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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	glory_n	grace_n	lord_n	4,464	5	3.7966	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41707	The primitive Christian justified and Jack Presbyter reproved, or, A scripture demonstration, that to be innocent and persecuted is more eligible than to be prosperously wicked delivered in a sermon in the Abby-Church of Bath by William Goulde.	Gould, William, d. 1686.	1682 (1682)	Wing G1441; ESTC R9434	18,041	33

I out of my mothers womb and naked shall I return thither c. and the same effect Affliction wrought in the late Martyr'd King of England who as he imitated the Piety so he had the troubles of David I shall not want saith he the heavy and envyed Crowns of this World when my God hath mercifully crowned and consummated his Graces with glory and exchang'd the shadows of my earthly Kingdoms among men for the substance of that heavenly Kingdom with himself Thus Afflictions wean us from the World and bring us nearer to God but Sin and the World are a Kin and of a blood and Sin is a departure from God the Lord saith to sinners you are departed and gone your iniquities have separated between you and your God as the Prophet Isaiah expresseth it 4. We are full of Worldly mindedness adhaesit pavimento as David spake but in another sense our soul cleaveth to the dust we all complain the World is naught and so it is the whole World lyeth in wickedness and yet as bad as it is it finds an entertainment in our hearts proportionably to our outward Prosperities the faster Riches and Honours and other Vanities increase the more eagerly we pursue and dote on these Transitory things 'T is Affliction that takes off their seeming pleasantness and imbitters the lusciousness of them to our taste that we have any apprehension at all of the Vanity of the World is due to those vexations of Spirit that are interwoven with it 5. To be innocent and to be Afflicted is the body and soul of Christianity its self I John your Brother and partaker of tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus said good St. John These were the Titles and Ornaments of his profession that is to say I John your fellow Christian for the former descant this is the plain Song Love is the Soul of Christianity and the soul of Love is Suffering God hath given a single Blessing to other graces but a double to this it is a double kindness we receive at Gods hands first to be Innocent and then to be persecuted with Jesus Christ The Church is like Moses his Bush when it is all on fire it is not at all consumed but made full of Miracle full of Splendor and full of God and unless we can find something that God cannot turn into Joy if he so please we have reason not only with the well instructed Heathens to be patient under but with St. Paul to rejoice exceedingly in Tribulation not to think a Fiery Tryal strange but rejoice that we are partakers of Christs Sufferings as St. Peter Paul's beloved Brother and our fellow Souldier under the banner of the Cross exhorts us and proportionably his brother James My Brethren Count it all joy when ye fall into divers Temptations Take the Prophets saith St. James as an example of Suffering Afflictions but Jesus Christ is beyond all these for he suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps These things considered is it not a barbarous thing for a grave Society of men to press their Sovereign wholly to lay aside the Rightful Successor of his Crown by the Laws of Heaven which is the doing evil to commit a known Sin to secure thereby the Protestant Religion that is that good may thence come or rather that the Zeal-drunk Presbyterian who prefers Rebellion before Martyrdom may not run the hazard of shewing himself no Christian by remonstrating against suffering Persecution A Papist cannot be a worse King than a Nero or Dioclesian and when St. Paul said we should stand to our Faith to imagine he intended we should stand to our Arms is a new and strange Interpretation But the Mischief is deeper yet for we cannot Disinherit this Gentleman but by a known Principle of the Court of Rome That Grace gives a a title to Dominion and accordingly the Pope disposeth of an Heretick Kingdom and barrs the Successor and gives it to another Man of his own nomination and to the next of the Line if he be of the Romish Perswasion and with what Conscience can these men mutatis mutandis press the King to an imitation of the Pope of Rome whilst they condemn in this very point his unjust Usurpation When St. Paul preached Obedience to the Higher Powers and the Primitive Christians prayed that the Father might be succeeded by the Son or the next of the Blood and Line could they be supposed to mean unless he were of this or that Religion and then it should be lawful to Disinherit them He that maintains such a point in a Parliamentary Session and at the same time calls himself a Christian is not so well qualified for Westminster as Bedlam The Doctrine of taking away the Right of Succession came from Rome the Pope had it from the Devil without question for St. Peter his pretended Predecessor taught no such thing but quite contrary exhorts all Christians and so includes the Presbyterian to endure the Fiery Tryal and rejoyce in being partakers of Christs sufferings now Christ came to give us an Heavenly not to take away any mans earthly Crown and accordingly as he knew no Sin so he underwent all sorts of Affliction He that saith I will not have this man to Reign because a Papist or a Puritan or saith this is the Heir let us by all means bar him of Possession is a much worse Christian than he that saith It is the Lord let him doe as it pleaseth him I will bear his Indignation because I have sinned against him This is the present Question under debate with reference to the Succession and not the Fighter for Reformation but the Patient under God's Correction is the best Defender of Christ Religion I can and will prove against all the Papists and Sectaries in Christendom I ask the Presbyterian these Questions and request an Answer to them 1. Doth the wrath of man work the Righteousness of God 2. Doth the Saviour of the World who came to save us from Sin not from Affliction stand in need of the sinful man to promote his Religion or the Interest of his Kingdom 3. Did Christ teach us by his Example or Doctrine to prefer Rebellion before Martyrdom and is not the contrary Position equal to a Mathematical Demonstration 4. Can the Pope in Cathedra or Pope Populus in Parliament by voting Evil good and Good evil sanctifie an unlawful action done with a good intention If these things be so I require him to prove it if not St. Paul's Doctrine will be found Billa vera in the Court of Heaven That we may not commit a present known Sin to avoid a future probable Persecution all the Bills Votes and Resolves of Froward men to the contrary notwithstanding I understand not the over-looking the lawfulness to pass to the expedience of the thing for Strafford lost his Head to please the Faction and then it was Voted on again by making it no President for the Peers of the Kingdom Suppose it be his Majesties judgement and perswasion as he hath declared that he cannot give consent to the Bill of Exclusion Is it either Religion or good Manners my Brethren to perswade our lawful Sovereign against St. Paul's advice which the Presbyterians quote sometimes to serve their own Interest and Turn Whatsoever is not of Faith is Sin Have not Princes Consciences as well as other men and may they not as well plead their Judicium discretionis who are only responsable to the God of Heaven as any private person who is and ought to be accountable both to God and Man Is it not sufficient for his Majesty to say what his Father Exemplified better one Man unjustly perish than the People be displeased is a fallacious Maxim especially considering the late King's conclusion hereupon I see it a bad exchange to wound a mans own Conscience thereby to salve State sores to calm the storms of Popular Discontents by stirring up a Tempest in a mans own bosome I hope the Commons of England will never arrive to that Insolence as to answer with Bradshaw to their Sovereign your Reasons Sir are not to be heard against the Supream Jurisdiction of this Nation and yet they have lately huss'd their Brethren and made them do Penance for being Jury-men and pay excessive Fees for no crime under the notion of Abhorrers of Petitioning And now we are upon the Petitioning point I remember a passage in Mr. Calamies Sermon Preached in 1645. at Michael Basing-Shaw London to the Lord Mayor and his Brethren when the Solemn League and Covenant was Renued with Prayer and Fasting You have saith Holderforth shot one Arrow already shoot another and if that miscarry shoot another He that cuts down a Tree though he cut it not down at the first or second blow yet the first and second blow prepare to the speeding blow that cuts it down You have delivered one Petition deliver another if that miscarry deliver another the speeding Petition will come at last That is in plain English Worry out your Prince with perpetual Noise and Clamours give him no rest till he submit to your Requests What this Fellow Preached in 1645. hath been practised for two years past yet must not I say so during the sitting of the Commons for fear of a Reprimand in such language as was never given a Priest by Imperial Princes But I bless God I have the spirit of an English man and my Knees due to God and the King shall never be yielded up to Usurpers come what will come Hanging Burning or any other or all the Torments that exercised the Patience of the Primitive Christians and herein I shew my self a Protestant whose great Principle it is rather than Sin to chuse Affliction FINIS

Will ye speak wickedly for God or talk deceitfully for him If not for the glory of God then not for an inferiour End not for the saving of a Life or the peace of a State Nay as Anselm Austin and others observe we should rather hazard the Salvation of mankind than commit a sin to save it If St. Paul say true and 't is hard to say he does not Damnation is due to such as do a present evil upon the prospect of a future good Rom. 3. 8. Suppose there were Presidents to justifie a Bill of this nature by the Laws of England shall humane Laws evacuate the Laws of God How often hath Jack-Presbyter the framer of that Bill pleaded that God must be obeyed rather than man c. Let him stand to his own Argument or give a Reason for the why not 't is strange to me that men calling themselves Protestants can be guilty of such Votes as these which are disowned by the true Protestant Religion by Law established in this best of Reformed Churches I am neither Papist nor Popishly affected but I assert a true Protestant Principle founded on Holy Writ that Sin is not to be elected if there be no other expedient left to avoid being Persecuted As for the distinction which some make that we may not do evil that good may come that is not for a private good end but we may for a publique benefit I have not so learned Christ I thank God and I desie the Jesuitical and Presbyterian Brotherhood to give me one Scripture Text or any one sound Reason to justifie that Distinction aforesaid and till that be done let the lawful Successor be Zealot for the interest either of Kirk or Conclave as I will not reade Mass nor swallow the Covenant so I will not Rebell against the Ordinance of God but leave God to govern his own World Who restrains the spirit of Princes and is wonderful among the Kings of the earth God who turns the hearts of Kings as the rivers of Water as it pleaseth himself the God who remembers mercy in his wrath and punisheth less than our sins deserved and this was the judgment and practice of the Saints and Churches Apostolically Primitive A Parisian Masacre a Guiscan League a Powder Treason a Covenant Reformation a Spanish Inquisition House and an English High Court of Justice the fighting for Reformation and bidding Defiance to Heaven by whom Kings reign these are Abominations so scandalous and Antichristian as do non-plus Hyperbolies and silence Invention and next to these there is scarce any thing more Criminal than the equally sinful and ridiculous Bill against the Succession of his Royal Highness in case he survive the King to the Crown and Sceptre of this Nation I wish the King may out-live his Brother and put a Period to this Question but I believe the framers of that Bill had a farther Design than the Dukes person and am clearly of opinion that there is both a Popish Plot and a Presbyterian one at this time against the Church or the King or both in Conjunction and hath been more or less so ever since the Reformation and I am heartily sorry that since Papists and Presbyterians call themselves Christians that by their Seditious Principles and Actions they should rather seem Proselytes to Mahomet the Victorious than to the Humble Innocent and Persecuted Jesus and yet that the latter Saints should be so far insensible of this as to call all that will not concur with them in their actions Tantyvies and Tories and French Pensioners is very insolently Ridiculous 2. Afflictions are the Exercises of our Graces as Faith Patience Humility and Charity in which Christ in his life who was a man of Sorrows and acquainted with Griefs was pleased to be exemplary to us and we should and ought to look up to this Jesus who endured the Cross c. Heb. 12. 2. 't is an excellent Expression of Charles the Martyr to his Son our Sovereign this advantage you have above other Princes that you have begun and now spent some years in the experience of Troubles and exercise of Patience wherein Piety and all Vertues are commonly better planted to a thriving as Trees set in Winter than in the warmth and serenity of Times He gives instance in David and Rehoboam the one prepared by many Afflictions for a flourishing Kingdom the other unsoftned by the unparallel'd prosperity of the Court of Solomon and this is indeed the great advantage of Afflictions above earthly Greatness that this last makes us Proud and Insolent and to say who is the Lord and by the other our graces are exercised and increased Ye have heard of the patience of Job saith St. James but we had never heard of any such thing but for his afflictions and we have heard of Job saith though he kill me yet will I trust in him but this was the fruit of his patience in suffering St. Stephen's Charity had never been upon Record for our imitation but for his Persecution Had the old Army of Martyrs took up Arms against their Emperors being Heathens instead of being Patient and Charitable and Humble and Meek like men that understood Christ's Religion they had neither been Presidents to us nor found for themselves a place in Heaven The assaults of Affliction may be terrible like Sampson's Lyon but they yield much sweetness to those who can encounter and overcome who know how to out-live the witherings of their Gourds without Discontent or Peevishness whilst they may yet converse with God as the Royal Martyr Charles the First rarely expresseth it 3. Afflictions wean us from the World and bring us nearer to God and Sin makes us earthly minded and makes a separation between God and us The sufferings of the Saints are the summ of Christian Philosophy they are sent to wean us from the vanities and affections of this World and create in us strong desires after Heaven whilst God here treates us rudely that we may long to be in our Country where God shall be our Portion and Angels our Companions and Christ our perpetual Feast and never ceasing Joy the entertainment of all injured and patient Sufferers Oh Death how bitter art thou to a man that is at ease and rest in his Possessions but he that is uneasy in his Body and unquiet in his Fortunes vexed in his Person and discompos'd in his Designs who here finds no pleasure or rest he will be glad and rejoice to fix his heart where he shall have the full of his desires and what can only make him partaker of real Happiness As long as the waters of Persecution are upon the earth the Allusion is pardonable I conceive so long we dwell in the Ark but where the Land is dry the Dove its self will be tempted to a wandring course of life and never return to her house of safety this blessed effect afflictions had upon Job in making him bid adieu to the World Naked came