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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	fall_v	gift_n	great_a	41	3	2.1267	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56683	The parable of the pilgrim written to a friend by Symon Patrick ...	Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1665 (1665)	Wing P826; ESTC R11931	349,344	544

affirmed that they only were the people of Sion and that unless he joyned himself to their company in which alas there was no Peace at all he should never come to that City of God which he sought after The heads of these divisions made the world believe that they were the Torches which must light them through the darkness of errour the Pole-star to regulate their course in the search and discovery of truth and that unless men used their Clue which God knows was most wofully intangled they should never fail to be lost in the Labyrinths and Maeanders of Ignorance and Folly Nay to such a degree did they magnifie themselves as if Truth and they had been born at the same time or at least had come of Age together It seemed to be a secret till they appeared and to have been reserved from the beginning on purpose to discover it self to them in Markets and Camps if not in lewder places The most modest pretension was that Truth was but a stripling or rather went in side-coats till it came to their schools to be ripened into the wisdome of perfect men They spake of the affairs of Heaven as if they were Counsellors of State in that Kingdom and opened the secrets of Jesus Christ as if they were his Confidents St. John who lay in his bosom never delivered any thing with greater peremptoriness than these men did and had it not been that they wanted his charity they might have been thought by most as great Oracles as they thought themselves There seemed no difference between them and Prophets but only that they could not prove their mission else they had the gift of boldness and fell not short in their pretenses to inspiration In this conceit they thrust into the world a great number of books which were called the Word of the Lord and cryed up as the Maps of that heavenly Country and the exact Charts whereby men must steer their course if ever they meant to come safely thither Into huge Volumes these writings sometimes swelled and they were wont to collect and faggot together so many things and so vastly different that a man could not easily avoid to lose his way in this Wood while he was seeking his way to Jerusalem Especially since they never forgot to furnish these bundles with some lusty sticks wherewith to bang their adversaries and beat them down as low as hell For in the midst of such a fearful scuffle there was so great a dust raised that no man could tell where he was nor discern any thing but only this that he was not in the way to the Vision of Peace I need not relate how sorely it grieved the good mans heart to see so many different wayes every one of them laying so high a claim to truth and bitterly reproaching the rest as damnable Heresies He could bend his course to no quarter but he was in danger to be assaulted with some question or other and was put upon his desence against some man of brass who thought himself worthy to be one of the Champions of Truth The spirit of common Barretry did not seem a greater plague to him than these vexatious disputing people The fury of whom likewise was sometimes so violent that he thought he had made a good retreat if he were not bruised and almost beat in pieces by their rude blows whose opinions he adventured to thwart by any strong contradiction Nay they all taking distant paths and not going in streight and parallel lines but in oblique and crooked wayes which crossed each other very frequently they never met together but there was such justling and quarrelling about the road to Jerusalem that no man could be near them but they would ingage him to take the one or the other part in the Bloody conflict So I call it for they thought that they did God good service when they dispatched one of their enemies and that they made him a Sacrifice when they satisfied their own beastly fury And this indeed was the saddest thing of all to his thoughts that their heat and passion they had the confidence to Baptize into the name of holy zeal and that which was but the love of their own opinion they constantly miscalled the love of God and of his Truth Though those dayes as I have already said were very frozen and cold yet they cudgel'd one another so long till they grew not and then they cry'd the weather was very warm and the Sun in his highest elevation Gods enemies they thought they opposed in their own and they fancied themselves ingaged against sin while they were buffeting a contrary opinion There was no heat but they took it for divine though it were of their own kindling and so they were but all on fire they never doubted but it was from heaven For there was no sin in those dayes like Moderation and no vertue comparable to a furious and headlong zeal But yet he received this benefit by those unhappy feuds that they made him sometimes think it was no mean thing in the esteem of others as well as himself for which there was so many and so fiery contenders The Prize he hoped would prove glorious which had drawn into the field so many combatants and which with such zealous sticklings all sides sought to win The affliction also which he felt in his spirit when he beheld them so sharply ingaged had this good effect upon him that it made him more sensibly admire the goodness of God which had preserved him from listing himself in any of those angry parties and entring into those never enough to be lamented broils This put him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him to remain long without the knowledge of the Truth who had so gratiously prevented him from diverting into the paths of falshood This degree of understanding he had already acquired That Sweetness and Love Meekness and Peace were the Harbingers to Divine Knowledg and since they were become his Guests he hoped that would not be far behind But that any man who knows God to be Love should imagine that he will dwell in a mind where there is nothing but hatred to be found seemed a kind of Prodigy unto him And it did quite astonish him to see that so many men did dream that the way to The Vision of Peace lay through the field of strife and war and that we must come to live together in endless love hereafter by living in perpetual frays and brawls in the world where we now are CAP. IV. How he happily heard of a safe Guide unto it with a true Character of him AND he truly who is not wont to frustrate the expectations of such well minded souls did not use much delay before he gave him a sensible demonstration of that which he already believed He found that the God of peace could not make himself long a stranger to

the record which God hath given of his Son that in him we have eternal life It would make my relation too long if I should transcribe that Treatise which is also come to my hands and therefore I shall only acquaint you with the conclusion of their discourse on this argument which was to this purpose And now said the Father if you call in question the credit of this Story concerning Jesus because you never saw him I would wish you to take heed lest you be a teacher of Rebellion and learn men to justifie Sedition against their lawful Soveraign For if we must entertain nothing but what we our selves see then the Rabble may do well to say they have no King because they never saw his face nor hath he yet gone his Progress among them and that there are no Laws that oblige them because they were not present when they were enacted nor heard his Majesty say The King Will or that he consented to them For my part I cannot see less reason to believe that our Lord was miraculously conceived ushered into the World by a Star and the shouts of the Heavenly hosts annointed with the Holy Ghost at his Baptism transfigured on the holy Mount confessed by Devils acknowledged by Angels justified by Miracles raised from the Dead and taken up to Glory then our children will have to believe that our present Soveraign after a long banishment was suddenly restored to his Throne that he entred his Royal City on such a day with the joyful acclamations of all his people that he rode in Triumph and was solemnly Crowned the year following and that the Book containing a description of the Magnificent Ceremonies of that day gives a true and just account of them They that would perswade you to doubt of the truth of the holy Writings which conveigh the notice of those great things to you and whereby you hold all the hopes you have of happiness at Jerusalem may in time think their wits so fine as to go about to prove that the Great Charter of England is but a forged Deed that all the Liberties you think you have are but the Idols of your own brain or that the whole Writing by factious spirits hath been corrupted and altered at their pleasure And if you should say that there are so many Arguments to stop their mouths that they will be ashamed of such foolish talk for Kings have sealed it and Parliaments confirm'd it and all English men have a long time asserted it you will find your self much mistaken and see that these allegations are not considerable with such disputes For so have these holy books as I esteem them been ever received for the Apostolical Writings none could ever prove them guilty of any imposture nor do their greatest enemies charge them with the crime of reporting false Miracles yea the Jews acknowledge them to have been wrought and Heathen writers have set their hands to some things of no mean account and yet these are not sufficient with such men to prove them true because they did not stand at the Apostles elbows when they were pen'd and sent abroad into the World And therefore what is the confession of all England worth to prove your Liberties since the confession of the whole Christian World for so many ages is not worth a straw with them to prove these Writings If they will not let you have a Jesus because they did not see him why should they suffer you to enjoy any other things which they can take away upon the same pretence But if they will permit you to enjoy the benefit of any antient Deeds when nothing can be justly excepted against them then we hope that it is lawful to call the Gospel as one of the Antients doth our new Conveyance whereby Jesus hath setled upon us an everlasting inheritance in the Heavenly Country of far greater value then that which the Israelites by Vertue of the old writings possessed in the earthly Here the young Traveller pluckt him by the sleeve beseeching him to make no longer stay in that place for said he you have dissipated all my clouds already and I am fully perswaded that there is such a City as Jerusalem Though I doubted a little of it yet let me not be suspected of Infidelity I protest to you that I bear such a reverend regard to these Writings which you have laid before me that I would rather lose all the goods I have in the World then part with them I have a long time held them so Sacred that they have been my comforters in all my troubles and the songs of my Pilgrimage At this very moment I carry them about me and shall hereafter set a greater value on them for what I have held by Custome I shall now hold by Reason and be able to render an account to those that ask of the Hope that is in me Let us go on Sir I intreat you without any further dispute and howsoever negligent I have been in former times I am resolved hereafter to read this Holy Book with more attention of Mind and to procure thereby that this short stay may not make me come a whit the later to my journeys end It is very well done said the Father that you have provided your self with so necessary a companion as that Book is which might serve to direct you without me but that I see you are not sufficiently acquainted with the language of it When you read of the Witness of the Spirit its like you waited for some immediate assurance of the truth of these writings And when you heard them speak of our being sealed with the holy Spirit of promise you lookt for an inspiration and expected to be stampt and impressed with a certain perswasion of their Authority Which is as much as to say that you desired to be endued with a confidence which as it stood upon no ground so might be shaken without any cause at all But I pray you hereafter to be as good as your word applying your mind more vigorously to comprehend the sense of what you read and where you doubt of any thing repair to me that I may assist your Understanding And above all things let me once for all advise you to use all means to strengthen your faith concerning the other Life and to assure your self upon such evidence as I have given you that Jesus is gone to Jerusalem and there expects your coming to him Do but firmly perswade your heart of this and keep it in your mind and then I shall think it as impossible for you to grow weary as for the Sun to stand still and as impossible you should miscarry as that the Sun should fall from his Orb. After he had received a promise from him that he would do his endeavour to make his Soul more sensible of this weighty thing they buckled themselves afresh to their march And never did the young man travel so lustily as now