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	king_n	see_v	4,142	5	4.2666	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56736	An answer to Vox cleri, &c. examining the reasons against making any alterations and abatements, in order to a comprehension and shewing the expediency thereof.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.	1690 (1690)	Wing P896; ESTC R36661	22,857	39

him my thanks for instead of an Answer to them or would have done my best to have written a Panegyrick upon that Noble Motto Nolumus mutare Leges Angliae That after all is the onely mighty and irresistable Argument that remains to be answered in this matter but I wont undertake it since it has been done to my hands by all the Parliaments and all the Convocations in England ever since the Barons wars unless by the present Convocation which has done nothing whose mind we do not yet know and till we doe it may pass for an infallible Council for surely Vox Cleri is not the mouth of it nor is our Author to be taken as the Churches Representative or Procurator General or to be allowed so many Proxies as shall make up a House But though he calls his Book Vox Cleri yet Tuba Stentorophonica Balaam's Ass prophesying or the like Title might have been as significant and suited it as well Having seen what he has to say on one side I am now to consider what has been or may be offered on the other and what he has to say against them The Reasons for some Abatements and Alterations at this time are so plain and considerable so great and important as shows the manifest expediency if not necessity of doing it and our Author has so little to say against it though he was bound to say what he could that he has thereby done more to give up the cause and satisfie every impartial man about it than if he had industriously pleaded for it though I will not say as he does of one of the Letters that a man would think this Writer to have been hired to betray the cause by his weak and impertinent arguments for its Defence for I believe our Author does honestly what he can and I don't suspect any treachery at all in his writing unless it be between his Will and his Understanding and I doubt the one does a little trick and impose upon the other for were it not for his implacable aversion and ill-will to the Fanaticks and Latitudinarians I am very confident that his Reason is for Alterations and Abatements by the little he has to say to the contrary and to the obvious and important reasons for them and because he himself so often and so expresly declares for them in his good moods and lucid intervals The first objection which he makes to himself and which rose up in his own thoughts for 't is not in answer to any of the Letters is this p. 5. Herein we may please the King the Parliament and a great part of the dissenting Laity which if it be true is very considerable Now as to the latter the dissenting Laity I don't know what to say to the great ones and the Politico's among them who are for keeping up a Separate Party as a Civil Faction in the State whom they who are the Heads of it and would make but an inconsiderable figure without it can manage upon occasion and have it ready raised and formed for their designs and I doubt they will not be so well pleased to have this and therefore themselves lessened by lessening the strength and number of the Separation as I hope the best and most honest of the Dissenting Laity will who are more concerned for the sincere good of Religion than carrying on Designs and Intrigues who will no doubt follow and accompany their Leaders into the Church as they went out with them But this I hope will be so far from being an objection to our Author or any Church of England man against Alterations and a Comprehension that it must be a very strong Argument for it since 't is the Schism and Separation in the Church that keeps up those Parties and Factions in the State which help to disturb the civil peace and quiet of the Kingdom and has been the cause of the greatest confusions in it so that whoever is a lover of the Church or Kingdom must be desirous to have an end put to them as far as is possible that we may unite in one religious and civil Interest As to the pleasing the King and Parliament hereby that I think is not to be doubted since the Parliament addressed to the King for calling a Convocation and the King was pleased thereupon to call one for this very end and design and to grant a Commission as has been usual in the like case to prepare things in order to it so that 't is to be feared that some men who are no great friends to the present settlement and constitution and who are upon some account angry and discontented are at the bottom of all this heat and stiffness against Alterations and who make use of others as Tools to work and hammer out their Designs by or at least to keep up a noise and disturbance among us as if great numbers were dissatisfied because they themselves are so for private reasons These men are mighty zealous against the Churches making any Alterations in the Circumstantials of Religion till the Court makes some Alterations in the Substantial places of profit I know we complain on all sides of being made and used as Tools as if this were the Fate of Churchmen and Religion were only an Engine in their hands charged with the terrors of another world to doe Execution only in this Our Author wishes he could leave his Countrey Minister who wrote one of the Letters well in his wits to consider whether he be not used as a Tool to destroy the established Church p. 42. by some who think themselves mighty Politicians Nay he tells us That the Authors of the two Letters may be Papists who by such Arts seek to divide that they may destroy us Now this is the deepest Plot of the Papists if it be one that ever was laid to destroy and blow up the Church and if those who are for Alterations in order to unite Protestants and strengthen the Church are Tools in the hands of Papists or other Politicians to destroy it the Church is in a lamentable condition and must necessarily be destroyed both by its friends and its enemies too and by those ways which in all appearance tend most to preserve it and the Design is laid so secretly and to be wrought so strangely that 't is impossible to prevent it On the other side 't is plain and notorious matter of fact that some Great Discontented Lay-men though not so Great as they would be did manage several of our stiff men against Alterations It was not so much behind the Curtain but the hands were seen if not the wires which moved the Puppets besides the dissatisfied Bishops and Clergy who have not taken the Oaths nor will own the present Government had more influence upon those who have sworn to the present King and Queen and most solemnly recognized them in the name of the Church of England than could be expected that men of such

all the scattered Arguments on this Head and twisted them all together with the greatest strength even with the shreds of Latine belonging to them which help mightily to bind 'em but I must unloose them a little to give particular Answers to them First then I doubt not but some of the Dissenters are as stiff and peevish as other sort of men and will be as hardly brought to come in upon Alterations as others are brought to make them I am very sensible of the inflexible and indeed unchristian spirit that is in many of the Fanaticks but this I must say for them they have not engrossed it wholly to themselves nor are the onely men that are unwilling to be brought to Peace and Union upon any tolerable terms or that refuse to have it upon any but their own I doubt not nay I have moral Assurance that a great many of the best and wisest Dissenters would come in upon some few Alterations such as I think no wise and good Church-man would refuse to them for that end such as altering the Subscription and the like Proposals made by that great man the present Bishop of Worcester whose wisedom and learning fits him to be universal Bishop of the Christian Church if there were to be such an one and would serve him instead of Infallibility Had there been such an opportunity as there is now of confirming those Proposals of his by Convocation and Parliament I question not but we should long before this have seen the happy effect of them for though some angry men draw up Pleas for Non-conformity as Lawyers draw up Bills of Pleading or Indictment which they stuff out with a world of hideous and dreadfull things for forms sake and to please their Clyents yet they mean not much by them in good earnest and a few things which they demand and principally insist on would satisfie and content them There were private and particular Reasons which hindred the full effect of the Alterations in 61 but yet the number of those who conformed upon them exceeded I doubt not and was much greater than the Alterations themselves and were the number never so little which were gained by this means yet it renders those who stand out more inexcusable and vindicates the Church without any detriment to it for it loses nothing of what is substantial and necessary to its well-being but onely some little things which are not worth keeping when they keep out Peace and Union I am not for pulling down the Pillars of the Church to enlarge it nor am I for letting in those at one door who will drive out either Episcopacy or Liturgy at the other without one of which there cannot I think be due Christian government nor due Christian worship without the other But I suppose we may take down an old Escutcheon or sweep down an old Cobweb or two or set up a new Gallery or whiten the old Walls p. 35. or the like without taking down beam after beam and after a less stone a greater till the whole Fabrick be like to fall and I believe the Church of England would stand as well though Tobit and all the Apocrypha were taken out of the Kalendar and some Ceremonies out of the Rubrick which do no more conduce to the support or to the ornament of it than those odd figures which we see in some old buildings that to unskilfull people look as if they bore a great weight when nothing really lyes upon them and which any man would take down if they kept his good friends and neighbours from coming to his house I cannot see how these small Alterations in things owned to be indifferent and alterable as the Church shall think meet should be made any reflexion upon it as our Authour fears that they will be cast back as filth in our faces as if our manner of publick worship were so corrupt that we were ashamed of it and were convinced of a necessity to purge it I do not remember that any of the Dissenters who have writ against the Church since 61. though they have raked up all the objections that zeal and anger could minister or invent did ever make use of this or throw those 600 Alterations which were then made in its teeth if they had it had shewn onely greater perverseness and unjustifiable wrangling after they were gone though they did not at all corrupt our worship whilst they remained nor make it at all unlawfull but an obsolete word may be changed for one in use and an expression altered for the better in a Prayer and a translation mended that is not so exact in many places and an 100 such alterations made and yet no condemning our selves for any corruptions that we were ashamed of and were convinced of a necessity to purge out Besides these Concessions which we make for Peace sake are not so much from the necessity of the things themselves as from the weakness and ignorances the prejudices and mistakes of others and the Church uses her Authority as all wise Governours doe and as God himself did in compliance to the temper and infirmities of those who are subject to it and with regard to the greater ends of Religion and Piety Peace and Charity which she prefers to Sacrifice or any the Externals of Religion But the Dissenters will not leave craving till they have all Give an Inch and they 'll take an Ell. p. 51. Well fare an old Proverb but that which spoiles it in this case is that 't is older than 61. or than any Alterations of our Liturgy then or before or perhaps than the Reformation it self and it was as true all along and served as well against all that desired any Alterations before or since and yet 't is hard to get this and Solomon's Meddle not with those that are given to change out of some mens heads who have no great Latitude or Profundity If the Church makes a concession to some persons to have their Children baptized without the sign of the Cross must she therefore yield also to Anabaptism and to their humour who will not have Children baptized at all If she should allow some to take the Communion without Kneeling must she yield to the Quakers who are for no Communion nor no positive Ordinances at all If she think not fit to pronounce the dreadfull Sentence of Excommunication for small matters must she yield to the Erastians who would take it quite away This is like the fear of the Lunatick that if he let the Barber cut off his Beard he would cut off his Head too and therefore was always against such a dangerous Reformation of his Face I am not of that witty Dissenter's mind who was for taking away all the Ceremonies with a fine similitude Religion is in a Consumption and therefore you must cut off its Hair I doe not think that is the way to recover it nor yet to give it Asses Milk though that might