Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	blood_n	body_n	holy_a	11,079	5	5.1892	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85839	Analysis. The loosing of St. Peters bands; : setting forth the true sense and solution of the covenant in point of conscience so far as it relates to the government of the church by episcopacy. / By John Gauden ...	Gauden, John, 1605-1662.	1660 (1660)	Wing G340; ESTC R202274	13,622	28

old Lastly I might truly alledge against the novelty of the Covenant in the Church of England that there is no precept or patern for any such in all the New Testament nor in all succeeding ages of the Christian Church we never read nor heard of any covenanting Christians until the Ligue sainte in France except those who in one baptism were sprinkled with the blood of Christ and so entred into that covenant which God makes with us and we with him in that holy laver of regeneration this is the new and Evangelical covenant of all true Christians this we break by wilful and presumptuous sins this we renew by true repentance and by worthy participation of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper § How vastly different from this sacred covenant this late piece of policy more than piety is and how little the true covenant of a Christian binds him by his Baptism or Repentance or the Eucharist against all Episcopal Government I leave to all sober-minded Christians to judge since both the power of ordaining Ministers and by them to consecrate and celebrate both Sacraments was ever derived from and by Bishops of the Church as the cheif conservators cisterns and conduits of all Ecclesiastical Authority and Ministerial power from the very Apostles the first Bishops of the Church Acts 1. who had the same immediately from Christ who was and ever is the great Bishop and Pastor of our souls to feed and rule his Church not only by his Word and Spirit but by such Shepherds and Rulers as he hath in all ages set over his flock of which Bishops were ever esteemed the Angels Presidents or cheif Fathers whom utterly to destroy and violently to extirpate out of this or any Christian Church is not only to offer signal and intolerable injuries to the persons of such excellent Bishops as England lately had and still may have but further mightily to abate the honor of this whole Church and its Ministry by taking away all the rewards and encouragements of Learning and Religion yea and to scandalize all Churches by abolishing such a venerable order and universal custom in the Church as hath no origine but that of the Apostles and looks very like an immediate institution of Christ either preceptive and explicite or tacite and exemplary The just abatements of Covenanters heats and rigors § So that if this were the sense and intent of the Covenant-makers and takers to extirpate and abolish not the abuses but the very uses of all Episcopal Order and Government the great Boanergesses who thunder out so much terror against Covenant-breaking may do much more justice and execution if they turn the mouths of their canons against such Covenant-taking which is better broken than kept in any unlawful sense and best of all when not at all taken with any such intention which is as presumptuous as it was preposterous § These things being thus premised are sufficient as I conceive to abate the edge and rigor of the Covenant as to its antipathy against all Episcopacy and to ravel that cable or bond of religious obligation which some men do seem to twist and urge upon poor peoples consciences in that point when in good earnest there is neither Law of God or man requiring imposing or comprobating any such Covenant by any National or Ecclesiastical authority so that it appears at best to be but a matter of will worship of humane and private invention void of publique and plenary injunction esteemed by many but as a stratagem of State a flag of faction an engine framed on purpose to batter down Episcopacy and the whole Church of England in order to obtain the spoils of them not to punish and amend the evil that might be in Episcopal Government or in some Bishops and other Ministers but to seize all their estates and all the patrimony of the Church to the great enriching of some sacrilegious Protestants to the gratifying of some Presbyters envy and revenge but most of all to the great joy and triumph of the Romish party and Jesuitick designs which were thought by many wise men to have been if not the Sires yet the Sibs to that Covenant that they might help to spread it as a snare in Mizpeh thereby to catch and destroy the famousest Bishops the most renowned Clergie the best reformed and most flourishing Church in all the world § The best aspect of the Covenant considered in conscience But I will look upon this Covenant in the softest sense that can be made of it as a voluntary Vow or religious Bond which private men and some part only of the Nation spontaneously took upon themselves in order to declare their sense of duty to God the King the Church their Country and the Reformed Religion to make themselves more strictly sensible of the sacred and civil obligations respectively due to them that so they might be more ready to discharge them in their places and callings by taking such a Covenant freely not for fear of prison plunder sequestration and the like wracks of mens souls the terrors of which made many if not most of the takers of the Covenant to take it and yet I believe not one fourth part of the people of England now living ever did take it in any sort and very few but rigid Bigots and virulent spirits in any sense against primitive reformed and regular Episcopacy so reduced to an efficacious conjuction with Presbytery as the most Reverend Primate of Armagh proposed in his Reduction of late and so did the Lord Virulam long before in his considerations touching the Church of England offered to King James in the beginning of his reign § In this aspect of the Covenant Answers direct as a religious obligation either newly made or renewed upon the foul of any that willingly and freely took it and who thereby think themselves eternally obliged to fulfill the letter of it or that sense they had of it as to the matter of Church-government by Episcopacy or Prelacy which they fancied to have abjured and renounced no less than Popery my Answers and Solutions are these 1. What only can bind in it First They are not the bare words of the Covenant which as charms can bind any mans conscience to or against any thing but it is that force of Truth Reason Justice Religion and Duty to God or man our selves or others which morally and really obligeth men either by Gods general or particular precepts which are as iron or admantine bands on every mans soul to chuse good and do it to hate evil and eschew it long before any of these withes or cords of mans combining and tying are put upon them by themselves or others 2. Not the takers fancy or imposers Secondly Nor can any such Covenant bind any man in any consciencious bond meerly by the power of a mans own imagination or by such a prejudice and presumption as he lists