Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n
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A42261
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A perswasive to communion with the Church of England
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Grove, Robert, 1634-1696.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing G2152; ESTC R13941
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28,017
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46
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their Treachery or their Force This is a Petition I am sure in which no good Christian can refuse to joyn and if we do heartily desire this let uâ— do what we can to promote it if our Prayer be noâ— unsincere and hypocritical we shall make use of ouâ— best endeavours to obtain the thing we have prayed for And now if our Vnion be thus desirable and necessary what should hinder but that at last we might bâ— all most happily united under the Discipline and Government of the Church of England A Church that iâ— already Framed and Constituted that has the Countenance and Establishment of the Laws that has beeâ— Protected by a Succession of Wise and Pious Princes that was Defended unto Death by our late Martyreâ— Sovereign that was Restored by his Majesty that now is and has been ever since so graciously Cherished bâ— him as if the Care of it were a Quality inherent anâ— hereditary to the Crown A Church that was Reformed by full and sufficient Authority upon mature and serious Deliberation with a perfect submission to the Rule of holy Scripture and a due regard to the example of the most Primitive times A Church that has constantly rejected all the Errours and Corruptions of Rome that admits of neither their Infallibility nor Supremacy that allows no Purgatory nor Indulgences no adoration of Reliques and Images no Praying to Saints nor Angels that does not think that God can be pleased with idle Pilgrimages or a forced Celibacy or any set number of Ave's and Pater noster's or other formal Devotions exactly computed upon a string of Beads and muttered over in an unknown Tongue that does not rob the Laity of half the Communion nor teach them that strange and contradictious Doctrine that the Elements are transubstantiated into the real Body and Blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper that does not only constantly deny these and many more absurd and erroneous Opinions of the Papists but has always sent forth as stout and able Champions to oppose them as any the Christian World affords A Church whose Doctrine is confessed to be Orthodox by the generality of our Dissenting Brethren and whose Discipline and Order of external Worship has nothing in it repugnant to any Law of God And what imaginable ground can there then be to justifie a Separation from such a Church Certainly the use of a few Indifferent things appointed only for Order's sake will not be enough to do it These are not Forbidden and therefore cannot be Sinful in themselves and where God has not Forbidden our Superiours may Command and in all such cases we are bound to Obey Some indeed there are that will not be satisfied with this They tell us that it is not sufficient that a thing be not Forbidden but that it must be Commanded or else it cannot be used in the Worship of God without Sin But if this Opinion be true I must confess that then it is Unlawful to hold Communion not only with ours but with any Church that is or ever was in the World for I do not believe that One can be found amongst them All that has not required the use of some Indifferent thing that was not Commanded Our Dissenting Brethren themselves will allow that the Time and Place of Religious Assemblies may be prescribed by Authority And if these necessary Circumstances may be thus Determined though they be not Commanded by God then it will be as Lawful to prescribe what particular Gestures and Habits shall be there used For these are things of the same Nature Circumstances as necessary as Time and Place and if we have any respect to the Decent and Reverent performance of the Service of God they may be as necessary to be determined too However it must be acknowledged that some things that are not Commanded may be Lawfully Enjoyned and Submitted to and if some then all that are of the same Indifferent nature unless there can be some sufficient reason assigned why some should be excepted and some not which will be very difficult where the Nature of the things is the same And in our present case it will be hard in the general to conceive how the Command of a Lawful Power should make that Unlawful which was not Forbidden and by consequence was Lawful before But if it should be still insisted on that nothing must be Commanded that God has not Commanded they that are of this Perswasion should be very certain that they have clear proof out of the Scriptures for it before they undertake to Forbid that which God has not Forbidden or else they stand condemned by their own Principle Now the Arguments they bring for this out of the New Testament are very few And those very obscure and no way applicable to the matter in hand without being mightily strained Those out of the Old Testament are not many that which has been chiefly urged and seems indeed the most pertinent and material is this The whole Levitical Service was particularly prescribed by God himself and Moses was strictly charged to make the Tabernacle and all the Utensils that belonged unto it After the pattern that was shewed him in the Mount And Moses verily was faithful in all his House as a Servant and so is Christ as a Son over his own House that is the Church Therefore as Moses laid down all the particular Rules to be observed in the Worship of God under the Legal Dispensation so has Christ under the Evangelical and it is as dangerous to add as it is to detract from these written Rules we may no more do what is not Commanded then what is Forbidden This I take to be the main Argument that is brought against us in the present Controversie and if this can be Answered all the rest will be but of little Force Therefore to give what satisfaction I can to this I say first that throughout the whole Epistle to the Hebrews where Moses and Christ or the Law and the Gospel are compared the scope of the Apostle is to shew the exact Correspondence there was betwixt the Type and the Antitype and not that our Saviour had as particularly prescribed the Order of external Worship as Moses by Gods appointment had done For it is certain he did not to give but one instance of very many The manner of Celebrating the Passeover how it should be Killed and how it should be Eaten is set down with every minute Circumstance But the Institution of the Supper of our Lord is not so delivered unto us We have only a short Narative with a general Command superadded Do this in remembrance of me And when St. Paul repeats it again he does it without any mention of the Posture of Receiving The Gospel which teaches us a more Spiritual way of Serving God is not so particular in the Circumstantials of Worship as the Law was and we must not affirm that it is because we would have it so We
Indifferent at a Conceived Prayer as ever he was at the Service of the Church And then on the other side let him consider whether he do not believe that very many may be as serious and devout at the Common Prayer as ever he was at any in the other way he is pleased to prefer And after he has thus inquired if he see Reason to acknowledge both as doubtless he will then the Scales will be even at the least Experience will shew that men may be Fervent and Affectionate with a Form and Cold and Inattentive without one And therefore when we are heavy listless and unaffected at a Prayer by a Form this Defect cannot proceed from the Manner of the Devotion but from the Indisposition of the Person that uses it And when we Separate upon this occasion we are guilty of a double Iniquity in Dividing the Church without sufficient Cause and charging our own Formality upon a good and wholesome Constitution My intended brevity will not permit me to give a particular Answer to all the Exceptions that have been taken at our Liturgy only in the general I say I know nothing in it that can be pretended to be Sinful in it self The most that is urged are some supposed Inconveniences which if we should grant to be real they cannot make our Communion Unlawful and then as I have often intimated it must be a Sin to Separate from it and we may not commit a Sin to decline an Inconvenience This would be to do evil that good may come of it They that are willing to improve every slight Exception into a Cause of Separation should beware of this The question is not whether there be not any thing in the Order of our Divine Service which a man could wish to be altered for that can never be expected under any Constitution The main inquiry is this whether any thing Unlawful be appointed to be used which will make an Alteration not only desirable but necessary and whether we are bound to withdraw till such Alteration be made Which has never been proved Men generally forbear our Publick Worship without ever examining into it upon no other ground but because they prefer their own Arbitrary way before it Which I do not admire but this is very strange and unreasonable that they should take such a disgust at our Liturgy and fly away from it as if it were Popish and Antichristian when they never have so much as read it at least considered it as they ought And here I shall take the Confidence to affirm that the Liturgy some abhor so much was made and reviewed with that Prudence and Moderation that Care and Circumspection that there is not any thing now extant in that kind that has been compos'd with greater Wisdom and Piety If we should take the liberty to compare it with the performances in the other way not to mention the many undecent incoherent irreverent expressions to say no worse that might be collected let any Prayer made occasionally and extempore by the ablest and most cautious of those that magnifie that way and despise ours be taken exactly in writing and published to the World and I am very confident that one Man without any great pains may find more things really exceptionable in that single Prayer in a short time than the several Parties of Dissenters with all the diligence they have hitherto used have been able to discover in the whole Service of our Church in more than a hundred years And yet some of our Brethren that seek industriously for Scruples in the Common Prayer will readily join in other sudden conceived Prayers without any Scruple when they cannot tell but that there may be some dangerous Heresie in every Sentence and some great Indecencies and Absurdities in every Word This is such partiality and unequal dealing as cannot be easily excus'd But if they should allow of the Forms of Prayer in our Liturgy there are certain Ceremonies injoyn'd which they think give them occasion enough to depart from our Communion A Man that were unacquainted with the true State of our case that should stand by and only hear the bitter Cries and Invectives that have been made against Ceremonies would be ready to imagine that sure our Church was nothing else almost but Ceremonies But he would be mightily surprized when upon inquiry he should find that these Ceremonies which had occasioned all this noise should be no more than Three the Surplice the Cross after Baptism and Kneeling at the Sacrament He would be amazed to think that these should be the things about which so many massy Books had been written so great discords and animosities rais'd Such a flourishing Church once quite destroyed and now most miserably divided after it had been so happily restored And his wonder must be increased when he should perceive that of these Three there was but One and no more in which the People were any way concerned The Cross and the Surplice are to be used only by the Minister and if his Conscience be satisfied no Mans else need to be disturb'd about them To Kneel at the Lord's Supper all indeed are commanded but supposing this to be unlawful it could hinder us only from partaking in that Ordinance and not in the rest But of that farther by and by In the mean time I do not understand but that some Ceremonies and particular Determinations of Circumstances are absolutely necessary in the Worship of God since it cannot be performed without them they that will have no Ceremonies can have no external Worship This I think will not be denied But the Ceremonies that are appointed in our Church are thought by some to be significant superstitious and breaches of our Christian Liberty and therefore not to be indured These are the great Objections against the few Ceremonies that are in use among us and these I shall briefly Consider First we are told our Ceremonies are significant And why may not a significant Ceremony be Lawful Are not Kneeling and lifting up the Eyes and Hands to Heaven significations of the Reverence we owe to the Divine Majesty Yes But Ceremonies that signify something naturally may be permitted but not those that signify by institution There should be some solid reason or some plain Scripture Authority brought to to make this difference good And here it is pleaded that every significant Ceremony is a Sacrament and it is downright Popery to make more Sacraments than God has made This I confess were very material if it could be proved But we acknowledge nothing to be a Sacrament but what is An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us ordained by Christ himself as a means whereby we receive the same and a pledge to assure us thereof Now if this be a true Definition as it is owned by us and must be acknowledged by our Dissenting Brethren that talk so much of their approving the Doctrine of our Church