Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	church_n	scripture_n	write_v	5,125	5	5.8373	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65235	Two letters to a friend, concerning the distempers of the present times	R. W.	1686 (1686)	Wing W104; ESTC R222551	25,813	36

adoring and praising God and praying for the remission of their sins Your being so much a stranger to our Church Prayers has inclined me to give you this large account of them and of my own thoughts I might here undertake also to satisfie your scruples of kneeling at the Sacrament and the Ring in Marriage but there has been so many good reasons given of them in several small Treatises for the justification of them that I will decline that trouble both for yours and my own sake And offer unto you the few following observations and so put an end both of yours and my own trouble And in order to doing this I desire you to look back with me to the beginning of the late Long Parliament 1640. at which time we were the quietest and happiest people in the Christian World And praised be God we yet are so we had then a prudent and consciencious King whose life was a pattern of Temperance Patience Piety and indeed of all the Christian Graces He governed I think by the known Laws of the Nation Every man sate then under the shadow of his own Vine and did eat his own Grapes that is enjoy'd the benefit of his own labour and eat his own bread in peace We had then no need of a Court of guard to keep the discontented inferiour people from rising against Government We had then no need to raise those Monthly Taxes to pay those Courts of guard and other Charges that are now come to be of necessity to secure us from the yet unseen Commotions of a malicious restless discontented Party which were first made so by the example of the ill-natured Presbyterians And continue to be so by retaining the destructive Principles they then taught them and which do still threaten us with new Commotions thus happy we were then and he that considers the present miseries of Germany Poland France and indeed of all Christian Nations how many Cities lately were and at this time are besieged what devastations and ravishings and fears follow running Armies what terrours and wants those poor distressed people now groan under he that considers all this and compares our present condition with theirs ought to say that England is at this time the happiest Nation in the Christian world But our unhappiness is that peace and plenty will not suffer us to think so and study to be quiet and thankful This I beseech you to consider seriously and good Cosin let me advise you to be one of the thankful and quiet Party for it will bring peace at last Let neither your discourse or practice be to encourage or assist in making a Schism in that Church in which you were baptized and adopted a Christian for you may continue in it with safety to your soul you may in it study sanctification and practise it to what degree God by his grace shall enable you You may fast as much as you will be as humble as you will pray both publickly and privately as much as you will visit and comfort as many distressed and dejected Families as you will be as liberal and charitable to the poor as you think fit and are able These and all other of those undoubted Christian graces that accompany Salvation you may practise either publickly or privately as much and as often as you think fit and yet keep in the Communion of that Church of which you were made a Member at your Baptism These Graces you may practise and not be a busie-body in promoting Schism and Faction As God knows your Fathers Friends Hugh Peters and John Lilbourn did to the ruine of themselves and many of their Disciples Their turbulent lives and uncomfortable deaths are not I hope yet worn out of the memory of many He that compares them with the holy life and happy death of Mr. George Herbert as it is plainly and I hope truly writ by Mr. Isaac Walton may in it find a perfect pattern for an humble and devout Christian to imitate And he that considers the restless lives and uncomfortable deaths of the other two who always liv'd like the Solamander in the fire of contention and considers the dismal consequences of Schism and Sedition will if prejudice or a malicious Zeal have not so blinded him that he cannot see reason be so convinc'd as to beg of God to give him a meek and quiet spirit and that he may by his grace be prevented from being a busie body in what concerns him not The reasons that I have offered to your consideration have crouded so fast into my present memory that they have made my Letter more perplext and longer and indeed some expressions in it bitterer than I intended when I began it But I beg your pardon for both And supposing I have it I will close all with this friendly advice and caution Remember you and I are but Citizens and must take much that concerns our Religion and Salvation upon trust I will explain my meaning for what I say and have said by this following Parable There was a man that was and continued under so great a mistake that though he thought and granted his Neighbour to be strong enough to lift a hundred pound weight from the ground yet could not be brought to believe or grant that he was able to lift fifty pound weight from it which was doubtless a great mistake But if you will give me leave I will explain my self by a more proper Parable and then make my Application The same mistaking-man offered and was willing to lend his Neighbour a hundred pound though it were his whole Estate upon his single Bond but being desired to lend him fifty pound upon his Bond he durst not trust him with that lesser Sum lest the Borrower should not be able to repay him And so he the Lender prove to be undone by the Borrowers inability to repay him Before I make my Application of what I have told you give me leave to tell you the Papists would obtrude upon all Christians a belief that all those doubtful Books which the Church of England calls Apocryphal were certainly writ by Divine Inspiration and ought to be of equal Authority with those which we call Canonical Scripture and that the foundation for our faith and manners to God and man may and must be laid equally upon both But I think we agree with the Papists concerning all the Books of the New Testament that is that all were writ by Divine Inspiratione But the Lutherans deny some part of the New Testament which both the Papists and we believe and grant to be writ by Divine Inspiration And now for my Application let me ask you seriously Are not you like this mistaking-man that durst trust a greater but not trust the Borrower with a lesser Sum of money You have trusted the Bishops and a select Clergy in a Convocation to tell you These you shall take to be Canonical Books of Scripture and no other Upon the truth of those and only those that they declare to be the holy Scripture you lay the foundation of your Faith and hope of Salvation You have trusted the Bishops that is the Church of England first their Learning and Wisdom to know and then their Integrity to tell you truly which is the blessed and holy Scripture With these great and necessary concerns of your Faith and Salvation you have trusted them and yet like the mistaking man you dare not trust them with what is of less concern Namely you do not believe them when they tell you how the Primitive Christians did worship and praise and pray to God And though you have trusted them to translate the Scriptures into English as being best learned in the Original Languages yet you dare not or do not trust them with the explanation of many words which have in the Original an ambiguous or doubtful meaning especially to us of the Laity who cannot know the Customs and Phrases of those Nations where our Saviour and his Disciples preached the glad tidings of our common Salvation Cosin I hope I have in this made some unforc'd and so useful Observations as an humble and good Christian will not gainsay And doubtless a soul truly humble will both think and say Almighty God hath appointed me to live in an Age in which Contention increases and Charity decays and it is certain that variety of Opinions and Controversies in Religion declare difficulty to know them truly but my comfort is That without Controversie there is so much Religion without Controversie as by the true practice of what is so I may save my Soul And therefore to make sure of that I will first become an humble Christian and conclude that I will in all doubtful things obey my Governours for sure they see a reason which I neither can or need to know why they command them I will be sure to be humble to fast and pray to be Charitable to visit and comfort dejected Families to love my Neighbours to pardon my Enemies and to do good to all Mankind as far as God shall enable me For I am sure these be Sacrifices which please Almighty God and will bring peace at last And I am sure that by using these graces these graces and my faith in Christs Merits for my Salvation will be more and more confirmed and by still using them more and more new graces will be still added and all be still more and more confirmed so confirmed as to bear witness with me and be my comfort when I must make my last and great account to the Searcher of all hearts Almighty God give me grace to practise what I have commended to your consideration for this and this only can and will make my life quiet and comfortable and my death happy And my dear Cosin as I wish my own so I wish yours may be September 12 1679. Your Affectionate Kinsman R. W. THE END

and also by standing up at the profession of the Creed which contains the several Articles that I and all true Christians profess and believe and also by my standing up at giving Glory to the Father the Son and to the Holy Ghost and confessing them to be Three Persous and but one God And secondly I go to Church to praise my God for my Creation and Redemption and for his many deliverances of me from the many dangers of my Body and more especially of my Soul in sending me Redemption by the death of his Son my Saviour and for the constant assistance of his Holy Spirit a part of which Praise I perform frequently in the Psalms which are daily read in the Publick Congregation And thirdly I go to Church publickly to confess and bewail my sins and to beg pardon for them for his merits who died to reconcile me and all Mankind unto God who is both his and my Father and as for the Words in which I 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 also to translate those Scriptures into English And in these Collects you may note that I pray absolutely for pardon of sin and for grace to believe and serve God But I pray for health and peace and plenty 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 in my adoring my God and by 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 joyning 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 I think especially by the Non-conformists 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 intailed with those Lands intailed with those Lands upon those men that alienate them to any other use than for the use of those that shall serve at God's Altar to which end the Priests Portion was kept with Care and Conscience till the days 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 exchanged 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 if you desire a further information I refer you to a little Treatise written by the Learned Sir Henry Spelman called De non temerandis Ecclesiis and especially to the Presace 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 then shared 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 and for a proof of which he refers you to the Parliament Rolls of the twenty-seventh of that King And to me it seems fit that the Observations of the ruine 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 which he left written are not also made publick but possibly they may pare too near 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 to preserve the Lands and Rights of the Church and therefore in his Book of Penitential Meditations and Vows made in his sad Solitude and Imprisonment at Holmby you may in that Chapter of the Covenant there find that at that time when he apprehended Himself in danger of 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 and yet no man hath a greater desire to have hishops and all Church-men so reformed 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 repair the breaches of the state without the ruins 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 beg of God that you may at last see and well consider the many errors that your indiscreet zeal hath led you into and that you and your Party may see also the many miseries it hath helpt to bring upon others and that for