Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	able_a	know_v	zion_n	23	3	8.5780	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64135	Treatises of 1. The liberty of prophesying, 2. Prayer ex tempore, 3. Episcopacie : together with a sermon preached at Oxon. on the anniversary of the 5 of November / by Ier. Taylor.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1648 (1648)	Wing T403; ESTC R24600	539,220	854

to be counted true believers rather then good livers they would rather endeavour to live well then to bee accounted of a right opinion in things beside the Creed For my own particular I cannot but expect that God in his Justice should enlarge the bounds of the Turkish Empire or some other way punish Christians by reason of their pertinacious disputing about things unnecessary undeterminable and unprofitable and for their hating and persecuting their brethren which should be as dear to them as their own lives for not consenting to one anothers follies and senselesse vanities How many volumnes have been writ about Angels about immaculate conception about originall sin when that all that is solid reason or clear Revelation in all these three Articles may be reasonably enough comprized in fourty lines And in these trifles and impertinencies men are curiously busie while they neglect those glorious precepts of Christianity and holy life which are the glories of our Religion and would enable us to a happy eternity My Lord Thus farre my thoughts have carried me and then I thought I had reason to goe further and to examine the proper grounds upon which these perswasions might rely and stand firme in case any body should contest against them For possibly men may be angry at me and my design for I doe all them great displeasure who think no end is then well served when their interest is disserved and but that I have writ so untowardly and heavily that I am not worth a confutation possibly some or other might be writing against me But then I must tell them I am prepared of an answer before hand For I think I have spoken reason in my Book and examined it with all the severity I have and if after all this I be deceiv'd this confirms me in my first opinion and becomes a new Argument to me that I have spoken reason for it furnishes me with a new instance that it is necessary there should bee a mutuall complyance and Toleration because even then when a man thinks he hath most reason to bee confident hee may easily bee deceived For I am sure I have no other design but the prosecution and advantage of truth and I may truly use the words of Gregory Nazianzen Non studemus paci in detrimentum verae doctrinae .... ut facilitatis mansuetudinis famam colligamus But I have writ this because I thought it was necessary and seasonable and charitable and agreeable to the great precepts and design of Christianity consonant to the practise of the Apostles and of the best Ages of the Church most agreeable to Scripture and reason to revelation and the nature of the thing and it is such a Doctrine that if there be variety in humane affaires if the event of things be not settled in a durable consistence but is changeable every one of us all may have need of it I shall only therefore desire that they who will reade it may come to the reading it with as much simplicity of purposes and unmixed desires of truth as I did to the writing it and that no man trouble himselfe with me or my discourse that thinks before hand that his opinion cannot be reasonably altered If he thinks me to be mistaken before he tries let him also think that hee may be mistaken too and that he who judges before he heares is mistaken though he gives a right sentence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristoph in Pluto Was as good counsell But at a venture I shall leave this sentence of Solomon to his consideration A wise man feareth and departeth from evill but a foole rageth and is confident 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a trick of boyes and bold young fellowes sayes Aristotle but they who either know themselves or things or persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Peradventure yea peradventure no is very often the wisest determination of a Question For there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle notes 2 Tim. 2. foolish and unlearned Questions and it were better to stop the current of such fopperies by silence then by disputing them convey them to Posterity And many things there are of more profit which yet are of no more certainty and therefore boldnesse of assertion except it be in matters of Faith and clearest Revelation is an Argument of the vanity of the man never of the truth of the proposition for to such matters the saying of Xenophanes in Varro is pertinent and applicable Hominis est haec opinari Dei scire God only knowes them and we conjecture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And although I be as desirous to know what I should and what I should not as any of my Brethren the Sons of Adam yet I find that the more I search the further I am from being satisfied and make but few discoveries save of my own ignorance and therefore I am desirous to follow the example of a very wise Personage Iulius Agricola of whom Tacitus gave this testimony Retinuit que quod est difficillimum ex scientiâ modum or that I may take my precedent from within the pale of the Church it was the saying of S. Austin Mallem quidem eorum quae à me quaesivisti habere scientiam quam ignorantiam sed quia id nondum potui magis eligo cautam ignorantiam confiteri quam falsam scientiam profiteri And these words doe very much expresse my sense But if there be any man so confident as Luther sometimes was who said that hee could expound all Scripture or so vaine as Eckius who in his Chrysopassus ventur'd upon the highest and most mysterious Question of Predestination ut in eâ juveniles possit calores exercere such persons as these or any that is furious in his opinion will scorn me and my Discourse but I shall not bee much mov'd at it only I shall wish that I had as much knowledge as they think me to want and they as much as they believe themselves to have In the meane time Modesty were better for us both and indeed for all men For when men indeed are knowing amongst other things they are able to separate certainties from uncertainties If they be not knowing it is pity that their ignorance should bee triumphant or discompose the publike peace or private confidence And now my Lord that I have inscrib'd this Book to your Lordship although it be a design of doing honour to my selfe that I have markt it with so honour'd and beloved a Name might possibly need as much excuse as it does pardon but that your Lordship knowes your own for out of your Mines I have digg'd the Minerall only I have stampt it with my own image as you may perceive by the deformities which are in it But your great Name in letters will adde so much value to it as to make it obtaine its pardon amongst all them that know how to value you and all your relatives and dependants by the proportion of relation

innocents of murdering them who were confessed righteous for such was their proposall being rather willing that Catholiks should perish with those whom they thought hereticks then that their should be no blood spilt But to the question it was fire they called for The most mercilesse of all the Elements No possibility of relenting when once kindled and had its object It was the fittest instrument for mercilesse men men of no bowels whose malice like their instrument did agere ad extremum suarnm virium worke to the highest of its possibility Secondly It was fire indeed they called for but not like that in my text not fire from heaven They might have called as long and as loud as those Priests did who contested with Elisha no fire would have come from heaven to have consum'd what they had intended for a sacrifice Gods Anathema's post not so fast as ours doe Deus non est sicut homo Man curseth often when God blesseth men condemne whom God acquits and therefore they were loath to trust God with their cause they therefore take it into their own hands And certainly if to their Anathemas they adde some fagots of their own and gunpowder 't is oddes but then we may be consum'd indeed and so did they their fire was not from heaven Lastly it was a fire so strange that it had no example The Apostles indeed pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonablenesse of their demand they desir'd leave to doe but even as Elias did The Greekes only retaine this clause it is not in the Bibles of the Church of Rome and really these Romano-barbari could never pretend to any precedent for an act so barbarous as theirs Adrimelech indeed kil'd a King but he spar'd the people Haman would have killed the people but spared the King but that both King and people Princes and Iudges branch and rush and root should dye at once as if Caligula's were actuated and all England upon one head was never known till now that all the malice in the world met in this as in a center The Sicilian evensong the mattins of S. Bartholomew known for the pittilesse and damn'd massacres were but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the dream of the shadow of smoake if compar'd with this great fire In tam occupato saeculo fabulas Vulgaris nequitia non invenit This was a busy age Herostratus must have invented a more sublim'd malice then the burning of one Temple or not have been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the Powder-Treason But I must make more hast I shall not else clime the sublimity of this impiety Nero was sometimes the populare ●dium was popularly hated and deserv'd it too for he slew his Master and his wife and all his family once or twice over opened his mothers wombe fired the Citty laught at it slandred the Christians for it but yet all these were but principia malorum the very first rudiments of evill Adde then to these Herods Master-piece at Ramah as it was deciphred by the teares and sad threnes of the Matrons in an Vniversall mourning for the losse of their pretty infants yet this of Herod will prove but an infant wickednesse and that of Nero the evill but of one citty I would willingly have found out an example but I see I cannot should I put into the scale the extract of all the old Tyrants famous in Antique stories Bristoni stabulum Regis Busiridis ar as Antiphatae mensas Tauricaregna Thoantis Should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was fancied by the most hieroglyphicall Egyptian this alone would weigh them down as if the Alpes were put in scale against the dust of a ballance For had this accursed Treason prosper'd we should have had the whole Kingdome mourne for the inestimable losse of its chiefest glory its life its present joy and all its very hopes for the future For such was their destind malice that they would not only have inflicted so cruell a blow but have made it incurable by cutting off our supplies of joy the whole succession of the line Royall Not only the Vine it selfe but all the Gemmulae and the tender O live branches should either have been bent to their intentions and made to grow crooked or else been broken And now after such a sublimity of malice I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruine of the neighbouring Temples which needs must have perished in the flame nor in the disturbing the ashes of our intomb'd Kings devouring their dead ruines like Sepulchrall dogs these are but minutes in respect of the ruine prepared for the living Temples Stragem sed istam non tulit Christus cadentum Principum Prudent hymn Impune ne for sansui Patris periret fabrica Ergo quae poterit lingua retexere Laudes Christe tuas qui domitum struis Infidum populum cum Duce perfido Let us then returne to God the cup of thanks giving he having powred forth so largely to us of the cup of salvation We cannot want where withall to fill it here is matter enough for an eternall thankfulnesse for the expressiou of which a short life is too little but let us here begin our Hallelujahs hoping to finish them hereafter where the many quires of Angels will fill the consort Praise the Lord ye house of Levi ye that fear the Lord Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord out of Sion Psal. 135. v. 20. 21. which dwelleth at Hierusalem FINIS