Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
truth_n age_n church_n time_n 2,142 5 3.6322 3 false
View all documents for the selected quad

Text snippets containing the quad

ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A66890 Anti-boreale an answer to that seditious and lewd piece of poetry upon Master Calamy's late confinement, supposed his who wrote Iter boreale. Womock, Laurence, 1612-1685. 1662 (1662) Wing W3334; ESTC R31824 84,472 126

There is 1 snippet containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

growing and increasing of Popery and that proneness that is in people to run head-long back again to the Garlick and Onions of Egypt this argument sure is sufficient to make us all believe the Ark of God is in danger But the truth is the Persons that make the Argument are none of the most likely men to prevent what they complain of For who have done so much to harden that Popish party to give them encouragement and advantage as they have done not to mention their Club-law and Sequestrations with the sale of their estates no Cogent Arguments sure to resolve and settle Conscience what by charging them with such things as cannot be made good against them and by condemning what is not to be disallowed in them and by opposing very weakly with more strength of passion than reason what is justly to be reproved they have made them more inflexible and obstinate in their opinions And they have given them advantage also by their factious Confederacies against that Hierarchy of the Church whose Learning and Authority is under God the onely probable means to check and silence them It was a most remarkable observation in the Sermon of the late most Reverend Archbishop upon the Scaffold alluding to that Counsel of the Priests and Pharisees against our Saviour Joh. 11.48 Men are afraid saith he that if they let this man alone the Romans will come and that Popery will prevail and then they will take away our place and our Nation but it proved the contrary for after they had put that man to death then the Romans came indeed and vanquish'd the City Popery could never have broken in upon us to shake the Ark of God in its decent and happy settlement amongst us as long as our lawful Governours were undisturbed in their station They were our new door-keepers they that thrust out the right Possessors to make room for their own ambi●ion they turn'd the Key and opened the Door nay they pull'd down the walls of Gods House and let in Popery It was their turning the Ark of God into a Noab's Ark where so many sorts of wild and unclean beasts were herded up together without order or distinction their dangerous mistakes in Doctrine their horrible confusions in Discipline their irreligious defalcations of some parts of Gods worship and their scandalous irreverence in the performance of all the rest these disorders caused so many to abhor the offering of the Lord and they inclined others whether more out of devotion and reverence that out of levity and a desire of change I shall not determine but inclin'd they were upon this account to lend a weak ear to the insinuations of those cunning Charmers of the Church of Rome For to use the words of that Wise and Learned Archbishop A Relation of the Conference with Fisher in Epist Ceremonies are the Hedge that fence the substance of Religion from all the Indignities which Prophaness and Sacriledge too commonly put upon it And this I have observed that no one thing hath made conscientious men more wavering in their own minds or more apt and easie to be drawn aside from the sincerity of Religion professed in the Church of England then the want of Uniform and Decent Order in too many Churches of the Kingdom And the Romanists have been apt to say The Houses of God could not be suffered to lie so Nastily as in some places they have done were the true worship of God observed in them or did the people think that such it were And I may add this as a further matter of scandal and advantage to them when men do openly proclaim and that so crudely and without any distinction that there is not a Nation under heaven * Mr. Calamy's challenge pag. 13. amounts to a positive assertion except this Nation of England that ever enjoyed the Gospel a hundred years together which is so apparently false that nothing can well be more false than that is when they tell us that gray hairs are upon the Gospel which is everlasting * Heb. 12.27 28. ch 8. ult Rev. 14.6 and can never wax old who can fence off the Scandal and not be transported with indignation to hear the holy Text abused by such absur'd allusions designed on purpose to raise up amuzements and jealousies in the people And we may now see the said Archbishops just Complaint to His Majesty of ever Blessed Memory verified In his Relation of the Conference in Epist by too sad an instance That the Church of England was in a hard condition She professes the antient Catholick Faith and yet the Romanist condemns her of Novelty in her Doctrine She practises Church-government as it hath been in use in all Ages and all Places where the Church of Christ hath taken any Rooting both in and ever since the Apostles times and yet the Separatist condemns her for Antichristianism in her Discipline The plain truth is she is between these two Factions as between two Mill-ston●s and unless your Majesty look to it to whose trust she is committed she 'll be ground to Powder to an irreparable both dishonour and loss to this Kingdom And 't is very remarkable that while both these press hard upon the Church of England both of them cry out upon persecution like froward children which scratch and kick and bite and yet cry out all the while as if themselves were kill'd What successe this great Distemper Ibid. paulo post caused by the Collision of two such Factions may have I know not I cannot Prophesie We may change the Phrase into A great Distemper caused by their Coalition and clubbing of Interests to gain a Toleration what success this may have I know not but as that renowned Prelate goes on though I cannot Prophesie Ibid. paulo post yet I fear that Atheism and Irreligion gathers strength while the Truth is thus weakned by an unworthy way of contending for it And while they thus contend neither part consider that they are in a way to induce upon themselves and others that contrary extream which they seem most both to fear and oppose But let the Ark of God be setled with a decent splendor and all the parts of Gods worship and service be performed with a due and becoming Reverence and in order hereunto let the Hierarchy of the Church enjoy its full Authority and incouragement and then we shall be in no such danger of Apostasie to either of these Factions 5. But however they say we have reason to perswade our selves that England's Ark is in danger to be lost were it only for the sins and prodigious iniquities that we are guilty of our Common-wealth sins drunkenness and uncleanness bribery and oppression our Sanctuary-sins our remissness and unfruitfulness our indifferency and lukewarmness the prophanation of Sabbaths and the strange unheard of unthankfulness that is amongst us And that Commination will extend to us if we be guilty of the like