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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	apostle_n	scripture_n	word_n	2,523	5	4.0634	3	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48813	An answer to the Bishop of Oxford's reasons for abrogating the test impos'd on all members of Parliament anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I, A.B., do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation of adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the Dais, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous / by a person of quality.	Lloyd, William, 1627-1717.	1688 (1688)	Wing L2673; ESTC R977	35,814	60

Bloud on the account of which such Butcheries and Burnings of Men alive have been committed that the so mis-stil'd Barbaritie and Inhumanitie of the Test-Act compared herewith is not only Mercie andHonor to the Persons concerned but a Monument of greatest Equitie and Philanthropie or Love to Humane Nature to endeavour to extinguish out of the Nation the very Principles of so much Bloud-Guiltiness and Bloud-Thirst of the greater heinousness becaus if the Bishop be to be credited in the Case it was for not believing a Transubstantiation which it was Morally impossible for those Martyrs to know and such abstrusities which they neither did nor could nor indeed ought to understand 4. To press and force a litteral Sense upon the Holy Scriptures Free Familiar Condescension to our Weakness in expressing things of a high Spiritual Nature in such Language as we in Humane Bodies most easily take things into our minds by as in the Sacrament the real Spiritual Union and Communication of the Value Vertue and Efficacy of the Sacrifice of Christ Himself and in the Union of and Communion and Communication of his Spirit to us is express'd by eating his Body and drinking his Bloud Now I say to force a litteral Sense upon this is such a piece of Rudeness Barbaritie and Ingratitude that if the same measure were meeted to all other parts of Scripture would even in the Judgment of those very Men who are either Atheists or Bigots in this matter not only turn it into Horrible and Abominable Burlesque but even Martyr and Murther those two Witnesses as some have expounded them To vindicate therefore those Sacred Volumes the Pandects of our most Holy Religion from having to do with so mid-night and Sphingian a Riddle in so plain and merciful an Institution so humble and even Domestic in a spiritual Sense as the Lord's Supper is a Riddle set on work to so much Cruelty and Bloud-shed is worthy the Spirit of a truely Christian and nobly English Senate and to set the danger of its return into use at the utmost impossibility Humane Providence could attain without the expectation of Miracle For what is meant by Transubstantiation the Bishop himself says is altogether unknown and uncertain especially to the persons chiesly concern'd viz. the Nobility and Gentry of the Nation and which they neither do can nor ought to know What obligation can they then have to believe it except with such a blind Faith as all Religion and Reason abhors However if they have no Faith concerning so fugitive a thing that like a shadow cannot be catch'd or like the Phantom of a Body that hath no flesh and bones to be seen and felt as all Bodies have and as Christ as it were prophetically expos'd his Body to the Experiment of when it was really there that no such Imposture concerning it should be palm'd upon the World I say if the Nobility and Gentry have no Faith of such a thing why may they not profess and declare they do not believe it For the Bishop seems either not to be awake or to dissemble a slumber that his Discourse of mens swearing to any thing his Burlesque on the famous Burgesses of Oxon and his Appeal to the Honourable Members concerning their Idea's of Transubstantiation and the Babel thence arising the whole Notion is indeed a Babalism or pertaining to Babylon the Great had been very good if the Test had requir'd them to declare their belief of such a Transubstantiation But now his Arguments hunt counter and impeach the Roman Tyranny of horrid Murthers upon persons for not believing what they neither do can nor ought to know what they can so hardly pronounce the sound of much less hammer the sturdy sullen Notion it self For who can know what there is no knowledge of But what more innocent than to declare when lawfully requir'd though before the Searcher of Hearts a man does not believe what he cannot nor ought to know nor so much as anvil a Notion of If it were never so true real knowable and worthy to be believed any one might without guilt when justly demanded to do so declare he did not believe it while he knew it not so as to find reason to believe it it were double Hypocrisie to do otherwise and all the Bishop's arguing and storying can never make it otherwise Indeed the whole recoyles upon himself and dashes out the brains of all he hath writ upon it which sure he crasly oversaw or thought all his Readers were such Fools as to be couzen'd with the gloss For if the infidelitie were ever so culpable it were a Dutie when adjur'd by a Law to declare it but how can the infidelitie be blam'd when after the Bishop's hunting down the Notion through the whole Historie of the Controversie He hath prey'd only upon a Ghost miss'd of all comprehension and he pronounces the summ and result of all to be what is meant by that Transubstantiation is a thing altogether uncertain and unknown and there is no one thing in which Christendom more both agrees and differs all Parties agree in the Thing and differ in the manner Now it so happens the Test was so sagaciously compos'd though it might lawfully have done much more that it modestly leaves the Thing free and requires only to declare a Belief of such Manner of Transubstantiation as of the Elements of Bread and Wine into the Bodie and Bloud of Christ and requires the Declarers own Belief alone and nothing of censure upon any others Belief in this branch of the Test which surely any man may lawfully make that makes it truly and seeing the whole Issue of the Notion is Scepticism the Bishop himself being Judg and what can the man do that comes after the ishop may not every man then say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I do not comprehend it therefore I do not believe it Indeed if there were Revelation for it like what there is concerning the Father Word and Spirit one God concerning the Incarnation and Hypostatic Vnion of the Eternal Word with Humane Nature leaning not on figurative expression but plain assertion wrought into all the discourse and whole Argument of Scripture all Disputes were silenc'd But when there is no pretext of Revelation but such a manner of speaking as if it were press'd alike into a literal sense through the whole Book of God it must overthrow all Theologie To refuse then a Figure there where it is so absolutely necessary that else Christ must eat his own flesh while it remain'd entire before the Apostles and drink his own bloud while it was circulating in his Veins and no amaze nor so much as question upon it is such a setting the Scripture to be broken upon the Wheel such a Barbarity as exceeds a thousandfold all the Barbarities and Inhumanities spoken of throughout the Bishop's whole Book Especially when our Lord declares in a like manner of speaking and doubts upon it His words were spirit and

life and the flesh profited nothing Why then should men bring the Scripture to the Engine to torture it into the confession of what as God speaks never came into his heart And so I may fairly dismiss the Bishop's longsom Historie of Transubstantiation seeing the mouth of his Canon turns upon himself for what he can and what should a man be shie of in declaring his Non-belief of what is against all the sense and reason of mankind what hath no ground in Revelation and what all the Wits and Subtilties the Canonists and School-men yea the very Councils of the Roman Vassalage can when set upon the utmost stretch make nothing of but a meer Babel if we may believe the Bishop in what he determines upon the whole search in favour of it Not like Solomon's conclusion of the matter into the whole of man but like the conclusion of Babel all was Jargon Nonsense Confusion and Rubbish and worse than that the conclusion will be like that of Babylon the Great a perpetual Desolation and Burning They therefore who have like Slaves bor'd their Ears to this spiritual Egyptian slavery and under the Plague of its Darkness to be even felt how just is it to disengage them from taking the Rights of their Prince and Country into their trust whether their contented Slavery rise from some weak part or a worse depravedness which inclines their always bowed down Backs and their Eyes laden with slumber under such a monstrous Bigottism I come therefore to consider of the second Proposition which however it runs in the Bishop's Text is thus express'd in the Test And that the Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are superstitious and idolatrous In which although I confess in my own Judgment the very Extremity as of Sense that the words can reach are supported by the demerit of the things Declared against Yet because it is a Test publickly offered the refusal of which suspends so great an Interest as all share in Government as the Bishop expresses it It will not be unfit to observe all the Lenitives that are by the Prudence of the Composers whoever they were it makes no matter contriv'd into it 1. Therfore I do believe is prefix'd to the whole Test by common Equity of Construction to be supplyed I do believe the first Proposition That in the Sacrament c. And in the second I do believe that the Invocation c. Now it is Evident a Man may Swear to his own Belief if he knows he does really so Believe although he be mistaken in the grounds of his Belief because it is onely matter of Fact within himself 2. There is a Limitation As these things are us'd and now us'd in the Church of Rome whether by express Command or by Approbation or Connivence so that the very grossness and stupidity of the most Dull and Ignorant who stick in the very thick Matter and are able to extricate themselves as the finer Wits pretend to do are to be taken into that Vsage and that most Meritoriously seeing if the Church of Rome leads such unwary and unapprehensive Persons in Obedience to it to the very brink of the Precipice into so deep and impure a Mud and that so unnecessarily it is to be chang'd with the Vsages as in it self And then those words of the Test As it is now used signifies the first beginnings of these things were not so fresh as now they are arriv'd to be 3. In that the word Superstitious is first set as the lesser and most undoubted and then not the downright full-out word Idolatry but Idolatrous It takes off the full Blow of the Censures for Idolatry imports a great danger suspicion and nearness to Idolatry but not absolute Idolatry it self And this the Bishop ought in all candid dealing to have taken Notice of and to have allowed the Caution with which the Test is worded for the Stabbing and Cut-throat word Idolatry is not used and so the Piquancy of that his remark false But letting slip all things that do not enter into the substance of the matter it is first to be observed that absolutely and in earnest all that dreadful Representation of the punishment of Idolatry in this World is disown'd by all sober Christians and those rigid Laws or any such Zelotic Spirit of Elias as among the Jews on the account of Idolatry are reversed under the milder temper and more moderate climate of Christian Religion and the compassionate Spirit of it as repeated by our Saviour expresly in those words to the Disciples that were for demanding Fire from Heaven upon the Samaritans Luke 9.54 To which our Lord rejoyned Ye know not what spirit ye are of the Son of man came not to destroy mens lives but to save them We disown all such torrid Enthusiasm where-ever it is found upon this Authority and such Ravagings upon the Lives of men meerly for their notwithstanding so great delusions in so plain a point of Divine Worship are not so much as thought of in the Test Cruelties and inhumanities of that kind are left as the proper Inheritance of the Idolatrous who indeed cut Throats and cause innocent Persons to pass through the Fire alive in the rage of their Moloch-Sacrafice And I am fully perswaded the principal end of the Test-Act was to secure the Lives and Fortunes of a Protestant Nation from the fury and blood-thirstiness of that name of Religion by which it is as much known as the Scarlet and Purple it is arraied in and that in the Historie of some Ages past and so cannot but be still suspected The prevention indeed of such the public practise of those Superstitions and Idolatrousnesses is worthy the care of a Protestant Magistracy to prevent and to take care the Contagion may not spread much less that a Protestant Kingdom should come under the Girdle of its Ministerial Government although with all Loyalty it owns their Soveraign according to the Christian Law and of the Nation and then for to set such Bounds to it as may most indemnifie it self But for the securities of Divine Justice upon Idolatry whenever they com to be manifested they wil be just and bring their conviction along with them which may be speedier than men are aware the Measure of Iniquity growing now full as of more then one God is Idolatry so of more than one Mediator is a Parallell Idolatry And as letting fall any glances of Respect upon any Creature Person or Thing Angel or Diamon Sun Moon or Stars or the inferiour Creatures as partial Gods conveying the Benifits of the Supreme God to us is foul Idolatry so any partial or inferiour Mediators are alike Idolatry under the Gospel And as the making to our selves any likeness either in Heaven above or the Earth beneath c. as a Medium to Worship God by so the making to our selves