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	ground_n	pillar_n	16,417	5	10.6783	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A81048	Unrighteousness no plea for truth, nor ignorance a lover of it. Being an answer to a book called A plea for truth, in love to truth, subscribed by James Pope, wherein is contained his answer to several queries (sent to him by Thomas White) which are tried and found unsatisfactory, and James Popes Ten queries to the people (called) Quakers fully answered. : Also the doctrine and practise of the people (called Baptists) ... With a full discussion of their principles ... / By a true lover of all their souls and eternal welfare. John Crook.	Crook, John, 1617-1699.	1659 (1659)	Wing C7225A; ESTC R171617	50,094	60

you differ in your understanding and that understanding which differs from truth is not good and so none of Gods gift and such what they know they know naturally like bruit beasts and how canst thou have fellowship with them except it be because you are both outwardly washed and so are joyned together in fellowship by that outward form in other things having no fellowship And so James Pope the wise in heart may see that thou and others are the deceived and deluded whilst thou would cast it upon Thomas White and the Reader may see who is the lyar and his burden he must bear Towards the beginning of the fifth page of thy Book thou sayest you practice washing because the Lord hath appointed you so to do and are not like many in our day or like Naaman the Assyrian that thinks it a business too low for them though it was not too low for Christ and his Disciples but it was too low for the Pharisees then who rejected the Counsel of God against themselves and were not baptized of him Luke 7.30 James Pope thou mightest have done well to have produced thy commission that so thy practice with it might have been compared that so whether thou exceeds or falls short might have been understood by the Reader until that be done thy saying the Lord hath appointed you so to do is no more then he that takes away my goods wrongfully without my consent and yet saith he doth it by Authority but can produce none saving his lust and strong desire after my property to make himself rich having nothing of his own to live upon And for some being like Naaman the Assyrian c. If thou knewest that there was a Prophet in Israel thou wouldst know who they are that are like Naaman the Assyrian that call the light of Christ with which every one that comes into the world is lighted and checks and reproves for sin natural and the checks of a natural conscience and is not sufficient to lead to salvation as was affirmed at the dispute at Dunstable by the Baptists some time since and of later times have been often so said by those called Baptists are not these most like Naaman that despise the true Prophets washing and is it not yet more evident that these are the despised and therefore the leprosie remains though they say they see and are not these wrath like Naaman and go their way from the light like him expecting some sudden irresistible power to fall from heaven upon them and to make them willing but will not come to the light in them to wait in it for power to overcome and do not they wait for such a thing but cannot believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is in the Pharisees nor that the light which reproves the drunkard and lyar for their evil is a spiritual light and sufficient to lead them to salvation but say as Naaman did behold I thought he would have come out to me and stand and call on the Name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper c. Are not you Baptists like Naaman in this also in your own thoughts limiting the holy one of Israel and setting bounds to his worship as if God could not be worshipped a right if men and women did not go down into the water and because the Lord is appearing in a way to disappoint the wisdom of the wise and to frustrate the thoughts of the prudent who think as Naaman did that they know how God will bring to passe the great things promised and accomplish the blessings upon his people looked for but they are mistaken as Naaman was and stumbling at the contemptibleness of the true Prophets counsel as he did and the Pharisees did when they reject the light and would not believe in it that they might be the children of it and such were those thou speaks of in Luke 7.30 who frustrated the Counsel of God within themselves as it is in the Margent of the Bible not being baptized of him those in the verse before being baptized with the Baptism of John and so he that hath an ear may hear and an eye may see who they are that are like Naaman the Assyrian and like the Pharisees who frust rate the counsel of God within themselves not being baptized of him but wilt not thou be inraged like Naaman if my counsel please not thee as the Prophets did not like Naaman if I should say that whilst thou compares others to be like Naaman art thy self with many of thy brethren that differ in their understandings from thee about Election and reprobation and yet you walk sweetly together in your fellowship as thou sayest like him spoken of in Job 8.15 viz. He shall lean upon his house but it shall not stand he shall hold it fast but it shall not endure In the fifth page thou returns an answer to Th. Whites exhortation viz. try your selves by the witness of God in your consciences whether you are come to the Church in God which is the ground and pillar of Truth and saith that as the Churches in Judea were in Christ who was and is God so are we bound to judge of the Churches in England but thou not daring to leave it so brings in a parenthesis which was well thought of to save thy head viz. walking in the same order and professing the same faith and then comes in to be in Christ for before the parenthesis they were not in Christ and it is as plain by adding of the parenthesis they are out of Christ so that without it thou durst not stand to vindicate them and by thy adding of it thou hast at once un-churched them all and so are Christs words made good he that will save his life shall lose it for where are those Churches among the people called Baptists of whom I speak that walk in the order of those Paul writ unto in his Epistle nay are not your Churches so far from being like those that if Paul were alive he would rather expresse himself by weeping over you for your disorder as he did over some amongst the Philippians whose steps you rather follow then those that he rejoyced to behold their order Phil. 3.18 of whom he had often told them and now saith he tell you even weeping that they are the enemies to the Cross of Christ and their end is destruction who minde earthly things and are not those thou calls Churches in England minding earthly things and some making too much provisions for their bellies others glorying in their shame as flattering Titles and foolish apparrel and such like and wouldst thou have us to judge every such member to be of the Church in God nay in him is light and no darkness at all and he who judges such Churches and such members to be rather Synagogues of Satan then Churches of Saints judges righteous judgement though James Pope call it by

and none can be in the truth and most truely live above the way ordained of God to life neither can any live above the way and yet be in the truth and therefore thy query is an unlearned question and manifests thy ignorance of the mysteries of Christ Q. 9. Whether if those who despised Moses Law died without mercy under two or three witnesses ought not those then that either in word practice or writing despise Christs Law to be deeply humbled and truely repent of so grievous a sin especially if they have taught others so do Answ I hope that is not the English of thy query viz. that thou wouldst have them more sorely punished that deny your water washing then those were that despised Moses Law Those who despise Christs Law ought to be deeply humbled and repent of it and turn from it or they cannot be saved and such are all those who despise the true light with which every man that cometh into the world is lighted and call it natural for Christ is a Law-giver and gives Laws to his children as Moses did to the Jews and his Laws and Ordinances are onely known and read in the true light and he which opposes or gain-says either in himself or others the manifestation of the Spirit which is given to every man to profit withall is an unprofitable servant unto God though he be found in all the outward practices of the true Church for God is a Spirit and they which worship him aright must worship in the Spirit and in the truth for such God did seek to worship him in the dayes of the Apostles and such God is seeking again and all others shall be discovered and cast out as dung upon the face of the earth and such despisers shall behold and wonder and by their mocking at the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world shall their bonds become strong and their punishment become sorer then those who despised Moses Law if they speedily repent not 10 Q. Whether it will be a good Plea at the dreadful day of Christ to say Lord we would not have despised thy Laws if thou hadst made them to our minds and we had thought they had been spiritual enough Answ It will be no good Plea at the dreadful day of Christ neither is it now to say Lord we would not have despised thy Laws if thou hadst made them to our minds and we had thought they had been spiritual enough and of this sort are all those who put the day of the Lord afar off and are of the night and know not the day of the Lord as yet to be dawned nor the day-star to be risen in their hearts but though they draw near with their lips their hearts are far from God and their minds are estranged from him by wicked works though in words they confess him yet they are but in their thoughts and think they stand sure but their foundation is rottenness and built upon the sands like all those who say and do not and hear his words but obey them not and cry the Temple of the Lord and Church-fellowship and Ordinances but hate to be Reformed and to have their conversation ordered aright and so cannot see Gods Salvation while they account that too low and carnal or legal and natural which checks and reproves for sin in the Conscience and accuses for evil and excuses when they do well and reject it and slight it as not spiritual enough and such are they thy Query speaks of had they known that the light in their Consciences had been spiritual and that which came from Christ the light of the world and given them to lead out of darkness and that with which they must come to see themselves lost and undone if ever they be saved and in the sight and sence of their miserable estate to wait for a Saviour and in that light to see him revealed to save when none can help or deliver I say this is the man and the woman that in truth thy Query speaks of that shall say Lord we would not have despised thy Laws if thou hadst made them to our minds or if they had been spiritual enough but the light in the Conscience we liked not because it alwayes bore a witness for God against all our evil wayes and now we marvel not that every one that doth evil hates it because it reproves them all but outward Observances and bodily Exercises we like well and in these Observations we look for the Kingdom of Heaven to come but to give up to be guided by the light in our Consciences and shines in our hearts for that to give us the knowledge of God in the face of Christ we like not but accounted it not sufficient to lead to Christ and that which prejudiced us the more against the light which shines in our hearts and hath long shewed us our evil words before we spake them and our thoughts when they first did arise in us before we consented to them to follow them was because we accounted it common to all men and that which every man had and that though it shewed some sins against the Law yet not all sins against the Gospel as unbelief and therefore slighted it as legal and natural and when it troubled us or reproved us when we had been worshipping of thee O Lord as we thought in breaking bread and drinking wine and preaching and praying and the like which we verily believed had been thy ordinances and appointments and when we were troubled in our spirits and minds after such exercises as these we looked upon it as the temptation of the Devil and did not know it to be Gods witness in our Consciences or his Spirit striving with us to bring us to silence that so we might know the dumb to speak and the Spirit of the Lord to move and stir and guide in us and we in all things to be led by it and so in all we did feel Gods acceptance by the Testimony of his Spirit in us even the Spirit it self bearing witnesse with our spirits that we were Gods Children and the Spirit of truth to lead us into all truth that so by it we might witness freedom from the inward troubles of our minds and spirits and the accusings of Gods witness in our Consciences and so be made free and perfect as pertaining to the Conscience by the blood of Christ which is onely known and felt in his light as the Scripture saith 1 John 1.7 If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin But we looked on that of God in our Consciences to be too low and of the reliques of the old Adam or something of the Law but we looked upon our selves as not being under the Law but under grace and so judged our selves in Christ and when we were at