Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	church_n	doctrine_n	hold_v	3,934	5	6.1946	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B02400	Two letters of the right reverend father in God Doctor John Cosin, later Lord Bishop of Durham, with annotations on the same. Also the opinion of the Reverend Peter Heylin, D.D. concerning the metrical version of David's Psalms, with remarks and observation upon them. / By R. Watson, D.D.	Watson, R.; Cosin, John, 1594-1672.; Heylyn, Peter, 1600-1662.	1686 (1686)	Wing C6363B; ESTC R220851	37,011	111

TWO LETTERS OF THE Right Reverend Father in God Doctor JOHN COSIN Late LORD BISHOP of DURHAM WITH Annotations on the same ALSO The Opinion of the Reverend PETER HEYLIN D.D. Concerning the Metrical Version of DAVID's PSALMS With Remarks and Observations upon them By R. WATSON D.D. LONDON Printed by F. Leach for Nich. Woolfe at the Leopard in Newgate-street MDCLXXXVI For my very Loving Friend Mr. Watson at the Princes Court in Jersey SIR THE Letter that Major Fontane brought from you was very welcome to me the rather for that I had inquir'd after you of many and could never hear of you before since the dispersion at Bristol for though I find your Name now in the review of one of Dr. Clare's Letters yet when I read that Letter at first I took it to have been Dr. VVadson from whom I had not long since received a Letter out of the West but I am glad it is you and that you have a so fair a subsistence for the present under so good a * The Lord Hopton Lord What will become of us all for the future our Lord above knows to whose Providence and Goodness we must recommend our selves You say right Our Church is as much misunderstood and misconstrued here abroad as it is misused and maligned at home and I have had experience enough of both The truth is they are here so exceeding uncharitable and somewhat worse that I know not how any man who understands himself and makes a Conscience of what he does can enter into any Communion with them b in those Doctrines and Practices which they hold necessary to Salvation and wherein they make their essential note of difference their Religion and their Church to consist And that I may answer your demand in brief for they say you are all to come hither it is far less safe to joyn with these men that c alter the Credenda the Vitals of Religion than with those that meddle only with the Agenda and Rules of Religion d if they meddle no farther and where it is not in our power to help it there is no doubt but in these things e God will accept the Will for the Deed if that will without our assent or approbation to the contrary be preserved entire though in the mean while we suffer a little for it oppression must not make us leave our own Church They of Geneva are to blame in f many things and defective in some g they shall never have my approbation of their doings nor let 'um have yours h yet I do not see that they have set up any new Articles of Faith under pain of Damnation to all the World that will not receive them for such Articles and i you know whose case that is Caetera cum veneris or if you come not in other Letters as you shall offer me occasion In the mean while I will be glad to hear of h your resolution still to be constant in the maintetenance of the Ancient Catholick Faith and Government of the Church of Christ which the Church of England hath profess'd and taught us though now there be a Cloud and Storm upon it as upon what Church hath there not been more or less in the several Ages of the World If you know of any thing fit for me to hear concerning our old Friends in England you will do me a favour to impart it to Your assured Loving Friend J. C. St. Germ. Jun. 19. 1646. SIR AS I expose his Reverence's Letters to publick view so I submit my Annotations on them to your savourable censure which are as follow Annotations a AFter Sequestration of his Estate a vast debt incurr'd for advancement of the Kings Interest the sale of most he had in any sort of value even to his Plate and Coach-Horses and the Rebels plunder of what he had left at Torrington our Noble Lord had no fair means of subsistence for himself much less wherewith to exercise his liberality toward the Chaplain and few Servants he had then attending on him whom yet notwithstanding their loss of all likewise at Torrington Divine Providence preserved then and many years after in their state of exile and carried them mercifully through all the difficulties incident thereunto b If we return to them in those Doctrines and Practices whatsoever they are wherein we may which I will not presume to enumerate and moderate our selves in some measure as to the rest by the meek Cassandrian and Grotian Spirit of a mutual charitable inclination toward an amicable reunion though they continue to exclude us their Communion for not subscribing to those new Doctrines and Articles we so far shall lay the Schism at their doors and may rest satisfied in our persevering Members of that Primitive and once Catholick Church which hath prescribed an excellent Canon of Belief and Practice unto us both c For what we suppose they have altered in the old Credenda let us be so exact as we fairly may be yet not over-nicely Critical lest we become uncharitable nor so fond of our own opinions as not to hearken unto the pacific language of the learned Grotius and other eminent persons of his temper a List of whose Names he hath publish'd and whom he directs us to their search and intimacy having perhaps discovered a better meaning than we at more distance can apply to the Letter of their Profession d As I fear they do though not under the Anathema of Damnation denounced against Dissenters if a strict scrutiny were made into the genuine sense of these Confessions with other Books and Writings generally owned by them Beside that they meddle with the Agenda and Rites of Religion without any justifiable Call or Commission for which reason alone were there no other we ought not to join with them in their Publick Worship or Communion e Then God may I doubt not accept the Will for the Deed although we decline Communion or Religious Compliance with either party from both whom we differ and at many their Doctrines or Practices we justly scruple wherein I might well have satisfied my self if I had been so well acquainted then as afterward with the learned Grotius's opinion de Christiano Segrege who himself if he dyed in that state as many that mean thereby to reproach him would have believed departed I make no question a good Member of the Catholick Church and so I hope many of us lived when in our state of Exile wheresoever we found no Oratories of our own we asked admission neither into the Churches of the Roman Catholicks nor the Temples or Meeting-places of the Lay-reformed Calvinists for Ecclesiasticks I dare not acknowledge those whom they pretend to make such f In too many of either whether we take them for Agenda or Credenda g Mine they never had but wherein they had the Deans likewise until it seems he chang'd his mind and departed from his aequilibrium of Indifference by making one Scale overmuch to

Legal principles than their own is not amiss noted from that act of folly if not more criminal I have read perpetrated by Isaac Penington London's Lord Chief Justice in his time who sent a fellow to Newgate perhaps a Clerk of some Church there only for setting a Malignant Psalm as he did another for Reading a Malignant Chapter possibly the 13th to the Romans such a one as he would have had encerped among many others toward constituting a new Apocrypha to secure a Scriptural Canon if he and other such miscreants could have compiled it to countenance their Rebellion as they did in misapplied Texts too often by Holy Writ Some other improper uses they made of 'em as at their City Feasts in the place of more artificial Musick that commonly attend such entertainments And as an hypocritical property to gain the reputation of Piety in the strict observance of family-duties as they call them whereof some of their own Children have taken notice as did that Boy who being reproached by his Play-fellow That they Sung no Psalms upon Sabbath days in the Evening as his Father and the rest did at their House received this in answer with too much truth as the young Gamester ingenuously meant it That the reason why at his Fathers house no Psalms were wont to be Sung was because they had no Window toward the street Many odd passages in reference to those Psalms have affected the minds of most judicious persons whose ears they have arrived but none upon that account have in their merriment made more reflections in contempt and scorn of our Religion which they will needs suppose either allows or tolerates 'em than some in the Roman Communion who to my knowledge mimically sing their Tunes and act such Farces with ridiculous circumstances as have been credibly reported to 'em observing also the rusticity of their language and inconsonancy of their Rhime as no man in his right mind can better temper an excuse of what he must not disown than by a smile and silence To what end they were first ordained may be shrewdly guessed by the critical season of their composition which we read was about the same time when by the formality of a Commission accompanied with the irregularity of Riotous and Sacrilegious people not only the Plate and rich Ornaments of the Altars were seized on in the Kings name E. 6. for their own commodity but most furniture of all sorts belonging to the several Quires throughout the Realm were rifled and the very structures in a great part demolished or defaced that in St. Paul's Cathedral it self not escaping as if so well the daily Sacrifice of praising God in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs whatsoever the new Liturgy order'd otherwise were thence to be exterminated as that of the Mass They that had such apprehension or other conceit in fancy for innovation might easily be induced to entertain this new device at least in their private Houses and as formerly they had been gratified with the priviledge of reading the Scripture in our vulgar language so now be yet more pleased with the liberty they might enjoy at will of singing their Psalter thus Poetically improved in the same Howsoever this may be not invidiously nor partially observed from the first publication of 'em that they were by none more regarded nor more eagerly contended for than by those that were most seditiously inclined and disaffected to the established order of the Church which in this particular among others was carefully provided for especially after the coming of the precise Brethren from Geneva where they had not only learned from their great Master Calvin a new Institution or System of Religion but acquainted themselves well with his subtile methods of Sacriledge or Sequestation of any Church Revenue which they could pretend to have been superstitiously employed that is in more truth applied to the external decency or solemnity of Divine Service and Religious Worship of God in his Holy Temple for little less than a suspicion of Rapine in some such sort seemeth to be implied in the 49 Injunction of Queen Elizabeth whereunto it occurs thus Because in divers Collegiate and also some Parish Churches heretofore there have been livings appointed for the maintenance of Men and Children to use singing in the Church by means whereof the laudable service of Musick hath been had in estimation and preserved in knowledge the Queens Majesty neither meaning in any wise the decay of any thing that might conveniently tend to the use and continuance of the said Science neither to have the same in any part so abused in the Church that thereby the Common Prayer should be the worse understanded of the hearers willeth and commandeth that first no alterations be made of such assignments of living as heretofore hath been appointed to the use of Singing or Musick in the Church but that the same so remain And that there be a modest and distinct Song so used in all parts of the Common Prayers in the Church that the same may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing and yet nevertheless for the comforting of such that delight in Musick it may be permitted that in the beginning or in the end of Common Prayers either at Morning or Evening there may be sung an Hymn or such like Song to the praise of Almighty God in the best sort of Melody and Musick that may be conveniently devised having respect that the Sentence of the Hymn may be understanded and perceived My Remarks upon which Injunction are these 1. That not only in Cathedrals but in some Parochial Churches also means had been setled upon Singing-men and younger Choristers to begin and carry on the Solemn Tunes of the Psalms in Prose as they are Verse after Verse prickt out by a middle distinction to that purpose 2. That the said settlement advanced the estimation of Musick accounted a laudable Service when diligently attended and performed according to the true intent and first institution thereof 3. That evident enough it is the Queen either had been moved or apprehended she should be to divert the Revenues of such Livings to other uses else why was her Majesty sollicitous to open her mind in an unnecessary caution against what no body thought on but her self 4. That if any did as such Harpies may have been about her Her Majesty very piously and generously discouraged the attempt by disclaiming all thought or meaning to authorize or countenance it 5. That her Majesty secured the popular convenience and complacence by ordering Plain-Song and continuing the Common Prayer intelligible by such as would be attentive to it accordingly Sung 6. That for the more Musical Ears and distinctive Judgements in that Science her Majesty provided pecular Hymns in some better Melody not intending thereby to cherish or gratifie the Curious but administer Comfort to Pious Souls predisposed so to apply it From all which I conclude That Thomas Sternhold and his