Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	church_n	doctrine_n	england_n	6,989	5	6.3346	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B03939	An English answer to the Scotch speech. Shewing the intollerableness of tolleration in matters of religion. And converting each argument in that speech to its most reasonable, genuine, and proper use, and each paragraph into an argument against its author. / By W.K., a lover of loyalty, truth and tranquility ; and one who accounts it a dignity, as well as duty, to be an obedient son of the Church of England.	W. K., fl. 1668	1668 (1668)	Wing K23B; ESTC R217294	11,450	17

Strife Intestine Discords which burst forth into Civill Warr and in short time bring Kings and Kingdomes to their last Periods Therefore that matters may not arise to such a heighth of insolency and that the Seditious Spirit of 40 and 48 which did then imbrue the Land in Blood may not again be encouraged by Connivance and Indulgence without dissembling my thoughts I cannot but averr That the preservation of the Lawes Ecclesiasticall and Civill Inviolable and Entire and a due care to quicken and Execute them will be the best way to preserve the Peace and promote the Unity of this Land and Nation I hold it the desire of none but Persons Jesuitted to Wish for the Free-Exercise of two Religions for under the pretence and shadow of them the common Peace of the Subject will be torn in peices And certainly your Magisteriall Doctor his Interrogation is altogether destitute of wisdom and truth For though like a simple sophister you seem to deny it Wisdom may devise a Penalty for Separatists whose Principles do not lead them directly to Rebellion that is neither Death nor Banishment for these two are not immediate opposites and therefore the Proposition is pitifull and fallacious there being a Medium between them viz a Pecuniary Mulct or lighter Corporal Punishments But it is the Trick of these Scriblers like their Father the Devil Fortiter Calumniari and to Exasperate the People by telling them what Cruelties they must expect and what Torments are Decreed hoping thereby to excite them to Rebellion under the Specious Pretence of Liberty and Self-preservation But though I must freely say as to the Promoters of a Religion differing in Fundamentalls from the Doctrine of the Gospel and introducing another Supreme Head of the Church that those two Punishments are most fit for them and deserved by them yet as to those who only differ in Circumstance and Ceremonies from the Church of England there is another way not as yet thought on by our addle-headed Reprinter viz. to let them be tollerated as to living conversing and injoying liberty amongst us but let them be fined for the neglect of Divine Service and their verbose Teachers discountenanced and silenced and this I take to be a way different farr from that which is here proposed But these men love to scare the people into sedition and to make them believe that death is threatned and many evils invented which were never thought of by any but themselves And whereas this opinion of the conveniences of inflicting penalties for Non-conformity to ceremonies may seem to interfere with that rule of Quod tibi sieri non vis c. It will easily be rejoyned though that Axiome always is of force in commutative justice yet I presume it is not so in that we call distributive which comprehends the affairs of Superiours with Inferiours because inferiours are not competent judges in the case till the tables be turn'd and themselves supposed the power offended and then they have determined the case to our hands even then when their authority was altogether unlawful and no other then a notorious usurpation and divellish Tyranny So soon as a Prince begins upon the insolencie and impudence of some obstinate dissenters to comply with the Traitors and condescend to their Petitions He gives them an incouragement the more to plague and pester him with Petitions Declarations Remonstrances c. And shall find which I pray God avert from this Nation that they will never leave inching and asking till they have justled and pusht him out of his Throne And here again we have the Presbyterian knack of lying for as soon as the Prince denies to them who have deserved death an interest in his peculiar favour and kindness they presently exclaim that he spoils banishes kills and burns his people for matters abstract from sense and altogether Spiritual when as in truth and reality he onely frowns on them and checks them for disobedient contumacy to his Laws and Edicts and their clancular endeavour to set Church and State into uproar and combustion rather than submit to what they acknowledge indifferent It is a very great and malicious errour in you Master reprinter to affirm the discountenancing of Regecides or at least the ringleaders to that barbarous inhumanity a persecuting of them for an opinion of Piety and for matters of Faith And unless you take faith in a very loose sense you cannot here be excused from being the Papists advocate who are latitudinarians in Faith in a contrary sense to them that are so in conformity for whilst those will do something these will believe all things whose cause I dare say was never promoted by suffering themselves but causing all dissenters from it to suffer The compliance of their doctrine with mens carnal interests being a cogent argument to the Libertine to embrace it and therefore your argument here being very insignificant deserves no further answer But if by matters of faith you mean ceremonies of Religion and the perswasions of men about things indifferent you then broach a Lye for the interest of the Presbyter for you never yet knew any condemned to death for any such dissent nor any number gained to the factious party by the obstinate sufferings of a vain-glorious Pyrgopollinices But it is the frequent practice of these seditious scriblers to amuse men with brags of their Proselytes and boasts of their number hoping thereby to affright their Superiours into a complyance with their Petitions Now how it can consist with the prudence of a Parliament to be Hectored and Hufft into a yielding to the factious whose very natures and notions strike at Supremacy I do not understand It would surely be no great errour of State to endeavour the transplanting of turbulent and implacable Spirits For though I question not but that the men you plead for are inveterate enemies to their native Countrey yet there is certainly some probable hopes that these artists of sedition might do us a courtesie in making uproares abroad as they have done at home Neither is this Good Sir an extravagant fancy for your Beloved Sir H. Vane that Baronet of Babel had in some few months almost set the whole Plantation of Concistorian New England into as bad a combustion as you did this of Old But however suppose we should fail of our hopes in this yet sure it is far better if their enmity be implacable to have our enemies abroad then to have them at home a Swelling in the Arm or an exterior Boil is nothing so dangerous as an impostume or an ulcer neer the Heart or in the Kidneys I cannot but think Sir you have taken up Arms and profess open hostility to sound reason In that you tell us here in a settled Kingdom where the interests of the Church are intricately interwoven with those of the State that Religion is not to be preached by arms that is in truth if you would a little lay aside your Tragical Language that

who seem to oppose it And then nothing will be so common as to cast reproaches upon the highest Authority that shall dissent from them and to averre such Tolleration a silent concession of the goodness of their cause for such impudent conclusions are not seldom extorted from gracious premises And why I pray may not our almost infinite and most pragmatical sects be as kind and good natured as the Moncks are who content themselves with and submit themselves to the Orders and Rules of their Holy Father the Pope acknowledging and embracing him as Supreme though imposing Novelties as Articles of Faith and have therefore good reason to yield onely unto him a passive but no active obedience I am sure our dissenters of the Classical Order have much more reason to acquiess in the Ecclesiastical Constitutions of our Church then they of theirs because our Holy Mother the Church hath declared to her children in her Rubrick of Ceremonies that they are indifferent in themselves and are onely imposed for the sake of order and decency and makes nothing an Article of faith which God hath not So that here lies the difference between these two parties they I mean the various orders in the Romish Church are lull'd into a repose by the drowsie rockings of a blind obedience and our Separatists here would hurry us into confusion by their impudent stickling for a perverse disobedience they sin by easie submission but these sin more by the Witchcraft of Rebellion But since you know whose property it is to be questionist and I apprehend this Paragraph a weak and inconsiderable one I shall onely say that therefore these Separatists and Papists cannot be suffered because we have found by an experience that hath been the price of Royal bloud that Lenity and Kindness will not reduce these men to the right Government that they cannot forbear to practice against the politick Laws and Constitutions of the Kingdom and therefore it is not fit they be tollerated in the State The Murthers Slaughters Battels Massacres which not long since arose and were promoted amongst us were the unhappy consequents of putting power into the hands of these cruel Separatists and a too great condescention unto them Opportunity not onely makes a thief but also discovers the dispositions of men And if we are not wilfully blind which is the worst obscurity we cannot but see they have given us a sufficient Comment upon their Natures how inclined they are to flesh themselves with bloud and slaughter to ravage and roar like Famished Lions though they thereby sacrifice their Souls to the infernal powers Sure then this should be a cogent argument to clip their Claws because an unjust and imprudent Tolleration would open a gate to all this impiety For who sees not that they are so far from repentance that they are traversing over again their old steps and want nothing but a Rump Parliament to set them a gog Good reason then hath this our Prudent Parliament to look to themselves their Laws and the Kingdom and provide manacles for these Orlando Furiosoes In seeking Liberty of Religion these men seek to believe any thing that may whimsically come or by a cunning Jesuit be subtilly insinuated into their brains And under the pretence of Religion and the exercising of it according to the first Christians institution they will neither serve God nor obey the Laws under which they are born That Maxime so often repeated amongst the Church-men of Rome hath not in their sense been ever executed upon the Separatists of England At least not upon them as Separatists and Dissenters from us in Religion but as they have been guilty of sedition and treason which is the Lacquey attendant upon the zealous Separatist And this is certain that where Hereticks are countenanced and the seditious encouraged there neither the power of the Prince shall be preserved nor yet the benefit of the Common people long maintained The next way to bring in infidelity is to suffer men to believe what they list for by that means they will at last believe nothing at all Christian Kings are obliged to advance the glory of God and the Salvation of their Subjects by taking care that the Word and Sacraments be orthodoxly preached and duly administrated to them And though it is plain that you here squint at the revenue of the Church as your great eye-sore yet give me leave to tell you that double honour i. e. extraordinary maintenance as well as countenance is to be given to them who by his Majesty are called to watch over the Souls of his Subjects It is questionless the Magistrates duty to uphold and encourage most singularly the Bishops that take care that the Word be preached without sophistication and the higgling Knavery of whining Oratory and extemporary non-sense That see that the people be instructed in their duty both to God and the King which though never so often joyned together in Scripture shall be sure to be separated either directly or implicitely by these Hectors for Schisme Now this you call governing the Kingdom by the interests of Priests a shrewd sign that your desire is to have a nation of Atheists I heartily wish that rule you seem to harp on viz. Quicquid propter Deum fit aequaliter fit were duly observed by this pharisaical generation for then I am sure whilst they religiously plead for the observation of the Sabbath they would not wickedly forget the fifth Commandment Now then since this Vice cannot be Tollerated but by the ruine of the State and since there is a greater obligation and necessity of Law to punish Hereticks and obstinately seditious Separatists than Fornicators and other such scandalous Livers because they are more immediately destructive of civil Society and the peace of a Nation than these are though it is true For these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience It cannot be thought that they are persons to be indulged being so neet of Kind to the Vipor For how hath the beams of favour hardned their dirty dispositions emboldening them to spit their poison even at the King himself and to talk treason with a familiar confidence which that it may not be brought into act it concerns the Magistrate not to be hufft out of their Severity These Men I know would willingly be thought to be of the same nature and condition of which we are They pretend to Worship the same God as we do but forget he hath said Thou shalt not speak evill of the Ruler of the People And whereas Michael the Arch-Angel brought not a Railing Accusation against the Disputing Devil these men study nothing but Slanders and Sarcasms against the Fathers of the Church And in truth notwithstanding all the Gayety of their Pretences the Differences between them and us will be found so vast that nothing but their Conformity or their Suppression can secure our Tranquility I know none that desires to have them Prosecuted with