Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	able_a	salvation_n	wise_a	5,460	5	6.2694	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57286	A Rowland for an Oliver: or, a sharp rebuke to a sawcy levite In answer to a sermon preach'd by Edward Oliver, M.A. before Sir Humphry Edwin late Lord Mayor of London, at St. Paul's Cathedral, on Sunday October 22. 1698. By a lover of unity.	Ridpath, George, d. 1726.	1699 (1699)	Wing R1462A; ESTC R219686	15,209	25

sufficiently censured already when I have made it appear that we have the Promise of the Spirit to help our Infirmities But I shall tell him further that if ever he come to have any Experience of the Work of God upon his own Soul to see the Sinfulness of his Nature and that he is eternally undone without a Saviour it will be no longer such a Mystery to him and I would fain know his reason why a Minister that is acquainted with the Condition of his People as all of 'em ought to be and is able to instruct them in their Duty and to reprove them for their Sins without a Set Form may not as well and as easily represent their Desires to God in the same manner pray for his Assistance against their particular Temptations and Sins beg for those Graces they want offer up Praises for such Mercies as they have received and turn his Instructions to them into Petitions for them without hazard of Blasphemy or Nonsence Let him give us his reason why all Ministers and Christians must be tied up to the Forms of others who have no more right to those Promises abovementioned than themselves and as appears by the Event have had a lesser share of them than many others have had Our Author before he had made so many ill grounded Objections and Charges against Extemporary Prayer ought first to have taken the Beam out of the Eye of his own Party before he had offer'd to pull the Mote out of those of others He cannot but know or have heard that the Book of Common Prayer is objected against as being the Mass-Book Romish Breviary and Rituals translated with some Amendments as K. Edw. 6 th own'd in his Proclamation to the Devonshire Rebels that it is chargeable with vain Repetitions that it stints God to such a daily Measure of Prayers hinders many necessary Petitions and the enlarging on those that it has according to the necessity of the Persons that join in it and many other things that I shall not now touch upon It ill became our Author to charge Dissenters with Blasphemy in their Prayers at random meerly upon report or slander when his Party oblige all their Clergy to assent and consent to all the Mis-translations of the Psalms and other places of Scripture in their Common-Prayer-Book when its evident that sometimes a whole Verse or more is left out as in the 72 d Psal. where the Words Pr●ise ye the Lord are 17 times omitted as is the Conclusion of the Lord's Prayer according to the Example of the Popish Missal and part of the First Commandment sometimes the Translation is blasphemous as in Psal. 18.26 where 't is said of God that he shall learn frowardness with the froward sometimes it is absurd and sensless as Psal. 58.8 and sometimes adds Words and Sentences which change and obscure its meaning as Psal. 2.12 and Psal. 14. Page 15 and 16. He goes on with his usual Assurance and says Our Saviour prov'd by a Form that the World has been so sensible of the Necessity of one that there is no Age or Church that has left themselves at liberty Not one word of which he can prove Our Saviour indeed hath giv'n us that usually call'd the Lord's Prayer as a Rule and which we own we may lawfully use as a Form but not to exclude others of our own composure The idle Pretence that our Saviour compos'd this out of the Jewish Form● then in Use hath been long since exploded or if it were so is a strong presumption that 't was only to be us'd as a Form during the Jewish Oeconomy But it is so evident in the Scripture that our Blessed Redeemer and his Apostles tied themselves to no certain Form of Prayers that none who have ever read the Bible can be ignorant of it Is it not strange if they judg'd a set Form necessary that they should not have compos'd one themselves or have told us who they empower'd to do it And is it not a reflection upon the Scriptures that they which are able to make the Man of God wise unto Salvation should not be thought sufficient to direct us how to pray without set Forms as well as it is to make Men able Ministers of the New Testament without set Homilies Would not Mankind look upon it as an Imposition on humane Nature if Forms should be impos'd upon them in which and no other they should be obliged to sue for Relief to their Superiors in all the Calamities that may befal them when it is impossible to compose such as will answer all Circumstances And is it not equally nay more absurd to restrain Men to Forms compos'd by others for addressing the Almighty in their various Exigencies that none can know so well as themselves and which tho' not expressed in such Terms as may please such envious Criticks as our Author yet He that searcheth the Hearts knows the Mind of the Spirit as we have heard before As to his Assertion that no Age hath been without a Form 't is Gratis dictum he has it only by Tradition and that he says himself is but little to be credited I think the known Passages of Justin Martyr and Tertullian in their Apologys are more than enough to answer such a pert Youngster The Passages are to the following Import Tertullian speaking of the Worship of the Christians Illuc that is towards Heaven suspicientes Christiani manibus expansis quia Innocuis capite Nudo quia non erubescimus denique●ine Monitore quia de pectore Oramus And Justin Martyr on the same Subject says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If this pert Sophister knows any thing he knows that those pretended Liturgies of Peter James Matthew Andrew c. are spurious and therefore shall say no more on the Subject but this that Eusebius in his Epistles of the Churches of Smyrna Vienna and Lyons is silent as to any Liturgy The like silence there is in the Epistles of Clemens Ignatius and the Writings of Justin Martyr Tertullian and Origen Nay Baronius ad An. 58. Numb 102. treating expresly of the Publick Prayers of the Church keeps the same silence as to the use of Forms Mr. Oliver's other silly Reflections of want of due Reverence in Places of Worship are so like himself that they deserve no other Answer but Contempt If others keep on their Hats there let him make amends for it if he pleases by pulling off his Shoes and while others sit may he be condemned always to stand and while others take no notice of the Altar may he bow to it till his Breeches burst behind For my own part I know no reason for being cover'd or uncover'd at any Sermon but as Convenience directs for though the Text be divine the Commentary is humane and I thin● his own Sermon is a convincing Instance that every thing delivered to us from the Pulpit is not the Message of God We must bring them to the Touchstone as the Bereans did to try whether they be so or not and I am certain his will never abide that Test. I shall conclude this extemporary Answer to a premeditated Sermon against extemporary Prayer with this one Reflection that the late Lord Mayor may well be abused in the street by Ballad-singers Hawkers and raskally Fellows when he was first abus'd to his face in the Pulpit by a pedantick Parson A Noble Example and as bravely followed but if the City of London suffer their Chief Magistrate and the ●reatest of the Kind in the whole Nation to be thus abus'd for going to Meetings which was neither contrary to the Laws of God nor Man they don't acquit themselves according to their Character It is utterly intolerable that a Gentleman who his very Enemies must own has acted the part of a good Magistrate should be so scandalously abus'd If this be Mr. Oliver's deference to Dignities it 's pity he should ever preach in any other Place but Bedlam where his name-sake Oliver's Porter us'd to rave And thus I leave the Huntsmen who sounded the seven strokes to the Field to sound the stroke of nine to draw home the Company for I believe their ..... will scarcely recover his Game so that he may ev'n sit down contented with the Honour of being the Ring-leader of those who sing such goodly Ballads as they were gathering Grigs about the streets one day and cry Lampoons against Magistrates another FINIS