Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	prayer_n	spirit_n	worship_v	1,667	5	8.9917	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A69535	The grand debate between the most reverend bishops and the Presbyterian divines appointed by His Sacred Majesty as commissioners for the review and alteration of the Book of common prayer, &c. : being an exact account of their whole proceedings : the most perfect copy.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Commission for the Review and Alteration of the Book of Common Prayer.	1661 (1661)	Wing B1278A; Wing E3841; ESTC R7198	132,164	165

their sins and to preach the wonderfull Mysteries of the Gospel to help men to search and understand the Scriptures and to search and to know their hearts and to know God in Christ and to hope for the glory that is to be revealed and fervently to pray for the successe of his endeavours and the blessings of the Gospel on the people and chearfully to praise God for his various benefits which cannot be well done without abilities A Physitians work is not to shew his parts ultimately but it is to do that for the cure of diseases which without parts he cannot do and in the exercise of his parts on which the issue much depends to save mens lives The ostentation of his good works is not the work of a good Christian and yet he must so let his light shine before men that they may see his good works and glorifie God And undeniable experience tells us that God ordinarily proportioneth the successe and blessing to the skill and holinesse and diligence of the Instruments and blesseth not the labours of ignorant ungodly Drones as he doth the labours of able faithfull Ministers And also that the readiest way to bring the Gospel into contempt into the world and cause all religion to dwindle away into formality first and then to barbarism and brutishnesse is to let in an ignorant idle vicious Ministry that will become the peoples scorn Yea this is the way to extirpate Christianity out of any Country in the world which is decaying a pace when men grow ignorant of the nature and reasons of it and unexperienced in its power and delightfull fruits and when the Teachers themselves grow unable to defend it And we must add that whatsoever can be expected duly to affect the heart must keep the intellect and all the faculties awake in diligent attention and exercise And in the use of a form which we have frequently heard and read the faculties are not so necessitated and urged to attention and serious exercise as they be when from our own understanding we are set about the natural work of representing to others what we discern and feel Mans mind is naturally sloathfull and will take its ease and remit its seriousnesse longer than it is urged by necessity or drawn out by delight when we know before-hand that we have no more to do but read a Prayer or Homilie we shall ordinarily be in danger of letting our mindes go another way and think of other matters and be senceless of the work in hand Though he is but an Hypocrite that is carried on by no greater motive than mans observation and approbation yet is it a help not to be depised when even a necessity of avoiding just shame with men shall necessarily awake our invention and all our faculties to the work and be a concurrent help with spiritual motives And common experience tells us that the best are apt to lose a great deal of their affection by the constant use of the same words or forms Let the same Sermon be preached an hundred times over and trie whether an hundred for one will not be much less moved by it than they were at first It is not only the common corruption of our nature but somewhat of innocent infirmity that is the cause of this And man must cease to be man or to be mortal before it will be otherwise so that the nature of the thing and the common experience of our own dispositions and of the effect on others assureth us that understanding serious Godliness is like to be extinguished if only forms be allowed in the Church on pretence of extinguishing errors and divisions And though we have concurred to offer you our more corrected Nepenthes yet must we before God and men protest against the dose of Opium which you here prescribe or wish for as that which plainly tendeth to cure the disease by the extinguishing of life and to unite us all in a dead Religion And when the Prayers that avail must be effectual and servent Jam. 5. 16. and God will be worshipped in spirit and truth and more regardeth the frame of the heart than the comeliness of expression we have no reason to be taken with any thing that pretends to help the tongue while we are sure it ordinarily hurts the heart And it is not the affirmations of any men in the world perswading us of the harmlesness of such a course that can so far un-man us as to make us dis-believe both our own experience and common observation of the effect on others Yet we confess that some forms have their laudable use to cure that error and vice that lieth on the other extreme And might we but sometimes have the liberty to interpose such words as are needful to call home and quicken attention and affection we should think that a convenient conjunction of both might be a well tempered means to the common constitutions of most But still we see the world will run into extreams what ever be said or done to hinder it It is but lately that we were put to it against one extreme to defend the lawfulness of a form of Liturgie now the other extreme it troubleth us that we are forced against you even such as you to defend the use of such Prayers of the Pastors of the Churches as are necessarily varied according to subjects and occasions while you would have no Prayer at all in the Church but such prescribed forms And why may we not add that whoever maketh the forms imposed on us if he use them is guilty as well as we of praying according to his private conceptions And that we never said it proved from Scripture that Christ appointed any to such an Office as to make Prayers for other Pastors and Churches to offer up to God and that this being none of the work of the Apostolick or common Ministerial Office in the Primitive Church is no work of any Office of Divine Institution To that part of the Proposal that the Prayers may consist of nothing doubtful or questioned by pious learned and orthodox persons they not determining who be those orthodox Persons we must either take all them for orthodox Persons who shall confidently affirm themselves to be such and then we say First The Demand is unreasonable for some such as call themselves orthodox have questioned the prime Article of our Creed even the Divinity of the Son of God and yet there is no reason we should part with our Creed for that Besides the Proposal requires impossiblity for there never was nor is nor can be such Prayers made as have not been nor will be questioned by some who call themselves pious learned and orthodox if by orthodox be meant those who adhere to Scripture and the Catholick Consent of Antiquity we do not yet know that any part of our Liturgy hath been questioned by such Reply And may we not thus mention orthodox Persons to men that profess they agree

do they tell us the usual Complaint hath been that there were too many Neither do we conceive any want of publick Thanksgivings there being in the Liturgy Te Deum Benedictus Magnificat Benedicite Glory be to God on high Therefore with Angels and Arch-Angels The Doxology Glory be to the Father c. All peculiar as they require to Gospel worship and fit to expresse our thanks and honour to God upon every particular occasion and occasional Thanksgivings after the Letany of the frequency whereof themselves elsewhere complain who here complain of defect If there he any forms wanting the Church will provide Repl. We have shewed you in the forms which we offered you what we judge wanting the Right Reverend Bishop of Exeter hath taken notice of the same want and proposed a supply those you name are either but general sentences or extend but to some few particulars as being suited to the persons and particular occasions of them and none save the Te Deum designed to be the distinct praise of the Church for the benefits of Redemption as the sutable and sufficient performance of this great part of the Liturgy However it will do you no harm that your Brethren be gratified with fuller expressions and variety They that have complained of too many because you shred your Petitions into almost as many Prayers and so the Thanksgivings into such briefs yet complained not of too much But that too many by the multitudes of Prefaces and Epilogues was the the cause of too little They complain that the Liturgy contains too many Generalls without mention of the particulars and the Instances are such Petitions as those That we may do Gods will To be kept from all evil almost the very Terms of the Petitions of the Lords Prayer so that they must reform that before they can pretend to mend our Liturgy in these Petitions Repl. We complain not that there are Generals but that there is nothing but Generalls in so great a part of your Prayers and therefore they are very defective And if really these Generalls suffice you a few lines may serve instead of your whole Book Instead of all your Confessions it may serve to say That we have greatly sinned and no more Instead of all your Let any or Deprecations it is enough to say Deliver us from all evil Instead of all your Petitions for Grace Peace Rain Fair-weather Health c. it is enough to say Give us the Good we want Indeed the Lords Prayer hath general Requests because it is the design of it to be a Rule of Prayer and so contain but the Heads to which all Prayers are to be reduced But if therefore you will have no more particulars why do you use any prayer but the Lords Prayer We hope you do not think to supply any defects pretended to be found in its Generals not to correct the order of it If it be but because you would not on every particular occasion be so long as to say the whole you may take that Head which suiteth that occasion And so Give us this day our daily bread may serve instead of all the Collects for temporal supplies And all your Offices may be blotted out and one of the petitions of the Lords prayer placed in the stead of each of them We have deferred this to the proper place as you might have done Repl. It was the proper place under the head of defectivenesse to instance in this as well as other defects We are now come to the main and principal demand as is pretended viz. The abolishing the Laws which impose any Ceremonies especially three the Surplice the Sign of the Crosse and Kneeling These are the Yoak which if removed there might be peace It is to be suspected and there is reason for it from their own words that somewhat else pinches and that if these Ceremonies were laid aside and these or any other Prayers strictly enjoyned without them it would be deemed a burden intollerable it seems so by N. 7. where they desire that when the Liturgy is altered according to the rest of their proposals the Minister may have liberty to adde and leave out what he pleases Yet because the imposition of these Ceremonies is pretended to be the insupportable Grievance we must of necessity either yield that demand or shew reason why we do not and that we may proceed the better in this undertaking we shall reduce the sum of their complaint to these several heads as we find them in their Papers The Law for imposing these Ceremonies they would have abrogated for these reasons Repl. To what you object to intimate your suspition of us from N. 7. we have before answered We must confesse the abatement of Ceremonies with the exclusion of all Prayers and exhortations besides what 's read will not satisfie us The liberty which we desired in all the parts of Worship not to adde to the Liturgy nor take from it but to interpose upon just occasion such words of Prayer or exhortation as are requisite and not to be tyed at any time to read the whole we are assured will do much to preserve the Liturgy and bring it into more profitable use and take off much of mens offence And pardon us while we tell you this certain truth that if once it be known that you have a design to work out all Prayers even those of the Pulpit except such as you prescribe it will make many thousand people fearing God to be averse to that which else they would have submitted to and to distaste both your endeavours and ours as if we were about drawing them into so great a snare And as the Proverb is You may as well think to make a Coat for the Moon as to make a Liturgy that shall be sufficiently suited to the variety of places times subjects accidents without the Liberty of intermixing such Prayers or exhortations as alterations and diversities require 1. It is doubtful whether God hath given power to men to impose such signified signs which though they call them significant yet have in them no real goodness in the judgement of the Imposers themselves being called by them things indifferent and therefore fall not under St. Pauls rule of Omnia Decenter nor are suitable to the simplicity of the Gospel Worship 2. Because it is a violation of the Royalty of Christ and an impeachment of his Laws as unsufficient and so those that are under the Law of Deut. 12. Whatsoever I command you observe to do you shall take nothing from it nor adde any thing to it You do not observe these 3. Because sundry learned pious and Orthodox men have ever since the Reformation judged them unwarrantable and we ought to be as our Lord was tender of weak Brethren not to offend his little ones nor to lay a stumbling-black before a weak Brother 4. Because these Ceremonies have been the fountain of many evils