Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	acknowledge_v	fair_a	great_a	20	3	2.0729	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48122	A letter of religion to the Protestant-dissenters from the Church of England, of what denomination soever in the county of Kent wherein is reported the ground of their dissent, their worship, way of instruction, and behaviour towards laws and government : to which is added a perswasive to conformity, at least an acquiescence in the religion established / by a curate of the same county.	Curate of the same county.	1675 (1675)	Wing L1574; ESTC R11508	15,343	27

unreasonable request of mine to you who are engaged in this County to the way of dissention from us if I desire you to peruse that Author and to proceed moderately if you can in your Inconformity till you or yours have answered him Neither can I think the denying of this your Principle will argue an Opinion in those that oppose it that Christ was less faithful than Moses For if he hath made known unto us all things that he hath heard of his Father John 15. 15. as to that Errand about which his Father sent him as Moses did in respect of the promulgation of the Laws he received from God for the Instruction and Government of the Israelites and yet left some circumstances unmentionned he is not unfaithful nor his dispensation uncomplete nor fail'd any more than St. Paul to declare the whole Counsel of God though he hath said nothing of the Antipodes Motion of the Earth or World in the Moon no nor so much of God's Decrees as some others have and continue to do What Ceremonies and Circumstances are recorded in the New Testament as the issues of the Will of the Great Captain of our Salvation to be constantly and universally practised in his Church let him be anathematized that renounceth to them either in Opinion or Practice and let the Church of England stand charged of partiallity and falsehood If any children of her Family will not say Amen But if many Acts of Religion and Piety are commanded in their Substance only in Scripture and men cannot perform them without circumstance what should be the Reason not the pretence why lawful Authority which is judge of decencie and always aims at a blessed Uniformity and in pursuance thereof injoyns nothing contrary to the least Iota of the will of our Saviour should not determine them when de facto some circumstances will though variously be used and determined by every private person But should this very obnoxious Principle be allowed you yet I make a Question whether you have not exceeded in your modern cavil the fairest extension of it For under pretence of precisely standing to Scripture and therein often to words sounds and syllables you have rejected somethings that are Scriptural in sense and signification at least in the judgment of those that are as pious and learned as your selves and infinitely beyond you in number and Antiquity yet still within the acknowledged Church of Christ For what a daring rudeness was it in you to damn Episcopacie supposing such as obtains in England as Unscriptural if the Jus Divinum thereof which is equivalent to the obligation of Scripture be so fairly pleadable by men that are ever ready to go down with you into the Sand to defend it at any Weapon in the Spiritual Armory and are no near at a loss or short of you in Piety than Learning For not to remember your former rage against this Government on the account of the former Principle or none I ask whether ever any Society of men were unchurcht for being govern'd by Bishops but by you For to reckon our Episcopacie Antichristian is as much as to unchurch us And though the Long-Parliament-Sermons call'd it Prelacie yet thereby they meant nothing else but our Episcopacie both in sense and execution But the people must have the new word Prelacie as then used by you having something yet left in them of the antient reverence to Episcopacie But if the Divine right of Episcopacie be not demonstrable as I believe it is yet hath it not as fair pretence thereto as any of those Hebrew or Scotch Roots from whence your different Associations are derived For let it be shewn wherein it comes behind in evidence to your forming and predominant Theses viz. The Doctrine of Lay-Elders and purity of Ministers The Doctrine of the Church-Covenant and Independent-Pastors Or again That the Gospel hath so restrained the Subject of Baptism as to exclude Infants And that men may now expect the same degree of conduct and assistance from the Holy Ghost to guide them into all truth and even to prevent study and meditation as the Apostles had c. And as it is in Government so I go on to demand of you in the point of worship Who ever besides your selves ran away from an explicite Communion with a Church for having a form of Prayer for kneeling at the Lords-Supper for the use of the Cross after Baptism and for the Surplise when they were declared not essential to Religion nor substantial in Worship but recommended and enjoyned out of Reverence to Antiquity and zeal for Uniformity by those who had Authority over us yet never asserted any other Authority in such matters but for edification Concerning which Ceremonies there is no man among you who seems to have retained discretion or a faculty of judging but only hovers and makes slight reflections but never prove them to be directly sinful unless by the former weak and every where even among your selves contradicted Principle The Doctrines of the Church of England contained in the 39 Articles have of late obtained to some better respect among you and on a sudden grow into favour with many Dissenters which one would think were a good pledge of their farther conformity there being nothing as I know in our Government and Worship that is contradictory or abhorrent from those Articles But what the reason should be of your approbation or whether you be not real in it I know not but if you are then proceed to examine other matters and your selves by them I doubt if you were urged to subscribe to them you would again as heretofore have your exceptions and only acknowledge for truth in them those which be the great Commandments However it were but fair if you do own our Articles to let the rest of your Societies know from your own mouths that there are some good things among us that they may become more modest in their revilings who seldome rate us below the Idolatrous the Superstitious and Antichristian not only in one but in all matters that pertain to us as a Church Perhaps you lay hold on our Articles now as an Argument ad hominem and to beat us as you think with our own Weapon for there are great cries among you as if many that live in conformity to the Church of England are departed in their Opinion from the Catholick soundness of the 30 Articles by espousing Socinianism of which there is much suspition and dread express'd in some late Writers but then they charge such persons therewith that are so clearly not guilty of it as that they approve and use that Lyturgy wherein there is a particular Creed against the farce of Socinianism and are willing for ought I hear to give other assurance of their detestation of it notwithstanding those passages in some late Papers that they have with great confidence accused and condemned But if the Doctrine of Socinus and his followers hath gotten any credit

How many soever they be you procure to your selves by this trifling and how bad soever they are in themselves yet they are not so distress'd as to want a piece of Scripture to help them when by discourse they are reduced to that modesty as to be asham'd of a naked and profane Curiosity for then as you have taught them their Curiosity is Scriptural and holy and the Text is 1 Thes 5. 21. Prove all things c. As if a man was thereby obliged to peep into every corner and forsaking his own station to hunt after new matters to try his skill about and not to stay till they are offered to him as matters concerning and weighty for every matter offered to us is not worth searching into and by those too that we have some reason to think are affected with care and Conscience for the good of our Souls 2. Discontent is another thing that hath added to the number of Dissenters which I might call without taking extraordinary licence to my self spite and peevishness For some in whose thoughts it never entred to alter their Principles or so much as to question the usages of the Church of England have yet made too open shew of deserting the Church by a bold frequenting your Meetings when the only reason of so doing was some occasional heat they have lately had with their lawful Ministers For if a Minister either prest by a Conscience of his duty or by the necessity of his condition do venture to take a measuring-cast of the Tythes due to him from his Neighbours Farm and would thereby adjust some mistakes and ill customs to do himself justice if there be no Arts left for the Owner to continue the fraud he shall be sure to find this woful revenge ready for him viz. That his angry Neighbour will hear him no more And to carry on this hasty and unwarrantable resolution he for a while perhaps keeps at home afterwards hovers about some neighbour Parishes and at last settles upon a Conventicle where whatever his Motives were for so doing he is sure to be welcome And if you had leisure or did dare to ask such a one his reasons of departure from us and joyning with you which were but fair in such a change you would find the account very shameful For it is not his love and liking of you but his despite and revenge to his Minister and he commends your Exercises on no other reason but to disgrace his Sermons I know some of you have ways not only to salve the man's Conscience but even to sanctifie the very occasion of leaving us but the great Topick from whence your Methods are derived is Interest not Integrity 3. Designe hath helpt you much in this matter There being some who have such desires and Projects in their Heads distinct enough from Religion which can never be accomplished but by your Success and Prosperity You well remember I suppose when his Majesty was restor'd to the Throne of his Ancestors there were many with him returned to their own Estates that had long been under the hands and embezelments of men that knew how to make a good Market of an unnatural War These men enjoy'd what they had thus basely gotten long enough to make them in love with what they possessed and such love they have thereto still that they will not be out of the Designe for another embrace For there are many pleasant Meadows large Woods and goodly Houses which yet hang in their eyes though they do not stick in their fingers but these can never be compassed again by them without making a new Bead-roll of Delinquents repairing to Haberdashers-Hall and extirpating Episcopacie that is by bringing all things again into War and confusion Or if it be done peaceably yet cannot be done without laying Bishops aside and distributing their Lands Now how can any labouring with this designe of a re-investiture to such Lands more properly bestow himself and his ways than in a diligent attendence on your Conventicles wherein Bishops have been so often declar'd your utter Enemies and the rooting them out both your aims and prayers There is little in such Designers Consciences to byass them more to you than to Rome but dreading that Church is not their friend in this particular they continue with others but on worse Principles to cry out against her It may perhaps be Objected that all of you are not for Alienation of Church-Land but some are against it and are ready as some of your Brethren at first did to declare against it If this be true of which there is some suspicion you may please to make it known at your next meeting which will be well for us but I doubt not for your selves 4. Dependance hath given you some advantage which because it is various I will only instance in such common connexions as are every where observable to have a power to increase the bodies of any sort of men that shall think fit to separate themselves for a distinct Society The Dependances which I mean are those which have a strong relation to food and raiment such as the Shop-keeper hath on the good Customer and the Tenant on the hopeful Landlord which though they are not intrinsecally evil nor the arts of obliging one and the other to be condemned as universally dishonest yet if on such considerations men shall sort themselves to a Sect and distinguish out to themselves a meet Religion or Religious party they are wicked and unreasonable Neither will it help you to say that there are the same presumptions of such among us and though it were true as in this 't is probable what you say For whatever mens secret motives are in abiding with the Church of England they are besides under a known Law for obedience and conformity to it by which all men under the same Government are equally obliged the Seller as well as the Buyer the Tenant as well as the Landlord which is a motive more extrinsecally honest than the other can pretend unto But to see men take a fair place in your meetings not to see and hear best but to be seen and noted best to remove from thence timely to the door and there to abide the train of the Company in their departure and all this time to distribute glances smiles and cringes according to the hopefulness of the person going out and lastly to acknowledge to their private Friends that their Trades and livelihoods engage them so to do whatever profit it brings to them can be no great comfort to you unless you are wonderfully pleased with gang and multitude I will acknowledge that 't is not to be believed that you can easily discriminate those from others or if you could that you would exclude them but yet I know this to be a truth and is to be told only those of you who glory in your number and sincerity My intent is to speak to such that understand and own the