Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	church_n	truth_n	word_n	4,240	5	4.9394	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56393	Reasons for abrogating the test imposed upon all members of Parliament, anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I A.B. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous : first written for the author's own satisfaction, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1688 (1688)	Wing P467; ESTC R5001	62,716	138

of the Gods of the People which are round about you nigh unto thee or far off from thee from the one end of the Earth unto the other Thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him Neither shall thine Eye pity him neither shalt thou spare neither shalt thou conceal him But thou shalt surely kill him thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to Death and afterward the Hand of all the People And thou shalt stone him with Stones that he die Because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt from the House of Bondage This was the Crime and this the Punishment of Idolatry and the Sentence was so severely Executed that for the setting up the golden Calf or Symbol of the Sun that the Aegyptians Worship'd as the supreme Deity as will appear in its proper place Three thousand of the Ring-leaders were put to the Sword by the Command of Moses Exod. 32. 27. And for this Reason it pleased God to destroy the Canaanites from off the Face of the Earth i.e. for giving Divine Worship to false and created Deities in Defiance to the Eternal Creator of it So black a Crime as this that is no less than renouncing God is not lightly to be charged upon any Party of Christians not only because of the foulness of the Calumny but the barbarous Consequences that may follow upon it to invite and warrant the Rabble when ever Opportunity favours to destroy the Roman Catholicks and their Images as the Israelites were commanded to destroy the Canaanites and their Idols But before so bloody an Indictment be preferr'd against the greatest part of Christendom the Nature of the thing ought to be very well understood The Charge is too big for a Scolding Word And how inconsistent soever Idolatry may be with Salvation I fear so uncharitable a Calumny if it prove one can be of no less damnable Consequence It is a piece of Inhumanity that out-does the Salvageness of the Canibals themselves and damns at once both Body and Soul. And yet after all we have no other ground for the bold Conceit than the crude and rash Assertions of some popular Divines who have no other Measures of Truth or Zeal but Hatred to Popery and therefore never spare for hard Words against that Church and run up all Objections against it into nothing less than Atheism and Blasphemy of which Idolatry is the greatest Instance But if they would lay aside their indecent Heats and soberly enquire into the Nature and Original of Idolatry they would be as much ashamed of the Ignorance of their Accusations as they ought to be of its Malice And therefore I shall set down a plain and brief Account of that Argument that when we understand the easie obvious and natural Notion of Idolatry it will for ever expose the Vanity of these Men's Fanatique Pretences I pray God there be nothing worse at bottom seeing it has ever been set up as the Standard against Monarchy It is a Subject that hath entertained the most able Pens in the World but I shall not presume or pretend to be so learned but shall confine all my Knowledge to the Word of God chiefly to the Mosaick Writings for there it is fully and clearly stated the Mosaick Law being enacted purely in Opposition to Idolatry Now nothing can be more obvious than that the Notion of it there is neither more nor less than this The Worship of the Heavenly Bodies the Sun the Moon and the Stars or any other visible and corporeal Deity as the Supreme God so as to exclude all Sense and Apprehension of a spiritual and invisible Godhead This evidently appears both by the Almighties several Revelations that he made of himself to the Children of Israel to preserve them from it and from the several Characters and Descriptions that himself hath upon numberless occasions made of it Most learned Men would trace its Original from before the Flood but they follow their Chase without any Scent as generally all Antiquaries do when they pursue into the first Source and Original of things The Iewish Robbies that are of too late a standing to pretend to any Authority in such Antient Matters for as they lived not above Six Ages before us so they had no other Records than what we have the Writings of Moses and the Prophets derive its Original from the Age of Enos but as their Conjecture is founded upon an ambiguous Word so it is contradicted by the State of the World at that time for by reason of the long Lives of the Patriarchs from the Creation to the Flood it is not easie to conceive That the Memory and Tradition of the late Creation of the World should be worn out in so short a time Enos being Adams's Granchild and living in the same Age with him for some Hundred Years But the plain Demonstration that there was no such Impiety before the Flood is that Moses when he reckons up the Causes that provok'd God to bring that Judgment upon the World makes no mention of the Sin of Idolatry of which if they had been Guilty as it is a Sin of the first Magnitude so it would have held the first place in the Indictment Others make Cham the Father of this Monster as they do of all other Crimes but for no other Reason beside his ill Name Others derive it from the Tower of Babel which they will have to have been built for an Altar to the Sun after the Custom of after-times when they Worshiped him upon High Towers for Altars Maimonides and his Followers find deep Footsteps in the time of Abraham who was born in Ur of the Chaldees that is say they the Country of the Antient ZABII the Founders of Idolatry and for that reason he was commanded out of his own Country to the Worship of the True God. But this Dream of the ZABII is so modern and so void of the Authority of any Antient Record that it proves it self a fond Imposture Tho in Abraham's time and that was many Centuries after the Flood we meet with the first Traces of this Apostacy For that extraordinary Discovery that God was pleased to make of himself as Supreme Lord of all things was made to Abraham in Opposition to the Idolatry of his own Country i.e. Chaldea who seemed to have been the first Founders of it and for that reason God commanded him to leave his Country his Kindred and his Fathers House and sojourn in the Land of Canaan where the Tradition of the Knowledge of the True God seems to have been much better preserved So that tho there were some Decays from the true Old Religion yet they were as yet very far from an Universal Apostacy That the Plague was then broke out in Chaldea is evident from the words of Ioshua 24. 2. Your Fathers dwelt on the other side the River in old time even Terah