Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	church_n	communion_n	society_n	2,512	5	9.2730	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30357	The ill effects of animosities among Protestants in England detected and the necessity of love unto, and confidence in one another, in order to withstand the designs of their common enemies, laid open and enforced.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1688 (1688)	Wing B5802; ESTC R11786	28,124	24

Inquisition erected for the adjudging punishing of them So that it is not the Fanaticks who are the only persons to be stuck at and ruined but the Conformists are to be treated after the same manner and to share in the common lot whereunto all honest sincere Protestants are destined designed Even they who were the darlings of Whitehall St. Iames's recompenced with Honors and Titles for betraying the Rights and Priviledges of Corporations persecuting Dissenters heading Addresses wherein Parliaments were reproached the Course of Justice against Popish Offenders was slandered the illegal arbitrary procedures of the Court applauded and justified all that were zealous for our Laws and Liberties stigmatised with the names of Villains and Traitors are now themselves for but discouraging Popish Assemblies attempting to put the Laws in execution against Priests who had publickly celebrated Mass not only checkt and rebuked but punished with seisure and imprisonment Nor are our Religion and Civil Liberties meerly supplanted and undermined by illegal Tricks glossed over with the varnish of judicial Forms but they are assaulted battered in the face of the Sun without so much as a palliation to give their procedures a plausible figure And the King being brought to a despair of managing the Parliament to his bare-faced purposes of Popery Arbitrariness of prevailing with them to establish Tyranny Idolatry by Law notwithstanding their having been as industriously packt chosen to answer such a design as art bribery Authority could reach notwithstanding their having been obsequious in their first Session to an excess that hath proved unsafe to themselves the Nation he seems resolvd not to allow them to meet any more but to set up a la mode de France and to have his personal Commands seconded with the assent of his durante beueplacito judges to be acknowledged and obeyed for Laws So that they who were formerly seduced into a good opinion of him are not only undeceived but provoked to warm resentments for having had their credulity easmess of belief so grosly abused And as the converting so vast a number of well meaning but wofully deluded people who had suffered themselves to be hoodwinked and fatally hurried to betray their Religion Country Posterity to the Ambition Popish Bigottry of the Court was a design becoming the Compassion Mercy and Wisdom of God so the methods means whereby they are come to be enlightned proselyted are a signal vindication of the Sapience Righteousness of God in all these tremendous steps of his providence by which our Enemies have been emboldned to detect discover themselves For tho their continuing so long to have a good opinion of the present King and their abetting him so far in the undermining our Religion and invading our Liberties may seem to have proceeded not so much from their ignorance is from their obstinacy malice yet God who penetrates into the hearts of men may have discovered some degrees of sincerity in their pretensions carriages tho accompanied with a great deal of folly unmanliness Nor are the Lords ways like to outs to give persons over us unteachable and irreclaimable upon their withstanding every measure of light and the resisting even those means which were sufficient and proper for their conviction but he will try them by new and extraordinary methods see whether feeling doleful experience may not convert those upon whom arguments and moral evidence could make no impressions And their being among those formerly missed and deluded Protestants many who retained a love for their Country a care for their posterity and a zeal for the Gospel and Reformed Religion even when their actions imported the contrary seem'd to betray them the singling and weeding out such from among the Court Faction party is a compensation both for the defeatment of all endeavours for the prevention of the evils that have overtaken us for the distresses calamities under which we do at present lye groan And if there be joy in Heaven upon the conversion of a Sinner with that thankfulness to God joy in themselves should they who have so many years wrestled against the encreachments of Popery Arbitrariness who have deeply suffered in their Names Persons and Estates upon that account welcome embrace their once erring misled but now enlightned reclaimed and converted Brethren And instead of remembring or upbraiding them with the opposition and rancour which they expressed against our persons principles ways let there be no language heard from us but what may declare the joy we have in our selves for their conversion and the entire trust confidence which we put in them For tho as to many things which might have been hindred had they not been lulled into deep delusions they may seem born out of due time yet there is season enough left both for giving obstruction to what we are farther threatned with for recovering out of the jaws of the Enemy what he thinks he hath irretrievably swallowed and devoured The first duty incumbent therefore upon Dissenters towards those of the Church of England is to believe that notwithstanding there having been many of them so long Advocates Partizans for the Court through ignorance of what was aimed at intended they are nevertheless as really concerned as any others and as truly zealous for the preservation of the Protestant Religion for maintaining the legal Rights Liberties of the Subject when occasion shall offer will approve themselves accordingly 'T is a ridiculous as well as a mischievous fancie for one party to confine all Religion only to themselves or to circumscribe all the ancient English ardor for the common Rights of the Nation to such as are of their particular Fellowship persuasion there being sincere Christians true Englishmen among those of all judgments societies of Protestants among none more than those of the Communion of the Church of England It were the height of wickedness as well as the most prodigious folly to imagine that the Conformists have abandoned all fidelity to God. cast off all care of themselves and their Country upon a mistaken iudgment of being Loyal obedient to the King. They know as well as any that the giving to Cesar the things that are Cesars lays them under no obligation of surrendring unto him the things that are Gods nor of sacrificing unto the will of the Soveraign the priviledges reserved unto the people by the Fundamental Rules of the Constitution ●●d by the Statutes of the Realm And they understand as well as others that the Laws of the Land are the only measures of the Princes Authority and of the Subjects Fealty and where they give him no Right to command they lay them under no tye to obey And tho here there a Dissenter have written against Popery with good success yet they have been mostly

glory through an enlargement of the Terms of her Communion and what would have been to the praise of her Moderation and Charity through her being perswaded to bear with such as differed from her in little things and could not prevail with themselves to partake with her in all Ordinances Upon the whole it is both the prudence and safety of Dissenters as they would escape Extirpation themselves and have Religion conveyed down to Posterity to unite their strength and endeavours to those of the Church of England for the upholding her against the Assaults of Popish Enemies who pursue her Subversion As matters are now circumstanced and stated in England there is not an Affront or Injury offered or done unto her by the Court which do not at the same time reach and wound the Fanaticks 'T is not her being for Episcopacy Cerimonies and imposed set Forms of Worship the things about which she and the Nonconformists differ that she is maligned and struck at by the Man in power and his Popish Juncto but it is for being Protestant Reformed and Orthodox Crimes under the guilt whereof Dissenters are equally concerned and involved Being therefore in opposition to the common Cause of Religion that the late Court of Inquisition is erected over her Ecclesiasticks all Protestants ought jointly to resent the Wrongs which she sustains and not only to sympathise with those Dignified and lower Clergy which are called to suffer but to espouse their Quarrel with the same warmth that we would our own And as we are to look upon those of the Episcopal Communion to be the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion and Reformed Interest in England so it is farther incumbent upon Dissenters towards them and a duty which they owe to God the Nation and themselves not to be accessary to any thing through which the legal Establishment of the Church of England may by any Act of pretended Regal Prerogative be weakned and supplanted I am not counselling the Fanaticks to renounce their Principles nor to participate with the Prelatical Church in all Ordinances on the Terms to which they have straitned and narrowed their Communion For while they remain unsatisfied of the lawfulness of those Terms and Conditions they cannot do it without offending God and contracting guilt upon their Souls nor will they of the Church of England in Charity Justice and Honesty expect it from them for whatsoever any man believeth to be in it is so to him and will by God be impured as such till he be otherwise englightned and convinced nor are the Fanaticks to be falie and cruel to themselves in order to be kind and friendly to them But that which I would advice them unto is that after the maintaining the highest measure of love to the consormable Congregations as Churches of Christ and the esteeming their Members as Christian Protestant Brethren notwithstanding the several things wherein they judge them to err and to be mistaken that they would not by any Act and Transaction of theirs betray them into the Despotical Power of this Popish King nor directly nor indirectly acknowledge his being vested with an Authority paramount unto and superceding the Laws by which the Church of England is established in its present form order and mode of Jurisdiction Discipline and external Worship Whatsoever ease arriveth to the Dissenters through the King 's suspending the execution of the Penal Laws without their Address and Application they may receive it with joy and humility in themselves and with thankfulness to God nor is there hereby any prejudice offered on their part to the Authority of the Law or offence or injury given or done to the Conformable Clergy Nor is without grief and regret that the Church-men are forced to behold the harassing spoiling and imprisonment of the Nonconformists while in the mean time the Papists are suffered to assemble to the celebration of their Idolatrous Worship without censure and controul And were it in their power to remedy it and give relief to their Protestant Brethren they would with delight and readiness embrace the occasion and opportunity of doing it But alas instead of having an advantage put into their hand of contributing to the relief of the Fanaticks which I dare say many of them ardently wish and desire they are compelled contrary to their Inclination as well as their Interest to become instrumental in persecuting and oppressing them Nor does the King covet a better and a more legal Advantage against the Conformists than that they would refuse to pursue Dissenters and decline molesting them with Ecclesiastical Censures and Civil Punishments so that their Condition is to be pitied and bewailed in that they are hindred from Acting against the Papists though both enjoined by Law and influenced thereunto by motives of Self-preservation as well as by ties of Conscience while in the mean time they are forced to prosecute their Fellow Protestants or else to be suspended and deposed and put out of their Offices and Employs And though I do believe that they would at last have more Peace in themselves and be better accepted with God in the great day of their account should they refuse to disturb and prosecute their Protestant Brethren and scorn to be any longer Court Tools for weakning and undermining the Reformed Cause and Interest yet I shall leave them to act in this as they shall be persuaded in themselves and as they shall judge most agreeable to Principles of Wisdom and Conscience In the interim the Fanaticks have all the reason in the World to believe that the Proceedings of the Clergy and Members of the Church of England at this season and juncture against them are not the Results of their Election and Choice but the effects of moral compulsion and necessity Not will any Dissenter that is prudent and discreet blame them for a matter which they cannot help but bear his misfortune and lot with patience in himself and with compassion and charity towards them and have his Indignation raised only against the Court which forceth them to be instrumental in their oppression and trouble And instead of being thereby provoked to petition the King to suspend the execution of the Penal Laws or that he would by an Act of his Prerogative dispense with their Meetings for religious Worship in defiance of them they ought to consider that is what the Court aims at by commanding their conformable Brethren to molest and pursue them For a power paramount and transcendent to the Law is what the King is usurping and which he would fain work his Subjects one way or another to acknowledge The Fanaticks cannot be so far void of sense as to think that the person now in the Throne bears them any good will but his drift is to screw himself into a Supremacy and Absoluteness over the Law and to get such an Authority confessed to be vested in him as when he pleaseth he may subvert the established Religion and set up