Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	apostle_n	church_n	pillar_n	3,742	5	10.1590	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62900	The principles of the Papists by which their leaders put them upon bloody and treacherous practices, plainly demonstrated by the Scriptures to be most erroneous and wicked. And a few better principles briefly laid down, for them (or others) to meditate on, tending to a peaceable life among men, &c. And also a few quæries left them last of all, to satisfie their consciences in. Partly for the sakes of those among them whose consciences have some tenderness in them, and are not quite feared: partly also for those who through ignorance are too much inclining to them. Also there may be some service of these things to others. By a lover of truth, mercifulness, plain-heartedness, humility and fidelity, W. T.	Tomlinson, William.	1679 (1679)	Wing T1850; ESTC R221759	49,364	105

darkness done in his cruel Inquisitions will all press upon him And yet this Man whose Sins and Cruelties and unmerciful Massacres reach to Heaven he must be the Man to forgive men their sins Oh the blindness and besotted condition of men whom the Lord hath given up to strong delusion I beseech you let us understand who they are that are given up to strong delusion to believe a lye if they be not that train that follows the Pope and depends upon him for the pardon of their sins For the strong delusions are to come upon them that follow the Man of Sin the Son of Perdition who exalts himself above all that 's called God and who sits in the Temple of God as the Pope doth And so you may find these deluded ones spoken of as the train of that exalted Man of Sin in the same Chapter with him 2 Thess 2. But the Pope pretends to have power to pardon sins because Christ gave that power to his Apostles for he boasts of his Succession to them especially to Peter But I aver that he that is departed and fallen away from the Apostles Spirit and Doctrine is no true Sucessor to them nor hath that power which they had The Apostles were innocent holy humble men of heart not seeking the glory of this World as the Pope doth not exercising dominion over mens Faith and Conscience as the Pope doth nor lording it over God's Heritage as the Pope doth but were ensamples of piety and holiness to the Flock of Christ But the Pope walks contrary to their Example and to their Doctrine being a devouring Wolf where he cannot exercise dominion over mens spirits He indeed arrogates to himself the title of Holiness but is far from the life of it being a ring-leader into wickedness murthers massacres perjury dissimulation and wicked fraud encouraging his Children to take Tests or Oaths so that they may lurk among us like Foxes under Sheeps cloathing until they can seize upon their prey Is not here plainly a departing and falling away from the upright and innocent spirit and wholesom doctrine of the Apostles When will your eyes be opened you that are his Subjects and Slaves When will you be sensible and understand what manner of Holiness you have set before you to follow I pray you consider what is it above and beyond these wickednesses that he shall live in who is such a Man of Sin and Son of Perdition See if you can find out grosser abominations among all that profess Christianity for which those titles may be put upon any man more justly So then seeing he is thus departed and fallen away from the Apostles spirit and doctrine who will trust to him for the remitting of their sins who have any good understanding or sound reason left in them and are not given up to strong delusion to believe a lye 4. I proceed to a fourth Principle of the Romish Church viz. That the Church of Rome whereof the Pope is Head is the true Church of Christ and all that depart from them are Hereticks That there was once a true Church and a precious Church of Christ at Rome I grant while they followed the Doctrine and innocent Life of Christ and his holy Apostles But since they are fallen therefrom into the murthering and lying treacherous spirit they are become degenerate and thereby cut themselves off as a Branch withered is cut off from the Vine But here by the way before I proceed any further I desire to be rightly understood that the bent of my Discourse is not against those that are simple-hearted and harmless among them and honest according to their knowledg but it is against the ruling and leading part who lead the rest into evil these are fallen away from Christ and hold others in bondage and keep them in captivity as the Israelites were kept captives in Babylon of old So there is a people that God calls his people in Babylon the great the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the Earth For saith the Scripture Come out of her my people which words were insignificant if he had not a people in the midst of Babylon This being premised which I desire may be minded all along I shall now for the finding out of the truth or falshood of this 4th Principle put the Question thus viz. Whether the present Church of Rome that is the ruling leading part and the ruled part from the Pope to his meanest Minister or Subject who are spirited to teach or actively to put in practice the destructive principles of their Church be the only true Church of Christ Now for the readier finding out of the truth or falshood in this Question I shall set another by it which may run parallel with it to give light to it namely Whether a people teaching or by principles practising lying perjury or false swearing hypocrisie and dissimulation Plots and conspiracies to destroy others assassinations secret murders and open massacres and other such like abominations and all this with consent and approbation of their Church Whether such a people be the only true Church of Christ and all that withdraw from them be Hereticks Thus the Question is truly stated concerning the present Church of Rome as their actions make it manifest and being thus stated I think I may leave the deciding of it to the meanest capacity where there is any grain of honesty left in their hearts towards Christ Jesus the Head of his Church for certainly none will say that such a Church is the only true Church of Christ and all others Hereticks except they have sold themselves to speak wickedly Now that the Pope and his Romanists are such a people they themselves prove by matter of fact and by their actions they sufficiently declare it to this present Age which is constrained for its own security to use the best means it can to preserve it self from their assassinations stabbings stranglings sinothering of their persons burning of their Houses and Cities and from their bloody hands and merciless massacres The Church of Christ in the Apostles days was the pillar and ground of truth upholding and holding forth truth in the World by teaching it and by living in it and so by living a just and innocent harmless life among men so that they were of no danger to others among whom they lived But the Church of Rome is come to that that she is become the pillar and ground of lyes and slanders of equivocation false accusations truce-breaking hypocrisie to seem one thing and be another to deny or hide their own Principles for wicked ends she is so far fallen from an innocent harmless life that she is become the pillar and ground of Plots and wicked designs to contrive the blowing up of Parliaments the ruine of Nations the destruction of Kings and Rulers the massacring of multitudes and butcherly murthering of thousands of innocent people that do them no harm This is the Pope's Roman

Cruelty I say accompanied with such things as I have named is one of their main guards or supports of their Religion It is like a wall of fire round about them so that if any among them shall but attempt to get out from them what can they look for but Fire and Faggot or a most hellish Inquisition if they catch them And what tortures and torments are acted there may sufficiently affright and terrifie such as think of deserting them This Cruelty is innate to their Religion for finding themselves defective of truth to uphold it they make it up with cruelty and with lyes when they have done to hide it That horrid piece of Cruelty intended by the Gunpowder-Plot and carried on so far as it went by their Creatures though those Actors in that work of darkness be honoured by them at Rome yet they would have you believe that it was only a trick of State so impudently shameless are they in forging lyes They would also make you believe that the Book of Martyrs is full of lyes and no better than a Fable because it records the abominable Butcheries and Cruelties which by them were acted upon conscientious people And all the ground they have to belye it is from hence that there was a mistake or two in it which Fox himself who was the Composer of that Book first discovered having had some wrong information given him in those particulars Thus they are not ashamed to act Cruclties but are ashamed to be apprehended therein for indeed their actions are so barbarous that even humane nature may blush to be found guilty thereof And yet they are fain to fly to this refuge of defence to uphold their Religion and also for the propagating of it For indeed to speak properly it is not the Kingdom of God and of Christ having truth for its foundation which they uphold but it 's a Kingdom of pride luxury and wantonness and debauchery which wants a foundation in truth therefore fly they to Cruelty for their support And their Cruelty so rings over the World that all but themselves and their slaves dread to come under their power For there is no mercy in them to old or young male or female to innocent Babes or Women with Child Oh the tortures and the invented devices of Cruelty that they put people to in Ireland since our memory in the year 1642. driving them into Rivers by droves and keeping them therein from getting-forth till they were drowned This was the easiest death they put them to Some they hanged some they ript open and let out their bowels some they starved to death some they buried alive ript up Women with Child dashed the heads of Infants against the stones commonly stript Men and Women naked and caused them to perish with cold and hunger many most beastly and barbarous tortures they put both Men and Women to And this now is their way of defending and propagating their Religion which their God who was a Murderer from the beginning acts them violently forward in Time was when they were something more moderate in their bloody ways when they cited people into their Courts and gave them a Tryal at their Laws and suffered them to argue for their Religion But now they are become violently savage and bruitish beyond all humane modesty whereby we may take notice of two things 1. That they are Seducers and that we need not doubt of because they wax worse and worse according to the Character which the Apostle gives of Seducers 2 Tim. 3.13 Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived 2. We may hence also have strong hopes that they have but a short time to reign and rage in the World for therefore Satan is come down among them with great rage knowing that he hath but a short time This their Cruelty now and not Truth is one of the grand pillars by which their Kingdom is upheld Secondly Another pillar upon which their Irreligion as I may call it or Kingdom of Darkness stands is Ignorance They take away the Key of Knowledge from men and keep them in blindness that so they may be led by them as they please And to colour this piece of policy they would perswade their people that Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion and that the Scriptures make men Hereticks as some of them in the Massacre in Ireland got an English Bible and trampling upon it in the dirt as is informed cursed it saying that that was the cause or ground of all the Difference and therefore it is a thing not to be born with by them that any of their Lay-people as they term them should have the Bible or Testament except it be as they have corrupted it So they keep them from that that they may keep them in ignorance and they keep them in ignorance that they may rule them as they please and the people being deluded by them are willing to have it so for they see not the Serpent's subtilty that lyes hidden under that Maxime That Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion It is indeed the Mother of Devotion but to whom Not to God I testifie but to the Pope and his superstitious and idolatrous Worship Ignorance keeps men devout to him and his will-Worship but Christ Jesus came to raise up a people that should worship God in spirit and in truth and his Spirit is the Spirit of a sound mind not a Spirit of blindness and ignorance The devoutest men upon Earth have always been a knowing understanding people witness Noah Daniel and Job Samuel David and the rest of the Worthies renowned in Scripture yea and the Son of God himself who was filled with wisdom and truth who sometime spent the night in prayer to God and he that is born again is in his measure renewed in knowledge after his image Col. 3.9 10. Lye not one to another seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him Mind this that the new man is renewed in knowledge he is not kept in darkness and ignorance to make him devout to God When Paul came to Athens and beheld their blind devotion in their ignorance to rectifie this their devotion he endeavours to bring them to true knowledge not to keep them still in ignorance for that was his work as also the work of the rest of the Apostles and Ministers of Christ to turn men from darkness to the light and so from the power of Satan whose Kingdom is in darkness unto God who is light that so they might receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith in Christ Jesus Act. 26.18 Now he that stops up the light from men must needs be a Thief and a Robber which comes to steal 1. To steal away the hearts of men from Christ to himself and from devotion