Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	according_a	doctrine_n	faith_n	2,992	5	4.9532	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46109	An Impartial account of the nature and tendency of the late addresses in a letter to a gentleman in the country.	Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1621-1683.	1681 (1681)	Wing I73; ESTC R7672	22,979	40

Popish Of reckoning up the pernicious endeavours of the Sectaries in consort with the Devilish Designs of the Papists And as if this were not sufficient to declare what they mean they not only take upon them to thank His Majesty For not passing Limitations or Nullifications of such wholesome Acts as were designed for Preservation of the Reformed Religion especially the 35th of Queen Elizabeth and for not suffering that Law and others made against Conventicles to be Repealed but they humbly pray His Majesty that those Laws now in force may vigorously speedily and equally be put in Execution against all Papists and Protestant Dissenters And particularly that the Statutes of the third of King James and the five and thirtieth of Queen Elizabeth may be put and continued in their due Execution It is something strange to find a company of men so zealous for the Protestant Religion when divers of them are the Disgrace and Reproach of any Religion which they take upon them to profess But can we believe that they are Protestants or at least that they understand the Protestant Interest who represent Dissenters as equally dangerous to the Government Established Religion as the Papists are It would administer a ground of too ill an Opinion of our Supreme Rulers and Publick Ministers should they allow and approve what these men have suggested For are there any among the Dissenters that have sworn Obedience to a Forreign Power that they should be thus put into the same List of dangerous persons to the Government with the Papists Or is there any Security that the Legislative Power can require of them for their Peaceableness that they are not willing and ready to give Yea Is not the Religion of the Dissenters established by Law as well as that of the Conformists tho' there be some things Ordained as the Accoutrements and Modes of the National Religion which the Non-Conformists cannot submit unto For as the only Foundation upon which the Dissenters go is that their Faith and Worship are agreeable and according to the Scripture which is the alone Rule of the mind of God to all his People in what they are to believe and perform So from the Authority which the Scripture hath allowed unto it by the Law of this Land and by the Consonancy of their Doctrine to the Establish'd Articles of Faith they humbly conceive that they have the countenance and warranty of the Law for their Religion Nor doth the Law disallow or forbid any thing which they profess it only enjoyns some further things which they cannot come up to And as the Dissenters do not oppose any one Doctrinal Article of the Church of England so they blame and judge no man for the Canonical Obedience that they promise to the Bishops or their Conformity to the Ceremonies but merely beg that themselves may be excused And should they be gratified as to all which in our present circumstances they do desire it would amount only to this That they may Preach the Gospel without being liable to Imprisonment Fines and Banishment Nor do they covet Ecclesiastical Preferments or Parochial Maintainance tho' were it not for some things which are made the Tests to those Places and Advantages and which without any Inconveniency might be laid aside there are many of them that are as worthy of them as others Neither can that which is stiled the Church of England suffer any diminution in the number of its Members by an Indulgence to Protestant Dissenters having both this will I give thee and thus saith the Migistrate on their side unless the Clergy should fall short in Abilities for their Function and in having Thus saith the Lord to plead for them But how dare these persons who have subscribed the Addresses assume the confidence to censure Parliaments for going about to repeal Laws which by woful Experience have been found not only useless but inconvenient both to the Protestant Religion and the Safety of the Kingdom For as Parliaments have Power to Enact Laws so they have the same Power to Abolish them whensoever they find that instead of answering the Ends which they were made for they have proved prejudicial to the Common Good And surely one may humbly say and that without the least Reflection upon the Grace and Favour with which the Addresses have been received that two Parliaments so fairly and unanimosly chosen and consisting of Gentlemen of the Chiefest Quality best Parts greatest Wisdom most plentiful Estates and firmest Integrity to the Interest of Religion and the Nation and all except a very few Zealous Sons of the Church and unfained Defenders of the present Hierarchy Discipline Forms and Rites of Worship were in all probability as able and likely to know what will let in or keep out Popery what will preserve us from or betray us into the hands and power of the Papists as Twenty or Thirty persons in a County or Corporation most of whom are not worth Forty Shillings Freehold a year and many of them not able to speak Ten words of sense together But it is easie to conjecture who in divers places set these Addressers at work and who put that in reference to Protestant Dissenters into so many Addresses namely either persons Popishly inclined that they might thereby continue and heighten our differences and make us the more easily a prey to Rome or some ignorant Clergy-men who besides their enmity at Phanaticks have little else to recommend them to the obtaining a common and civil respect but their Cassock and their Surplice SECT XIX And as if all this that I have with the greatest sincerity and justice represented unto you were not enough to blast the credit of the Addresses and to oppose the weakness and folly of such as have subscribed them there is something yet further and which is infinitely more pernicious that they pursue and aim at namely to possess His Majesty and the World with a belief that there is a design carried on by Protestants against the King and the Government Hence they not only thank His Majesty For recollecting the several steps and advances by which we were betrayed into our former confusions but take upon them to observe that there are some ill men who labour the subversion of our Religion Liberties and Properties under the specious pretence of Reformation being the same method that they brought to pass all the miseries of Vsurpation and Tyranny that this Kingdom lately groan'd under and that being seasoned with the old leaven of Common-wealth Principles they have endeavoured to make a misunderstanding betwixt His Majesty and his people and to throw us back into the same confusion we were delivered from by His Majesties happy Restauration and that not only the good order and quiet of the Government hath been most wickedly attempted to be disturbed and shaken but to be overthrown and utterly subverted and the very Monarchy it self to be destroyed Surely had these persons who