Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	speak_v	true_a	word_n	4,837	5	4.2671	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39296	The account from Wickham (lately published by John Raunce and Charles Harris) examin'd and found false and warning thereof given to all such well-meaning persons among the people called Quakers, as through personal affection, want of consideration, or weakness of judgment have been betrayed, or may be in danger to be betrayed by them, or any other in the same dividing spirit with them, and led aside from the way of truth into a separation from the people of God, for whose recovery and preservation this is written / by Thomas Ellwood.	Ellwood, Thomas, 1639-1713.	1689 (1689)	Wing E611; ESTC R3890	22,353	20

thither Judge you then of their Sincerity in making this Cavil And as to their other Cavil about Youths and Girls filling up our Meetings if thereby they mean that the Meetings consist of such ' its false If they mean not so but only that some young ones are sometimes there present 't is idle The Meetings it is well known consist of the most antient grave weighty Friends of either Sex in the Country And if any young people or old either that have been little amongst us at our other Meetings and whose deportment and behaviour hath not ansuered their Profession have stept in such have been taken out and desired to withdraw But if they except against all that are young in Years meerly because they are young their exception is to be excepted against as not according to Truth And I question whether they obseve their own methods in the separate Meetings they have set up But if they do not it is then without question that they urge these things not from a conscientious tenderness and with a sincere mind but as a ground of Contention and occasion of Quarrel So also they say they desired that our Meetings might consist of qualified chosen Friends from each particular Meeting But I pray now do their separate Meetings consist of such qualified chosen persons Ye that have been amongst them deal faithfully with your selves and if ye find them false in these particulars urging those things in pretence which they do not practice in reality suffer not your selves to be deceived by them As for our Meetings they do consist of qualified Friends from each particular Meeting such as are chosen by him who best knows their Qualifications God who qualifies them for the service he engages them in and enagages their Spirits in an holy Concern to undertake the work he qualifies them for But is it not strange that these men who seem ready to startle at the very Name of Form and cry out so fearfully against Imposition should on a sudden so far forget themselves as thus to contend for Form in choosing the Members of their Meeting and impose upon all others that should not be chosen and qualified as they think fit to absent themselves from those Meetings What Confusion do these Men run into Now having told us what they desired they go on to tell us what they have disliked as that when Persons have declared that they could not go to the Womens Meeting with their Marriage for Conscience sake several have declared to this effect That the authority of Iudgment concerning such Consciences belong'd to them and that they had power to judge Spirits and Consciences and that they had not only power to desire but to require Marriages before the Womens Meeting and that they could have no Vnity with neither stand Witness to any Marriage but what went first to a distinct Womans Meeting and that such ought not to proceed in Marriage but wait till the Cloud was over telling them it was not Conscience but Stubbornness and Wilfulness and would say They knew it by an inward Sence without any outward Demonstration Thus they fill your Ears with noise and endeavour to prejudice your minds with Reports of what they say others have said whose Sayings perhaps they may have mis-reported or perverted their meanings in giving their own Sence of others words for if ye observe it they do not say several have declared these very words which they have there set down but this in Effect which depends upon their Construction of the words spoken the true Sence of which too cannot be so clearly understood without knowing the Occasions and Circumstances of the Discourse Yet even as these Men have related them they will not sind upon a due Examination any great advantage accrue unto their Cause not will you I hope find cause of Offence from any of these fore-going Expressions As for the authority of judging concerning Conscience which I take to be the main thing here they carp at before it can be rightly understood with relation to be the present Case the occasion and intention of the Words must be considered A Couple that profess Truth lay their Intention of Marriage before a Meeting of Friends The intent of their doing this is not barely and only that their Intention may be made known but that the Friends of that Meeting if no just cause of Obstruction appear may own them joyn with them Act for them and stand by them in the carrying on and consummating of their Marriage Now if this Couple shall refuse to proceed in that Method for the accomplishing their Marriage which the Meeting uses on the like Occasions and shall pretend a Conscientious scruple for such Refusal hath not that Meeting Authority to inquire into the Grounds and Reasons of such a pretence and upon that Inquiry power also to judge of the Sincerity or Insincerity of such a Pretence or Plea of Conscience so far as concerns their own Satisfaction in order to their owning or not owning acting for or not acting for joyning with or not joyning with standing by or not standing by such Persons in their present Procceedings How else shall a Meeting be capable to act with Iudgment and Safety shall a Meeting of Friends be obliged to acquiesse and submit to every bare Plea of Conscience from others contrary to the firm Perswasion of their own Consciences and not be allowed a Liberty Ability Capacity Authority to Examine Try Judge a Plea of Conscience whether it be sincere or no especially in a Case wherein themselves are to be concerned Worse then would the Condition of a Meeting be than that of a single Person We have been told indeed by some of them when we have asked of the Parties refusing a reason of their refusing to let their Proceedings be lookt into by the Womens Meeting that we ought not to ask them such Questions but that when they have declared it to be matter of Conscience to them we ought to be satisfied with that Answer without inquiring further But this has not answered our Consciences nor our Understandings We believed that in a Case wherein they desired us to be concerned we might reasonably desire to be further satisfied th●● so Their excepting against any Friends saying if any did say they had power to judge Spirits shews how short they are of the state of the Spiritual Man who the Apostle testifies Iudges all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. Consider I intreat you wherefore was the Gift of Discerning Spirits given to the Church as we read it was 1 Cor. 12. 10. If it was not to be used in the Church And wherefore were the Saints exhorted 1 Iohn 4. 1. To try the Spirits whether they were of God or no if they have not received from God ability to Try and power upon Tryal to Iudge whether those Spirits are of God or not at least so far as relates to their own satisfaction in receiving or not receiving

joyning or not joyning or not joyning with them If any Friend being sensible that a Couple was clouded and muddled in their minds as some have been in our Meeting by the Oppositions and Gain-sayings of these Men and their Party and thereby made uncapable at present of seeing what the Lord required of them should advise them not hastily to proceed in Marriage but wait till the Cloud was over what hurt was there in that to any If it were said to some that their Refusal proceeded not from Conscience but from stubbornness and willfulness What then was that impossible to be true Or impossible to be known or being true and being known was it unfit to be spoken If any knew it by an inward sence they had the better ground to speak it on And though it is not probable any Friends exprest themselves as these Men have set it down viz. by an inward sence without any outward Demonstration yet I do not believe that to be impossible And if these Men hold otherwise ye would do well to put them to speak plainly that you and all may see how far they are degenerated However this is certain that in those controverted Cases which came before the Meeting in this Country during this Disturbances that these Men made there whatever inward sence any Friends had of the Stubbornness wilfulness and insincere Pleas of Conscience made by any whom they abbetted the Lord never suffered us to want Outward Demonstration thereof also sufficient to confirm that inward sence and convict the Opposers They proceed in discovering their Dislike saying Also we have not liked to send Men from the Country to the Yearly-Meeting to sign Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity For my part I never knew any sent for that purpose nor any Papers signed at the yearly-Meeting against any Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity These are but false Insinuations by which they endeavour to fill your minds with prejudice against Friends that thereby they may bind you the faster to themselves But the Lord I hope will break their Bands of Iniquity and open your Understandings to see and discern between Truth and Falshood that ye may reject the one and cleave to the other Therefore take not their Stories upon trust but examine and try them Here ye see they suggest as if Friends of the Country were sent to the Yearly-Meeting to sign Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity This is false Those Friends that go from the Countries to the Yearly-Meeting go as in the general Love of God so on the general Service of Truth to communicate the general state and condition of Friends in the several Counties they go from and to consider and advise together in the openings of Life and heavenly Counsel from God how to be servicable one to another and to the whole body in procuring Liberty Ease Relief to those Members that are in Sufferings by Persecution or Labour under Necessities and Wants whether in this Nation or any other And to be Instrumentally helpful to open the way as the Lord opens their Hearts and Understandings thereunto that Truth may have a free and open passage to be propogated and spread in other Nations either by Books or Preaching as the Lord shall stir up the Spirits of his Servants thereunto whereby the Body edefies it self in Love. But these Meetings I know this sort of Opposers have long disliked and reproached nor are they in reality for any settled Meetings for Business either Monthly Quarterly or Yearly but such as themselves may direct and govern Now as for what they suggest of signing Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity as I know of none such ever signed there so there having been but one Paper that I remember signed at the Yearly-Meeting against any that pretended to be Ministers I suppose in this Cavil they aim at that That was a Testimony signed in the year 1677. against I. S. and I. W. who were gone from the Vnity of Friends into a Separate Spirit and had countenanced an open Separation in the North long before And having been charged by Friends in the North with many things contrary to the Testimony of Truth after many Meetings had between Friends and them thereupon a Meeting was at length by joynt consent of both Parties appointed to be held at Draw-Well in York-shire in the 2 d. Month 1676. which Meeting lasted four days and thereupon a full hearing of the Charge against them and their Defence they were found faulty in the most material things laid to their Charge as by the Narrative of the Proceedings of that Meeting signed by above twenty Friends that were present doth appear And after a deep Travel of Spirit for them that they might be brought to a sence of their Guilt they seemed at length in some degree bowed and produced a Paper in order to give Satisfaction to Friends containing a Condemnaiion of themselves and of that Spirit by which they had been mis-led But quickly after being blaimed as was said by some of their own Party and encouraged to persist in their former Opposition they denyed their own Paper of Condemnation using Falshoods and Equivocations to avoid the force of it as with relation to I. S. I my self from a personal Conferrence which I had with him at I. R's House do certainly know and their great Agent W. R. who not only was one of that Meeting at Draw-Well but was said to have assisted them in drawing up that Paper of Condemnation for them did afterwards expresly say It was but a Rattle to please Children which evidenced the Naughtiness of their hearts and the insincerity of their dealings who afterwards concerning their work of Opposition Division and Separation they were tenderly admonished thereof in an Epistle from several Friends at London in the 3 d. Month 1676. But they rejecting the tender Love of Friends towards them and hardening themselves against the good advice in that Epistle given them went on in their dividing Work I. S. Travelling the Countries and spreading the Division and Separation further Whereupon Friends felt a necessity upon their Spirits at the Yearly-Meeting 1677. above a year after to give forth a publick Testimony against them and against that dividing Spirit they were then led by That all Friends might be warned of them that no more might be deceived by them and that the Meeting might be clear in the sight of God who had laid that concern weightily upon it For your sakes it is O ye beguiled ones whom my Soul both pitties and seeks that I have given this short but plain account of this matter that ye may have a right understanding of things and not to be mis-led by mis-reports and mis-representations of matters to the hardening of you against the Work of the Lord and the hurting of your own Souls They express their Dislike also of Contentious Books sent as they say on the Countries

the very profession of Truth and sit down again under the preaching of a Parish-Priest of which Examples might be produced in several parts But not to seek Examples far from home what shattering work has been among them since their Seperation from Truth and Friends even in their own Meeting at Wickham One that was a bold Champion in their Quarrel a great Contender for them against Friends and Truth 's order and went into the Separation with them hath since turned Papist and gone openly to mass I forbear to name the Person or publish at present the miscarriage which drove him from the being unwilling to expose persons or things unless necessitated thereunto Another that had got up to be a pert Preacher among them hath of late deserted both them and his Profession and is now said to hanker after the Baptists Divers others of their party in that Town are gone off from the very Profession of Truth and are gone to the Priest or the Top-Knot or both as I have been credibly informed The Lord make these Examples warnings to you that ye may not tempt God as some have done and by him be given up to a reprobate sense They strike also at the order of Truth under the phrase of unscriptural Discipline page 1. and of unscriptural Orders page 2. as if they thought and would have you believe the way and method of acting and managing the Affairs of the Church now were as expresly set down and plainly to be read in the writings of the new Testament as the Discipline of the Church under the law was in the wirtings of the old not considering or not seeming to regard the Difference between the Dispensations of Law and Gospel wherof the one was expresly limitted to a litteral Prescript the other left to the Direction of the free and unlimitted Spirit of God which is never absent from the true church and by which the true Church ought to be and is guided They should do well to distinguish between unscriptural and Anti-Scriptural between that which is contrary to the Scripture and that which is not contrary to it though not expresly and fully set down in it And ye would do well to put them to speak their sense plainly in the case If their meaning be that the order and Discipline of the Church of Christ is expresly particularly invariably and fully in term set down in the Scriptures of the New Testament let them assert it and they or others shall soon by God's assistance be made sensible of their Error Or if they will affirm and undertake to prove that the order way or method of managing the Affairs of the Church of Christ now used amongst Friends is contrary to the Scriptures of Truth it shall not be long before they shall be convicted of Falshood and Slander therein In the mean time it will not be a miss to observe what Scriptural Orders they have brought forth either during their jangling Contention with Friends or since their Separation from us They who so tartly twit Others with unscriptural Orders should one would think be very exact in squaring their own Orders by the Letter of the Scriptures How Scriptural their Practices are in the case of Marriage in their Separate Meetings I refer to your own impartial Observations who have been present at any of them What they have laid down in their late printed Account and which they say they desired is That the Men and Women might meet together whilst we sate to wait upon God and also whilst all Marriages were proposed and that Men might take care concerning their Sex and the Women of theirs against the next Meeting and then if the Women had any mind to be together about any other Matters that they thought they could do best by themselves they might take their Liberty c. I earnestly press you to consider and wish ye would as earnestly press them to shew where this Order which they propose is exprest in the holy Scriptures Is there any plain Direction of such a method there Is there any Intimation there that the Saints so practised Have they any either Precept or Precedent in the Scriptures of Truth for this Proposal of that more then we have for our practice which they reject They say It is a Comfort to them that they can say in the presence of God They have not been the cause of Division by bringing into the Church any sort of unscriptural Discipline and yet in the same breath as it were they propose the bringing in a Discipline no whit more Scriptural then they which that oppose O Consider these things I beseech you all ye well-meaning Ones who have been and are in any measure beguiled by the fair Speeches and smooth Insinuations of these and such like men Bring their work to the Light of Christ examin it by the Light weigh it in the true Ballance try it by the true Touch-stone and take not every thing for Gold that doth a little glister They add that they desired Our Meetings might consist of qualified chosen Friends from each particular Meeting and not be filled up with Youths and Girls and Strangers from other Countries to busie themselves to head and make Parties among us and then carry Tales form place to place to increase difference Surely none whether Strangers from other Countries or others should head and make Parties in Meetings or carry Tales from place to place yet this I certainly know was their practice in our Meetings while they continued amongst us and by that means the Difference was much increased in these Parts But if they would have Strangers by which I suppose they mean Friends of other Countries wholly excluded from our Meetings I say Distance of place or remoteness of outward Habitations ought not to make any such Distinction among us None are Strangers to us to our Meetings or to the service of Truth in our Meetings who are not Strangers to that divine Life and Power but dwell in it and are subject to it by which we have been gathered to be a people to the Lord and our Spirits engaged to his service The Spirit of Christ is an universal free unlimitted Spirit and both teaches us how to behave our selves towards Friends that come from other Countries to sit in the Vnity of the same Spirit with us in our Meetings and them how to behave themselves amongst us But I fear these men are no more just in this cavil than in the former Don't they think ye when they go into other Countries help fill up the Meetings of their own Party Ask them if they have so done and busied themselves to head and make Parties and help make Division where Meetings have not been actually divided And whether Strangers from other Countries such as are confederated with them in their wicked work of Separation come not to their separate Meeting in this Country I appeal to your own observation and knowledge who sometimes resort