Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	heart_n	spirit_n	word_n	12,735	5	4.2755	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56805	The conformist's fourth plea for the nonconformists wherein several considerations are offered for Christian forbearance : with some relations of some of their sufferings ..., together with some account of the infamous lives and lamentable deaths of some informers / by a charitable and compassionate conformist, author of the former Pleas.	Pearse, Edward, 1631-1694.	1683 (1683)	Wing P974; ESTC R34547	112,844	120

Affectation in them Affectation of what of Fines Losses Frowns Threatnings Diminution of Civil Privileges as far as some can deprive them If this be their Hypocrisy verily they have their Reward They go to hear them for Scruples and Fanaticism Let a Divine repent of such a meditated Calumny and Aspersion lest he fall into them So the Heathen objected Sed non ideo bonum quia multos convertit Quid hoc mati est cujus reus gaudet c. Tertull. Apol. chap. 1. Whatever another intends to do that dares to make the Success of their Ministry of the Gospel the Power of God to Salvation upon rational Souls to lead Christian Lives no greater Argument of divine Approbation than the spreading of Mahumetanism and the Success of the Alcoran if he never found the Efficacy of Grace of the Spirit Word and Sacraments upon his Heart let him turn his Thoughts and his Time if not his Pen to make ready for his Judgment and to secure his Peace rather than to rake into Sores and Ulcers and keep them open to get Money as some Beggars do their Sores Consid IX A safe and speedy Union of Diffenters as nearly united as possibly can be made is most desireable that there may be a happy End put to their many Sufferings Religion and Humanity can take no pleasure in the deserved Punishments of Men the Murmurs and Complaints of Sufferers stir and move Compassions and Pity holds the Hand even of Justice in all Cases in which Necessity is not urgent and manifest The Evil of Separation hath been opened when the Evil of their Sufferings hath not been touched upon They are urged with the first but that is but one Side of the Evil let us search into the other Sore to take the whole Weight and Compass of the Mischief that lies upon the Protestant Religion and both run down from the same Cause and he that would stop the Current of Evil in divided Streams and dry up the Flood of Afflictions and Miseries must stop it at the Well head of the Cause They are urged to enter into the Communion of the Church as by Law established because of the Mischiefs of their Separations and it would be a special Service to move our Governors to make their Return as easy as may be by opening the Scandal of their Sufferings If their Consent to our Injunctions were gained the Controversy would be at an end and this Prosecution also But that being not like to be attained this way the Continuance of the Separation is more for the good and profit of the Church than their Sufferings for while they enjoy their Liberty the Gospel is preached and they that are regenerate and called and gathered to Christ are gathered to the Catholick Church tho not united unto a particular Church in some certain Bonds of external Communion But if they were totally suppressed and where they are most narrowly watched and kept in thousands of Souls would lose the Benefit of their Labours and their Hearts are like to be more estranged from us and the Church will still lose the Content and Comfort of their Communion The supposed and aggravated Sin and Evil of the Separation is doubled by their Sufferings and made more incurable by the Exasperation We see and taste the Fruit of above twenty Years Proceedings and better cannot be expected but much worse may be feared To argue for a Release from their Sufferings because they have suffered deeply may seem weak and inconsequent but take them in a Complex of Causes and Circumstances and I do hope the Argument may prove a Matter of Consideration to them that are concerned in these great Matters If a Man should move for a Suspension of the Laws against Malefactors thus Millions have suffered Imprisonment and Death and therefore spare them the Argument is not only ridiculous and weak but weak and sinful because they are Malefactors and the Laws of God both natural and revealed require it and there would be no Safety to the Lives of Innocents nor of Civil Rights and Possessions But to argue Our dissenting Brethren have suffered much therefore forbear to inflict more Punishments upon them is not without some Strength and convincive Evidence 1. The performance of Religious Exercises in a different Form is no such Offence and Crime as deserves to be punished before the Penal Laws decree the Penalties The Difference of the Administrations is made by the diverse using or disusing of Things indifferent some extending their Liberty further than others To use Christian Liberty wisely and as much as may be inoffensively is no punishable Crime but a Duty and if there be not a Liberty in indifferent Things there is none at all 2. But if it were a Matter punishable yet of such Things as are punishable before a Penal Law be made Sed non ideo sequitur eam paenam debere exigi quia boc pendet ex connexione finium ob ques poena instituta est cum ipsa poenâ as Grotius writes De Jure Bell. Pac. lib. 2. cap 4. § 22. Now what can be the Ends of these Penal Constitutions 1. Unity of Mind with our Governors in those Things enjoined that seems to be the Reason of the Assent and Consent which none can be of but such as were so minded before it was required all Reasons and Circumstances perpensed But that all should be of the same mind is impossible in our State That 's an End not attainable and they who propose it propose only for themselves and them of the same Judgment with them and exclude the rest whom the Lord hath received It was a wise and is a celebrated Saying of the Emperor Maximilian the Second to Augustus of Saxe when he interposed for Peueer in the Vbiquitarian Controversies and Persecution The Duke told him he would have all his Ministers agree with him and among one another to which the Emperor answered Ego in negotiis ad fidem conscientiam pertinentibus nec ausim vel velim cuiquam offerre necessitatem aliquam coactione Scis irrito conatu c. I know that will be lost Labour and that it is grievous and dangerous in it self Id nunquam perficies inquit Imperator neque nostrum est imperare Conscientiis an t ad fidem quimque vi cogere Perclius Histor Carcerum p. 361. Hoornbeck Summa Controv. cum Lutheranis p. 657. 2. The Peace of the Church and State may be aim'd at Can there be Peace in the House of God whilst one Fellow-Servant smites another Surely that is not the way to Peace Which brings to my mind that of the Learned Hornbeck Oratione de Ecclesiarum inter se Communiene If we shall receive or treat them otherwise than Brethren whom Christ doth not disdain or think unworthy of so great a Name Place and Honour Atque hoe Christianae charitatis communionisque est fundamentum This is the Foundation also of all Christian and Ecclesiastical Love

Suppression of Nonconforming Protestants 1. Those Magistrates that serve the Design 2. Those of the Clergy that wish or approve it 3. Those Under-Officers and Agents that go under too dishonurable a Name in my conceit to come in the same Page or stand a-brest in my Division with Magistrates and Ministers 1. Of the Magistrates Noble and worshipful Gentlemen I made bold in a former Plea to address to you on the behalf of my Reverend Brethren so I call them because Christians and because they are Protestants and Divines of Age and Learning I account their Sufferings to be a great breach upon our Protestant Body a weakening of our Strength a Blot upon our professed Christianity no Service to the King or Church but a rejoycing and a Service to their and our professed Enemies it can be for no Man's Interest Profit or Honour to trouble the Servants of Christ and to provoke his Wrath which if it be kindled but a little Blessed are all they who put their trust in him I may better speak in the Cause of others than in mine own and when I plead for them I really believe I offer you a Service that should not be despised but favourably construed and kindly taken for I do warn you to have nothing to do with the Ruine of just good peaceable holy learned Men and Christians and the King 's good Subjects yea and some of your best Friends for I do believe they make many Prayers to God for you to turn your Hearts to save your Souls and their Intercessions for you are as one piece of Defence between you and harm If these are my Mistakes I am mistaken and if I am altogether mistaken I beseech you pardon the Mistake and accept the Affection Respect Honour and Good-will I bear you for I would serve you without a Mistake if I could But verily I think I am pretty right in my Judgment of this Case and have the concurrent sense of some of them or of their Relations who have been active in the same way in which you now appear You are not all of a Mind and Temper you act from various Dispositions or Habits of Mind and these are as various as those observed by that antient Christian Cicero Lactantius of the Prosecutors of the Christians Acceptâ enim Potestate pro suis moribus quisque saevivit Some for too great a fear have ventured to do more than they were commanded Others out of a private Hatred of their own against just Men some from a natural Cruelty of their own some that they might please and by this Office or Service prepare or secure a way for their Advancement some ran headlong to kill as one of Phrygia who burnt all the People with the Conventicle or Meeting-place it self Lactan. de Justitia l. 5. c. 11. p. 490. Lugd. Bat. 1660. Thus Men were moved of old From what of these Principles or Affections they now move concerns them to enquire before that measure which they mete to others be measured to them again Generous Minds should be locked up against the Intrusion of Temptation to bring in such low Affections as these are by which a Christian Heart is more prophaned than the Temple was by Paul's bringing in of the Gentiles into it these are too base Affections for such as hope for Heaven You say we have a Law and according to that the Nonconformists ought to suffer and you are impowered to execute the Laws indifferently This was the strained Pretence of the Jews to be so urgent with Pilate to crucify our Saviour John 19.7 We have a Law and by our Law he ought to dy Whereas he ought not to have been accounted a Blasphemer in saying He was the Son of God for he was so and if he had been a Blaspemer by which of their Laws did they cry Crucify crucify him Give me leave I beseeeh you to speak freely I have not in all my Narratives touch'd upon any that I know now to have his Sword drawn in this fresh Assault but have related things past to be your Admonitions and Examples that I may not provoke but profit you I grant you have a Law and I believe many of you do wish there were no such Law and many are weary and cautious sparing and fair in the Execution of it But I beseech you once again to keep to the Scope of the Law and to the Law it self as relating to the Scope and there will be no need of Tumults to guard any of your Persons to find out and disperse the Meetings nor such fear of you from the Nonconformists That Preaching and Praying which contains matter of Sedition Rebellion and Insurrection and is expresly of that nature without forced and uncharitable Construction or perverted illogical Inferences are the only Exercises under the name of Religious Exercises which you can justly punish Reading Scripture singing Psalms are Religious Exercises and the matter of them undoubtedly godly Preaching and Praying are as undoubtedly God's Ordinances as the Scripture is 〈◊〉 Words It is as manifest Impiety to forbid these any of these or all of them in one Assembly as it would be to obliterate any part of Holy Writ or to cancel any Divine Law It is Impiety and not to be supposed that any Christian Legislators should make a Law to prohibit any Religious Duty or Exercise in it self considered and if any of you think you may punish Preachers or Hearers for such undoubted Religious Exercises you sin against God and all the Laws in the World cannot justify your so doing for no Law of Man can defend any Man in sinning against the Law of God It is true that the Preface of a Law is not a Law and the Scope of the Law is not the Law but as the Scope of the Law expressed in the Preface was the Reason and Intention of the Law-maker and all the general Words in the Law were formed with reference to the Scope or else they were not made as rational Means conducing to its Ends no more than it would be to forbid speaking that there might be no swearing Any Exercise of Religion that tends to Sedition Rebellion and to move Insurrection is so far punishable as it is abused and perverted to that unsufferable End or else you punish Religious Duties absolutely taken because by such Numbers or by Persons above sixteen Years of Age in such Numbers and then you 'l say it is not religious Duties that is punished but the prohibited number of above four besides the Family But then again the number absolutely taken doth not make a Crime or should not but as it is supposed to soment Sedition For why shall it be unlawful for twenty forty or a hundred of divers Families to meet in one Place for Religious Exercises any more than for some noble and great Family of some one Noble-Man or Gentleman or Boarding-house which hath so many Persons in it to meet together in one Hoom for Religious