Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	church_n	communion_n	separation_n	2,767	5	10.7643	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56805	The conformist's fourth plea for the nonconformists wherein several considerations are offered for Christian forbearance : with some relations of some of their sufferings ..., together with some account of the infamous lives and lamentable deaths of some informers / by a charitable and compassionate conformist, author of the former Pleas.	Pearse, Edward, 1631-1694.	1683 (1683)	Wing P974; ESTC R34547	112,844	120

Affectation in them Affectation of what of Fines Losses Frowns Threatnings Diminution of Civil Privileges as far as some can deprive them If this be their Hypocrisy verily they have their Reward They go to hear them for Scruples and Fanaticism Let a Divine repent of such a meditated Calumny and Aspersion lest he fall into them So the Heathen objected Sed non ideo bonum quia multos convertit Quid hoc mati est cujus reus gaudet c. Tertull. Apol. chap. 1. Whatever another intends to do that dares to make the Success of their Ministry of the Gospel the Power of God to Salvation upon rational Souls to lead Christian Lives no greater Argument of divine Approbation than the spreading of Mahumetanism and the Success of the Alcoran if he never found the Efficacy of Grace of the Spirit Word and Sacraments upon his Heart let him turn his Thoughts and his Time if not his Pen to make ready for his Judgment and to secure his Peace rather than to rake into Sores and Ulcers and keep them open to get Money as some Beggars do their Sores Consid IX A safe and speedy Union of Diffenters as nearly united as possibly can be made is most desireable that there may be a happy End put to their many Sufferings Religion and Humanity can take no pleasure in the deserved Punishments of Men the Murmurs and Complaints of Sufferers stir and move Compassions and Pity holds the Hand even of Justice in all Cases in which Necessity is not urgent and manifest The Evil of Separation hath been opened when the Evil of their Sufferings hath not been touched upon They are urged with the first but that is but one Side of the Evil let us search into the other Sore to take the whole Weight and Compass of the Mischief that lies upon the Protestant Religion and both run down from the same Cause and he that would stop the Current of Evil in divided Streams and dry up the Flood of Afflictions and Miseries must stop it at the Well head of the Cause They are urged to enter into the Communion of the Church as by Law established because of the Mischiefs of their Separations and it would be a special Service to move our Governors to make their Return as easy as may be by opening the Scandal of their Sufferings If their Consent to our Injunctions were gained the Controversy would be at an end and this Prosecution also But that being not like to be attained this way the Continuance of the Separation is more for the good and profit of the Church than their Sufferings for while they enjoy their Liberty the Gospel is preached and they that are regenerate and called and gathered to Christ are gathered to the Catholick Church tho not united unto a particular Church in some certain Bonds of external Communion But if they were totally suppressed and where they are most narrowly watched and kept in thousands of Souls would lose the Benefit of their Labours and their Hearts are like to be more estranged from us and the Church will still lose the Content and Comfort of their Communion The supposed and aggravated Sin and Evil of the Separation is doubled by their Sufferings and made more incurable by the Exasperation We see and taste the Fruit of above twenty Years Proceedings and better cannot be expected but much worse may be feared To argue for a Release from their Sufferings because they have suffered deeply may seem weak and inconsequent but take them in a Complex of Causes and Circumstances and I do hope the Argument may prove a Matter of Consideration to them that are concerned in these great Matters If a Man should move for a Suspension of the Laws against Malefactors thus Millions have suffered Imprisonment and Death and therefore spare them the Argument is not only ridiculous and weak but weak and sinful because they are Malefactors and the Laws of God both natural and revealed require it and there would be no Safety to the Lives of Innocents nor of Civil Rights and Possessions But to argue Our dissenting Brethren have suffered much therefore forbear to inflict more Punishments upon them is not without some Strength and convincive Evidence 1. The performance of Religious Exercises in a different Form is no such Offence and Crime as deserves to be punished before the Penal Laws decree the Penalties The Difference of the Administrations is made by the diverse using or disusing of Things indifferent some extending their Liberty further than others To use Christian Liberty wisely and as much as may be inoffensively is no punishable Crime but a Duty and if there be not a Liberty in indifferent Things there is none at all 2. But if it were a Matter punishable yet of such Things as are punishable before a Penal Law be made Sed non ideo sequitur eam paenam debere exigi quia boc pendet ex connexione finium ob ques poena instituta est cum ipsa poenâ as Grotius writes De Jure Bell. Pac. lib. 2. cap 4. § 22. Now what can be the Ends of these Penal Constitutions 1. Unity of Mind with our Governors in those Things enjoined that seems to be the Reason of the Assent and Consent which none can be of but such as were so minded before it was required all Reasons and Circumstances perpensed But that all should be of the same mind is impossible in our State That 's an End not attainable and they who propose it propose only for themselves and them of the same Judgment with them and exclude the rest whom the Lord hath received It was a wise and is a celebrated Saying of the Emperor Maximilian the Second to Augustus of Saxe when he interposed for Peueer in the Vbiquitarian Controversies and Persecution The Duke told him he would have all his Ministers agree with him and among one another to which the Emperor answered Ego in negotiis ad fidem conscientiam pertinentibus nec ausim vel velim cuiquam offerre necessitatem aliquam coactione Scis irrito conatu c. I know that will be lost Labour and that it is grievous and dangerous in it self Id nunquam perficies inquit Imperator neque nostrum est imperare Conscientiis an t ad fidem quimque vi cogere Perclius Histor Carcerum p. 361. Hoornbeck Summa Controv. cum Lutheranis p. 657. 2. The Peace of the Church and State may be aim'd at Can there be Peace in the House of God whilst one Fellow-Servant smites another Surely that is not the way to Peace Which brings to my mind that of the Learned Hornbeck Oratione de Ecclesiarum inter se Communiene If we shall receive or treat them otherwise than Brethren whom Christ doth not disdain or think unworthy of so great a Name Place and Honour Atque hoe Christianae charitatis communionisque est fundamentum This is the Foundation also of all Christian and Ecclesiastical Love

and against any thing which some great Men would have we may imagine from what kind of Men such Representations were made And considering that such a Representation thus made to the King so long a Stranger in his own Kingdom by a Speaker in Parliament it is wonderful the King did not proceed to an utter Extirpation of all Nonconformists as Enemies to his Government and no Lovers of his Person in whom the Regality is invested And to tell the King that all Nonconformists are no Friends to the established Government was to motion a fair Reward of the Loyalty of very many who used all Endeavours to restore his Majesty and Government and to contradict what the King himself told the Ministers of London on the Day of his happy Return when the Reverend Mr. A. Jackron presented him with a Bibe in their behalf as he passed through St. Paul's Church-Yard to this effect That he must attribute his Restauration under God to their Prayers and Endeavours This spiritual Antipathy against good Men hath been very troublesom to many wise and moderate Magistrates and pressed out all the Sowrness of some Mens Spirits into the Cup of the Nonconformists and forced milder Natures into an obsequious Severity to Pride and Anger which could not be restrained from falling on these Men that were to be set at naught and they who shewed them respects forfeited the Civilities due to themselves I will conclude this Head with a few Instances of this Antipathy and Incivility A wealthy Citizen of very good quality in time of the Plague went to visit his native Country and secretly to distribute his Charity which was proportionable to his Estate and Mind and being in a Town in the Assize time was brought before some Justices of the Peace these demanded Bond for his Behaviour or else he must to Prison He understanding himself and being conscious there was no cause of Imprisonment refused the first and having a good Spirit a good Purse and good Counsel escaped the last After the Oxford Act came out a peaceable and inoffensive Nonconformist was constrained to think of a Removal from a convenient Settlement He was necessitated to leave his Family which Separation was next to an Exile to him and when he could come home to come in the Night He employed his Friends and rode about himself to find an Habitation After much enquiry he was directed to a very good convenient House which he was glad of with respect to his Wife who was a worthy Gentlewoman and bore her part of his Sufferings with decency and affection The Landlord was a Courtier The Minister took the House of him that was entrusted to let it gave Earnest brewed and prepared for his Settlement but before he could remove a Gentleman of that Neighbourhood who had no power either to let or hinder came and hung a Lock upon the Door of the House and wrote a Letter to the Landlord at London acquainting him with what he had done and begging his Pardon for the Presumption for he thought it was not fit that a Nonconformist should be his Tenant Surely this Gentleman looked upon a Nonconformist as the Samaritans upon the Jews and would deny him Water or not receive him into his House or bid him God speed And so the Gentleman was to seck again for an Habitation to his great perplexity and trouble A Gentleman of Quality and Truth gave me this Relation of one within his own knowledg One saith he a very worthy Person was sorely exercised with Witchcraft which the Witch confessing was brought before some Justices one of whom said to be a famous Persecutor bad her go home and if she bewitched none but Fanaticks she should never be troubled for him And so he had no relief from the Law nor Ease otherwise till the Witch died several Years after Did they who so strongly brought in our Terms foresee that there would be Nonconformists and that Nonconformity would not only eject them out of their Habitations and Benefices but out of Corporations and their own hired Houses but exclude them out of the common Right of Humanity and Justice then they have the greater cause to repent If they did not they are the more innocent Causes of many and great Troubles to many truly good Men and are engaged to endeavour their Deliverance from all these Troubles It is remarkable that the most active Instruments in this Anti-Evangelical Work have been none of the best but indeed the worst of Men. And of them it may be noted 1. What their Quality is and hath been 2. What their Impiety and heinous Wickedness of the grossest Nature 3. What their Success hath been 4. What Appearances have been of God against them and what their Ends have been Some of them have been convinced converted and taken off from this Way and Course and some have been made Examples of humane and divine Justice There are abundance of inferior Officers that are very vicious and dishonest and yet nothing is to be seen very remarkably differing them from other vicious and poor People but that of all Sorts of Instruments these Informers should be noted out by Divine Providence as Examples of notorious Vices Falshood Perjuries and miserable Deaths may be a Warning to the worst of Men not to grow so bad and bold against the Ways of God It is not necessary to refer the following Narratives unto the above-mentioned Heads I shall not pretend to so much unprofitable Exactness but relate what is well attested in a promiscuous way About the Year 1674 about twenty five Persons Men and Women were indicted for a Rout or Riot in Stafford-shire that is to say for a Meeting for Religious Exercise The Prosecutors were Thomas Ward Bayliff to the Lord Stafford executed for Treason and the Popish Plot and five more whereof one died immediatly others lost their Places and others came to Poverty One Holmes an Informer hunting to find out Mr. Bakewell's Meeting in the Night fell into a Pit of Water and was in danger to be drowned had not some helped him out which Danger did operate upon him so as to say that he would go no more upon that account And Mr. S. Minister of B. met Mr. Bakewell and professed he was sorry for any thing he either said or did against him to bring him into Trouble It is observed That those who became Enemies to Mr. Bakewell of Burton had been Professors of Piety but fell from it and they fell into great and apparent Decays of Estates even to Poverty Note Most commonly they who never made a shew of Piety or fell from it trke the way of Informing Godliness is gainful and hath the Promise of the Life that now is but Ungodliness hath the contrary Curses I will confirm this Observation with a fearful Example of Apostacy and Wickedness most remarkably punished with Ruine of a good Estate and a most miserable shameful Death The Narrative was communicated to me by a