A02990:206
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulness of a stinted liturgy and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keys: tending to satisfy the doubtful, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulnesse of a stinted liturgie and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keyes: tending to satisfie the doubtfull, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.
Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the University of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the Universitie of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640
Chapter 8: The people may lawfully be present at those prayers which are put up unto God in a stin…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
and antichristianism is a filthy and loathsome leprosy which by degrees did infect the pure worship of God: If therefore our Liturgy was soured in after-times with that old leaven, it might be pure and free in its first original. Is it for matter taken from the church of Antichrist because it was culled and picked out of the popish dunghill, 1the popish and vile mass-book full of all abominations? 2Who knoweth not that many precious truths may be culled and picked out of the mass-book?3 Good gold may have some dross; and amongst an heap of dross it is possible to find some good gold. A true mans goods may be found in a thieves den or cave; and the goods of the church in the possession of Antichrist. Antichrist hath either by violence broken in upon, or by secret insinuation, before his cunning was spied, gotten the rich treasures of the church into his hand, which the right heirs may lawfully require and take back again, ⟨p. 152⟩not as borrowed from him, but as due to them. I scarce know how a man should more honour Antichrist or wrong the true church of God, then to grant that all the good things that Antichrist doth usurp do of right belong unto him and are borrowed from him: For they are the rich legacies which Christ hath bequeathed unto his church, to whom properly they pertain. The matter then of our stinted form may be from God, and proper to the church, though picked and culled out of the Mass-book. If therefore our stinted Liturgy be Antichristian, it is so either in respect of the matter or of the form. Not of the matter: for that which properly belonged to Antichrist, the soul and gross errors, are purged out. Not of the form: for order and phrase of speech is not properly Antichristian; of which more hereafter. The Papists cannot sincerely approve our public service but they must condemn and detest their own; their prayers in an unknown tongue, their praying to saints departed, much more to feigned saints, their receiving in one kind, their unbloody sacrifice, their real presence, their satisfaction for venial sins, and temporal punishment of mortal sins, their blotting out of the second commandment, or at least confounding it with the first, with others the like. And if for the first eleven years of Qu.