Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	great_a	speak_v	2,174	5	4.1269	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

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

among us which God forbid who may we blame for it but your selves and your Fore-runners who could never endure that body of Canons wherein was one in Title and Doctrine against Socinianism It is the fourth Canon agreed on by the several Synods of London and York 1640. wherein Socinianism is called a damnable and cursed Heresie a complication of many antient Heresies condemn'd by the four first General Councils and lastly contrariant to the Articles of Religion now established in the Church of England I know on what Canon or Canons the burden of your clamour was laid and that the Lawyers helpt you to find out an irregularity in their making though the Composers had the King's Commission to impower them and the Canons the King's Declaration before them yet this Canon underwent the same fate as others though not so audibly complain'd against which I cannot think for all that but was as well as the rest secretly design'd against by the first Authors of our confusions in Religion For soon after the Ministers that exercised before the Lords and Commons at their Monthly Fasts complain'd against infinite Errors and Heresies and this by name of Socinianism and that the persons who were guilty of it were not the adherents to Episcopacie but such as were hearded among the Dissenters and joyn'd for a pretended Reformation The matter therefore well considered though you dislike Socinianism as well you may yet you may see whether directly or by accident I enquire not who unhappily ministred to its growth if not to its first Introduction Concerning the Discipline of the Church of England I have found nothing so boldly talkt against as the particular of Excommunications as if they were irregularly decreed and on light and unmeet occasions But these exceptions are so idle and vain that they argue either ignorance or unrighteousness in those who first made them For had they observ'd how and by whom men are Ecclesiastically censured they would not think the Keys usurp'd by Lay-men 'T is no news to hear Courts and their proceedings first misunderstood and then misrepresented by those who are obnoxious or have an itch to rule and are impatient of Government Now Government it self being sacred and necessary they that quarrel at it must begin with the suspected corruptions of it of which they are neither capable to judge or amend and so proceed to confusion but still keeping up to a noise of corruption till themselves are possess'd of it and then become abominable And as for the causes and occasions of Excommunications that are insisted on by you to be light and trivial it is manifest that those who so accuse are very heedless or very illiterate For let them but read the ordinary form of that Instrument and they will find the cause is renouncing to Government and contempt of the Court that is when men do not acknowledge the Jurisdiction or will not submit and acquiesce in its determinations and censures Having thus mentioned your Principle of Dissent and some Applications that you make thereof for your own pitiful defence against the Church of England let me further add something of the ways and manners you observe or at least are in use among your selves I have sometime considered your Worshipping of God and finde that though you have long handled that Text That God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth to serve you against those you oppose yet there is little assurance that there is more spirit or truth in your worship than in your slighted Neighbour's For if to worship God in spirit be to joyn the Soul with external performances in God's Worship what can you say for your selves more than those from whom you separate who acknowledg the Doctrine and profess the practise of the same beyond your disproof knowing herein they are to be tried by God and not you who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins But yet have not the Sons of the Church of England greater appearances that their Souls are joyn'd to the material parts of Gods worship than you when they readily use such Acts and Indications of reverence as you make Conscience to deny and a piece of Religion to contemn nay sometime become distinctly character'd from us by an obstinate and insolent refusal to use them The Congregations that worship God according to the Canons and Rubricks yf the Church of England do in Prayer and Communions kneel in hearing they are uncovered and in any other constant or contingent Office are decent orderly of which they are so far observant that to prevent any opportunity for confusion it is their Principle to submit and conform to a stated rule given them by their Superiours which is the only guard against indecencie and distraction But your Assemblies those of our County are otherwise managed Many profess to come with no other designe than to hear only and think themselves discharg'd to God and their own wish if they come time enough to hear a mystical Text pronounc'd as the warning to a Sermon This they believe to be the worship of God or else have knowledge of none And when they come there is no difference between them in the Market and in the Meeting-house and to say truth there needs none that their carriage may bear proportion to the nature of such unlawful Assemblies They have been taught that Preaching and Hearing are the principal Duties of Minister and People and for the one to preach plain Doctrine and the other to be uncovered are both superstitious and moreover that Superstition is so dangerous that rudeness is much safer with such-like whimsies that whenever they are reproved for it in our Assemblies especially in this point of the Hat they think they are abridged of their Christian Priviledges Neither is your Worship better for truth than spirit if to worship God in truth be to worship him after the manner that Christ hath revealed him who is the true God For concerning God nothing is more Emphatical in the Revelation of him by Christ than then that he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all Rom. 8. 32. which Doctrine that it might be preserved fresh in the memories of Christians then was an holy Rite instituted by our Saviour that carried with it the most easie and familiar signification of the same viz. the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper which is to be celebrated with such words that do import the very Doctrine whereby is shewn not only our Saviour's care and faithfulness to continue an assertion of the Point but over and above that this is the most properly differing Character of the Christian Society But alas Of what little use is this among you your former setting up spiritual Rails by strange and unchristian Niceties hath made a desolation of this Table not yet to be repaired by the soundest Doctrines and vehementest exhortations to those that otherwise are governable people And as for your