Selected quad for the lemma: prayer_n
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A27174
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Take heed of both extremes, or, Plain and useful cautions against popery and presbytery by way of dialogue : in two parts / by Luke de Beaulieu.
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Beaulieu, Luke, 1644 or 5-1723.
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1675
(1675)
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Wing B1578; ESTC R7658
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78,624
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146
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of your being Gods Church and people and I shall say more to it anon I only add now that as it is observ'd that where Religion hath been loosest there Fortune hath been most worshipped so when you had broken all natural and religious bonds you made use of the prosperous events of your enterprizes to justifie the lawfulness of them Pr. Well I see you 'll make hard shift but you 'll have something to say But can you find that we attribute to the Sacraments the vertue of working by their own efficacy the grace they signifie which you call opus operatum don 't we rather teach that nothing but Gods Grace can work any good in us and that outward means are useless without it Pa. Yes I do suppose the Sacraments are of no great account amongst you whatever is not of your own appointment is of little use or profitableness though ordained by the first Rulers of the Christian Church or by Christ himself But I could tell you of two or three things of your own devising of as great force and efficacy as any of our Sacraments that is your Covenant your powerful Preaching and your extemporary Prayers of the first I have spoken enough already how you made it a most precious and soul-saving Ordinance and equalled it at least to the Covenants God hath been pleased to make with Mankind wherefore it was to be taken standing uncovered and one hand bare and lifted up which is more of honour and reverence than you afford to the blessed Sacrament of the Body and Bloud of Christ which you receive fitting upon your tails or to any other part of Divine Worship If any one will see more of it let him read Thomas Mokett's Sermons on that subject printed 1642. That your Preaching is likewise very powerful I have evinc'd before in that you call it the Gospel the Word of God and make it in a manner equal to Scripture as proceeding from the same Spirit as Mr. Marshal told the Parliament at a Thanksgiving-Sermon for some good success of yours S. Marshal 1643. p. 3. I should send you home presently and command all of you not to weep to day but to eat the fat and drink the sweet but that I have first some banquetting stuff for your souls such as God hath brought to my hand sure they might make a very soul-refreshing meal on what God himself had prepared Mr. Palmer also pag. 27. How few come prepared to the Ordinances your preaching and Praying Who is it that considers the weightiness of the business he is about that he is now about a soul-saving or a soul-destroying work And accordingly in your Catechising your Converts if they be aged the grand question is When and at what time they were converted for your Preaching works Conversion even as Strong-drink works Madness When you have taught malicious or ignorant people to rail at the Church and to hate it and those that side with it then the powerful Ordinance of Preaching hath done the feat and the man is converted even as the weak-brain fellow that hath lost his reason by too much drinking As for your Praying being it is by the Spirit no wonder if it works strangely Mr. Vavasor Powel a holy man The History of his Life 1671. p. 16. and well worth to be credited though somewhat more Fanatick than you for having a most authentick Testimony and Approbation of fourteen of the chiefest Divines in the Assembly did by his Prayers cure one Mrs. p 18. Watkins of the Parish of Laningg in the County of Brecknock who for two years together had kept her bed and one Elizabeth Morris of New Radnorth who was troubled with the Falling-sickness and Convulsion-Fits and did once in a wet Harvest stop a most fierce rain p. 19. in seeking the Lord and begging for fair weather This will not seem strange if we consider what one of you said That God had kindled the fervent fire of Supplication in your hearts Jehovah-Jireh p. 31. Oh how did the Lord-before and ever since this Parliament began stir up and inflame the fire of supplicating faith or faithful supplication and fervent zeal in private humiliation to seek the Lord in the face of Christ for mercy and reconcilement to our poor Land And then how could that fire that came from the Lord do less than consume and devour every thing that stood in its way As Dr. Owen said to the House of Commons Joh. Owen 1659. p. 14. The Adversaries openly confest That there was nothing left for them to overcome or to overcome them but the Prayers of the Fanatick Crew And as Mr. Coleman said to the same Auditory We prayed at Nazeby 1645. p. â—â— 17 they plotted see what end the Lord hath made come and behold the works of the Lord. And at Langport and Bridgewater they could not stand for God was against them We prayed we fought Th. Good 1â—â—â— p. â—â— we conquered certainly the power of Prayers is destructive And Mr. Goodwin God hath given to those his Saints the Rebels a Commission to set up and pull down by their Prayers and Intercessions Whence by the way might be gathered that you have some kindness for us being you pull'd none down but the Church of England But possibly the efficacy of your Prayers did not so much as the reach of your Piques and Muskets However you see here is opus operatum with a vengeance all the difference is that our Sacraments are of Christs Institution and work Grace only whereas your powerful Ordinances are of your own devising and besides Grace can work destruction Pr. And can you find this one thing more about the Sacraments that we take the Cup away from the people as is the order of your Church positively against an express Command of Christ who said Drink ye all of this Sure you won't say we are guilty of dispensing with such an express Injunction of Christ as you do in this case Pa. No you never took the blessed Cup from the people but you went very near to take away from them the sacred Bread and all You know how seldom and in how few places that holy Sacrament was administred in your reforming times and you know how little regarded still by many of your party since you could preach and pray by the Spirit And yet we are in good hopes that you 'll comply with us in this too for that in another case you can dispense with as absolute a command of Christ that is concerning the Lords Prayer of which he commanded When you pray say Our Father c. Luk. 11.2 But your wisdom hath found it out that 't was enough to say the sense of that Prayer without repeating the very words and then if you should use it the people might be brought to believe that a set Form of Prayers is lawful according to so great an example which might be a great prejudice to your
have respect to the Saints the whole lump of them if you will maintain your interest whole and intire have regard to the Saints small and great More could not have been said to perswade the people to do you good and in this you are in no wise inferiour to the most self-preaching Monks Pr. I scorn your words we are in nothing like your foolish Fryars Presbyterians are a serious and considering people who serve God according to his VVord in spirit and in truth whereas they mind nothing but their fopperies their superstitions and biggotteries whereby they have made Religion ridiculous Pa. Yes you would fain make the world believe that your new-devised Church-Government and every thing you speak and do is Scripture and according to the Spirit and truth and to hear you cry up your Orders and outward circumstances of divine Service one would think you had found Scriptural or spiritual Ceremonies But when all comes to all it is only this that you make Religion and Godliness to consist in rejecting that decent and instructing Order in Divine VVorship which the Primitive Church used and transmitted to us for to follow your irreverent and unseemly manner of worshipping God according to your own minds But that you also have done enough to make Religion ridiculous and fabulous too is easie to be seen by what I have said and shall say further the many intolerabiles ineptias you preached in your best-studied Sermons before your Parliament and printed afterwards as being excellent Discourses are sufficient proofs that your grave out-sides are inwardly full of emptiness or something else and I protest nothing can fully represent how ridiculous you have made the Publick Offices of Religion as being an eye-witness of it in your Private Meetings And had you not besotted your people by making them believe that what others do is all Popish and Antichristian but what you do your selves is Scripture and Gods Ordinance in purity they would hiss you out of your Desks or at least leave you there alone to enjoy your extravagant humours I leave it as a conclusion to be drawn from our whole Discourse when it is ended that you have made Religion ridiculous or rather that yours is a mock-Religion consisting altogether as to the exterior of it in new-made Prayers and Sermons spoken with a certain piteous tone and some affected faces and paroxisms of Zeal such as Mr. Cheynel was in when he told the Parliament 1646. p. 4. I arrest you this day at the Suit of the great Jehovah for a Debt of ten thousand talents nay millions of millions and over and above of High Treason against the three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity and then he was in a Trance pag. 24. Oh saith he I feel I bless God I feel my self transported even beyond my self with raptures and extasies of love I could tell you of Christ-concerning-points and Soul-concerning-points of Parliament-repentance and Sacrament-repentance and Bed-repentance and Shop-repentance and many such new-coined phrases which are none of the least part of the powerfulness of preaching And I could tell you of a receipt which is as the extract of a Book called Parliament-Physick for a sick Nation Licensed by Mr. J. Cranford which makes a mock-Physick or Divinity of all Evangelick and moral Vertues 1644. p. 112. A great deal of fopperies and futilities as you charge us with might be pickt out of the Sermons as you then printed and I doubt not but the Prayers were much after the same sort had they come out in print and if my Notes deceive me not what you preach now is not much better but I will not say any thing except what I have under your hands But this needs not be prosecuted directly any further Pr. What of all this These be personal failings I don't know how we are come insensibly to talk of things that are meerly practical whereas we was to speak of Doctrinal points I 'll give you but two or three instances more of the wide difference that is betwixt us and then let all the world be judge how impertinent you have been in charging Popery upon us And first you make outward splendor and prosperity to be a mark of the true Church whereas we teach according to Divine and Humane Histories that the Church hath her wanes as well as her fulness that sometimes she is fain to flee into the wilderness and that her Glory may be eclipsed without she doth cease to be the true and only Spouse of Christ Pa. Well I hope you love us never the worse for that agreement as you see is betwixt us in practical points for those be the most important But as for what you mentioned last I must confess that after the Kings and the Churches return to their right you taught E. Calamy 1662. p. 10. 14 That the Ark of God was in great danger and very near to be lost gray hairs saith Mr. Calamy are upon the Gospel I say not that the Gospel is dying but that it hath gray hairs I dare challenge any Scholar to shew me an example of any Nation that hath enjoyed the Gospel for an hundred years together now that gray hairs is to an hundred years is no wonder Well gray hairs are here and there and yet no man lays it to heart But then 't is to be observed that your Principles and Doctrines do change according to your condition Th. Good Ph. Nye Sy. Symp. Jer. Bur. W. Bridge p. 10. according as five of your Brethren told us in their Apology to the Parliament This principle we carried along with us not to make our present judgment and practice a binding Law to our selves for the future For in the days of your Power you then followed God and Providence every prosperous success of yours was a mark that yours was Gods Cause and you his beloved ones Behold God in the Mount cries Mr. Vicars at every advantage you had over the Kings party in his Jehovah-Jireh yea and your prosperity was a mark that you were destroying Antichrist Tho. Palmer in that Sermon 1644. dedicated to the Earl of Essex Epist Dedicat hath these brave expressions God hath put you in his own place God hath grac'd you with his own Name Lord of Hosts General of Armies God hath committed to your care what is most precious to himself precious Gospel precious Ordinances a precious Parliament a precious people God hath called forth your Excellency as a choice Worthy to be his General and the Champion of Jesus Christ to fight the great and last battel with Antichrist in this your native Kingdom So Mr. Caryl in a Thanksgiving Sermon for a Victory of yours Jos Caryl 1644. Divine Providence is a leading Cloud to this day it is ill to out-run Providence and it is as bad not to follow it Many things that I have said before will clear it enough that you made your good success and prosperity an argument