Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	day_n	great_a	sabbath_n	1,394	5	9.4960	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47636	The keeping of holy days recommended in a sermon preached at Hadham before the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Father in God, Henry, Lord Bishop of London, &c. at his Lordships late conference with his clergy there / by Thomas Leigh ...	Leigh, Thomas, 1633 or 4-1686.	1684 (1684)	Wing L1021; ESTC R13950	18,956	38

soon angry we find how the Hypocrites in Esaias 58.2 Fasted for strife and debate and smote with the Fist of wickedness and exacted all their labours they brought forth their Bills and Bonds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Seventy have it whom the Arabick exactly follows and the Chaldee Syriack and other Interpreters agree thereto Although some of our Festival days are the common days of Payment of Rents and Debts yet we should not exact all our labours use our utmost rigor then upon failure Feasting uses to make Men placid and easie to be intreated and is then most pleasing to God as well as Fasting when Men deal their bread to the hungry and cover the naked and lodge the harbourless when they loose the bands of wickedness undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free and break every yoke moreover reconciling our selves to our Enemies and making up differences between Neighbours Catechising Children Visiting the Sick and all such works of Charity are proper works for a Holy day I need not tell you how Religious the first Christian Emperors were this way not only in giving but forgiving how at Easter they set all Prisoners at liberty except Traytors Murderers Ravishers of Women and such notorious Malefactors I could tell you how our Saxon Laws provided that no Man should be put to death upon the Lords day that the Ordeal Tryal should not be undergone upon any Feast or Fast day and took care for the relief of Prisoners every Lords day But these are things which no Man will gainsay and therefore I will pass on and come in the last place to enquire what are the causes of the great and general neglect of these days which the Lord hath made so signal and worthy to be observed I shall touch on three Superstition Profaneness and Covetousness First Superstition even the Superstition of those men that are most afraid of or most declame against Superstition their conceit is no less Superstitious than their Notation is fond in making it to be Quicquid super statutum I would ask them in this case what Statute have they that forbids the keeping of any other day besides the Lords day 1. If they say God is the Lord of time and he hath said Six days shalt thou labor I reply Those words are no part of the fourth Commandment I mean not of it as commanding but a permission incouraging the Observance of the thing commanded as if it were said the Lord allows you six days for your own business and may therefore more strictly require the seventh of you for his own service they are no more a Command than that in Gen. 3.19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread But the practice of the Objectors who have indicted Fasts and Thanksgivings on working days when and as often as they pleas'd is Confutation enough to the Objection But 2. They urge that to the Galat. 4.10 Ye observe days and months and times and years I reply again If the Context and Scope of the whole Epistle did not shew it plainly to be written to Judaising People those four words in the Text alledged would tell us the Apostle means the Jewish Festivals whereof they had four sorts But what is that to us that keep days in testification of our being Christians and disclaiming all Judaism and keep them not in imitation of the Jews no more than we do the Sabbath but rather in order to their invitation and bringing them over to the Christian Faith and to shew that Christ is greater than Moses But the great thing they insist on is 'T is against Gospel purity to have mixtures of Human Inventions with Divine Injunctions and this superstitious conceit is the great cause not only of this neglect but of Schism or unlawful Separation Ans I have already said To be thankful for benefits is a Law of Nature and no Human Invention and to give thanks yearly on those days whereon those Benefits were bestow'd rather than any other is so Natural hath so great a congruity in it that the Objectors themselves choose to do so But let them tell me is there any more of man in keeping an Easter-day than a Fifth of November in praising of God for the first planting of the Christian Religion than a late preservation of it But what Did they never hear of the Feast of Purim and that Feast of the Dedication whereat our Lord was present of the Seven days which King Solomon kept at the first Dedication of the Altar and the Seven days that King Hezekiah kept at the Feast of Unleavened bread over and above what the Law Commanded 2 Chron. 30.23 Of the four Fasts in Zech. 8.19 whereof but one was injoin'd But because they call us so often to the Pattern in the Mount we will take a View of that and shew you that the Israelites did not only Act super but contra statutum in several things yet no separation was made from Publick Communion with that Church and therefore every Imperfection can be no just cause of Separation nor every Supererogation I will give three notorious Instances whereof two concern Festivals The First shall be touching the Feast of Tabernacles whereof we read Nehem. 8.17 All the Congregation of them that were come again out of the Captivity made Booths and sate under the Booths for since the days of Joshua the Son of Nun unto that day had not the Children of Israel done so that is they had not kept the Feast of Tabernacles at least in that main circumstance of dwelling in Tents and Booths for a Thousand years together and that throughout the most flourishing time of that Church although it was expresly Commanded no less than four times in Moses It is a wonder how it came to pass that neither David nor Hezekiah nor Samuel nor Jehoiadah nor any other reforming King zealous Priest or inspired Prophet no answer by Vrim and Thummim corrected this neglect in so many Ages in all which time we find no secession made from the Church that then was My Second Instance shall be in a Holy year the Observation whereof is Commanded Levit. 25.2 c. When ye come into the Land which I give you then shall the Land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord thou shalt neither sow thy Seed nor prune thy Vineyard c. And now see the Omission in the Punishment threatned Levit. 26.34 c. inflicted 2 Chron. 36.21 untill the Land had injoyed her Sabbaths for as long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath to fulfill threescore and ten Years So long the Babylonian Captivity lasted that the Land might rest and lie untill'd so many years as the Seventh or Sabbatick year had been unobserv'd Reckon and ye will find just Seventy sevens in four hundred ninety years so that for 490 years together they had broken the aforesaid Law to wit from the days of Samuel to the Captivity and yet no Separation all that while

gracious means whereby the glad Tidings of Salvation have been made known and become saving unto us 1. For the Mysteries themselves the first great Mystery of Godliness or Christian Religion is God manifested in the Flesh and this we think our selves bound to commemorate on the days of his Incarnation commonly call'd the Annunciation and of his Nativity The next is his being Justified in the Spirit at his Resurrection and this we Celebrate as on every Lord's day so especially on that day of the year whereon he rose Then his being receiv'd into Glory on Ascension day his being Preach'd to the Gentiles on the Epiphany whereto are premis'd and subjoyn'd that of the Circumcision and Presentment of our Lord in the Temple to shew our hope of the Conversion of the Jews and that we and they must expect to be saved by one and the same Saviour 2. Others are in contemplation of the Means whereby so great a Salvation hath been publish'd for the benefit of all mankind As 1. The Descent of the Holy Ghost for which we have our Whitsunday 2. Our Lords being seen of Angels in order to make them his Ministring Spirits to Minister to them that shall be Heirs of Salvation for which we have that of Michael and all Angels 3. His being believed on in the World through the Preaching and Writing of the Apostles and Evangelists and the means of all those Persons and Things whereby so great a Mystery was made credible to the World as was that of our Lords Birth by the little less miraculous Birth of John the Baptist the only Saint therefore whose Nativity we observe and the dreadful Massacre of the Fourteen thousand Infants at Bethlehem And that of his Resurrection and Ascension by the aforesaid Effusion of the Holy Ghost the death of the Protomartyr Stephen who saw our Lord standing at the right hand of God and all other Saints and Martyrs their Holy lives and painful deaths And now after all when the great Creator and Redeemer of Mankind and Sanctifier of the Elect have been devoutly acknowledged on distinct days If there be one added to recognise the Ineffable Trin-Vnity I hope none will gainsay it though the ground I go upon will not reach it Ye see now our Church hath not stuffed her Calendar with the Invention of the Cross of Christ of the Head of John Baptist the Bones of St. Luke the Relicks of any other Martyrs with the Names of seign'd or real Saints that had not a special Commission to Preach the Gospel or were not extraordinary instruments to assert the Credibility of it So that our Church Calendar is a kind of Catechism instructive even of them that cannot read where Holy days are duly observ'd Fifthly Upon this ground we may build the true degrees and distinctions of Holy days All the Rubricks are not of an equal dye there are if I may so say dies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scarlet days Festa duplicia majora minora as they us'd to speak God hath left a greater impression and mark upon some than upon others as he did upon the Jewish and as they had so have we upon the same score three distinctions of Days And this threefold degree of Holiness might be made out as well in Persons and Places as Times both in the Jewish and Christian Church but that is alien from our business First The Lords day is as the Sabbath was with them the Queen and Empress of Days a day which God hath Crown'd more than any other by extraordinary Acts of his own 'T is the first day that God made that whereon he began the Creation of the World and that whereon our Blessed Lord finish'd the work of our Redemption It pleads the greatest Antiquity as a day set apart for all Religious Performances that whereon our Lord twice visited his Disciples that whereon the Holy Ghost descended upon them that whereon St. Peter Preach'd and Converted Three thousand Souls whereon St. Paul gave the Holy Communion and used to have his Collections for the Poor that whereon the Primitive Christians used to Pray standing and always forbid Fasting A Day which the Great Constantine took care to be wholly devoted to Divine Worship and Christian Instruction on it he caus'd all Courts of Judicature to be shut up all publick Suits and private Arbitrations to be superseded The Great Theodosius forbid all publick shews and spectacles on that Day The other Theodosius did the like and moreover provided in case the Day of the Birth or Inauguration of the Emperor happen'd on the Lord's day the solemnities usual in honour of the Imperial Majesty should be deferr'd till another day A Day which always as far as we can find had the Preheminence in this our Land Of the British Church we have scarce any Records but for our Antecessors the Saxons it is demonstrable that they after they became a Christian and setled People for above Three Hundred years gave the preference to this above all other Festivals although a certain Historian hath born us in hand to the contrary The Laws of King Ina and of King Withred at the Council of Berghamsted the Canons of the Council of Cloveshow or Cliffe held under Cuthbert Archbishop of Canterbury the Excerptions of Egbert Archbishop of York The Laws of King Alfred and Edward the Elder in conjunction with Guthrun the Dane The Laws of King Athelstan King Edgar the Peaceable and King Ethelred in a General Council of all England and King Kanute All take most especial care for the observance of the Lords day above others and if I mistake not in one place 't is call'd The Holy Day This is plain to any one who consults that great lover of Church and Clergy the Learned and Industrious Sir Henry Spelman I should not doubt to answer the Pompous Arguments that are brought to the contrary from the times of the Norman Confusions and afterwards but I hold not my self so much bound to account for those times because if they did reduce the Queen of Days to a common Peerage with the other less Holy it is no more to be wondred at than twenty things besides For they made the Virgin and other Saints fellows with our Lord or rather Superiors in all other Honors Where one Church was built in Honor of our Lord there were ten Dedicated to St. Mary ten Ave-Maries said for one Pater-noster and in several other things the Mother had ten to one odds of her Son and Men were grown so sottish at last as with a small distinction to allow that Peter-noster might be said to the Mother of our Lord. And now let me speak alittle to the Honor of of the Church of England as it hath stood ever since our happy Reformation Some that have taken good pains to deliver us from the Superstitious and Judaising Doctrines of others about the Observation of our Lords day have run into another Extreme and levelling that with other Holy