Selected quad for the lemma: state_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
state_n	church_n	civil_a	society_n	1,332	5	9.1138	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54578	A discourse concerning liberty of conscience In which are contain'd proposalls, about what liberty in this kind is now politically expedient to be given, and severall reasons to shew how much the peace and welfare of the nation is concern'd therein. By R.T.	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.; Dury, John, 1596-1680.	1661 (1661)	Wing P1881A; ESTC R213028	34,446	118

and a speedy punishing so numerous a party would not be prudent because the persecution of one party would alarme all the others and make them fear that their turnes would be next This is a party that none have reason to fear as long-liv'd according to the course of nature for it doth not cherish the hopes of its followers by any sensuall pleasures in this World nor can its principles assure men of any reward in the World to come because the Quakers having degenerated from the light of the Scripture to that within them they can have no grounded assurance of any good terms in another World Those of them that are idle and go from Town to Town neglecting their callings may without any injury or provocation to the rest of the parties he compell'd to work And I am confident that these poor Enthusiastick people by hard labour and diligence in their callings might be at once curd of their melancholy and errours and be thus induced no longer to call a bad spleen a good Conscience Undoubtedly any Enthusiast that had been tired in some Mechanicall Trade by very hard labour in the day would find little gusto in reading Iacob Behmon's works at night Sixthly that those who professe the belief of a fifth Monarchy that is of Christs Reigning personally on the Earth a thousand yeares and draw no consequences from thence about their duty in promoting that fifth Kingdom by being active in dethroning any Magistrates or devesting Bishops and Ministers of their places because they are said to be of the fourth may not for that opinion be liable to any punishment For as ill uses as this opinion hath been put to in our dayes it was believed by almost all the Fathers of the Church before the first Nicene Councell And therefore I do so state this sixth proposall that only those now that believe a Millennium and draw no more consequences of Rebellion and Sedition from it then its Primitive assertors did may have the benefit of liberty As for those who by this innocent opinion would occasionally disturb civil Societies it is fit they should be dealt with as enemies of mankind and as such who would found the fifth Monarchy in a colluvies of more vile people then Romulus did the fourth and would multiply Confusions and Disorders in the World by destroying propriety and producing innumerable swarmes of Hypocrites in so much that if the Devil were to reign personally on the Earth he would not fill the World with more prodigious impieties For 't is likely that he would not take away more mens lives then they but rather be willing that severall generations of men should still succeed one another and that he would account the most provoking indignities that could be offer'd God in the World were only to be shewn by those men who would advance their temporall designes by Religion it being a greater affront to a King to be put to servile and ignominious uses in his Kingdom then to be banish'd from it Till any factious assertors of the fifth Monarchy can shew Gods warrant for their having Donations from him of our Estates as the Israelites could for their seising on those of the Egyptians we have reason to look on them as the Nations exterminated by Ioshuah out of their Countries did on him who as Procopius saith in the second book of his Vandalics caus'd Pillars to be erected with words on them in the Phanician Language which he thus renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. We fly from the face of Ioshuah the thief the Son of Nun. But without doubt these mens design is not to claim our goods by such a right as Gods people the Israelites who yet were weary of the Theocracy they liv'd under did the Egyptians first of all but as the Mammelucs did since whose Government is the true example of theirs who would rule us by a Nation within a Nation And indeed those men may be asham'd to ask Liberty of Conscience who in their principles proclaim they will never give it from whom all the favour such as are not of their opinions can hope is to be kept so well in heart as to be able to hew their wood and draw their water for them Moreover their abusing those words of the Saints inheriting the Earth or which is all one founding dominion in grace would leave us still in a state of war For every man pretending to have grace nothing can decide the controversie but the Sword where there is no infallible judge Among the Papists there is a pretended one and so the opinion of giving the ballance of Land to the party preponderating in grace where there is a steady hand to hold the scales is not among them so mischievous as here it would be Seventhly that neither the old Discipline nor the Ceremonies of the Church of England nor an acknowledgment of the lawfulness or expediency therof be obtruded on any of the fore-mention'd parties nor that any censures from Ecclesiasticall Courts by Fines or Excommunication may be extended against them for Non-conformity For though Excommunication from a Church which a man doth not own as true or having Authority over him doth terrifie him no more then predictions of Thunder from Almanacks yet it makes that tremendous punishment of the the Gospel that judgement precursory of the last cease to be formidable But truly according to the Custom of our Church and much more according to the Church of Scoland an Excommunicate person is some way obnoxious to outward punishments And as our barbarous custom is for the Lord of a mannor to seize upon all the goods of any shipwrack'd persons that were thrown up by the Sea on his ground so in Scotland often the goods of those men who fall as wrecks on the shore of the Church accrue to it And thus accidentally trouble is created to the Magistrate about tempering the rigour of the Church by his power As one not many yeares since Excommunicated in Scotland procur'd his Excommunication to be taken off by a Counsell of War and so it was revers'd errante gladio as laid on possibly errante clave Having thus presented the proposalls to be considered and therein occasionally given some Reasons for Liberty of Conscience as it concerns some of the respective parties among us it remains now that more generall Reasons be produced and such as are comprehensive of the concernments of all or most of the parties differing in lesser matters of Religion To prove how much a due liberty granted to them will conduce to the peace and safety of the Nation and what publick inconveniences will follow from the contrary The first Reason shall be taken from the necessary connexion between Civil liberty and that which is Spiritual and therefore they that would devest any of their spirituall liberties do alarm them with just causes of fear about their losing civil liberties by the same hands For first it must necessarily be presumed that such

under that notion find many to own it now in this Kingdom Yet are the Non-Conformists likely still to increase as from Edward the sixths time to this they have gradually done And some that are weary of our former Presbytery may yet be willing to return to it if they find Episcopacy Afflictive to them though thereby they onely shift their pain For nothing so much as Persecution makes men set up Altare contra altare every man choosing rather to be a Sacrificer on his own Altar then a Sacrifice upon anothers If any Ecclesiastical persons therefore shall design to gratifie the Peace and Welfare of the Nation without the allowance of a due Liberty of Conscience I shall think their onely aime hereby is to confirm the truth of their Doctrine and Discipline by a miracle I cannot but judge them too sagacious to believe that they can convince mens understandings of the truth of any Assertions by Torturing their bodies For men by the rage of passion to conduct knowledg into the World is as unlikely as the lighting of a candle with Gun-powder How ridiculous is it to think that Truth got any thing by the writings that pass'd between Luther and Henry the eight There are severall erroneous opinions that if we wish the world well rid of we shall find to die away of their own accord if we do not exasperate the maintainers of them just as nature makes us amends for the ugliness of Monsters in their being short-lived Yet even in the case of naturall unhandsomenesse I have seen the vulgar vary from their common Rule of judging it when a deform'd Malefactor hath been going to Execution Nor do the words of Cheaters that die on Gibbets want belief among the Rabble And if the common people are alwaies so ready to believe what is affirm'd by infamous persons because they are dying we may well suppose they will give credit to the words of such as liv'd demurely when they are to die because such and such thing were affirm'd by them I believe that hardly more Priests have been cut off by the Law then Papists thereby made That Faith hath been given to the Assertors of Popish opinions because they have been dying which they could just have drawn from me by raising the dead Nor is it a thing unobserv'd by any lookers into Antiquity that the Christian Religion hath still got ground in the World not by persecuting but being persecuted But that which I cannot without horror observe is that the not allowing a due Liberty of Conscience hath instead of advancing the cause of Truth propagated Atheism in this Nation This doth but too clearly appear from that Irreligion many of our Gentry have been infected with by the Reverend Divines of the Church of England not having had freedom to Worship God in publick according to their Consciences For severall persons of the Gentry not being able to hear a Liturgy a way of Prayer which every Church in the Christian World but ours then had and Sermons from such Divines as were not Puritans chose rather not to go to Church at all then be there present at the Worship they disgusted and no marvell that thus neglecting Gods publick service they at last grew unconcern'd in any Religion The like temptations to Atheism would be incident to many that are not of the Gentry if Liberty as has been propounded should not be given to the Non-conformist Divines For though severall of this sort of men would exercise their Devotion in private meetings and some would joyn with such publick Worship as was to be had yet many would hear no Sermons at all as possibly not likeing that which looks like a Conventicle and more disliking the way of praying and preaching us'd by very many Divines that adhere to the former Episcopacy Now t' were pity that this disease of Speculative Irreligion should infect the Commonalty as well as others and that by the persecution of Ministers who differed from us in lesser things we should as it were naile those Canons that might be employ'd in battering the Atheism of the Age because they are not all of the same length and shape Which Atheism I fear hath occasionally been not a little advanced by the disagreements of Ministers about the Divine Right of severall forms of Church-Government For things to be believed and done in order to salvation can have no more then a Divine Right and their opinions of Discipline have claim'd so much and by this means they have made some foolish men apt to think that the Trumpet of Religion giveth an uncertain sound and that nothing at all is of any Divine Right I account the body politick of the Nation to be as well concern'd in the upholding Religion as the Souls of men the Majesty whereof would be sufficiently kept up if the Teachers of it did either agree in all points about it or else in this one thing that the dissenters in lesser Controversies of Religion are obliged to allow a mutuall toleration And indeed when I consider what opinions men call one another Hereticks for not agreeing in it seems to me the same thing as if after the Pope had pronounced Virgilius the Bishop of Saltsburg Heretick for saying there were Antipodes he should have call'd the Pope Heretick too for saying there were none These parties that differ so in the circumstantial points of Religion are equally Antipodes to one another and alike near Heaven and in the Revolution of a few houres they see the same fun though not the same stars I mean they have the same Fundamentall though not lesse considerable Truths The Popish Religion among all the different Ritualls our fore-Fathers used was accounted the same some Worshipping God Secundum usum Sarum and others Secundum usum Bangor c. Why then may not the Protestant Religion be so esteem'd here among our little varyings Though possibly some very few Divines of all parties here for want of Prudence and Goodnesse of nature may endeavour the rigorous imposing of things not necessary that is such as we may be without and which all Protestant Churches but ours are without yet will the Laiety probably and I hope a great part of the Clergy of severall perswasions be far from concurring with them as Abettors of such an odious work as may produce further mischiefes to Church and State meerly to gratifie the blind zeal or unpurged choler of a few If Gods Ambassadors have a mind to quarrell about Precedency or Ceremonies in Religious things pretendding that it is necessary to observe them most strictly the people are now grown so wise as not to think it necessary for themselves to encounter hazards to make some of these Legats of Heaven submit to the Punctilio's of others just as severall Ambassadours from one Prince falling out in a strange Countrey about Ceremonies in Civil things which one of them being of a loftier humour would reduce the rest to practice would hardly find any