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	scripture_n	spirit_n	3,143	5	5.2045	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28148	A certaine sound, or, An alarm sounded to the persecuting episcopalians in and about the cities of London & Westminster those bloody cities in many whoredoms, and to the rest of that sect throughout the nations who prophanely, bloodily, or maliciously now have, or heretofore have had any hand in persecuting the innocent servants and prophets of the most high, for the exercise of their pure conscience to the Lord God their creator.	Billing, Edward, 1623-1686.; Burrough, Edward, 1634-1662.	1665 (1665)	Wing B2899; ESTC R32746	9,660	15

Innocent Flock it cannot be so for they shall then dread though they now make merry over the Lords Witness and Witnesses that most dreadful and irrevocable malediction Go ye cursed yea when such come to dye the Light of Christ Jesus with which every man is enlightned that comes into the World shall arise in the Conscience to the utter condemnation of all those who in their life-time have despised or disobeyed it Then shall the betrayers of the Just and hard-hearted imprisoners of the innocent to death for obeying it know what it is to be a Iudas or a Pharaoh Then shall the worldly-wise and rich with the false divining Hireling their frontier and leader who serpent-like to save self have bowed to and even twisted about every green and dry tree that in the deceit hath stood up feel the Parable of Dives and know that Lazarus the poor poor in Spirit in the faithfulness is the Seed that doth and must inherit Now if you be men and would be deemed in any measure rational to posterity for what you do have done against us positively declare what 's the evil these People called Quakers as a people have done or if you have ought against them but for their worshipping the living God of Heaven and Earth in Spirit Truth and Righteousness nay farther if they have left undone any thing that they ought to have done in the Spirit of God and according to the Scriptures of Truth make it appear for our souls delight to be and are subject to the higher or highest power and in my heart I intend most willingly and for conscience sake actively to be obedient to every Ordinance of man which is or shall be made for the Lords sake I say by plain Scripture command of Jesus our Lord or pure example from his holy Apostles detect our principle and practice if you can and without supposition or false allegation orderly set forth to the world what detriment we have brought upon the good People of these Nations since it pleased the Lord first to raise us up therein and also what the evil is that we have done you who have thus spilt and drank our blood without Mercy Have we done ought against you except reprove you for your rending and damming Superstition and Idolatry prophane and unmanly as well as antichristian Persecution with the rest of your superabounding evils and uncleanesses in which you wallow that you might repent amend your lives and be saved I say again produce your charge against us under your hands plainly and directly setting forth and declaring matter of Fact only without allegation dubious supposition or any manner of clandestine trick or intreague of State-Policy dissonant to Scripture or forreign to the matter that it may be transmitted to the ends of the earth or at least so far as your spirit hath traduced or made odious us or our Principle that all reasonable and unprejudiced people in the world may judge whether it bear in it cause enough thus to kill us in your Coals and Holes force and banish us out of our Nation where of we are as free-born as your selves And when you have thus manifestly plainly and publickly emitted your charge into the world then lay by your Swords Clubs Goals and ungodly Laws and bring forth your Priests also with whom if not for whom you thus engage Soul and Body and let them publickly thorowly and equally dispute your and their Religion and what they can vive voce face to face say or rather prove against us or our Principle in Religion who in the Spirit of Truth serve and fear the Lord by you called Quakers I am sure if they your Priests be spiritual men or but so much as spiritually minded it cannot be denyed on their parts And this would be a good way to try Spirits and for you and them to try and hear Truth and be tryed by it and true Religion is a Spiritual not a State matter and whoso is found in the Error let the smooth stone of David be slang into their hearts by the hand of a holy man to convince and the Sword of the Lord run through and through them as his most holy Spirit shall give utterance And if to that they will not submit leave it to the Lord of the Harvest for further or contrary to this no Man or Power upon Earth hath Commission from Christ Jesus to act So consider well what Church you are of and whose Servants and Ministers you are that instigate the Rulers who are too apt of themselves to imprison and hew down the Innocent with carnal swords promp and help Parliaments to make Laws against us move the inferiour Magistrates to execute them and cause dissolute Souldiers to tear us out of our holy Meetings from thence drag and drive us into your Goals and Dungeons there to be kept till Banishment or Death whereby in the Curse you rend assunder the endeared Husband from the tender and faithfull Wife whom God hath joyned together dislocating the blessed Child from the righteous Parent the faithful Servant from his honest Master and calling the Master from the Servant c. If this be Christian or Apostolical I know not what is Antichristian and Diabolical Most certain I am Precept from Christ Example from his Apostles or the least seeming vestage in any of their Writings for such doings you cannot pretend and the right generous English Spirit abhors such Salvagism as Hell Then in this matter who are you like or to whom may I compare you but your selves Except in that of your Oaths of Alleageance and Supreamacy you run parallel with the Roman Episcopalians in the late Marian Persecution with the Sacrament of their Altar the one they used as a Roman Gin against the then Martyrs the other you impose as an Antichristian Snare upon Us the now obeyers of the true Christ who saith Swear not at all c. For often-times when neither your selves your late made cruel Edicts nor the Multitude who for the most part have been for you against us can raise seeming plausible matter enough against the truly Innocent to ensnare and incasserate their persons Then I have often seen and observed your last subterfuge to be viz. O but will you take the Oath of Alleageance and sometimes it 's Will you take the Oaths of Alleagiance and Supremacy whenas for pure Conscience-sake we who profess Christianity and are Christians indeed as wel as in words cannot may not dare not swear by Heaven Earth Evangelists or any other Oath whatsoever because the promised Messiah and performed Oath of God of whom Oaths under the Law were a Type hath commanded us in express words But I say unto you Swear not at all but let your yea be yea and your nay nay c. and his Apostle Iames saith Above all things my Brethren swear not So that being absolutely commanded by the Son of God and precautioned or rather confirmed by his

clear'd at the Custom-house about a Quarter of a year since Who sees not the hand of God against these accursed undertakings Yet so blind or rather wilfully wicked you are that I have not heard that any one in considerable authority hath so much as endeavoured that the rest of these yet living Innocents might be released from their so unjust cruel Bondage and Banishment but on the contrary I have heard some in their stiffneckedness blasphemously say Cannot your God defend you from the Plague in Prison out of Prison at Sea or Land c. To such I plainly answer as a living man yet upon the Earth My God can preserve me if he please and I do believe in my heart will if it be for his glory and that he hath any further service for me to do among ye if not his eternal will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven And I am as fully assured that if it had stood with his most holy will and that in his uncomprehensible wisdom he had seen it meet to have made those Innocents further or otherwise more eminently serviceable to Him and his Truth upon the Earth He could and would have delivered them out of your hands or in your hands under this your most vile usage preserved them from your drinking their innocent bloud but then if not for this and such like doings how should the measure of your iniquities be filled up However we have not at any time preached or affirmed that our outward bodies were immortal but liable for the confirmation of our immortal Testimony even to suffer by your Spirit and Generation much outward misery unnatural cruelties death and what not as was our blessed Saviour his holy Disciples and Followers by those Jews and Monarchs of Old in whose dayes they appeared on the Earth and they were as obnoxious and odious to their then Hierarchy Monarchy as the right true Christian man called Quaker is now to yours and all your Jewish usage of us his now Disciples and Servants we as really feel as he and his did theirs Nevertheless were I sure to dye many deaths by your hands whilst I continue in Gods fear I cannot fear you because you are so very wicked and unjust But If you could the Soul destroy as well as th' Body kill You were indeed then much to be fear'd for doing ill And that it hath pleased the infinite wise God that in this common calamity which is come upon the Nation because of your unparalleld abominations and that no flesh may arise to glory in his sight some of our bodies who have not sin'd with you fall with or rather by you do not therefore rejoyce as the former Jews uncircumcised in heart and ears did over Jesus the just one and the then holy People that believed in his testimony saying That he was as one smitten or forsaken He that hath saven others let him now save himself And that his good Apostle was a perverter of their Laws a sower of Sedititon a turner of the world upside down c. I say do not hereby stiffen your necks nor strengthen your ungodly hands against the Lord and his Anointed because the outward Bodies of the Godly and Prophane dye alike for when they the former Jews thus drank innocent blood and magnified themselves against the innocent and righteous then loe their destruction was nigh and behold yours slumbers not and the dregs of the Cup without mixture of pitty you shall as surely drink at the hands of our God as you now Torment Banish and drink the Bloud of us his People and Servants And alas poor animals for what you can in the mean time do against our Rock or us in him You do but in your most impetuous wills fight with the wind and in very great confusion beat the air of your own imaginations for we know right well you are limited by him whose Seed you would limit And I sensibly declare unto you by the authority and in the power of the living God the Root of that Lilly or Vine from which we sprang up into which by the grace of his Eternal Love we are ingrafted and in which through infinite mercy we grow and prosper in the Lord cannot be prevailed against and in the end you will as surely feel and find it so as ever you were born For the Mountain of the House of our God is must and shall be established upon the Top of all unholy Mountains whatsoever And have you not heard and every since we were a People we have carried our Lives in our hands And is it not manifestly seen and known to all men now living in these Nations who are not wilfully blind that through the God of our Life that strengthens us we have not valued our Liberties outward Estates Preferments even Lives and all to the death in comparison of our Faithful Testimony for Gods immortal and most glorious Truth before you that now are were in outward Power And have we not in this your day of thrice woful and heavy Persecution again and again confirmed and sealed this our Testimony with our blood and the purely offering up of all that hath been near and dear unto us as men And is there not so much as one considerate considerable Gamaliel among you to consider these things However let not the prophane so much as think in their dark sensuality who were never known of themselves to conquer any thing but themselves with Drink Whordoms Violences Oathes and such like Bestialities to overcome us who believe and walk in the Light who have taken up the Cross of Christ Jesus for our Armour in which we sensibly feel the power of God leading to and surrounding us in his salvation Nay nay be it known unto you all that do but so much as think or wish ill to Israel this day there are among us who in the power of the Lamb are more than Conquerors over whatsoever it's possible for you to say do or think to do against us for Truth and unto such a strange thing cannot befal neither any evil tidings from you affright them because we fear not as you fear neither hope as you hope for while we live we love to serve our Creator chusing gladly to obey the motions and commands of the Law of his Spirit written in our hearts rather than so much as taste of the pleasures or rather bondage of your not to be paralleled wickednesses w ch shal last you but for a season mark that so that when he who gave us breath creating us and you to serve and obey him is pleased to call for our souls standing in his fear out of your false fear vain hope and glory we are ready with joy and gladness to answer to his command who saith Come ye blessed enter into eternal rest prepared for the Lambs of the fold c. But with the Swearer Lyer Whoremonger Superstitious Idolater and ungodly prophane Persecutor of Gods