Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A48851
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A sermon preached before the House of Lords, on November 5, 1680 by ... William Lord Bishop of St. Asaph.
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Lloyd, William, 1627-1717.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing L2712; ESTC R20309
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18,469
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46
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may judge by their Writings I mean Iohn Huss and Ierom of Prague They had to do with the most sober piece of Popery the Council of Constance which invited them thither to Dispute with them for their Religion But after all their Disputing instead of having leave to return according to their Pass-port that brought them thither they were burned there in the presence of the Emperor from whom they received it And not only that Cruelty but that breach of Publick Faith were owned and justified by the Pope and his General Council I may perhaps have been too large in things so far off and so long since and therefore for the rest of my discourse I shall confine it to England and to things done since the Reformation This Church was freed from thraldom by King Henry the Eighth and was then Reformed in King Edward VI. days with no material difference from what it is now at this present Soon after his death under Queen Mary his Successor it came to have a through feeling of the Spirit of Popery Though she came in with the greatest assurance that she would make no Change in Religion Though she promised it upon her Royal word to those Protestants that brought her to her Crown though they deserved it without a promise by venturing their lives for her against a Protestant that was set up in oppositition Yet she was no sooner setled upon her Throne but the Spirit of Popery quite cancell'd all those Obligations There were none that durst appear for the Protestant Religion but were fain to fly their Countrey to save their lives or stayed and lost them with the cruellest deaths Of the last sort were the Archbishop of Canterbury and divers Bishops and other eminent persons Both they and hundreds more of the Clergy and Commonalty were burnt alive upon no other account but their Religion There was only one Flower here at Westminster that was distracted and wounded a Priest at Mass for which he was burnt among the rest Of all the other that suffered there was no other pretence against any but only upon the account of their Religion Their charge was for not going to Confession or for not going to Mass or for denying Transubstantiation when they were called to it There was nothing else in their Accusation there was nothing else in their Sentence there was nothing else for which they suffered It was meerly for their not submitting to Popery a sufficient proof of the Spirit of that Religion But soon after when the Protestant Religion came in again see what a contrary Spirit appeared on the other side When Queen Elizabeth came to Reign and immediately declared her Religion and Established it in her first Year without any violence from that day forward for ten years together what one Papist was there that suffered death for his Religion Though living in the midst of them whose dearest Friends and Relations they had murdered and though those Protestants could say There goes he that burnt my Father or he that murdered my Brother or that brought them to that cruel Death Though the Queen her self could say who they were that in her Sisters time dealt most insolently and barbarously with her for they had taken away her Attendants and put her under a Guard of Souldiers and carried her Prisoner from place to place and that they had not murdered her too she was beholding to the Spaniard for it Though not so much to his Humanity as his Policy for if she had been dead the Queen of Scotland who had married the Dauphin would have been the next Heir to the Crown But for her life she knew she owed no thanks to those Papists that were now her own Subjects I mean to those of the English Nation yet when she came to be their Queen for ten years she touched not a hair of any of their heads Only she kept them from publick exercise of Popery she required them to come to Church every Lords-day and those that did not she made them pay Twelve pence a Sunday This was all that they suffered for ten years after ours was the Established Religion Was there ever so generous a revenge so much Cruelty requited with so much Clemency After that the Pope by an Authority he gives himself made bold to declare her uncapable to Reign because forsooth she was a Heretick and exhorted all her Subjects to depose her and to murder her by a Bull that he gave out for that purpose This Bull being set up publickly at noon-day by one of her own Subjects and he being taken and hanged for it they had the impudence to call him a Martyr and he stands the first Martyr in their Roll among all them that suffered in her Reign So it was ten years before any of them suffered and then it was for declaring her no Queen and for posting up the Popes Bull to make her Subjects depose her and murder her That Bull had such an effect upon many of her Subjects that they broke out into open Rebellion against her When that failed they betook themselves to private Conspiracie to destroy her any way by Assassination Which was proved time after time as fully and as clearly as ever any thing was proved under the Sun And it was proved that the first movers to it were Popish Priests and especially Jesuites who came over from beyond-Sea for that purpose This obliged her to make Sanguinary Laws to keep them out of the Kingdom which yet were rarely inflicted upon any but those that were found to have actually carried on some design against her life And there were divers Penalties upon them of that Religion to make that uneasie to them which was so dangerous to her and to her Kingdom But in King Iames his time it was almost three years that he had reigned before the Gunpowder-Treason during all which time there was no Papist put to death upon any of those Laws There was no Penalty inflicted upon any of them that could be pretended to be upon the account of Religion But contrariwise they were remitted the arrears of all their Penalties in Queen Elizabeths time nay more than that they were admitted to Court they were employed in Embassies they had Honors conferred upon them as well as others they were debarred from nothing but only the Publick Exercise of their Religion and that was provocation enough to engage them into that hellish Treason which was to have been executed as on this day It was a Treason that shewed the Spirit of that Faction how fierce and implacable it was after so much experience of ours on the contrary It shewed how impossible it was to oblige them how impossible to keep them from doing mischief such a mischief as none other could have invented none but would have abhorred it that had not been possest with the evil spirit of that Religion What! to murder their King that had been so gentle and easie to them to murder the innocent
could not think Hereticks fit to be trusted with the Cure of Souls But otherwise as to Temporal things I do not find that they inflicted any kind of Punishment But when the Arians came to have the Power in their hands when theirs was come to be the Imperial Religion then Depriving was nothing Banishment was the least that they inflicted In many places they proceeded to Blood which was never drawn on the other side by the Orthodox Christians except once in a popular Tumult in Alexandria where George the intruding Bishop was torn in pieces and yet that was rather by Heathens than by Christians as Ammian himself a Heathen Writer confesses Except that if it need be excepted I do not remember any other instance of an Arian that was put to death in those days upon the account of Religion And to shew that likewise in case of Schism the best Christians always kept the best temper besides those instances I have already given which perhaps are not so proper to prove this because when they happened Christianity was not the established Religion When it was established by Law then there happened that famous Schism of the Donatists which gave an evident tryal of this With what folly and fury did they break out of the Church With what insolence and perverseness did they behave themselves towards it What out-rages did they commit nay what did they not commit even to blood in the Circumcellions case While the Catholicks on the other hand except in that case which forced rigor from them in their own defence treated them with all calmness and gentleness They called them Brethren in their Writings They wooed them to be Friends and offered them terms of Communion such as none would have offered but passionate lovers of peace such as none would have refused but the obstinate enemies of it and yet all this while the Catholicks had the Government on their side which since those Schismaticks could not get from them they took a course to destroy it by letting in the Vandals into the Roman Empire I have shewn so much of this Diabolical Spirit in every sort of the Enemies of the Church of God not only in Heathens and Unbelievers without but also in Hereticks and Schismaticks within And I have shewn so much of the Christian Spirit on the other hand the great patience and meekness of Gods people in dealing with all sorts of enemies that considering what advantage they have who lay about them with rage against those that stand still and are only ready to suffer one would wonder that long since true Religion had not been destroyed or driven out of the world But to this I have to answer and this is my second Doctrine that notwithstanding all this rage and malice of the Adversaries and notwithstanding all this meekness of Christians yet still God is concerned for the Christian Religion and he shews it by sending such seasonable Deliverances as preserve it often from hurt and always from utter destruction Destroyed it shall never be For so much Christ declared before he built his Church when he promised to make his Apostles the Foundation-stones in it saying to Peter in particular Upon thee will I build my Church He added this promise that the Gates of Hell should not prevail against it And so to all his Apostles at parting when he was about to be taken up into Heaven he promised for all that I will be with you even to the end of the world If Christ be with his Church according to his promise that is enough to secure it against utter destruction I speak now as to the Catholick or Universal Church for there is no such Promise given to particular Churches They may be destroyed and perish for their sins We see many are so already almost all that were planted in the Apostles times The Church of Ierusalem where our Religion began The Church of Antioch where we were first called Christians the Six Churches to which St. Paul writ his Epistles The Seven to which St. Iohn writ in his Revelations where are they scarce a remnant remains most of them are quite perished from the Earth This is Gods judgment upon them for their sins A Judgment which God threatned long since that if they did not repent he would take away their Candlestick from them A Judgment so dreadfully executed to warn us that unless we repent we shall all likewise perish But then if we do repent we shall not perish this we know for an Exception strengthens a Rule We know that they which keep up the Power of Religion shall find it a strong band between them and God by which as we oblige our selves to him not to leave him nor forsake him so he obligeth himself to us that he will not leave us nor forsake us And therefore howsoever for our lesser transgressions he may punish our offences with a rod and our sin with scourges nevertheless his loving kindness will he not utterly take from us nor suffer his truth to fail Nay in this case if he suffer his Church to be oppressed his design may be not so much to punish as to purge them He may run them through the fire to melt out their dross to make them shine more glorious by having been for a while in Persecution But whatsoever his dealing may be which we are to resign entirely to his Wisdom whether he design to punish or purge us or whether only to shew us the rod we are sure in all conditions to be under the good Providence of God If our ways please the Lord either he will make our enemies to be at peace with us or he will not let them be able to hurt us at least they shall not have their will upon us they shall not say There there so would we have it They shall not be able to swallow us up quick though they are never so wrathfully displeased at us The ways that God hath to deliver us are many more than I am able to reckon and yet I can reckon more than I can bring within my time But so the thing be done what matter is it which way God uses whether by destroying his and our enemies whether by breaking their Combinations against us or by otherwise weakning their strength whether by infatuating their Counsels or discovering their crafty designs whether by raising us up friends or uniting us among our selves and so making us too many and too strong for them whether by giving means unexpected or by blessing what we have above expectation He can do what and which way he will and we are sure it is his will to deliver his People from their enemies for he is on their side and will shew it wheresoever there is need and when he sees it the fittest time to deliver them All that I have said hitherto hath been only upon such general heads as are equally acknowledged by all sorts of Christians among us and for this agreement