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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	day_n	know_v	lord_n	2,641	5	3.7017	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44405	The Church of England free from the imputation of popery	Hooper, George, 1640-1727.	1683 (1683)	Wing H2698; ESTC R17107	25,742	38

or Improper by those Nations that by the Mercy of God have yet a better Neighbourhood always of great Edification to the Devout but particularly to be remembred by those whom Commerce carrys into remoter Countries where tho if Report mistake not it has by some been most scandalously forgot So Clear and Free is the Sign of the Cross as Us'd by us from the least shadow of Superstition 6. Lastly the Fasts and Feasts of the Church come as unjustly under the same groundless imputation The time of assembling is a Circumstance of our Worship that cannot be left to particular choice but must be determin'd in Common and what is to be done at that time must be determin'd too in any Orderly Assembly so that it must be left to the Discretion of the Governours when we are to keep a Festival and when a Fast As to the Keeping of the Lord's Day our Church was not at Liberty without she would have rashly departed from Apostolick observation and the Continued practice of all Ages and Places since the beginning of Christianity As for the Keeping of Easter she was too under the like Obligation the Annual Feast of the Resurrection the Creat Lords Day being known to have been the Chief and the Cause of all the Weekely And as to the Fast of Good Fryday it was nigh as early as the Feast of the Resurrection They lamented their sins our Saviour dy'd for on the Fryday before as constantly as they commemorated His Rising again for our Salvation the Sunday after And in Order to the keeping of those two great Days with more Devotion there was likewise in the Church some time beforehand set apart for better Recollection and greater Preparation The number of Days in some Places more in some less That of Forty no Superstitious Number had obtain'd in the Western Countrey and therefore was still kept and would to God it were as Religiously observed as it was Piously appointed Whitsunday too the Day on which the Holy-Ghost descended was Observ'd Always and Universally by the Ancient Church Onely the Nativity of our Saviour was of later remembrance but yet before Popery came in First observ'd in the Western Church and afterwards taken up by the Eastern in St. Chrysostom's time as it slands recommended by him to the People of Antioch Other times besides these have been Appointed too for our Religious Assemblies which besides the general Worship of God the Examples of his Saints and Martyrs are gratefully remembred and piously propos'd and those Days are call'd commonly by the Name of the Person then particularly Commemorated Not that the Worship is to the Saint or that the Day is employed in his Honour onely because on the Occasion of his Memory or Martyrdom we come together as to Pay our other Duties to our God so to thank him for the Graces of his Servant and to be Edified and Instructed by the Example It is true the Church heretofore when God had been bountiful to them in the Number of his Saints increased in some proportion those Days of his Worship and it is to be Confessed that Popery had both acknowledged Saints to God which he might not own and gave the True Saints an Honour which they must disclaim But with is the Number of those Days is not greater then that the Affairs of the World may well comply and as the Number of the Apostles is not large so their Sanctity sure is unquestionable and then on those Days we neither Beseech by their Merits nor Recommend our Selves to their Intercession You see then how unreasonable the Objection of Popery is here too but see to what absurdity it goes on First it is Suppos'd Popery to keep a Day in the Memory of an Apostle and then it is thought as Popish to call him a Saint A Great Person at Geneva it seems presum'd it somewhat Popish to Observe Sunday it self and consider'd about Changing the Day Nay some are so perversely Superstitious on the other hand as that That Day on which all the Christian World remembers our Saviour's Bitter Passion has seem'd to them the fitter for a Feast and the Time Universally now set Apart for the Joyful Memory of his Blessed Nativity the more proper for a Fast This indeed is not like the Papists No it is like a Jew or a Healthen So I hope it has sufficiently appear'd how little guilty those Usages are of the Popery of which they are accus'd the cheif designs of these papers But having not been able to discourse of their Innocence without some discovery of their use I shall crave the Readers patience for a short digression wherein he may see that the first Governours of our Reform'd Church did not only use their Liberty and impose them as things Indifferent but as things expedient and to which they were oblig'd in all Godly Prudence For altho the Persons who now enforce this account may think so much of themselves as that the weakest of their Possible Jealousy ought to have been consider'd most yet the First Reformers were not to engage themselves in a task so endless nor to content themselves with so narrow a view several other respects more weighty and things more practicable did expect their care For in the Reformation there were more considerations to be had then some are pleased or capable to understand There was a Regard to Truth to Increase of Piety to Gravity and Decency to Antiquity to All the Modern Churches the Roman it self the Grecian and the then Reform'd Regards then had and ever since to be continued They were indeed to provide in the first place that their prescrib'd Rites should be such as might not in any manner reasonably offend their own members but be the most fit to raise and promote their Devotion They were too at the same time to take care that no offence should be givin to other Churches no just scandall even to that they left For as to the Church of Rome tho we were forc'd to part from Her it was to be withal Christian meekness and Charity with a desire that she would return to Herself and us and would at last follow the Reformation which she had been often desir'd to begin And therefore when we cut off Her Corruptions and Superstitions we retain'd some of her most Laudable and Antient. Ways not leaving them tho' Godly and Venerable because Practis'd by Her as the Spirit of Opposition would have directed but for that Cause the rather practising them our Selves as it was fit for Christians and Brethren All the Innocent Ceremonies indeed we did not keep because their Number was Excessively great and they of small or no Edefication Tho' under that Burden we could have been content to rest had that been the Onely Dispute and were it to have been the Condition of our Peace But the Tyranny of their Corruptions by which they forc'd us out of their Communion having restor'd us to our First Liberty and taken

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Free from the IMPUTATION OF POPERY LONDON Printed for W. Abington next the Wonder Tavern in Ludgate-Street 1683. THE Church of England Free from the Imputation OF POPERY THE Case between the Church of England and the Dissenters from it The Imputation requiring not much of Learning or Speculation it might well seem to be no difficult matter to see into the bottom of it and clear the difference And indeed the Duty of Obedience in things indifferent and the obligation of each Christian to preserve the Unity of the Church are so convincing and the Expedience of some Ceremonies in general and the Innocence of ours in particular so plain that the Reconciliation of our Brethren to us upon the view of our Reasons and the Answers we have given to their Scruples might be easily expected were there not some General Prejudice upon the minds of otherwise well-disposed men that like an interposing mist either diverts the light that would otherwise come in or lets it not appear in its own colour And this seems to be no other than the Opinion many men have been poffest with that our Worship is Popery and that to return to our Communion is to make a step towards Rome to joyn company with those that are going thither For this conceit once entertain'd a Minister of the Church of England is a disguised Emissary of the Romish Church and all the Arguments and Perswasions he offers for Conformity are receiv'd no better than if he was endeavouring to pervert to the Papal Superstition If we speak to them of the Common Prayer they think of the Mass and while we discourse to them of the fitness and lawfulness of kneeling at the Communion they imagine nothing else but the Worship of the Host and the Doctrine of Transubstantiation By whose Malice and Artifice soever this Prejudice has been rais'd and cherish'd they we must confess have gain'd their point by it They have stopt the Ears and blinded the Eyes of those that otherwise would know the voice of their Brethren The Aversion of the people deservedly raised against Popery they have had the skill to turn against the greatest and best Church of the Reformation And they have had the pleasure to put her under the most sensible affliction of lying under an imputation she so much abhors and hearing her self reckon'd amongst those she has so openly and so justly condemn'd None can be ignorant how far this Prejudice has prevail'd and with what success tho's indeed it is a conceit so unlikely and inconsistent that we might well expect no rational person should have entertain'd it And did not Popery let us know what gross absurdities may find credit with the ignorant it would be very hard to imagine how any belief should be given to such an impossibility Transubstantiation it self being as conceivable a thing as that a Protestant really of our Church should be a Papist too and any other contradiction as easily reconcil'd as that Neither can they fairly object Ignorance and an Implicite Belief to the Papists who know so little the constitution of the Protestant Religion as not to see it in our Church and who resign themselves to their Teachers so far as with the same credulity to call our Chruch Popish with which the Papists are taught to call it Heretical So Causeless I hope and Groundless will this mischievous Calumny appear to all those that shall consider and all those who will be willing to consider that do not wilfully chuse a mistake so scandalously unjust to a great Reform'd Church and so destructive and ruinous to the whole Reformation As therefore they would not be found ignorant of the Religion they profess as they would not continue so highly uncharitable to their Brethren nor be guilty of the Ruine of what they would be thought so much to contend for if there be in them any love of Truth any care of Justice and tenderness of Conscience any concern for the publick cause and our common Religion let them think of these things In the first place therefore False to begin with the unreasonableness in general of this Jealousie wherewith some men are prepossess'd Who would not stand amaz'd to hear that Church stil'd Popish the purity of whose Faith has been declar'd so expressly so illustriously attested and spoken of through all the World Know they or care they what they say that say this of a Church that has solemnly and positively disown'd all the Usurp'd Authority and condemn'd all the false Doctrines of the Roman See its Supremacy Infallibibility Transubstantiation Idolatry of the Angels and Saints Purgatory c. that has not done this in a corner or in the ear but proclaim'd it on the House top that like a City set upon a Hill has been as high and eminent on the one side as Rome it self with its seven boasted Hills has been on the other and has as remarkably oppos'd the Errors of that Church as ever they had been advanc'd What a new wonder must this be to the World to hear the Church constituted by Cranmer and Ridley accus'd of Popery that Faith and Worship suspected to be un-reform'd which was deliver'd down to us by those great Martyrs Is this the reward of a Church whose Sons have given so loud Testimony against the Roman in their Lives and by their Deaths who have still born the burden and heat of the day who have felt the fiercest rage of the Enemy and have return'd them the dead-liest wounds who have been foremost still in all encounters all along in the last age and in our own the famous and the Victorious Champions of the Protestant Cause If this Church and these Men after the declaration made in our Articles after repeated subscriptions and abrenuntiations after all this zealous opposition of Popery must be yet suspected of Popery as well on the other side may the Decrees of the Council of Trent be said to comply with the Reformation and the Pope himself be thought a Protestant One would imagine from the suspitions of these men that traduce is that there was some small inconsiderable difference betwixt the Papists and us something that might easily be reconcil'd not that we differ as much from them and in as substantial points as those very persons that complain For let all the Harmony of Protestant Confessions be consulted and see if we are not of the Harmony and our Articles do not conspire with theirs if ours are not as express and as directly opposite to the Roman Church if there can be any hopes of reconciling us sooner than of reconciling them For though there are of the Protestants that retain not some indifferent Ceremonies which we have and that we might well do it you will see presently yet it is to be suppos'd they would not stand out against the Roman Church on that account if the rest were well agreed If they could once allow their Transubstantiation Idolatry