Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	cause_n	just_a	separation_n	3,235	5	9.9864	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51221	Of patience and submission to authority a sermon preach'd before the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen at Guild-Hall Chapel on the 27th of January, 1683/4 / by John Moore ...	Moore, John, 1646-1714.	1684 (1684)	Wing M2545; ESTC R32113	43,694	66

can the King have better hold of them by any Oath they shall please themselves to take since that Oath also according to the doctrine of the Decree would become unlawfull and so cease to bind them if it should happen once to be condemn'd by one of the Breves or Bulls of the Pope Moreover though these Jesuits do profess yet indeed they do not exhibit as much obedience to the King as other Popish Subjects do to their Prince for it is well known that they of the Gallican Church do pay obedience to the Laws and Edicts of their King even against his Holiness's Bulls and sixty Doctours also of the Sorbon have declared that the English Subjects of the Roman Persuasion may lawfully and safely take the Oath of Allegiance which this Consult of Jesuits has condemned But to doe the Reverend Fathers of that Order right it must be confess'd that notwithstanding all the affronts they have put upon Kings they can grosly flatter them when it will serve the interest of their Society Of which egregious flattery the French Jesuits in their College at Paris founded by the Bishop of Clermont have given a very late instance Where in the place of their old Inscription Collegium Claromontanum Jesu they have put up this Collegium Ludovici Magni wiping out at once the names both of their Founder and Saviour What a change will Interest make in the Opinions and Practices of Men Pope Hildebrand to whose dictates the Jesuits pay most religious respect declares Kings to be the Priests Servants and even inferiour to the Exorcist but these pious Fathers did not think they had given testimony sufficient of their loyalty till they had preferr'd their King before Jesus Christ And having thus proved that all resistence to the Supreme Authority is unlawfull and that the Popes were the first abettours of it in the Christian Church by pretended Arguments from Scripture I come 2. To shew with what care impartiality and patience the good Christian searches into the grounds and causes of his Persuasion that the commands of Authority are sinfull before he refuses to pay obedience to them No power on Earth can make him withdraw his obedience to God nor any danger awe him into the doing of that which he believes to be a sin Where Man's Laws stand in opposition to God's Law if it may be done without detriment to his Religion he accepts the benefit of Christ's Licence given to his Disciples and makes his escape by flying from one City to another or else he patiently submits to the penalty decreed to be inflicted upon him for his conscientious refusal But because men have refused to conform to the Laws of the Government when there has been nothing in them repugnant to the Will of God and have been justly punished for their disobedience at the same time they have thought themselves Martyrs for the Cause of Christ and since on the one hand it is most unhappy for them to suffer for their mistakes and on the other of ill consequence to Governours that their Laws when just and expedient should not be duly observed therefore the man who has possest his Soul with patience does not run away with the first appearances of things as being prone to suspect the errour may lie rather in his understanding than in the Laws of his Superiours nor does he forbear to comply with the will of the Higher Powers till upon much consideration he becomes persuaded there can be no compliance without involving himself in sin And if a Law chance to be enacted the matter whereof may seem evil to him he does not hasten rashly into any conclusion but he imploys his patience his sincerity his prudence in all the proper methods to inform his judgment truly before he comes to a resolution how he must behave himself And in order to prosper in a work of such importance he begins it with hearty prayer to God to bless his undertaking and guide him into all truth Before he enters into the merits of the Cause it self he impartially enquires whether he be not carried into it by prejudice passion profit fame or some other secular end Whether he has not taken up this opinion of the unlawfulness of conformity to the Laws as well as many false ones by the prejudices of a disadvantagious education by having heard the Arguments read the Books and conversed with the Men onely who are of one side There being reason to believe that many of the Dissenters from our Church are mere strangers to all the constitutions of it They have rarely if ever been present all the time of Divine Service they have never seriously perused any one office of our Liturgy and fairly weighed what may be said for it They scarce can pretend to have read more leaves of the Book of Publick Prayers than of the Alcoran However these men separate from us because they have been taught to doe so and because their Friends do upon whom they have such a dependence as not to dare to displease them And in which course while they continue their most dangerous errours will be incurable He farther considers whether his present dissent does not proceed from his having had a known reputation in such a Party a long time and although he could now without any violence to his Conscience yet he is ashamed to retreat or whether it be not because he finds his opposition to the Government to be popular and he draws crowds after him of admirers or to be very profitable he gains a fair livelihood by it and should be at a loss for his subsistence did he not engage himself in the interests of the Dissenters Lastly He considers whether he doth pass judgment in the other cases which occur in his life with the same scrupulosity and tenderness he does in this for if he have with such art managed his Conscience that notwithstanding it's tenderness in the matter of Conformity it can allow him to live quietly in the known breach of any of the moral duties of Religion he has just reason to suspect his want of sincerity as to the causes for which he divides from the Church If notwithstanding his long refusal to join with us in our Common Prayers as stinting the Spirit and not tending to edification he yet can submit to the forms of solemnization of Marriage to gain a person with a great fortune and to legitimate his issue to inherit it and if after many years absence from our Churches and separation from our Communion as antichristian and unlawfull he yet can receive the holy Sacrament with us to qualify himself for an office or employment it will be obvious either that his Conscience is perversely instructed or that he is an hypocrite Now as none of the reasons before-mentioned can justify any Man's disobedience to Authority seeing they owe their rise to pride interest or passion so were such heads of enquiry duly poised in the balance and allow'd

and sometimes rugged yet Christian patience will so cheer up our drooping hearts that we shall not return back out of them nor go astray from them nor sit down in despair of ever arriving at the end of our race We shall not fail to work out our salvation with fear and trembling while it frequently refresheth our memory and animates our courage with the pleasing assurance that it is God who works in us both to will and to doe of his good pleasure And the more work lies on our hands the greater diligence we shall give to make our calling and election sure 2. If the Petitions the patient man puts up to Heaven be not presently granted he does not grow weary of his devotions and give them over as if God neither heard him nor had any regard to what he desired For there be many good reasons which convince him that God's time to answer his Prayers is the best and that he ought submissively to wait for it Perhaps the thing he prays for is not proper for his condition and might doe him harm if he had it Or perhaps he does not address himself to his Prayers with that just preparation which may testify his sense of the Divine Presence and that awfull regard he ought to have of the great God with whom now he has more immediately to doe Or it may be he does not pray with that warmth and intention of mind which the vast importance of the mercy he begs for does deserve Therefore he ceaseth not to pray although a speedy return be not made to his Prayers as well knowing God's Ears are always open and his Mercies ever free but that the fault must lie on his own side Which obligeth him narrowly to look into the defects of his own performance and to mend them The patience with which his Soul is sustained even when God refuseth to grant the things he has pray'd for preserves him from running into any sinfull extreme From either being so prophane as to believe his condition may be prosperous though he prays not at all or so vainly fancifull as to hope by any superstitious practice to render his Prayers the more effectual He is as far on the one hand from being puft up with the haughty confidence of the Stoic who bids his wise man fac te ipse felicem make himself happy as he is from degenerating into the superstition of the Papists who lest their Prayers should miscarry address them to hundreds of Mediatours more than God has either appointed or allow'd and without one example in the Primitive Church to justify it Insomuch as some honest and learned men of that Church could not forbear laying open the absurdness and impiety of this modern practice of these Semi-christians who pray hardly oftner to God than to the Virgin Mary thinking it the highest crime to say the Lord's Prayer if presently they do not add to it an Ave Maria as if that without this would not be of the least value By which course they seem to imply that God's hand is grown shorter than it was in the beginning and the power and merit of Christ's intercession so weakned by length of time that they find it necessary to join a multitude of Saints to him to be his Coadjutors And to this purpose Henno interprets Gen. 2.18 It is not good that the man should be alone let us make a meet help for him That is says he one Advocate or Mediatour in Heaven is not sufficient for Mankind which has so many causes of the highest and most dangerous consequence depending before God Let us make him a meet help i. e. The Blessed Virgin Neither are opinions so ridiculous and usages so repugnant to Primitive Christianity to be charged onely on the weak and ignorant Members of that Church since these things have taken up a place in their Public Offices and we find Pope Pius II. directing his Prayers immediately to the Virgin Mary to cure his Fever and in that Prayer acknowledging her power to be infinite and the whole world to be filled with its Miracles And Leo X. gives her the title of Goddess and Bonaventura a Cardinal and a Saint has burlesqu'd the Book of Psalms applying and translating the incommunicable Attributes of God and Jesus Christ unto the Virgin Mother But the humble patient Christian we are describing he both abhors the impious Doctrine of Epicurus that holds God is too high and too busie to mind our Prayers and the false Worship of the Romanists who go about to reconcile the offended Deity with trifling and childish Penances He does not hope to move God to hear him the sooner by scourging his back or by a Pilgrimage perform'd barefoot He does not cross his Body but he crucifies his Lusts he does not put off his shoes but he layeth aside every weight which may clog and incumber him so that he cannot run with patience the race set before him But he has a great care that the fear of being drawn into the senseless superstitions of Rome betray him not into a neglect of natural reverence in his devotions and the omitting of decency and order in the Worship of God Neither does he believe that the length of his Prayers will the more recommend them to Heaven or that he shall have a speedier grant of them when they are utter'd in unpremeditated and sometimes unseemly expressions than when offer'd up in a grave form of proper and well chosen words He is not so much concern'd for the circumstances of his Prayers as the sincerity of them He is even afraid of being so loud in private as to make the Streets the witnesses of his Devotion lest he should onely receive the Pharisee's reward but he retires into the secresies of his Closet and there poureth forth his soul before God with a profound reverence an unfeigned humility and deep sense of his own wants and though his Prayers be not always long yet he suffers few hours of any day to pass without sending up to Heaven hearty and earnest supplications with thanksgivings 3. He does not unreasonably terrify himself with distant dangers and anticipate calamities before they come For the remote evils we so much dread may both prove very tolerable when they come and make but a short stay with us Nay though to us they may seem insufferable and by no humane means to be avoided yet the alwise Providence of God whose ways are as unsearchable as the great deeps may prevent their coming at all and scatter our proud enemies before the wind who boasted of their powers as invincible contriving for us a wonderfull deliverance when we suppose our selves on the brink of destruction And surely the Israelites when they beheld Pharaoh and his Hosts floating upon the Red-sea could not but with shame reflect upon their own distrust of God's wisedom and goodness and those unjust reproaches they had cast upon Moses as if they