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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	great_a	matter_n	see_v	3,060	5	3.1155	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51391	The Bishop of VVorcester's letter to a friend for vindication of himself from Mr. Baxter's calumny	Morley, George, 1597-1684.	1662 (1662)	Wing M2790; ESTC R697	25,939	52

THE Bishop of Worcester's LETTER To a Friend For VINDICATION of Himself FROM Mr. BAXTER'S Calumny Tenet insanabile multos Scribendi Cacoethes London Printed by R. Norton for Timothy Garthwait at the Little North-door of St. Pauls Church 1662. Mr. Baxter hath lately printed a Book called The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance and the Benefits of Self-Acquaintance in the Address of which Book to his dearly beloved the Inhabitants of Kidderminster he hath this ensuing passage relating to the Bishop of Worcester IN a disputation by writing those of the other part formed an Argument whose Major Proposition was to this sense for I have no Copy Whatsoever Book enjoyneth nothing but what is of it self lawful and by lawful authority enjoyneth nothing that is sinful We denied this Proposition and at last gave divers Reasons of our denial amongst which one was that It may be unlawful by Accident and therefore sinful You now know my Crime it is my concurring with Learned Reverend Brethren to give this reason of our denial of a Proposition yet they are not forbidden to Preach for it and I hope shall not be but only I. You have publickly heard from a mouth that should speak nothing but the words of Charity Truth and Soberness especially there that this was a desperate shift that men at the last are forced to and inferring that then neither God nor man can enjoyn without sin In City and Countrey this soundeth forth to my reproach I should take it for an Act of Clemency to have been smitten professedly for nothing and that it might not have been thought necessary to afflict me by a defamation that so I might seem justly afflicted by a prohibition to Preach the Gospel But indeed is there in these words of ours so great a Crime though we doubted not but they knew that our Assertion made not Every Evil Accident to be such as made an Imposition unlawful yet we expressed this by word to them at that time for fear of being misreported and I told it to the Right Reverend Bishop when he forbad me to Preach and gave this as a reason And I must confess I am still guilty of so much weakness as to be confident that Some things not Evil of themselves may have Accidents so Evil as may make it a sin to him that shall Command them Is this opinion inconsistent with all Government yea I must confess my self guilty of so much greater weakness as that I thought I should never have found a man on Earth that had the ordinary reason of a Man that had made question of it yea I shall say more then that which hath offended viz. That whensoever the commanding or forbidding of a thing indifferent is like to occasion more hurt than good and this may be foreseen the commanding or forbidding it is a sin But yet this is not the Assertion that I am chargeable with but that Some Accidents there may be that may make the Imposition sinful If I may ask it without accusing of others how would my Crime have been denominated if I had said the contrary should I not have been judged unmeet to live in any governed Society It is not unlawful of it self to Command out a Navy to Sea but if it were foreseen that they would fall into the Enemies hands or were like to perish by any Accident and the necessity of sending them were small or none it were a sin to send them It is not unlawful of it self to sell poyson or give a knife to another or to bid another to do it but if it were foreseen that they will be used to poyson or kill the buyer it is unlawful and I think the Law would make him believe it that were guilty It is not of it self unlawful to light a candle or set fire on a straw but if it may be foreknown that by anothers negligence or wilfulness it is like to set fire on the City or give fire to a train or store of Gun-powder that is under the Parliament House when the King and Parliament are there I crave the Bishops pardon for believing that it were sinful to do it or command it yea or not to hinder it in any such case when Qui non vetat peccare cum potest jubet yea though going to Gods publick worship be of it self so far from being a sin that it is a Duty yet I think it is a sin to command it to all in time of a raging Pestilence or when they should be defending the City against the assault of an Enemy it may rather then be a duty to pro●ibit it I think Paul spake not any thing inconsistent with the Government of God or Man when he bid both the Rule●s and the People of the Church not to destroy him with their mea● for whom Christ dyed and when he saith he hath not his power to destruction but to edification yea there are evil Accidents of a thing not evil of it self that are caused by the Commander and it is my opinion that they may prove his command unlawful But what need I use any other Instances then that which was the matter of our dispute Suppose it never so lawful of it self to kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament if it be imposed by a penalty that is incomparably beyond the proportion of the offence that penalty is an Accident of the Command and maketh it by Accident sinful in the Commander If a Prince should have Subjects so weak as that all of them thought it a sin against the example of Christ and the Canons of the General Councels and many hundred years practice of the Church to kneel in the Act of Receiving on the Lords Day if he should make a Law that all should be put to death that would not kneel when he foreknew that their Consciences would command them all or most of them to dye rather then obey would any man deny his command to be unlawful by this Accident Whether the penalty of ejecting Ministers that dare not put away all that do not kneel and of casting out all the people that scruple it from the Church be too great for such a circumstance and so in the rest and whether this with the lamentable estate of many Congregations and the divisions that will follow being all foreseen do prove the impositions unlawful which were then in Question is a Case that I had then a clearer call to speak to then I have now only I may say That the Ejecting of the Servants of Christ from the Communion of his Church and of his faithful Ministers from their Sacred Work when too many Congregations have none but insufficient or scandalous Teachers or no Preaching Ministers at all will appear a matter of very great moment in the day of our accounts and such as should not be done upon any but a necessary cause where the benefit is greater then this hurt and all the rest amounts to Having given you to whom I owe it

this account of the cause for which I am forbidden the exercise of my Ministry in that Countrey I now direct these Sermons to your hands that seeing I cannot teach you as I would I may teach you as I can And if I much longer enjoy such Liberty as this it will be much above my expectation The Bishop of Worcester's Letter to a Friend for Vindication of himself from Mr. Baxter's Calumny SIR I Have received that Letter of yours whereby you inform me that Mr. Baxter hath lately written and printed something with such a reflection upon me that I am obliged to take notice of it I thank you for your care of my Reputation which next to Conscience ought to be the dearest of all things to all men especially to men of my Profession and Order who the more they are vilified whether justly or unjustly the less good they will be able to do especially amongst those that have industriously been prepossessed with prejudice either against their Persons or their Functions This was St. Pauls Case when there were some that did what they could to make the Corinthians to undervalue his person that thereby they might discredit his Doctrine and weaken his Authority whom therefore he thinks he may without breach of Charity call False Apostles and Deceitful Workers Nay this was our Saviours own Case who whilest he lived here upon the Earth was ever and anon traduced and slandred by the Scribes and Pharisees those proud Hypocrites who were the greatest pretenders to holiness and yet the greatest seducers of the people and the grossest falsifyers of Gods Word that ever were in the world until these our times which have brought forth a generation of men St. Johnaptist would have called them a Generation of Vipers who in the Art of holy jugling and malicious slandring have out-done the Pharisees themselves and all that went before them witness their so often wresting and perverting the Scripture in their Sermons to stir up the people to Sedition and their as often Libelling the King in their Prayers in order to the making of his Subjects first to hate him then to fight against him and at last to take away his Crown and his Life from him And is it any wonder that those that are such Enemies to Kings should not be friends to Bishops or that one who hath done what he could to make the late King odious unto his People should do what he can likewise to make the Pastor odious unto his Flock to his Flock I say For it is the Bishop of Worcester and not Mr. Baxter that is Pastor of Kidderminster as well as of all other Parochial Churches in that Diocess neither did I or any other Bishop of Worcester ever commit the Care of Souls in that or any other Parish of that Diocess to Mr Baxter though by that Preface of his to those of Kidderminster he would make the world believe that they were his Flock and not mine and that therefore he hath the more reason to complain of my defamation of him as he calls it in that place and before that people whereas the truth is that Mr. Baxter was never either Parson Vicar or Curate there or any where else in my Diocess for he never came in by the Door that is by any legal right or lawful admission into that Sheepfold but climbed up some other way namely by violence and intrusion and therefore by Christs own inference he was a Thief and a Robber and indeed he did Rob him that was then and is now again the lawful Vicar of that Church he Robbed him I say first of his Reputation amongst his Flock and then of his means and maintenance by taking away the Fleece as well as the Flock from him though as Mr. Baxter himself hath confessed to me He be a man of an unblamable life and conversation though not of such parts said Mr. Baxter as are fit to qualifie him for the Cure of so great a Congregation which whether it were so or no I am sure Mr. Baxter was not to be the Judge but in that Case the Bishop that was then living should and would have provided him a Coadjutor as I have done since and such an one as I hope will feed that flock with much more wholsome Doctrine then Mr. Baxter did when he sowed the seed of Schism and Sedition and blew the Trumpet of Rebellion amongst them For which cause I thought it my Duty as being their Pastor in Chief not onely to forbid Mr. Baxter to Preach there any more which by the way he had done without my License but likewise to Preach there my self and to do what I could to undeceive that poor seduced and miserably deluded people which was not to be done as long as they had the person of their Seducer in so great admiration and therefore by the example of St. Paul who in order to the same end did take the same course with Alexander the Copper-smith with Demas Philetus and Hymeneus as likewise by the example of Christ himself who in order to the same end did take the same course with the Scribes and Pharisees I thought it necessary to let them know that one that was of great authority amongst them meaning indeed though not naming Mr. Baxter was not the man they took him for that he had not dealt faithfully with them nor preached the word of God sincerely to them when he made them believe it was lawful for them to take up Arms against the King nor in suffering if not making them to scruple at these things as unlawful which he himself confesses to be lawfull and afterwards making use of those scruples of theirs which he himself had infused into them or not endeavoured to take from them as the only argument why those things they did so scruple at should not be enjoyn'd by lawful Authority though lawful in themselves because forsooth the enjoyning of things lawful by lawful Authority if they may by Accident be the occasion of sin is sinful which assertion of his as I then said and must still maintain is destructive of humane society in taking away the Authority of Commanding and the obligation of obeying together with the whole Legislative power Civil as well as Ecclesiastical and Divine as well as Humane And thus much as Mr. Baxter himself saith I told him before in mine own house neither did he then deny the assertion or endeavour to disprove what I inferr'd from it by any of those distinctions or instances he now useth And that this is true the Reverend Dr. VVarmstry now Dean of Worcester will witness for me whom I desired to be by whilest I conferr'd with Mr. Baxter foreseeing what misreport a man of Mr. Baxters principles and temper was like enough to make of what should pass betwixt us And it was very well I did so for I find that the Presbyter aswell as the Papist will serve themselves as often as they are put to it of