Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	apostle_n	church_n	true_a	1,505	5	5.2874	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34913	The cry of Newgate with the other prisons in and about London in which dismal holes and cels [sic] are imured about three hundred persons of the innocent people of God called Quakers, for no other cause but for their unspotted testimonies in God, held in clear consciences / to you magistrates, priests, and people of the city of London, and elsewhere whom these may concern, are these words uttered by R.C.	R. C. (Richard Crane)	1662 (1662)	Wing C6809; ESTC R29280	5,727	14

take pleasure therein as to hunt the good protestant Christians out of their peaceable meetings with your armed men and drive them by hundreds in flocks to your Prisons and is it not because we cannot cease to meet together to worship the living God in the Spirit of Truth as he hath manifested and if it lie upon any from the Lord to deny to be driven by your armed men knowing right well those Proceedings are unjust and abominable to peaceable English men then you immediately fall upon them with Sword and Musket and shed blood as freely as though you were ordered only to murder Now whosoever this doth or on whom it lieth to be done it is for a Testimony against your wicked illegal Proceedings by Club Law which our very Souls loath for we never refused to go with a civil Officer provided he came by Warrant and he orderly serving his Warrant on those men whose names were therein expressed but truly I say though this be Englands Law I never see it yet legally executed upon us Therefore a good reason have we to cry out against your Club Law we being known to be peaceable men and such as do wholly follow and ensue the same And further it is not unknown to you what Blood hath been lately shed in our Meeting within Aldersgate and especially on the body of that murdered martyred Saint John Trowell whose Blood the Earth hath drunk up and thereout cryeth aloud for Justice with others dead since both of their hurts received there and of their cruel Imprisonment in Newgate to the number of ten Persons whose blood is yet to be accounted for Therefore the thing is not a pastime or sport as you may make it for the eye of the just God beholds your Doings and will not at all acquit you in these Actions for Pretious in the Eye of the Lord are the Death of his martyred Saints And I do tell you again Englands Laws are made to preserve and protect the good Protestant People of the same in all their just Rights and not to destroy them Think ye it is not taken notice of by many how at this day the Papists though the Laws are against them have liberty to Meet and are not broke up neither desturbed but rather indulged I speak not this because I would have them or any denied their Liberty in matter of Conscience What meaneth these things well the Intentions of all hearts are bare and naked before our God And verily I say unto you O ye Magistrates these Actions are altogether Illegal Cruel Abominable Unnatural and Heterogenial towards us who fear the living God that created all things both in heaven and in earth Yet nevertheless this I say in God's holy dread and fear prove us yet more and try us even to the extremity that is in your hearts yet our unspotted Innocency must will and shall clear us unto God's just Witness that is in your Consciences and this is God's Word unto you all And Oh ye Priests that are the fomenters of these things precited by your wicked envious Railings which whets on the Magistrate to accomplish your intended Purposes I say in God's fear your Judgement neither sleepeth nor slumbereth but is near to be accomplished for Gods Eternal decree hastens concerning you what shall I say you have been tried and into the Furnace you have been cast where you might have learned true Wisdom but alas alas you are found to come forth with a thicker and fouler crust tenfold then when you went in and though your tree be grown and the leaves thereof be seemingly green yet know you this from the Lord if you know it not your tree is seen to be rotten at the root for true wisdom hath searched it out and a hewer from the holy One stands ready with an Ax in his hand to give it that fatal blow decreed from the Lord and great yea wonderful great will be the fall thereof if your Worship were the Worship of the true God why did you not manifest it to the World in the day of your Tryal some years since had you sealed your Testimonies therein and firmly stood your ground then it would have confirmed your Doctrine for in Season and out of Season the Apostles of Jesus both Taught and Preached and they were true Ministers of the Church of God but yours have been and are found not to be so for it was not seasonable for you in that day to hold forth the Testimonies because the Laws were not in being which did uphold you and on which you leaned and also on which you lean at this day Now I say and do aver should the Magistrate secular and the Power Military each one stand in his proper station and leave you to stand alone in yours I tell you you would appear to be even as you are a dead Image without Life which gives no true motion now mark us well the despised in your Eye were we so suffered we not then as well as you and from the same Power and are not we the same in truths Testimony now as then and do you cause us to be Persecuted and cruelly entreated because we will not do as you have done that is change as you have changed no no far be it from us God Eternall hath begotten us in his Life by his holy Seed which never did will or shall change for whoever changeth from it yet it still remains unchangeable in Eternity Therefore cease cease ye Clods of Earth ye morsels of Envy ye things of Naught ye attomes of Vanity ye pitchers filled with Enmity against the chaste Seed of God what are ye in comparison of that which ye strive with and persecute for it is God in his Saints ye sight withall and against But know assuredly God hath determined deliverance and hath sworn it and we faithfully believe it therefore we are neither solicitous or anxious concerning your threats or cruel actions that you do or may be permitted to do unto us for we are preserved even by that Power that gives you power to do what you do and therefore we are not careful I say for we are better acquainted with that Power than your selves are for our lives and preservation therein stands and in the fence thereof do we reside and inhabite immortal praises be given in the immortal Seed of all his from the pure breathings of his holy Spirit for ever and for evermore But woe woe unto the Oppsers Persecutors and Fighters against this suffering Seed of God and the Lamb-like Spirit which is now manifest and is most sorely burthened and laden with the unheard of Cruelties and Abomination of this Generation of every sort the Wine-press of God's implacable inexorable wrath is even near to be trod whereout will flow rivers of Blood for the disposition of the abominations of this generation calls for it and from which there is no escape This is God's Truth to all you Hirling persecuting Priests which will stand on your head for ever And to all you People of this City of London who ever you be that sport your selves in these execrable and damnable Practices of hunting the true Christians out of their peaceable Meetings and are delighted to see us driven like silly sheep up and down the streets and thrust into noysome and dismal Cels by hundreds at once I say long hath the Lord born with you but you have almost sinned out your day and your pleasures are even at an end Vanity after Vanity Vanity after Vanity have ye with greediness purchased and for no other purpose than to serve your wicked hearts lust whereby God Eternal hath been and is most highly dishonoured you have a pretended Reformation but rather a Deformation as witness your Bull-baitings Bear-baitings your vitious Interludes and Stage-playes with all manner of obscenities well the reins is given you and a full swinge you had for some years past in these things yet little do you regard or see the Judgements that attend you but as though by adding Sin to Sin is the very way to become sanctified and so he that can Sin most is the best Saint in your account Oh! my Soul my Soul is dissolved into sorrow and sufferings for these things and to see how things run retrograde how the most obscene scurrilous black-mouthed Curser and Swearer with all his vain unclean talk is now counted good Communicants and them that are otherwise are branded and marked out for ruin and destruction but know you this that live without God in the World and are not satisfied neither will or can be till you have full gorged your selves in all the cursed Works of Vanity in which you have sollaced your hearts I say unto you a Fire is kindled which inwardly burneth fiercely out of which will issue the Vials of God's Implacable Vengeance and is quickly to be poured out upon the Earth to consume all the Plants of God's curse bundles bundles for this Fire which is never to be extinguished until the Earth be cleared from all those poysonous pestiferous Pollutions with which it is over-pread and covered This is God's Eternal Truth to you ye men of Sodom and he that can Read let him Read R. C. FINIS