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Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42570	A letter to Father Lewis Sabran Jesuite in answer to his letter to a peer of the Church of England : wherein the postscript to the answer to Nubes testium is vindicated and F. Sabran's mistakes further discovered.	Gee, Edward, 1657-1730.; Gee, Edward, 1657-1730. Answer to the compiler of the Nubes testium.	1688 (1688)	Wing G455; ESTC R177350	6,204	9

a Sermon on that subject which this evidently is cannot be either St. Austins or near his time since there was then and long after not only no Feast but no belief of any such thing as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. But you endeavour to illustrate this shadow or rather phantome of an Answer by an Instance You tell his Lordship St. Austins fourteenth Sermon de Sanctis is allowed by all to be his genuine work the Title whereof is in the Feast of all Saints yet that the Institution of that Feast was much later than that Sermon which was made for and preach'd in the Solemnity of a Virgin and Martyr Surely Sir you thought your putting your name and your society to your Letter would fright the nameless Author from daring to give one word of Answer to that Letter and therefore that you might take the Liberty to say what you pleased in it Without such a supposition I am not able to rescue you from a more odious Character than I am willing to mention For this is one of the falsest passages I have met with in so few words You say St. Austins 14 th Sermon de Sanstis is allowed by all to be his genuine work This is give me leave to speak out very false For the Benedictines of Paris not to mention our Authors whom I will not insist on to prove against your ALL have thrown this Sermon into their Appendix as Spurious and shew that it is a meer Cento made up of pieces of Sermons borrowed here and there You tell his Lordship next that the Title of the Sermon is in the Feast of all Saints This is as false as the other for not onely in the Louvain but in the Benedictine as well as in Erasmus's Edition the Title of this fourteenth Sermon is in Festo Conversionis Sancti Pauli a Sermon on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. I must confess Sir that I was wholly astonished at your asserting these things with so much assurance to a Peer and to a Peer also of the Church of England and without any truth I lookt again and again at it and lest it might be an errour of the Press I lookt into the fourth into the twenty fourth into the thirty fourth into the forty first I lookt also into the two next Sermons before and after this fourteenth Sermon de Sanctis but no news could I find of your Title in any one of those Sermons and therefore must lay this mistake to your own charge You lastly tell his Lordship that this fourteenth Sermon was made son and preach'd in the solemnity of a Virgin and Martyr which is as false as either of the other since it certainly was made for and preach't upon St. Pauls Conversion You next tell his Lordship of a far greater mistake in this my Objection much to be wondered at in so great a pretender to reading as if say you Feast or day of Assumption in the Writings of Antients did almost ever signify any thing else but the Day of a Saints Death But pray Sir what is that to this Sermon if the day of Assumption do not ever signify the day of a Saints Death why may not this be the exception but to pass that you know very well that that cannot be the meaning here since this Sermon speaks of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and that it was the Churches Custom to believe that the Virgin Mary was on the day of that solemnity assumed into Heaven But all this is but to raise a dust about nothing for were the Argument from the Title as weak as you could desire yet what follows in my Postscript is more than strong enough to convince all reasonable men that that Sermon could not be St. Austins I next urged against this Sermon that the Benedictines of Paris in their late Edition of St. Austin had cast it into their Appendix as spurious and that they told us that in their MSS. it wanted the name of any Author but that the Divines of Louvain told us that in several Manuscripts which they used in their Edition of St. Austin this Sermon de Sanctis was intituled to Fulbertus Carnotensis This Argument you were affraid to take together and therefore without saying a word to the Benedictine Manuscripts which name no Author for that Sermon you think you answer the Louvain MSS. about its being intituled to Fulbertus by saying St. Ambrose and Chrysologus's Sermons have appeared in MSS. under other Authors names But pray Sir what would you prove from hence because such a thing hath happened to St. Ambrose therefore this Sermon must be St. Augustins because printed among his works tho' it bears not his name either in the MSS. used by the Louvain Divines or by the Benedictines How is it that we know one man's Sermon 's from another's is it not either from his style or from its being attributed to such a person by the most and best Manuscripts from one of these ways it is that St. Ambrose's or any other Father's Sermons are vindicated to their true Authors But both these Arguments are directly against this Sermon 's being St. Austins the style is dull and heavy hath not any thing like or near the briskness wit and great sense of St. Austin and further the MSS. used by them give it against you they either intitle it to no Author or to Fulbertus Carnetensis Tho' my Arguments were not very weighty yet what I next urged I thought would fully satisfy any ones scruples I mean the instance of Isidores being quoted in it by which I said it was certain that this Sermon must be written after his time who lived in the beginning of the Seventh Century What I say is certain here you tell his Lordship is unprobable You give this as one reason because the Author of that Sermon says no Author among the Latins could be found who treating of our blessed Ladies Death had been positive and express whereas Gregory of Tours in the Sixth Age hath a most full account of our blessed Ladies Assumption and therefore the Author of this Sermon must have lived before Gregory and consequently long before Fulbertus or Isidore of Sevil. But I do not see this Consequence it is no errour to suppose the Author of that Sermon had never seen Gregory of Tours Book and therefore might have that expression concerning no Latin Author treating of the Virgin Maryes Assumption Or we may very well suppose that if he had he reckons his story among those Apocryphal ones which were then writ but rejected by the Church of God And I cannot see how it should be a fault in Fulbertus to reject Gregory of Tours if he knew of him as an Apocryphal Author and not in St. Bernard who so very long after either doubted or disbelieved as you own in the page before this the Story of the Assumption notwithstanding the most full account of it in Gregory whom with the

A LETTER TO Father Lewis Sabran JESUITE In Answer to his LETTER to a PEER OF THE Church of England WHEREIN The Postscript to the Answer to NVBES TESTIVM is vindicated And F. SABRAN's Mistakes further discovered LONDON Printed for Henry Motlock at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard 1688. Imprimatur A Letter to Father Lewis Sabran Guil. Needham R mo in Christo P. D. Wilhelmo Archiepiscopo Cant. a Sacris Domest Nov. 25. 1687. Reverend Sir SInce I am altogether a stranger to that Honourable Person to whom your Letter is dedicated I would not presume to write my Vindication to his Lordship but thought it more proper for me to address this to your self What I put down in a Postscript in relation to your Sermon at Chester hath I perceive given you no little disturbance I do not wonder at it since few men are content or able to bear the justest censure that can be past upon them But tho' I do not wonder at your displeasure yet I do very much at your attempt to vindicate your self in a matter that is not capable of any defence as I shall quickly shew you I intend this Letter for a Vindication of my self to the world as well as to you and therefore will take leave to repeat what you said in that Sermon and what it was that I animadverted upon in my Postscript to the Answer to the Nubes Testium In the second page of your Sermon you have these words If I presume not to present them yours and your Auditours Prayers without taking along the joynt Intercession of the Mother of God I follow therein the Advice of St. Augustin which I address to you in his words Let us by the most tender Application of our whole heart recommend our selves to the most Blessed Virgin 's Intercession let us all with the greatest eagerness strive to obtain her Protection that whilst with Assiduity we pay her our Devotions on Earth she may intreat for us in Heaven by her earnest Prayers for undoubtedly she who brought forth the Price of Redemption hath the greatest Right to intercede for those who are redeemed This was the passage that I reflected upon there since with a very little pains I found that that Sermon out of which you quoted these expressions was not St. Austins and therefore I said in that Postscript that I could not but conclude you guilty either of great Ignorance or of notorious disingenuity who would ascribe to the venerable St. Austin this Notorious Forgery These Expressions of my Postscript I do still own notwithstanding your Vindication and intend this Letter for a Defence of them and a full Confutation of what you have so weakly and so unwarily offered towards the clearing of your self You have prefaced your Letter to that Honourable Lord with some hard words against the Church of England about her Reformation by meer Lay-Authority about her want of Succession Mission and about her undermining one third part of the Apostles Creed I am so very desirous to come to the Controversie betwixt us that I will only tell you here that every word of what you have said there against the Church of England is very false and very absurd You next make two or three Reflections upon my Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium I will pass over these at present also since I am not at leisure here to defend that Book and which is more I need not against what you have said there You next come to the Dividing of my Accusation against you and tell the World I accuse you first of Ignorance in saying you followed the Advice of St. Austin when you recommended your self to the Most Blessed Virgins Intercession In Answer to which I must tell you Sir that you abuse words in dividing them-into the charge of Ignorance about Using the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin and Disingenuity about quoting the Sermon as St. Austins Your design I easily foresee which is to draw me into a Controversy about Invocation of Saints that so the heavy charge laid against you may be either dropt or buried in a multitude of words about other things But to be plain with you Sir now you have drawn me into the field I am resolved not to be diverted with the throwing in of other matter about Invocation which I have sufficiently answered once already in my Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium I am resolved to finish this dispute about the Sermon of St. Austin before I begin any other with you When you have either cleared your self or owned your obstinate Mistake then I shall be at your service either in the DEFENCE of my Book or of my Mother the Apostolical Church of England You must not be angry therefore if I throw aside as nothing to the purpose of the present Controversy what you have set down out of the Nubes from your third to your sixth page where I was glad to find that you did recollect with your self that our dispute was about those words as taken out of the thirty fifth Sermon de Sanctis Which I said could not be St. Austins but you are now resolved to defend that it may As for my Arguments you tell his Lordship that I borrow some Proofs of this Confident Assertion I suppose you mean of the Sermons not being St. Austins of Alexandre Natalis and add one of my own contrivance Since I am not acquainted with that Honourable Lord I am afraid you will not do me the favour to tell that Lord from me that what you say here is very false I designed and drew up that Postscript and had it Printed in half a day I had not lookt into Natalis Alexandre of five weeks before and which is more neither looked for or ever saw one syllable in him about that or any other Sermon attributed to St. Austin that I remember I must own that I have been acquainted with Natalis Alexandre but it was meerly to find out the stealings of your Pious and Learned Author of the Nubes Testium who as I have thewn in my Answer did not only steal his whole Book excepting a small passage or two out of that French Historian but stands excommunicated by this present Pope for his pains After your false account whence I had my Proofs you come next to examine them singly My first was that the Title a Sermon on not in as you translate the words the Feast of the Assumption does not at all agree to any thing that is near St. Austins time You answer that there is no consequence can be drawn from the Title since the Title as I suppose your meaning is might have been afterwards added But why Sir can there be no consequence drawn hence my design was not only from there being no Feast of Assumption then which you grant and therefore no Sermon could be Preached on that Solemnity but from there being no belief of such an Assumption then and therefore