Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	faith_n	jesus_n	lord_n	4,121	5	3.4974	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A81005	Several letters and passages between His Excellency, the Lord General Cromwel and the governor of Edinburgh Castle, and the ministers there, since His Excellencies entrance into Edinburgh. Published by authority.	Cromwell, Oliver, 1599-1658.	1650 (1650)	Wing C7166; Thomason E613_6; ESTC R31337	7,514	15

him gladly because ye are wise if erroniously the truth more appears by your conviction stop such a mans mouth with sound words that cannot be gainsaid if blasphemously or to the disturbance of the publique peace let the civil Magistrate punish him if truly rejoyce in the truth and if you will call our speakings together since we came into Scotland to provoke one another to love and to good works to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and repentance from dead works to charity and love towards you to pray and mourn for you and for the bit e returns to and incredulity of our professions of love to you of the truth of which we have made our solemn and humble Appeals to the Lord our God which he hath heard and born witness to if these things be scandalous to the Kirk and against the Covenant because done by men of civil callings we rejoyce in them notwithstanding what you say For a conclusion in answer to the witness of God upon our Solemn Appeal You say you have not so learned Christ to hang the equity of your cause upon events We could wish blindeness hath not been upon your eyes to all those marvellous dispensations which God hath wrought lately in England But did not you solemnly Appeal and Pray did not we do so too and ought not you we to think with fear trembling of the hand of the great God in this mighty strange appearance of his but can slightly call it an Event Were not both yours our expectations renewed from time to time whilest we waited on God to see which way he would manifest himself upon our Appeals And shal we after all these our Prayers Fastings Tears Expectations and solemn Appeals call these bare Events The Lord pity you surely we fear because it hath been a merciful and gracious deliverance to us I beseech you in the bowels of Christ search after the minde of the Lord in it towards you and we shall help you by our prayers that you may finde it out for yet if we know our hearts at all our bowels do in Christ Jesus earn after the godly in Scotland We know there are stumbling blocks which hinder you The personal prejudices you have taken up against us and our ways wherein we cannot but think some occasion has been given and for which we mourn the apprehension you have That we have hindred the glorious Reformation you think you were upon I am perswaded these and such like binde you up from an understanding and yielding to the minde of God in this great day of his power and visitation and if I be rightly informed the late Blow you received is attributed to prophane Councels and Conduct and mixtures in your Army and such like the natural man will not finde out the cause look up to the Lord that he may tell it you which that he would do shall be the fervent prayers of Your loving Friend and Servant O. CROMVVEL Edinburgh Sept. 12. 1650. For the Governor of Edinburgh Castle THese Queries are sent not to reproach you but in the love of Christ laying them before you We being perswaded in the Lord That there is a Truth in them which we earnestly desire may not be laid aside unsought after by any prejudice either against the things themselves or the unworthiness or weakness of the person that offers them If you turn at the Lords reproofs he will pour out his Spirit upon you and you shall understand his Words and they will guide you to a blessed Reformation indeed even to one according to the Word and such as the people of God wait for wherein you will finde us and all Saints ready to rejoyce and serve you to the utmost in our places and Callings QUAERES I. VVHether the Lords Controversie be not both against the Ministers in Scotland and England for wresting straining and improving the Covenant against the godly and Saints in England of the same Faith with them in every Fundamental even to a bitter persecution and so making that which in the main intention was Spiritual to serve politicks and carnal ends even in that part especially which was Spiritual and did look to the glory of God and the comfort of his people II. Whether the Lords Controversie may not be for your and the Ministers in England sullenness at and darkning and not beholding the glory of Gods wonderful Dispensations in this Series of his Providences in England Ireland and Scotland both now and formerly through envy at Instruments and because the things did not work forth your platform and the great God did not come down to your mindes and thoughts III. Whether you carrying on a Reformation so much by you spoken of have not probably been subject to some mistakes in your own judgements about some parts of the same laying so much stress thereupon as hath been a temptation to you even to break the law of Love towards your Brethren and those Christ hath regenerated even to the reviling and persecuting of them and to stir up wicked men to do the same for your Forms sake or but some parts of it IV. Whether if your Reformation be so perfect and so Spiritual be indeed the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus it will need such carnal policies such fleshly mixtures such unsincere actings as to pretend to cry down all Malignants and yet receive and set up the Head of them and so act for the Kingdom of Christ in his Name and upon advantage thereof and to publish so false a Paper so full of specious pretences to piety as the fruit and effect of his repentance to deceive the mindes of all the godly in England Ireland and Scotland you in your own consciences knowing with what regret he did it and with what importunities and threats he was brought to do it and how much to this very day he is against it and whether this be not a high provocation of the Lord in so grosly dissembling with him and His people For the Right Honorable The Commander in Chief of the English Army My Lord YOur Papers I have communicate to these with me whom they concerned who have desired me to return this Answer The Contents of these Papers do concern the publique Differences betwixt you and these of the three Kingdoms who have faithfully adhered to the Solemn League and Covenant and are awed by the Oath of God from accession to the guiltines of clear and evident breaches of Covenant and have been so often and fully answered in the publique Papers of this Kirk and Kingdom In the Resolutions of the Assembly of Divines in England and in the published Writings of the soundest Divines there yea and of all the Reformed Kirks That they conceive it needless though a matter of no great difficulty to give a particular Answer especially since the late General Assembly have authorized their Commissioners to take into consideration matters of publique concernment to this Kirk unto whom if you please you may hereafter direct Papers of that kinde In the mean time they rest fully perswaded in their mindes That the event of a Battel though ordered indeed by a just and wise Providence is no infallible proof of the Equity or Iniquity of a Cause seeing there is one Event to the Righteous and to the Wicked to him that sweareth and to him that feareth an Oath as it is clear in the cause of Israel against Benjamin about the men of Gibeah I am My Lord Your most humble Servant W. DUNDAS Septemb. 12. 1650. FINIS

established in the love of the Truth in all the tribulations that befal them I onely do adde that I am My Lord Your most humble Servant W DUNDAS Septembr 9. 1650. For the Governor of Edinburgh Castle SIR BEcause I am at some reasonable good leisure I cannot let such a gross mistake and inconsequential reasonings pass without some notice taken of them And first their ingenuity in relation to the Covenant for which they commend themselves doth no more justifie their want of ingenuity in answer to Colonel Whalleys Christian offer concerning which my Letter charged them with guiltiness deficiency then their bearing witness to themselves of their adhering to their first Principles and ingenuity in prosecuting the ends of the Covenant justifies them so to have done meerly because they say so They must give more leave henceforwards for Christ will have it so will they nill they and they must have patience to have the truth of their doctrines and sayings tryed by the sure touchstone of the word of God and if there be a liberty and duty of tryal there is a liberty of judgement also for them that may and ought to try which if so they must give others leave to say and think that they can Appeal to equal Judges who have been the truest fulfillers of the most real and equitable ends of the Covenant But if these Gentlemen which do assume to themselves to be the infallible Expositors of the Covenant as they do too much to their Auditories of the Scriptures counting a different fence and judgement from theirs breach of Covenant and Heresie no marvel they judge of others so authoritatively and severely but we have not so learned Christ We look at Ministers as helpers of not Lords over the faith of Gods people I appeal to their consciences whether any trying their Doctrines and dissenting shall not incur the censure of Sectary and what is this but to deny Christians their Liberty and assume the infallible Chair What doth he whom we would not be likened unto do more then this In the second place it is affirmed That the Ministers of the Gospel have been imprisoned deprived of their Benefices Sequestred forced to flye from their dwellings and bitterly threatned for their faithful declaring the will of God c. And that they have been limited that they might not speak against the sins and enormities of the evil Powers That to impose the name of railing upon such faithful freedom was the old practice of the Malignants against the Preachers of the Gospel c. If the civil Authority of that part of it which continued faithful to their Trust true to the ends of the Covenant did in answer to their consciences turn out a Tyrant in a way which the Christians in after times will mention with honor and all Tyrants in the world look at with fear and many thousands of Saints in England rejoyce to think of it and have received from the hand of God a liberty from the fear of like usurpations and have cast off him who trod in his Fathers steps doing mischief as far as he was able whom you have received like fire into your bosoms of which God will I trust in time make you sensible if Ministers railing at the civil Power calling them Murtherers and the like for doing this have been dealt with as you mention will this be found a personal persecution Or is sin so because they say so They that acted this great business having given a reason of their faith in this action and some here are ready further to do it against all gainsayers But it will be found that these reprovers do not only make themselves the Judges and Determiners of sin that so they may reprove but they also took liberty to stir up the people to Blood and Arms and would have brought a War upon England as hath been upon Scotland had not God prevented it and if such severity as hath been expressed toward them be worthy the name of personal persecution let all uninterested men judge whether the calling of this practice railing be to be paralleld with the Malignants imputation upon the Ministers for speaking against the Popish Innovations in the Prelates times and the Tyrannical and wicked practice then on foot let your own consciences minde you The Roman Emperors in Christs and his Apostles times were usurpers and intruders upon the Jewish State yet what footstep have ye either of our blessed Saviors so much as willingness to the dividing of an Inheritance or their medling in that kinde This was not practiced by the Church since our Saviors time till Antichrist assuming the infallible Chair and all that he called the Church to be under him practiced this authoritatively over civil Governors The way to fulfil your Ministery with joy to preach the Gospel which I wish some who take pleasure in reproofs at adventure do not forget too much to do Thirdly you say you have just cause to regret that men of civil imployments should usurp the calling and imployment of the Ministery to the scandal of the Reformed Kirks c. Are you troubled that Christ is preached Is preaching so inclusive in your function Doth it scandalize the Reformed Kirks and Scotland in particular Is it against the Covenant Away with the Covenant if this be so I thought the Covenant and these could have been willing that any should speak good of the name of Christ if nor it is no Covenant of Gods approving nor the Kirks you mention in so much the Spouse of Christ Where do you finde in the Scripture a ground to warrant such an assertion That preaching is included in your function though an approbation from men hath order in it and may do well yet he that hath not a better warrant then that hath none at all I hope he that ascended up on high may give his gifts to whom he please and if those gifts be the Seal of mission be not envious though Eldad and Medad prophesie you know who bids us covet earnestly the best gifts but chiefly that we may prophesie which the Apostle explains there to be a speaking to instruction and edification comfort which the instructed edified and comforted can best tell the Enargy and effect of if such evidence be I say again take heed you envy not for your own sakes lest you be guilty of a greater fault then Moses reproved in Joshua for envying for his sake indeed you erre through the mistake of the Scriptures approbation is an act of conveniency in respect of order not of necessity to give faculty to preach the Gospel Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the county lest men should be drunk It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousie to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition he may abuse it when he doth abuse it judge If a man speak foolishly ye suffer