to do your own business 1 Thes 4. 11. Your Affectionate Friend B. P. February the 18. 1667. FINIS