Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	church_n	faith_n	infallible_a	8,239	5	9.9784	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56744	A letter from Dr. P. to the Bishop of R--- in vindication of his sermon on Trinity Sunday.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.	1696 (1696)	Wing P905; ESTC R33033	40,115	93

Character and therefore I have endeavoured the best way I can to defend this against its Adversaries and to represent it to its Friends in the best light that of the Scriptures and Antiquity in which it appears much clearer than in those Scholastick Disputes and Explications which have only clouded and obscured it and turn'd plain Christianity into a Metaphysical Subtlety But when those who defend and maintain the Faith are brought under a Charge of undermining and betraying it this is not only a particular Injury to themselves which it is very hard to lye under and no Man as one says ought to be patient under the Suspicion of Heresie but it is a great injury and disservice to the Faith it self by supposing its pretended and avowed Friends to be its secret Enemies and that upon a free enquiry and examining into it they see reason to be so and thereby rendring the very Doctrine suspicious and questionable as well as increasing the Number and adding to the Party and Interest of its profest Adversaries The charging any such Suspicion of Heresie upon me and some others and especially of Socinianism will look as ridiculous and incredible to those who know us as Sir John Fenwick's charging some of the known Friends and Assertors of the Government with being in the Plot and inclined to Jacobitism I have given so much Evidence to the contrary in all my Discourses and Sermons that if any think they might have reason to do this for a few mistaken Words and Expressions which they do not like or understand others may upon the same account charge me with Popery too tho' I have writ so many Treatises against it because I followed not exactactly their Words and Phrases or their Method of Writing and Thinking in managing those Subjects but either granted too much to my Adversaries or asserted something that they think odd and suspicious and looks to them like a Popish Principle As when in a Discourse on the Sacrifice of the Mass I own the Eucharist to be a Sacrifice in some sense and in some sense Propitiatory too from hence there may be as good ground to charge Popery upon me as any thing Heretical or Socinian upon the mistaken and misunderstood Words of my Sermon when the whole Scope Design and Drift of it was to the contrary Perverse and Angry Men tyed up to their own Models and narrow Systems might have made as great a Work and stirred up as great Suspitions Contests and Dissentions among our selves a few Years ago about several Points relating to those Popish Controversies as about the Real Presence Justification Good Works and the like as have been more lately and very unhappily raised about the Trinity and have given as great an advantage to the common Enemy by so doing And no doubt the one would have took hold of it and improved it as much against the common Cause then as the others have done since But tho' I think it would have been very imprudent and very dangerous both then and now to stop the Controversie and impose silence upon this account and let our Adversaries write on and triumph without Answers and so to lose the Truth for fear of losing Peace yet common Prudence and Christian Charity and a hearty concern for the common Cause should make all Writers agree in one Case as well as the other notwithstanding some little difference of Thoughts and Expressions and not break out into a Civil War among our selves while we are opposing a publick Enemy when in the main we do agree in the same Doctrine the same Article and Confession as 't is exprest by our Church The School-men and Divines of the Church of Rome differ very much among themselves about these very matters Peter Lombard and Richardus de Sancto Victore about the Definition of a Person and Essence generating Essence Durandus Scotus Ocham and Biel about the Divine Unity and whether the distinction in the Deity be real and Formal or Modal and Virtual The Scotists and Thomists have their known Differences and Parties about those and other things Copreolus and Aureolus differ throughout so do the Jesuites and Dominicans Molina with Thomas and Cajetan Valentia Suarez and Vasquez tho' all Jesuites yet dispute fiercely with one another the two latter especially about the famous Question of a common Subsistence in the Trinity whilst Arriba is very zealous against them all for allowing Aliquid Relativum as well as Absolutum in the Trinity And to name no others Tanner Ruiz and Arriaga oppose one another and those that have gone before them in several high Points as do indeed all their Modern Writers taking the part sometimes of Scotus and sometimes of Thomas and sometimes differing from both and always from those that wrote a little before them They dispute Problematically and hold different Opinions concerning these Trinitarian Points as much as other Theological Questions and particularly Ruiz * Disp 22. Sect. 1. proposes an Explication of the Trinity different from the common Soholastic one making the Three Persons together God adequately and each single Person God inadequately Which tho' he asserts not yet by his Authorities out of the Fathers we may see he Favours whilst all of them still agree in the common Faith of the Article as 't is determined and exprest in the words of their Church So long as they do this none of their Infallible Popes or wise Bishops have thought fit to interpose by their Authority or to determine on one side or other or to impose silence upon all notwithstanding the mighy plenitude of their Ecclesiastical Authority and the wretched Slavery which hath been complained of under it even the worst of Slaveries to rational Creatures that of their Minds and Thoughts Notwithstanding that it seems their own Members and their Learned Men have a free Liberty of venting their private Thoughts and different Sentiments even in those high matters so long as they consent and subscribe to the general Doctrine of their Church Nay which is more strange and more to be wondered at they have never censured that I know of those known and exceptionable Passages and bold Assertions in Durandus Aliaco Erasmus Genebrard and others of Three Gods in a Personal sense and of Cajetan Molina Javellus and abundance of their celebrated Writers holding Three Eternals and Omnipotents and Interpreting the Athanasian Creed so as to make those Adjectives signifie only Substantively and Essentially While they allow this Freedom Liberty and Latitude to their Friends and to one another they give no quarter to their Adversaries out of their Communion but pursue them and particularly Mr. Calvin with the heaviest Charges of Blasphemy and Tritheism Nay even of Atheism for the least unwary and exceptionable Expressions about the Trinity as may be seen in Genebrard de Trin. Fevardentius's Theomachia Salmero's Disput Possevin in Atheismis and others The Reason is plain they hated them upon other Accounts and were resolved to