Selected quad for the lemma: prayer_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
prayer_n	day_n	lord_n	sabbath_n	3,593	5	9.3562	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52421	A discourse concerning the pretended religious assembling in private conventicles wherein the unlawfullness and unreasonableness of it is fully evinced by several arguments / by John Norris ...	Norris, John, 1657-1711.	1685 (1685)	Wing N1251; ESTC R17164	128,825	319

it ought to be nothing else as if the whole day were to be spent at Church and in keeping publick Assemblies so far as conveniency and edification of the people will permit Why else did Holy David desire to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever Why prayed he that he might be so happy One thing have I desired of the Lord that I will seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life Therefore if Conscience to obey God or desire to doe him service did draw them to his house at any time or to any part of his Worship the same would induce them at all times and to all parts of it The liberty then that such persons take in God's service as if all were Arbitrary argues much of hypocritical wantonness nothing of sound or sincere godliness They who are fed with Corn from Heaven meat to the full are thus faln to loath the Mannah that Rained down upon them twice every Sabbath-day Of a third sort I could inform the Reader who being weak yet I hope well-meaning Christians not knowing the depths of Satan under a specious pretence of Piety are not content with what they hear at Church but must afterwards fill their heads with notions which they hear at Conventicles wherewith they feast themselves without fear after they have been fed to the full in God's house with Angels food Without fear I say of offending God by breaking the order he hath set in his Church by countenancing abetting or joining themselves with such unlawfull and ungospel-like Assemblies without fear of offending or provoking the Rules of the Church which they are bound to obey by seeing their Laws despised and affronted without fear of exposing themselves to the temptation and hazard of falling so fearfully as they cannot but see that some of their Brethren and Neighbours have done And without fear of losing what they have heard in publick by departing immediately from the Church to a Conventicle as if all Religion did consist in nothing but hearing and all the Service of God were but according to the French scoff a mere Preach If this be the way of keeping the Sabbath where is room then for Meditation which the Scripture as much enjoins as hearing Thou shalt meditate on the Law that thou mayst observe to doe according as is written Mary therefore kept Christ's sayings because she pondered them in her heart David therefore grew to be wiser than his teachers because God's Law was his meditation Conference with Neighbours and Family-instructions will by this means also be issued out Thus shall you say every one to his neighbour and every one to his brother what hath the Lord answered and what hath he spoken The best of Hearers even Christ's own Disciples took another course than these now doe When they had heard their Master Preach they spent their time after Sermon in conferring among themselves about what they had heard and went to their Teacher to be better informed and to have all doubts resolved For want of so doing it comes to pass with too many as sometimes it did with some of them that though they had seen their Lord's mighty power in feeding five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes yet their Faith was never the stronger And this was the reason They considered not the miracle of the Loaves for their heart was hardned They had seen the miracle but they had not considered it nor meditated on it and therefore it did them no good at all In the judgment of the Presbyterian Divines themselves the way these people take is not the right For the Assembly of Divines in their Directory for Worship give this rule for the Sanctification of the Lord's day that what time is vacant between or after the Solemn meetings of the Congregation in publick be spent in Reading Meditation Repetition of Sermons especially by calling their Families to an account of what they have heard and Catechising of them holy conferences prayer for a blessing upon the publick Ordinances singing of Psalms visiting the Sick relieving the Poor and such like duties of piety charity and mercy accounting the Sabbath a delight In a word I could inform the Reader what impious devices have been used not onely to make a rent in the Church but also to keep it open that it should never close again by endeavouring that an irreconcileable prejudice might be perpetuated in the minds of people against the publick Ministry and Ministers of the Church And to the end that those poor deluded Souls which have been drawn off from their due attendance to God's publick Ordinances to wait on these men in their clanculary and irregular conventions might never return to the Church any more I have observed that the absence of one of these Masters of Conventicles in the places where they are held have ever been carefully supplied by the presence of some other Domestick Chaplain to keep up their House-meetings As if Ieroboam's impious policy should never be forgotten who not daring to trust his new divided Tribes in a joint resort to the Temple at Ierusalem set up his Calves to be Worshipped by them nearer home But I will not rake any longer in this puddle lest it stink in the nostrils of pious and sober Christians as it cannot but doe in God's already Now I appeal to all my judicious and learned Brethren of the Clergy and to all persons else of stayed principles and piety whether for a stranger thus to pluck the work of a Pastour of a Congregation out of his hands be tollerable in the Church of Christ or no Whether this practice that tends thus to divide betwixt Minister and People breaking the near bond of relation that is and ought to continue between them robbing him of his flock and taking them off from dependance on him for the enjoyment of the work of his ministry be of God or no And whether he hath ordained any such course as the means of Grace in his Church or whether this be not rather a strategem of Satan to introduce all manner of impiety and ungodliness The Presbyterian Divines themselves have given their judgment on my side already in this case In these words To make a Rupture in the body of Christ and to divide Church from Church and to set up Church against Church and to gather Churches out of true Churches And because we differ in something therefore to hold Communion in nothing this we think hath no warrant out of the word of God and will introduce all manner of confusion in Churches and Families and not onely disturb but in a little time destroy the power of Godliness purity of Religion peace of Christians and set open a wide gap to bring in Atheism Popery Heresie and all manner of wickedness So also in their Preface to the Ius divinum of Church-government

Superstition and Idolatry avert them from our Church and make them sit down in the scorners chair Doth not this say in effect that all those good laws formerly made against Papists and all penalties and mulcts by virtue thereof inflicted were most unjust in punishing them for refusing to join with us in that form of worship which we our selves cannot approve of We may say with the Athenians Auximus Philippum nos ipsi Athenienses We have strengthned the hands of our Enemies against us by our own divisions and contentions It is an odious quality and that which obscures the lustre of all the commendable vertues which Franzius notes of the Cranes that oftentimes they are so vehemently enraged one with an other and maintain such a combate among themselves that they neither observe nor fear the coming of the Fowler Yea that they rather desire his approach and to be taken by him than to be reconciled to their mates with whom they are faln out It is a thing much to be feared that these men will never be at quiet and peace in the Church untill they make that true of themselves which I have read objected to the aforesaid people of Athens by way of reproach that they would never vouchsafe to treat or hear of peace but in mourning gowns namely after the loss of their friends and fortunes in the wars He hath no mind that considers not this nor heart that condoles it not Put the case that though the Liturgy of our Church was composed with so much piety and prudence yet there might remain any thing capable of amendment as a freckle in a fair Face what if it be not in all things suitable with every man's judgment or fancy as there is nothing in the world the Directory it self not excepted so well done that doth not displease some the best cook'd dishes please not every Palate yet as St. Augustine of old answered the Donatists Si peccavit Caecilianus non ideo haereditatem suam perdidit Christus Shall God therefore loose his publick worship and service shall it be trampled upon slighted and prophanely neglected because we differ about black and white as Bishop Ridley told Bishop Hooper in a Letter to him And though in these latter days preaching hath gotten ground of the Prayers of the Church in the opinion of some whom we shall see present now and then at the former but seldom or never at the latter yet withou● any detraction to that excellent ordinance of God be it spoken this most despised part of God's worship must needs be granted to have the preheminence of the other especially in these days wherein the Church is so maturely composed and throughly setled in the faith and the Book of the holy Scriptures so complete and common amongst us in our own Language by him that considers 1. First that it is the most proper and immediate worship of God and preaching but mediate as it is the means which God hath ordained to teach men how to pray and to fit them for that duty For how can they call upon him in whom they have not believed And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher 2. Secondly it is a duty simply and entirely moral good in respect of its own nature and quality before any external constitution passed upon it and may be resolved into one of the dictates and principles of the Law of Nature imprinted universally in the hearts of all men at the creation For before the Law of the ten Commandments men began to call on the name of the Lord as being taught by the light of Nature that in God we all live move and have our being and that he is the Father of lights from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift But preaching and hearing are acknowledged by all to be instituted worship and moral onely by an external imposition and mandate of the Supreme Lawgiver 3. Thirdly it is a duty of longer duration than preaching the one being onely for this life the other for the life to come also the one proper and peculiar to men as members of the Church militant the other common to men and Angels in the Church triumphant The knowledge is small which we have on Earth concerning things done in Heaven notwithstandings thus much we know even of Saints in Heaven that they pray 4. Fourthly it is a duty of larger extent and benefit than Preaching is this onely profiteth those that be present that do hear it and attend upon it but Prayer is available even for those that are far distant yea though they be in the remotest parts of the world When Lot's preaching did no good at all to his hearers yet Abraham's prayers might have been so effectual as to have saved five wicked Cities if there had been but ten righteous persons in them What our Blessed Saviour's judgment was in this case we may easily gather by that place in the Gospel where he calls the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an house of Prayer not of Preaching Whence in the Primitive times all the Christian Temples were called and known by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oratories And publick Prayers of the Church have as much the preheminence of private as the duty it self hath of preaching in ●egard there is more force in these Prayers wherein the whole Church joyn together as one man than there can be in those that others though never so many make apart any where else I say unto you saith our Saviour that if two of you shall agree on Earth touching any thing that they shall ask it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven Much more then if a Thousand and more if the whole Church They are two excellent and remarkable sayings of St. Chrysostome to this purpose which are quoted by Bishop Iewel in his reply to Harding's answer Non aeque exoras cum solus dominum obsecras atq●e cum fratribus tuis Est enim in hoc plus aliquid videlicet concordia conspiratio copula amoris charitatis sacerdotum clamores Praesunt enim ob eam rem sacerdotes ut populi orationes quae infirmiores per se sunt validiores eas complexae simul in c●elum evehantur Thou dost not so soon obtain thy desire when thou prayest alone unto the Lord as when thou prayest with thy Brethren for herein is somewhat more the concord the consent the joyning of love and charity and the cry of the Priest For to that end the Priests are made overseers that they being the stronger sort may take with them the weaker Prayers of the People and carry them up into Heaven Again he saith Quod quis apud seipsum precatus accipere non poterit hoc cum multitudine precatus accipiet Quare Quia etiamsi non propria virtus tamen concordia multum