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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	church_n	great_a	know_v	1,117	5	3.7969	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27058	The true history of councils enlarged and defended against the deceits of a pretended vindicator of the primitive church, but indeed of the tympanite & tyranny of some prelates many hundred years after Christ, with a detection of the false history of Edward Lord Bishop of Corke and Rosse in Ireland ... and a preface abbreviating much of Ludolphus's History of Habassta : written to shew their dangerous errour, who think that a general council, or colledge of bishops, is a supream governour of all the Christian world ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; to which is added by another hand, a defence of a book, entituled, No evidence for diocesan churches ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1682 (1682)	Wing B1438; ESTC R39511	217,503	278

can they tell the Church that they are subject to the six first General Councils and yet not to the seventh eighth ninth or any since 3. I have oft against Johnson and elsewhere proved that there never was an universal Council of all the Churches but only of part of those in the Roman Empire Were there no proof but from the recorded Names of the Callers of Councils and all the Subscribers it is unanswerable 4. Who knows not that the Church is now divided into about Twelve Sects all condemning one another And that they are under the Power of various Princes and many Enemies to Christianity who will never agree to give them leave to travel to General Councils And who shall call them or how long time will you give the Bishops of Antioch Alexandria the Jacobites Abassines Nestorians Armenians Muscovites and all the rest to learn so much of each others Languages as to debate intelligibly matters of such moment as Laws for all the World must be Twenty more such absurdities make this Aristocracy over all the World as mad a conceit as that forementioned And when we know already what the Christian Parties hold and that the said Jacobites Nestorians Armenians Circassians Mengrelians Greeks Muscovites c. are far more than either Protestants or Papists do we not know that in Councils if they have free Votes they will judge accordingly against both But this sort of men are well aware that the Church is always but Councils are rare and it 's at least uncertain whether ever there will be more and the Articles of the Church of England say They may not be called without the Will of Princes and the Church is now under so many contrary Princes as are never like to agree hereto And they know that some body must call them and some body must preside c. Therefore they are forced to speak out and say that the Pope is St. Peters Successor the prime Patriarch and principium Unitatis and must call Councils and as President moderate and difference the lawful from the unlawful And that in the Intervals of Councils he as Patriarch is to govern at least the West and that every Diocesane being ex Officio the Representer of his Diocess and every Metropolitane of his Province and every Patriarch of his Patriarchate what these do all the Bishops on Earth do And so the Riddle of a Collegium Pastorum is opened and all cometh but to this that the Italians are Papists who would have the Pope rule Arbitrarily as above Councils but the French are no Papists who would have the Pope rule only by the Canons or Church Parliaments and to be singulis Major at universis Minor This is the true Reformation of Church-Government in which the English should by them agree And now you know what I am warning you to beware of We are for a twist conjunction of the civil Power and the Ecclesiastical and for Christian Kingdoms and Churches so far national as to be ruled and protected by Christian Kings in the greatest Love and Concord that can be well obtained And for Councils necessary to such ends But we are not for setting up a Foreign Jurisdiction over King and Kingdom Church and Souls upon the false claim of uncapable Usurpers One of your selves in a small Book called The whole Duty of Nations and another Dr. Isaac Barrow against Papal and all Foreign Jurisdiction published by Dr. Tillotson have spoken our thoughts so fully as that we only intreat you to take those for our sense and concurr with us therein for our common Peace and Safety We reverence all Councils so far as they have done good we are even for the Advice and Concord of Foreigners but not their Jurisdiction If you know the difference between an Assembly of Princes consulting for Peace and Concord and a Senate to govern all those Princes as their Subjects you will know the difference between our Reverence to Foreign Councils and the Obedience to them now challenged as the only way to avoid Schism I hope you will join with us in being called Schismaticks both to Italian and French Papists The great Instrument of such mens Design being to over-extol Councils called General and to hide their Miscarriages and so by false History to deceive their credulous party who cannot have while to search after the truth I took it to be my Duty to tell such men the truth out of the most credible Historians especially out of the Councils themselves as written by our greatest Adversaries that they may truly know what such Bishops and Councils have done Among others this exasperated a Writer by same called Mr. Morrice who would make men believe that I have wronged Councils and Bishops and falsified History and divers other accusations he brings to which I have tendered you mine Answer I have heard men reverence the English Synods who yet thought that the 5th 6th 7th 8th Excommunicating Canons and the late Engines to cast out 2000 Ministers proved them such to England as I will not denominate I have heard men reverence the present Ministry and Universities who yet have said that they fear more hurt from the worser part of them to England than they should do from an Army of Foreign Enemies whom we might resist I write much and in great weakness and haste and have not time for due perusal And my judgment is rather to do it when I think it necessary as I can than not at all And Mr. M. would make his Readers believe when he hath found a word of Theodorets hastily mistaken and Calami translated Quils and such matter for a few trifling cavils that he hath vindicated the Councils and Bishops and proved me a false Historian And can we have a harder censure of General Councils than his own Reverend Lords and Patrons pass upon them who tell us that there is but six of all the multitude to be owned If all the rest are to be rejected I think the faults of those six may be made known against their Designs who would bring us under a Foreign Jurisdiction by the art of over-magnifying General Conncils I confess these men have great advantage against all that such as I can say for they have got a sort of Followers who will take their words and are far from having will or wit impartially themselves to read the Hiflories and try the case but will swear that we are all Rogues and Schismaticks and unfit to be suffered And they have got young Reverend Priests who can cry away with them execute the Laws being conscious how much less able they are to confute us than the Gaoler is But this is but a Dream The morning is near when we shall all awake Perhaps you remember the jeasting story with which Sag●tar●us begins the Preface to his Metaphysicks Indeed the hysterical suffocating Vapours do ordinarily so work that in a place of Perfumes or sweetness the Women faint and swoun away as dead

a man to take that went through an Orchard Vineyard or Corn-field and what the Law of nature is and whether the Kings Army on whose strength the Safety of King Kingdom depends may not violently take food without the owners consent rather than perish will find it harder to justifie the denying Christendom and Communion to godly Persons that scruple our sort of God Fathers Crossing and Kneeling c. than to confute the aforesaid stealing or that which is meerly to save life 6. And as for Lying in cases of necessity No less men of their own party than Grotius de Jure Belli and Bishop Jer. Taylor in Duct Dubit have written for it And though I be against it and many Conformists for it yet I will not deny but if the Life of the King might be saved among Enemies by a Lie or the Life of a Patient by his Physicians deceiving him by a Lie much more may be pretended for it than for all the heinous sin which I fear § 7. And if these words be uncharitable Railing what means have we lest to give them that demand it the Reasons of our Nonconformity What if we had gone further and taken it for a crying Church Crime and called all the Clergy to Repentance If that which we judge sinful be not so let them confute us If it be so and as great as we fear is it not our duty to bewail it and mourn for it Ezek. 9. 4. Zeph. 3. 17 c. And is not mincing and extenuating great sin an implicit hardening men against Repentance Should one Preach against Adultery Fornication Perjury Murder as about a doubtful Controversie or a small thing and say but Good men are on both sides I dare not say it is a sin though I dare not do it my self Or if it be one it is but such as good men are ordinarily guilty of We must not judge one another What were this but worse than Eli to his Sons to cherish Sin and Preach Impenitence and serve Satan against the Evangelical Preaching of Repentance § 8. For my Judgment I profess it to be the duty of me and all men to use no Language of Good mens faults no though they turn Persecutors upon some particular Errour but what is consistent with true Love to the men and to cover their faults that are private and meerly personal as far as lawfully we may but not to make light of publick aggravated Crimes such as those of Hophni and Phinehas nor to shew indifferency towards Buyers and Sellers in the Temple nor to strengthen the Sin which threatneth a Land If I thought that hundreds or thousands of Christ's faithful Ministers in any Country were unjustly hunted and forbidden to Preach the Gospel to a People that truly need it and this to the unavoidable dividing of the People and the plain making way for a Forreign Jurisdiction I should take my self as a guilty hinderer of Repentance and Enemy to the Publick Safety if I should say only This is a doubtful Controversie between Good Wise and Learned men Labbe ends his To. 1. as justifying his bitterest Reproaches with the Authority of Christ Peter Paul John Jude Ignatius And if he had only given great and publick sins the true names necessary to mens knowledge of them for Repentance or Preservation those Texts and many more would have justified him CHAP. XIII Of his Supposition that I speak against all Bishops Councils § 1. THis is not so 1. I write oft for the great usefulness of Councils 2. I justly praise no small number of them especially before the great Rising of the Bishops for the first 300 or 400 years He once acknowledgeth it of the African Councils And he might have seen the like of many Spanish and some French and Germane Councils The English I little medled with 3. The First General Council at Nice I justly honour yea and the Three following and many more than three for the soundness of their Faith and as having many very laudable persons in them though I shew the ill effects of their contention and ambition I have heard some Conformists confess the great Learning and piety of the Westminister Synod in 1642. and of the Synod of Dort where we had Delegates and yet sharplier speak against the Acts of both by far than I have done by any such pious Persons Even they that have honoured Bishop Carlton Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Dr. Ward c. that were there have yet bitterly reproached the Decrees which they subscribed And how many as well as Dr Heylin have written and spoken ill of A. Bishop Usher of A. Bishop Abbot A. Bishop Grindai A. Bishop Parker yea of A. Bishop Whitguif● for the Lambeth-Articles which I justifie not who yet have a great honour both for Bishops and their Councils § 2. But I confess I am much of Nazianzen's mind and I think I am no more against them in the general than he was And I am against our subjection to the Jurisdiction of Forreign Councils and the use that the Pope and ambitious Clergy have made of them to become Masters of Princes and of the world I am not for Ebbo's French Council which deposed Ludov. Pius nor for making them either the Popes Army or the Army of Patriacks against each other or of such Princes as Constantius Valens Theodosius junior Anastasius Philippicus Justinian Irene c. to fulfill their own mistaken wills how honest soever the men might be Much less am I for such work as the Council at Later an sub Innoc. 3 made no nor that at Florence § 3 And I take it for an Act of great Prudence in this my accuser while he is vindicating Bishops Councils to go no further than the four first General when it is many hundred that I have mentioned And is it not really an intimated accusation of them to vindicate so few of above 400. And those such as for their faith we all own And yet a man would think by the strein of his style and language that it were at least the greater part of Conncils that he were pleading for I say still as Bishop Bilson and other Protestants Well ordered sound Councils we owe great respect and honour to for Counsel strength and Concord but subjection and Obedience saith he We owe Them none save as we are bid be all subject one to another and serve one another in Love § 4. And now I leave any impartial man to judge what answer such a book deserved which goeth upon all these forementioned untrue suppositions CHAP. XIV Some mens Credit about ancient Church History may be conjectured at by their Reports of the History of the time and place that we live in § 1. BY their History of late and present things we may conjecture at the Credit of not Mr. M's but others of the Clergy-accusers and Prosecutors of their Brethren Almost all that I remember that write against me agree in such misreporting matters of

once they perswade me to Reviews and Retractions Partly heaping up abundance of down right Falshoods Partly clipping Sentences and leaving out the part that should make them understood and turning true Words by perversion into Falshoods And partly by mixing this known Truth That I was on the Parliaments side and openly declared it But when at the new Model I saw that they changed their Cause I changed my Practice was from the Day that I went into the Army a resolved Opposer of all that they did to the Changing of the Government their Usurpation was sent among them to that end which was immediately after Naseby Fight And continued openly disowning the Usurpation and the Means that set it up And though I was Preaching and Writing against the said Usurpers when an Army was Fighting for them against the King and the King knew how to forgive and Honour them that did so much to his Restoration yet are the Accusers so far from forgiving those that never personally hurt a Man that they forbear not multiplying false Accusations yea and accusing those Ministers and private Men that never had to do with Wars Yea the same Men that then wrote against me for the Changers and Usurpers have since been the fierce Accusers of us that opposed them And if these Men be unsatisfyed of my present Judgment I have no hope of giving them Satisfaction if all will not do it which I have largely written in my Second Plea for Peace for Loyalty and against Rebellion and all my Confutation of Hooker's Politicks in the Last Part of my Christian Directory with much more But this Book must have if any a Peculiar Answer V. Lately when I taught my Hearers That we must not make the World believe that we are under greater Sufferings than we are nor be unthankful for our Peace and that we must when any hurt us love and forgive them and see that we fail not of our Duty to them but not forsake the owning and just defending by Scripture-Evidence the Truth opposed They Printed that I Bid the People Resist and not stand still and dye like Dogs And I was put the next Day to appeal to many Hundred Hearers who all knew that the Accusation was most impudent Lies This is our present Case VI. The Players I hope expect no Answer to their Part. London Printed for R. Janeway in Queens-Head-Alley in Pater-Noster-Row 1682. The General Part containing the Design and Sum of this and the former Book that it may be understood what it is that Mr. Morrice defendeth and opposeth and what it is that I maintain or blame and by what Evidence § 1. I Have been these forty years much troubled with the temptation to wonder why God suffers most of the World to lie drown'd in Ignorance Infidelity and Sensuality and the Church of Professed Christians to live in so great Scandal Contention Division and for the greater number in a Militant Enmity against the Word Will Way and Servants of Christ while in Baptism they are Listed under him But of late since Experience tells me of the marvelous Diversity of Humane Interests and Apprehensions and the deep Enmity of the Fleshly Mind to Spiritual things I admire the Wisdom and Providence of God that there is so much Order and Peace and Love in the World of Mankind as there is And that all men live not as in a continual War And I perceive that if God had not preserved by Common Grace some remnants of Moral Honesty in the World and had not also sanctified a peculiar People whose New Nature is LOVE the Sons of Men would have been far worse than Bears and Wolves to one another and a man would have fled with greater fear from the sight of another man than from a Snake or Tyger But God hath not left himself without witness in his Works and daily Providences and in the Consciences of those who have not sinned themselves into Brutes or Devils And hence it is that there is some Government and Order in the World and that sin is ashamed of its proper name and even they that live in Pride Covetousness Ambition Lying Persecution c. cannot endure to hear the name of that which they can endure to keep and practise and cannot endure to forsake § 2. And indeed it is a great Credit to Honesty and Piety to Truth and Love and Peace and Justice that the deadliest Enemies of them are ambitious of their Names and though they will damn their Souls rather than be such they will challenge and draw upon any man that denieth them to be such And I must profess that I fetch hence a great confirmation of the Immortality of Souls and a Future Life of Retribution For if there were not a very great difference between Moral Good and Evil what should make all the world even the worst of men be so desirous to be accounted Good and so impatient of being thought and called naught and as they deserve And if the difference be so vast here must there not needs be a Governour of the World that hath made such a difference by his Laws and Providence and who will make a greater difference hereafter when the End and Judgment cometh § 3. Among other Causes of Humane Pravity and Confusion one is the exceeding difficulty that young men meet with in the communication of so much Knowledge as they must necessarily receive from others Knowledge is not born with them It is but the power and capacity of it and not the act in which an Infant excels a Dog And how shall they have it but by Objects and Communication And Objects tell them not things past the Knowledge of which is necessary to make them understand things present and to come and without which it is not possible to be wise And God teacheth not Men now by Angels sent from Heaven but by Men that were taught themselves before and by his Spirit blessing mens endeavours And when I have said by Man how bad how sad a creature have I named Alas David's haste Psal 116. was not erroneous passion nor Paul's words Rom. 3. a slander when they called all men Lyers that is untrusty and so little do men know that must teach others and so much doth all corruption incline them to love flattering Lies and to take fleshly Interest the World and the Devil for their Teachers and to hate the Light because it disgraceth their hearts and deeds and so much goeth to make a man wise that it must be a wonder of merciful Providence that shall help young men to Teachers that shall not be their Deceivers There were ever comparatively few that were truly wise and trusty and these usually despised in the World § 4. And how should young men know who these are This is the grand difficulty that maketh the Errour of the World so uncurable It requireth much wisdom to know who is wise and to be trusted who can well