Selected quad for the lemma: master_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
master_n	call_v	good_a	servant_n	2,802	4	6.4698	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67472	Love and truth in two modest and peaceable letters concerning the distempers of the present times / written from a quiet and conformable citizen of London to two busie and factious shop-keepers in Coventry.	Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.	1680 (1680)	Wing W673; ESTC R38020	26,280	37

Bishop only because he is learned and condition with him not to preach or make a Doctor of the Civil Law a Bishop who is not in Orders and should not preach but govern which I think he may do what is this to you or your Party You ought to consider this and that the Bishops Revenues was never theirs nor yours nor your Predecessors nor can any man now living claim it for his It is only and most certainly Gods given to him by our Kings Predecessors and our King appoints who shall govern the Church under him and have the Churches Revenue for their reward More might be added but I am as weary of saying this as you will be to read it Now for Preaching I praise God I understand my duty both to him and my neighbour the better by hearing of Sermons And though I be defective in the performance of both for which I beseech Almighty God to pardon me yet I had been a much worse Christian if I had not frequented the blessed Ordinance of Preaching which has convinced me of my many sins past and begot such terrours of Conscience as have begot in me holy resolutions to amend my life and earnest Prayers to Almighty God the giver of all grace to enable me by his grace to perform those holy resolutions This benefit and many other like benefits I and other Christians have had by Preaching And God forbid we should ever use it so or so provoke him by our other sins as to withdraw this blessed Ordinance from us or trun it into a curse by preaching Heresie and Schism which too many have done in the late time of Rebellion and indeed now do in many Conventicles and their Auditors think such Preaching is serving God when God knows it is contrary For can you think to sit an hour in a warm Room upon an easie seat your head covered your mind at rest and your malicious humour pleased to hear your Governours scandalized and with their scandals some new needless Notions offered to your consideration and then their truth or falshood left for you to judge and determine Can you think you are at this time scrving God or satisfying your own curiosity or malicious humour doubtless not serving God Nay let it be granted that you hear nothing but truth preach'd yet I question whether the direction how you should honour and serve God be honouring and serving him For example If a Master calls his Servant and gives him positive directions what he shall do the day following and the Servant hears him with good attention but neglects to do what he is directed Can you think the hearing his Masters direction is serving him No doubtless it is not it is granted he could not have known his Masters will without hearing it but he serves him not by hearing his direction but doing his Will And the like may be observed concerning your magnifying extemp●rary Prayer by gifted men in publick and contempt of the Church Liturgy The first of which you call praying by the Spirit but doubtless it was an evil Spirit that John Lilbourn Hugh Peters and many others of your Party prayed by in the days of Cromwel the Tyrant when they prayed to God to prolong his life to streugthen his Arm and inable him with zeal and courage to perfect what he had so happily begun and make a thorow Reformation in the Church and whole Nation And in the same Prayer to libel our late vertuous King by praying to God that if he had not wholly withdrawn his grace and given him over to a reprobate sense that he would at last bring him back from his present evil Council to his great Council the present godly Parliament Thus or to this purpose was that pious and prudent King libelled in your publick extemporary Prayers and the Tyrant magnified by those that were so shameless as to call themselves the godly Party And many well-meaning people were so beguiled as to say Amen to what was thus prayed And by this means the Church Liturgy came to be abhorred by some and neglected by almost all And can you think praying thus and appointing God in their Prayers what he was to do for them and their Cause and when and by what manner and means he was to do it was honouring and serving him No doubtless God forbid that private Christians should be so tied to set Forms of Prayer as not in their retired and private devotions to make their private Confessions of their private sins to the searcher of all hearts and beg their pardon of him and pray extempore for such a measure of his assisting grace so to strengthen them that they may never relapse into those or the like sins This doubtless is to honour and serve God but this is but to honour and serve him privately And if I be mistaken in my private Prayers my mistakes concern only my self and end there But it is not so in your Publick extemporray Prayers the mischief is not ended when the Prayers are And that these should justle out the well-known and approved Prayers of the Church which were composed and so pathetically and properly worded by the assistance of Gods Spirit in many of those blessed Martyrs and Consessors whom he made his Instruments to settle and resorm the Church of England from the gross Corruptions of that of Rome I say that you and your Party should not when you consider this grieve to think it was done by you is to me a wonder and I praise God that he makes me look upon it with a thankful detestation And now good Cosin give me leave to tell you as I did your Brother in a Letter writ some years past what I do or ought in duty to do when I make my self a Member of any Christian Congregation assembled to pay reverence to Almighty God and pray and praise him according to the Injunction and Custom of our Church First We all do I am sure they that know best and are most devout do all kneel and as many as well may with their faces toward the East and in that order and humble posture and with one consent all make their general and humble Confession of their unworthiness to appear before God by reason of their many and grievous sins past And we beg pardon for them and his grace to serve him the remaining part of our lives with more purity and holiness And having confest and prayed thus if the Searcher of all hearts does bear witness with us that this Confession and these Prayers be sincere and that our purpose is to amend our lives and obey him better We do and may put on a modest confidence that he will assist us with his grace and be assured that he is at peace with us and loves us And this being done in an humble and ardent manner we proceed to laud and magnifie our God in a joynt repeating a part of the Psalms which are all composed of gratitude

Communion To which the Fathers reply was A man may live in an inficted City and not have the Plague My Judgment and publick Practice in Religion are both so well known here and at Rome and both to my danger and damage that I may continue in it with more safety than others And separation may be a sin in me who Judge the unity of the Church in which I was baptized and confirmed and the peace of the State in which I was born to be preforred before my private opinion interest or satisfaction and I think to commit a Schisin and separate from that Church would make me guilty of the sin of a Scandal justly given and therefore live in it and die in it I must though it be the impurest of Christian Churches But let him that now is not of it never be of that Church which is so far departed from the Primitive purity and now maintained only by splendour and the maxims and practice of polity If you doubt the truth of this relation I will give you unquestionable confirmation of it at our next meeting It has been longer than I intended and I beg your pardon and beg you also to consider with what inconsiderable zeal you and your Party rush into Schism and give just cause of Scandal by opposing Government and affronting that Church in which you were born and baptized and I hope confirmed by a Bishop I think the doing so requires your sad and serious consideration For if there be such sins as Schism and Scandal and if there were not they could not have names in Scripture then give me leave to tell you I cannot but wonder that you and the scruple-mongers of your Party should rush into them without any tenderness or scruple of Conscience And here let me tell you the Church of England which you oppose enjoyns nothing contrary to Gods Word and hath summed up in her Creeds and Catechism what is necessary for every Christian to know and to do And can you that are a Shop-keeper or private man think that you are fit to teach and judge the Church or the Church fit to teach and judge you Or can you think the safety or peace of the State or Church in which you live should depend upon the scruples and mistakes of a party of the Common People whose indiscreet and active zeal makes them like the restless Scribes and Pharisees Mat. 13. 15 who compass Sea and Land to get Parties to be of their opinions and by that means beget confusion in both No doubtless Common reason will not allow of this belief for a liberty to preach and persuade to your dangerous Principles would enflame the too hot and furious zeal of so many of your Party and beget so many more restless and dangerous contentions that there could be neither quiet or safety in a Nation but by keeping a standing Army which I know you detest and from the cause of which God deliver us I have told you often that Samuel says 1 Sam. 15. 23. Rebellion is like the sin of Witchcraft and I cannot tell you too often that Schism is too like that mysterious sin for when the fire of Schism and Rebellion is kindled no man knows where it will end Consider this and remember that St. Jude accounts them that make Sects to be fleshly and not to have the Spirit of God which too many of your Fraternity pretend to And now after so long seriousness give me liberty to be so pleasant as to tell you a Tale by which I intend not to provoke you but to explain my meaning There was a North-Country man that came young and poor to London to seek that which he call'd his fortune and it proved to be an Hostler in an Inn of good note in that City in which condition he continued some years and by diligence and frugality get and saved so much money that in time he became the Master of that Inn. And not long after his arrival to that happiness he sent for three of his Neeces one to serve him in his Kitchin and the other two did serve for some years in a like condition in other houses 'till mine Host their Unkle died who at his death left to each of them a hundred pound to buy each of them a North-Country Husband and also to each of them ten pound to buy new Cloaths and bear their charges into the North to see their Mother The three Sisters resolved to go together and the day being appointed two of them bought very fantastical Cloaths and as gaudy Ribbands intending thereby to be noted and admired but the third was of a more frugal humour yet aimed at admiration too and said she would save her money wear her old Cloaths and yet be noted and get reputation at a cheaper rate For she would hold some singular new fantastical opinion in Religion and thereby get admirers and as many as they should and it proved so And doubtless this is the Ambition of many Women Shop-keepers and other of the Common People of very mean parts who would not be admired or noted if they did not trouble themselves and others by holding some odd impertinent singular opinions And tell me freely do not you think that silence would become our Cosin Mrs. B than to talk so much and so boldly against those Clergy-men and others that bow at the Altar she says to the Altar and use other like reverence in Churches where she and her Party are so familiar with God as to use none And concerning which let me tell you my thoughts and then leave you to judge Almighty God in the Second Commandment says he would have none to bow down or worship a graven Image Intimating as I suppose a Jealousie lest that reverence or worship which belongs only to him be ascribed or given to an Idol or Image But that reverence and worship does belong to him and was always paid to him is to me manifest by what the Prophet David says Psal. 5. I will in thy fear worship towards thy holy Temple And again I will praise thy name and worship towards thy holy Temple And again Psal. 132. 138. O let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord These and many more might be urged out of the Old Testament And in the New you may see it is a duty to worship God First St. Paul says Heb. 13. 10. We have an Altar And you may note Rev. 22. 9. where the Angel that had shewed St. John a Vision forbad him to fall down to him but bad him fall down and worship God And again Chap. 14. 7. Worship him that made heaven and earth I omit more Testimonies which might be multiplied and shall tell you next that Churches are sacred and not to be used prophancely For you may note that our Saviour did with a divine indignation whip the money-changers out of the Temple for polluting it and said His house should be