A55307:72
The Samaritan showing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oil that must…The Samaritan shewing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oyl that must…
The Samaritan showing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oil that must heal the church together with the way or means to do it / by a country gentleman who goes to common-prayer and not to meetings.The Samaritan shewing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oyl that must heal the church together with the way or means to do it / by a country gentleman who goes to common-prayer and not to meetings.
London: printed for Tho. Simmons, 1682
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.
The truth is, the idle Dream, the fond Imagination of a possibility of making Christians of one uniform Judgment and Practice, hath filled the Christian world with variance, strife and contentions, with blood, violence, rapine, and oppression, with proscriptions and banishment: Yea hath left little more than the name of Christian Religion in most parts of the world. For that men may be of one Judgment and Practice in Religion, there must be Impositions, and these Impositions must be enforced by Laws, and the contempt or breach of these Laws must be penal, and those penalties must be sharp and severe, and severely executed, and so bring us to such a pass, or else they are only Mockings, and men will laugh at them, and differ still as much as ever.
The truth is, the idle Dream, the fond Imagination of a possibility of making Christians of one uniform Judgment and Practice, hath filled the Christian world with variance, strife and contentions, with blood, violence, rapine, and oppression, with proscriptions and banishment: Yea hath left little more than the name of Christian Religion in most parts of the world. For that men may be of one Judgment and Practice in Religion, there must be Impositions, and these Impositions must be inforced by Laws, and the contempt or breach of these Laws must be penal, and those penalties must be sharp and severe, and severely executed, and so bring us to such a pass, or else they are only Maukings, and men will laugh at them, and differ still as much as ever.
And sure it is, that men fearing God, will not debauch their Consciences, nor sin against God, they will not hazard their Souls to preserve and secure their Lives, their Bodies, and their Estates; ⟨p. 38⟩they will not run the hazard of being damned everlastingly, to escape the temporary punishment of imposing and domineering Rulers and Churchmen; and therefore they must be imprisoned, fined, banished, hanged, and damned too, if it were in the power of their good Friends and Prosecutors to do it. And these are the blessed Effects of Tyrannical Impositions; these the means of Peace, Union and Concord among Christians and Churches. But I would fain learn who taught them these means, ways and methods of Peace, Unity and Concord. Of all the Creatures upon Earth, a man would suspect they learned it from the Devil, who was a murderer from the beginning; surely they never learnt them from the holy Jesus, for he never used any such methods of Peace, nor taught any such to his Disciples that I can find in the Gospels. Ye know not what manner of spirit you are of.