Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	bishop_n	day_n	king_n	4,175	5	3.7569	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54406	A discourse of toleration in answer to a late book intitutled A discourse of the religion of England.	Perrinchief, Richard, 1623?-1673.	1668 (1668)	Wing P1593B; ESTC R36669	46,325	62

of the Church are obvious to them Thus I have shewed how false are all these Slanders After these most false Accusations of the Bishops and Clergy he proceeds to shew how weak their State is which he saith Is not advanced by these present Rigors nor more rooted in the hearts of the People To this we answer That it is no wonder that a Form of Church-Government should meet with many Difficulties in its return after the Proscription of twenty years For in that space some hundred thousand Souls that were not born before or had not before come to the use of their Reason must needs be tainted with a prejudice against it by hearing nothing almost from the Pulpits but Invectives and slanders of it And it is no easie thing to rase out the first Impressions that are made upon the mind Besides this it was not to be expected but that the Restitution of that Church should vex all those whom the Ruins of it had made rich And that when they were to Disgorge what they had Sacrilegiously devoured they would also vomit out all their Choler empty their Spleen and vow an eternal hatred against those that recalling their own Proprieties reduced them to their former Wants and confine them again to their ancient narrow homes Add to these all such as are Cast from their Power broken in their Fortunes disappointed in their Hopes by the return also of the Civil Government Which when they dare not directly oppose they think they may with more security oppugn by assaulting the Ecclesi●stical State that is a prop and support of it who hope to Wound the King through the sides of the Church and are therefore more industriously and designedly malicious against her Others there are who provoked by some unkindnesses of particular Church-men rail at all Some that cannot get the Promotions of the Church are angry with those that have them Many that like poor Ministers of the Church of England do yet envy those who have no necessity to crouch before them The Spirit of Contradiction the Variety of Changes in the late Times the small reverence that People have for Governours contracted by being used to speak against the Usurpers who had no right to their Affections have so far corrupted the Common Conversation of this Nation that every Party which is uppermost cannot escape their reproaches and hatred And the Arts of the Sectaries to thwart discourage all endeavours to Uniformity to slander all those whose Offices or Parts are most obstructive to them for there is not a man of such escapes the dirt they can sling is not the least cause of the slow progress All these considered it cannot seem strange to an Observing person that Prelacy drives but heavily It must be a Generation or two not seven years that can wear out all these Difficulties All this doth not take off from the Intrinsick Worth of Prelacy Whilst on the other side Presbytery languished almost as soon as it had a being Erastians and Independants baffled it in the Assembly which was its Cradle and proposed it to a Publick scorn Therefore it is imprudently done for them to upbraid us of Weakness who themselves could not keep their standing for above two or three years The Particulars by which he Remonstrates our weakness are either unavoidable as what remedy can there be if the Latitudinarians Indifferent men and Conforming Puritans do not Conform in the simplicity of Spirit as becomes the Ministers of Christ We can have no greater Security than the Faith of men Or else are common to all perswasions as to have some among them that are a reproach unto the whole whose behaviour may disgust other And we can never hope while the Church is on Earth that it will be free from all Corruptions We are sure the number of such among us are far less than what the Dissenters represent who condemning the most unblameable will not be very shie in mis-reporting those that are not so strict as they should be Therefore neither of these sorts ought nor can debase the Intrinsick State of Prelacy in the minds of Wise and Good men As to the Question If the Affairs of the Common-wealth should go backwards I hope they do not intend to drive it that way Can the Clergy alone be at rest in their Honour Power and Wealth We answer no and we do not desire it We cannot do as the several Sects of Dissenters did make our Addresses to every Usurper Congratulate every New Form of Government Blaspheme the Providence of God for their sakes and pray for every one that had killed and taken Possession No we cannot do it we must fall upon the same Scaffold where Monarchy bleeds to death and be buried under the ruines of the State You know we did so and you may be sure it will be so again No Party nor Church doth more strictly assert the necessity of Allegiance to Princes than the Church of England He doubts of the truth of that Observation No Bishop No King which the late practices have made as evident as the day But he saith It is not evident that the present frame of Prelacy hath an Immutable Interest in the Regal Name and Power The Doctrines which Prelacy maintains in opposition to Presbytery have so much Truth and are so much for the Safety of Kings that we cannot imagine they will be so unkind to themselves as to suppress them And the Kings of England have seen so many reasons to hate Sacriledge that we cannot fear they will take away the Revenues of Bishops and therefore we think the Prelacy has as immutable an Interest in the Regal Power as the Regal Power hath in them In the laft place after he hath said That the Religion of any State must be held up by its Venerable Estimation among the People and that must be the reality of Devotion and Sanctity which is a very great Truth He sincerely as he saith wishes well to the Clergy for which we as sincerely thank him but then he adds these three Conditions 1. That Bishops must not be the head of Ignorant Lewd and Scandalous Ministers c. This we think also they ought to take care of as much as they can But yet if such get within their Diocess the fault may not be theirs For they are bound up by the Laws and it is not with them as with the Triers that had as absolute a Tyranny as their Masters had over Ministers and might reject whom they pleased without any account But now if Patrons present Unworthy Persons which have the Qualifications the Law requires the Bishops must not reject them Nor can they as Committees turn a Minister out of his Living at their Pleasures but must give an account to the Laws The Second Condition is That by their management the Sound Knowledge of God may be encreased that Holiness and Righteousness may flourish c. This also we acknowledge to be their Duty and if

they get any to our greater Confusion They being now enraged by their former Disappointments they have also seen their miscarriages and are thereby instructed to a greater Cunning to avoid the rocks they before split upon It will now be done with greater ease the Waves are not yet quite down since our last Tempest and therefore the lesser Winde will soon move them We have not had time enough to recover our last sickness and we may easily Relapse to our former Disease Most of the same men are alive still who were the Causes of our Unhappiness they have the same Considences among their Parties know all their Tempers and Humors and the Arts and Means of calling them together Therefore to permit these Factions which is all one with a Toleration cannot be for the Interest of England if Peace and Quietness and the steddy Administration of the Laws be for the Interest of it It is also for the Interest of England that we have a Rightful Prince to rule over us Whose Just Title giving him a right to all the Affections and Obedience of the People he shall need no Arts of Tyrants to keep them in Fear and to weaken them to a Vassalage But Usurpers conscious of their want of Right know that they have not those affections which are due to it do therefore endeavour to have the fears of such as cannot love them and to that end do all to weaken them which nothing doth so effectually as Schisms and Factions From the Courts of Tyrants crept those monstrous Idolatries of Dogs and Crocodiles and he was no other who taught Israel to Sin in Worshiping Calves By the same way that these men use their power do they also get it And Dissentions in Religion do facilitate the way to Usurpation Therefore the Commons in the Parliament Jac. 19. give this as a reason why the Sect of Papists should not be connived at Rushworth's Coll. p. 41. because It openeth too wide a gap for Popularity to any who shall draw too great a party And it is not out of our memory that Cromwel got his Power by the other sort of Sectaries Therefore a Toleration is as much against the Interest of England as a rightful King is for it To keep the people of England in their good Nature not to have them corrupted in their Manners is certainly for the Interest of the Nation This people are free and Open-hearted naturally full of Simplicity devout and inclinable to Religion and therefore very obnoxious to Deceivers that come under the shew of Piety What cruelty would it be to expose such a people to the Arts of Impostors to suffer them to be scattered as sheep upon the Mountains without a shepheard to be corrupted in their Natures to become Barbarous Perverse Jealous Cruel Fierce and Proud for into such Monsters doth Schisms and Factions transform men and where they finde not an ill nature they assuredly make it And therefore it is contrary to the Interest of England to permit that which makes her people to be such SECT 12. An Answer to the Discourse of the Religion in England That the Reasons upon which a Toleration is denied to the Papists will conclude against the other Sectaries HAving seen how ineffectual a Toleration is to the removal of our unhappiness and shewed how little it is for the Interest of this Nation at this time to adjust this Discourse it is fit to consider the reasons which are brought for it Those which require our notice are contained in a Discourse of the Religion in England the Author of which pretends to more Sobriety than is usual in the Writers for that way and indeed he seems to be a man of such Parts as deserved a better subject than that he hath undertaken In the examination of his Arguments I shall proceed as becomes him who professes no love to Dissentions and therefore shall pass over all those things in that tract which do not immediately concern a Toleration of those Dissentions and Dissenters which it pleads for and leave the Papists to answer for themselves the reasons upon which a Toleration is denied unto them viz. 1. That Popery disposeth Subjects to Rebeilion 2. It persecutes all other Religions within its reach 3. Wheresoever it findes encouragement it is restless till it bears down all before it or hath put all in Disorder But yet I must minde both the Author and Reader that the Practises upon which these Reasons are grounded are not peculiar to the Papists but are common to all other Sects as appears in the Arrians Donatists and other Heriticks And if the Papists have any Doctrines which countenance these practices they are to be accounted as the issues of their Insolency in their own Greatness Every Sect when it is in its beginnings is lowly and meek but having gotten strength so far as to lay down Fear they then boldly take Counsel from their Fortune and dictate against their contemned Inferiours and professed Dissenters 2dly The Author ought to have made it appear that the Parties which are pleaded for are exempt from the guilt of that which is here charged upon the Papists For 1. Is not the Disposing Subjects to Rebellion in a great measure effected by that Position That it is lawful to take Arms against the King and that Arms may be taken by his Authority against his Person and against those that are Commissioned by him Were not these the Positions and Doctrines that were to solve the scruples of men in the last War and were not these improved to the Murder of a just Prince Those that managed that War were all Dissenters from the Religion established by Law and there cannot as is conceived one man be named among them that was of the Church of England For the 2. The persecuting of all other Religions within its reach Did not those who took the Covenant binde themselves to it by Oath Solemn League and Cov. Art 2. viz. to extirpate Popery and Prelacy and Superstition Heresie Schisme and whatsoever they should finde contrary to sound Doctrine And whither this Extirpation was not a Persecution let all Ages judge when they shall read the History of the late times and there finde the Plunderings of Papists the Sequestrings Plunderings and Imprisonments in the nastiest Prisons and in holds of Ships of those Ministers and Fellows of Colledges that were the Asserters of Liturgy and the Government legally established in the Church of England As for the 3d. A restlesness where it finds encouragement till it bears down all before it or hath put all in disorder The late practices have plainly declared that this is not peculiar to the Papists For we have seen a Party that from the time of Queen Elizabeth through all discouragements and in despight of the Authority of Princes have still been restless till they met with those that thought them necessary for other Designs and being then encouraged they so far laboured to bear