Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	hatred_n	zeal_n	zealous_a	43	3	8.8625	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58813	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, and Court of Aldermen, at the Guild-Hall Chappel, the 16th of December, 1683 by John Scott ...	Scott, John, 1639-1695.	1684 (1684)	Wing S2067; ESTC R14440	16,814	42

is their Interest to sharpen it and render it as Keen and Active as may be so that when once you have ingaged your selves in their Faction to be sure they will imploy their utmost Indeavours to bigot your Minds to their Opinion and to ingage all your Zeal for the little Modes and Circumstances they Contend for they will so represent the Matter to you as if the Life and Substance of Religion were in Dispute as if God and Jesus Christ and the Gospel were all at stake upon the Controversie and your Souls were to sink or swim with their Opinions and your Zeal being ingaged by these Arts for the trifling Opinions of your Party you will by degrees grow remiss and neglective of the great and weighty Things of Religion For the mind of Man being finite in all its Acts can never operate divers ways at once with equal Force and Vigour but whatsoever Time and Attention we bestow upon one thing we must necessarily substract from another and so by degrees as we grow more and more Zealous for the little Modes and Opinions of our Party we shall grow more and more remiss in the main and necessary Duties of Religion till at last we degenerate into perfect lukewarmness And accordingly how many are there among our selves the very Spirit of whose Religion is evaporated into a noisie busie and blustering Zeal for Parties who are wondrous Nice and Scrupulous about the Rites and Ceremonies of Religion and yet can swallow Lies and Perjuries Treasons and Rebellions without the least Straining or Remorse O did but these men love God and their Neighbours in the same Proportion as they do a Conventicle Did they but hate Impiety and Immorality but half as much as they do Bishops and Liturgies what excellent Christians would they be But Alas their Zeal is swallowed up in their Faction the Current of it is diverted out of those proper Channels of Piety and Vertue into the little wranglings of their Party where it flows Headlong and makes a Clamorous noise to no other purpose but to disturb the World Wherefore as you would not be Tempted into a gross neglect of the Substantials of Religion to convert your Piety and Vertue into Bigottry and stickling for Parties Meddle not with those that are given to Change Fourthly By ingaging our selves in Factions against the Government we shall in all Probability insensibly involve our selves in indirect Courses and be train'd on from one Evil to another into the most Flagitious Villanies When first men list themselves into Parties their Designs perhaps are fair and innocent They are told that their Religion their Liberties and Properties are in danger and finding such a Party of men set up for forward and zealous Assertors of them they mingle with them with no other intent but to concur with them in all honest and lawful Endeavours to preserve and secure those invaluable Blessings But Alas poor Souls they see where they begin but God knows where they will end for now they must move by the measures of the Faction and see with its Eyes and hear with its Ears through which to be sure all the Actions and Designs of their Governours will be represented to them in the blackest Colours by which their Passions being inflamed with contempt and hatred of them will soon blaze out at their Mouths or Pens into seditious Talk or Factious Libels and then such is the nature of contempt and hatred that the very venting of them fans and irritates them till at last they settle into inveterate rancour and then they are capable of any mischief for all along as their passion is growing they mistake it for a pious zeal for God and Religion and the publick good and under that Notion cherish its irregular transports concluding that nothing can be amiss that proceeds from such a sanctified Principle and so though they lie and slander and backbite and perjure themselves over and over yet 't is all well because they do it out of Zeal for the Glory of God and the true Protestant Religion For when once intemperate zeal gets ahead it bears down all considerations of Reason and Religion before it and hurries us on into the foulest Enormities and then when once our outragious Zeal hath transported us into illegal and unjustifiable Actions we shall many times be tempted to proceed through mere despair of a safe retreat and to shelter our selves from the Punishment of one Crime by committing another For so in all Factions Men do commonly so involve themselves that when they have done ill they have no other way to save themselves but by doing worse Thus when by their Seditious Behaviour they have incensed their Governour against them its necessary for them to Associate and when they are Associated its necessary to Rebell and when they have drawn the Sword its necessary to fling the Scabbard to the Devil for I make no doubt but many of those Wretches that Murdered the late King would have trembled at the thought of it when they first ingaged in the Faction but their zeal having once transported them into Sedition they had no other way to escape but by Rebellion and being engaged in Rebellion they had no other Sanctuary but Regicide As therefore you would not expose your Innocence and Vertue to these and such like dangerous Temptations mingle not with such as are given to Change Fifthly and Lastly By ingaging with Factions against the Government we shall in all probability intangle our selves in the greatest Temporal Mischiefs and Calamities For Faction is naturally forward and Pragmatical it fills Mens heads with Projects and Chymera's with Mysteries of State and Models of Government and sends their thoughts after the Fools eyes roving to the ends of the Earth to Parliaments and Privy Councils and high Consultations about Affairs of Government And when once their Minds are got abroad their Bodies cannot stay long behind but away they must to some Coffee-House or Publick Refectory to vent their Politicks and advise about Affairs of State discharge their Consciences to the Publick by directing how things ought to be managed and shewing where the Ministers of State are out and by what Measures they ought to steer the Helm of Government and in the mean time while they are Governing abroad the Shop is neglected at Home and the Trade decays and they and their Families sink insensibly into Beggery for though for a very small charge they may sit and govern an hour or two together yet hereby their time is not only wasted which is much more precious then their Money but their heads are filled with so many Politick Whimsies that when they come home they cannot mind their business their Shops are grown too little for their Minds and they can neither think nor talk beneath Affairs of Empire And when once Men are got into this vein 't is time for their Creditors as well as their Governours to look after them for 't is

busie and contriving Knaves can impose on it for having once Wedded his Affections to the Interest of the Faction they will quickly bribe his Understanding into a belief of every thing that favours it and let the opinion or the story be never so improbable it will find an easy Access to such minds as are already feed by their Affections to entertain it and provided it be but serviceable to the Party he is ingaged in that will prevail with his Understanding against a thousand good Reasons to the contrary let him but hear his Prince reproacht with never such wild and improbable stories he shakes his head and swallows all for Gospel Tell him that the King is deeply ingaged in a Plot against his own Life and Crown and Dignity Alass what a dismal Story is this that a Man should thus fall out with himself and doat upon his own ruin But though his Faith thus glibly swallows Camels on one side yet 't is strange to see how it will strain at a Gnat on t'other for tell him on t'other side with never so much Evidence and Demonstration that the Traiterous design he talks of is hatching under the Wings of his own Faction and though you shew him the very Association and Band of the Bloody Conspiracy upon the Principles whereof they have Murdered one King already and so may reasonably be presumed to be acting the Tragedy of another especially when they act the same things over again Scene after Scene so exactly in the same Garb and Plot and Language that had one who dyed 40 years ago arose from his Grave but 2 or 3 years since he would doubtless have concluded that 42 was not yet expired yea though you produce a fresh Conspiracy proved upon the Party by undeniable Evidence and even by the free Confessions of the dying Conspirators themselves yet 't is next to impossible to perswade him that ever such wise Men should be so mad or such good Men so Wicked as to ingage in such a desperate Villainy But I need not tell you who have seen the Transactions of these last six years how many fulsom Lies have been confidently believed and notorious Truths dasht out of Countenance through blind Partiality to a Faction And indeed when once a Man is ingaged in a Faction 't is thenceforth impossible for him to judge impartially of things because now his Faith must see through his Affections and his Affections must follow the interest of his Party and if that be ingaged in ill designs it will need ill Principles to countenance it and his Affections being pre-ingaged to the Interest of the Faction will easily bribe his Understanding to assent to any Principles that are needful to support it Wherefore if you have any reverence for your own Understandings if you would not be play'd upon by Impostors and Deceivers and choust and abused and lead by the Nose through all the wild Mazes of folly and falshood meddle not with those that are given to change Secondly By ingaging our selves in Factions against the Government we shall in all probability insensibly contract the most black and Diabolical Affections for this is the Natural Process of all Faction it begins in Pride and Self-conceit in an arrogant Presumption that we are much wiser than those above us and fitter to Rule and Govern and then having once entertained this overweening Opinion of our selves we look upon all that are superior to us with Envious and Malignant Eyes and think our selves highly injured and affronted that we are not plac't at the upper end of the World and then from Envying we proceed to hating our Governours and from hating them to Impatience of their Government to ease our selves of which we soon imbody into Factions where we whet our Malice and Arrogance upon one another by applauding each other in censuring those above in running spiteful Descants on their Actions and Arraigning their Male-Administrations at the Tribunal of our Majesty than which there is nothing can more effectually humour and gratifie our Vanity For what a Glorious thing is it for a little Shop-keeper or Mechanick to perk up a mighty Politician and sit in Judgement on his Governours to expose the Folly of their Conduct and find out the soft places of their Ministers of State how much greater and more Magnificent is this than to be Dull and stay at home and mind ones own Business And when by thus humouring our Pride we have blown it up into Insolence this swells our Envy and that inflames our Malice against all that are above us or opposite to us for by this time our mind is so bloated that we cannot bear the least Contradiction but are ready to run down with Clamour and hard Names every thing that thwarts our imperious Dictates and in matters of Religion every thing is Popery that agrees not with the Model of our Reformation and in matters of State every thing Tyranny that opposes the Platform of our Government and unless all things be framed according to our Humour and bend to the Dictates of our Oraculous Pride Heaven and Earth will come together the Gospel and Liberty and Property will vanish and the whole Frame of things sink into Confusion And while we thus make our Pride and Self-conceit the Standard of the World and expect that all things should comply with and truckle to it We shall be so impatient of Contradiction that 't will be little better than Treason or Blasphemy to oppose us so that whosoever presumes to give Check to our Insolence is sure to be made the mark of our Malice and to be persecuted with all the Reproach and Opprobrium that the most inveterate Rancour can invent Thus Faction you see is impregnated with the very Nature of the Devil and carries in it all the Pride and Envy Rancour and Malice that sunk down the Angels of Light from Heaven and converted them into Fiends and Furies Wherefore as you would not expose your Natures to Spoil and Ravage to be over-spread with the most Poisonous Affections and drown'd in the Passions of Hell Meddle not with those that are given to Change Thirdly By ingaging our selves in Factions against the Government we shall be mightily tempted to neglect the great and necessary things of Religion for generally the Foundations of all Factions against Government are laid in little Disputes about matters of Religion which are usually started by the Leaders of the Faction for no other end but to ingage the honest Zeal of the People against the establisht Religion that thereby they may ingage them against the establisht Government And could they but make them as Zealous for the Mass as for the Directory 't would be all one to them which of the two they advanc't against the publick Establishment their Design in these hot Disputes about Religion being only to lay a Train to blow up the Government and since the Zeal of the People is the Tool they must Work with it