Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	dear_a	friend_n	love_v	2,516	5	5.8302	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B04785	A letter to Mr Penn with his answer.	Popple, William, d. 1708.; Penn, William, 1644-1718.	1688 (1688)	Wing P2964A; ESTC R187006	11,830	11

general Consequences of your particular Reproach I have said it already That the King His Honour His Government and even the Peace and Settlement of this whole Nation either are or have been concerned in this matter Your Reputation as you are said to have medled in publick Affairs has been of publick Concernment The promoting a General Liberty of Conscience having been your particular Province The Aspersion of Popery and Jesuitism that has been cast upon you has reflected upon His Majesty for having made use in that Affair of so disguised a Personage as you are supposed to have been It has also weakned the force of all your Endeavours obstructed their Effect and contributed greatly to disappoint this poor Nation of that inestimable Happiness and secure Establishment which I am perswaded you designed and which all good and wise Men agree that a just and inviolable Liberty of Conscience would infallibly produce I heartily wish this Consideration had been sooner laid to Heart and that some demonstrative Evidence of your Sincerity in the Profession you make had accompanied all your endeavours for Liberty But what do I say or what do I wish for I confess that I am now struck with Astonishment at that abundant Evidence which I know you have constantly given of the Opposition of your Principles to those of the Romish Church and at the little Regard there has been had unto it If an open Profession of the directest Opposition against Popery that has ever appeared in the World since Popery was first distinguished from common Christianity would serve the turn this cannot be denied to all those of that Society with which you are joyned in the Duties of Religious Worship If to have maintained the Principles of that Society by frequent and servent Discourses by many elaborate Writings by suffering Ignominy Imprisonment and other manifold Disadvantages in defence thereof can be admitted as any proof of your sincere Adherence thereunto this it is evident to the World you have done already Nay further If to have enquired as far as was possible for you into the particular Stories that have been framed against you and to have sought all means of rectifying the Mistakes upon which they were grounded could in any measure avail to the setling a true Character of you in mens Judgments this also I know you have done Dr. Tillot son For I have seen under the Hand of a Reverend Dean of our English Church a full acknowledgement of Satisfaction received from you in a suspiciou he had entertained upon one of those Stories and to which his Report had procured too great Credit And though I know you are averse to the publishing of his Letter without his express leave and perhaps may not now think fit to ask it yet I am so thoroughly assured of his Sincerity and Candor that I cannot doubt but he has already vindicated you in that matter and will according to his Promiss be still ready to do it upon all Occasions Nay I have seen also your Justification from another Calumny of common Fame about your having kidnapp'd one who had been formerly a Monk out of your American Province to deliver him here into the Hands of his Enemies I say I have seen your Justification from that Story under that Persons own Hand And his return to Pensylvania where he now resides may be an irrefragable Confutation of it to any that will take the pains to inquire thereinto Really it afflicts me very much to consider that all this does not suffice If I had not that particular respect for you which I sincerely profess yet I could not but be much affected that any man who had deservedly acquired so fair a Reputation as you have formerly had whose Integrity and Veracity had always been reputed spotless and whose Charity had been continually exercised in serving others at the dear expence of his Time his Strength and his Estate without any other Recompence than what results from the consciousness of doing good I say I could not but be much affected to see any such Person fall innocently and undeservedly under such unjust Reproaches as you have done It is a hard case and I think no man that has any Bowels of Humanity can reslect upon it without great Relentings Since therefore it is so and that something remains yet to be done something more express and especially more publick than has yet been doue for your Vindieation I beg of you Dear Sir by all the tender Efficacy that Friendship either mine or that of all your Friends and Relations together can have upon you by the due Regard which Humanity and even Christianity obliges you to have to your Reputation by the Duty you owe unto the King by your Love unto the Land of your Nativity and by the Cause of Universal Religion and Eternal Truth Let not the Scandal of Infincerity that I have hinted at lye any longer upon you but let the Sense of all these Obligations perswade you to gratifie your Friends and Relations and to serve your King your Country and your Religion by such a publick Vindication of your Honour as your own Prudence upon these Suggestions will now shew you to be most necessary and most expedient I am with unfeigned and most respectful Affection London October the 20th 1688. Honoured Sir Your most humble and most obedient Servant Mr. PENN's ANSWER To the foregoing LETTER Worthy Friend IT is now above twenty Years I thank God that I have not been very solicitous what the World thought of me For since I have had the Knowledge of Religion from a Principle in my Self the first and main Point with me has been to approve my Self in the sight of God through Patience and Welldoing so that the World has not had weight enough with me to suffer its good Opinion to raise me or its ill Opinion to deject me And if that had been the only Motive or Consideration and not the desire of a good Friend in the name of many others I had been as silent to thy Letter as I use to be to the Idle and Malitious Shams of the Times But as the Laws of Friendstip are sacred with those that value that Relation so I confess this to be a Principle One with me not to deny a Friend the sattisfaction he defires when it may be done without offence to a good Conscience The Business chiefly inlisted upon is my Popepery and endeavours to promote it I do say then and that with all Sincerity that I am not only no Jesuit but no Papist And which is more I never had any Temptation upon me to be it either from doubts in my own mind about the way I profess or from the discourses or writings of any of that Religion And in the Presence of Almighty God I do declare that the King did never once directly or indirectly attack me or tempt me upon that Subject the many Years that I have had the Advantage of a free

my constant Zeal for an Impartial Liberty of Conscience But if that be it the Cause is too good to be inpain about it I ever understood That to be the natural Right of all men and that he that had a Religion without it his Religion was none of his own For what is not the Religion of a mans choice is the Religion of him that imposes it So that Liberty of Conscience is the first Step to have a Religion This is no new Opinion with me I have writ many Apologies within the last twenty Years to defend it and that impartially Yet I have as constantly declared that Bounds ought to be set to this Freedom and that Morality was the best and that as often as That was violated under a pretence of Conscience it was fit the Civil Power should take place Nor did I ever once think of promoting any sort of Liberty of Conscience for any body which did not preserve the Common Protestancy of the Kingdom and the Antient Rights of the Government For to say Truth the one cannot be maintained without the other Upon the whole matter I must say I love England I ever did so and that I am not in her Debt I never valued Time Money or Kindred to serve her and do her good No Party could ever byass me to her Prejudice nor any Personal Interest oblige me in her wrong For I always abhor'd discounting Private Favours at the Publicks Cost Would I have made my Matket of the Fears and Jealousies of People when this King came to the Crown I had put Twenty Thousand Pounds into my Pocket and a Hundred Thousand into my Province For mighty numbers of People were then upon the Wing But I wav'd it all hop'd for better Times expected the Effects of the Kings Word for Liberty of Conscience and Happiness by it and till I saw my own Friends with the Kingdom deliver'd from the Legal Bondage which Penal Laws for Religion had subjected them to I could with no Satisfaction think of leaving England though much to my Prejudice beyond Set and at my great Expence here having in all this time never had either Office or Pension and refusing ever the Rewards or Gratuities of those I have been able to oblige If therefore an Vniversal Charity if the asserting an Impartial Liberty of Conscience if doing to others as one would be done by and an open avowing and steady practising of these things in all times to all Parties will justly lay a Man under the Reflection of being a Jesuit or Papist of any Rank I must not only submit to the Character but imbrace it too And I care not who knows I can wear it with more Pleasure than it is possible for them with any Justice to give it me For these are Corner Stones and Principles with me and I am scandalized at all Buildings that have them not for their Foundations For Religion it self is an empty Name without them A Whited-Wall a Painted-Sepulchre No Life or Virtue to the Soul No good or Example to ones Neighbour Let us not flatter our Selves We can never be the better for our Religion if our Neighbour he the worse for it Our fault is we are apt to be mighty hot upon speculative Errors and break all Bounds in our Resentments but we let practical ones pass without Remark if not without Repentance As if a mistake about an obscure Proposition of Faith were a greater evil than the breach of an undoubted Precept Such a Religion the Devils themselves are not without for they have both Faith and Knowledge but their Faith doth not work by Love nor their Knowledge by Obedience And if this be their Judgment can it be our Blessing Let us not then think Religion a litigious thing nor that Christ came onely to make us good Disputants but that he came also to make us good Livers Sincerity goes farther than Capacity It is Charity that deservedly excels in the Christian Relegion And happy would it be if where Vnity ends Charity did begin instead of Envy and Railing that almost ever follow It appears to me to be the way that God has found out and appointed to moderate our Differences and make them at least harmless to Society and therefore I confess I dare not aggravate them to Wrath and Blood. Our Disagreement lies in our Apprehension or belief of things and if the common Enemy of Mankind had not the governing of our Affections and Passions that Disagreement would not prove such a Canker as it is to Love and Peace in Civil Societies He that suffers his Difference with his Neighbour about the other World to carry him beyond the Line of Moderation in this is the worse for his Opinion even though it be true It is too little considered by Christians that men may hold the Truth in Vnrightcousness that they may be Orthodox and not know what Spirit they are of So were the Disciples of our Lord. They believed in him yet let a false Zeal do violence to their Judgment and their unwarrantable heat contradict the great end of their Saviours coming Love. Men may be angry for God's sake and kill People too Christ said it and too many have practised it But what sort of Christians must they be I pray that can hate in his Name who bids us love and kill for his sake that forbids killing and commands love even to Enemies Let not Men or Parties think to shift it off from themselves 'T is not this Principle or that Form to which so great a Defection is owing but a degeneracy of Mind from God. Christianity is not at Heart No Fear of God in the inward parts No aw of his Divine Omnipresence Self prevails and breaks out more or less through all Forms but too plainly Pride Wrath Lust Avarice so that though People say to God Thy Will be done they do their own Which shews them to be true Heathens under a mask of Christianity that believe without Works and repent without forsaking busie for Forms and the Temporal Benefits of them while true Religion which is to Visit the Fatherless and the Widow and to keep our selves unspotted from the World goes barefoot and like Lazarus is despised Yet this was the Definition the Holy Ghost gave of Religion before Synods and Councils had the meddling with it and modeling of it In those days Bowels were a good part of Religion and that to the Fatherless and Widow at large We can hardly now extend them to those of our own way It was said by him that could not say amiss Because Iniquity abounds the Love of many waxes cold What soever divides man's Heart from God separates it from his Neighbour and he that loves self more than God can never love his Neighbour as himself For as the Apostle said if we do not love him whom we see how can we love God whom we have not seen O that we could see some men as eager to turn People