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	rule_n	scripture_n	3,053	5	6.0044	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57190	Vituli labiorum. Or, A thanksgiving sermon, in commemoration of our great deliverance from the horrid Powder-Plot, 1605 And also of Gods merciful discovery of a bloody conspiracy against His Majesties Person, and the Protestant religion, 1678. Both intended by the papists. Preached at St. Peter's, Exon, Nov. 5. 1678. In prosecution whereof the Churches persecutions, foreign and domestick, by the hands of popish votaries, ever since the Reformation, are briefly recapitulated. Their charge of novelty on our church and religion is retorted. The absurdity of many of their doctrines and principles, and how destructive unto civil government, is detected. By John Reynolds, M.A.	Reynolds, John, d. 1693?	1678 (1678)	Wing R1318; ESTC R219030	19,513	36

VITVLI LABIORVM OR A THANKSGIVING SERMON IN Commemoration of our Great Deliverance From the HORRID Powder-Plot 1605. And also of Gods Merciful Discovery of a Bloody Conspiracy against His Majesties Person and the Protestant Religion 1678. Both intended by the Papists Preached at St. Peter ' s Exon Nov. 5. 1678. In Prosecution whereof the Churches Persecutions Foreign and Domestick by the hands of Popish Votaries ever since the Reformation are briefly recapitulated Their charge of Novelty on our Church and Religion is retorted The absurdity of many of their Doctrines and Principles and how destructive unto Civil Government is detected By IOHN REYNOLDS M. A. London Printed for Tho. Cockeril at the Three Leggs in the Poultry And Walter Dight Bookseller in Exceter 1678. To the Right Worshipful Sir THOMAS CAREW Knight Judg of the Sessions for the County of Devon and Recorder of the City of Exceter Honoured Sir NO sooner could I make my thoughts to comply with the motion of publishing this Sermon which I presume for its seasonableness unto the present juncture of affairs more than from any intrinsick worth therein some that heard it were pleased favourably to estimate but it presently became the matter of a deliberation with my self what could discourage me from hoping but that your worthy Name might prove auspicious unto it by lending it something of a credit to pass out into the world I foresaw nothing that could check my pleasing aims herein but might arise either from the subject treated of in this Discourse or from the person whose it was and doth now present it unto your candid acceptance or from the defectiveness of the management and handling of it As to the first of these I did the more easily perswade my self that it could not offend you to see and read in this Sermon the deformities of a false Religion in any degree exposed who have your self zealously espoused and are so good a friend unto the true and best Religion in the world A Religion never sufficiently to be praised and commended for the certainty of its Rule which are those Books of Canonical Scripture of whose authority there was never any doubt in the Church for the compactedness of her Fundamentals determined and summed up in the Apostles Creed explained in those others which are called the Nicene and Athanasian for the simplicity of her Sacraments and all her Administrations managed in a language and performed with that decent plainness as may be understood by all that are concerned in them for the gravity and soundness of her Ordination and Ministry for the peaceableness of her Tenets in obedience to the Magistrate for her conformity to the Apostolick and Primitive pattern in all things so far as the looseness of this Age will bear for the undoubted assurance of finding Salvation by its Rules and Precepts if we continue in them and do them These and the like are the lineaments of our and your Religion which cannot be displeasing unto you to assert and therefore neither to oppugn the contrary But neither in the second place could I suppose any disrespect unto the person submitting those Papers unto your candor that should be able to create unto you any ill resentment of the Sermon it self In that what never had been I could easily hope must have a greater occasion than this to beget it For indeed it is a pleasure to me to let the world to know that under Him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift next unto the memory of my exeellent and worthy Patron deceased I owe most unto your care and providence for the comfort and bene esse of my being and Ministry in the place where I am whereby you have buoyed me up above the necessity of depending upon the precarious benevolence of a people which I wish no good or honest Minister were ever put to trust to A good part of my Books deservedly bear your honoured name upon them for their Donor The first and the most seasonable News-years gift I could possibly have received for the encouragement and assistance of my first studies in this your own Dwelling-parish You never yet denied me any request which notwithstanding have been very many that in consistency with your Honour and Power I durst move unto you nor ever spared to take any pains which yet have been very great whereof the success in prospect hath promised fairly on my behalf So sure hath been my happy interest in your ever valued respects that I never found it hitherto checked with the least change of countenance or carriage So noble and generous that whereas anothers kindnesses would have necessitated a man to the study of an Answerable Gratification you have always taken my Relation to you as your Minister for so sufficient a Supersedeas to such designs that I have never apprehended any adventure more hazardous of yours than only to attempt it I cannot really admit any diminutive account of your goodness to my self otherwise than by considering you in that larger sphere which God hath placed you in as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a common good to your Country of which for me to say any thing would be altogether unnecessary forasmuch as there are every day so many mouths open to acknowledg it There being therefore no room for the scruple of a personal prejudice It remains in the third place that only the defectiveness and blemishes of my speaking unto this subject can render it unworthy of your acceptance and as to this I confess the charge and relye upon your known and experienced candor to excuse and lay your finger on the naevi of this Discourse Indeed it is a small and a slight thing in it self to have your Name prefixt unto but yet it is not unusual for Maps in single sheets to carry their Dedication on their forehead And as for the failances in the manner of handling it forasmuch as it is a time for every one of us to shew his zeal for his Religion the fear of smaller miscarriages that are frequently incident to zealous actings will no more dispense with their total neglect than it can warrantably prescind or supercede any other Moral or Religious duty in that we cannot acquit our selves therein with an absolute perfection Hoping therefore that upon the removal of those bars first supposed my way of access unto your favourable reception of these few Pages is plain and open I shall in gratitude for what I presume of your pleasing countenance reflecting on them and all other signal pledges of your kindness think my self now and ever obliged to pray That the father of mercies would still make good the multiplied effects of his infinite love and goodness for your temporal and eternal welfare That the generation rising may by an hundred-fold recompence unto the hopeful branches of your Family all the good that your self have been the instrument of unto the generation shining and that he who is now your humble

them may be raked out of their dark Cells by the search that is and will be made after the Complotters of this new grand Treason and Massacre which is yet but in the dawn of a perfect and full discovery And here we have matter of horror and astonishment unto every soul amongst us Who can tell what an universal sweeping calamity the forcing open of one principal Sluce would have let in upon us What more murdering of Kings yet Nay then pray we with pious Mr. Herbert GOD HELP POOR KINGS We this day find new Argument to excite us to pray for the life of the King as the Primitive Christians were wont in their ordinary Liturgy to pray pro morâ finis namely that it would please God to defer the end or fall of the Roman Empire thereby to put off the lamentable times of Antichrist from their days very well apprehending the Apostles meaning in 2 Thess. 2. That that wicked one could not be revealed until the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which withholdeth or letteth were taken out of the way and what that was which letted the Apostle durst not speak out for fear of incurring the rage of the Romans on their new planted Churches but the thing that letted was the Roman Empire the decay of which the Apostle foresaw and that Antichrist would build up himself upon the ruins of it Accordingly when the Empire came to be broken into various Kingdoms by the coming down of the Northern Nations and by other intestine occasions then did the Pope with all his Creatures invade the vacant seat of the Empire Now whether or no we have not a like parity of reason earnestly to pray pro vitâ Regis that they had to stir them up to pray pro morâ finis I leave to your selves to judg And thus having shewed you the frequency of Babylon's troubling or afflicting Zion I am sensible that I have herein somewhat anticipated my self in the third Branch 3. Branch of this part of my Text and that is the earliness of the Enemies spite and malice against the Church or Israel of God Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth Yea this is their sagacity and wicked policy to take the first advantages and if it were possible not to suffer the Church to grow up to strength and stature but to oppress and crush it betimes while it is tender and least able to resist This was the merciless policy of Pharoah and the Egyptians to drown the Hebrew Children as soon as the tender Midwifes hand had received them into the world To doom them to die in Water as soon as they began to breath in Air. This was the bloody subtilty of Herod to cut off him that was born King of the Iews if he could as soon as the very name of him began to be noised And this was the vigilant policy of the grand Professor of all such destructive arts Revel 12. 4. The Dragon stood before the Woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born Oh how implacable is the malice of the Churches enemies that although the Church could not be supposed to do any thing to exasperate and provoke them in its early minority and youth yet unprovoked they have afflicted me from my youth What could nothing of her youthful prettinesses and beauties charm their pitiless Adamantine hearts to spare the Church in this her so pleasant age no not infancy or tenderness not innocency or causelesness nor all her insinuating excellencies besides are able to make an Oratory perswasive enough unto the Enemies of the Church for one drop of compassion but notwithstanding all this have they many times afflicted me from my youth What meekness so great that can forbear at least to chide with this kind of Ruffian Adversaries O Daughter of Babylon happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones Psal. 137. 8 9. Object But what shall we yield our Popish Enemies so great an advantage to acknowledg that our Church is so young and so late a thing that our Protestant Religion is but of yesterday our supposed Novelty is that which they do incessantly charge us with Sarcastically demanding of us Where was your Religion before Luther Sol. No no with respect to our Adversaries of Rome we say Many a time have they afflicted us from our youth not meaning the youth of our Church but only from the youth of our Reformation And in answer to the Question Where our Religion was before Luther we boldly affirm where-ever the Christian Religion was imbraced and the holy Scriptures were received there was our Religion And as it bears the Denomination of the Reformed Religion although Luther were a very happy Instrument in the Reformation the meanness of the Person so much the more commending the power of God that accompanied the work yet there were clouds of Witnesses in all ages of the lapsed state of Rome that bare Testimony against that spreading canker of her corruptions before Luther was in being Our own King Edward the first four hundred years ago in Session of Parliament under the subscription of the Peers utterly renounced the Popes supreme Authority No less man than Lewis the Twelfth of France in defiance of the Pope coyned money with this Inscription Perdam Babylonem I will destroy Babylon several years before Luther began to stir But suppose we date the beginning of the Reformation from the rise of Luther's name in the Christian World which was in 1517 may we not retort their question Where was your Religion before Luther with another more significant Where was your Popish Religion before the Council of Trent which commenced not till at least six or seven and twenty years after Luther entred upon the Reformation until which Council there was never such a body of Popish Doctrines or Heresies intirely and professedly owned and received in the world as now there is For that Council of Trent decreeing many things to be Points of Faith which were not so accounted before hath made no small distraction among the Papists themselves Before this time we can calculate unto them out of the best Historians when and how their several Heretical Innovations and Idolatrous abuses crept in The Popes Usurped Supremacy took place in Boniface the third which was above Six hundred years after Christ though Gregory the next immediate Pope save one before him earnestly declared against Iohn of Constantinople that whosoever should claim to himself the title of Universal Bishop was the immediate forerunner of Antichrist and urgeth this good argument against it If there be one called Universal Bishop then must the Universal Church go to the ground if he which is Universal happen to fall Before these times instead of the Blasphemous titles of your Holiness in the abstract The most

Orator at the Throne of Grace may never want the opportunity or power of approving himself to the last day of his life St. Thomas Novemb. 13. 16●8 Sir Your most faithful and affectionate Servant IOHN REYNOLDS A Thanksgiving Sermon in Commemoration of our Deliverance from the Powder-Plot and of the discovery of the late Bloody Conspiracy of the Papists Psal. CXXIX 1 2. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth may Israel now say 2. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth yet they have not prevailed against me BAronius the great Annalist for the Church of Rome hath indeed made a very proud and lofty claim on the Popes behalf viz. That Christ after his Resurrection translated upon the Popes both Priesthood and Kingdom But by what a thin and faint argument doth he grasp at so large a Jurisdiction namely That this was signified by that shadow of St. Peter whereby the sick were healed that the Popes should always have the same power which Christ himself had though never so far different from him in good life and manners because they should ever at least retain the shadow But I pray what consequence is there from the shadow of St. Peter unto the shadow and from thence unto the power of Christ and that power likewise that should not serve to heal the sick as did St. Peter's shadow but to destroy Kings and Kingdoms for what other miraculous power have they made proof of this thousand years A cruel instance thereof we had in the Conspiracy plotted against us this day Seventy-three years ago wherein the Pope and his Agents taking counsel with the Prince of Darkness were agreed and sworn together yea and approached within a few hours of accomplishing their Hellish design To blow up the King and Royal Family the Clergy Nobles Knights and Burgesses in Parliament the very confluence of all the Glory Piety Learning Prudence and Authority in the Land with one sulphureous blast But because age and length of time generally brings with it the oblivion and forgetfulness of the most notable occurrences and that we experimentally find our irreligious age to be grown so remiss and negligent in the recognition and celebration of this once renowned Deliverance God is pleased from time to time to awaken and rub us up by suffering this bloody brood of the Papacy to engage upon such like attempts afresh though to his only praise be it ascribed hitherto without accomplishing their wicked aims and purposes Such was the traiterous design wherewith we have been alarm'd this last month the consequents whereof had it taken effect I dread to think In respect of both which and manifold other repeated occasions our merciful God having so often preserved and shielded our Princes and their Kingdoms our Church and Religion from their implacable rage and fury good reason have we to make our hearts and spirits thankfully to accord with this Psalm of praise part of which you have heard read in the words of our Text. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth may Israel now say many a time have they afflicted me from my youth yet they have not prevailed against me This is one of the fifteen Psalms that is intituled a Song of Degrees a Song of Ascensions or of Heights either to note the excellency of the Song and without doubt much more sweet and captivating would these Psalms appear unto us if the nature and reason of the Hebrew Musick and Poesie were better known unto us than it is Or a Song of degrees with respect unto the stairs or steps which by degrees went up into the House of the Lord whereon the Singers should stand or in reference to the several Stages of their coming from Babylon The design of the Psalm is to recount the Churches past troubles and deliverances occasioned by some good success of Affairs in evading the hands of their enemies then fresh in memory Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth may Israel now say From my youth from the time of my being in Egypt from whence I came forth when I grew up to be a Church or from my first Constitution The words do afford us three principal heads of Discourse First Here are the Persecuting attempts of the Enemies of Religion against the Israel of God or against Gods Church which we have twice delivered either by way of Poetical elegancy or out of a zealous affection to the praise and glory of God in reciting it or the better to express the malignity and spight of the Enemies themselves Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth c. Secondly Here is the frustration of those mischievous attempts against the Church Yet they have not prevailed against me Thirdly Here is the Churches bounden and thankful reflection on her afflictions and the happy issue of them suggested by the Psalmist May Israel now say which stands in the middle between the Churches Persecutions and Deliverances as respecting both the misery and the malice of the one excellently serving to enhanse the mercy and the value of the other I. In the first of these Generals we have again three Branches 1. Here is the Churches Affliction or Persecution by the hands of her Enemies They have afflicted me 2. Here is the frequency of the Enemies inflicting trouble and persecution on the Church Many a time have they afflicted me 3. Here is the earliness of the Enemies spight and malice against the Church of God attempting to blast it in the bud Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth 1. The first branch of this Division shews us the ordinary case and state of the Church of God to be a state of affliction being to grapple with enemies and that at first seeming with very great odds and disparity for thus you find the enemies of the Church to be expressed in the Plural Number they whereas the Church it self is simply spoken of in the singular Number they have afflicted ME. The Iews while they inhabited Canaan the land of Promise how vastly were they out-numbred by their enemies that surrounded and compassed them on every side On the East they had the Moabites Ammonites Assyrians and Chaldeans on the West the Philistines on the North the Syrians on the South the Arabians and Egyptians and these were all alike maliciously bent against them Compare but the Popish and the Protestant interest in the world how few are the Protestant Kingdoms and Territories in comparison of those large Dominions which do strike sail to the See of Rome and even amongst those who sculk under the name of Protestants how few are there who would adventure any thing in a critical time upon that Profession which in a calmer state of things they are ready to protest unto now from these their numerous enemies what can the Church of God expect but affliction and trouble Either 1. By open force as Cain did furiously imbrue his hands

great and excellent God on earth The invincible Monarch of the Christian Commonwealth c. The Popes were then content with the sober stile of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Your Gravity The setting up of unwritten Traditions in equality with the Sacred Oracles as it were the bringing of another Trojan Horse into the place of our Palladium the Word of God came to be ratified in the Seventh Age. The use of Images in Churches grew up into an occasion of Idolatry about the same time although the first suggestion thereunto was only by a pictured table of some of the chief of the Fathers that assisted in the sixth General Council hung up in the Porch of St. Sophia in Constantinople Both the name and Doctrine of Transubstantiation was no earlier broached than in that Laterane Council that convened in the year 1215. And how well think you did Bernard the Dominican believe this Doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Popes Legate that instigated him thereunto who about the year 1309 poysoned the Emperour Henry the seventh with the consecrated Host or the sub-Deacon that poysoned Victor the third in the Chalice or Hildebrand alias Gregory the seventh that threw the Consecrated Host into the fire because it answered not his demands as the Heathen gods did concerning his success against the Emperour I could further open this pack and shew you much more of the same stuff but these are instances enough without an induction of more particulars to warrant our inference from thence that the Popish charge of Novelty on us is justly to be recriminated upon themselves And as for the Antiquity of our Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we appeal unto the holy Gospel and the four first General Councils But so much for the prejudice and the spite of Israels enemies against her even from her youth I must forthwith betake my self unto the second principal part of the Division of my Text And that is II. The frustration of the Churches Enemies in their mischievous attempts against her yet they have not prevailed against me Whatsoever probability of success may appear for a while on the Adversaries part there shall be no final or total prevailing against the Church Haman for a while seemed to be in a fair way to have prevailed against all the Iews when he had the Letters of Execution sealed with the Broad-seal and Posts sent forth whereas in the mean time he was but twining a Rope for his own neck The Enemies confidences and insultings may grow high but such kind of heights can serve for no other purpose than like the silver and golden Precipices which the Emperour Heliogabalus devised and would have prepared for himself to make his ruin to be the more observed and taken notice of Sennacherib may boast that with the sole of his feet he would dry up the rivers of the besieged places but God was able to make the hearts of his Soldiers as water to fill up the Channels God disappointed the devices of the crafty so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise He taketh the wise in their own craftiness and infatuates their counsels when they are carried headlong in a bad cause he makes them to lose themselves in the Labyrinths of their own wily brains and their crafty policies so intricately woven serve oftentimes but as a key of many Wards to open the Chambers of Death unto themselves as is famous in his rendring this days Conspiracy fatal unto its own Authors On the other hand on the behalf of those whom God undertakes to protect and shield he hath infinitely more ways and methods in the course of his wise Providence to secure and preserve them than their most deadly lurking enemies can find how to hurt and injure them Gods Israel have the Captain of Salvation on their side the Lord Jesus Christ who so leads on the army of Saints against their enemies as that you may be sure he will bring them honourably off again We have in him not only the vertue of his Death and Resurrection but also the benefit of his Intercession supplying us with invincible strength to overcome our enemies we have with him also legions of powerful Angels to fence and guard us one of whom in one night smote in the Camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand So that whatsoever enemies think effectually to prevail against the Israel or Church of God must first make account to cancel all the Promises that are given for Israels security he must first overcome God himself his Power his Wisdom and all his other Attributes concerned for his People he must subdue the Captain of our Salvation storm Heaven and put all the glorious Host of those Guardians of the Saints there to the rout before he can perfectly and fully prevail against Gods Israel Bravely therefore doth the Prophet in an Ironical Apostrophe upbraid the enemies of Ierusalem upon this very consideration Isa. 8. 9 10. Associate your selves O ye people and ye shall be broken in pieces and give car all ye of far Countries gird your selves and ye shall be broken in pieces Gird your selves and you shall be broken in pieces Take counsel together and it shall come to nought speak the word and it shall not stand for God is with us Yet here I must caution you That you do not imagine by what hath been said that you have any absolute security given unto any particular Churches but that they may be prevailed against This attestation of Gods Providence for Israels safety in the Text and that other promise of our Saviour in Mat. 16. 18. Vpon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it are to be understood to speak of the Church universim and not partitim any farther than particular Churches do still stand firm upon the rock of sound Faith and a good Christian life on which Christ hath founded the whole We know particular Churches have been broken off as that of Ierusalem Corinth the Seven Churches of Asia c. and yet Christ hath still his Church in the World and will have till time shall have an end As for the Church of Rome it self it was long since forewarned though she take but little notice of it that she should not be high-minded but fear lest she her self were cut off after the severe Example of the Iews before her Rom. 11. 20 21 22. Nay the words sound like a clap of Thunder Otherwise thou also shalt be cut off Undoubtedly God might have cut off this Church of England with the cursed Powder-Plot or with the dreadful stroke which was intended us in this new forged Conspiracy and yet have been justified in so doing especially considering how highly we have provoked him thereunto by the prophane and customary neglect of most of the duties of Religion and Divine Worship among the general sort of men by the