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england_n	abate_v	church_n	dissenter_n	71	3	11.5483	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45394	An account of Mr. Cawdry's triplex diatribe concerning superstition, wil-worship, and Christmass festivall by H. Hammond.	Hammond, Henry, 1605-1660.	1655 (1655)	Wing H511; ESTC R28057	253,252	314

Riot Which I was careful to remove from this Festivity And first having disclaimed it as more intolerable in a Christian then in a Jew and that upon this account that Spiritual joyes are his eminent if not only portion under promise His answer is that these are not limited to one or twelve dayes in a year but are daily joyes every day is a Christmas to a godly heart Rejoyce in the Lord always c. But he that thus answered could not but know that the weekly Lords day is set apart for a Christian Feast dedicated particularly to these Spiritual joyes and that this was very reconcileable with the text that said once and again Rejoyce always and how then can this be opposed to an annual Festival Besides all that I had to say was that the Christian joyes should principally be Spiritual and this not as a proof of the lawfulness of Festivals but of the unlawfulnesse of riots and the Diatribists answer is wholly to that other head to which that was never designed as a medium To which I might 3dly adde that that text to the Philippians is an exhortation to rejoycing in tribulations in the saddest as well as the cheerfullest seasons and so the alwaies is to be limited by the context And then the application of it here was still so much less pertinent In the 2d place my 18th § being designed to shew how separable all riot was from this Festival by the nature of Christian dainties instruction prayer praises almes and the Sacrament of the Lords Supper none of which were capable of luxurie and Festivity and Hospitality which were clearly separable from it His answer is 1. that these two last are thus separable from riot but very hardly And I shall only demand Are the leasure and cessation from business on the Lords day experimented to be more easily separable from it Is it more ordinary for the same men to be drunk upon Christmas day then upon all or upon any one Sunday in the year And have not preachers and magistrates been as industrious to cast out this profane Spirit on the Lords day and been as unsuccessful in their indevours And shall this be any argument for the abolition of that day Next saith he the heathen usages in it almost yielded § 2. as they imply that the festival was instituted to gratify the heathen so God to shew his dislike of them hath suffered them to be attended with two extremes of true worship superstition and profaneness But to this I say 1. that the heathen usages were no way yielded § 2. but only an argument used ad homines that so affirmed 2. If there were heathen usages in it those would no way imply the Festival to have been instituted to gratifie the heathens It was instituted to the honor of Christ and the heathens were farre enough from being gratified with that and t is sufficient if the converted heathens among whom it was instituted by their converters did of themselves assume some of their Gentile customes by them thought innocent in the celebration 3dly T is great presumption and intrusion into Gods secretest Counsels to say that Gods suffering this Festival to be attended with superstition or profaneness was to shew his dislike if not detestation of it For who revealed this counsel of Gods to this Diatribist Besides how easily might this argument be retorted on the Lords day by a Jew and all the riot and unprofitableness of hearers on that day be made an evidence of Gods dislike if not detestation of the setting apart of this day to his service What impiety of any Sect would want arguments to support it if such as these might be admitted Now lastly the matter of the present debate being only that of riot what had superstition or profaneness either or both to do with that His 19th § is the accusing those who keep up and cry up the custome of the festivity yet have taken liberty to lay aside hospitality and charity not only at the time but all the year long To which it is sufficient to answer that then it seems their hospitality is not the occasion of riot to any and that is a Competent means of vindicating the festivity so farre from that part of the accusation which now we have before us But then 2dly it were perhaps worth examining what degree of truth there is in the suggestion and in what instances it is founded something like this he had once suggested before and I had then thought that it was not worthy taking notice of But now the returning of it again more solemly makes me suspect there may be somewhat in it And having no other clue to introduce me into his secrets and the charity and hospitality of those that have cast off the festivals and with it their obedience to the Church beyond those that have retained both having never been so notorious that I could take cognizance of it and the writing a Diatribe against all freewill oblations in a Christian being no vehement indication that those in whose defence it was written were very eminent in the exercise of those virtues I began to pitch upon one thing that might of late have yielded some shew of truth to his observation viz. that the condition of many mens worldly plenty hath been so changed of late that the men have been forced to abate somewhat of the degree of that charity and hospitality that formerly they had both ability and will to exercise and that these fall out to be the men that retain obedience to the Church of England and so keep up and cry up the festivals of the Church though they are not able to keep up the good cheer of it in that degree which formerly they have done And if the Diatribist was willing to take notice of this turne of the tyde and being himself one of the prosperous party that had cast off obedience and festivals but retained hospitality and charity was willing to compare himself with others who being deprived of all their revenues were not likely to hold up their hospitality then sure this is a way of answer which might soon be retorted if justice were allowed to take place and every man were reinvested in his own again In the mean those that are deprived of ability to be charitable on one side as to be occasions of riot on the other if they must be reproacht for their defects in one should not in reason be accused for excess in the other And that is all I shall reply to this answer Unlesse to the 2d part of it I reply in a word that the hospitality attendant on this Festival was never by me defined or imagined and is with no justice by him supposed to be a misers feast nor know I any the least necessity that it should be followed with a neglect of charity all the year after but rather that it be lookt on as a copy which the whole life of a Christian is to

AN ACCOUNT OF Mr. CAWDRY'S Triplex Diatribe Concerning Superstition Wil-worship AND Christmass Festivall By H. Hammond D. D. LONDON Printed by J. Flesher for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivy-lane and for Richard Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1655. A Preface to the READER 1. THat Mr. Cawdrey hath taken great pains to shew me the infirme parts of three little Tracts of Superstition Will-worship and Festivals I am now obliged to take notice and to design the vacancy of a few days to clear those brief discourses from all the misprisions and exceptions to which some contrary hypotheses of his how true shall in due place be examined more then the want of evidence in the Tracts themselves may have rendred them liable 2. What on the two former heads I wrote many years since I confesse I expected not to see arraigned at this time being designed as part of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which might help to repaire the breach at least mollifie the Paroxysme by removing two of the five specious charges under which the blameless ceremonies and customary practices and observances of the Church of England were by dissenters oppugned and rendred odious And what was then said as I could not discern wherein it came short of Evidence of conviction if I had I should certainly either have cleared or supprest them so it was never my fortune in nine years space to hear from any that it lay under an ill character but on the contrary that it had in some measure performed what it undertook freed our Church from those two accusations and demonstrated them as applied to us to be perfect calumnies And I have but one Petition to the Read●● at his entrance on these debates that he will calmly review those two Treatises with three more designed to the same end and upon his strictest survey advertise me wherein I have failed in my undertaking 3. But it is come to passe what Arrian long since taught me to expect that as when general discourses come to be applied to particular cases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then the contention begins so when the grounds more universally laid for the justifying our Church were in a tract concerning Festivals and especially the day of the Nativity of Christ brought home to the clearing that celebration from either of those two as from all other charges then Mr. Cawdry's hypotheses in which I suppose his way of managing his opinion of the morality of the Sabbath had engaged him found themselves to be concerned then the commemoration of the birth of Christ though but by one anniversary being not easily reconcileable with the grounds which he had laid for the Christians one weekly Sabbath in the 4th Commandment of the Decalogue was solemnly to be indicted and as in a Chancerie bill all imaginable evill to be affixed on it and the customary riot of festivities being not sufficient to render it odious the more formidable charges of Will-worship and Superstition must be revived and by the necessity of this consequence to salve his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all that I had said on either of those two subjects though never so clear must now be called to a severe examen and so store of new tasks provided for me 4. And me thinks t is possible that old Nahum's word may not here be unreasonable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even this also for good To which purpose I am willing to remember what Alexander Aphrodisaeus told the Emperors Severus and Antoninus in his Preface to the Tract of Fatalitie and Free will that whosoever would point him out any doubt or difficulty that remained in that matter after the reading of his treatise he would account it a great favour and honour to him rendring this reason for it because it was not easy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in one Tract to do two things exactly both dilucidely to expound the matters of which he principally wrote and all those other things also which were usefull to the explicating thereof 5. And the same I desire may introduce my address to this Diatribist and the tasks by him set before me The subjects which he hath chosen to consider with me being such as well deserve some care from each of us that we neither deceive others nor our selves in them I mean perfectly practical concerning a peculiar Christian duty incumbent on us in that of Festivals and again a more universal duty that of obedience to our immediate Superiors and to the universal Church of Christ from which we must not depart or be affrighted upon pretense of Superstition c. and yet ought warily to secure our obedience from that and the like guilts when there is any real danger of them And beside these there is somewhat of a more sublime consideration on occasion of that of Will-worship the freewill offerings which will very well become a Christian to bring to Christ rewardable in a high degree though they are not under any express precept such are all the highest charities and devotions and most heroical Christian practises which shall all not onely be degraded but defamed if every thing be concluded to be criminous which is not necessary if all uncommanded practise be unlawfull 6. Now this Diatribist having undertaken to examine what I then wrote and done it with so little partiality to me that I have no reason to suspect he hath left any minute difficulty unmentioned I shall hope that the descending to a particular survey of all his objections will probably prevent any future mistake in these matters and upon this score as St Augustine thought it necessary for those heathens which deisied all their benefactors to build one altar and pay some homage to their enemies because they deserved to be numbred among their benefactors so have I not grudged the tribute of my pains at least that of a ready though laborious obedience to this call of the Diatribist but apprehended this opportunity of removing all doubts which can recur and require solution entertaining my self with some slender hope that the Reader may reap some small benefit thereby in order to christian practice the one thing which I desire to propose as the end of all my meditations and never to be drawn by the importunity of those which differ from me in opinion into any contention or ingagement which hath not this aime visible before it the seasonable checking and reformation of some vices such sure are those which here I desire to prevent and remove or the confirmation and increase of virtue to the glory of God and the multiplying of fruit to our account 7. That this hath been the onely aime of all hitherto publisht by me even of those discourses which are most polemical I am so fully satisfied in my self that I doubt not to approve it to any that can make question of it where difference of opinion doth not either by close consequence or