Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A39741
|
A sermon preached before the honourable House of Commons at St. Margaret Westminster, on Thursday, the 5th of November, 1691 by William Fleetwood ...
|
Fleetwood, William, 1656-1723.
|
1691
(1691)
|
Wing F1252; ESTC R6743
|
16,159
|
32
|
they did God Service in so using them If we should yet proceed to enquire upon what Grounds and Reasons Christians go when they pursue each other to death and find it is because some know the Father and the Son in one and others in another way and the Stronger will impose his way of knowing on the Weaker or else he shall not know at all a considering Man must stand amazed and have a very mean Opinion both of Human Reason and the Christian Institution And yet the Case is neither better nor worse than so One knows the Father and the Son in Pomp and Ceremonious Ostentation of External Worship and another in Plainness and Simplicity One serves him by the means of Images and gorgeous Representations another Worships him in Spirit and in Truth One takes his necessary Doctrins from Tradition's Mouth another from the Oracles of God alone One forms his Notions of a Church from what his Fancy tells him were convenient it should be another takes it as he plainly finds it and is content with the Wisdom of God which often seems but Foolishness to Man One interesses Saints and Angels in his behalf to God the Father together with the Mediation of the Son another thinks that God the Son is sufficient of himself being as powerful as willing to save to the utmost all that call upon him one will have all the Sacrament in both kinds as it is certain Christ distributed it and his Disciples and the Church after them for many Ages Another gives but half but says it is the whole to all Intents and Purposes arguing with subtilty and much distinction in a matter wholly of Institution and Revelation One takes that Sacrament and believes it is a Mystery and certainly made what our Lord design'd and what the Words effect with Prayer Another takes it and believes that God hath made himself which yet destroys the very Notion and Nature of a God by confounding the greatest Proof we have of such a Being as neither had nor can have a beginning And that when he is thus made anew Man takes him in his Mouth and swallows down into his Stomach the Son of Man of Thirty three Years of Age and the Eternal Son of God by whom he made by whom he redeemed the World with abundance of other plain distinct Doctrines as any in the World yet calls it after that a Mystery And what 's the event of all this contrariety Why that they who know the Father and the Son one way should not endure that any one should know them in another way and live 'T is in vain to tell them that you guide your self by the Light of Nature and make the best use you can of your Reason and call in the Aids of Learning and an honest Mind and submit to whatever appears to be plainly revealed This will not do you must believe or dissemble or die if you have not Faith or Knavery you must have Patience and Courage to attend to the last Reasons of Fire and Sword and Halters Sure 't is impossible that Christ our gracious merciful adorable Redeemer should leave the Bosome of the Father where he Reigned in everlasting Love and Unity to come and sow the Seeds of Strife and Discord upon Earth That he should take upon him Humane Nature to devest it for ever after of the Bowels of Compassion That he should descend to instruct the World in new-unheard-of Lessons of Barbarity That he should design to abrogate the Sacrifice of Beasts and spare their Lives to substitute the Lives of Men and satiate his incensed Father with the horrid Steams of Humane Blood and let his own be shed to teach us how to pour out one another's on the Ground like Water He should not have been born of such a sweet and gentle Maid nor suck'd the Breasts of any humane Female he found the World in better Order and rul'd by milder Principles And if these things be so he will give us leave as there is reason to say with respect to the Concerns of this Life good had it been for Men he never had been born But God forbid things should be so Heaven is not farther distant fom the lowest Hell the Purity of GOD Himself from the Pollutions of the vilest Sinner than bloody Principles and Practices are from Christ's Religion Of all the Constitutions and religious Dispensations and Oeconomies that ever were contrived by Men or revealed by God there is none so little able to support the deadly weight of Inhumanity as the Christian is The very Incarnation of our Saviour preaches up Love and Goodness in the loudest tone and most affecting and surprizing manner in the World The Angels sang not only Glory be to God on high but Peace on Earth and Good will towards Men and that not only in respect of God but of one another Never was Life more full of Sweetness and Humanity His Doctrine was all Peace and his Practice one continued Act of going about and doing Good Love was his old his new his first his middle and his last Command Love was his living Exercise and Love his dying Legacy It was the Badge and Cognizance of those that truly followed him By this shall all Men know that ye are my Disciples if ye love one another And to be sure he did not mean Men should distinguish so exactly as they do the Love of their Neighbours Souls from that of their Bodies It had been wretched trifling and unworthy of our Lord or any good Man to have so frequently pressed the Duty of loving one another if he intended only loving of their Souls By this shall all Men know that ye are my Disciples if you love one another's Souls though ye torment their Bodies days and years by Tortures Racks and Engines by burning strangling blowing up or any other exquisite ingenious way of murchering them This I say had been unfit for Christ or any good and sober Person to intend and only worthy of the villainous Subtilty and tender Nicety of the Fathers of the Inquisition who whilst the Eye-balls of the Sufferers in that sanctified Hell are rolling in Death and startling from their Orbs and their Souls expiring amidst the Torments stand kindly by and with wondrous Charity beseech the Executioners by the tender Mercies of God and by the Bowels of our Lord to take great heed they shed not a drop of Christian Blood As if the tender Mercies of our God and the Bowels of our Lord were not an Adjuration strong enough to move Compassion for the Body as well as the Soul and for other ways of killing as well as shedding Blood No if the Spirit of Christ and his Religion be to be discovered in the Gospel and the sacred Writings of the Apostles let Men pretend never so much to know the Father and the Son yet if their Principles and Practices tend to Blood and Cruelty and let them be never so firmly perswaded in their
Minds that they do God Service we may as certainly conclude they do not know the Father nor the Son as we may there are such Persons in the Godhead If then for the Credit of Nature for the Honour of Humane Reason and for the Truth and Sanctity of Christs Religion we must acquit them of all Blood and Barbarism where must we lay on what must we discharge the Horrours of this Day To what must we attribute those perpetual Plots and dark Contrivances to trouble the Felicities and rob the Nation of the precious Life of our immortal Maiden Queen who though her Reign were long as it was glorious yet might have almost mark'd and counted every year by some attempt of some ungodly Messenger from Rome or Factor for their Partizans It were endless and useless too to dwell on the particular Disturbances and strong Concussions that this Nation in especial sort hath felt from that ambitious restless and blood-thirsty Party My design is rather to repeat in short the Grounds from whence they all proceed 1. The Decrees of General Councils 2. The Bulls of Popes against whole Nations or particular Persons 3. The private Doctors Writings and Authority And 4. The Encouragement the Attempters find if they succeed in this World if they miscarry in the next Whether the Councils I intend and that are so frequently cited for this purpose do decree the extirpation of Heresie in so absolute terms as to lay a Necessity on Princes and Governours to perform is a Dispute I need not engage in it is enough and e'en too much in Conscience if they have left the matter in such loose uncertain terms that they whose Interest misguided Zeal or sanguinary Tempers shall incline them to such Attempts may find their Excuse and take their Sanctuary in those terms The Government of Tunis Tripoly of Salee and Argiers are far from making any Laws expresly to command their Subjects the exercise of Piracies and Robberies yet they are practised every day and an honest Man would go near to die that should reproach them with it and yet no Man can clear them of the Injustices and Violence And that some Councils have gone farther than this is agreed upon by all our own Writers and taken amiss by a great many of our Adversaries if question'd and denied with a very ill Grace by any of them And if Councils which have obtained amongst them the greatest Veneration and which if well and rightly menaged would deserve and find it too from us and all the sober World besides if they shall but seem to countenance much more command such cruel and unnatural things the greater their Authority is the greater will the Mischiefs be the worse the Consequences and who shall deliver their Souls from them Secondly That Popes to gratifie their Spleen Ambition or Revenge have by their Bulls excited Princes to exterminate their Subjects and Subjects to rebell and rise against their Kings and thereby caused horrible Devastations inhumane Massacres and overflowed the World with Seas of Christian Blood is so plain and manifest that 't is as often confess'd with glorying in the Power as denied with abhorrence of the Fact And 't is but turning to the Chronicles of any Nation in the World to find the exorbitant Power and ill-got Credit of these Soveraign H. Priests have been the Causes of as many Evils publick and private as any thing in the World besides A third Occasion or Ground of these Disturbances and barbarous Practices is the Writings and Authority of the Doctors in Request A Professor of Lovain wrote a Book of late on purpose to prove that abundantly more had written in defence and maintenance of the Deposing Doctrine than against afraid one would think we should be mistaken and think it possible for the true Roman Catholicks to be good Subjects But there is an Order of Men so famous for these sort of Writings and accursed Labours and for the Guidance of Men's Consciences and consequently Governing the World that seem in such peculiar manner to have appropriated the Power and Principles of Blood and Mischief to themselves that 't were a kind of Trespass and Affront to their Wit their Policy their Pride Ambition their Malice and Revenge to attribute any of our publick Evils to any other primary Cause and first Original It cannot be that a Prophet perish out of Jerusalem said Christ It cannot be that any mighty Mischief any Master-piece of Wickedness should be done without that Order says all the Christian World I came not to send Peace but a Sword said our Lord that is by accident and sore against his Will but these Men give us such a Scheme of Christianity as makes the Sword seem natural design'd and necessary Be wise as Serpents said our Lord and innocent as Doves but these Men have refin'd on Wisdom and the Cunning of the World to that degree that they seem to have understood our Saviour as exhorting to the imitation of the Old Serpent and the Red Dragon bending their Studies wholly to the Confusion of the World My Kingdom is not of this World said Christ All Kingdoms of the Earth say they are Christs and in his Name will we tread them under that rise up against us To be short whilst these Men's Writings are in vogue and the Consciences of Men committed to their Guidance the Christian World must never look for Peace and if God in pity to the World prevent not the growth of their abominable Doctrines and Designs when the Son of Man cometh he shall neither find Morality nor Faith on Earth The last Foundation of our Dangers and Disturbances that I will mention is the Encouragement the bold Attempters meet withal if they succeed in this Life if miscarry in another Riches and Honours are such powerful Motives and Temptations that sometimes the reputed Wise and Brave and Generous Souls are vanquish'd by them But when they meet with needy and ambitious ones they find them ready and prepared beforehand for the Wickedness or if these are not for the turn there are others of a dark and clouded Soul eat up with desperate melancholy Thought and overwhelmed with Zeal and Sadness which Tempers moulded artificially by ravishing descriptions of the Joys of Heaven and work'd into a lively Hope nay Certainty of once possessing them are fit for all the Impressions in the World and stick at nothing for the gaining them And then if Poisoning Stabbing or cutting of Throats be represented meritorious of Heaven they will quickly find or make an Opportunity altho' the way lead to the paths of certain Death with Torments And that these courses have been taken amongst a hundred other Witnesses the dark Contrivance of this Day shall rise in Judgment and attest These are I think the chief though not the only Arguments that have all along influenced the Sons of Violence to our destruction more or less and always will till God give them the grace to renounce