Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	old_a	scripture_n	write_v	3,081	5	5.9465	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93646	The guilty-covered clergy-man unvailed; in a plain and candid reply unto two bundles of wrath and confusion, wrapt up in one and twenty sheets of paper. The one written by Christopher Fowler and Simon Ford of Reading; the other by William Thomas of Ubley in Somersetshire. Wherein all their malicious slanders and false accusations, which they cast upon the truth, are clean wash'd off; their weapons with which they war against the Lamb, broken over their own heads; and they, with the rest of the tyth-exacting teachers, proved to be the great incendaries, and mis-leaders of these nations. In which also there is made a brief and sober application, to the magistrates, and other inhabitants, within the city of Bristol. / By Thomas Speed, a friend to all that tremble at the Word of the Lord; but an irreconcileable enemy to the mysterious deceit, and monstrous hypocrisie of those that do teach for hire, and divine for money.	Speed, Thomas, b. 1622 or 3.	1657 (1657)	Wing S4905; Thomason E893_1; ESTC R203614	61,807	87

can escape the stroak of your slanderous pens who dare preach any thing print any thing and produce no other proof for what you avouch but this that you dare say it is so Nay to what height of impudence are you come who dare belie the Son of God in saying presently after that he commanded his to travel about to declare without shooes on their feet Monstrons impiety Mar. 10.8 9 10 what is it not enough for you to heap slanders falshoods and reproaches upon me but you must attempt to fasten an untruth upon him who is truth it self Read that Scripture again and then see if you can be so wicked as to say that Christ commandeth that which never proceeded out of his lips viz. that his should travel without shooes upon their feet Reader what horrible fables would these men fasten on the Scripture among the ignorant were they kept sealed in Greek or Latin when as they dare even now to assert such things to be in them for asserting which the meanest child that can read English may prove them Liars Much ado you keep in this Section labouring in confusion and all to prove that which I never denied 1 Cor. 9.6 to 14. viz. that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel Which Scripture you say the adversaries to Ministers maintenance do pass over in deep silence and you expect it will be by me also c. To which I say that I do subscribe to the truth of what Paul saith all along in that Chapter viz. That he that planteth a vineyard ought to eat of the fruit thereof and he that feedeth a flock ought to eat of the milk thereof c. But what is all this to you who are not Planters but destoyers not Feeders but devourers of the flock or if you were such what rule is this for your vexatious suits at law for your maintenance Doth the Scripture say that Paul took those men by the throats that gave him not the tenth of all their increase when you shall come to do Pauls work and tread in Pauls footsteps I shall not deny you Pauls wages You close this Section with as notable a falshood as the rest viz. that no man holds the nine parts by firmer law in these Nations then the Minister claims his tenth by Rep. If a man purchase ten acres of Land by measure and payeth a full consideration for each foot of the said ten acres have you as much right to the tenth acre who never advanced peny towards the purchase as he hath to the other nine who paid the full value for the whole If a poor man having a great family to maintain do rent five acres of land and after he hath plowed it and sowed it and he and his have lived in hope perhaps with naked backs and empty bellies to receive the fruits of all their labor and toil have you as good right to the tenth sheaf as the poor oppressed man hath to the other nine Well you may have a law that will own you in such your cruelties in the Courts of men but sure I am you have no law that will justifie you in the presence of the Lord and that shall you surely one day witness to your shame and sorrow without repentance Where as I demanded in my Epistle a rule in Scripture by which the teachers of the Nation did exact the tenth of their encrease who did not hear them nor own them for their Pastors William Thomas answereth me by another Query viz. Must a Minister be deprived of the members of his Church and the maintenance of his place both at once Rep. Is this Query a rule in Scripture to justifie their practice Reader thou that art sober judge whether this be an answer bespeaking him that gave it forth to be a Minister of reason muchless of the Gospel These are the men that do so passionately assert the Scripture to be their rule in words and yet being demanded a rule thence for their practice in a matter of such moment are so shameless as to offer a senceless Query instead of Scripture And thou maist further observe that throughout both their books they have not produced any one Scripture that do prove their practice in the things they are accused of But instead thereof do offer the conceptions of their own brains or else such meanings and sences as they please to force upon the Scripture which if a man refuse to accept of he is presently condemned for an Antiscripturist SECT 8. In your eighth Section both you and William Thomas do confess the matter of fact viz. That many of your brethren are found wallowing in the common mire c And you say also that you do bewaile it Which I should have some reason to beleeve also were your Pulpits fill'd with as frequent declamations against the abominations of such your polluted Brethren as they are with invectives against those that stand up to bear witness against theirs and your wickedness In the close of this Section you speak of Swearing drunken and otherwise disorderly companions that frequent the Quakers assemblies Rep. To which I say That I have been often in the meetings of those peaceable people and do bless the Lord that I lived to be in them where I have seen many drunken swearing disorderly companions But they were not of them with whom they assembled though they were among them but the scabby sheep that belonged to some Priest or other that came there to act the same part in those Assemblies that their Shepheards do in the pulpits viz scoff scorn reproach and revile the innocent SECT 9. Your ninth Section is full of venome and bitterness of taunts and unsavory scoffs which as I said in the beginning I shall let fall into the Channel You accuse me for calling the Scriptures in scorn your rule For which I can boldly and truly charge you to be a couple of malicious lyars For the Scriptures of truth I do highly esteem and do bless the Lord for them neither have I through all my Epistle or Book mentioned them with that apparent contempt that you do calling them in your Tenth Section your low Rule and Section Sixty two your old Rule When my pen doth drop such contemptible expressions touching the Scriptures as these are then write me down among the number of those that do scorn it with your selves Until then know that the Scriptures I do own against you and your prating companions that do pretend to cry up the Scriptures in word onely serving your lusts upon them making a trade to talk of them thereby to get a livelihood but do most wretchedly abuse them and trample them under feet by contradicting them in your practices After this having expostulated with you touching all your violence and persecution against Christ in his members minding you of the judgement of the great Day you return this in answer viz Judge not that you be not judged

is a stone that every sorry thing in black to use your own expression hath to cast in his face who hath so much honesty and courage as to bear testimony against the wickedness of your Pharisaicall generation If any man doth appear with strength of truth and plainness to decry the deceit and unrighteousness of teachers and people every ignorant Priest is presently crying out a Jesuite a Jesuite thinking by that brand of reproach to render those just accusations that are brought against them less credible in the judgements of the simple But do not decieve your selves in thinking that I shall be scared from discovering your uncleanness by your great words I am as irreconcileable an Antagonist to the Antichristian principles and practices found among the Jesuites as I am to the same found among you from declaring against which I shall never be disswaded by either bribe or fear The rest of your scorns and unsavory scoffs in your Title page I pass over as being unwilling to defile my thoughts or my pen with such filthy rubbish I now pass to both your Epistles And first I cannot but take notice how you walk in the old path of begging Patronage to your deformed Pamphlet Christ Fowler and Simon Ford 's Epistle to Col. Sydenham examined You have some mire and dirt to throw upon the innocent out of the raging Sea of your inward guilt and what then that you may act your design with the more authority you must crouch and cringe to Col. Sydenham and tell him that you are his Honors affectionate Servants that under his shelter as you phrase it you might shoot out the bitter arrows of lies and slanders with which your Epistle and Book do abound with the greater hope of credit among those that live in the same spirit of wickedness with your selves Had you writ nought but truth that would not have needed the shadow of any mans wing for its shelter and patronage I once knew Colonel Sydenham dwelling in a spirit of prudence and moderation in which if he yet abideth and be not Priest-ridden into passion and prejudice against the truth which I should be sorry to understand I doubt not but he doth discern and loath that spirit of fawning and flattery upon which you offered up to him that polluted sacrifice of an Epistle You begin it with a high but a lying Accusation charging me with Apostacy to damnable doctrines To which I say That he that saith that of me which he neither doth nor can prove is a lyar and such do I charge you Two to be who have most maliciously dealt with me both in this Epistle and the Pamphlet as your Predecessors the Roman blood-suckers did with the poor innocent Christians in those days viz. cloath them with the skins of some ugly creature and then cast them to the wild beast to be devoured But I doubt not but that I shall before you and I part give the sober Reader a true representation of such Doctrines and Practices of yours and your Brethrens as will make his ears to tingle You tell Colonel Sydenham that in my Epistle I challenged all the publick Teachers in the Nation and you in particular Rep. Now whether this be true or like the former Col. Sydenham and all honest readers may determine upon perusal of my Epistle in which there is not a word of any challenge or any thing like it But how doth it appear that I did challenge you your proof is because you say I sent you each a Book by name To which I shall onely say That the person that delivered you a book from me utterly mistook me For why I should particularly direct a book to either of you whose faces to my knowledge I never saw nor ever exchanged word with you let the reader judge This is the pretended ground of your undertaking but I rather judge the real rise to be from a mixture of your guilt and ambition that you might at once give the world a proof of your abilities both in painting and sophistry But your coverings are too short and to the most weak-fighted of the children of light is your nakedness manifest The next thing you suggest to Colonel Sydenham as a motive to your undertaking is that you dared not to betray the truth and the glory of the Lord Jesus nor the precious souls of the people Rep. Did not your hypocrisie stare in your faces when you were penning these fained motives Are you not known to live in a professed enmity to the truth of Christ appearing in his Saints and yet pretend a zeal for it Are not your conversations a stain to the very profession of hi●●●me by living in pride covetousness by your persecution nay what in you lieth drawing his blood in his innocent Lambs and yet you tender of his glory Besides how can you absolve your selves from being betrayers of precious soul who cry peace peace where the Lord hath spoken no peace Jer. 6.14 and do slay the souls that should not die who do reach for doctrine Ezek. 13 19. the traditions of men drawing poor souls from their true guide to listen to your corrupt dreams and divinations and keeping them fast in the snares of Satan do lead them down hood winck'd into the chambers of death I shall pass from yours to William Thomas his Epistle Will. Thomas his Epistle to his friends c. in and about the City of Bristol scan'd in which he maketh a great cry to little purpose He directeth it to his well beloved Friends and Neighbors in and about the City of Bristol those in particular of his own charge and in special those that have sadly and dangerously declined from the Scripture path Rep. I will not quarrel at the sence or rather the of this inscription I shall speak to the thing intended It seemeth that William Thomas hath those of his own charge that have sadly and dangerously declined from the Scripture path And do they not therein demonstrate themselves to be teachable Disciples in following their Pastors practise Sure I am he is far wide from the Scripture-path both in his principles and practice and if you call to him for Scripture to prove what he saith or doeth as I have sufficiently done he will give you one of his own meanings or wild deductions instead of Scripture which if you refuse to accept then an out-cry is presently made here is one that denieth Scripture an Heretick an Heretick He telleth his friends in Bristol among many other notorious untruths that I will needs bee his adversary Reply As if from a busie minde I had been the beginner of the present contest betwixt us VVill. Thomas the beginner of the present Contest Whereas I was quietly abiding in my calling not designing to write or print any thing to him or touching him Neither can I say but that I might have gone to my grave in silence without writing or printing ought that