Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A30727
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Christian liberty asserted in oposition to the Roman yoke delivered in a sermon preached in His Majesties royal chappel of Windsor, the 8th of Decemb. 1678 / by John Butler.
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Butler, John, D.D.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing B6277; ESTC R7538
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15,021
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44
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Jews had said to terrifie the Galatians the Apostle asks them this question this only Gal. iii. 2. would I learn of you received you the spirit by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith q. d. did I who am a Jew when I preached to you the Gospel of Christ upon which the Lord working with me you received the Holy Ghost and saw that Doctrine confirmed by miracles did I oblige you to any such custom AND This only would I learn of the Papists did we first receive the Gospel from them I know very well that some of them want not confidence to affirm any thing but we are better assured that Christianity was planted in this Island long before any of the Popes agents set their feet here And when they did come what did they do for us but corrupt our Religion by degrees and draw us into their yoke by making us believe that if we did not keep close communion with and observe them in all things we should certainly be damned BUT the Galatians were weary of their past and afraid of their future persecutions if they did not comply with the Jews THE more Fools they ARE ye so foolish says our Apostle have Ch. iii. 3 4. ye suffered so many things in vain if it be yet in vain q. d. Have ye embraced the Gospel with resolutions to suffer in the profession of it have ye done it hitherto and will ye now by foolishly thinking to avoid persecutions lose the Crown laid up in store for you on that account THE more fools they and the more cowards we WE have suffered in the defence of our Religion of the cause of God and his Vicegerents against a schismatical and rebellious generation of men but yet such as were set on and managed undoubtedly by our old implacable adversaries of Rome How many men of all ranks and degrees with an invincible courage lost their Estates their Liberties their Lives in the quarrel and are we faint-hearted now Have a care He that seeks thus to save his life is in a fair way to lose it BUT stay is the Liberty wherewith we are made free worth the contending for i. e. so as to oblige us to die if called to it rather than yield to the Roman Yoke IS it I do not in the least doubt it I am sure the first blessed instruments of our happy Reformation and their followers thought so else they would never have lost their Lives in the cause BUT Good God! in what an age do we live when a sort of men among our selves of loose and corrupt principles have not stuck to affront the memory of those blessed men and women with the name of Foxian Martyrs Such fellows will look to themselves I 'll warrant them NOW to satisfie you in the point I will in as few words as I can give you an account of this liberty wherewith we are made free and then tell me what you think on 't WE have the Oracles of God those Fountains of living water which contain all things necessary for our Salvation put into our hands 2 Tim. 3. 17. and read to us according to the Apostles times in a known tongue We have the Word of God purely dispensed by Workmen that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth We have the Sacraments rightly and duely administred according to our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ his own holy Institution And all this which characterizeth a true Church in order to our future happiness Then which both tends to that and also to our present well-being we are taught to obey our King and all that are put in authority under him without resisting to suffer death rather than lift up a finger against him never to expect to see the face of God with comfort unless we be of a peaceable disposition and live an holy life so taking the holy Jesus for our pattern as yet despairing most justly of all benefit from our own or others pretended righteousness to rely upon his most meritorious Death and Passion for our Salvation In a word to honour all men to love the Brother-hood nay our very enemies to fear God and honour the King These for brevity's sake I offer only as a specimen of that great and glorious liberty wherewith we are made free And what think ye now is not this liberty worth the contending for worth every mans contending for I will not so much as suspect that any person here thinks otherwise But if any such there be I shall only desire your patience a little while till I come to paint out to them the yoke of bondage which is to be given us in exchange for this liberty and then I hope they will be satisfied In the mean time let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith we are made free Stand fast therefore For Christ his sake stand fast Which is the Apostles second argument to enforce his exhortation Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free CHRIST made the Galatians us and the whole world free by his meritorious Death and Passion on his part and by faith and repentance on ours Christ made us free by enjoining us no more than his own perfect law of liberty leaving power indeed to the Guides of the Church to take care that all things should be done with decency and order but not to alter or diminish no nor to add a tittle that was not built upon that foundation And all the Epistles of the holy Apostles are but so many Comments upon that Law As for the straw therefore and stubble which our adversaries of Rome have built upon this foundation in order to our making brick for the repair of their tottering Tower away with it LET us follow Christ the author and finisher of our faith and not the corrupter of it Christ the Captain of our Salvation the Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls and not his pretended Lieutenant and Vicar who acts both beyond and contrary to his Commission Remember I beseech you your first Vow when you were baptized into Christ who purchased your liberty by shedding his own most precious Blood for you and not into that man or Church who are most notoriously known ready to take it from you at the expence of your bloud if they cannot compass it by other means Remember that at that time you promised faithfully to be the Souldiers of Christ and to fight manfully under his Banner and do not run from your Colours by ungratefully and cowardly quitting your Post STAND fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free AND now one would think the Apostle had said enough to make his Galatians stand fast by urging to them their liberty and the author of it that there needed no more to be said in the case and that therefore if those would not prevail upon them all other arguments would prove insignificant and useless NO such matter He
knew very well that if he did not shew them as well the danger and absurdity of quitting their station as the profit and pleasure of keeping it they would be wavering still TAUGHT therefore by this blessed Apostle as well as by Moses who did not think it enough to set life and good before the people unless he shewed them also death and evil I shall pursue his method and proceed to the second general part of my Text the Dissuasion or Dehortation Be not intangled Nolite contineri nè illaqueamini nè implicemini nè retiamini for so many ways the original word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is translated and the sense in each rendition is much the same as though the Apostle should have said you are now in a state of liberty and freedome which Christ hath purchased for you have a care of such nets and snares such artifices and cunning devices as are laid and prepared to deprive you of it Have a care of their fair pretences So our Apostle as many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh they constrain Chap. vi vers 12. you to be circumcised Have a care of being intangled by their fawning concessions and crafty distinctions A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump saith the Apostle And therefore V. 9. h. c. as he tells them I testifie again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to the whole Vers 3. Law So I testifie to all those that are wavering and ready to be intangled by the arts of those perverters that they must sooner or later submit themselves to the whole law of that Church unless they would be looked upon as half Papists who are in the esteem of the ruling part of that Church little better than Protestants and shall perhaps fare little better when occasion shall serve The plain truth of it is this and herein lies the cheat If any person whom they have a mind to make a Proselyte boggle at their Antichristian doctrine and practice of giving the Sacrament under one kind only they will tell him very softly that indeed it is true the Church hath for many weighty reasons altered the primitive Institution but that yet however if he cannot with a quiet mind submit to the Canon in that particular he shall be dispensed with and receive it in both till he be clearly convinced and fully satisfied But then 't is an hundred to one they impose upon him by giving him unconsecrated Wine If he startle and stand amazed as well he may at the horrid and barbarous doctrine of excommunicating and deposing Emperours Kings and Princes from their regalities and dignities not only for being Hereticks themselves as they please to call them nay their very being male morati will do it but for not extirpating Hereticks out of their dominions with fire and sword if warned so to do and thereupon having absolved their Subjects from their allegeance of giving their dominions to others if they cannot persuade any of their own people to dispatch them out of the way by the knife or poyson If any one I say whom they are about to intangle start or stare at such horrid and barbarous doctrines they are dexterously ready to assure him that there is a very great mistake in this whole matter For alas these are only the opinions of some few private Doctors amongst them and not the doctrine of the Church No by no means God forbid Though all this while as that Church hath never yet censured such positions so one not to mention more of these Councils which they call general hath in a very Concil Lat. 4. great measure asserted them and the Popes whenever they have had a will and power enough in their hands have not been sparing to justifie and put them in execution AS for their art of intangling by striking a terror into the minds of their intended proselytes on the account of persecution telling them which is a common Topick among them Well well we shall be all of one Religion within these two or three years or within such or such a time and such like threatning expressions indeed silly women laden with iniquity and children void of understanding if they be intangled herewith may be pitied but for men and women that have been well grounded in the Principles of our Religion to be catcht with such chaff it is a crime unpardonable TO conclude this part of my discourse upon the Dissuasion or Dehortation If you find that they would intangle you by telling you as they seldom fail to do that if you come over to them undergo their penance perhaps they will get some body or other to do it for you and die in their Communion whatever your crimes be you shall be certainly saved but that if you live and die though never so full of faith and good works out of their Communion you stand Excommunicate and will be as certainly damned Fear them not stand fast and be not intangled WHAT Enter into Communion with or fear the excommunication of such as stand excommunicate themselves and that by an Apostle too Let no man startle at what I say I 'le make my words good This very Chap. i. 8. Apostle says expresly though we or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel to you than that which we have preached unto you Anathema sit let him be accursed And for fear such bold Innovators should not take his word for it he repeats it Verse 9. again as we said before so say I now again if any man preach any other Gospel to you than that you have received Anathema sit let him be accursed NOW that they have justly incurred this sentence of excommunication let them get it off how they can will easily appear if we take but a view of the yoke which upon our being intangled they have prepared for our necks 1. AND that is the first argument ab incommodo which our Apostle urgeth to enforce this Dissuasion or Dehortation there is a yoke in the case BE not therefore intangled with the yoke of bondage I will begin with the first part of their yoke which we occasionally mentioned before their denying to the people the Cup in the Holy Sacrament A yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear OUR blessed Saviour instituted eating and drinking the Symboles of his Body and Bloud apart the Apostles and the Church after them constantly practised it for above a thousand years together and now we must be sacrilegiously rob'd of it for reasons of their own invention for Christs Vicar must be wiser than his Master and because they will please to have it so THEY tell us that the Church hath an unlimited power to do such things and to make such alterations Believe it that list I have something else to do BUT this is a very small matter with them HEAR what Bellarmine says of the unbounded power of the Pope alone