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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	father_n	name_n	son_n	18,910	5	5.2331	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59624	The Act of Parliament against religious meetings, proved to be the bishops act, or, A letter of the Arch-bishop of Canterbury to his fellow-bishops, to promote the persecution intended by it printed, to save the trouble of copying it out : with some Animadversions thereupon.	Sheldon, Gilbert, 1598-1677.	1670 (1670)	Wing S3067; ESTC R17672	6,340	9

a Command from my Lord Bishop of Lincoln to disperse Copies of the preceding Letter to the several Parishes within the Jurisdiction of the Arch-Deaconry of Lincoln In pursuance therefore of his Lordships Order I send this to you Earnestly desiring you to take especial regard to perform whatsoever is therein required of you either in your own Person or relating to your Parishioners And how you shall discharge your duty therein I shall expect an account at the next Visitation I am Your very loving Friend and Brother I. CAWLEY Archidiac Lincoln Iune 7. 1670. Some Animadversions upon the foregoing Letter IT hath been some matter of Wonder to many sober and impartial men to see that Gospel Liberty which out Lord Christ hath purchased for all his Followers and which in this Nation by many remarkable Providences and sad Rebukes God hath been working as it were out of the fire on the behalf of his Innocent and Mistaken People and which for some years they have been in a peaceable and undisturbed possession of to the Universal satisfaction of all that without prejudice have observed their carriage should now lately of a sudden and without any provocation given be ravished from them and an Act of Violence contrived and executed against them in so precipitate and furious a manner that together with their undoubted Liberty as Christians their known Common Rights as English-men and Free-born are forcibly taken away and they in their Persons and Estates are exposed to the utmost rapine and malice of all that are willing to destroy and devour them as if meer difference of opinion had made them the vilest of Malefactors and for that they were utterly to be excluded from the relief of Pity as well as of Protection After many conjectures about the Rise and Projection of this Mischievous Device it hath pleased God who will not suffer the Authors of Iniquity to lie long concealed to bring it now to light And in this Letter Reader thou seest who they are that are called upon to rejoyce as more particularly sensible of the good providence of God therein and who are earnestly desired to execute it with utmost Rigor considering the abundant Care and Provisions that Act contains for their Advantage And these are no less persons than The Right Reverend Fathers in God our very good Lords the Lord Bishops Persons whose Names and Titles as they are in this Letter given to them the Scripture is utterly unaquainted with and yet they daily boast of their Pedigree and cry out as the Jews did of old The Church the Church But by no means will they be prevailed with to tell us what they mean by the Church or who is their Father only we are sure that God is not since they have so little resemblance to the Humility Patience Condescention and Meekness of the Lord Christ his Son Though these may be accounted Harsh words yet we desire they may be weighed for we are sure we need go no further than this Letter to justifie our selves in using them Behold here the Chief of the Bishop's Order an Arch-Bishop one who is in Name a Christian in profession a Protestant yet so wholly unconcerned in either of these that throughout his whole Letter in matters of the greatest concernment he makes no mention at all of the Name of Christ as if he knew he had nothing at all to do with him but were wholly as indeed he is an Apocryphal Officer And likewise altogether passing by the Papists as if no Law had ever been made against them or they had left off to be dangerous He only fixes a Character of Odium upon his Protestant Brethren To persecute and oppose these he calls a Pious and Blessed work and is so far from bewailing the Calamity that is likely to be brought upon them and upon the whole Nation for the Injuries done to them that he stirs up All to help it forward and to joyn with him in this odious and for ever to be abhorred Imployment All which though we might ascribe to Gilbert Shelden and make it his personal miscarriage of whom we can say and are ready to prove That his too little Learning hath made him thus mad yet we will fix this Violence rather upon according to his own stile Gilbert Cant. or to speak out his Title in words at length Gilbert Archbishop of Canterbury who being as such and in that capacity not a creature of God's making nor any part of a Divine Ordinance must answer the Darkness of his Original since the same evil Spirit which begets Pride in any doth likewise instil and direct unto Civility by which that Pride may be maintained and upheld Concerning this Prelates Pride besides his Intolerable Title which is no small part of that Name of Blasphemy which is more fully and at large written upon his Father the Pope's forehead what need w●● any other Argument to prove it by than the base and contemptible stile he useth to those whom What ever we think of them yet he owneth as Ministers of Christ The Apostle Peter calls those he writes to Elders and himself their fellow-Elder 1 Pet. 5.1 But this Archbishop being in a higher elevation and transcendent in his Priviledges to any Apostle looks down with scorn upon his Brethren the Teachers of the Nation and Parsons Vicars Curates is the best language he can afford them We wish those poor despised men many of whom we hope are only mistaken in their way would a little consider what unworthy Bondage they are under and what vile drudgery is exacted from them instead of being Gospel-Preachers they must now turn State-Informers and set up an Inquisition to rack and torture their innocent Neighbours whom it should be their business to convert and save It is indeed pritty but too thin a covering at this time of day to command them to be careful of their Lives Pope Paulus did it to prevent Luther's Reformation and now it is meerly in other words to desire them to put on Sheeps cloathing for a time that they may play the Wolves with the better pretence and greater advantage We may indeed be excused if we seem to wonder that he did not at least for forms-sake desire his Curates to preach somewhat more frequently but we think it prudently forborn for why should those who are so professedly the Servants of men be exhorted so much to contradict themselves as to preach Christ the Lord or upon what pretence of Reason could this Arch-Bishop require that from others which he hath so little care or skill to do himself Passing by this Over-sight therefore wherein he is rightly Episcopal as carrying a good decorum with it give us leave Christian Reader to observe only that we find him in open terms without any figure to call the Surplice and Hood a Priestly habit enjoyning all to wear them in the time of officiating at Divine Service that so by their Ordered performance

THE Act of Parliament AGAINST Religious Meetings Proved to be The Bishops Act OR A LETTER of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury to his fellow-Bishops to promote the Persecution intended by it Printed to save the trouble of copying it out With some ANIMADVERSIONS thereupon Anno Dom. 1670. For the Right Reverend Father in God my very good Lord and Brother the Lord Bishop of Right Reverend and my very good Lord IT hath pleased his Majesty and the two Houses of Parliament out of their pious care for the welfare of this Church and Kingdom by making and publishing the late Act for the preventing and suppressing Conventicles to lay a hopeful way for the peace and settlement of the Church and the Uniformity of Gods Service in the same It becomes VS the Bishops as more particularly sensible of the good providence of God to endeavour as much as in us lies the promoting so blessed a work And therefore having well considered what will be fit for me to do in my particular Diocess I thought fit to recommend the same Counsel and Method which I intend God willing to pursue my self to your Lordship and the rest of my Brethren the Bishops of my Province being thereunto encouraged by his Majesties Approbation and express Direction in this affair In the first place therefore I advise and require you that you call before you not only your Chancellors Archdeacons Commissaries Officials Registers and other your Ecclesiastical Officers but that also by such means and at such places as you shall judge most convenient you assemble before you or some grave and discreet person or persons your Commissioner or Commissioners the several Parsons Vicars and Curats of your Diocess and Iurisdictions within their several Deanaries and that you impart to them respectively as they shall come before you or your Commissioners the tenure of these my Letters requiring them and every of them as well in Mine as in your own Name that in their several capacities and stations they all perform their duty towards God the King and the Church by an exemplary conformity in their own persons and practice to his Majesty's Laws and the Rules of the Church in this behalf I advise that you admonish and recommend to all and every of the Parsons Vicars and Curates within your Diocess and Iurisdiction strictness and sobriety of life and conversation checking and punishing such astransgress and encouraging such as live orderly that so they by their vertuous and religious deportment may shew themselves patterns of good living to the people under their charge And next that you require of them as they will answer the contrary that in their own persons in their Churches they do decently and solemnly perform the Divine Service by reading the Prayers of the Church as they are appointed and ordered in and by the Book of Common Prayer without addition to or diminishing from the same or varying either in substance or ceremony from the order method which by the said Book is set down wherein I hear and am afraid too many do offend And that in the time of such their officiating they ever make use of and wear their Priestly Habit the Surplice and Hood that so by their due and reverend performance of so Holy a Worship they may give honour to God and by their own Example instruct the people of their Parishes what they ought to teach them in their Doctrine Having thus counselled the Ecclesiastical Iudges and Officers the Clergie of your Diocess in their own particular duties your Lordship is further desired to recommend unto them the care of the people under their respective Iurisdictions and Charges that in their several places they do their best to perswade and win all Nonconformists and Dissenters to obedience to his Majesties Laws and unity with the Church and such as shall be refractory to endeavour to reduce by the Censures of the Church or such other good means as shall be most conducing thereunto to which end I advise that all and every of the said Ecclesiastical Iudges and Officers and every of the Clergie of your Diocess and the Churchwardens of every Parish by their respective Ministers be desired in their respective stations and places that they take notice of all Nonconformists Holders Frequenters Maintainers Abetters of Conventicles and unlawful Assemblies under pretence of Religious Worship especially of the Preachers and Teachers in them and of the places wherein the same are held ever keeping a more watchful eye over the Cities and greater Towns from whence the mischief is for the most part derived unto the lesser Villages and Hamlets and wheresoever they find such wilfull Offenders that then with A Hearty Affection to the Worship of God the Honour of the King and his Laws and the Peace of the Church and Kingdom They do address themselves to the Civil Magistrate Iustices and others concerned imploring their help and assistance for preventing and suppressing of the same according to the late said Act in that behalf made and set forth And because there may be within the limits of your Diocess some peculiar or exempt Iurisdictions belonging either to your Dean Dean and Chapter Archdeacons or to some Ecclesiastical or other persons I do therefore desire that by such wayes and means as your Lordship shall conceive most proper you do communicate this my Letter unto them delivering unto every of them Copies of the same for their better Instruction and that you require them in My Name that within their several Iurisdictions they also pursue the Advices and Directions before set down as if the same had been given by a particular Letter unto them under my own hand Lastly That for the better direction to all those who shall be concerned in the Advices given by this Letter I advise you will give out amongst the Ecclesiastical Officers and your Clergie as many Copies of the same as your Lordship shall think conducible to the end for which it is designed And now my Lord what the success will be we must leave to God Almighty yet my Lord I have this confidence under God That if we do our parts now at first seriously by Gods help and the assistance of the Civil Power considering the abundant care and provision the Act contains for Our Advantage We shall within a few monthes see so great an alteration in the destractions of these times as that the seduced People returning from their seditious and self-seeking Teachers to the Unity of the Church and Uniformity of God's Worship it will be to the Glory of God the welfare of the Church the praise of his Majesty and Government the happiness of the whole Kingdom And so I bid your Lordship heartily farewell and am My Lord Your Lordships most affectionate Friend and Brother GILBERT CANT ' Lambeth-house May the 7th 1670 A Copy of a Letter from the Archdeacon of Lincoln to the several Parishes within his Iurisdiction SIR I have received