Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
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A54947
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A private conference between a rich alderman and a poor country vicar made publick wherein is discoursed the obligation of oaths which have been imposed on the subjects of England : with other matters relating to the present state of affairs.
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Pittis, Thomas, 1636-1687.
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1670
(1670)
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Wing P2316; ESTC R26884
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111,578
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274
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only take Cognizance of their Actions Your Authority is supplicated and humbly begg'd to be made use of only to restrain their open affronts to Law and Government and to give a check to their bold Assemblies and numerous Meetings for fear lest their discerning their strength they may at last attempt by force what your Oath obliges you to endeavour to prevent and obviate And by this they will only pay a Tribute at the most by Mulcts and Punishments for what they are so willing to enjoy and they need not be forced to a Faith in that which Reason does not perswade them to believe Thus the Rod punishing and restraining the unlimited propagation of Error and Schism they will by this be put upon enquiry after the Truth and upon a sufficient view of what they have not yet made a through inspection into they may at last embrace with cordial affection what they now prosecute and offer violence to with the greatest transports of passion and malignity Ald. But their Party seems so very much lately encreased that they will turn the edge of the Magistrates Sword and weary Justice with the execution of them Vic. You may therefore cut your work far shorter and Justice may act with the less noise but greater success if you only prosecute the Heads of them and execute the Laws only upon those who lead the innocent sheep astray Ald. And are you contented that the rest should still run into disorder Vic. You will find the rest in time to run themselves into the fold when the Bell-weathers are gone which they were wont to follow Ald. But methinks this should be the Office of the Bishops and their Ecclesiastical Judges Vic. First Sir all that the Law permits them to act punishes nothing but the soul and conscience and those persons that we have to deal with have their Consciences feared with an hot iron so that these wounds will not make them bleed for the utmost a Bishops Court can do is but to excommunicate the Offendor Ald. And is not that exceeding severe Vic. It is Sir a most dreadful Sentence and made such gashes and wounds formerly that no Medicine but an Absolution could heal far more deep than the severest stroke from the sharpest Sword set on by the hand of the most potent Emperour But now since Atheism and Impiety has grown to a height under the pretense and shelter of Reformation and Religion heavens thunder and lightening too proves to men but like Squibs and Rockets make only a great noise and a pleasant flash but scarce singe so much as the Garment Ald. Methinks Mr. Vicar you make light of that which was went to be esteemed a serious matter and awed the minds and consciences of men before Christianity could gain either the favour or assistance of the Civil Magistrate Vic. I only now gave you the Conjectures of those persons we have to deal with when Order and Religion are almost banished by the boldness and Rebellion of wicked men but if you would have mine own judgment I cannot but tremble at the very thoughts of an Excommunication which being attended with its due circumstances does not only cut off Communion here but also from Fellowship with the blessed Angels and Saints hereafter and what is thus bound on Earth shall be bound in Heaven Ald. And why cannot this then have the same effects that it had heretofore to restrain men from vice and disobedience Vic. Your Worship need not enquire a reason of this when you shall consider that those for the most part that will be concerned in this Sentence have other Notions not only of the Sentence it self but also of the Persons that pronounce it than the Primitive Christians formerly had they think the Sentence is not of such force as we believe it is and however that those persons that now pronounce it are not sufficiently authorized to do it Ald. Why They are Commissioned by the King himself and enabled by the Laws of the Land Vic. The wisest of them will not question I suppose but that they have a Civil Sanction and that the Ecclesiastical are the Kings Courts but this is so far from being Argumentative to produce fear that it is the only reason why they scorn it and the chief motive that I would make use of to crave assistance from the Civil Sword Ald. How can that possibly be Methinks you relate Riddles to me Vic. I shall presently then unriddle the Mystery because I am not willing to hold you in suspense You must know then that our Non-conformists are much of the Papists humour in particular nor can they think that the Civil Power should give a Sanction to the Kirks Laws and therefore if they can but satisfie themselves that the present Church is without Power derived from Heaven the Statutes made to confirm our Courts or to make the Sentences of these valid they conclude to be of no greater concernment than the other Laws made against themselves and may be equally violated without sin or danger To tell you the truth Sir they look upon our Church as none at all our Bishops only as Popish Prelates our Ministers as nothing but Baals Priests and all our maintenance as nothing but food for the God Bell. Al. Not so surely Vic. Why do they then separate from us And not only look upon our Prayers as deficient but our very Sermons without Authority and Power nay our very Communion and Sacraments as abomination and pollution Ald. These men indeed must be looked to for I see if they are permitted thus to run on without controul they will not only bring us to confusion but kill and stay that they may take possession Vic. That was you know their former Doctrine and though they then made as one would think sufficient use yet acording to their usual Method they are yet upon the Application Ald. But if these men reject our Church and deny our Bishops to be at least Ministers how will they make out their own Call and evidence their own Ordination lawful since their Primitive Reformers the Authors of their Succession received Orders from the Bishops hands by virtue of which they presumed to impose upon others Vic. They have a way to deny Succession to be necessary to a Church and besides they have changed their Principles as your Dialogue will inform you that the Presbyterian might the better associate with the Independent and unite their Forces to vanquish ours But if you would have your doubt at large resolved I know you are sufficiently acquainted and have familiarity with persons of all Perswasions and I desire you would put your Objection close to them that so they may give you a resolution of what I profess my self unable to do nor will I attempt it since neither my Judgment nor Obligation leads me to it Ald. I see no reason indeed why you should be put upon the defense of them But an Excommunication makes men liable to Temporal
that we were before engage to perform to his Majesty Vic. That your Worship may with great facility discern when you shall consider that you were before obliged to preserve and defend not only his Majesties Person but also all his Praeeminencies and Prerogative part of which is notoriosly known to be Ecclesiastical as well as Civil Government and consequently the power of reforming Religion and therefore the offering at an Alteration without him attempts the destruction of that blessed mixture that Lawyers inform us is in his Person and violates his Royal Prerogative besides the diminution of his Revenue by abolishing of the Hierarchy from whose First-fruits and Tenths he reaps no small advantage nay finally it makes part of a Parliament contradict and abrogate what the whole had before by several Acts and Statutes established fixing Prelacy by Laws that cannot justly be repealed by a power less than what at first established it Ald. Truly I did not think so much could have been said against what carried such specious or pretenses but it seems there lodged a Snake in the midst of those sweet herbs Pray Sir proceed to your reflections upon those other Articles that remain unconsidered Vic. I would not have your Worship to conjecture that my discourse will be so much as a Breviate and Epitome of what many persons have writ in Folio For there have scarce been more hunters of the Beast in the Revelation whose exact number a melancholly person once found out in the words of the Covenant than there has been of this Scotch Monster however that we may see also how great friends they are to his Majesty we need travel no further than the third Article which engages us to preserve the Kings Person only in the conservation of true Religion and the Liberties of the Kingdom which laies him open as I hinted before to every Traytor or Enthusiast that has either malice or madness enough to conclude him an enemy to both or either But what may be worth your observation in the same Article in which the preservation of the King 's naked Person stripped of all his Royal Prerogative is limited care is taken that the Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberty of the People be strictly maintained without an interpretation or restriction at all which loudly proclaimes to the whole World what friendship this League designed for his Majesty Ald. Methinks I begin to withdraw my affection from that which I had once a kindness for and I fear this wound to his Sacred Majesty was but a kind of Prologue to that Tragedy that succeeded it Vic. Although I cannot but very much rejoyce to see your Worship confirming that Act with your Judgment which the Penalty of a Law then only seemed to extort to wit the renunciation of the Covenant Yet I shall further I hope enhance your abhorrency of this strange Beast no less than confirm your last consequence and deduction when I shall remember you that the next Article besides that it assumes a most Absolute Tyrannical and Arbitrary Power in bringing men to what we know not who shall deem condign punishment does countenance and encourage and not only so but bind men by the Solemnity of an Oath to Parricide Regicide and any the greatest Villanies in the World How easie was it by vertue of that for Husbands to ease themselves of unpleasant Wives or Wives to divorce themselves from those Husbands that they found their affections either out of wantonness or curiosity to decline from How easie a way was this for the Son to enquire into his Fathers years before nature gave period to his life that so he might be the present Possessour of what he was only heir to before Nay for the Subjects to arraign and condemn their Prince since it was without respect of persons could they but once affix the Title of Incendiary Malignant or obstructer of the Reformed Religion upon him The definition of each particular of which was left in their own breasts to inspire Ald. These Inferences cannot methinks but startle all us that have swallowed down such poyson the regret that is in my Conscience makes me sit very uneasie Vic. I could willingly allow my self as well as you a breathing time were it not for fear that what I have all this time pursued would be too long at rest and recover strength Ald. Nay I would not have you by any means give an interruption to your discourse for I have already given order that they should not expect us at Dinner but provide some repast for us against the Evening Vic. I thank your good Worship not only for your patient condescention in admitting so much familiarity all this while but for your great care both of your self and me though indeed I should not alwaies be so bold an Intruder Ald. He never intrudes that is invited Bagpipes you know will not go at all if they are quite empty Vic. I thank you Sir for that Metaphor for nothing but that could so well have reminded me of the Covenant We have already dispatched half the Articles and condemned one more to make them even and the fifth is nothing but talking of Peace in the midst of War and boasting of strange effects of reconcilement when all know there was no such thing and therefore here the failing of the Saints was superadded to the Perjury of the Sinner And finally as to the Sixth Article it only supposes in general terms what we have already refuted in particular that the cause of this Covenant was the defence of Religion together with the Liberty and Peace of the Kingdoms that the whole tended to the glory of God the Publick Advantage and the Kings Honour and therefore the Jurors here swore to remain constant in the pursuit of the Design against all opposition throughout the whole course of their lives Thus did it not only ensnare a Nation with good words to dig out their own Bowels to rage against Nature it self and sheath their Swords in their nearest Relations to pull down and ruine the most glorious Church in the whole World and force it to be truly Militant but what may supperadd the Complement to all it s deformed dashes it made the King a Slave to his Subjects divested him of all his Royal Robes and made him sacrifice his Head to preserve his Crown which it would also have deprived him of but that his Martyrdom eternized it Ald. Why do you think then that the Covenant murdered the late King of ever blessed memory Vic. No Sir I should be strangely uncivil if I should draw such Conclusions for in that your Worship would be concerned but this I shall be bold to say That the threefold Cord tied him to the Block and left him there for another Party to cut off his head But I expected your Worship should after all this digression have required me to discover the strengeh of the Argument by reducing the whole to some short Form Ald. Truly