Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	darkness_n	light_n	shine_v	11,650	5	9.6082	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34431	Episcopacie asserted, as it now stands established in our church and common-wealth with the titles of honours, the dignity of authority, the endowments of revenues : by these following argumnts taken 1 from the Word of God, 2 from the light of nature, 3 from the rights of His Majesty, 4 from the lawes of the kingdome, 5 from the lawes of civility and common humanity / by Thomas Cooke ...	Cooke, Thomas, d. 1669.	1641 (1641)	Wing C6039; ESTC R11518	12,655	27

in restlesse and incessant labours at their studies the fruits whereof are all to be expended for the enriching of the Laity with all the precious treasure of Divine Mysteries so are they to be correspondent in a mutuall reciprocation of proportion●ble offices and duties and that by incorporating all that knowledge into all their existences occasions and occurrences and as St. Origen said of St. Paul Sanctificabat prophana fecit ecclesiastica So they are to sanctifie all their civill and secular conditions And as one said of the Sacraments that they were Verba visibilia So they are to rarifie and sublimate all their lowe terrene temporall employments into a manifest visibility of the purity of Religion which will apparantly result not onely out of the exact measuring of the length and the breadth and of the height and depth of all their endeavors and undertakings according to the strict rule of the word of God But also by pointing all their intentions with a defixed ●yme at the high and chiefe end of the glory of God and by ever rancking all their other inferiour and secundary ends with a Methodicall subordination and a harmonious coherence and an orderly and tributary subserviancie to the supreame And then is the Poet said of Isla and her Picture which the Painter had drawn so to the life-like hir Vt utramque putabis esse v●ram Aut utramque putabis e●●e pictam So an ordinary Spectator that is divided through weakenesse of Iudgement into a dubious apprehension might either thinke both Laicke and Ecclesiasticall persons to be a chosen generation a royall Priest-hood an holy Nation a peculiar people a● St. Peter called the distressed Iewes writing to them being strangers scattered through Pontus Galatia Cappadocia Asia and Bithynia or both of them to be and not to be like a Picture that is and is not what it seemes to signifie and represent a Nation and no Nation a people and no people Christians and yet no Christians as they ought to be Or else because they are as they are good Bishops who for the most part are as good as any sort of men amid the many infirmities our weake nature is subject unto and notwithstanding the many tentations our best performances are too too frequently blasted and blemished with And in some respects doe farre surmount and transcend many thousands of other vocations and conditions in both unknowne and unvaluable eminencies and that in a double respect 1. As first because in their tender yeares almost as soone as they could see to discerne of colours and differences they could be so Eagle-eyed as to spy out the pretious pearle of the Gospell to the study whereof they did wholly dedicate themselves without any further consult with nature and that with a kinde of disdaine of all other professions whatsoever and singled out its excellencies from all the flatteries of honour and riches and renown that courted their judgement from every corner of the earth and the knowne world to be their sole and secure and most sincere delight and as most really and substantially advantagious to themselves and as most universally and freely profitable to all others in their most spiritualized and sanctified desires and wishes howsoever slighted and undervalued by some ignorant Atheist as the most barren and chargeable and laborious and difficult and despicable vocation in the world 2. And secondly for the many weary dayes and weekes and moneths and yeares and anxious and vexatious cares and indefatigable and restlesse paines whereby they have exhausted and consumed the flower of their strength and prime time and all to enrich themselves by Gods blessing and the assistance of his holy Spirit with heavenly treasures to be retayled againe sometime to men of corrupt minds who for the most part requite them with no other rewards but heapes of contumelies and heart-breaking reproaches wherewith they abundantly revenge all the great good of grace and glory which they intended them And to conclude when the State did never yet decree by any publique act eyther riches or any honourable remuneration to any of the Bishops or any of theirs for any of the best services and performances which measured by the strictest exactions of humane Lawes may well goe for luxuriant and redundant super-erogations And now to treat of nothing but degradations and demolitions of those Pillars of earth contrary to the word of God and the light of nature and contrary to the Rights of his Majesty his Title Oath and Prerogative and contrary to the Lawes of the Kingdome and of common humanity and civility and supra and praeter and ultra all their demerits and when many poore and beggerly Incorporations are permitted and allowed to tryumph in needlesse and superfluous Priviledges whose chiefe Magistrates wisdome and policy is sometimes recorded with his owne handy-work on the roofe top of his ruinous habitation this would make St. Hierome if he were now alive to blush and repent at what he said in his Epistle ad Eustochium quid Cicero cum Apostolis For the Orators exclamation of ô tempora ô mores may well suite for a fit amplification of the Apostles prediction of these our perilous times the Apostle speaks of in his 2. Epistle to Tim. 3. c. v. 1. This know also that in the last daies perilous times shall come v. 2. For men shall be lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud blasphemous disobedient to parents unthankefull unholy v. 3. Without naturall affection truce-breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of those that are good v. 4. Traitours heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God v. 5. Having a forme of godlinesse but denying the powers thereof He that please may reade and use it as his Looking-glasse and m●ke Discovery of some things amisse in himselfe and thence learne to surrender up all the surfets of mistakes wherewith they have undervalued and vilified those reverend Fathers whom Tertullian calls A postolici semi●is frutices haereditarios discipulos Christi and are procuratores salutis generis humani and the Chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof as Elisha said of Elias and ought to be honoured with all thankefulnesse omni loco actu habitu tempore as Ausonius said to Gratian the Emperour and rather then to abase them any lower then they are with any dimiunitions to study how to adde to them further and ampler enlargements in all for as St. Hierome said in point of obedience so may I say in matter of beneficence quis pudor quod nonpraestet fides quod praestitit infidelitas so what a shame is it that Our Father should not be as bountifull to the Church as ever was Pater Noster But instead thereof in this cleere and plentifull Sun-shine of the Gospell to bereave them contrary to the Lawes of grace of nature of those endowements which were confer'd upon them by such as were contrary to themselves both in nature and in grace in respect both of naturall and spirituall affections will prove a double aequivocall operation in the production of contrary effects in both Religions both theirs and ours For as their blind superstition became to them like the clay wherewith our Saviour opered the blind mans eyes in the Gospel which was likelier quite to put them out then any way to cleere them or recover them taught them to worke out new Discoveries of better wayes of serving God and honouring him with their substance not onely for the buying out of the Prince of darknesse from his Regencie if it were possible wherewith hee tyrannized over the Children of darknesse but also for the hyring of the light of the world if it might be to breake out and shine upon them their kindred and Country-men and with a holy kinde of Symony to purchase for them the gifts of the holy Ghost So the abundant bright Sun-shine of the Gospel dazles the light of nature in some into such a stupor of insensible blindnesse and ignorance as they can neither see their owne hands nor yet the surplussages of their over-flowing estates nor the sundry formes of wants and miseries wherein our Saviour proclaims and presents his distresses continually in many thousands of his poore and afflicted members But when they come to the Church they seeme to see double and take all temporall accessions of honours of authority and of revenues to be a voenenum and a perditio and altogether superfluous bursome and dangerous But manum a tabula Therefore as the Hills stand about Hierusalem as the Psal. saith so let the Lord and the Lords annointed and all the minor Lords of the earth and all that beare good will unto Sion incompasse and incampe like Legions of Angells round about the reverend Bishops and all they are from this time fourth and for evermore Amen good Lord so be it Amen Amen FINIS Errata PAge 3. line 23. for perfection read protection page 5. line 2. for spoken read published line 27. for secondly read Thirdly p. 6. l. 15. for Majesty r. Majestie is p. 9. line 11 for Thirdly read Fourthly l 18. for imployed r. implyed l. 19 for con●rived r. contrived p. 12. l. 18. for Heresenan r. Heres●on l. 24. for deni r●dein p. 13. l. 19. for altuis 1. altius l. 22. for ●ries r. series l. 28. for exercises r. exercised p. 16 l. 1● for constituam r. constitut●m line 22. for in read of page 21. line 27 for earth read the earth

enterprised gainst them But to flye upon the Bs. their donees and adopted children and to out them of their Legacies as well or rather because they are Bishops then for any Morall or politicall offence as yet either alleged or sufficiently proved notwithstanding all the worthy services wherewith they or some of them or some of their famous predecessours have enlarged and advanced the felicity both of Church and State cannot be warranted from the gests and acts of former times and will prevent a Parallel in after ages For as Tertullus the Oratour said to Foelix the governour seeing we have injoyed great quietnesse by thee and many worthy things have beene done unto our Nation by thy providence we acknowledge it wholly and in all places most noble Faelix with all thankes so they might understand if they pleased and confesse and acknowledge that they and their Fore-fathers have injoyed great quietnesse by their meanes For as the Apostle saith of the Israelites that to them appertaine the adoption and the glory and the giving of the Law and of the service of God and of whom are the Fathers so to them appertaine the adoption and the glory of the chiefe Ambassadours and Messengers of Christ of the high Stewards of the great and manifold mysteries of Salvation of the Master-builders of the great City and Temple of the Church and body of our head Christ of the faithfull dispensers of the Covenant of Grace and of the Ministeriall givers both of the Law and Gospell and of the constant preservers with their utmost care and diligence of the sincere service of God and of whom came all the Fathers in both the famous Universities and in all the Cathedrall and parochiall Churches throughout the whole Kingdome who did baptize and teach and marry and blesse from God all their Fore-fathers and were to them in stead of Christ their first and sole Deputy redeemers who recovered them out of worse then Aegytian darkenesse bondage and so have hitherto preserved them and with their burning and shining rayes of light from above did enlighten and mollify and reduce the old blind and hard-hearted world into bright day-light and Dove-like mildnesse and gentlenesse to combine and knit and grow up together by the bands of charity into one man and one mind And from those Halcyon dayes of love and peace and joy and delight they deriving all their happinesse 〈…〉 for their Fore-fathers debts and their owne for former and present benefits all conce 〈…〉 them and theirs with some thankefull requitalls of acknowledgement at the least But in stead thereof to affront the merits of their Piety and constancy and learning and charity with affections high and rough and grimme in frownes and threats of their utter ruine and destruction makes the Gospell little better in event then Senecaes institution of his great Scholler Nero in his Heathenish morality of whom it is said that he seemed non tam erudi●sse ingenium Neronis quam armasse saevitiam And that by decreeing it incongruous and dangerous for them as Bishops to taste of the pleasures of any little parcell of secular and temporall greatnesse that at the best have but stillam gaudii in ultima te parvitatis constituam which is not onely to prejudicate their generous education of their continuall exercise of their best parts in the sublimest cōtēplations in ye most abstruse mysteries in Divinity as unfruitful to refine the temper they are of by nature and as altogether vnusefull unprofitable to renue their infirm frame with sufficient supplies of grace to be as pious and as religious amid the smiles of their great fortunes as Ioseph was in the Court of Pharoah King of Aegypt and as the Evangelicall Saints were in the Roman tyrant Neroes house But to found and ground from thence a greater degree of Popery then ever yet was discovered in the late Bishops or aymed at or attempted by any of them namely the single life of the Clergy which the Apostle calls the Doctrine of Devils For if honours and intermedling with secular affayres and great possessions be inconsistant with holy orders then must the Clergie be interdicted and excommunicated altogether from the honourable estate of Matrimony as too too various and tedious with many more vnavoidable changes of distractions and interruptions from their studies which is by this meanes pointed at as the next intolerable burthen and grievous captivity they must of necessity expect to be enthralled unto And so from thence to derive restraints to the honourable and to the rich and married and to the great Commanders in the Civill state to forbeare their darling pleasures and not to be like Polyphemus Evangeliophorus whom Erasmus brings in his Dialogue between him and Cannius dreaming that the Gospell hanging at his girdle might reach an influence to his heart and head and corporally worke a spirituall change upon his intellectualls as if the meere carrying of the Gospell about a man or the sometimes vouchsafing to a Preacher an averse eare that is charmed from within with swarmes of a thousand curbes of sundry fancies and that too but in case of distresse of necessitated respite and leasure from their other occasions and in a just dread of Court-censures and the punishments prescribed by humane Lawes And as the streame swinge of custome and company heaves and drives them were enough to maintaine the credit of a Christian profession and in the meane time to ingrosse and impropriate to themsel●es all the guerdions and garlands due to the greatest endowments and best deservings and confine the Clergy only to their Intellectuall and Spirituall delights and hopes of their future happinesse and inheritance in the Kingdome of Heaven as Iulian the Apostata did the Christians when he spoyled them of their goods and estates jeering them with their Masters Doctrine saying to them blessed are yee poore for yours is the Kingdome of Heaven As if our blessed Saviour had suffered death onely to redeeme them from the bookish and leane drudgery of the Clergy and had come to crowne them like a Temporall King as the Iewes expected with the Rose buds of all the delights or more then ever Salomon provided for his lusts in the dayes of his vanity and to content himselfe onely with some few younger brother Parsons to be conformable to his poverty and to side with him in the fellowship of his sufferings but rather they are to be like Epiphanius of whom it is said that Pingebat actibus paginam quam legisset So they are to expresse in their lives and conversations all their Lectures they have heard and read and received from their learned Ministers For as the exemption of them from the busie employments of Magistracy and the denudation of them from the bewitching splendor of honours or exonerating them of the cumbersome luggage of riches and great possessions must be turminated altogether by them in a moonkish Retirement and that to be worne out and spent