Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	account_n	conclude_v	great_a	63	3	2.0921	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26871	Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1689 (1689)	Wing B1195; ESTC R2643	73,886	164

hate you as it hated me because you are not of the World but I have chosen you out of the World Marvel not if the World hate you As many as will live godly in Christ Iesus shall suffer Persecution c. Who do you think all this is spoken of It is not of you that are fleshly worldly ungodly men Who Persecuteth you for righteousness sake Who hateth revileth or imprisoneth or fineth you for living godly in Christ Jesus Do you suffer as much for reviling Preachers as we have done for Preaching What suffer you for all the Oaths that be sworn daily in Streets and Taverns and the horrid prophaneness Atheism Sadduceism Infidelity that men are guilty or If you did suffer for Whoredom Drunkenness Blasphemy is that for Christ or righteousness When the Holy Ghost saith As he that was born after the Flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit even so it is now is it such as you that he meaneth When Peter saith They speak evil of you and falsly accuse your good conversation in Christ 1 Pet. 3. 16. whom meaneth he When he saith 1 Pet. 4. They think it strange that you run not with them to all excess of ryot lasciviousness lusts excess of wine revellings banquetings and abominable idolatry who do you think he meaneth And when he saith 1. Pet. 2. 9. Ye are a chosen Generation a royal Priest-hood a holy Nation a peculiar People that ye should shew forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light who is it that he meaneth You 'll say It is Christians True But is it Hypocrites Is it those that will say at last Lord we have Prophesied in thy Name and Eat and Drunk in thy presence to whom Christ will say Depart from me ye workers of Iniquity I know you not Sure false Christians are worse than Heathens 39. The way which you take against Religious persons doth shew who it is that sets you on work and what it is that is the root of your enmity As Gods Image is in the understanding will and executive power of man so is Satans and he is accordingly described by Christ to be 1. A Liar and Deceiver 2. A Malignant Hater of Goodness or Holiness and a cause of sin 3. A hurtful murderer or destroyer And these are the three ways by which Godly people are prosecuted in the world 1. Belying them is grown so common with their enemies that there is nothing scarcely so notoriously false which they will not affirm of them and it 's well if some will not preach it print it or swear it And they make one another easily believe it Till experience proved it I did not think that humane nature had been liable to such impudent monstrous lying 2. The daily business of many is by wit and diligence to draw men to hate Religious men on false pretences As plainly as Christ preacheth and urgeth Love as his great Commandment so plainly do these press and urge men to Hatred But of this before 3. And Hatred tends to Hurtfulness What plotting and labouring is there in the world to ruine and destroy each other The malignant spirit is blood-thirsty It 's strange how the unclean Devils thirst to draw or suck some blood from Witches Nothing more alienates me from the Papal Kingdom than that it lives like Leeches upon blood To read over the History of the Inquisition and of their Massacres would make Men take Toads and Adders and mad Dogs and Wolves for harmless things in comparison of some Men. If any would requite them or others with the like I hate it in Protestant or Papist The Turks conquered the Greek Empire partly by the mutinous divisions of the Christians and partly by promising them Liberty of Religion And when the Christians thought they should have that they yielded up the Empire with the less resistance And that which was so advantageous to the Infidels might well used and limited be more advantageous to the Christian Truth and Church But though good things may be used in an ill cause it is a sign of a bad cause which needeth bad means That cause which is carried on by Lying Perjury and Deceit by malignant Love-killing endeavours and by cruelty and hurtfulness and blood is thereby made suspicious to all wise men It is a wonder of impudency in Baronius Binnius and other Papists to justifie Martin a Canonized Saint for renouncing Communion to the death with the Synods and Bishops who perswaded the Emperor to draw the Sword against the Gnostick Priscillianists and themselves to defend a thousand-fold greater cruelties and murders in their own Church on the account of Religion But sin is mad self-contradiction 4. I conclude with this great truth They that hate and oppose Godly mens obedience to God do seek to silence the chief Witness of Christ and to cast out Christianity from the Earth Christianity cannot be proved to be true but by the Spirit which is its Seal and Witness This Witness of the Spirit was not only extraordinary in Languages and numerous Miracles but also ordinary in the work of Sanctification This Seal is set on all that shall be saved in all times and places The Lord knoweth who are his And let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity He redeemed us to purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Iesus Christ Tit. 2. 12 13 14. By this healing work Christ is known to be indeed our Physician the real Saviour that saveth his people from their sins As man generateth man and the Father is known by the similitude of the Child and as he is known to be a good Artist that can make others such This is Christs standing Witness in all times and places And when you would turn this into scorn and cloud it with slanders or the charge of Hypocrisie and would have such judged an odious people and have them driven out of the world what do you in effect but spit in the face of Christ and crown him with Thorns and call him a Deceiver and crucifie him afresh and seek to expel Christianity from the Earth What reasonable man could believe Christ to be Christ the Saviour of the world if he did not sanctifie men and make them much better and fitter for Heaven than other men So that in this you directly militate for the Devil the World and the Flesh against God the Father Son and Holy Ghost against the Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints and the Hope of Resurrection and life everlasting which if you did openly under the name of Infidels or Heathens or rather as the profest Souldiers of the Devil it were less disingenuous and hypocritical than to do it in

their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment Laws they may not well be counted Rebels saith he of Obedience pag. 520. But I hear many now say the contrary and Condemn such Doctrine as disloyal I find some joyn with the Papists in accusing the Reformation as caused by Rebellions in Germany Geneva France Belgium c. And I find Bishop Iewel Bilson and other Bishops defending the French defence and Dr. Peter Moulin of Canterbury in his answer to Philanax Anglicus Contradicting their accusers as false in Point of History Abundance of such Political Controversies are now lately agitated some charging their adversaries with Rebellion and some with Tyranny Some saying they are guilty of Treason against the King and others They are Traitors against the Kingdom And too ordinarily damning one another as if these matters were Articles of our Creed What a dismal difference is there now about those words in the Declaration in the Corporation Act There is no Obligation on me or any other person from the Oath called the solemn League and Covenant Some say there are none but Rebels will refuse it And that if any obligation had been granted to things lawful or necessary some would have extended it to Rebellion or Schism And therefore all Obligation is to be renounced Others say that National perjury is a forerunner of National Calamity or ruine and that where Oaths bind not there can be no Trust and no Trust no Commerce And they think as Dr. Sanderson and Casuists Papists and Protestants do that though an Oath or Vow be unlawfully Imposed and Sinfully taken and part of the matter of it be unlawful and the Imposers and Takers are bound to repent and no one is bound by it to the unlawful part yet the taker is bound to that part of the matter which is lawful or necessary And they take it to be lawful and necessary to Repent of sin to oppose Prophaneness Schisms Heresy and Popery to defend the King and therefore that it obligeth them to these I meddle not with the Roman opinion that it is the Henrician Heresy to say that Kings have a power of investing Bishops and disobeying the Popes Excommunication and of such as Cardinal Perron that dare not question or deny the power of the Pope and Councils to Excommunicate and depose Kings because then they must condemn approved General Councils which are their religion itself and saith he must grant that the Pope is Antichrist and the Church erroneous that hath so long used this I name all these Political Controversies 1. To tell you that it is not factious and passionate enmity to each other on such accounts which I mean by enmity to Religion 2. And to remember men that if in so many and great points of Politicks and Government the Learned and Christian World have so great difference what reason is there that we should Damn or Excommunicate or hate each other about a hard opinion in Religion or a Ceremony 3. And to tell the Popish Church that if it were a good argument that there must be one Pretorian Court or Church to oblige all the World by an universal determination in what sence to expound the Scripture because it is abused to errour by mens mistake and there must be an end of Controversies by the same reason there must be an universal Pretorian Court to expound all human Laws and end the controversies of Lawyers Yea and to master all mens Reason for Scripture is no more commonly controverted and abused than Law is And not half so much as Reason is which is pleaded for almost all the falshood and wickedness in the World. § 10. Moreover it is not personal feuds between Man and Man that I mean by Enmity to Godliness No though any such be against an Innocent and Godly Man where it is not for his Godliness but some other difference § 11. I will say more though some dislike it it is not a Papist as such that I mean by a Malignant Enemy of Godliness I know that Education and Temptation and want of hearing the confutation of their errours judiciously made may cause Godly persons to think that the universal Church must be united in some humane Head or Soveraign power and that there is no other way to end controversies and schisms and that as Dr. Saywell saith there must be some over Kingdoms or National Churches as well as over particular persons that many may not escape while a few are punished It is easy to be deceived by the pretences of Unity and Concord while men see the divisions and discords of others And the false pretences of Antiquity are so confidently uttered by their Clergy that men unacquainted with the history may verily believe them And the plea for an uninterrupted succession of Ministerial ordination and that a Superior must give power to the Inferiors deceiveth many If there must be a Diocesane to ordain and rule all Presbyters and a Metropolitan to ordain or rule the Diocesanes and a Patriarch to rule them from whom shall the Patriarchs receive their power or commands but from a Pope The poor reasoning which the French now use with the Protestants puzleth unskilful persons viz. Was there any Church before your reformation If yea where was it And had not you your Ministerial power from it It was Rome or none And if it was the true Church then it is so now We answer them there was and is one only Catholick Church Of this Christ only is the Head or Universal governour and no man or men Of this all Lawful Pastors are his official guides in their several Provinces as many Justices and Mayors of Corporations under one King That all these having one King Jesus and one Law of Christ and one Spirit and one Faith and Hope are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to use Synods when needful to that end but not as a Pretorian or Regent Aristocracy or Court. That the Church before Luther was all over the World where ever there were Christians in Ethiopia Egypt Syria Armenia Georgia Circassia Asia and where ever the Greek Christianity is in Moscovy and in all Europe where there were true Christians That the envious man having sowed Tares this Church is unhappily fallen into many corruptions diseases and factious sects almost all censuring one another no part of it is perfect That the Papal part is in Doctrine Worship and Government one of the most corrupted parts Yet so far as their diseases or errours nullify not their profession of Christianity they are parts though leprous And therefore though they are the most uncharitable and schismatical part as they cut off or unchurch all the Christian World save themselves yet being as Christians united to the rest in the common faith their Baptism Ordinations are not nullities as they invest men in the Christian Society and Christian Ministry though that part of them is a nullity which engageth men

Cain and Abel MALIGNITY That is Enmity to Serious Godliness That is To an Holy and Heavenly State of Heart and Life Lamented Described Detected and unananswerably proved to be the Devilish Nature and the Militia of the Devil against God and Christ and the Church and Kingdoms and the surest sign of a state of damnation By Richard Baxter or Gildas Salvianus Who earnestly beseecheth all Enemies Scorners Opposers and Persecutors of serious Obedience to God not to refuse so small a matter as the Reading this short undeniable Evidence to save their Souls while yet there is hope from so damnable a state of Sin and Diabolism Especially Magistrates and Clergy-men who are Sacrilegious and Blasphemous if in the name of Christ's Ministers they turn those Sacred Offices against him LONDON Printed for Tho Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheapside near Mercers Chapel 1689. READER THIS reprehensive Lamentation of English Malignity or hatred and scorn and persecution of serious Godliness by them who profess to believe in God and to be Christians was written in prison but without any provoking sense of my suffering in Anno 1685. or 1686. And by one that was not wholly ignorant how much of the Papists counsel and power was causal in our change since the return of K. Ch. 2. 1660. And therefore it grateth so much upon the Papists though they were professed Protestants who were the open Agents It was written by one who can remember at least since 1627. that the serious practice of Godliness was the common scorn of the vulgar rabble and he that did but read the Scripture and Books of Piety and pray in his family and catechize Children or Servants or hear a Sermon at the next Parish Church from a Godly Conformist when he had none at home yea that did but seriously talk of Christ or Scripture or the Life to come or preparation for Death and Iudgment went under the name of a Puritane which was a reproach in the mouth of drunkards swearers fornicators and all the sensual worldly sort both high and low And that Conformable Ministers yea and Gentlemen that were but seriously Religious no more scap't this scorn than Nonconformists who were then so few that they were in most places unknown He sadly remembreth how greatly this malignant rabble triumphed in the Bishops Visitation Articles and in the Preaching and Talk of many Priests who sharpened their Sermons with Invectives against Puritans as dangerous Hypocrites though they had not a Nonconformist within many miles He heard the Godly Conformable Ministers lament that the Bishops and Ecclesiastical Courts by their jealousie and heat against the Nonconformable Puritans became the strength and encouragement of this malignant vitious rabble and that the young worldly Ministers took it for the way to preferment to Preach against Puritans while they treated the multitude of Prophane prayerless families that had no savour of serious Religion as their good and peaceable Flocks He lived to see the Godly Learned Conformists so grieved for this that they long'd for a Reformation and many Conformists as Bishop Robert Abbot Bishop Downame divers others published their Reproof and Lamentation for it And good Robert Bolton in his Directions for walking with God thinks that since Malice entred into the heart of man there was never a word tossed with more Malice in the mouths of drunkards and prophane men than the word Puritan Hundreds and thousands of these wicked scorners of Religion were either admitted or driven to the Sacrament or lived quietly in great Parishes while they despised it while these poor Puritans were strictly hunted after And if they fasted and prayed with a dying or sick friend without getting a License for it from the Bishop the Church-warden must enter them into their Inquisition or be forsworn These Puritans having the greatest averseness to Popery in some things were too suspicious of all that they thought smell'd of it And when they heard that in Ireland the Papists had most barbarously murdered the Protestants two hundred thousand and that they boasted that they rose by the King's Commission and threatned to invade England and that the English Papists were against the Parliament this made them think that the Protestant Religion was not safe but in the Parliaments part and care Upon which the next year when our odious Civil War began many of them went into the Parliaments Armies But the generality would fain have lived quietly at home but the debauched rabble and their Patrons would not suffer them But they turned the name Puritan into Roundhead and Down with the Roundheads was the common Cry. I have my self by the Cry been in present danger in passing through a City where no man knew me because I wore not long Hair. If their Neighbours did but pray and sing a Psalm in their houses the rabble would like the Sodomites at the door of Lot set up a Cry against them in the streets and say Down with the Roundheads the Rebels a Gowry a Conspiracy c. Even where I lived they assembled with weapons and sought my life and knockt down mortally by the issue even strangers in the streets that medled not with them because they were accounted friends to the Puritans By this means the Parliaments Garrisons and Armies were fill'd with Religious men that were forced to flie from their houses by the malignant ignorant drunkards to save their lives And this even this was the ruine of K. Charles and his Army and of the persecuting Bishops and Clergy Necessity made thousands to be Souldiers that could not live at home And most were moved by an Argument that was not cogent still saying We cannot believe that God would suffer the generality of the most Religious to chuse the wrong side and the generality of the Papists and ignorant drunkards and malignants to be in the right O what shame and pity is it that the Antipuritan Clergy no better remembred from 1660. till now by what means they fell and that they no more understood nor yet understand what a torrent of sin of danger and of shame is come upon them by their strengthning themselves by sheltring to say no worse the sensual irreligious malignant rabble Rich and Poor that they may tread down the Puritans that by their own doings are brought into a dislike of them Will God ever bless a prophane rabble or Gentry to be the honour and strength of the Church against the Religious that desire a Reformation It is not their new foolish names and scorns as Whigs Trimmers Presbyterians c. that will prove that it is not serious Piety that they hate As long as the most filthy wicked livers are the Enemies and Accusers and in their own Party and Companions the vilest debauchery passeth for sufferable and a small disgrace and thousands of such live at ease when preaching the Gospel and praying without their Fetters or Book must cost men ruine and imprisonment

in a schism and in sin That the Ministerial power is not the gift of Man but only of Christ who by the Charter of his recorded Word giveth the power and the obligation to that person who is duely chosen and called thereto As the Kings Charter giveth the power to the Mayor of a Corporation duly qualified and chosen that the ordainers are but partly Judges of due qualification and partly Ministerial Investers and not at all the Donors of the Power that ordination is for order sake needful when it may be had to keep men from being Judgers of their own sufficiency But order being only for the thing ordered as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath is not necessary against the end That there is no necessity that a Superior must ordain but as the Colledge of Physicians Philosophers c. make Physicians Philosophers as approved so may equals in the Ministry Do not Bishops make or consecrate Bishops If this were not so who makes the Pope If he did not pretend that his power is given him immediately from Christ he must grant that there are some men above him to give it him and so he is not the Soveraign If they say that the power of Popes and Kings is given by the whole body the Church he is then no Pope for it 's known that three parts of the Christian World are against him If he will say None are the Church but those that are his party any sect or rebels may say the like and appropriate authority to themselves Nothing more cheateth the ignorant than ambiguous words and confusion And explaining those words and needful plain distinction would save the writing of many volumes and would make truth easily meet the seeker and unravel all the spider Webs of deceivers Do but well use these few distinctions and all Popery vanisheth into smoak 1. Distinguish between a Catholick Church as headed by Christ This we are all members of and a pretended Catholick Church headed by the Pope or any men This is another Church as to the denominating form having another informing unifying head And this is it which we deny 2. Distinguish visibility Christs Church is so far visible as to have a Head who was visible on Earth is visible in Heaven and will visibly come to Judgment and visibly reign for ever It hath visible Laws Protection and Officers The subjects bodies and their profession are visible And it is no farther visible no not as to the Souls or real faith of the subjects The Papists Church hath an Usurping Visible Humane Head on earth 3. Distinguish of Baptism and Ordination as into Christs Catholick Church and done by Papists as Christians And as into the Popes Catholick Church and done by Papists as Papists 4. Distinguish of Subjection and Communion We owe Communion when we owe no Subjection and where men have no right to be our Governours 5. Distinguish between Communion in Christianity and that in Essentials Integrals or Accidents and Communion in errours and corruptions or defects We have Communion with Papists and all Christians in Christianity if they be Christians indeed But we renounce Communion in the errours and sins of them and all others as far as we are able to avoid them All Christians have Union and Communion in the Essentials of Christianity No Christians have Union and Communion in all the Integrals on Earth all being imperfect But the more such Union and Communion the better No Christians have or ought to have Communion in all the Accidents All should avoid Communion in sin 6. Distinguish between Communion of Hearts Communion of Profession and Communion in Local presence We have Heart Communion in one Essential Faith Hope and Love with all true Christians on Earth We profess all one Faith in the Essentials We have nearer Communion or fuller with the Reformed Churches which are soundest in the Integrals than we have with the more faulty and corrupt But we have Local presence but in one place at once and we ought to avoid Local presence where we cannot have it without sin though we have Communion in Faith Love and Profession with the same men If a Reformed Church will not admit our Local presence without subscribing some one untruth we must be absent when we may be present with a worse Church which excludeth us not by any such Imposition 7. Accordingly distinguish of Separation We separate not at all from Union or Communion with Papists as they are Christians or as they hold any Truth But 1. We separate from Subjection and Obedience to them which we never owed them or any other Church 2. We separate from Communion with their Church as it is a Policy informed by an Usurping Humane King or Head. 3. We separate from all their sins so far as we know them 4. We deny Local presence in their Mass-worship because of the sin imposed on us both before it and in it 5. We are uncapable of Communion in all accidents or mutable indifferent things Understand and use well these few plain distinctions and you need little more to answer all the Papists And I fear not to add that were the Papists in my power as I never did I never would use any inhumanity or cruelty towards them yea I would use no Offensive but only Defensive force against them nor hurt one of them further than they made it necessary for the Defence of the Land or those whom they would hurt I knew not till a Book called The Liberties of England lately told me how many very severe Laws are against them I am no Judge of the times that they were made in nor of their occasions But I think that of late they have done more hurt than good For 1. Some of them seem too severe 2. Some I cannot prove to be justifiable viz. Those which would compel them to come to our Sacramental Communion when many a good Minister would not receive them if they came And that which excommunicateth them that never were of our Communion And that which layeth the Excommunicate as such in prison c. 3. It greatly tendeth to misinform Forreigners who seeing these Laws think they are all put in Execution and so believe those that tell them that the Catholicks here are under constant Cruelties and frequent Martyrdoms whenas I never in all my life knew of one Papist that suffered so much for his Religion as I have done my self within these few years past though my sufferings are so small as to be no meet matter of very great complaint 4. These Laws being a continual danger to them should there be Governours that would execute them doth put them on continual plotting and striving against them Sufferings or great dangers put men by fear upon self-defence and the utmost endeavours for deliverance who would be more quiet if they found themselves in safety and though their Clergy would be still plotting the recovery of the Papal power to