Selected quad for the lemma: state_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
state_n	act_n	great_a	parliament_n	1,157	5	6.1002	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61424	A caveat against flattery, and profanation of sacred things to secular ends upon sight of the order of the convention for the thanksgiving, and consideration of the misgovernment and misfortunes of the last race of kings of this nation.	Stephens, Edward, d. 1706.	1689 (1689)	Wing S5424; ESTC R184625	23,049	37

otherwise well qualified besides that it is a great Errour in Government in other respects as to this present purpose it gives great incouragement to such to seek to get them by indirect means and the evil Example of Men in seeking after Preferments and in their behaviour in them tends very much to the corrupting of the rest of the people and infecting them with these Vices But no Examples of this kind are so pernicious as those of the Clergy It is a great truth that when Vertue fails in them Faith will fail in the people If they who in their Baptismal Vows have renounced the World the Pomps and Vanities and Superfluities of the World and are moreover consecrated to the special Service of God and obliged by their Profession to teach as well by Example as by Doctrine Heavenly-mindedness and Contempt of the World shall so forsake that and follow this World as to turn that Sacred Profession into a Trade as a means to get Riches and Honours and live plentifully and even outdo the men of the World in unsatiable prosecution of these things what a Temptation must this be to all others to do the like in their way Nothing can be more absurd and inconsistent than Coveteousness Ambition Pride and Indulgence to the Enjoyments of the World with the Profession of a Minister of the Gospel of Christ Even Riches and Wealth in a Clergyman unless he be as rich in Good Works is in my apprehension a Scandalous and Nauscious thing And such usually prove mischievous Instruments both in Church and State if favoured or suffered to grow too great in either King Charles II. by his Prodigality which was increased by the Prodigality of his Parliament and by suffering himself to be cheated and abused being often in want of money for supply of that was forced after some time to corrupt by Pensions and Perferments the members of Parliament to betray their trust and feed his Prodigality with the Peoples Money These Examples of those who notoriously cheated him and of himself in corrupting those Publick Trustees and other such abuses were no less effectual to the Corrupting the Manners of the Nation in respect of Justice and Honesty than were his other Debaucheries in respect of Temperance and Sobriety And yet it may be a question Whether the greedy Pursuite of Preferments by our Clergy-men and their ill and irregular Use of them either hourding up Riches or misemploying them in a secular or luxurious way of living have not been as mischievous Examples to infect peoples minds with Over-valuation of the World and the Pomps and Vanities thereof as any of those other with other Vices This is more notorious than that I need either to scruple the mention or use many words to convince others of the truth of it and doth much incline me to think it very necessary that some effectual course be taken to reduce our Clergy to a more Philosophical way of living or that none but who are so disposed may be admitted to any great Preferments This may possibly offend some but no good Christian I am confident and therefore to stop the Mouths of all such I will give one instance of so notorious a defect of good Employment of the large Revenues of our Church as shall make the best and greatest of our Clergymen lay their hands upon their Mouths It is now one hundred and forty years since the Reformed Religion which had received some interruption by Queen Mary was restored and established by Queen Elizabeth about the beginning of that Age Almighty God by his Special Providence had produced two things of great Consequence in the World the Restauration of Learning facilitated by a new and admirable Invention of Printing and a Discovery of a new World of Barbarous Ignorant People by the help of another late Invention and Improvement of Navigation We have had as great advantages of access thither and to all parts of the World as any People but what use have we made of this and of all our great Learning and large Revenues What sense have we expressed of the wonderful Goodness of God to Mankind of the Labours of our Saviour and his Apostles of the Zeal of the primitive Christians and of the Obligation of all these Examples What Devotion to God What charity to the Souls of Men So far have we been from that that the very Pharizaical Zeal of the Jesuites and other Romish Emissaries could not move us to the least degred of Emulation which hath not been wanting upon other occasions But what wonder is all this when our Devotion and Zeal for the Service of God and good of Souls hath scarce extended so sar as Ireland The truth is it is no wonder if such Abundance of the World choak and stifle all Motions and Activity of this kind Our very Liturgy doth reproach us with Laziness and Coldness and is a publick Monument to condemn us The very Defects in our Reformation which could not be remedied at the first composure of that Book but are there noted that it might be done in due time remain unreformed as they were to this very time notwithstanding the various conditions we have since been in and the many other Alterations we could easily make We have not restored any thing of the true Christian and Ancient Discipline of the Church but opposed and suppressed those who have desired it and instead thereof retained only a Popish Relict and Abuse of it have by secular Laws forced such into the Church as according to the true Christian Discipline ought to have been cast out and instead of preserving the Honour of Christianity helped the Serpent to cast out a Flood of Scandals to eclipse it We have not restored the peculiar Solemnity of the Christian Worship without which our Service in the judgment of Bishop Andrews is imperfect and defective to its proper and frequent use but instead thereof set up such a kind of Form to be read with great formality at the Altar as was heretofore introduced and presently after exploded in France as a dry and barren Novelty And for our Preaching in which we glory how much hath it been abused to please Princes and to please and maintain Parties to perswade people out of their natural rights under pretence of Loyalty and into Slavery under the notion of Passive Obedience that thereby they might preach themselves into Preferments And for those great Christian Virtues of Humility contempt of the World Heavenly-mindedness Frequent and Earnest Prayers and Fasting and Zeal and Industry for the Service of God and Salvation of Souls so much recommended in the Gospel not only by Word but by the Example also of our Saviour his Apostles and the primitive Christians and which are noted by a Heathen Historian to have made the Country Clergy in his time venerable in the sight of God and Man how little thereof is there now to be met with among our Clergy So little that I

desireable and actually desired by the English as much as any people in the World. But these Intermissions and Interruptions of Parliaments as they served only for the security of Malefactors and evil Councellors from condign Punishment and were for that end procured by them so did they expose those Kings to their Knavery and to be misled by them to their own ruin The Consideration of the Causes of the Unhappiness of the last race of Kings gives us a clear Prospect into the necessary Means to make the next and the Nation under them more happy Of which the first and principal is a constant care and endeavour by all proper means to promote the Honour and Esteem and the sincere and cordial profession and practice of TRUE RELIGION AND VERTUE and a resolved suppression with a generous indignation of all Vice and Debauchery even those in maskarade sordid Covetousnes and empty Ambition This is the most direct and powerful Means both for the common good of all and for the private good of each particular as its natural effect and for obtaining the Divine Favour and Blessing which alone gives life to all as is plain from what I have said before And the proper meanes to do this are good Example Acts of Grace and Favour or of Displeasure and Indignation as occasion requires Provident choice of Ministers Officers and Servants and strict execution of good and effectual Laws Of the great power of Examples when set upon the Beacons of high Places in a State which makes them if good as real Lights and favourable Stars to stear by if bad as an Ignis fatuns to mislead poor blinded wandring Souls we of this Nation cannot be insensible who have seen and felt so great unhappy effects of ill ones But it is not sufficient for a Prince to give good Example in his own person and actions unless he take great care also that the force of his own be not enervated baffled and affronted through his connivance or remisness by the ill examples of those about him but especially of his Ministers Officers and Servants that there be not an Ignis fatuus among them but that the whole state may be like a clear Heaven free from clouds and adorned with illustrious radiant Stars that by a favourable aspect and benign Influence he encourage such but with the Storms of Indignation disperse all noxious Meteors And to this not only the great Importance but even Easiness of the work is no mean Obligation For DEBAUCHERY is a base unmanly degenerate thing a composition of Folly Inconsiderateness Impotence Rashness Madness a mere Imposture nothing less than what it most affects to be thought nothing but frothy Wit or knavish Craft instead of true Wisdom and solid Judgment Impudence and Rashness instead of true generous Courage nay many times mere Peusillanimity and Baseness or foolish fear of the Imputation of Cowardize and Censure of vain men under the greatest appearance of Courage and Magnanimity in some a greater Monster among Rational creatures than ever Nature produced among Animals Nor is it less base degenerate and unmanly in persons of a higher rank in State Office or Employment than in the meanest but on the contrary a Degeneracy so much the greater and more monstrous A debauched Lord a Scandalous Judge a Covetous Proud and Haughty Clergy-man immersed in secular business are all gross Absurdities It makes a Title of Honour to become a Lye and the person who bears it an Impostor such a person effectuually abdicates the Nobility of his Ancessors is no longer a real object of Honour or Respect but of Indignation and Contempt and deserves to be treated as such by all men Such a Judge is worse But such a Clergyman worst of all And therefore as it renders them unfit to be trusted or imployed in great and weighty business so doth it expose them to the contempt of all but more especially to the just Indignation of a Virtuous Prince Besides though Debauchery and Lycentiousness hath long raigned under Impunity and be grown to a great height of Impudence yet hath it not yet so far spread and prevailed but that a generous correction and suppression of a thing so odious in its own nature would be very gratefull to the best and greatest part of the Nation And thus much upon a civil Consideration but we ought not to rest here it is a matter of greater importance than so We ought to consider the greatness of that Majesty which is concerned in it in comparison of whom the whole Earth is but a Mole-hill but as the dust of the Ballance and all mankind are nothing We ought to consider the State of the Nation polluted and defiled with Presumptious and Impudent sin with open contempt of Religion and of the precepts of the Gospel We ought to consider the Extraordinary Judgments of God upon some of the chief Authors and Promoters at least by Example and Connivance of all this Wickedness how they have been blown away with a puff like chaff before the Wind. We ought to consider the admirable Mercy Patience Long-suffering and Clemency of God in granting us so extraordinary a Deliverance when in humane probability and consideration of our own demerit and monstrous sins of the Nation we had more reason to have expected nothing but Confusion and some severe Judgments upon us We ought also to consider the Manner and Circumstances of all this how God hath therein made bare his Arm made his effectual Interposition so manifest and apparent as is sufficient for the conviction of all who are not hardned and blinded And when we have done all this we ought farther to consider what all this calls to us for what Obligations it lays upon us what God expects from us and what we have further to expect from him according as we behave our selves The abominable abuses of Popery have run the Reformed Churches into some contrary Errors and Mistakes in several particulars and among the rest concerning external Acts of Repentance if I mistake not For publick sins by which the Holy Majesty of God is publickly dishonoured a publick Satisfaction in the sense of the Antient Christians is to be made both by particular persons and by whole Nations when the sins are National as they may be by publick Connivance and other ways When a Land is so polluted and defiled it must be purged by putting away the evil by Severity upon the criminals and by some publick Act of Repentance giving Glory to God and if it do not thus judg it self it may expect to be judged of the Lord and the more severely by how much the longer it is deferred This is notoriously the case of this Nation at this time but what in particular is to be done in it belongs to others to consider I mean as to such publick Satisfaction putting away the Evil and giving Glory to God. But certainly whatever else be done it will be to no good purpose but