Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	doubt_n	part_n	use_v	4,423	5	9.3660	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51220	The banner of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, display'd, and their sin discover'd in several sermons, preach'd at Bristol / by John Moore ...	Moore, John, b. 1621.	1696 (1696)	Wing M2544; ESTC R16818	58,646	155

to you to see so populous so famous and so antient a City as Bristoll is on a light Flame Your Hands bound with Cords and your selves hall'd along the Streets like Fellons and delivered into the Custody of cruel and hard-hearted Men with infinite more mischievous and unknown Miseries that attend Wars whither civil among our selves or Foreign by Invasion of Strangers Are there none of you left alive in this City that can testifie what the unspeakable Miseries were which this distracted Kingdom endured in the time of that Scism that so grievously wounded and disturbed the Peace of the Church in the Reign of that pious Prince King Charles the I. if there are as doubtless there are many ask them and they will tell you what horrible Confusions there were both in Church and State and the Government of both utterly subverted till God in Mercy restor'd them to us again and will continue so till the same Spirit of Faction and Scism do for our Sins give us another overturn Oh England England once the Mistress of Islands if a true list and number of those thy Natives which most cruelly slew one another in thy late civil Wars should be brought to thy view And if all the Christian Blood then shed to satisfie the Factious Humours of some Men had been exhall'd by airy Vapours and now shour'd down upon thy fertile Fields and populous flourishing Towns and Cities thou wouldst see strange and prodigious Sights If those deep Sighs and Groans which thousands of excellent and vertuous Ladies and Gentlewomen utter'd from their afflicted Souls and standing with Petitions in their Hands at the doors of a company of Thieves that called themselves Committees praying from day to day from week to week and from month tomonth to buy their own Estates their lovely Cheeks bedew'd with a flux of brinish Tears from their tender Eyes If such things as these can be pleasing to any sort of profest Christians surely they are void of a right Understanding they are led not by Reason but by a Spirit of Madness which hath very little fence in what it acts Consider these things my Brethren in time lest ye repent it when it is too late And now lastly I pray you seriously to consider that there are no greater Enemies to the service of God in our Church Assemblies than the Apostate Church of Rome consisting of Monks Fryers Jesuits and Mass-Priests Can ye then do them a greater pleasure than to joyn with them in Hatred and Contempt of it Did they not burn both the Book it self and the choicest Persons of those that composed it and will ye throw their Ashes into the River they tied them to Stakes and will ye shoot at their Hearts with bitter words Next unto the sacred Scriptures I am bold to say that our Common-Prayer Book is the surest visible Bulwark to keep out Popery from ever being established by Law in this Kingdom any more for ever and will ye persevere in throwing dovvn such a Fortification and so let in again the Antichristian Beast of Rome to ruin and destroy us and to make us and your selves an everlasting Reproach and a perpetual shame O do not rob those Martyrs of that Honour vvhich they purchased at so dear a rate for the Benefit and Good of their surviving Brethren and Friends that then vvere or thereafter should be made Members of the Body of Christ O do not disgrace their Labours by blotting and staining them vvith scurilous Language and thereby expose the Protestant Faith to the Scorn and laughter of a cruel Adversary for over your Shoulders do the Blood-thirsty Papists shoot at our Hearts O that ye vvere vvise that ye vvould consider these things and return to the high way of Salvation again What joy would there be in our Churches What loving Embraces What mutual Society What Gladness of Heart What inward Comfort and Consolation to our Immortal Souls What reviving of Spirits How sweet would such Unity Peace and Concord be to the whole Kingdom How mediately-secure should we be not only from all fears of a Foreign Invasion but from all doubts of a Civil War amongst our selves Then should we offer our daily Sacrifices of Praise and Thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one Shoulder and one Consent Thus have I discharg'd my duty to all that profess the name of Christ in this Kingdom wherein I was born What the effect of it may be God knows for I do not I leave the issue of it to the only wise Saviour of the World in whom are hid all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge whose poor weak and unworthy Servant I am and hope to persevere therein Dum Spiritus hos Regit ortus And lest any Reader should here and there meet with a word or two in this Postscript which he may happily think hath a tang of Acerbity I have thorowly season'd and sweetned it with the judgment of a Martyr'd Monarch a Stedfast and Faithful Defender of the truly antient Catholique and Apostolick Faith Upon the Ordinance against the Common-Prayer-Book IT is no News to have all Innovations usher`d in with the name of Reformations in Church and State by those who seeking to gain Reputation with the Vulgar for their extraordinary Parts and Piety must needs undo whatever was formerly settled never so well and wisely So hard can the pride of those that study Novelties allow former times any share or degree of Wisdom or Godliness And because matter of Prayer and Devotion to God justly bears a great part in Religion being the Souls more immediate converse with the Divine Majesty nothing could be more plausible to the People then to tell them They served God amiss in that Point Hence our public Liturgy or Forms of constant Prayers must be not amended in what upon free and publick advice might seem to sober Men inconvenient for matter or manner to which I should easily consent but wholly cashiered and abolished and after many popular Contempts offered to the Book and those that used it according to their Consciences and the Laws in force it must be crucified by an Ordinance the better to please either those Men who gloried in their extemporary Vein and Fluency or others who conscious to their own formality in the use of it thought they fully expiated their Sin of not using it aright by laying all the blame upon it and a total rejection of it as a dead letter thereby to excuse the deadness of their Hearts As for the Matter contained in the Book sober and learned Men have sufficiently vindicated it against the Cavils and Exceptions of those who thought it a part of Piety to make what prophane objections they could against it especially for Popery and Superstition whereas no doubt the Liturgy was exactly conformed to the Doctrin of the Church of England and this by all Reformed Churches is confessed to be most sound and Orthodox For the matter of

using Set and Prescribed Forms there is no doubt but that wholsome words being known and fitted to Men's Vnderstand●ngs are soonest received into their Hearts and aptest to excite and carry along with them judicious and fervent Affections Nor do I see any reason why Christians should be weary of a well-composed Liturgy as I hold this to be more then of all other things wherein the Constancy abates nothing of the Excellency and Usefulness I could never see any reason why any Christian should abhor or be forbidden to use the same Forms of Prayer since he prays to the same God believes in the same Saviour professeth the same Truths reads the same Scriptures hath the same Duties upon him and feels the same daily wants for the most part both inward and outward which are common to the whole Church Sure we may as well before-hand know what we pray as to whom we pray and in what words as to what sense when we desire the same things what hinders we may not use the same words Our Appetite and Digestion too may be good when we use as when we pray for our daily Bread Some Men I hear are so impatient not to use in all their d●votions their own Invention and Gifts that they not only disuse as too many but wholly cast away and contemn the Lord's Prayer whose great guilt is that it is the warrant and original pattern of all set Liturgies in the Christian Church I ever thought that the proud Ostentation of Men's Abilities for Invention and the vain affectations of variety for Expressions or in Publick Prayer or in any sacred Administrations merits a greater brand of Sin than that which they call Coldness and Barrenness nor are Men in those novelties less subject to formal and superficial tempers as to their hearts than in the constant Forms where not the words but Men's Hearts are to blame I make no doubt but a Man may be very formal in the most extemporary variety and very fervently devout in the most wonted Expressions Nor is God more a God of Variety than of Constancy Nor are constant Forms of Prayers more likely to flat and hinder the Spirit of Prayer and Devotion than un-premeditated and confused variety to distract and lose it Wherein Men must be strangely impudent and flatterers of themselves not to have an infinite shame of what they so do and say in things of so sacred a nature before God and the Church after so ridiculous and indeed profane a manner Nor can it be expected but that in duties of frequent performance as Sacramental Administrations and the like which are still the same Ministers must either come to use their own Forms constantly which are not like to be so sound or comprehensive of the nature of the duty as Forms of Publick Composure or else they must every time affect new Expressions when the Subject is the same which can hardly be presumed in any Man's greatest Suffitiencies not to want many times much of that compleatness o●der and gravity becoming those duties which by this means are exposed at every Celebration to every Minister's private Infirmities Indispositions Errors Disorders and Defects both for Judgment and Expression A serious sense of which inconvenience in the Church unavoidably following every Man 's several manner of officiating no doubt first occasioned the Wisdom and Piety of the antient Churches to remedy th●se mischiefs by the use of constant Liturgies of Publick Composure The want of which I believe this Church will sufficiently feel when the unhappy Fruits of many Men's ungoverned Ignorance and confident defects shall be discovered in more Errors Schism Disorders and uncharitable Distractions in Religion which are already but too many the more is the pity However if violence must needs bring in and abett those Innovations that Men may not seem to have nothing to do which Law Reason and Religion forbids at least to be so obtruded as wholly to justle out the Publick Liturgy Yet nothing can excuse that most unjust and partial severity of those Men who either lately had subscribed to used and maintained the Service-Book or refused to ●se it cryed out of the rigour of Laws and Bishops which suffered them not to use the Liberty of their Conscience in not using it That these Men I say should so suddenly change the Liturgy into a Directory as if the Spirit needed help for invention tho' not for Expressions or as if matter prescribed did not as much stint and obstruct the Spirit as if it were cloathed in and confined to fit words So slight and easie is that Legerdemain which will serve to delude the Vulgar That further they should use such severity as not to suffer without Penalty any to use the Common-Prayer-Book publickly altho` their Consciences bind them to it as a duty of Piety to God and Obedience to the Laws Thus I see no Men are prone to be greater Tyrants and more rigorous exacters upon others to conform to their illegal novelties than such whose pride was formerly least disposed to the obedience of lawful Constitutions and whose licentious humours most pretended Conscientious Liberties which freedom with much regret they now allow to Me and My Chaplains when they may have leave to serve Me whose Abilities even in their extemporary way comes not short of the others but their modesty and learning far exceeds the most of them But this matter is of so popular a nature as some Men knew it would not bear learned and sober Debates lest being convinced by the evidence of Reason as well as by Laws they should have been driven either to sin more against their knowledge by taking away the Lìturgy or to displease some Faction of the People by continuing the use of it Though I believe they have offended more considerable Men not only for their numbers and Estates but for their weighty and judicious piety than those are whose weakness or giddiness they sought to gratifie by taking it away One of the greatest faults some Men found with the Common-Prayer-Book I believe was this That it taught them to pray so oft for Me to which Petitions they had not Loyalty enough to say Amen nor yet Charity enough to forbear Reproaches and even Cursings of Me in their own Forms instead of praying for Me. I wish their Repentance may be their only punishment that seeing the mischiefs which the difuse of Publick Liturgies hath already produced they may restore that Credit Use and Reverence to them which by the antient Ch●rches were given to Set Forms of sound and wholsom words The Memory of the Just is Blessed Who when a King on Earth no King beside That liv'd more just That more unjustly dy'd FINIS