Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	according_a	church_n	word_n	2,678	5	4.0797	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26939	How to do good to many, or, The publick good is the Christians life directions and motives to it, intended for an auditory of London citizens, and published for them, for want of leave to preach them / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1283; ESTC R5487	40,184	56

Concord men will never know where to rest nor ever agree in any ones determination but Christs All men that can get power will be making their own Wills the Rule and Law and others will not think of them as they do and the variety of fallible mutable Church Laws and terms of Concord will be the Engine of perpetual discord as Ulpian told honest Alexander Severus the Laws would be which he thought to have made for sober Concord in fashions of Apparel Those that are united to Christ by faith and have his sanctifying Spirit and are justified by him and shall dwell with him in Heaven are certainly Christians and such as Christ hath commanded us to love as our selves And seeing that it is his Livery by which his Disciples must be known by loving one another and the false Prophets must be known by the fruits of their hurtfulness as Wolves Thornes and Thistles I must profess tho Order and Government have been so amiable to me as to tempt me to favourable thoughts of some Roman power in the Church I am utterly unreconcilable to it when I see that the very complexion of that Hierarchy is malice and bloodiness against Men most seriously and humbly pious that dare not obey them in their sinful usurpations and that their cause is maintained by belying hateing and Murdering true Christians And on the other side too many make Laws of Love and Communion to themselves and confine Christs Church with their little various and perhaps erroneous Sects And all others they Love with pity but only those of their Cabin and singular opinions they love with complacency and communion those that condemn such as Christ justifieth and say that Christians are not his are near of kin to one another tho one sort shew it by Persecution and the other but by Excommunication or Schismatical separation We are all one in Christ Jesus Gal. 4. 28. And therefore I advise all Christians to hate the causes and ways of hatred and Love all the causes and means of Love Frown on them that so extol their singular sentiments as to backbite others and speak evil of what they understand not Especially such as the Pamphleters of this Age whose design is weekly and daily to fight against Christian Love and to stir up all men to the utmost of their power to think odiously of one another and plainly to stir up a thirst after blood Never did Satan Write by the hand of man if he do it not by such as these The Lord of Love and Mercy rebuke them And take heed of them that can find enough in the best that are against their way to prove them dishonest if not intolerable and can see the Mote of a Ceremony or Nonconformity to a Ceremony in their Brothers Eye and not the Beam of Malice or Cruelty in their own Take heed of those that are either for confounding Toleration of all or for dissipating cruelty on pretence of Unity That Land or Church shall never truly prosper where these three sorts are not well distinguished 1. The Approved that are to be encouraged 2. The Tolerable that are to be patiently and lovingly endured 3. The Intolerable that are to be restrained They may as well confound Men and Beasts Wise Men and Mad Men Adult and Infants as confound these three sorts in reference to Religion I add this Note to prevent Objections that tho meekness and gentleness promote peace yet to speak sharply and hatefully of hatred un peaceableness and cruelty and all that tends to destroy Love is an act of Love and not of an uncharitable unpeaceable man VII If you love the common good of England do your best to keep up sound and serious Religion in the publick Parish Churches and be not guilty of any thing that shall bring the chief interest of Religion into private Assemblies of men only tolerated if you can avoid it Indeed in a time of Plagues Epidemical infection tolerated Churches may be the best preservatives of Religion as it was in the first 300 years and in the Arrians Reign and under Popery But where sound and serious Religion is owned by the Magistrate tolerated Churches are but as Hospitals for the sick and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful And doubtless if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest once into prohibited or tolerated Conventicles as they will call them they have more than half overcome it and will not doubt to use it next as they do in France and by one turn more to cast it out The countenance of Authority will go far with the Vulgar against all the scruples that men of Conscience stick at and they will mostly go to the allowed Churches whoever is there Let us therefore lose no possession that we can justly get nor be guilty of disgracing the honest Conformists but do all we can to keep up their Reputation for the good of Souls They see not matters of difference through the same Glass that we do They think us unwarrantably scrupulous We think the matter of their Sin to be very great But we know that before God the degree of guilt is much according to the degree of mens negligence or unwillingness to know the Truth or to obey it And prejudice education and converse maketh great difference on mens apprehensions Charity must not reconcile us to sin but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each other It hath made me admire to hear some mens words against Comprehension as they call it that they would not have Rulers revoke that which they judge to be heynous sin in their impositions unless they will revoke all that they think unlawful lest it should strengthen the Parish Churches and weaken the tolerated or suffering part I will not here open the sin of this policy as it deserves But I wish them to Read a small book called The whole Duty of Nations said to be Mr. Thomas Beverleys VIII If you love the common good take heed lest any injuries tempt you into sedition or unlawful Wars No man that never tried them can easily believe what an Enemy Wars and Tumults are to Religion and to common honesty and sobriety Men are there so serious about their Lives and Bodily safety that they have no room or time for serious Worshipping of God The Lords day is by necessity made a common day And all mens Goods are almost common to the will of Soldiers Either Power seems to authorize them or necessity to allow them to use the Goods of others as their own as if they were uncapable of doing wrong It is their honour that can kill most and how little place there is for Love it is easie to conceive I doubt not but it is lawful to fight for our King or Country in a good Cause As Nature giveth all private men a right of private self-defence and no more so the same Law of Nature which is Gods Law giveth all Nations a Right

of the name and lineage that proveth worthy There are many other good works by which some rich men may be very profitable to the Common-wealth such as setting all the poor on work and building Hospitals for the Impotent c. But these this City is happily acquainted with already and tho still there be much wanting yet there is much done V. But one more I will presume to name only to you that are Merchants For I am not one who have the ear of Princes who are more able might not somewhat more be done than yet is to further the Gospel in your Factories and in our Plantations Old Mr. Eliots with his helpers in New-England have shewed that somewhat may be done if others were as Charitable and zealous as they The Jesuites and Fryars shewed us in Congo Japan China and other Countries that much might be done with care and diligence Tho the Papal interest was a corrupt end and all the means that they used was not justifiable when I read of their hazards unwearied labours and success I am none of those that would deprive them of their deserved honour but rather wish that we that have better ends and principles might do better than they and not come so far behind them as we do if half be true that Pet. Massoeus and the Jesuites Epistles and many other writers tell us of them I know that they had the advantage of greater helps from Kings and Pope and Prelates and Colledges endued with trained men and copious maintenance But might not somewhat more be done by us than is yet done 1. Is it not possible to send some able zealous Chaplains to those Factories which are in the Countries of Infidels and Heathens Such as thirst for the Conversion of sinners and the enlargment of the Church of Christ and would labour skilfully and diligently therein Is it not possible to get some short Christian books which are fitted for that use to be translated in such languages that Infidels can read and to distribute them among them If it be not possible also to send thither Religious Conscionable Factors who would further the work the case of London is very sad II. Is it not possible at least to help the poor ignorant Armenians Greeks Moscovites and other Christians who have no Printing among them nor much Preaching or knowledge and for want of Printing have very few Bibles even for their Churches or Ministers Could nothing be done to get some Bibles Catechisms and practical books printed in their own tongues and given among them I know there is difficulty in the way But mony and willingness and diligence might do something III. Might not something be done in other Plantations as well as in New-England towards the Conversion of the Natives there Might not some skilful zealous Preachers be sent thither who would both promote serious piety among those of the English that have too little of it and might invite the Americans to learn the Gospel and teach our Planters how to behave themselves Christianly towards them to win them to Christ IV. Is it not possible to do more than hath been done to Convert the Blacks that are our own slaves or servants to the Christian faith Hath not Mr. Goodwin justly reprehended and lamented the neglect yea and resistence of this work in Barbados and the like elsewhere 1. Might not better Teachers be sent thither for that use 2. Is it not an odious crime of Christians to hinder the Conversion of these Infidels lest they lose their service by it and to prefer their gain before mens Souls Is not this to sell Souls for a little mony as Judas did his Lord And whereas the Law manumits them from servitude when they turn Christians that it may invite them to Conversion and this occasioneth wicked Christians to hinder them from knowledge were it not better move the Government therefore to change that Law so far as to allow these Covetous Masters their service for a certain time useing them as free Servants 3. And whereas they are allowed only the Lords day for their own labour and some honest Christians would willingly allow them some other time instead of it that they might spend the Lords day in Learning to know Christ and worship God but they dare not do it lest their wicked Neighbours rise against them for giving their Slaves such an Example might not the Governours be procured to force the whole Plantation to it by a Law even to allow their Infidel Servants so much time on another day and cause some to congregate them for instruction on the Lords days Why should those men be called Christians or have any Christian reputation or priviledges themselves who think both Christianity and Souls to be no more worth than to be thus basely sold for the gain of mens servilest labours And what tho the poor Infidels desire not their own Conversion Their need is the greater and not the less VI. I conclude with this moveing inference The great opposition that is made against doing good by the Devil and his whole Army through all the world and their lamentable success doth call aloud to all true Christians to overdo them O what a Kingdom of Malignants hath Satan doing mischief to mens Souls and bodies through the Earth Hating the Godly oppressing the just corrupting doctrine introducing Lies turning Christs labourers out of his Vineyard forbidding them to Preach in his name the saving word of life hiding or despising the Laws of Christ and setting up their own Wills and Devises in their stead making dividing distracting Engines on pretence of Order Government and Unity Murdering mens bodies and ruining their Estates and slandering their names on pretence of love to the Church and Souls encouraging Prophaneness Blasphemy Perjury Whoredom and Scorning Conscience and fear of sinning What diligence doth Satan use through the very Christian Nations to turn Christs Ordinances of Magistracy and Ministry against himself and to make his own Officers the most mischievous Enemies to his Truth and Kingdom and saving work to tread down his Family and Spiritual worship as if it were by his own Authority and Commission To Preach down Truth and Conscience and real Godliness as in Christs own name and fight against him with his own word and to teach the people to hate his servants as if this pleased the God of Love And alas how dismal is their success In the East the Church is hereby destroyed by barbarous Mahometans the remnants by their Prelates continued in Sects in great ignorancé and dead formality reproaching and anathematizing one another and little hope appearing of recovery In the West a dead Image of Religion and Unity and Order drest up with a multitude of gawds and set up against the Life and Soul of Religion Unity and Order and a War hereupon maintain'd for their destruction with sad success So that usually the more Zealous men are for the Papal and formal humane Image the more zealously they study the extirpation of Worshipping God in Spirit and Truth and thirst after the blood of the most serious Worshippers and cry down them as intolerable Enemies who take their Baptism for an obliging Vow and seriously endeavour to perform it and live in good earnest as Christianity bindeth them and they take it for an unsufferable Crime to prefer Gods Authority before mans and to plead his Law against any thing that men command them In a word he is unworthy to be accounted a Christian with them who will be a Christian indeed and not despise the Laws of Christ and unworthy to have the liberty and usage of a man that will not sin and damn his Soul So much more cruel are they than the Turkish Tyrants who if they send to a man for his head must be obeyed And is the Devil a better Master than Christ and shall his work be done with greater zeal and resolution Will he give his Servants a better reward Should not all this awaken us to do Good with greater diligence than they do evil and to promote Love and Piety more earnestly than they do malignity and iniquity Is not saving Church and State Souls and Bodies better worth resolution and labour than destroying them And the prognosticks are encouraging Certainly Christ and his Kingdom will prevail At last all his Enemies shall be made his footstool yea shall from him receive their doom to the everlasting punishment which rebels against omnipotency goodness and mercy do deserve If God be not God if Christ will not conquer if there be no life to come let them boast of their success But when they are rottenness and dust and their souls with Devils and their names are a reproach Christ will be Christ his promises and threatnings all made good 2 Thes 1. 6. c. He will judg it righteous to recompense tribulation to your troublers when he cometh with his mighty Angels in flaming fire to take vengeance on rebels and to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all true Believers And when that solemn Judgment shall pass on them that did Good and that did Evil described Matth. 25. with a Come ye blessed inherit the Kingdom and go ye Cursed into everlasting fire doing Good and not doing it much more doing mischief will be better distinguished than now they are when they are rendred as the reason of those different dooms FINIS