Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A53406
|
Comfort in affliction, or, Advice to Protestant dissenters in times of persecution together with remarks on the just judgments of God upon this city and land, since the prohibition of the Gospel, by mulcts and penalties / by J.O.
|
J. O.
|
1682
(1682)
|
Wing O4; ESTC R32241
|
16,661
|
19
|
Comfort in Affliction OR ADVICE TO PROTESTANT DISSENTERS IN Times of Persecution TOGETHER WITH Remarks on the just Judgments of God upon this City and Land since the Prohibition of the Gospel by Mulcts and Penalties By J. O. LONDON Printed for R. Jones 1682. COMFORT in AFFLICTION OR ADVICE TO PROTESTANT DISSENTERS c. THE Suppressing the Glorious Light of the Gospel and Banishing it out of Publique View the silencing the Grace of Christs own Lips and causing the Joyful Sound that Proclaims the Acceptable Year of the Lord to cease out of our Borders is the Evil of Evils and the Misery of Miseries which brings all other Evils and Miseries along with it yea this shuts up the Kingdom of Heaven from the World and sets Hell wide open for all men to run headlong into it as we see it done this day This excludes the Love Mercy and Goodness of God from the World as much as possibly it can and brings in his Wrath and heavy Displeasure to wast and consume it of which we have had the sad and most exquisite Experience now alas for several years together For since the Gospel under several Mulcts and Penalties hath been forbidden to be Preach'd how many Manifestations of Gods Just Anger have we seen in many strange and unusual Prodigies in the Heavens in the Waters c. Being loud Warnings of the Wrath to come What a griveous and desolating Plague the Scourge of the Almighty hath destroyed Thousands and Ten Thousands in that late great City and in many other parts of the Nation the like whereunto hath not been heretofore What a dreadful Conflagration hath devoured that Famous and Incomparable City the Head and Glory of these Nations and laid it in Ashes and Ruines like Sodom and Gomorah which Cities were set on Fire from Heaven but this from Hell by the Locusts of the Bottomless Pit the Emissaries of the Pope and his Clergy which Vermin have swarmed in this Nation since the removal of the Gospel And this provoking Sin is not so much the Sin of the people as of Evil Counsellors at the Helm who as it were have openly renounced Christ and desired Barabbas to be given to them in his stead they have rejected the sweet and Meek Gospel of Christ and have desired to be given to them the Cruel and Murderous Religion of Antichrist And this one thing carrys weight in it that they who tolerate Popery to take its ease among us and to lengthen its Cords and to strengthen its Stakes though it be directly against Christ and they who tolerate the open exercise of the Jewish Religion which denies and blasphemes Christ will by no means suffer nor endure the true and sincere Gospel of Christs Kingdom to be published but under great Penalties From hence follows the greatest and deepest ignorance of God and Christ that can be and of all their unsearchable Riches which the Gospel hath discovered to the World The greatest ignorance of the Law and of Gospel of Sin and of Righteousnes of Salvation and Damnation of Heaven and Hell in a word the grossest ignorance of all the Revealed Truths of God which concern us either to obtain Eternal Life or to avoid Endless Death Never was there such a Deluge of Sin seen upon Earth as now covers the Face of the Nation this is even become the covering of all Flesh All sorts of People of High and Low Degree whether Secular or Ecclesiastical are all drencht and dyed in it in such sort that Men live in this World in the manifest likeness of the Devil and if Satan himself were Incarnate you could not easily discern one from the other They set their Faces against Heaven and call out upon God to Damn them Soul and Body So Divelish they are that they would fain be tormented before their time and do often provoke Hell to swallow them up for because they can be no liker to the Devil in this World they would hasten to Hell that there they may be fully like him Oh Monsters of Mankind Oh the true Seed of the Serpent the right Generation of Vipers Ye have been fore-warn'd by God to flee from the Wrath to come but who hath warn'd you to flee unto it Who among the remote Nations would believe the report of all your Villanies The very rehearsal of them would put them into Pangs and the bare hearing of them into Tremblings their Sayings and Doings are such as are not fit to be mentioned or recited among Men but onely in the midst of Devils For who without horrible fear could either repeat or hear their desperate Blasphemies against God himself glorious in Holiness and against our Lord Jesus Christ whom God hath made his First-Born Higher than the Kings of the Earth and when he brought him into the World he said Let all the Angels Worship Him and against the Holy Spirit against whom whoever speaks a word it shall never be forgiven him against the blessed Gospel the great and onely Power of God to Salvation against the Kingdom of God on Earth and against them that dwell in Heaven Therefore O Lord forgive them not For their Vine is as the Vine of Sodom and of the Fields of Gomorrah their Grapes are Grapes of Gall their Clusters are bitter their Wine is the Poyson of Dragons and the cruel Venome of Asps The shew of their Countenance doth witness against them and they declare their Sin more than Sodom they hide it not they boast of it and every Man is famous as he can do most wickedly Wo unto their Souls for they have rewarded evil against themselves For therefore Hell hath enlarged her self and opened her Mouth without measure and their Glory and their Multitude and their Pomp and he that rejoiceth shall soon descend into it This their Day approacheth it comes it makes hast when they shall perish for ever like their own Dung and they that have seen them shall say where are they And therefore howl ye Profane Ones for the Day of the Lord is at hand it shall come as a Destruction from the Almighty then shall your Wicked Hands fall down and your Proud Hearts melt and you shall be sorely afraid Pangs and Sorrow shall take hold on you even Pangs as of a Woman in Travel and when ye shall look to one another ye shall be amazed at one another and your faces shall alter and change colour as Flames For behold the Day of the Lord cometh cruel both with Wrath and fierce Anger to lay the Land desolate for your sakes and he shall destroy the Sinners thereof out of it And he will punish the World for their evil and the Wicked for their wickedness he will make the Arrogancy of the Proud Ones to câ—ase and will lay low the Haughtiness of the Terrible Ones In that day Sodom and Gomorrah shall rise up in Judgment against you and it shall be more tolerable for them than for you O Ye Profane Ones
them and therefore let not the Rebellious exalt themselves Thus have Irehearsed the Evils we â—y under and now I shall represent some of the Great and Deadly Dangers that we are in And one is to have the Nation quire overrun with Popery and to have the Popes Throne of Iniquity new erected amongst us And are there not swarms of Priests and Jesuits earnestly at work to bring this to pass they having emptied their Popish Cloysters and Monasteries from beyond Sea into England to promote their Catholique Design here And they knowing who stands at their right hand have done it with great boldness and with too great success For they have perverted not only very many of the Common People but some Nobility also and many Gentry And they have two great Engines to advance their design to wit on the one hand Safety on the other Danger on the one hand Promotion on the other Destruction on the one hand Life on the other Death with the one of them they allure with the other they terrifie with the one they draw whom they can with the other they drive whom they cannot draw And these Engines are of that force that thereby they have conquered many weak sinful and unstable Souls yea and have prevailed with some Persons of Honour and Quality to send their Sons to Monasteries and their Daughters to Nunneries beyond Sea to be trained up in their Damnable Religion there till better provision can be made for them here of which they now are in full hopes And now think with your selves and consider well O my Dear Protestant Country-Men how could you endure to see the Pope Worshipped here again in England for a God on Earth to see him set his proud Foot on the Neck of your King to see your King a Tributary to the Pope and to stand or fall at his base pleasure how could you indure to be forced to acknowledge his sinful and foolish Decrees to be equal to the Holy Word of God and to own his little Wafer or piece of Bread for the very Natural Body and Bloud of Christ which was crucified and shed on the Cross how could you indure to have your throats stretched so wide as to swallow down only this one Abomination of his which is more vast and rude than the first Chaos how could you indure to see new Roods erected in every Parish Church and to bow your selves down and worship Stocks and Stones Crucifixes and Images instead of the True and Living God how could you frame your selves to Auricular Confession and to rehearse or enumerate all your sins in a Priests Ear who himself stands in need of Forgiveness more than you being a greater Sinner how could you indure that their lusty Priests should defile your Wives and Daughters they being prohibited Wives of their own and so should drive again a General Trade of Whoredom in the Nation as they have been wont to do formerly how could you submit your selves to their Popish Pennance and to travel their Popish Pilgrimages to their feigned Saints and ridiculous Reliques how could you bear the severity of their Ecclesiastical Courts and Censures and to be pronounced Heretiques by those who are themselves the greatest Heretiques in the World how could You Noblemen and Gentlemen who have your Estates or part of them in Abbey and Church-Lands as they were called be content to have them taken away from You and your Posterity and given back again to maintain Abbots Monks Friers Nuns and such kind of Popish Vermin and Locusts which if once admitted will eat up again every green thing in the Land And let me tell you that all these Estates of yours they do not only promise to themselves but verily expect them Yea farther how could you indure to have your loving Husbands taken from your Heads and your dear Wives torn out of your Bosoms your sweet Children dragg'd out of your Houses your near Relations and friendly Neighbours hawlled and hurried into Prisons and Dungeons and there to be wracked starved tormented and at last if they live to it to be put alive into the flames of Fire there to be burnt and consumed to Ashes and that only because they sincerely cleave to Christ and his Gospel and will not adhere to Antichrist nor receive his Mark nor do his Hellish Drudgery how could you indure to see this cruel Beast of Rome to play Rex here in England again and though he be the First-Born of the Devil yet to set himself up above all that is called God and Worshipped And yet you are now in more danger to see all these things come to pass because you received not the truth in the love of it whilst you enjoyed it than your Predecessors have been this Hundred Years they having now gotten both Wind and Tide with them even Opportunity and Incouragement Wherefore a Great Man concluded That now certainly the Papists would do their Work they were in so fair a way But he reckoned without his Hoast And lest my Protestant Country-Men should be too much discouraged in this apparent and approaching Danger I will furnish you with one Rich Cordial out of the Words of Henry the VIII which he directed to the Papists in his days in his foregoing Declaration against them where he saith Are you not wicked which so hate the Truth that except she be utterly banished ye will never cease to vex her The Living God is alive neither can Truth his Darling He being alive be called to so great shame contumely and injury as you would have her and if she may be called to all these yet can she come to none of them Who is he that grievously lamenteth not Men to be come to such Shameless Boldness to shew apertly that they be Enemies to Christ himself on the other side who would not be glad to see such Men as foolish as they be Wicked For they work a deceitful Work and by all their cunning Craftiness Mysterious and Industrious Actings they only dig the Pit into which they must fall themselves and contrive the ruine that must be their own Portion Your Second Danger is to have the most Cruel and Inhumane Massacre executed upon you that ever yet was committed in the World by the Consecrated Hands and Weapons of the Papists And this Glorious Service of theirs is designed upon the English Protestants for the singular Promotion of the Catholique Cause which hath its way usually prepared into all Nations by Fire and Sword The Wrath of the Papists is so kindled against you and they are so thoroughly set on fire from Hell that they are ready to break forth into their greatest flames and to endeavour the Destruction of All at Once It is well known how well they are Hors'd and Arm'd and how they train their Troops against the Bloudy Day intended It is well known how well they are furnish'd with Money intended for other purposes It is well know what numbers of French Men