Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	great_a	king_n	people_n	9,166	5	4.4099	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77431	A brief discourse of the present miseries of the kingdome: declaring by what practises the people of England have been deluded, and seduced into slavery, and how they have been continued therein, and by what meanes they may shake off that bondage, they are now enthraled under. / Written by a lover of his country, for the good of all such who are not contented to be slaves, but desire to live free-men.	Lover of his country.	1648 (1648)	Wing B4583; Thomason E467_24; ESTC R205268	21,615	31

fowlest impieties and the most irreligious practises the basis and foundation of all their structure publique faith they have prostituted like a common whore and taught her to pick the pockets of her fornicators Lying and perjury hath been the untempered morter they have dawb'd withall Murder Theft and Rapine hath been the chiefe materials they have wrought withall But lest you should imagine me too invective although I speake nothing but the truth I will give you my observations of the difference betweene the present and preceding times wherein if every indifferent understanding be not able to discover a remarkable disparity and how we are declin'd into a much worse condition then formerly we enjoyed I must conclude he wilfully shuts the eyes of his reason lest he should be made sensible of that ignorance he hath lived in or be found guilty of conniving at those plots and practices which during this Parliament have been used to ruine and destroy his Country It were enough to let you see the difference if I onely tell you the Kingdome before this Parliament enjoy'd peace and that it is now embroyled with a Civill War but I shall addresse my selfe more particularly to each mans understanding and in the first place I shall begin with our Religion which was so reform'd and setled in this Kingdome as that it was an honour unto our Nation a fear and terror unto the Romish party and the hope and wish of all Protestant Churches beyond the Seas that they might be rendred in a capacity to imitate us for we had excluded the novell introductions and superstitious fopperies of the Papists and yet retained a decency of order Divine worship in our Churches such as would not admit of parity to confound or fancy to disturbe the wel-composed harmony in the government of the Church That God who is the God of Order and is delighted in it as appeares by the consent and union in the Creation and disposing of all things was here served with Order and Reverence Humility was the Garment we put on when we entred into the holy places exprest by our humble Gestures and civill Comportment in the time and place of Adoration and each degree according to his eminency had that duty and respect payed him which was due according to the superiority of his calling from his inferior and subordinate Officers A remedy was provided for each inconvenience and no crime could escape unpunished unlesse by the corruption of the Judge and that nothing can prevent for whilst Jugdes are men some of them will still be wicked and corrupt and private passions and interests will lead them to connive at offences or to passe indirect and unjust Sentences according to their affections and relations We had as many eminent and learned men in the Kingdom as any Age ever produced and the Vniversities and Innes of Court as flourishing in their severall Professions as ever they were The Word and the Sword Religion and Justice were equally administred through the Kingdom each man knew where and how to pray according to the Patterne and Forme prescribed by our Saviour and to joyne with united hearts and voices in the most sacred and best composed Lyturgie of the world The first rudiments of Christian Religion were learned by heart by being only Auditors and Assistans at our Church service The Lords Prayer the Greed and the ten Commandements which are the principles of Christian Religion was a part of our Lyturgie and we are daily taught how to praise God for the benefits we had and did daily receive and how to pray unto him for the supply of our wants And sure on these two maine pillars of Praise and Prayer the structure of Religion is erected This was the Sacrifice we offered three or four times a day in our Cathedrals and at least as many times a week by injunction in our ordinary Churches and now this sacred Offertory which by Act of Parliament was Enjoyned by Ordinance is Abolished as if it were a crime to serve God in any other forme or method then the two Houses shall prescribe Instead of this Decency and Vniformity what confusion is introduced is obvious to every man how these divine Collects are enforced to give place to extempore Nonsence and the admirable composed Prayers extracted out of the most patheticall parts of the Scripture must be banished the Church whilst Heresies and Blasphemies are planted within the walls of the Church whereby whole Congregations are infected and become Separatists in their tenents Pious Religious and Orthodox Ministers are Voted out of their Free-holds and violently ejected because they will not be perjured and conforme to worship the Presbyterian Idol or the Independent Monster these novell Reformers would set up And in the Cures of these Reverend Divines for the most part ignorant Non-conformists and factious Schismatiques are placed by which they have new modell'd the Church and setled therein fit Chaplains for such Patrons who must instruct the people to believe nothing to be Orthodox Divinity but what they read unto them out of a Parliament Ordinance or a City Diurnall And if they can but continue the people in this slavish Ignorance to forget their duty to God and their Loyalty to the King and to submit by an implicite faith to the power of the Parliament then their great work is done for all their great labour is to keep up their Diana the Parliament and to keep the people from knowing that it is the Devill that utters those Oracles which are vented from that Shrine But sure the Bloud of those Martyrs who have suffered for good Consciences and have either dyed in Prisons or for want been starved abroad being unjustly robbed by these mercilesse men of all their Estates and Lively-hoods cry loud for vengeance and will one day awaken the patience of our long suffering God And draw down his revenging wrath on these counterfeit Zealots and impious Hypocrites who have indeed really no Religion but only make use of that sacred Cloak to disguise all their villany For what have these great Reformers done but introduced will-worship into the Church and Lawlesnesse in the Common-wealth For who can now discover the face of any Church in this Kingdome where every severall Congregation use a distinct forme of worship and where there is no Coercive power to compell Vniformity in Doctrine or to punish Deformity in manners The sacred Scripture is profaned and by the Liberty each man appropriates to himself to Interpret according to his own Fancy or rather to apply that divine writing to serve for the advancing his own designes the sense thereof is so inverted by these Scripturists who use it no other wayes then the Devill did to intrap circumvent their hearers so that those divine Oracles which were bequeath'd us to instruct us in the right way to Heaven are by these lying Prophets become by-paths that lead to destruction Our Lawes which are each Subjects Birth-right how