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	law_n	sabbath_n	2,914	5	9.8028	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56144	Canterburies doome, or, The first part of a compleat history of the commitment, charge, tryall, condemnation, execution of William Laud, late Arch-bishop of Canterbury containing the severall orders, articles, proceedings in Parliament against him, from his first accusation therein, till his tryall : together with the various evidences and proofs produced against him at the Lords Bar ... : wherein this Arch-prelates manifold trayterous artifices to usher in popery by degrees, are cleerly detected, and the ecclesiasticall history of our church-affaires, during his pontificall domination, faithfully presented to the publike view of the world / by William Prynne, of Lincolns Inne, Esquire ...	Prynne, William, 1600-1669.	1646 (1646)	Wing P3917; ESTC R19620	792,548	593

kinde of Zeale like the madde Prophetesse in the Poet have run into the open streets yea and searched private houses too to looke for such as spent those houres on the Lords Day in lawfull pastimes which were not destinate by the Church to Gods publike service and having found them out scattered the companie and brake the Instruments and if my memory faile me not the Musitians head too and which is more they thought that they were bound in Conscience so to doe c. And sect 9. p. 258. He most prophanely and scurrilously stiles the Lords-Day The NEW SAINT SABBATH And sect 13. pag. 269. c. hee concludes thus Nay which is more it was so publikely avowed and printed by one who had no calling to interpret lawes except the provocation of his own ill spirit That Dancing on the Lords-Day was an unlawfull pastime punishable by the Statute of 1 Carl. c. 1. which intended so he saith to suppresse Dancing on the Lords Day as well as Beare-Baiting Bull-Baiting Enterludes and common Playes which were not then so rise and common as dancing when this Law was made Things being at this height it pleased His Excellent Majestie Observing as hee saith himselfe how much his people were debarred of Recreation and finding in some Counties that under the pretence of taking away of abuses there had bin a generall forbidding not only of ordinary meetings but of the Feasts of the Dedication of Churches commonly called Wakes to ratifie and publish the Declaration of His Majesties Father before remembred Adding that all those feasts with others should bee observed and that all Neighbourhood and freedome with manlike and lawfull exercises be therein used commanding all the Justices of Assize in the severall Circuits to see that no man doe trouble or molest any of his Loyall and dutifull people in or for their lawfull recreations having first done their duty to God and continuing in obedience unto His Majestie and his Lawes and further that publication thereof be made by Order from the Bishops through all the parishes of their severall Diocesses respectively Thus did it please His Excellent and Sacred Majestie to publish His most pious and Religious purpose of opening to his Loyall people the liberty of the Day which the day allowed of and which all Christian States and Churches in all times before had never questioned withall of shutting up that doore whereat no lesse than Judaisme would in fine bave entred so in time have over-ran the fairest and most beautifull Church at this day in Christendome And certainly it was a pious and Princely Act nothing inferiour unto that of Constantine or any other Christian King or Emperour before remembred it being no lesse pious in it selfe considered to keep the holy dayes free from Superstition than to preserve them from Profanenesse especially considering that permission of lawfull pleasures is no lesse proper to a festivall then restraint from labour Nay of the two it is more ancient for in his time Tertullian tells us that they did diem Solis laetitiae indulgere devote the Sunday partly unto mirth and recreation not to devotion altogether when in an hundred yeares after Tertullians time there was no law or constitution to restraine men from labour this day in the Christian Church Yet did not his most Excellent Majestie finde such obedience in some men and such as should have beene examples unto their flockes as his most Christian purpose did deserve there being some so setled in the opinion of a Sabbath Day a day not heard of in the Church of Christ 40. yeares agoe that they choose rather to deprive the Church of their paines and ministrie than yeeld unto His Majesties just commands for whose sakes specially next unto my duty unto God my Soveraigne and the Church my Mother I have employed my time and Studdies to compose this History that they may see therein in briefe the practise of Gods Church in the times before them and frame themselves to do thereafter casting aside those errours in the which they are and walking in the way which they ought to travell which way when all is done will bee Via Regia the Kings High way as that which is most safe and of best assurance because most travellers by Gods people Our private pathes doe leade us often into errour and sometimes also into danger And therefore I beseech all those who have offended in that kind to lay aside their passions and their private interests if any are that way misguided as also not to shut their eyes against those truths which are presented to them for their information that so the King may have the honour of their due Obedience the Church the comfort of their labours and conformable ministry For to what purpose should they hope to bee ennobled for their sufferings in so bad a cause which neither hath the Doctrine of the Scriptures to authorize it or practise of the Church of God the best expositer of the Scripture to confirme and countenance it or to be counted constant to or in their first conclusions having such weak and dangerous premises to support the same since constancy not rightly grounded is at best but obstinacy and many times doth end in Heresie Once againe therfore I exhort them even in Gods name whose Ministers they are and unto whom they are to give up an account of their imployment and in the Kings Name whom as Gods Deputy they are bound to obey not for wrath only but for Conscience sake and in the Churches name whose peace they are to studdy above all things else and their owne names lastly whom it most concernes that they desist and goe not forward in this disobedience lest a worse mischiefe fall upon them For my part I have done my best so farre to give them satisfaction in this present point so farre forth as the nature of an History would permit as they might thinke it no disparagment to alter their opinions and desert their errors and change their resolutions since in so doing they shall conforme themselves unto the practise of Gods Church in all times and Ages This prophane Doctor in his Epistle before Doctor Prideaux his Lecture of the Sabbath and in his Moderate Answer to Master Burton pag. 50. to 56. 76. 80. 81. 110 112. hath many passages to the same effect against the Sabbaths morality the strict intire Sanctification of the Lords-Day in yea Justification of the Book of sports and of the Archbishops and Bishops silencing excommunicating censuting those who refused to read it to the people The like passages we meet with in Bishop Whites Doctor Primrose and Master Joronfides Treatises of the Sabbath in Christopher Dew his Innovations unjustly charged chap. 10. 11 12. in Edmund Reeve his Communion Booke Catechisme expounded wherein the Piety Necessitie and Vtilitie of His Majesties Declaration for sports is extolled above Elah pag. 90. to 108. that these Pages were afterwards torne out of the

fellowes that in their letter to Calvin depart from the constitution Ordinance and practice of the Apostles and Apostolicke men and call not this day the Lords day or Sunday but with the piety of Jeroboam make such a day of it as they have devised in their owne hearts to serve their owne turne and Anabaptising of it after the minde of some Iew hired to be the God Father therefore call it the Sabbath page 7. This name Sabbath is not a bare name or like a spot in their foreheades to know Labans sheep from Iacobs but indeed it is a Mistery of Iniquity intended against the Church c. page 13. But what doe I speake de integro die of a whole day do but that in keeping the Lords day which the Widdow did in her Almes that gave two mites sic tu duas horas so give the Lord two houres this if you do not beware you lose not integroru mannorum labores the Labours of many whole yeares Page 20. Others also for the Plots sake must uphold the name of Sabbath that stalking behinde it they may shoot against the services appointed for the Lords day Hence it is that some for want of witte too much adore the Sabbath as an Image dropt downe from Iupiter and cry before it as they did before the Golden Calfe This is an holy day unto the Lord whereas it is indeed the great Diana of the Ephesians as they use it whereby the mindes of their Proselites are so perplexed and bewitched that they cannot resolve whether the sinne be greater to bowle shoote or dance on their Sabbath then to commit Murder or the Father to cut the throat of his owne child All which doubts would soon be resolved by plucking of the Vizard of the Sabbath from the face of the Lords day which doth as well and truly become it as the Crowne of Thorns did the Lord himselfe This was plotted to expose him to damnable dirision and that was plotted to impose on it detestable superstition yet to die for it they will call it a Sabbath presuming in their zealous ignorance of guiltfull zeale to be thought to speake the Scripture phrase when indeed the Dregs of Ashdod flow from their Mouthes p. 21. With us the Sabbath is Saturday and no day else no ancient Father nay no learned man Heathen or Christian took it otherwise from the beginning of the world till the beginning of their Schisme in 1554. page 22. Many that see so little benefit will be suckt out of the constitutions of the Apostles practise and tradition of holy Church Doctrine of Godly and learned Fathers that they have got themselves heapes of Teachers that to serve their owne turnes will call and keepe the Lords day as a Sabbath and so prophane it with such outcries that the voyce of truth will become silent but with Moses liberavi animam meam Doctor Peter Heylin in his History of the Sabbath dedicated to his Majesty and printed by the Archbishops speciall approbation is every way as prophane and bitter against the morality and strict observation of the Lords-day Sabbath as Pocklinton we shall instance but in a Passage or two The first is in his Epistle to the Reader before the second Booke of his History in these termes And this part we have called the History of the Sabbath too although the institution of the Lords day and entertainment of the same in all times and ages since that Institution be the chiefe thing whereof it treateth for being it is said by some that the Lords Day succeeded by the Lords appointment into the place and rights of the Jewish Sabbath this booke was wholly to be spent in the search therof whether in all or any Ages of the Church either such doctrine had beene preached or such practise pressed upon the Consciences of Gods people And search indeed we did with all care and diligence to see if we could finde a Sabbath in any evidence of Scripture or writing of the holy Fathers or edicts of Emperours or decrees of Councells or finally in any of the publike Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church but after severall searches made upon the Alias and the Pluries wee still returne Non est inventus and thereupon resolve in the Poets language Et quod non invenit usquam esse putet nusquam that which is no where to be found may very strongly bee concluded not to be at all Buxdorfius in the eleventh Chapter of his Synagoga Judaica out of Antonius Margarita tells of the Jewes Quod die Sabbatino praeter animam consuetam praediti sunt alia that on the Sabbath day they are perswaded that they have an extraordinary soule infused into them which doth enlarge their hearts and rouse up their spirits Ut Sabbatum multo honorabilius peragere possint that they may celebrate the Sabbath with the greater honour And though this Sabbatharie soule may by a Pythagoricall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seeme to have transimigrated from the Jewes into the bodyes of some Christians in these latter dayes yet I am able to give my selfe good hopes that by presenting to their view the constant practise of Gods Church in al times before and the consent of all Gods Churches at this present they may be dispossesed thereof without great difficulties It is but anima superflua as Buxdorfius calls it and may bee better spared then kept because superfluous To which wee shall annex these passages in the eight Chapter of this his second Booke Sect. 7. pag. 249. c. Thus upon search made and full examination of all parties wee finde no Lords Day-Sabbath in the Booke of Homilies no nor in any writings of particular men in more then thirty three yeares after the Homilies were published Then reciting Doctor Bounds opinion in his book of the Sabbath pag. 211. All lawfull pleasures and honest Recreations as Shooting Fencing Bowling which are permitted on other dayes were on this day to bee forborne No man to speake or talke of pleasures or any worldly matter he saith Most Magisterially determined more like a Iewish Rabbi then a Christian Doctor Yet Romish and Rabbinicall though this doctrine were it carried a faire face and shew of Piety at least in the opinion of the Common people c. Sect. 8. p. 255. 256. We may perceive by this that their intent from the beginning was to cry downe the Holy Dayes as superstitious Popish Ordinances that their new found Sabbath being placed alone and Sabbath now it must be called might become more eminent Nor were the other though more private effects thereof of lesse dangerous nature the people being so insnared with these new devices and pressed with rigour more then Jewish that certainly they are in as bad a condition as were the Israelites of old when they were captivated and kept under by the Scribes and Pharises Some I have knowne for in this point I will say nothing without good assurance who in a furious

Popery and Arminianisme which this Bishops creatures excepted against and speedily informed him off Dr T. Cumber then Vice-Chancellor informs him of this Sermon in a Letter of his May 22. 1632. wherein he writes in this manner I cannot but further advertise your Lordship in a word that here was one Mr Bernard a discontinuer and a Preacher as I hear about London who uttered some offensive words concerning some Ceremonies and Rites used in some Churches in a Sermon of his at Saint Maries and as I have heard in some other Church before I gave a decree to the Beadle to convent him but he could not be found To which the Bishop returned this answer written with Mr Dells hand and thus endorsed May 27. 1630. A clause of my Letter to Dr Cumber concerning Mr Bernard c. I AM sorry you have been troubled at Cambridge with the distempered speeches of any men in the Pulpit And I must confesse I heard of both the particulars you mention before I received your Letter That in St. Johns it seemes they have punished and you doe very worthily to joyn with them in case any thing for the publique shall be further requisite And as for Mr Bernard I am the more sorry for him because he is in London within my Charge Neverthelesse if he have done unworthily I shall be very ready to assist you and the Vniversity in what I may be able And since you gave a Decree to the Beadle to convent him and he slipt away the while I will do the best I can to send him backe there to be answerable to the Government against which he hath offended And if he shall refuse so to do without giving better reason then I thinke he can I shall certainly suspend him till hee do it So in hast I leave you c. W. London Before this Doctors Letter the Bishop had received an information of the heads of his Sermon from others thus endorsed with his own hand May 6. 1932. Notes of Mr Bernards Sermon at Cambridge the particulars whereof are hereafter expressed more at large in his own words Soone after Mr Bernard by this Bishops prosecution was brought into the High Commission Court and forced to deliver in a Copy of his Sermon to the Bishop which he did who excepted against these Passages in it for which he was articled against Gods Ordinances for his publike Worship are the glory of any Nation By Gods Ordinances here I understand chiefly the Word Sacraments and Prayer which if blended and adulterated with any Superstitious Innovations of men cease to bee Gods Ordinances and he ownes them no longer It is not the single having of Gods Ordinances for his publike Worship but the having of them in their purity and integrity that dignifies a Nation Gods Ordinances for his publike Worship in their Purity and Integrity are a sure shield between a Nation and publike ruine and desolation For proofe whereof I challenge all Recordes both divine and humane to produce one instance wherein God punished any part of his Church with any Nationall ruine and destruction before they had either departed from or corrupted his Ordinances The Apostle Rom. 1. 16. affirmeth of the preaching of the Word that it is the power of God to salvation It is the meanes by which God manifesteth his omnipotent and irresistible power in the conversion and salvation of all those who from eternity were ordained thereunto by Gods absolute and immutable Decree This seemes to confute their errour who think meanly and basely of these Ordinances of God which we have proved to be the glory of that Nation where they are in their purity and integrity These men turn their glory into shame for is there not a generation of prophane men among us who are afraide and ashamed to preach twice on the Lords day to preach plainly powerfully and spiritually to the soules and consciences of their people least they should be accounted Puritans Many who are afraide to hear too often especially on the weeke dayes least they should be accounted Bible-bearers and gadders after Sermons Many who are as much afraide to performe holy duties in their families and to speake like Christians as Peter was who that his speech might not betray him began to curse and swear Many who complain that there is too much preaching and that it was never merry since Many who esteem very meanly of prayer especially of the publike prayers of the Church Some that have scorufully called the sirging of a Psalme a Geneva Iigge But the principall exception was for this ensuing Discourse in the close of his Sermon Further I will not deny that God hath his true invisible Church among those Nations as he had in Israel in the dayes of Ahab and Eliah nay I see no reason why in a large yet true sence we may not call the Church of Rome Italy or Spain a particular visible Church of Christ as Israel in the Reign of Jeroboem was a Church of God though Idolatrous and Apostaticall Yet I say that it is imposible that any should be saved living or dying without repentance in the doctrine and Idolatrous worship of the Church of Rome as the late Tridentine Councell hath decreed it My reason is this Hee that thinkes to go to heaven any other way then by faith in Christ onely shall never come there But he that dyes without repentance in the Doctrine of the Church of Rome as the Councell of Trent hath decreed it thinkes to go to heaven another way then by faith in Christ onely as namely by the merits of his own workes Ergo such a one shall never come there Thirdly if Gods Ordinances for his publike worship in their purity are the glory of a nation then it followes that they who go about to deprive a Nation of any of Gods Ordinances for his publike Worship either in whole or in the best part of them idest in their purity and integrity they go about to make that Nation base and inglorious and if so then are they enemies to that Nation and Traytors to it if it be their own Nation for Treason is not limited to the royall blood as if he only could be a Traitor who plotteth and attempteth the dishonour and shedding thereof but may be and is too oft committed against the whole Church and nation which last is by so much the worst of them two by how much the end is better then the meanes and the whole of greater consequence then any other part alone Whereby we may learn what to account of those among our selves if any such be which is better known to you then to mee who endeavour to quench the light and abate the glory of our Israel by bringing in their Pelagian errours into the Doctrine of our Church established by Law and the Superstitions of the Church of Rome into our warship of God as high Altars Crucifixes and bowing to them id est in plain English

in it To which was answered that this Book was as the Papists stile their Images a meer ignorant Lay-mans not a learned Archbishops Book consisting meerly of unlawful Pictures Therefore he had it only to view not read Secondly his curious guilding of the Book and Pictures in it argues that he prized it more then ordinary to help him in his Devotions Thirdly he was so far from refuting it that he authorized those very Pictures to be reprinted in England and bound up in our Bibles Fourthly he had many small Popish guilded velome Pictures curiously guilt inserted into this Book a pregnant proof he very much doted on these Puppets in his declining age The third particular objected against me in my study is two large folio Masse-books and that I had noted one of them frequently with my hand That I had likewise there the Roman Missal Pontifical and twenty two Popish hours of our Lady Breviaries Manuels and Books of Popish devotion I Answer First that it is lawful for every learned man to have those Books to peruse and refute them as there is occasion there being no great Schollers but have them in their studies for this end for which cause alone I both read and noted one of them with my own hand not out of any love to or approbation of the Masse it self And they may as aptly conclude that I am a Turk because I have the Alcoran in my study as that I am a Papist or Popishly affected because I have the Masse-book The same Answer I shall give to the other objected Books found in my study The Reply hereto was First that the meer having all or any of these Books in his study was no convincing argument of his affection and inclination to Popery no more then his keeping the Alcoran as a Schollar proves him to be a Turk neither was it so pressed by us since many Protestants have them in their studies to peruse refute which is no offence but laudable and necessary in some cases But we have punctually proved all along that he bought perused and noted them with his own hand not by way of dislike or refutation but approbation yea he pursued them strictly in practise and imitation as far as the most superstitious Popish Priests or Prelates did at Rome in most particulars Secondly compare his having of these Books with the extraordinary curiousnesse and costlinesse of their binding guilding the Popish Images Crucifixes in his study Chappel Gallery and the rest of our following evidence and then they are a very strong Argument to prove him a professed Papist in affection opinion if not in practise too The last objected thing found in my Library is my private Prayers and Devotions written with my own hand against which there are three exceptions First that some of these Prayers are extracted out of the Roman Missal Pontifical Breviary and hours of our Lady Secondly that they are digested into Canonical hours of prayer after the Papists Model Thirdly that I make mention of prostration in some of them To which I return this general Answer That this being only a Book for my own private devotions and use alone ought not to be charged against me As to the objected particulars excepted against I Answer First that if any such prayers be taken out of the Missal Pontifical or Roman Breviary yet they are devout and pious in themselves and there is no prayer to Saints or Angels in the Book Thirdly the Canonical hours of Prayer are of very great Antiquity in the Church derived from holy King Davids practise who said Seven times a day will I praise thee and was taken up and practised by Christians within two hundred years after Christ and approved of in preces privatae in Queen Elizabeths raign Thirdly that prostration in prayer is no crime but commendable and a signe of extraordinary humility Christ himself using this gesture in his prayers before his passion Hereunto the Commons Councel retorted in general That his own private devotions did best of all serve to discover his secret intentions and inclinations therefore they were fit to be given in evidence for this purpose In particular First that his collecting of Prayers out of such Popish dunghils when there were purer mines to dig in was a symptome of a Romish inclination And whereas he alleageth the matter of those prayers to be good those we except against are for their very matter meerly superstitious Secondly that this justification of the Antiquity and lawfulnesse of Canonical hours of Prayer was taken verbatim out of Mr. Cosens his hours of Prayer formerly complained of in Parliament That Canonical hours of Prayer are no wayes warranted by Davids president who speaks onely of Praise not Prayer and never digested his Psalms or Prayers into such Canonical houers nor any other Saint in the Old Testament or New The most exact patern of Prayer which Christ himself left both his Disciples and us to imitate warrants no such practise nay the Primitive Christians and true Antiquity never knew of any such Models of Prayer digested into Canonical hours which Popish monks first introduced practised prescribed Neither did Queen Elizabeth approve of them as Dr. Cosens pretends in his hours of Prayer whence the Archbishop borrowed this false answer as some who answered his Book by publique Authority have manifested to his shame Thirdly the Archbishop hath quite mistaken the last objection which was not his prostration to God in Prayer but his prostration coram Altare and dum Altari adsto in honour and reverence of his idolized Altar So that the charge rests still upon and sticks faster to him then before by this his justification Thirdly From my study at Lambeth they pursued me to my Gallery there where they charge three Pictures against me to which I return this Answer That the first of them which is the great one was given me by a friend and there can be no harm or Popery in it being onely the Picture of Saint Ambrose Augustine Jerome and Gregory the first which may be lawfully made and reserved That the two other Pictures were in the Gallery long before my time and continued there in Archbishop Abbots Bancrofts and Whitgifts dayes to prove which he produces Mr. Dobson his servant who affirmed that he saw these two latter Pictures in the Gallery in Archbishop Bancrofts time where they continued ever since and one of them is a Picture against Popery to wit of Christ going into the sheepfold by the door and of Popish Priests and Friers climbing into it by the window like theeves and robbers Besides the Harmony of confessions of the reformed Churches holds that Images are in themselves indifferent so as no adoration be given to them yea Mr. Calvin in the place forecited is of the same opinion And I have written against the adoration and superstitious use of Images as fully as any man