Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	false_a	true_a	worship_n	4,780	5	7.8086	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29842	Theatrum redivivum, or, The theatre vindicated by Sir Richard Baker, in answer to Mr. Pryn's Histrio-mastix ...; Theatrum redivivum	Baker, Richard, Sir, 1568-1645.	1662 (1662)	Wing B513; ESTC R16868	52,802	150

another Book and perswade all men to be Beggars Plutarch writ a ●ook De Vtilitate ab Inimicis Capienda and if this man had the good meaning of Plutarch and had written his Book de Vtilitate à Spectac●●lis Capienda we might then perhap● have thought him as Charitable as no● we think him Malicious But if he be not a Manichee he is at least very like one who seems he could finde in his Heart to blame God for Creating of Vipers and such other Venemous Beasts because his gross Head is not able to conceive how the soveraign Antidote of Treacle should be extracted from them And now to make a Recapitulation of his Arguments to see how he hath laboured all this while De lana caprina about a matter of nothing and how easily his main blows may be avoided with one ward he saith Plays are bloody and Tyrannical It may be true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they are a provocation to Lust It may be true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they are Ordained and Dedicated to the Worship of Devil-Gods it is true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they are the Pomps of the Devil renounced by Christians in their Baptism It may be true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they are fraught with bitter Scoffings at Religion and Religious men it may be true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they cause a prodigal Expence of Time and Mony it may be true of Heathen Plays which lasted many times many daies together and were set forth at Infinite charges it is false of ours He saith they are an immediate occasion of much Actual Adultery it may be true of Heathen Plays it is false of ours He saith they occasion much Drunkenness and Excess it may be true of Heathen Plays it is fal●● of ours And thus to his Diversis Nodis Vnus Cune●s many arguments as he calls them one answer as a wedg may serve sufficiently to cleave them all asunder Yet he hath one passage that stands barking in a Corner but dares not come out in the likeness of an Argument where he calls Fol. 329. Playhouses the Seminaries of Vices the Temples of Venery the Scholes of Bawdery the Dens of Lewdness and all the Vile names he could get together by raking Hel and Billings-gate But will it not be a Sop to stop Cerberus his mouth if we do but examine the Common-Wealths in which Plays have been most usual whether after Plays admitted they have grown in their manners either not worse or perhaps better for so it may appear that Plays have been no such corruptions no such corrupters of the times as he would make them Examine the Roman State and not to wander about take the times under the Emperour Augustus in which Plays where in their heighth he Reigned six and Fifty years a reasonable time to make a tryal and were not his times more quiet more civil and more virtuous then ever they had been before So quiet that all the world was quiet and the Temple of Ianus shut up twice in his time So civil and virtuous that as himself was call Augustus so his times were called Augustum Saeculum Come to our own Co●ntry which is better known to us take the Time from the beginning of our late famous Queen Elizabeth to the present almost fourscore years a large time likewise for probation and were ever any Times known in this State more Civil or more Virtuous so civil that no civil Arms so virtuous that Iustice never more duly administred Se●mons never more Preached more frequented Virtues in Princes never more transcendent Loyaltie and Love in Subjects never more eminent that if Virgil might say it of Augustus Times certainly we much more justly may say it of these of ours Iam redit virgo redeunt Saturnia Regna As if the Golden-Age of which the Poets talk such wonders were come into the world again And how then are Plays such Seminaries of Vices as he talks of He must find better Seminaries then Plays or he is like to have but a slender crop That we may know these Phrases of his to be nothing but the Fictions of the Devil's Poetry or the Flowers of his Rhetorick He will say they are the very words of Tertullian and other of the Fathers but will he never learn this one lesson so often taught him They may be true of Heathen Plays they are false of ours He will lastly say that we have spoken indeed of general and publike Virtues but they are the Vices of private men that he complains of as though the publick were any thing but the uniting of the private or the generall any thing but the meeting of particulars and who doubts but there will be a Cham in the Ark though Noah the Preacher of Righteousness be continually in presence there will be a Iudas amongst the Apostles though Christ himself be doing his Miracles continually before them But should not this man consider rather from whence these men took their infection which from Plays we are sure they did not then to stand baiting at Plays which is at most but Cum capiti medendum est Reduviam curare for to think to mend ●ens Vices by taking away Plays is as ●dle as that one should think to mend 〈◊〉 Faces by taking away Glasses He hath yet one Argument behinde ●hich is I may say his Palmarium and ●hich he hath kept for a final Argu●ent because it must serve to give a final ●low to beat down Plays namely ● Fol. 552. The fearfull judgments of God ●hich have been shewed upon them A final Argument indeed able to beat down not onely Plays but all mens Hearts from seeing of Plays But where is his Commission to make the Application It is no doubt good counsel when any extraordinary fearfull accident happens to call our selves to account and to enter into a due consideration of all our miss-doings acknowledging that such things are oftentimes sent of God as gracious warnings to draw us to Repentance but yet when such things happen to censure them presently as Judgments of God upon any particular Sin● and to determine upon what particular Sin or Sinner they are sent this is more then this man hath warrant for either from Scripture or Fathers or from Discretion● When God reveals the reason of his doing we may safely then take notice of it and rest our selves upon it as when the Earth opened and swallowed up Korah and Dathan there was manifestly known both the particular Sin and the particular Sinners Likewise when Fire fell down from Heaven upon S●dom and Gomorrha But when the Tower of Shilo fell and with the fall slew eighteen men who could make the application seeing Christ saith● They were not the worst men upon whom the Tower of Shilo fell When a childe was born dumb and blinde this man