Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	church_n	word_n	write_a	3,648	5	10.7659	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56579	A modest and peaceable letter concerning comprehension, &c.	B. P.	1668 (1668)	Wing P7; ESTC R7834	7,213	16

beg this mercy they be the Letany and Collects of the Church composed by those learned and devout men whom you and I have trusted to tell us which is and which is not the written Word of God and trusted to translate those Scriptures into English And in these Collects you may note that I pray for pardon of sin and for grace to believe and serve God absolutely but for health and peace and plenty for all these I pray conditionally even so far as they may tend to his Glory and the good of my Soul and not further and this confessing my sins and begging mercy and pardon for them I do by adoring my God and the humble posture of kneeling on my knees before Him and in this manner and by reverend sitting to hear some chosen parts of Gods Word read in the publick Assembly I spend one hour of the Lords day every forenoon and half so much time every evening And since this uniform and devout custom of joining together in Publick Confession and Praise and Prayer and adoration of God and in one manner hath been neglected the power of Christianity and humble Piety is so much decayed that it ought not to be thought on but with sorrow and lamentation And lastly for I am tedious beyond my intention whereas you and your party would have the Bishops and Cathedral-Church-Lands sold to supply the present necessities of the Nation I say first God prevent the Nation from such necessities as shall make them guilty of so many Curses as have been by the Doners of those Lands intail'd with those Lands upon those men that alienate them to any other use than of those that shall serve at God's Altar to which end the Priests Portion was kept with Care and Conscience till the dayes of King Henry the Eighth who is noted to make the first breach of those Oaths that were always taken and kept by his Predecessors and taken by himself too to preserve the Church-Lands and it is noted that he was the first Violator of those many Laws made also to preserve them out of which Lands he took at the dissolution of the Abbies a part for himself exchang'd a part with others that thirsted to thrive by the dissolution and gave the rest to be shar'd amongst the Complying Nobility and other Families that then were in greatest power and favour with him concerning which I refer you to a little Treatise written by the Learned Sir Henry Spelman called Do non temerandis Ecclesiis and especially to the Preface before it in which you may find many sad Observations of the said King and find there also that more of the Nobility and those other Families and their Children that shared in the Church-Lands came to die by the Sword of Justice and other eminent misfortunes in twenty years than had suffered in four hundred years before the dissolution for a proof of which he refers you to the Parliament Roles of the twenty-seventh of that King And to me it seems fit that the Observations of the ruin and misfortune of the other Families that were sharers of the Church-Lands made by that pious and learned Knight since the said twenty years are not also made publick but possibly they may pare too neer the quick and are therefore yet forborn I will say nothing of Queen Elizabeth but for King James I will say he did neither follow King Henry's nor her President and his Childrens Children sit this day upon his Throne And for his Son Charles the First who is justly called the Martyr for the Church He had also well considered the Oaths taken by all his Ancestors and by Himself too at his Coronation and therefore in his Book of Penitential Meditations and Vows made in his Solitude and Imprisonment at Holmby you may in that Chapter of the Covenant there find that at that time when he apprehended Himself near to death yet that this was then his Resolution The principal end of some men in this Covenant is the abasing of Episcopacy into Presbytery and of robbing the Church of its Lands and Revenues But I thank God as no man lay more open to the sacrilegious temptation of usurping them which issuing chiefly from the Crown are held of it and can legally revert only to the Crown with my consent so I have always had such a perfect abhorrence of it in my soul that I never found the least inclination to such sacrilegious reformings yet no man hath a greater desire to have Bishops and all Church-men so reform'd that they may best deserve and use not only what the pious munificence of my Predecessors have given to God and the Church but all other additions of Christian bounty But no necessity shall ever I hope drive me or mine to invade or sell the Priests Lands which Pharaoh ' s Divinity and Joseph ' s true piety abhorred to do I had rather live as my Predecessor Henry the Third sometimes did on the Churches Alms than violently to take the Bread out of the Bishops and Ministers mouths There are ways enough to repare the breaches of the state without the ruines of the Church as I would be a restorer of the one so I would not be an Oppressor of the other under the pretence of publick debts the occasions of contracting them were bad enough but such a discharging of them would be much worse I pray God neither I nor mine may be accessary of either Sir I have been longer than I intended for which I crave your pardon and I beg of God that you may at last see and well consider the many errors that your indiscreet zeal hath led you into and the many miseries it hath helpt to bring upon others and that for the remainder of your dayes you may redeem the time past and study to be quiet and to do your own business to this I shall encourage you and to live as unoffensively to others and as strictly to your self as you do intend and by God's grace added to your endeavours he shall make you able and daily to practise an humble peaceable piety so humble and peaceable a piety as may stop the mouths of all gain-sayers for such holy and quiet living will bring peace at the last And in this the Almighty give me grace to be like you Study to be quiet and to do your own business 1 Thes 4. 11. Your Affectionate Friend B. P. February the 18. 1667. FINIS

That God would take them out of the World This you may find in the Reports of that Learned Judg as it was left amongst many other of his Reports all exactly written with his own hand and as they are now publisht by Sir Harebottle Grimstone who now is the worthy Master of the Rolls And you may note that the said Reports were publisht in the year 1658 at which time Oliver the Tyrant was in his full power and you may there find that all his Judges allowed these Reports to be made publick and subscribed their Names to them and with Oliver's consent doubtless for he had found that those very Non-conformists whose Sedition helpt him into his power became after a short time as restless and discontent as they were with their lawful King and indeed as willing to pull him down as they had been diligent to set him up Dear Cousin these Places to which I have refer'd you for a Testimony of what I said are not to be doubted and though you would not then give any credit to what I assur'd you I knew to be a truth yet I hope you now will And now seriously Sir let me appeal to your own Conscience and ask how easily would you have given credit to any stranger that had brought you news of any error committed by any Bishop or their Chaplins or by any of the Conformable Clergy though there were not any reasonable Probability for it Dear Cousin consider what I say and consider there is a great stock of innocent blood to be answered for not only the blood of our late Vertuous King and the blood of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and the Lord Strafford but the blood of many good and innocent Families that now eat the bread of sorrow by being impoverisht and undone and which is worse there is a corruption of the manners of the greatest part of the Nation to be answered for and all this occasioned by our late Civil War and that War occasioned by the discontented restless Non-conformists and them only for till then we knew not the name of Independent or of Seiker or Quaker Cousin these are the sad effects of thes● busie bodies many of whom God hath still so blinded that they cannot yet see the errors they have run themselves and the Nation into nay that would imbroile it again into greater ruin rather than not be complyed with in their peevish desires and designes Dear Cousin I will not say all but indeed too many of the men with whom you comply and do so much magnifie are too like Simeon and Levi that were Brethren in this iniquity And as you love the peace of the Church in which you were Baptized and the peace of the Land in which you were born and live and enjoy what you have nay as you love the peace of your own Soul draw back and let it not enter any more into their Councels or Confederacy but at last take notice that though neither you nor any of your Associates scruple at the sin of Sedition but rush into it without Consideration or fear even as a Horse rushes into the battel yet I pray take notice that St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians reckons it with the deeds of the flesh even with murder and Witchcraft which you so much abhor and many think Sedition a more hainous sin than they by reason of the more evil and more destructive effects of it for murder may become so by taking away the life of but one single person and witchcraft hath its limits and bounds set to it perhaps not to take away the life of any man but only to do mischief to a single person or a Family and must end there But who knows the limits of Sedition or when the fire is kindled which is intended by seditious men who can who is able to quench it And for some proof of the miserable effects of it though I might give you too many sad instances of them in former times yet I will only refer you to the late Long Parliament now fresh in memory and the woful effects of that Civil War begot and maintained by seditious discontented men And for the sorrow you express for those men of tender Consciences that are scandalized at wearing a Surplice kneeling at receiving the Sacrament the Cross in Baptism and the like and would have them therefore taken away that so many so learned and so godly Men might by taking them away be brought to a Conformity and made capable of preaching the Gospel which otherwise they cannot do being scandalized at these Ceremonies I now ask you what if more men and more learned men and more godly men and as tender conscioned men shall be scandalized by their being taken away What care will you or those of your party take for their tender Consciences Nay I ask again what if we shall forget or neglect the tender Consciences of our own party and comply with yours What security can you or they give us that this shall satisfie them so as to ask no more when this is granted Or that a year hence their Disciples or their Successors shall rest satisfied with what is now granted Really I cannot think any security can be given but that this being granted yet any man of a melancholly or a malicious or a peevish or a fantastical or a wanton Conscience or a Conscience that inclines to get reputation and Court applause may call his own a tender Conscience and become seditious and restless if his tender Conscience be not compli'd with I shall next satisfie your desire or rather your challenge why I go so constantly to the Church Service and my answer shall be in all love and in sincerity I go to adore and worship my God who hath made me of nothing and preserv'd me from being worse than nothing And this I do inwardly in my Soul and testifie it outwardly by my behaviour as namely by forbearing to cover my head in that place dedicated to God and only to his Service and also by standing up at the profession of the Creed which contains the several Articles that I and all true Christians profess and believe and also by standing up at giving Glory to the Father the Son and to the Holy Ghost and confessing them to be Three Persons and but one God And secondly I go to Church to praise my God for his many deliverances of me from the many dangers of my Body and more especially of my Soul in sending me Redemption by the death of his Son my Saviour and for the constant assistance of his Holy Spirit a part of which Praise I perform frequently in the Psalmes which are daily read in the Publick Congregation And thirdly I go to Church publickly to confess and bewail my sins and to beg pardon for them for his merits who died to reconcile me and all Mankind unto God who is both his and my Father and for the Words in which I