Selected quad for the lemma: honour_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
honour_n	eternal_a	glory_n	immortality_n	1,513	5	10.0609	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27637	The principles of Protestant truth and peace in four treatises : viz. the true state of liberty of conscience, in freedom from penal laws and church-censures, the obligations to national true religion, the nature of scandal, paricularly as it relates to indifferent things, a Catholick catechism, shewing the true grounds upon which the Catholick religion is ascertained / by Tho. Beverley ...	Beverley, Thomas.	1683 (1683)	Wing B2188A; ESTC R12543	325,863	502

prerogative or peoples Liberties but leaves every thing as it finds them to their own just rights according to Law and if it self come to be one of those Rights It doth not repeal from any the Legal Right of it self which is the greatest and surest Rule that a Religion can guide it self by not to disturb but to extend peace to the world The Prince the People being for it or any thing it teaches or does most secure of their own interest though it fall out oftentimes to the greatest sufferings of its servants in all worldly Interest even loss of life it self and that with all circumstances of painful dying which yet it is able to r●●●mpence in the resurrection of the just that better resurrection There remains nothing to compleat this whole Discourse of the excellency of Christian Religion in the Foundatio●● of Peace it lays but the Universal Goodness Holiness ●urity Mercy and all the most generous fruits of th●se it is so concerned in and enjoins with so much absoluteness the heavenly and eternal glory it directs the earnestness zeal and highest ardor of all Christians upon so that while they are in the way of well-doing seeking honour glory and immortality they have all the arguments of love and peace working within them and governing all their outward Actions But I have so every way prevented my self in this part that I shall not at all further pursue it but recollect this whole Discourst into the Conclusion of it And in the first place it carries upon this very sad and melancholy Contemplation The so great and nice preparation of Natural Religion of Christian Religion for the peace and quietness of the world How monstrously unsuccesful hath it been among men What great Heats and Disquiets have Differences in Religion been still both the true and unpretended Occasions and the pretended only and counterfeit Causes of in the world What Blood and Cruelty what Slaughters and Massacres what Exquisite Torments and Artifices of Barbarity have been call'd for Contrived and Executed in this Q●arrel On one side men have made Religion a cover and shelter for Sedition Rebellion Commotion and Change of Government perfectly against the whole design of it On the other side Wordly Powers have charg'd all offers of a Religion never so true never so peaceable as if it was bringing out the Engines of Destruction for the blowing up States and therefore judg'd most reasonable the Authors and Proselytes of it should be pursued with severest punishments And without any Relation to these Concernments the very different apprehensions in Religion have been thought worthy of the extreamest Hate and most barbarous Persecutions of Racks Wheels and Tortures as if men having destin'd one another to Hell in another world on these accounts thought it but fit the Hell should be begun here or else which hath been sometimes a pretence for this savage method they would pull them with violence indeed out of that fire or save them from those flames yet so as by fire cruelly forcing them thereby into the Religion of their Judges Now how contrary this is to the nature of True Rational or Christian Religion I have all along shewn But however multitudes of the Votaries of Religion whether true or false have with incredible patience and oftentimes with joy and triumph embrac'd their sufferings and gloried in their death and torments esteeming their pains Martyrdom a name of honour in this world and of great expectations in the world future So that a very considerable part of Story is fill'd up with great undertakings upon account of Religion with the severity of Laws against any thing strange or innovated in the profession of Nations and the Martyrologies of those that have suffer'd for being otherwise perswaded Now if a man values and estimates things by this worlds peace happiness and quiet he would be ready to praise and applaud Atheism and Irreligion and wish there never had been the name or notion of any other in the world to give origin to so much mischief and injumanity Especially considering the Christian Religion the most excellent tender Religion most compassionate of Humane Nature most Clear Intelligible Rational Vertuous freest from Ceremony most aliene from Superstition most modest and humble most submissive to Government at its first entrances into the world endur'd the whole weight and body of malice and cruelty against it was sown in the Blood and grew up as from the Graves of the Confessors and Martyrs of it being first founded in the death of the Author though he indeed gave proof of the Truth and last issue of it in a Glorious Resurrection And since it hath possess'd it self of the acknowledgment and Authority of Thrones Princes Laws and Governments Baptiz'd whole Nations into its profession it hath been most strangely perverted from its whole design and intention into the same instrument of Ambition and Cruelty upon the various accounts and occasions that Church-History and other Chronologies swell and labour in the Relation of Yea even small and valueless things if weighed upon its own just Ballance have yet given fury to the greatest Animosities and Dissentions which have not been washed off but in an Ocean of Blood In sum this of all Religions hath been first most persecuted hated and oppos'd by Grandees and Chiefs of the world in its first approaches to the world and since by the several Dissentions within it self been the Field of Blood made use of sometimes by design sometimes by angry power but so as that the purest and most sincere Professors have been mostly dyed in their own gore so that by the same standard of worldly interest next to Atheism and Irreligion Antichristianism or denial of Christian Religion would seem next to be chosen But when we more wisely and justly apprize the mighty and unconquerable Reasons for Religion in general and the particular vast and momentous Arguments for the reception of True Christian Religion it must needs lead us to other much more serious and reconciling Considerations And who that is a Grave Thinker having been first put into an amaze then into the most melting and relenting Commiserations that the world should be so unhappy in that wherein its greatest happiness consists that there should be such deplorable instances of rage and even Hellish cruelty that cannot be drawn out or exprest in any suitable and condecent language upon the account of that Religion that professes every where of it self it came not to destroy mens lives but to save them even then when the mistaken Zealots of it would have had Fire from Heaven in a present revenge upon those that would not receive the most compassionate founder of it the greatest lover of Humane Nature that ever was in the world Who I say that ponders these things would not set himself to find out the causes of these evils and sadly bethink himself how they should so generally fall out among Christians themselves And indeed he