Selected quad for the lemma: power_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	death_n	hell_n	key_n	2,731	5	10.4414	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27954	The Reasons for non-conformity examined and refuted, in answer to a late Letter from a minister to a person of quality, shewing some reasons for his non-conformity.		1679 (1679)	Wing R497cA; Wing B26; ESTC R8497	14,618	25

palpably false for the Church of England has expresly ordered her Ministers as is plain in the form of private Baptism to baptize Children without God-fathers and God-mothers or the sign of the cross where there is any apparent danger of death and therefore it must be the Parents fault how scrupulous soever he be not the Ministers if his Child die unbaptized I know not what remark to make on this but shall leave it to himself and every impartial Reader to think on it But yet I must farther observe that to assert the salvation of baptized Infants does not deny salvation to all that are unbaptized though we are not so certain from the Word of God of the salvation of the one as of the other the salvation of baptized Infants depends on an express Covenant but we have the goodness and clemency of the divine nature as a reason to hope well of others especially of the Children of Christian Parents who were born within the Pale of the Church and were designed by their Parents to be made the visible members of it Nor is the denial of Christian burial to such Infants as die unbaptized any argument as he suggests that our Church doubts of their salvation but only that she does not own them as actual members of the Church as no Persons are who are not actually admitted into the Christian Church by Baptism and possibly this may be designed as an act of Discipline to correct the neglect of Parents and to beget in them a greater veneration for the Christian Sacraments His last objection is against the office for the burial of the Dead in which we find these words for asmuch as it hath pleased God of his great mercy to take unto himself the Soul of our dear Brother here departed c. where taking them to himself he says must signifie taking them into Heaven if we believe the Lords Prayer Our Father which art in Heaven but is God no where else then but in Heaven because he is there in an eminent manner does not the wise man tell us that the spirits of men departed return unto God who gave them Eccl. 12. 7. Does that signifie going into heaven then we have Scripture for it that all men are saved for the Spirits of all Men after death return to God To return to God and to be taken to him signifies Falkners libertas Eccl. ch 5. s 9. to be put into the immediate disposal of God which as a Learned man well observes Our Church acknowledgeth to be an act of mercy in God through the grace of Christ who hath the Keys of Hell and Death that dying persons do not forthwith go into the power of the Devil who had the power of Death Heb. 2. 14. but do immediately go into the hands of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ to be disposed of by him according to the promises and conditions of the Gospel-Covenant agreeable to the sense of the ancient Church which in the Offices of Burial magnified the divine power whereby the unjust and Tyrannous power of the Devil was overcome and our Lord receiveth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to his peculiar and most righteous judgment But still he urges that other expression that we commit his body to the ground in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life which words he tells us must necessarily be spoken with reference to the person then interred inasmuch as they are the continuation of the foregoing declaration viz. God's taking his Soul to himself Committing his Body to the ground must indeed necessarily refer to the person interred but there is no necessity every thing that follows should for it is not his but the Resurrection to life we declare our hope of our Church thinking it fit on such a sad occasion as this to declare their hope of a future Resurrection and since God's taking his Soul to himself does not necessarily infer the salvation of such a person as I have already shewed we cannot thence infer that the Resurrection to life refers to the interred person neither But he has found one passage which he says puts it out of all doubt that when we bury a known Adulterer Fornicator Drunkard we declare and avouch that his soul is assuredly gone to Heaven viz. that in the prayer after burial that when we shall depart this life we may rest in him viz. in Christ as our hope is this our Brother doth this I grant refers to the interred person but is no argument that the former expressions do for this is only a judgment of charity which differs much from a sure and certain hope There are various degrees of hope and some of them so little that we can hardly deny them to any person though never so wicked for where we are not absolutely sure that they died wholly impenitent we have some degree of hope and though we have reason to fear this of too too many yet we are seldom so certain of it as to exclude all hopes of the contrary But as a fuller justification of our Church in this matter we may consider that this Office of Burial supposes that the Person interred died in the Communion of the Church and were Church-censures duly administred as this Office presumes them to be and as certainly they would be were not the Church weakned by powerful Schisms and Factions no Man could die in the Communion of the Church but such as we should have very good reason in the judgment of charity to hope well of and since through the decay of Discipline many die in the Communion of the Church who deserved excommunication I doubt not but who-ever shall leave out that sentence as our hope is this our Brother doth at the Burial of some notorious profligate sinners complies with the intention of the Church and may justifie himself to his Superiours for doing so Having thus examined and as I think answered this Minister's objections against Conformity I must now look back and take notice of the only piece of ingenuity he has been guilty of throughout this Pamphlet and that is where he owns the lawful use of an established Liturgy or prescribed form of publick prayers nay that as he says nothing against a Liturgy or prescribed form of publick prayers in the general so neither against the main doctrine contained in the prayers of this Book of Common-prayers in particular and in requital of this I shall as readily acknowledge what he adds that it is quite another thing to be bound up to declare my unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained in the Book but he ought also to have added and prescribed by the Book together with those prayers that is that there is a real difference between that conformity which is required of a Clergy-man and that which is required of a Lay-man