Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	church_n	let_v	2,627	5	4.5197	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44308	The non-conformists champion, his challenge accepted, or, An answer to Mr. Baxter's Petition for peace written long since, but now first published upon his repeated provocations and importune clamors, that it was never answered : whereunto is prefixed an epistle to Mr. Baxter with some remarks upon his Holy Common-wealth, upon his Sermon to the House of Commons, upon his Non-conformists plea for peace and upon his Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet. / by Ri. Hooke.	R. H. (Richard Hooke); Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Petition for peace.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Holy commonwealth.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Sermon of repentance.	1682 (1682)	Wing H2608; ESTC R28683	62,409	170

taught you You cast off the Reins of Church Government you set your selves at Liberty Did this Cure your Divisions and create among you Peace and Unity No after you had divided from the Church and cast off its Rule and Orders you subdivided among your selves and broke all into pieces and parties never did any Age see such lamentable Divisions in this Church and Nation But you accuse the Bishops as if they will not give you leave to serve God as his Apostles did God forgive you this as false as foul an Accusation Do not the Bishops maintain and the Church stedfastly continue in the Apostles Doctrine Do they not against the Romanists who would obtrude upon us their Traditions in conjunction with the Scriptures assert the Scripture alone to be a most perfect Rule of Faith and Manners Do they not serve God as the Apostles have taught and so many you in Communion with our Church Truly if your meaning be that they give you not leave to serve God as Apostles and no less or lower will serve you than to be as they to give Laws to all the Churches and to be under the Laws of none you must prove your selves to be such before you crave that leave But though you are not Apostles yet you are Prophets you foresee and foretell the Sufferings of your Innocent Party Strange What a Noise they make in almost every Paragraph lamenting and repeating their Sufferings We are against our wills enforced as often to let them know and I wish they would rightly resent and lay it to heart that the Bishops and Conformable Clergy have been really Sufferers for many years and in the Loss of all they had and they the Causes of their Sufferings and for all those years enjoyed all Ease and Plenty and at this time of their present loud Complaint they have yet suffered nothing and are certain they shall not doe if they will return to their Duty all their former Miscarriages being by his Majestie 's Mercy buried in oblivion and if they will doe so they may be received into Favour and are as capable of all Preferments as any the truest Sons of the Church I am unwilling to remark the other part of their Prophecie ripping up our Divisions by their Party raised and continued ever since the Reformation they in effect threaten they will be their Sons and Heirs and that we must not expect Peace but look for Misery and Division unless they may have their Demands to be as free and high as the Apostles and here as their manner is they heap up a multitude of Scriptures you may judge how pertinently by the first they alledge 1 Philippians 14. There St. Paul saith Many of the Brethren in the Lord waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the Word without fear This Text they cite to prove that the Bonds and Burthens and Displeasure which is upon them from their Superiours hinders them from serving the Lord without fear Saint Paul's bonds made these Brethren confident and set them above fear But our Brethren upon their meer fancy of Bonds and Burthens are faint-hearted and with fear even distracted The other Scriptures make as little for them or against the Bishops and so I shall pass them over The 18 th and 19 th Reasons are of the same Bran yet again and again they cry up their Abilities and their Godliness and cry out of their Sufferings and Persecutions and the Ungodliness of all who are not of their way I cannot conceive the Reason why this one Topick of their Sufferings makes up more than Ten of their Twenty Reasons and they bring it in over and over so very often but that they think no body knows or will believe they have suffered any thing and therefore they say it so often or else by the loud and repeated Cry of their own they would drown the loud Cry of the Bishops Sufferings by them and their Party which yet the Bishops themselves pass by in Silence but the World cannot but take notice of with much concernment Let us yet hear them again In the 18 th they call themselves the Holy Seed and so many able Ministers laid aside and that many of them suffer and that the Ungodly add Affliction to their Affliction And in the 19 th So many truly fearing God being cast or trodden down are tempted to think ill of that which themselves and the Church thus suffer by and when so many of the worst befriend this way because it gratifieth them it tendeth to make your Cause judged of according to the qualities of its friends or adversaries Of their Sufferings enough and too much of their Godliness and the Ungodliness of all who are not of their Party We have heard often too 't is their strain and way with the Pharisee to stand on their Tiptoes and say God I thank thee I am not thus and thus I am not such as this Publican The worst they say befriend that way 1. That 's no proof of the evil of that way rather of the goodness which shines forth so apparently that it convinces and even enforces the worst of men to approve it Video meliora probóque 2. Who are those worst The King the Parliament and all the obedient Sons of the Church of all Estates and Qualities This is usually their great proof that themselves truly fear God their dislike of established Order this their evidence that others have not the fear of God their Obedience to those whom God hath set over them in Church and State By the one they commend themselves by the other they condemn all but themselves and that this is no untrue Accusation they have made appear in that they made no difference between the best and the worst but cast out all of the Episcopal way Nay as one of them pleading before them the Sobriety and Unblameableness of his Life and Conversation they told him to his effect He should fare the worse for that they liked not so well a sober as a scandalous Malignant who gave their Proceedings against him some colour of Justice 2. They tell us they are tempted to think ill of that they suffer by Ans 'T is easie to guess whence that Temptation is a Criminal is tempted to think ill of the Law because he suffers by it Ungodly men are tempted to think ill of God and murmur at him because they suffer by his just Judgments for their Wickedness You are taught otherwise Matt. 5.44 20. We repeat what formerly we have said That the Holy Ghost hath already so plainly decided the point in controversie in the Instance of Meats and Days Rom. 14.15 that it seemeth strange to us that yet it should remain a Controversie A weak Brother that maketh an unnecessary difference of Meats and Days is not to be cast out but so to be received and not to be troubled with such doubtfull Disputations despising and judging the Servants of the Lord

whom he receiveth and can make to stand and that upon such small occasion is unbeseeming true Believers Their 20 th Reason is delivered with so mighty Confidence that they would make us believe it looks like a Demonstration But 't is scarce worthy the name of a Reason They tell us The Holy Ghost hath decided the Point in controversie between us that they think it strange 't is yet a Controversie A strange Presumption whereby they at once condemn all the Conformists and Non-conformists too in this Church ever since the Reformation They think it strange 't is a Controversie and yet know 't is the great Controversie of these 100 years What Volumes have been written pro and con upon this Subject The Churche's Power in things indifferent their own it seems wanted the Illumination of the Holy Ghost who could not see and shew that his plain Decision and so were fain to argue against the Churche's Orders with their slender Probabilities And ours in these charitable mens Judgment were Resisters of the Holy Ghost in asserting the Churche's Power to command for Decency and Order the Holy Ghost having plainly decided the Point against them that they had no such Power the most reverend Whitgift Morton Hall Hooker Mason Sanderson I wonder you did not demonstrate to this last Dr. Sanderson who I suppose was a Commissioner on the Bishops part his wilfull Sin and Errour in Preaching and Writing so earnestly for the Churche's Ceremonies from this very 14 th Chapter of the Romans we look upon him as the great Casuist of the Age a most rare Preacher and Textuary his Temper truly Christian and primitive charitable humble meek modest even to diffidence his Discourses profound and yet plain to the meanest capacity nothing more clear more clean more cogent and convincing And we judge those two Sermons of his one upon the first of St. Peter 2.16 the other upon Romans 14.23 do fully assert the Churche's Constitutions by the Non-conformists opposed and fairly represent and fully answer their Objections and Master Hooker had with as much meekness and strength done it before you have Time and Numbers if you resolve to stand out and not conform to answer Mr. Hooker point by point your many hands may make the work light but to make it short and easie I challenge a whole Smectymnuus of you to answer onely Dr. Sanderson solidly and soundly and I shall promise you to renounce Conformity and if you cannot as I know you cannot you are self-condemned if you renounce not Non-conformity and now I shall be as highly confident as your selves and shall affirm in a direct contradiction to yours that the Holy Ghost hath so plainly decided the Point in Controversie on the Churche's part that she hath Power to command things indifferent for Decency and Order in God's Worship in the 1 Corinth c. 14. v. 40. That 't is strange it should be yet a Controversie Nay the Church had that Power as to outward Order and Decency to appoint Rites and Ceremonies even when God himself had made Laws for Ceremonies and those so many that we might have thought none could or might be added The Religious Kings and Governors of the Jewish Church enjoyned divers things concerning God's Worship which were not by God commanded There was no Commandment of God assigning the Priests Order Manner and Times of Attendance in the Service of the Temple yet David and Solomon appointed them and the Priests conformed and observed them There was no Commandment for Singers Psalteries Organs Cimbals Harps yet David appointed for the Temple this Musick vocal and instrumental There was no Commandment for the Feast of Purim yet Mordecai enjoined it Hester set it forward and the Jews established it for succeeding Generations There was no Commandment for the Feast of Dedication yet our Saviour observed it If therefore the Jewish Church when God himself had instituted abundance of Ceremonies might and did appoint others besides those by God commanded which were generally by all without contradiction observed surely à fortiori the Christian Church having no Law of particular Ceremonies and Rites given by Christ since without Religious Rites God cannot be publickly worshipped in any orderly and decent manner may especially having a general Law to authorize her 1 Corinth c. 14. constitute and appoint such Rites and we must obey her Constitutions in things neither commanded nor prohibited But to come closely to their 20 th Reason since ad Triarios ventum est 't is their last and that in which they place their greatest strength The Holy Ghost say they hath plainly decided the Point in controversie in the Instance of Meats and Days Rom. 14. 15. A weak brother that maketh an unnecessary difference of Meats and Days is not to be cast out but so to be received I shall here premise the weighty Monition of Dr. Sanderson O beware of misapplying Scripture it is a thing easily done but not so easily answered I know not any one gap that hath let in more and more dangerous Errours into the Church than this that men take the words of the Sacred Text fitted to particular occasions and to the condition of the time wherein they were written and then apply them to themselves and others as they find them without due respect had to the differences that may be between those times and cases and the present Sundry things spoken in the Scripture agreeable to the infancy of the Church would sort very ill with the Church in her fulness of strength and stature This Caution directs me to tell the Petitioners that the Point and Case in controversie between us and them is hugely different from that Rom. c. 14. v. 15. in respect of the Time the Persons and Matter in difference 1. For the Time The Jewish Church was now expiring its Constitution dissolved The Christian Church succeeding it was in planting in its infancy in this time when the Church was not settled and its Order not fully established the new Converts being tender Plants were to be tenderly used and all sorts in pious Prudence to be indulged but not so in a Church planted and settled then and there all its Members are obliged to obey its Orders and not to cast them off upon pretence of Conscience or Christian Liberty the Troubles at Francford they mention though much to the hindrance of the Reformation because in the infancy and beginning of it yet because in the beginning of it that Party which opposed the new-made Constitutions of our Church were not so culpable as these Troublers who a hundred years after the Orders of the Church had obtained and happily flourished have invaded and overturned all Order and Government and now that 't is restoring keep up the same humour of opposing it 2. The case is different in respect of the Persons differing about Meats and Days The one Party were weak the other strong in Faith and Judgment of their Christian Liberty Now of