Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	according_a	king_n	kingdom_n	2,565	5	5.6188	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70084	Truth maintained, or, Positions delivered in a sermon at the Savoy since traduced for dangerous, now asserted for sovnd and safe / by Thomas Fvller.	Fuller, Thomas, 1608-1661.; Fuller, Thomas, 1608-1661. Sermon of reformation.	1643 (1643)	Wing F2475; ESTC R222778	73,801	126

much as will serve your turne To the law saith the Scripture S and to the Testimony Moses wrought according to the Patterne so Salomon too godly Bucer makes it his worke to perswade King Edward to build up a perfect Church and he V prophesies sadly that he was afraid Popery would succeed because the Kingdome of England was so averse to the Kingdome of Christ And we know the Marian dayes followed me-thinkes we are too like his proprophesie and our W Marian times approach too fast TREATIS K You write of a Reformation of a Church like Bodin Would I wrote like Bodin though on the condition that I never wrote Answer to your Examinations Would we had some Bodins some such able States-men that they might improve their parts to advance an happy Accommodation betwixt our Sovereigne and his Subjects L You make it a worke of Policy not of Piety I make it as indeed it is a work both of Moses and Aaron wherein Piety is to be prefer'd and Policy is not to be excluded M. Such Counsellours had Jeroboam and Jehu Sir shoot your Arrowes at me till your Quiver be empty but glance not with the least slenting insinuation at His Majesty by consequence to compare him to Jeroboam or Jehu for their Idolatry He knoweth how to bestow his Gold farre better and to leave the Calves for others N This Moderation and Qualification you speake of is not so consistent with spirituall Essenses and Operations This your line is not so consistent with sense as to need much lesse deserve a Confutation O If the Spirit of God should not have wrought in the souls of Unregenerate I wonder that allotting as you say but one afternoon for the whole work of your Examination you could spend so much time some minutes at least in such impertinencies P To speake closer And truly no more then needs for as yet you are farre enough from the matter But I will not confute what you confesse Q What Qualification did Queen Elizabeth expect She needed not to expect any when she had all Requisites to reforme Those who have such Qualification are not to expect but to fall a working those that want it are not to fall a working but still to expect Queen Elizabeth as supream in her Dominions had a sufficient calling to reforme nothing was wanting in her Onely her Memory doth still deservedly expect a more thankfull acknowledgement of her worthy paines then generally she hath received hitherto R What Qualification did Henry the eight expect in his attempt against supremacy He likewise had Qualification sufficient and therefore needed not to expect any as your following words doe witnesse wherein you say that All his Kingdome was universally conjured to Rome If it was his Kingdome then he had a calling if it was conjured to Rome then he had a cause to reforme and being the King was bound to be the Exorcist to un-conjure his Subjects from such superstition Yea had King Henry reformed as sincerely as he had a lawfull Calling thereunto his memory had not been constantly kept in such a purgatory of mens tongues for his lukewarme Temper even the most moderate counting him too good for to be condemned and too bad to be commended S To the Law saith the Scripture and to the testimony I will treasure up this excellent passage till a convenient time being confident that before the next Paragraffe is examined I shall appeale to these Judges and you decline them T Godly Bucer makes it his worke to perswade King Edward to build up a perfect Church The book of godly Bucer which you cite I have seene on the selfe same token that therein he makes a Bishops to be above Presbyters Jure divino You know Bucer wrote this worke as leading the front of his Opera Anglicana in the very beginning of King Edwards reigne before the Reformation was generally received in England and whilst as yet Popery was practised in many places And next to this his book followeth his gratulation to the English Church for their entertaining of the Purity of the Gospell so that what he doth perswade in the book you alleadge was in some good measure performed in that Ks. reign and afterwards better compleated by Queen Elizabeth And he prophesieth sadly that he was afraid Popery would succeed Herein he took shrewd aime and it happened he hit right Such predictions are onely observed when afterwards they chance to take effect otherwise if missing the marke men misse to marke them and no notice at all is taken of them I know a latter Divine not the lowest in learning one of the highest in b zeale amongst them who foretelleth that Atheisme rather then Popery is likely to overrunne England Such Presages may serve to admonish not to afright us as not proceeding from a propheticall spirit but resulting from prudentiall observations But before we take our farewell of this book of Bucers it will not be amisse to remember another passage not to say presage in the same worthy worke that we may see what sinnes in his opinion were forerunners of mine in a Kingdome The margin presents the Reader with the c latin which I here translate though the former part there of be englished already in mens practise and the latter I feare will be englished in Gods judgements How horrible an affront doe they doe to the Divine Majesty who use the Temples of the Lord for Galleries to walke in and for places so prophane that in them with their fellowes that prattle and treat of any uncleane and prophane businesse This sure is so great a contempt of God that long since even for this alone we have deserved altogether to be banished from the face of the earth and to be punished with heaviest judgements Such I am afraid will fall on our nation for their abominable abusing of Churches besides other of their sinnes and prophaning the places of Gods worship Not to speake of those and yet what man can hold his tongue when the mouthes of graves are forced open who in a place to vvhich their guilty conscience can point vvithout my pens direction did by breaking up the Sepulchers of our Saxon Christian Kings erect an everlasting Monument to their ovvn sacriledge Such practises must needs provoke Gods anger and now me-thinks I write of the Reformation of a Church like Bucer and not like Bodin W Me-thinks we are too like his prophesie and our Marian times approach too fast I hope otherwise trusting on a good God and a gracious King But if those times doe come woe be to such as have been the cause or occasion to bring or hasten them One day it will he determined whether the peevish perverse and undiscreet spirit of Sectaries bringing a generall dis-repute on the Protestant hath not concurred to the inviting in of superstition and Popery may come riding in on the back of Anabaptisme If those times doe come I hope that God who

better to beat the earth To fight as they did against dust and ashes bodies of men long before buried except they thought by this similitude of burning dead bodies to worke in silly people a beliefe of Purgatory fire tormenting soules deceased Now when it came into question whether the Ordinances and Decisions of those Reformers should be ingrossed in Parchment or in paper a Doctor Swinborne Master of Clare Hall gave his opinion that paper would doe the deed well enough as being likely to last longer then those decrees should stand in force as afterward it came to passe they being all rescinded in the next yeer being the first of Queene Elizabeth Two things more must here be well observed First that there is a grand difference betwixt founding of a new Church and reforming of an old For the former Saint Paul outstript all men in the World The Papists bragge much of King Edgar who is said to have founded as many Monasteries as there be weekes in the yeer Surely more Churches in Asia and Europe were built from the ground by Saint Paul who strived to preach the Gospel not where Christ was named lest he should build upon another mans foundation Romans 15. 20. But reforming of Churches is an easier work as not giving a Church the life but the lustre not the birth but the beauty either repairing what is defective or removing what is redundant Thus we acknowledge Solomon the sole founder of the Temple though Ioash repaired it amending the breaches thereof Iotham enlarged it adding the beautifull porch thereto and Ezechiah adorned it covering the pillars with silver therein However it is worth our observing that Reformers are sometimes ambitious to entitle themselves to be founders as being covetous of credit and counting it more honour to make a thing then to mend it Thus Nebuchadnezzar boasted Daniel 4. 30. Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the Kingdome by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty Whereas Babylon was built by Nimrod or as others say Semyramis many yeers before Nebuchadnezzars cradle was made Yet he no doubt did encrease strengthen and beautifie it on which title see how he engrosseth all the glory unto himselfe as first and sole founder Is not this great Babylon that I have built Let none in like manner brag that they are now the first Founders of a Church in England built long since therein time out of minde We deny and defile such Papists as say that Augustine the Monke was the first Apostle of this Island where the Gospel long before had been preached though not to the Saxons our Ancestors yet to the Britans our Predecessors Yea having cause to search who first brought Christianity over into Britanny my endeavours have been still at a losse and left at uncertainty Perchance as God Deuteronomie 34. 6. buried the body of Moses That no man knoweth the place of his Sepulchre unto this day to cut off from the Jewes all occasion of Idolatry So it seems his wisdom hath suffered the names of the first founders of Religion Here to be covered in obscurity to prevent posterity from being superstitious to their Memories However if justly we be angry with the Papists for making the Brittish Church a tall stripling grown to weare swadling cloathes againe more cause have we to distaffe the pens and preachings of such who make their addresses unto us as unto pure Pagans where the word is newly to be planted A b Moderne Author tels us a strange story how the servants of Duke D. Alva seeking for a Hawke they had lost found a new country in the Navell of Spaine not known before invironed with Mountaines and peopled with naked Salvages I should wonder if such a Terra incognita could be found in England which what betwixt the covetousnesse of Landlords and the carefulnesse of Tenants is almost measured to an Acre But if such a place were discovered I must allow that the Preachers there were the first planters of the Gospel which in all others places of the kingdom are but the Continuers thereof I hope Christ hath reaped much goodnesse long ago where these now new pretend to plant it And if England hath not had a true Church hitherto I feare it will not have a true Church hereafter The second thing I commend unto you is this That a perfect Reformation of any Church in this world may be desired but not hoped for Let Zenophons Cyrus be King in Plato's Common-wealth and Batchelors wives breed maides children in Mores Vtopia whilest Roses grow in their Gardens without prickles as Saint Basil held they did before the fall of Adam These phansies are pleasing and plausible but the performance thereof unfeisable and so is the perfect reformation of a Church in this world difficult to bee described and impossible to be practised For besides that Sathan will doe his best or rather his worst to undoe it Man in this life is not capable of such perfection Look not to finde that in man out of Paradise which was not found in man in Paradise continuance in an holy estate Martin Luther was wont to say he never knew good order in the Church last above fifteen yeares in the purity thereof yea the more perfect the Reformation is the lesse time it is likely to last Mans minde being in constant motion when it cannot ascend higher will not stand still but it must decline I speake not this to dis-hearten men from endeavouring a perfect Reformation but to keep them from being dis-heartned when they see the same cannot be exactly observed And yet there are some now adayes that talke of a great light manifested in this age more then ever before Indeed we Modernes have a mighty advantage of the Ancients whatsoever was theirs by Industry may be ours The Christian Philosophy of Iustin Martyr the constant Sanctity of Cyprian the Catholick faith of Athanasius the Orthodox judgement of Nazianzen the manifold Learning of Ierome the solid Comments of Chrysostome the subtill Controversies of Augustine the excellent Morals of Gregory the humble Devotions of Bernard All contribute themselves to the edification of us who live in this later Age But as for any transcendent extraordinary miraculous light peculiarly conferred on our Times the worst I wish the opinion is this that it were true Sure I am that this light must not crosse the Scripture but cleere the Scripture So that if it affirmeth any thing contrary to Gods written Word or enforceth any thing as necessary to salvation not exprest in Gods Word I dare boldly say That such a light is kindled from Hell As for the opinion of Christs corporall visible Kingdome to come within few yeares I will neither peremptorily reject it nor dare absolutely receive it Not reject it lest I come within the compasse of the Apostles reproofe 2 Peter 2. 12. Speaking evill of the things they understand not Confessing my selfe