Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	peace_n	spirit_n	unity_n	1,812	5	8.9331	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50883	Areopagitica; a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of vnlicens'd printing, to the Parlament of England.	Milton, John, 1608-1674.	1644 (1644)	Wing M2092; ESTC R210022	36,202	42

it self will tell us more at large being publish to the world and dedicated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his death deserve that what advice he left be not laid by without perusall And now the time in speciall is by priviledge to write and speak what may help to the furder discussing of matters in agitation The Temple of Janus with his two controversal faces might now not unsignificantly be set open And though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth so Truth be in the field we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength Let her and Falshood grapple who ever knew Truth put to the wors in a free and open encounter Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva fram'd and fabric't already to our hands Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us there be who envy and oppose if it come not first in at their casements What a collusion is this whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence to seek for wisdom as for hidd'n treasures early and late that another order shall enjoyn us to know nothing but by statute When a man hath bin labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge hath furnisht out his findings in all their equipage drawn forth his reasons as it were a battell raung'd scatter'd and defeated all objections in his way calls out his adversary into the plain offers him the advantage of wind and sun if he please only that he may try the matter by dint of argument for his opponets then to sculk to lay ambushments to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe though it be valour anough in shouldiership is but weaknes and cowardise in the wars of Truth For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty she needs no policies nor stratagems nor licencings to make her victorious those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power give her but room do not bind her when she sleeps for then she speaks not true as the old Proteus did who spake oracles only when he was caught bound but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time as Micaiah did before Ahab untill she be adjur'd into her own likenes Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes then one What else is all that rank of things indifferent wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other without being unlike her self What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances that hand writing nayl'd to the crosse what great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of His doctrine is that he who eats or eats not regards a day or regards it not may doe either to the Lord How many other things might be tolerated in peace and left to conscience had we but charity and were it not the chiefstrong hold of our hypocrisie to be ever judging one another I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from another though it be not in fundamentalls and through our forwardnes to suppresse and our backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of custom we care not to keep truth separated from truth which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all We doe not see that while we still affect by all means a rigid externall formality we may as soon fall again into a grosse conforming stupidity a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble forc't and frozen together which is more to the sudden degenerating of a Church then many subdichotomies of petty schisms Not that I can think well of every light separation or that all in a Church is to be expected gold and silver and presious stones it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares the good fish from the other frie that must be the Angels Ministery at the end of mortall things Yet if all cannot be of one mind as who looks they should be this doubtles is more wholsome more prudent and more Christian that many be tolerated rather then all compell'd I mean not tolerated Popery and open superstition which as it extirpats all religions and civill supremacies so it self should be extirpat provided first that all charitable and compassionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the misled that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw it self but those neighboring differences or rather indifference are what I speak of whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline which though they may be many yet need not interrupt the unity of Spirit if we could but find among us the bond of peace In the mean while if any one would write and bring his helpfull hand to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under if Truth have spok'n to him before others or but seem'd at least to speak who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with asking licence to doe so worthy a deed and not consider this that if it come to prohibiting there is not ought more likely to be prohibited then truth it self whose first appearance to our eyes bleat'd and dimm'd with prejudice and custom is more unsightly and unplausible then many errors ev'n as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible to see to And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions when this very opinion of theirs that none must be heard but whom they like is the worst and newest opinion of all others and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound and true knowledge is kept at distance from us besides yet a greater danger which is in it For when God shakes a Kingdome with strong and healthfull commotions to a generall reforming 't is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing but yet more true it is that God then raises to his own work men of rare abilities and more then common industry not only to look back and revise what hath bin taught heretofore but to gain furder and goe on some new enlightn'd steps in the discovery of truth For such is the order of Gods enlightning his Church to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it Neither is God appointed and confin'd where and out of what place these