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	observation_n	sabbath_n	1,995	5	9.7332	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41016	Sacra nemesis, the Levites scourge, or, Mercurius Britan. disciplin'd, [Mercurius] civicvs [disciplin'd] also deverse remarkable disputes and resolvs in the Assembly of Divines related, episcopacy asserted, truth righted, innocency vindicated against detraction.	Featley, Daniel, 1582-1645.	1644 (1644)	Wing F593; ESTC R2806	73,187	105

uniting of all christians in the faith first given to the Saints and the doctrine of the primitive Church yet he could never en●ure those who went about to sodder the Roman and reformed religion and to bring Christ and Anti-christ to an enterview neither would he ever be brought to varie in his practice a nailes breadth from the canons of the Church of England and rubrick of the Common Prayer 4. After the scene was turned and many who before had layen in obscuritie were brought upon the stage who like the statues of Brutus and Cassius eò praefulgebant quod non visebantur did shine the brighter the more they were hid The Doctor among others was chosen by 390 votes to be a member of the Assemblie and among many other of eminent parts and worth was designed by the whole house of commons to answer a popish Priest which he did accordingly and was in so fair a way that if his conscience had been a Lesbian rule and would have bowed that way where preferments are now offered he might not only have held both his benefices but expected such farther priviledges as the chief of the Assemblie now enjoy But when a covenant was tendered wherein he must of necessitie proclaim his ingratitude to the world by swearing to endeavour the ruine of those upon whom under God he built his chief hopes and intangle his conscience in evident perjurie by swearing to break all his canonicall oaths necessitie constrained him to break off from the Assemblie and for this cause he is now in bonds and stript of all his ecclesiasticall preferments and temporall revenues nudus nudum Christum sequitur and followes his naked Saviour himself also stark naked But to leave off this sad and melancholie discourse and come to the beneficiall positions and sattin cassock thou talked of and game at gleek thou shouldest have said noddie a game at which thou playest at as well Sundays as working-days For beneficiall positions I know none held by the prelaticall clergie as your schismaticall laicks tearm them save this which the Apostle hath delivered that godlinesse is great gain and hath the promises of this life and the life to come but I can tell you of fruitfull doctrines and beneficiall uses raysed by your Enthusiasts as namely that usurie after it hath been with a barber chyrurgion and hath its teeth pluckt out is very lawfull and that those of your sect alone have a right to the creature and that the wicked have no right or title to any thing they possesse and that therefore when you plunder any Malignant you steal not but take your own from them and agreeable to your positions is your practise you make no bones to devoure widows houses under colour of long prayers like vultures you hover over dead corpses and thereout suck no small advantage if any rich man be going the way of all flesh some of your fraternitie must be sent for with all speed to pray his soul ex tempore into heaven and after you have perswaded him to set his house in order for he must dye and not live and he is going to draw his last will and testament you will be sure to have a ●inger in it or rather a claw or naile to scrape and scratch something for your selves under the title of pious legacies SECT. XIII Of ministeriall habits recreations on the Lords day and how the Brownists and sectaries prophane the Christian Sabbath HAst thou yet any better stuff in thy shop Britanicus besides the large mourning weed beg'd artificially at the last funerall of a saint Yes a sattin cassock surely a decent garment for a grave divine especially on high dayes what wouldst thou have the reverend clergy to weare wouldst thou have them go in cuerpo like your new England and Holland theologues or in a rocket liued through with plush or taffata as some of the Assembly men flaunt it or in a short jacket much like the riding coat of Davids Embassadors which was cut off at o● sacrum the huckle bone Here Brit. thou playst the base cynick ●alcas fastum Platonis thou tramplest upon Plato's pride but remember what Plato repli'd calcas fastum sed alio fastu thou tramplest upon the pride of some of the clergy in their apparell but thou dost it in a worse kind of pride As for card-playing I need not gle●k it with thee for we are at play already thy earnest is nothing but jests and those very scurrilous and ridiculous and therefore either to be scorned or retorted upon thee in sober sadnesse The Doctor is no player at cards or dice nor approveth at all any recreations on the Lords day but such as like Aarons golden plate in his miter have holinesse stamped on them As for those of thy precise sect they indeed will not for a world play a game at cards or tables on the Lords day after evening prayer but they do far worse they take away morning and evening prayer both and jear out the sacred liturgy of the church if thou art come to thy self Brit. and hast thy wits about thee prethee tell me is it not better playing a game at tables on the christian sabbath wherin a wooden man is taken up without any losse or hurt or at chesse in which there is an image of men set in battail array there to cast the bloody die of war on that day to kill to pillage to plunder of the two I had rather see latrunculos on that day then latrones chesse-men then pressed-men notwithstanding to chuse you rifle houses and sequester malignants on that day your city magistrates and Officers will not suffer a poor waterman to rowe on the Thames yet they permit the souldiers in all the courts of guard and forts and ships to drink and swell all the day a physitian may not passe over the river to save the life of the body not a divine to save the life of the soul yet they account it a sanctifying of the sabbath to beat up drums and presse souldiers to kill men on that day O precise hypocrisie or rather hypocriticall precisenesse A devout father sharply reprooving the evill conversation of some christians in his time told them to their faces gentes agitis sub nomine Christi you act the parts of Gentiles in the habit of Christians but I may truly say of you Iudaeos agitis sub nomine Christi you act the parts of Iewes in the habit of Christians Iewes I say in the rigid observation of the Sabbath of Iewes in venting your spleen and malice against Christ by excluding his prayer out of your liturgie by defacing his name Iesus wheresoever you see it written in golden characters or wrought in cloth of gold or tissue or stampt in holy vessels calling it the Iesuits trim or ga●b by inveighing against keeping the feast of the nativity resurrection and ascension and terrifying those that in a religious compassion fast

a lawful way not by popular tumults but by a Bill passed in Parliament and that to be tendered to his Majestie for his royall assent and how such a bill can be pressed upon his Majestie who hath taken an oath * at his Coronation to preserve Bishops in their legall rights I must learn from our great masters of the law For by the Gospel all inducements to sin are sin and solicitations to perjurie are tainted with that guilt neither is there any power upon earth to dispence with the breach of oaths lawfully taken 15. If we desire that this Church of England should flourish like the garden of Eden we must have an eye to the nurseries of good learning and religion the two Univers●ties which will never be furnished with choice plants if there be no preferments and incouragements to the students there who for the farre greater part bend their studies to the Queen of all professions Divinitie which will make but a slow progresse if Bishopricks Deanries Archdeaconries and Prebendaries and all other Ecclesiasticall dignities which like silver spurs prick on the industrie of those who consecrate their labours and endeavours to the glorifying of God in imploying their tal●nt in the ministerie of the Gospel be taken away What ●ayls are to a ship that are affections to the soul which if they be not filled with the hope of some rewards and deserved preferments as a prosperous gale of wind our sacred studies and endeavours will soon be calmed for * honos abit artos omnesqu● incenduntur studio gloriae jacentquo ea semper quae apud quosquo improbantur honour nourisheth arts and all men are inflamed with the desire of glory and those professions fall and decay which are in no esteem with most men And if there are places both of great profit honour and power propounded to States-men and those that are learned in the law like rich prizes to those that prove masteries shall the professors of the divine law be had in lesse esteem then the students and practisers in the municipall And shall that profession onely be barred from ●ntring into the temple of honour which directeth all men to the temple of vertue and hath best right to honour by the promise of God honorantes nic honorab● those that honour me I will honour because they most honour God in every action of their function which immediately tendeth to his glory They will say that Episcopall government hath proved inconvenient and prejudiciall to the State and therefore the Hierarchie is to be cut down root and branch Of this argument we may say as Cicero doth of Cato his exceptions against * Murenae set aside the authoritie of the objectors the objection hath very little weight in it For it is liable to many and just exceptions and admitteth of divers replyes First it is said that Episcopall government is inconvenient and mischievous and prejudiciall to the State but it was never proved to be so Secondly admit some good proof could be brought of it yet if Episcopacie be of divine institution as hath been proved it must not be therefore rooted out but the luxurious stems of it pruned and those additions to the first institution from whence these inconveniences have grown ought to be retranched Thirdly if Episcopacie hath proved inconvenient and mischievous in this age which was most * beneficiall and profitable in all former ages the fault may be in the maladies of the patient not in the method of cure This age is to be reformed not Episcopacie abrogated that the libertie and loosenesse of these times will not brook the sacred bands of Episcopall discipline is rather a proof of the integritie thereof then a true argument of any maligr●tie in it to the state without which no effectuall * meanes or course can be taken either for the suppressing schismaticks or the continuation of a lawfull and undenyable succession in the Ministery 16. Lastly though some of late think they have brought gold and silver and precious stones to build the house of God by producing some stuff out of antiquitie to prove the ordination of presbyters by meer presbyters yet being put to the test it proves meer trash for there can be no instance brought out of Scripture of any ordination without imposition of Apostolicall or Episcopall hands neither hath prime antiquitie ever approved of meer presbyters laying hands one upon another but in orthodoxall Councels revoked cassated and disannulled all such ordinations as we may read in the Apologies of * Athanasius and elsewhere What shall I need to adde more save the testimonie of all Chistians of what denomination soever under the cope of heaven save only the mushrom sect of Brownists sprung up the other night all who have given their name to Christ and acknowledge and have some dependence on either the Patriarch of Constantinople in the East or of Rome in the West or of Muscovia in the North or of Alexandria in the South together with the Cophti● Maro●ites Abissenes and Chineses not onely admit of Episcopall government and most willingly submit to it but never had or at this day have any other Neither is this or can it be denyed by our Aërians but they tell us that these are Christians at large who hold many errors and superstitions with the fundamentals of Christian doctrine their Churches are like oare not cleansed from earth like gold not purged from drosse like threshed wheat not fanned from the chaff like meale not sifted from the bran like wine not drawn off the lees we are say they upon a reformation and the new Covenant engageth us to endeavour the reformation of the Church of England in doctrine worship discipline and government according to the Word of God and according to the example of the best reformed Churches The best reformed which are they whether the remainders of the Waldenses and Albigenses in Piemont and the parts adjoyning or of the Taborites in Bohemia or of the Lutherans in Germanie or those that are called after the name of Calvin in France and elsewhere First for the Waldenses the fore-runners of Luther as he himself confesseth they had Bishops who ordained their Pastours a catalogue whereof we may see in the historie of the Waldenses first written in French and after translated into English by a learned Herald Secondly for the Lutheran Churches they have Prelates governing them under the titles of Arch-bishops and Bishops in Poland Denmark and Swethland but under the name of Superintendents and Intendents in Germanie and as for their judgement in the point it is expressely set down in the * apologie of the Augusta●e confession in these words we have often protested our earnest desires to conserve the discipline of degrees in the Church by Bishops Nay Luther himself who of all men most bitterly inveighed against the Antichristian Hierarchie yet puts water into his wine adding l●t no man