Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A70003
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The Examination of the bishops upon their refusal of reading His Majesty's most gracious declaration and the nonconcurrence of the Church of England in repeal of the penal laws and test : fully debated and argued.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing E3725; ESTC R26702
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23,815
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44
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of Hypocrisy and Imposture And to be plain with our later Protestant Law-makers the Shamm past so current then that it has been practised ever since Is there any one Law made against our later Nonconformists whose preamble does not run upon this Topick the Breach of the Peace and the undermining the very Foundations of the Government and all for deserting the Church of England and meeting in their own Religious Assemblies to offer up their Prayers and Devotions to God according to their Consciences Was there ever a late Conventicle disturb'd with any other Warrant than as Riotously and Routously assembled and thereupon punisht with Fines Imprisonments and Sequestrations sometimes even to the Ruines of whole Families Does not the same Masquerade run through all the Penal Laws And the very meer meeting to Worship God charged with no less than Sedition and Tumult But wherein lyes the Sedition and Tumult Was it in their so meeting No sure For as the Intention makes the Guilt the Intention was only a Religious Worship and not a State-disturbance Was the Sedition then in the Doctrines they Preach'd If so why was it not proved against them Their Meeting-House Doors stood open and their Enemies were both potent and numerous enough to hear and detect any Seditious Design or Doctrines against the Crown or State. And the Law was furnisht both with Rods and Axes to punish any Crime of that kind according to its Demerit before the Penal Laws were so much as thought on No tho' that was the Pretence it pincht not there The Dissenters grew too numerous and the Church of England began to see her Grandeur shrink and her Dominion lessen and therefore her Old Arts must once more be her Refuge The Nonconformists must be crusht and supprest and to avoid all imputations of Oppression and Cruelty Sedition and Riots must be the charge against them and the Law gilded over with that fair Title to make it swallowable 'T is true indeed the Law here did not reach to Death however it took care to make their Purses if not their Veins bleed for it and that too sometimes with so total a Drein that whole Families have been reduced to the condition of starving which is the very next door to it And all things consider'd Liberty next to Life is so dear that whole years of noysome Imprisonment have been very little the easier punishment Having given you this true Pourtraict of our Penal Laws I shall only add some few Lineaments more and so finish the piece And to make a farther Ballance betwixt our selves and Rome in that point how unchristian or unwarrantable soever all such Penal Inflictions for meer Conscience may be the Church of Rome has or at least fancies she has some little Pretext for such Laws For under her famous Tenent of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and her Confinement of Salvation only within her own Boundaries she may have sometimes consented to the Practice of now and then cutting off a stray Sheep to terrifie the rest of the Flock from leaping the Fold as imagining to her self in so doing and in now and then Sacrificing one or two lost Sons of Perdition for such she accounts them and thereby lopping off some corrupt Member already past hope of Redemption she only secures possibly the whole Body as she thinks from Apostacy and Damnation And consequently such exemplary Acts though of the greatest Rigour are only intended as absolutely necessary for that Great End Vniversal Salvation But alas our more Charitable Church that pretends not to bound the Grace of God but by a larger latitude and more extended Operation of the Blood of Christ Equally allows Salvation to true Zeal and Piety in both Churches and indeed in all Christian Professions Under all this Concession I say our Protestant Church utterly wants this Loop-hole and upon true Examination will be found wholly inexcusable if not impardonable For in executing of her Sanguinary Laws in punishment of meer matter of Conscience she cuts off not like Rome the supposed Members of Perdition but even those Professors of Christianity which by her own Confession may be equally with her self the Sons of Grace and Coheirs of Salvation Nay I 'le venture to add one bold Word more because a true one The Church of England in her once executing of her sanguinary Laws is undoubtedly guilty of more Barbarity than the ten Primitive Heathen Persecutions For in all cases of Suffering for Religion 't is an undeniable Maxim That He that makes the Martyr least thiks he makes him The bloodiest Pagan Tyrants in all their studied Arts of Blood and Christian Massacre did not believe that they butchered the then only Professors of Truth and Heirs of Heaven But on the contrary in Devotion to their own supposed true Deities they thought they only executed Apostates Blasphemers and Infidels for such they accounted the Christians as profest Deserters of their Heathen Gods and Sacrifices Nor is the forementioned Romish Case much different as lying under the unhappy Belief of Hereticks irreparable State of Damnation But all this while our Church of England I am sorry to her Shame it must be spoken out-do's the very Heathens themselves in enacting and executing those Penal Laws by which she cuts off those very Members of Christianity who if true Zealots in their Profession she owns are in the number of the Elect of God And if any true Zealots amongst them those certainly that have Courage and Constancy to DIE for their Religion are not the least of them and consequently she cannot deny but in executing those Laws she both makes the Martyr and knows she makes him too And if she 's so blameable in her Severity against the Romanists much more criminal must her Rigour against the Dissenters be whom she owns to differ from her self in little more than Ceremonies and Punctilio's Nay the Ferment has sometimes boyl'd so high that our Protestant Church has put her Zeal upon the stretch to find means to vent her Indignation when some of those very Laws against Recusancy have been extended against the Protestant Dissenters and the greatest part of their Sufferings received from the Lash of those Laws I shall not pretend to dive so far as to ascertain whether that Comprehension was originally design'd by those Laws or otherwise an artificial Superstructure to serve a State turn but either way the severity of those Laws is not a little notorious where so trivial Matters of Dissent in Religion as has been said before have been so cruelly treated But if our Protestant Church cannot possibly be reconciled to Liberty of Conscience and therefore these Laws were her Weapons against it her more generous way at least more agreeable to a Christian Profession had been first fairly to have overthrown it by Dint of Argument before she had made use of Dint of Steel to do it by And for that purpose I wonder how that famous Bishop Taylor has past for so great
a Doctor of the Church all this while and his Treatise upon that subject call'd Liberty of Prophecying not yet answer'd or at least the Author under no small Ecclesiastick Fulminations if no other way to answer it for so terrible a Blow against the Churches long main Favourite Bulwark her Penal Laws 'T is true some People will object What are all these Laws to the CHURCH when enacted only by the Civil Power as an Expedient for its own Security and Defence and therefore warrantable and lawful nor in any respect are chargeable upon the Ecclesiasticks Alas this is such a feeble Objection that 't is scarce to be named without Blushing As if the Clergy did not act in Parliament by their Representatives nay the very Bishops sitting there in Person assenting to and undoubtedly little less than Original Founders of those Laws But grant it as they say the meer Establishment of the Civil Power The Clergy by owning the Justice and asserting the Necessity of such Laws for Defence of their Church the Lay-Power in this Case is little more than the Cats Paw to rake out the Chesnut Nor are the Civil Rulers and Temporal Power of a Christian Government any ways more authorised to outgo the Gospel Moderation and Clemency for any Politick Consideration whatever than the more immediate Oracles of Truth the Preachers themselves And this the great Legislators of those Penal Statutes very well knew and therefore as I told you before they cunningly converted Recusancy into High Treason and Non-conformity into Riots and Routs to find something tho but seemingly justifiable for the Fangs of their Laws to lay hold of and so boulster'd up their Penal Statutes to make them able to walk upright I 'le only put this one Question to all the Doctors of our Church With what Conscience can a Church that owns it self Fallible establish Laws to punish Dissenters in Religion when by her own Concession of Fallibility she neither has nor CAN have any Certainty or Assurance how strong soever she thinks or hopes her own Foundation but that she punishes those that possibly may be more in the Right than her self more especially in those Professions that found their Dissenting Doctrins on her own Basis the Scripture I cannot tell what Equity wiser Heads may find out for the Ordination of Penal Laws but truly in my Opinion the Great Prince of Peace that reprimanded the Drawing of that Sword that cut off but the Ear of the High Priests Servant tho in his own immediate Cause very little intended the raising his Church or the propagation of his Gospel by either Axes or Gibbets or Gaols or Dungeons And He that left us the Standard of Christianity in the Innocence of Doves never commission'd us the Rapine of Vultures and though we are conceded the Subtilty of Serpents I know no warrant that he gave us either for the Stings or the Poyson of them And tho my Zeal for Truth makes me thus plain in detecting the only Shame and Frailty of the Reform'd Church I hope she has Goodness enough to forgive the Boldness of a Blushing Son who is no otherwise solicitous than for her covering her own Nakedness And that I may truly term it such the Reformation that otherwise may boast her Purity and Principles only founded on Holy Writ and all the rest of her Doctrins and Practices derived from those sacred Oracles will be only found tripping here and in all her support of Scriptural Records in all other Points I am afraid must have recourse even to the exploded Authority of TRADITION only for her Penal Laws For I shrewdly suspect that Lollards Towers and Inquisition Houses let her mince it as she will will be found the only Precedents for the Estates she has confiscated the Families she has beggar'd the Gaols she has fill'd besides her sometimes loading of Gibbets and ripping up the Bowels even of her own Co-Disciples because Dissenting Professors of Christ and all by her Penal Laws Nor will it suffice for an Excuse to insinuate that the Establishment of Religion and Conformity of Worship on one side and the Preservation of Peace and Tranquillity of the State on the other side exact the necessity of such rigid Laws Though by the by the Peace of States is rather destroy'd then upheld by such Laws for what Civil War in almost all the Christian World that directly or indirectly has not had the Oppression of some Religious Party its greatest if not only Incendiary No to gain the first of these great Ends let the Teachers and Professors of our Establish'd Church live up to the heighth of their Profession and re-call the Wanderers and reduce the Strays into the Fold by their own convincing Examples of Christian Piety a much more commendable way of making Proselytes than the foremention'd rigid Arts of Conversion And for the second great End the Governments Security if her Temporal Fences are not strong enough let her make stronger and if any of her Dissenters are the disturbers of her Peace let her single out the Guilty from the Innocent and wreak her just Vengeance where 't is deserved and not punish the Dissent it self which as being meer matter of Religion is wholly uncapable of such Crime for the sake of any corrupted Members that either are of or Herd under the Covert of such or such a Congregation of Christians For to do that work by the undistinguishing merciless Hand of her Penal Statutes is so little conformable to the Evangelical Precepts that I am afraid the doing such notorious Ills that Good may come of it whatever Religious Security or Gospel Propagation may be intended by them these Penal Laws I say that can swallow the Estates Fortunes Liberties and Lives of their weaker Brethren and fellow Christians instead of being either Christian or Just or any ways related to 'em will at last appear much nearer of kin to that famous Rover that wanders round the World to seek whom he may devour insomuch that their Ordination will be found little less than borrowing Engines from Hell to help to set up Heaven Now to the Case of the Church of England if these are her Penal Laws for I shall not trouble my self with a tedious recital of the several Statutes of that nature as being all but Scions from the same Root I should gladly know what Beauties or rather invisible Charms the Church of England can find in these Statutes to be in the least solicitous for their preservation For alas maugre all her Volumes written upon the Unreasonableness of Separation from her Communion and her Justification of her zealous Indeavours for Conformity unless the Means and Methods used to obtain it as these Laws were intended for such be equally Justifiable her whole Pretensions fall to the Ground Nor will it excuse her to say that they were chiefly enacted in Terrorem as being but seldom put in execution as if a studied ill Deed were therefore more excusable because