Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	earth_n	heaven_n	militant_a	4,766	5	11.7120	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70321	A view of the nevv directorie and a vindication of the ancient liturgie of the Church of England in answer to the reasons pretended in the ordinance and preface, for the abolishing the one, and establishing the other.	Hammond, Henry, 1605-1660.; Charles I, King of England, 1600-1649.; England and Wales. Sovereign (1625-1649 : Charles I). Proclamation commanding the use of the Booke of common prayer.	1646 (1646)	Wing H614B; ESTC R2266	98,033	122

for Kings c. 1 Tim. 2. 1 2. where though the mention of those severall sorts of Prayers signified by those foure words might be matter of apology for the making severall addresses to God for Kings in one service supposing them proportion'd to those sorts in that text yet have we distributed the frequent prayers for him into the severall services one solemne prayer for him in the ordinary daily service and only a versicle before as it were prooemiall to it another in the Letany another after the commandements of which though our book hath two formes together yet both the Rubrick and Custome gives us authority to interpret it was not meant that both should be said at once but either of the two chosen by the Minister another before the Communion where the necessity of the matter being designed for the Church militant makes it more then seasonable to descend to our particular Church and the King the supreame of it just as Herodotus relates the custome of the Persians l. 1. p. 52. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they pray for all the Persians peculiarly for the King To this practice of ours so grounded in the Apostle we shall adde 1. The reward promised by the Apostles intimation to such Prayers if not as I conceive by those words that we may live a peaceable and quiet life c. that peaceable and quiet life of all blessings the greatest seeming to be a benefit or donative promised to the faithfull discharge of that duty of praying and supplicating and interceding and giving thankes for Kings yet certainly somewhat else in that high Declaration made concerning it in the next words for this is good and acceptable before Good our Saviour whose acceptation is reward sufficient to any action and yet who never accepts but rewards also 2. The practice of the antient Christians set down by Tertull. Sacrificamus pro salute Imperatoris pura prece our prayers are sent up a pure sacrifice for the prosperity of the Emperor and that quoties conveniebant in another place at every meeting or service of the Church precantes semper pro omnibus Imperatoribus vitam prolixam Imperium securum domum tutam exercitus fortes Senatum fidelem populum probum Orbem quietum quaecunque hominis Casaris vota sunt praying alwaies for the Emperours and begging of God for them long life secure reigne the safety of his house couragious Armies a faithfull Senate a good people a quiet world all those severalls which would make up more prayers then our book hath assigned all that either as Man or King they can stand in need of and so Athenagoras and others to the same purpose especially when they have occasion to justifie the fidelity of Christians to their unchristian Emperours having no surer evidence to give of that then the frequency of their prayers for them which they which thinke necessary to abbridge or supercede must give us leave by that indication to judge of somewhat else by occasion of that to pick to observe their other demonstrations of disloyalty to those that are set over them by God And to any that are not guilty of that crime nor yet of another of thinking all length of the publike service unsupportable I shall refer it to be judged whether it be necessary that the King be prayed for in the Church no oftner then there is a Sermon there Sect 36 6. The Communion of Saints which if it were no Article in our Creed ought yet to be laid up as one of the Christians tasks or duties consists in that mutuall exchange of charity and all seasonable effects of it between all parts of the Church that triumphant in heaven Christ and the Saints there and this on earth militant which he that disclaimes by that one act of insolence casts off one of the noblest priviledges of which this earth is capable to be a fellow-citizen with the Saints and a ●llow-member with Christ himselfe The effects of this charity on their parts is in Christ intercession and in the Saints suffrages and daily prayers to God for us but on our part thankesgivings and commemorations which 't is apparent the Primitive Christians used very early solemnizing the day of Christs resurrection c. and rehearsing the names of the Saints out of their Dipticks in time of the offertory before the Sacrament besides this so solemne a Christian duty another act of charity there is which the Church owes to her living sonnes the educating them in the presence of good examples and setting a remarke of honour on all which have lived Christianly especially have died in testimony of the truth of that profession and again a great part of the New Testament being story of the lives of Christ and his Apostles and the rest but doctrine agreeable to what those lives expressed it must needs be an excellent compendium of that book and a most usefull way of infusing it into the understanding and preserving it in the memory of the people to assigne proper portions of Scripture in Lessons Epistles and Gospells to every day every Sunday every Festivall in the year which are none in our Church but for the remembrance of Christ and the Scripture-Saints to infuse by those degrees all necessary Christian knowledge and duties into us the use of which to the ignorant is so great that it may well be feared that when the Festivalls and solemnities for the birth of Christ and his other famous passages of life and death and resurrection and ascension and mission of the Holy Ghost and the Lessons Gospells and Collects and Sermons upon them be turn'd out of the Church together with the Creeds also 't will not be in the power of weekly Sermons on some head of Religion to keep up the knowledge of Christ in mens hearts a thing it seems observ'd by the Casuists who use to make the number of those things that are necessariò credenda necessary to be beleeved no more then the Festivalls of Christ make known to men and sure by antient Fathers whose Preaching was generally on the Gospells for the day as appears by their Sermons de tempore and their Postils To all these ends are all these Festivals and these Services designed by the Church and to no other that is capable of any the least brand of novell or superstitious and till all this antidote shall be demonstrated to be turn'd poyson all these wholesome designes to be perfectly noxious till ill or no examples uncharitablenesse schismaticall cutting ourselves off from being fellow-members with the Saints and even with Christ our head till ingratitude ignorance and Atheisme it selfe be canonized for Christian and Saint-like and the onely things tending to edification in a Church there will hardly appeare any so much as politick necessity to turn these out of it Sect 37 7. For the reading of the Commandements and prayer before and the responses after each of them though it be not antiently

whence the passages excepted against are fetcht as that particularly of Praying for Gods mercy upon all men from 1. Tim. 2. 1. nor 3. a more artificiall composure for the raising that zeale and keeping it up throughout then this so defamed part of our Liturgy for which and other excellencies undoubtedly it is and not for any Conjuring or Swearing in it that the Devill hath taken care that it should drink deepest of that bitter cup of Calumny and Reviling which it can no way have provoked but only as Christ did the reproach of the diseased man What have I to do with thee c. when he came to exorcize and cast out the Devill that possest him And for this to be throwne out of the Church sure there is no other necessity then there was that there should be Scandals and Heresies in it onely because the Devill and his Factors would have it so Sect 27 5. For the dividing of Prayers into divers Collects or Portions and not putting all our Petitions into one continued Prayer these advantages it hath to give it authority 1. the practice of the Jewes whose Liturgy was dispensed into Lessons c. and 18. Collects or short Prayers 2. The example of Christs prescribing a short Forme and in that saith S. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 teaching us the me asure or length due to each Prayer of ours Hom. de Annâ f. 965. and setting a mark of Heathenisme Mat. 6. and of Pharisaisme Mat. 23. 14. on their long Prayers 3. The advice of the Antients who tell us S. Peters Forme used for a great while in the Roman Church was a short one and that Christ and S. Paul commanded us to make our Prayers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 short and frequent and with little distances betweene And so Ephiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 orat c. 24. directs to offer our Petitions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with all frequency and Cassian de instit mon. l. 2. c. 10. from the universall consent of them Vtilius censent breves orationes sed creberrimas fieri The way that is resolved to be most profitable is to have short Prayers but very thick or frequent And he addes a consideration which prompted them to this resolution Vt Diaboli insidiantis jacula succinctà brevitate vitemur That by that means the Divells darts which he is wont to find and steale his time to shoot into our breasts may by the brevity of our Prayers be prevented To these many more might be added but that the no-advantage on the other side above this save onely the reputation of the labour and patience of speaking or hearing so much in a continued course in one breath as it were will save us the paines of using more motives to perswade any that sure it is not necessary to exchange this pleasant easie course of our Liturgy for the tedious toylsome lesse profitable course in the Directory Sect 28 6. For the Ceremonies used in the severall Services much might be said as particularly for that of kneeling in opposition to sitting at the Lords Supper designed in the Directory 1. That it is agreeable to the practice of all Antiquity who though they kneeled not because the Canon of the Councell of Nice obliged all to stand in the Church between Easter and Whitsuntide or on the Lords day all the yeare long which by the way absolutely excludes sitting as also doth that saying of Optatus l. 4. That the People may not sit in the Church and of Tertullian l. de Orat. c. 12. That 't was an Heathen custome to sit in the Church and therefore ought to be reprehended yet used the Prayer-gesture at receiving i. e. bowing their bodies and heads which the Fathers call adoration kissing of the hand is the propriety of the Latine word but but the ordinary denotation of it bowing the body the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is more then the former the cultus major among the Learned For as Herodotus observes of the Eastern Nations that the manner of equalls was to kisse one another at meeting of inferiours to kisse the hand of the Superiour but of the Suppliants or Petitioners that would expresse the greatest humility to bow themselves before him so was this last of the three continued among the primitive Christians in their Services of the greatest piety and humility Climacus p. 298. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when I receive I worship or adore agreeable to which the great men in the French Churches who receive it passing or going a meer Aegyptian Passe-over custome do first make a lowly cringe or curtesie before they take it in their hands 2. that Christs Table-gesture at the delivering it is no Argument for sitting both because it is not manifest by the Text that he used that save only at the Passe-over from which this Supper of the Lord was distinct and was celebrated by blessing and breaking and giving the bread c. to which some other gesture might be more proper and more commodious and because Christs gesture in that is no more obligingly exemplary to us then his doing it after Supper was to the Apostles who yet did it Fasting Act. 13. 2. and generally took it before the agapae and as by Plinies Epistle it appears so early in the morning that the Congregation departed and met again ad capiendum cibum promiscuum to take their meales together As also 3. that the contrary gesture of sitting as it was not many years since by a full Synod of Protestants in Poland forbidden if not condemned because they found it used by the Arrians as complying with their opinion who hold our Saviour to be a meer Creature so is it now profest by some of our late Reformers writings to be a badge and cognisance of their beleeving in the infallibility of Christs promise of coming to raign on this Earth again and take them into a familiar and a kind of equall conversation with him the Doctrine of the Millenaries once in some credit but after condemn'd by the Church and though favoured by some Learned men both antiently and of late is not yet sure cleare enough to come into our Creed or Liturgy or to be profest and proclaimed by that gesture when ever we receive the Sacrament The evidence or proofe of it being primarily that in the Revelation which by the rest of that Book I am very apt to suspect may signifie any thing rather then what the letter of the words imports to us at the first view of them But I shall not enlarge on this nor the other Ceremonies mention'd but referre the Reader to the Learned Satisfactory unanswer'd labour of M. Hooker on these Subjects and then aske him when he hath read him 1. whether he repent him of that paines 2. whether in his Conscience he can thinke it necessary or tending to edification to cast all these causelesly out of this Church or the whole Liturgy for their sakes Sect