Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A59964
|
The history of Scotch-presbytery being an epitome of The hind let loose / by Mr. Shields ; with a preface by a presbyter of the Church of Scotland.
|
Shields, Alexander, 1660?-1700.; Shields, Alexander, 1660?-1700. Hind let loose.
|
1692
(1692)
|
Wing S3432; ESTC R3536
|
61,532
|
66
|
Country without distinction of Free and Unfree they gather about Fifty four Horsemen march to Dumfreâ—â— take Sir Iames Turner Prisoner and disarm the Souldiers without any more violence Being thus by Providence engag'd without any hope of retreat and getting some Concurrence of their Brethren in the same condition they come to Lanerk where they renew the Covenant and thence to Pentland-Hills where by the Holy disposal of God they were routed many killed and 130 taken Prisoners of which 35 were afterwards hanged who had much of the Lords Presence at their deaths and assurance of his Love strengthening them to Seal a noble Testimony After this conflict many were forefaulted of their Estates and Intercommuned Souldiers are permitted to take free Quarter in the Country to Examine Men by Tortures to strip them who did so much as resist the Fugitives and thrust them into Prisons c. Hence we may see the Righteousness of God how justly at that time he left us in such a damp that like Asses we couched under all Burdens and few came out to the help of the Lord against the Mighty drawing on them Meroz's Curse and the Blood of their butchered Brethren But the King having now brought his only opposites the few Faithful Witnesses of Christ to a low pass he went on by Craft as well as Cruelty to advance his own in promoting Antichrist's Interest And therefore having gotten the Supremacy devolved upon him by Law he would now exert that usurped Power and work by insnaring Policy to effeâ—tuate the End which he could not do by other means Therefore seeing he was not able to suppress the Meetings of the Lord's People for Gospel-Ordinances in Houses and Fields but that the more he laboured by violent courses the greater and more frequent they grew hâ— fell upon a more crafty Device not only to overthrow the Gospel and suppress the Meetings but to break the Faithful and to divide between the Mad-cap and the Moderate Fanaticks as they phrased it that he might the more easily destroy both to confirm the Usurpation and to settle People in a sinful silence and stupid submission to all the Incroachments made on Christ's Prerogatives and more effectually to overturn what remained of the work of God And knowing that nothing could more fortifie the Supremacy than Ministers their homologating and acknowledging it Therefore he offered the first Indulgence Anno 1669 signifying in a Letter dated that Year Iune 7. His gracious Pleasure was To appoint so many of the outed Ministers as have lived peaceably and orderly to return to Preach and exercise other Functions of the Ministry in the Parish-Churches where they formerly served provided they be vacant to allow Patrons to present to other vacant Churches such others of them as the Council should approve That all who are so indulged be enjoyned to keep Presbyteries and the Refusers to be confined within the bounds of their Parishes and that they be enjoyned not to admit any of their neighbour Parishes unto their Communions nor Baptize their Children nor marry any of them without the allowance of the Minister of the Parish and if they Countenance the People deserting their own Parishes they are to be silenced for shorter and longer time or altogether turned out as the Council shall see causeâ— And upon complaint made and verified of any Seditious Discourse or Expressions in the Pulpit uttered by any of the Ministers they are immediately to be turned out and further punished according to Law And seeing by these Orders all pretences for Conventicles were taken away if any should be found hereafter to preach without Authority or keep Conventicles His Pleasure is to proceed with all severity against them as Seditious Persons and Contemners of Auhtority To salve this in point of Law and to make the Kings Letter the Supreme Law afterwards and a valid ground in Law whereupon the Council might proceed and enact and execute what the King pleased in matters Ecclesiastick He therefore caused frame a formal Statutory Act of Supremacy of this Tenor That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority and Supremacy over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastick within his Dominions and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the External Government of the Church did properly belong to him and his Successors as an inherent right to the Crown and that he may Settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administrating thereof and Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical Meetings and Matters to be proposed and determined therein as He in His Royal Wisdom shall think fit which Acts Orders and Constitutions are to be observed and obeyed by all His Majesties Subjects any Law Act or Custom to the Contrary notwithstanding Whereupon accordingly the Council in their Act Iuly 27. 1669 do nominate several Ministers and appoint them to Preach and exercise the other Functions of the Ministry at their respective Churches there specified with consent of the Patrons The same day also they Conclude and Enact the forementioned Restrictions conform to the King's Letter and ordain them to be intimate to every person who is by Authority foresaid allowed the exercise of the Ministry These indulged Ministers having that Indulgence given only upon these terms that they should accept these Injunctions and having received it up these terms also as ane Essential part of the Bargain and Condition on which the Indulgence was granted and accepted as many following Proclamations did expresly declare do appoint Mr. Hutcheson one of the number to declare so much In acknowledging His Majesties Favour and Clemeâ—cy in granting that Liberty after so long a restraint and howevâ—â— they had received their Ministry from Iesus Christ with full Preâ—â—â—â— from him for regulating them therein yet nothing could be more refâ—eshing on Earth to them thâ—â— to have free liberty for the exercise of their Mâ—nistry under the Protection of Lawful Authority In the mean time tho cruel Acts and Edicts were made against the meeting of the Lord's People in Houses and the Fields after all these Midianitish Wiles to suppress them such was the Presence of the Lord in these Meetings and so powerful was his Countenance and Concurrence with the Labours of a few who laid out themselves to hold up the Standard of Christ that the number of Converts multiplied daily to the great encouragement of the few Hands that wrestled in that work through all humane discouragement Therefore King and Council was put to a new shift which they supposed would prove more effectual to wit Because there was a great number of Nonconformed Ministers not yet Indulged who either did or might hereafter hold Conventicles therefore to remede or prevent this in time coming they appoint and ordain them to such places where Indulged Ministers were settled there to be confined with Allowance to Preach as the Indulged should employ them thinking by this means to incapacitate many to hold Meetings
they lost both Church and Liberty It 's true the ordinary Meetings of Presbyteries and Synods were about that time discharged to make way for the Exercise of the new power conferred on the four Prelates who were at Court But this could not give a discharge from a necessary Testimony then called from faithful Watchmen However the Reformation being thus rescinded and razed and the House of the Lord pulled down then they begin to build their Bable In the Parliament Anno 1662. by their first Act they restore and re-establish Prelacy upon such a Foundation as they might by the same Law bring in Popery and setled its Harbinger Diocesan and Erastian Prelacy by fuller enlargement of the Supremacy The very Act beginning thus Forasmuch as the ordering and disposal of the external Government of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty as an inherent Right of the Crown by Virtue of his Royal Prerogative and Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastick whatever shall be determined by his Majesty with advice of the Archbishops and such of the Clergy as he shall nominate in the External Government of the Church the same consisting with the standing Laws of the Kingdom shall be valid and effectual And in the same Act all Laws are rescinded by which the sole Power and Jurisdiction within the Church doth stand in the Church-Assemblies and all which may be interpreted to have given any Church-power Jurisdiction or Government to the Office-Bearers of the Church other than that which acknowledgeth a dependence upon and Subordination to the Soveraign Power of the King as Supream By which Prelates are redintegrated â—o all their Priviledges and Preheminences that they possessed Anno 1687. And all their Church-Power robbed from the Officers of Christ is made to be derived from to depend upon and to be Subordinate to â—he Crown-Prerogative of the King Whereby the King is made the only Fountain of Church-Power and that exclusive even of Christ of whom there is no mentioned Exception And his Vassals the Bishops as his Clerks in Ecclesiasticks are accountable to him for all their Administrations a greater Usurpation upon the Kingdom of Christ than ever the Papacy it self aspired unto Yet albeit here was another display of a Banner of defiance against Christ in altering the Church-Government of Christs Institution into the humane Invention of Lordly Prelacy there was no publick Ministerial at least united Testimony against this neither Therefore the Lord punished this sinful and shameful silence of Ministers when by another wicked Act of the Council at Glasgow above 300 Ministers were put from their Charges and afterwards for their Non-conformity in not countenancing their Diocesan Meeting and not keeping the Anniversary Day May 29. the rest were violenâ—ly thrust from their Labours in the Lords Vineyard and Banished from their Parishes and adjudged unto a strange and nice Confinement twenty Miles from their own Parishes six Miles from a Cathedral Church as they called it and three Miles from a Burgh Yet in this fatal Convulsion of the Church generally all were struck with Blindness and Baseness that a Paper-Proclamation made them all run from their Posts and obey the Kings Orders for their ejection Thus were they given up because of their forbearing to sound an Allarm charging the People of God in point of Loyalty to Christ and under the pain of the Curse of the Covenant to awake and acquit themselves like Men and not to suffer the Enemy to rob them of that Treasure of Reformation which they were put in possession of by the Tears Prayers and Blood of such as went before them instead of those prudential fumblings and fistlings then and since so much followed Wherefore the Lord in his Holy Righteousness left that Enemy to cast them out of the House of the Lord and dissolve their Assemblies and deprive them of their Priviledges because of their not being so valiant for the Truth as that a full and faithful Testimony against that Encroachment might be found upon Record Nevertheless some were found faithful in that Hour and Power of Darkness who kept the Word of the Lords Patience and who therefore were kept in and from Tentation which carried away many into sad and shameful Defections tho' not from suffering hard things from the hands of Men and only these who felt most of their violence found Grace helping them to acquit themselves suitably to that days Testimony being thereby prevented from an active yeilding to their impositions when they were made passively to suffer force However that season of a publick Testimony was lost and as to the most part never recovered to this day The Prelates being setled and readmitted to voice in Parliament they procure an Act Dogmatically condemning several Material parts and points of our Covenanted Reformation to wit these Positions That it was Lawful for Subjects for Reformation or necessary self-defence to enter into Leagues or take up Arms against the King And particularly declaring that the National Covenant as explained in the Year 1688. and the solemn League and Covenant were and are in themselves unlawful Oaths and were taken by and imposed upon the Subjects of this Kingdom against the Fundamental Laws and Liberties thereof That all such Gatherings and Petitions that were used in the beginning of the late Troubles were unlawful and seditious And whereas People were then led into these things by having disseminated among them such Principles as these That it was lawful for People to come with Petitions and Representations to the King That it was lawful for People to restrict their Allegiance under such and such Limitations and suspend it until he should give security for Religion c. It was therefore enacted that all such Positions and Practices founded thereupon were Treasonable And furder did enact that no Person by Writing Praying Preaching or malicious or advised speaking express or publish any Words or Sentences to stir up the People to the dislike of the Kings Prerogative and Supremacy or of the Government of the Church by Bishops or justifie any of the Deeds Actings or things declared against by that Act. Yet notwithstanding of all this Subversion of Religion and Liberty and restraint of asserting these Truths here trampled upon either before Men by Testimony or before God in Mourning over these Indignities done unto him in everting these and all the parts of Reformation even when it came to Daniel's Case of confâ—ssion Preaching and Praying Truths interdicted by Law few had their Eyes open let be their Windows in an open avouching them to see the duty of the day calling for a Testimony Tho' afterwards the Lord spirited some to assert and demonstrate the Glory of these Truths and Duties to the World As that judicious Author of the Apologetical Relation But this is not all For these Men having now as they thought subverted the Work of God they provided also against the fears of its revival making Acts declaring that if outed Ministers dare to continue to