Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	christian_a	good_a	great_a	1,688	4	2.1264	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43661	A letter sent from beyond the seas to one of the chief ministers of the non-conforming party by way of reply to many particulars which he sent to the author in a letter of news / by a lover of the established government both of church and state.	Hickes, George, 1642-1715.; Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1674 (1674)	Wing H1855; ESTC R12608	16,745	38

A LETTER Sent from beyond the SEAS To One of the CHIEF MINISTERS OF THE NON-CONFORMING PARTY By way of Reply to many Particulars which He sent to the Author in a Letter of News Useful for these Distempered Times By a Lover of the Established Government both of Church and State ANNO DOMINI M. DC LXXIV A Letter sent from beyond the Seas to one of the Chief Ministers of the Non-conforming Party Dear Cousin I Was very glad to receive your Letter but very far from being glad to find you still so extreamly desirous of Innovations in a Government so well established as that is under which you live I perceive you are more zealous than it becomes a good Subject or a good Christian to be for carrying on a Project of my Lord Choses's as Unreasonable as New viz. That of Disabling a Papist to Inherit the Crown For doubtless that proposal was first made and afterwards promoted by him the last Sessions of Parliament not out of true Love to the Reformed Religion but out of Spite or Revenge to the D. of Y Who were he not only Papist but Heathen or Mahumetan which I think is not much worse would certainly have as good a Title to his Crown and all his Temporal Rights as if he were the most Orthodox and Holy Christian in the World And I am perswaded that my zealous Lord Chose would not be willing that the King and Parliament should make a particular Act to disable his own Posterity to Inherit the great Estate he hath got if they should turn Papists or Atheists as others have done before them We all know what mischief in the World that Damnable Doctrine has made That Temporal Rights and Inheritances depend upon Saintship and Grace And if it be clear from Scripture as nothing is more clear that a King ought not to lose his Crown or any other Person for feit his Temporal Rights for not being Christians or for renouncing the Christian Religion then it is plain that neither the D nor any other Person ought to be deprived of their Temporal Rights especially Crowns of all Temporal Rights the greatest for not being Protestants or which is more for renouncing the Christian Religion And I am heartily glad that God gave the Fathers of the English Church the grace to defend her Doctrine in opposing that Unreasonable and truly Romish Proposal of my Lord Chose which if they had approved and defended after it was proposed they had truly acted in that like men Popishly affected and shewed themselves to be what their Adversaries would fain perswade the World they are For 't is the Romish Church and her Doctors which maintain That Kings Excommunicated or Heretick Kings or which is all one that Kings that renounce the Apostolick Faith ought to be Deprived and Deposed But 't is the Church of England that maintains the contradiction of that Unscriptural Unevangelical Principle and thinks her self as much obliged to submit her self to a Heathen Atheistical Heretical or Popish Prince where she can as to an Orthodox King and where she cannot she thinks her self obliged to suffer as her Saviour like a Lamb brought to the slaughter and dares pretend to take up no Arms but those of the Primitive Christians whose true Copy she is Tears Arguments and Prayers I say it is the Church of England that is of this judgment and neither the Church of Rome nor the Church of Scotland both of which have actually Excommunicated and Deposed Lawful and Rightful Princes under the Notion of being Hereticks and Enemies to Christ's Kingdom forgetting both alike the Precepts and Examples of our Saviour and his Apostles on which the Church of England hath grounded the contrary Doctrine as well as on right reason Our Saviour though God rendred unto the Heathen Caesar the things that were Caesar's he owned his right to the Empire both by word and deed although he were but the adopted Successor of the greatest Usurper that ever was in the World Nay furthermore he owned and submitted to the Procuratory Power of Pilate who acted but by Commission from the Emperour Tiberius who if there be any truth in the Character of Tacitus was the greatest Tyrant and the most wicked man that ever the World saw And as for St. Paul there is no Article of our Religion not even that that Jesus Christ is the Son of God more clear in his Epistles than that Every Soul should be subject to the Higher Powers That we should Obey not only for Wrath but Conscience sake That whosoever resisieth receiveth to himself Damnation and lastly that all the Powers and when he wrote there were none but Heathen Powers were Ordained of God I might here insist upon the Practice of the Apostles as it is represented in their Acts and the constant Submission and Sufferings of the Primitive Christians as they are reported by the Ecclesiastical Fathers and Historians but the Scripture it self is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of this Argument which the Church of England has not only established in her Doctrine but her Fathers and Sons of late maintained in their Practices and which the Church of Scotland agreeing in this and many other Points with that of Rome did ever oppose both in Word and Deed. And since that Kirk and Nation have been of this Opinion we need not wonder that the English Disciples of their Buchanan and Knox have practised those rebellious Principles which have so debauched and corrupted the Subjects of the Kings of England as to make them be proverbially called The Kings of Devils And which the Anabaptists in Germany improved into this Maxim That Saintship was the Foundation of Soveraignty and that the Righteous ought to Inherit the Earth And furthermore if Crowns ought to be Entailed upon Protestants only then it is but just that the Estates of all Subjects whatsoever should be so Entailed And if for example the D of Y must be cut off from his Rights for being a Roman Catholick then let the rest of the Papists lose theirs they are all alike Idolaters and let them all alike suffer And to bring the Case to your own House can you imagine that you your self ought to lose your Right to the Estate you have or may have hereafter upon that supposition that you should turn Papist which men as firmly resolved against it as you have certainly done These Practises and Proposals are such that they have left a blot on the memories of some men that seem more zealous than their Brethren And I am glad at present that the Religious Lord Chose is the Chief Patron and Promoter of such an Unreasonable and Romish Design I have more than ordinary reason to call it Romish because I have heard it maintained here among all the Priests I converse with It is a Doctrine dearly beloved by the Romanists And put but the name of Heretick to a Prince here and it is just the same case as when you call a

Arts you have so wrought your selves into the esteem of your Disciples that few of them are either so Covetous or so Poor but they will Pinch at home to supply you There are several Orders of Franciscans here who have renounced not only Parsonages but all Temporal Estates and Possessions whatsoever and by their vain glorious Sanctity and Austerities they have got like you such fast hold on the Souls of the People which is the fastest hold of all that they can easily make most of them dispose of their Children cashier their Servants and settle their Estates as they please and by these Tricks do more effectually promote the Interest of Rome than all the Parish-Priests within the Pale of that Church And really when I consider what Influence these Sanctimonions and self-denying Zealots have o're all families in all places where they live how hey steal away the Hearts of the People from their Parish-Priests and drain their Congregations and how the deluded People had rather give them the worth of a shilling than the dues of two pence to their own Cures it makes me often run the Parallel between you and them and think what a Politick and Gainful Pretence you have got to renounce your Livings for to secure your Consciences and to Preach the Word like the Primitive Apostles when God knows 't is not out of love to the People but to your selves And I protest to you were I a man to be maintained by the Pulpit and consulted my Profit more than the Goodness of my Cause I should take the same courses that you do I should rather be Mr. M. than Dr. A. of Plymouth and should chuse the plentiful Income of that dull Zealot Dr. Manton before that of his most Learned and Religious Successor of Covent-Garden But though you live very well and better indeed than most of the Ministers of the Church yet the mischief of it is you are uncapable of Dignities which makes you such Aërians and upon all occasions openeth your Throats as wide as Sepulchres against the Bishops and the Church You know what an History of Bishops Mr. Pryn hath wrote and what a fair Collection the Learned Smec hath taken out of him as if when a Bishop is defective either in Piety Learning or the skill of Government it were not the deplorable unhappiness but the fault of the Church of England Should an Heathen or Mahumetan make such an Historical Collection of Scandalous Christians either in this or former Ages you would not be perswaded for all that to prefer the Alcoran before the Gospel or the most exalted Paganism whatsoever before the Christian Religion Therefore wise and sober men will make no Inference but this from such a malicious enumeration of Particulars that corruptions will creep into Government notwithstanding all the care that can be used to the contrary and that by the favour of Princes who hear with other mens ears and often receive undeserved Characters of men sometimes Ambitious sometimes Ignorant and sometimes Slothful Imprudent or Debauched Persons will be Preferred to the most Honourable Dignities in the Church But this as often as it happens is the misery of the Church of England which all true Church men lament though the men of the short Cloke take all such occasions to expose her to the scorn of the common People who judg by Sense and not by Reason and who are taught by you to make no distinction between the Bishops and the Church But were all her Bishops the best Christians the best Scholars and the best Governors in the World and should the Royal Hand place her Mytres on the Heads of none but Jewel's Whitgift's Andrews's Hall's Usher's Morton's Taylor 's and Sanderson's yet that Unchristian Spirit of Envy and Discontent which informs the Non-conformists would still flie upon her with open mouth like Beasts upon the Saints of old condemned to the Amphitheater and make her as she hath already been for almost forty years a Spectacle to God to Angels and to Men. The wicked Lives of Scandalous Bishops and Priests if there be any such are her sad misfortune but cannot justifie the Schism you are guilty of who are bound to hear even them as much as the Jews were bound to hear the Scribes and Pharisees those Hypocrites that sate in Moses's Chair And in that deplorable state of the Jewish Church when the Priests and Prophets were both alike corrupted and called by the Holy Spirit Dumb and greedy Dogs yet it had been unlawful to make a separation and set up other Altars against that which God who was their King had set up I cannot but mind you of the Schism of Jeroboam who by dividing the Church as God was pleased to divide the Kingdom into two parts made Israel to Sin But to insist on the Samaritan Secession and write all that is necessary to discover and aggravate the damnable Nature of Schism would require as much more Paper as I have bestowed and so make me as tedious again as I fear I have already been Besides it would oblige me to answer Mr. Hales's Treatise of Schism with whose leaves you vainly endeavor to cover your shame And I had indeed a year agoe undertaken that easie task but that a Western Gentleman to whom I discovered my Intentions told me That a Friend of his had already begun that good Work so that I hope it is Printed by this time And if either that or this or any thing else a thousand times better than I am able to write may prove effectual to reclaim you from Schism I shall be as glad as to see some other of our Friends reformed from Drunkenness Swearing and Uncleanness which are very grievous and dreadful Sins but yet not more damnable in their Nature nor more destructive to the Christian Religion nor more deeply rooted in the Soul of man than that of Schism From which I pray God by the Power of his Grace to Preserve me and Reform you through Jesus Christ our Lord to whose Protection I commit you and rest Your most Affectionate Cousin And humble Servant Saumur May 7. 1674.