Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	church_n	head_n	visible_a	2,242	5	10.0238	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26871	Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1689 (1689)	Wing B1195; ESTC R2643	73,886	164

in a schism and in sin That the Ministerial power is not the gift of Man but only of Christ who by the Charter of his recorded Word giveth the power and the obligation to that person who is duely chosen and called thereto As the Kings Charter giveth the power to the Mayor of a Corporation duly qualified and chosen that the ordainers are but partly Judges of due qualification and partly Ministerial Investers and not at all the Donors of the Power that ordination is for order sake needful when it may be had to keep men from being Judgers of their own sufficiency But order being only for the thing ordered as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath is not necessary against the end That there is no necessity that a Superior must ordain but as the Colledge of Physicians Philosophers c. make Physicians Philosophers as approved so may equals in the Ministry Do not Bishops make or consecrate Bishops If this were not so who makes the Pope If he did not pretend that his power is given him immediately from Christ he must grant that there are some men above him to give it him and so he is not the Soveraign If they say that the power of Popes and Kings is given by the whole body the Church he is then no Pope for it 's known that three parts of the Christian World are against him If he will say None are the Church but those that are his party any sect or rebels may say the like and appropriate authority to themselves Nothing more cheateth the ignorant than ambiguous words and confusion And explaining those words and needful plain distinction would save the writing of many volumes and would make truth easily meet the seeker and unravel all the spider Webs of deceivers Do but well use these few distinctions and all Popery vanisheth into smoak 1. Distinguish between a Catholick Church as headed by Christ This we are all members of and a pretended Catholick Church headed by the Pope or any men This is another Church as to the denominating form having another informing unifying head And this is it which we deny 2. Distinguish visibility Christs Church is so far visible as to have a Head who was visible on Earth is visible in Heaven and will visibly come to Judgment and visibly reign for ever It hath visible Laws Protection and Officers The subjects bodies and their profession are visible And it is no farther visible no not as to the Souls or real faith of the subjects The Papists Church hath an Usurping Visible Humane Head on earth 3. Distinguish of Baptism and Ordination as into Christs Catholick Church and done by Papists as Christians And as into the Popes Catholick Church and done by Papists as Papists 4. Distinguish of Subjection and Communion We owe Communion when we owe no Subjection and where men have no right to be our Governours 5. Distinguish between Communion in Christianity and that in Essentials Integrals or Accidents and Communion in errours and corruptions or defects We have Communion with Papists and all Christians in Christianity if they be Christians indeed But we renounce Communion in the errours and sins of them and all others as far as we are able to avoid them All Christians have Union and Communion in the Essentials of Christianity No Christians have Union and Communion in all the Integrals on Earth all being imperfect But the more such Union and Communion the better No Christians have or ought to have Communion in all the Accidents All should avoid Communion in sin 6. Distinguish between Communion of Hearts Communion of Profession and Communion in Local presence We have Heart Communion in one Essential Faith Hope and Love with all true Christians on Earth We profess all one Faith in the Essentials We have nearer Communion or fuller with the Reformed Churches which are soundest in the Integrals than we have with the more faulty and corrupt But we have Local presence but in one place at once and we ought to avoid Local presence where we cannot have it without sin though we have Communion in Faith Love and Profession with the same men If a Reformed Church will not admit our Local presence without subscribing some one untruth we must be absent when we may be present with a worse Church which excludeth us not by any such Imposition 7. Accordingly distinguish of Separation We separate not at all from Union or Communion with Papists as they are Christians or as they hold any Truth But 1. We separate from Subjection and Obedience to them which we never owed them or any other Church 2. We separate from Communion with their Church as it is a Policy informed by an Usurping Humane King or Head. 3. We separate from all their sins so far as we know them 4. We deny Local presence in their Mass-worship because of the sin imposed on us both before it and in it 5. We are uncapable of Communion in all accidents or mutable indifferent things Understand and use well these few plain distinctions and you need little more to answer all the Papists And I fear not to add that were the Papists in my power as I never did I never would use any inhumanity or cruelty towards them yea I would use no Offensive but only Defensive force against them nor hurt one of them further than they made it necessary for the Defence of the Land or those whom they would hurt I knew not till a Book called The Liberties of England lately told me how many very severe Laws are against them I am no Judge of the times that they were made in nor of their occasions But I think that of late they have done more hurt than good For 1. Some of them seem too severe 2. Some I cannot prove to be justifiable viz. Those which would compel them to come to our Sacramental Communion when many a good Minister would not receive them if they came And that which excommunicateth them that never were of our Communion And that which layeth the Excommunicate as such in prison c. 3. It greatly tendeth to misinform Forreigners who seeing these Laws think they are all put in Execution and so believe those that tell them that the Catholicks here are under constant Cruelties and frequent Martyrdoms whenas I never in all my life knew of one Papist that suffered so much for his Religion as I have done my self within these few years past though my sufferings are so small as to be no meet matter of very great complaint 4. These Laws being a continual danger to them should there be Governours that would execute them doth put them on continual plotting and striving against them Sufferings or great dangers put men by fear upon self-defence and the utmost endeavours for deliverance who would be more quiet if they found themselves in safety and though their Clergy would be still plotting the recovery of the Papal power to

and scorn And Sulpitius Severus his sharp Invective against Ithacius Idacius and the rest of the Bishops in their Synod was that in prosecuting the Priscillian Gnosticks they brought the matter to that pass that if Godly men did but fast and pray and read Scripture the Bishops made them suspected as Priscillianists even St. Martin himself Woe to them that turn the sacred Offices of Magistracy and Ministry against God that did ordain them to be used as in his name and in some representation of himself sacrilegiously blaspheming him as an Enemy to himself Shall the Throne of Iniquity have fellowship with God that frameth mischief by a Law to make sin common and allowed By this the Reader may see that there is a double History needful to the full understanding of this Book and of the nature and causes of Malignity that is 1. The History of Adam's fall and the great depravation of humane nature thence arising and the true meaning of the Enmity thence put between the Womans and the Serpents seed exemplified in the two first Brothers born into the world as also in Ishmael and Isaac Esau and Jacob and frequently mentioned by Christ and his Apostles 2. The History of the advantages that Malignity hath got in England since the Reformation and especially since the return of Charles the second This must contain the sad differences begun at Frankford in Q. Marys days the errours and extreams of both the differing Parties the by assing determinations of Q. Elizabeth the difference between the first Bishops that had been exiles and their Successors the Presbyterians provocations by over-opposing Episcopacy and the Bishops design to root them out and the making of the Canons to that end The rise of a new sort of Bishops begun in Laud Neile Howson Corbet and Buckeridge with Mountague and their growth under Buckingham against the old Churchmen The design of a Coalition with Rome and the French and English attempts thereto The interruption of this design by the first Long Parliament and the Wars The Scots forcing the Parliament that in their straits asked their help to take their Covenant The imposing that Covenant on the whole Ministry and making it a dividing Engine on pretence of Unity The Parliaments casting out with a multitude of flagitious Ministers some Doctors for being against them for the King contrary to the desires of Peace-makers The Presbyterians under Monk restoring King Charles the second The return and preferment of his Doctors and their revengeful resolutions Their design to get all Church-power and Preferment and Academick Rule into the hands of them that most hated Puritans or would endeavour their extirpation and would educate Youth in bitter prejudice and hatred of them The vulgar hatred of serious Godliness in Conformists and Nonconformists under the name of Puritans The power that a few returned Doctors had with the King and Chancellor in the dispose of Preferments and thereby to over-rule the Parliament and to procure the Acts of Uniformity Corporation Oaths Vestry and Militia Oaths and the Acts for Banishments Confinements Imprisonments Fining Ejecting Silencing and Ruining such whose Consciences pleaded Gods Law and Authority against any of their Oaths Impositions and silencing Prohibitions to preach the Gospel The great difference in the Wars I meddle not with the Cause between the Adherents and Souldiers of the K. Ch. I. and the Parliaments in point of Piety and Sobriety The Animosity and implacable heat by which the before Conquered and now Ruling Party proceeded towards the ruine of those that they took for Enemies to the Cause Civil or Ecclesiastick which they had owned The unhappiness of the then present Ministry that being young then had never medled with Wars that they must equally suffer as Enemies for fearing the Imposed Oaths Subscriptions Covenants and Practices The rejoycing of the common sort of the luxurious drunkards whoremongers and Infidels that they had got so many of the Religious into contempt and scorn and ruine The woful increase of Whoredom Luxury and Impiety and Sadducism hereupon The great numbers of Religious people who before hoped for Peace and a pious Prelacy that fell hereupon into an hatred of Prelacy and a great disesteem of the Conforming Ministry and so our Divisions are grown to a fixed factious Enmity and malice and worldly interest will hear no motions or petitions for Peace and yet madly plead all for Love and Peace while they implacably fight against them and accuse those as the Enemies of Peace who beg Peace of them and cannot obtain it This is the sum of the doleful History which this Book presupposeth But should I write it the rage would be increased The foregoing Narrative is as much as is fit for this brief Discourse which if you will you may style Acris correptio with Gildas or Planctus Ecclesiae with Alv. Pelag. Or the Groans of the Church with a late Conformable Divine It hath been cast by four years at first because it would not be endured and after in a vain hope that our Church Reformation would make such a complaint less necessary But now I perceive the Devil will be the Devil and Mankind will be born blind sensual and malignant till there be a new Heaven and Earth in which dwelleth Righteousness Come Lord Iesus August 24. 1689. The fatal Day of Silencing in England in 1662. Chap. I. A Lamentation for the case of the Deluded Malignant Militant World. § 1. THE depraved and miserable condition of Mankind hath long been the astonishing wonder of the sober and inquisitive part of the world Philosophers were puzzled with the difficult questions whence it first came and why it is no more remedied Christians are taught by the sacred Scriptures how to answer both by laying it on mans misusing of his free will supposing Gods permission of his tryal and temptations and on his resistance and rejection of remedying grace in the degree that it is vouchsaft or offered But still there are difficulties and our understandings are dark and hardly satisfied And whence ever it comes the case is doleful and we cannot but think of it with astonishment and lamentation When we saw an hundred thousand made dead corps by the London Plague 1665. it did not take off the terrour to know how it begun And when we saw the City on a dreadful flame which none could stop it cured not the general astonishment to conjecture how it was kindled or carried on No doubt but Hell it self proclaimeth that God is Holy Wise and Iust and Devils and Men are the cause of their own everlasting punishment But yet if we had a sight of it amazement and dread would overwhelm us And alas what a Map of Hell is the greatest part of Earth Hell is a place of Lying Malignant and murderous hurtful Spirits miserable by and for their wickedness And is not this in a lower degree a true description of most of the Earth § 2. Nineteen parts in Thirty

never Revile or Prosecute the Atheists Infidels Sadduces Hobbists and those many thousands that seldom if ever go to any Church or worship God publickly at all Is the worship that Peter and Paul used worse than irreligiousness and infidelity 11. Who can believe that you are sincerely zealous against misworshiping God when you can ordinarily your selves be in a drinking house or playing house at the time of publick worship And when so few of you ever so much as worship God in your Families by Prayer or read the Scripture or Catechise your families 12. Is it not a strange thing to hear men accuse others for not using the Liturgy in Gods worship and at the same time would have them that refuse it to be forbidden all publick worshiping of God at all Doth this signify any dislike of their omitting Gods worship Which is the more ungodly omission to omit all worship of God and live like Atheists or to omit only so much of the Liturgy as the Apostles used not I have known many that could not eat cheese as is said before nor scarce smell it without danger of Death If you would have a Law made that such shall eat no other meat few wisemen will believe that it is their health and life that you desire If a man fail in paying his Landlord some odd act of Service will you make a Law that he shall pay nothing at all If a Subject neglect paying some excise or using Bow and Arrows will you forbid him paying any thing or serving the King at all Sure they that forbid men all publick worship be offended at somewhat else than that men do not rightly worship God unless they think that not to worship him at all is better than doing it without their Book Obj. But he shall be Compelled to better worship Ans. How when he lieth in jail he cannot publickly worship God at all Is that better worship I know it is banishment which some would have executed And will men worship God any better among Heathens or Infidels or others Or why should other Countries endure them if they be not to be endured in their own Are not English-men that worship God only by their own Book as much Nonconformists when they are in other Lands France Spain Italy Germany Holland c. as those are here that do not use it And are they there intolerable and worthy of ruine Did the Apostles or first Churches banish any on such accounts Will Christ banish them from his Kingdom Hath he made any such Laws And is not he the absolute Soveraign Hath he left his Servants to the will of man to use them how they will or cast out of his Church whom they will Are you sure these are none of the number of whom Christ saith I was hungry and ye fed me not c. In as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren you did it not to me Mat. 25. Accus But they are Schismaticks and Separate from the Church and is not that a damnable sin Ans. 1. Being speaking only to malignant enemies of serious Godliness I say It is not only Separatists that you hate but Godly Conformists yea perhaps most of all because you are more restrained from hurting them How oft hear we Curses and Revilings against Conforming Puritanes or as some call them Church Whigs If they are not haters of their brethren but Friends to Love and Peace you nickname them Trimmers And cursing those whom Christ blesseth when he saith Blessed be the Peace-makers for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven You say Cursed be the Trimmers and would the Kingdom were rid of them It is any that are for a holy life and obedience to God that you abhor 2. As I said before you spare those that come to the Parish Churches no more than others The old Nonconformists wrote more against Separation than any else in England did And yet were hated as intolerable The reconcilers who are since made Nonconformists did publickly offer to be Subject to Arch-Bishops and Bishops to use the Liturgy themselves if reformed and if it were not yet never pleaded for separation And yet are never the more endured 2. But who is it that they separate from Do they not profess Union and Communion with the whole Catholick Church on Earth What separation do you mean Is it their Local absence And are not you such Separatists from all the world saving the Assembly where you meet One cannot be in two places at once Or is it that they dislike somewhat in your Forms of Worship so they may in others Forms with whom yet they profess Communion And in what is it that they shew dislike or separation They hold Communion with you as Christians and as reformed from Popery They separate not from Papists as Christians And from you it is only for that which you say is no part of your Worship or Religion but things indifferent which they think to be sin And are those Separatists from your Church who only separate from that which is no part of your Church or Worship 3. Are the French and Dutch Churches in London Schismaticks or Separatists who profess Communion with our Churches though they use not our Oaths Subscriptions or Liturgy Liking their own mode better and preferring it is no Separation If I like your Liturgy better than any in the Bibliotheca Patrum is that separating from all Churches that use the rest 4. Who are the Schismaticks in France Italy Poland c. Those that are called so and persecuted as such or those that impose on them the things which they judge sinful What if you were in a Presbyterian Land where the Liturgy and Prelacy are forbidden and another Form set up by Law and you should contrary to that Law use the Liturgy and Ceremonies or at least refuse subscribing against Prelacy and for Lay Elders If they excommunicated or ruined you for this who do you think were guilty of the Schism 5. Do they forsake the Assemblies before they are excommunicated Or is it not an odd thing for to excommunicate men first and then accuse them for not coming to Church I have known Ministers stop in the midst of Publick Worship and refuse to go on till an excommunicate person went out The whole representative Church of England do in their 5 6 7 and 8 Canons ipso facto without tryal or sentence excommunicate all in England who affirm any thing to be sinful or repugnant to Gods Word in the Church Governing Offices whatsoever in the Liturgy Ceremonies or Articles And shall they after this be called Separatists for not coming in Doth not the Canon shew that the Church would not have them come in when they cast them out Obj. But the Church and Canon bid them repent of that their wicked errour and publickly confess it and so come in Ans. 1. Is a mans Judgment absolutely in his power Can a man believe a thing to

persons and closing for the future in mutual love was the only way to the Nations peace You would tempt men to think that you desire to see such days again by trying whether destroying men will tempt nature to a self-defence 2. But you have oft had it proved by Henry Fowlis Bishop Barlow and abundance more that no Protestants come near the Principles and Practices of the Papists as to King-killing and Rebellion And if yet you know not that the War began between two parties of Episcopal conformists here among the English you are unfit to judge of that which you know not And by reading Rushworth Whitlock or any true Histories of such times and matters you may be better informed As you may of their different principles if you read Iewel Bishop Bilson and Richard Hooker on one side and Mainwarning and Sibthorp on the other 3. But how few men are alive that had any hand in those miserable Wars You have oft been offered a thousand thanks if you will silence and hunt no other that are as innocent as you and more than many of of their accusers And shall thousands suffer for other mens deeds 3. What will wise men think of such a sort of men as charge multitudes in general with Rebellious and Seditious Doctrine and have accused so few of any such these twenty years that I know not of one publickly Accused Tryed and Proved guilty of all called Presbyterians in all this Land If they are guilty prove it and let the guilty suffer and not the innocent Only had I my wish I would Bar Perjury and Condemning men unheard Accus They are an unpeaceable sort of people Ans. That 's soon said Who hath these 22 two years manifested most desires of Peace They that have beg'd for it again and again Pleaded and written for it Offered their Oaths that they would obey any lawful Commands for it and do any thing which they did not believe that God forbids Or those Bishops that would not have one Form or Ceremony or needless Subscription forborn to save thousands of Ministers from being silenced and laid in Common jails nor to save many thousand of the people from suffering and to heal the divisions of the Church One would think this should be as easie a Controversy as when Soldiers are plundering the Country and the people on their knees intreating for their goods and lives to determine which of them is most against War. Accus But what need they make such a stir with their Religion What need they any more than go to Church and live obediently and be quiet Why will they be righteous over much will not less ado bring men to Heaven Why do they differ from their Neighbours and judge all carnal that be not as Scrupulous as they God is merciful and will he save none but Puritans or precise zealots Ans. Now you come to the real matter of your distast I did not meddle with the case of Nonconformity as it is a Controversy between Godly men but only as you make a pretence of it to exercise your enmity against serious Godliness and a handle to lay hold on many whom Christ will justify and save To all before said I add 1. If you think they do too much search the Scriptures and see whether it be not less than God commandeth And if so is it not God whom you accuse and reproach 2. If they do too much in obeying God why do Canon-makers impose such abundance on them as if God had not imposed enough 3. Why do you never find fault with men for being too strong too healthful too rich too great but only for being too obedient to God When Christ saith If we did all that God commandeth we must say we are unprofitable Servants we have done no more than was our duty and the best on Earth come short of duty But this which is the Core I answered before And conclude that all that be in their right wits can easilier bear all your accusations and persecutions of us as if we did too much in obedience to God than the accusation of Conscience and the displeasure of God for doing too little Which alas when we have done our best would sink us into despair had we not the merits of Christs suffering and perfect righteousness to trust to Chap. V. An humble Expostulation with the English Papists who by Information and Prosecution seek our ruine THough it be not Popery as such that I am here reasoning against the course that many Papists take in seeking our destruction giveth me cause of this humble expostulation And I speak now of no other but of them I mean 1. Those that write so hotly and ragingly to provoke Superiors to ruine us 2. Those that make a trade of being delators against us for worshiping God as we do 3. Those of them that break in upon us with greatest haughtiness and fury to take away all our goods and seek our imprisonment 4. Those that seek to ruine us by those Laws which were made against themselves 5. Those that would make Superiors believe that our Doctrine is more rebellious than theirs To these I offer a few modest questions Qu. 1. There are some among you that profess great Spirituality and strictness in Religion Serenus Cressy wrote to me commending Baker's book which he published that he forsook the Church of England because he found no Spiritual contemplation and devotion among us Such as Nerius Sales Kempis Gerson Borromaeus Renti c. are really the chief honour of your Church Much of that for which I am hated by the Enemies of serious godliness I acknowledge to Gods praise I was first chiefly awakened to by a book written by one whom Watson and others of your party grievously accuse I mean Parsons Book of Resolution corrected by Bunny True Christianity and Godliness is the same thing in all that have it Your Priest Mr. Hutchinson alias Berry writeth that the most of serious Godliness among Protestants is found among those called Puritans So that I was fain to defend the Conformists against his charge All this being so is it the Spirit of God that engageth and enrageth you with the most destructive bitterness against those men whom you confess to be the most Religious meerly because they are stiffest against your Church Government and way of worship And do you not know that it tendeth more sensibly than disputes to perswade the people whom you thus hate and prosecute that your Religion is malignant and enmity to real Godliness Qu. 2. Do you think it is prudent for you as soon as ever you get up and before you dare openly own your name and cause to begin with Malice Rage and Cruelty and that against the most religious as you say Will not this perswade the people that all is true that is said of your intended cruelty and make them fear you as so many Leopards or Wolves Will they not say if the young Serpents