Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	write_n	write_v	writing_n	326	4	8.8356	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26962	Naked popery, or, The naked falshood of a book called The Catholick naked truth, or, The Puritan convert to apostolical Christianity, written by W.H. opening their fundamental errour of unwritten tradition, and their unjust description of the Puritans, the prelatical Protestant, and the papist, and their differences, and better acquainting the ignorant of the same difference, especially what a Puritan and what a papist is / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1677 (1677)	Wing B1315; ESTC R13884	120,987	206

particular Doctors but of the Church in Councils which we must call your Churches Judgment You undertake not to justifie any more And if I talk with any of my Neighbours and ask him what he believeth have I any more than a single Doctors opinion Is his Answer the Faith of your Church But would you have any one past seven years old believe you that writing is of no more use to Memory for conservation of Antiquities when God would not trust his Ten Commandments to the Peoples Memories but would write them in Stone and put them in the Arke which you have so little skill in Antiquity as to say here was the first writing Sure if you will read your Jesuite Euseb Nirembergius de Antiqu. scripturae you will not say that your Grand-Father taught you truly that Opinion as the Tradition of the Church Why do you write to your own Relations if writing be so un-intelligible Could the Bible have been kept as well in Memory as by Writings Why were the Gospels written then Do you go to Tradition or to Books to decide any Controversie now of the various readings Did Pope Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. reform the vulgar Latine by Memory or by Books Pope Pius's Trent Oath sweareth Men to Interpret Scripture according to the consent of the Fathers Do any of your Doctors know how that is by Memory and Oral Tradition or by Books Did Possevine and Sixtus Senensis and such others Correct Books by Oral Tradition or by Books Did Celestine and the Carthage Council debate the Case of the Nicene Canon a narrow Instance which Memory might have served for out of Mens Memories or out of written Records Why doth 〈◊〉 bring us out new Forged Canons and why do the Copies of many Councils differ in the recital of Canons if Memory and Universal un-written Tradition can reconcile the difference Was the Athenian Philosophy propagated and preserved better by Memory or by Books Why is not the Stoicks and Epicureans and others as fully known now as Aristotles and Plato's if Memory without Books could have done Have you as full notice now of the Acts of James John Matthew Thomas Bartholomew c. without Book as you have of Paul's by the Book Is memory sufficient to have preserved to us the Statures of the Land without Books and Records Yea or the Common-Law without any Records or Book Cases Why are all your Councils written and all the Decretals to say nothing of the Civil Roman Laws Institutes Pandects and Digests Can you decide the Controversies about the Decretals published by Isidore Mercator by Tradition What are all your Libraries for at the Vatican Florence Paris and in each Learned Mans House if Books be so useless and unintelligible If one of your Relations ask you what is in the Council of Trent Florence Laterane and so upward can you tell him fully without Book by Tradition And are not these Councils your very Religion Doth every Papist Neighbour carry them all in his brain more certainly than in Books Or could your Grandfather and Grandmother have told us more certainly what is in them than Crab Surius Binius Baronius Justellus Albaspinaeus Petavius Sirmondus c. could do Or is all left uncertain because it is written Through Gods Mercy our Essentials and somewhat more are delivered certainly down to us by two hands by Oral and Practical Tradition and by the Scripture because they lye in a narrow room But yet if you had the front to tell the World that your immutable Church hath never changed the Creed it self we could not believe you because Books contradict you Tradition from your Great Grandfather cannot assure us that Filioque was in the Creed from the days of the Apostles Nor that the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints and the other words mentioned in Vessius and Usher de Symbolis were in so long Nor that the Greeks added no words to their Creed at Nice nor afterward at Constantinople in General Councils nor that all S. Hilaries outcry against Creeds was in vain Nor can Tradition without Book yet assure us what were the very words of the Creed used commonly by the Greeks immediately before the Nicene Council nor who wrote that ascribed to Athanasius Nor among the various Formula's of that called the Apostles found as aforesaid in Irenaeus Tertullian Epiphanius Ruffinus c. which of them was in constant use or whether liberty of such alteration of words was not then used And no Unwritten Report of your Grandfather can assure us that your Mass-Book or Liturgy was the same in the Apostles days as it is now nor that it was for 600 years the same in all the Churches of one Empire and that every Bishop had not power to use what Liturgy he pleased in his own City or Parochia Nor can your Tradition assure us that what the Father and Grandfather used was used from the Apostles when the Church of Neocaesarea clamoured at S. Basil for his singularity and innovations and S. Basil retorts on them that they at Neocaesarea had scarce left any thing unchanged I hope this is not the less credible because Basil hath written it At least I pray hereafter give over your ill practice of leading simple Readers into a Wood of Church-History to lose them and the Question there among a multitude of Citations of old Books when you know not what else to say as William Johnson did because there the ignorant know nothing themselves but may as well believe the Affirmer as the Denyer and at least the diversion to voluminous Controversies about particular mens words may hide your Errours Do not resolve all the Controversie yea the Faith of your Followers into a multitude of Books of Councils and Fathers which they never saw And do not take so much care to corrupt and alter Books for your interest as instances and your Indices Expurg tell us you have done Resolve without Book the Controversie about your great Laterane Council whether Dr. Taylor Dr. Pierson Dr. Gunning and Bishop Cousins lately that say Innocent 3. made and published the Canons and the Council did not consent to them be in the right or rather they that answered Dr. Pierson and Dr. Gunning and indeed your Church which holds the contrary which Mr. Dodwell seemeth to me lately to have fully proved in his Book about tolerating Papists Nay why may we not expect that you lay by your Book Catechisms your Office Books your Controversie Books and teach your People all without Book But by this Counsel to your Relations you fully shew that you would have them to have no certainty at all either what Christianity is or what Popery is For they shall never speak with the Universal Church or with a General Council while they live And all their Neighbours to whom you send them are fallible Persons I suppose you one of the chief of them and alas how failible you are you have in two Writings grosly

shewed Having said thus much more to shew that your Foundation is Sand who send us from Books to our Grandfathers as infallible and that this is no better a ground than the Abassines Greeks and others may build on as well as you and that we our selves have a far surer and Universal Tradition than the Papacy hath and have your own consent to every word of our Objective Religion I now proceed to consider of your Character of Parties CHAP. II. YOU describe to us four supposed Parties I. The Puritan II. The Prelatical Protestant whom your Fitz-Simmons calleth The Formalist III. The Papist as you suppose us falsly to describe him IV. The Papist as you suppose him truly described whom you call The Apostolical Christian In all which you shew that you are far from Infallibility and a man unfit for your Relations to trust in so great a Case I. I confess you give the Puritan a very laudable description in comparison of the Prelatist Protestant and the feigned Papist And you tell us that you were once a Puritan your self and you own still that which you describe as Puritanism only adding Popery to it which you think it wants I confess you speak incomparably more honourably and charitably of Puritans than some malicious interessed Persons of their own Protestant Profession will do But 1. You deal not informingly in your describing a Puritan before you distinguish that ambiguous ill-made word It hath three common acceptions among us at least First The ancientest as it signifieth the old or later Catharists who held that they were perfect if they are not belyed And none come nearer these than the Papists and Quakers certainly Protestants are far from it Secondly the old Non-conformists had the name of Puritanes put on them by those that were against them For what reason I leave them to answer to God Thirdly and because these Non-conformists lived strictly and were for much preaching and praying and holy conference and spending the Lords-day in holy Exercises and serious diligence in working out our Salvation and were sharp against drunkenness swearing and such other sins therefore the vulgar Rabble of vicious ones that durst not rail at Piety under the name of Piety took the advantage of the Bishops displeasure at the Non-conformists and of the name Puritane and put that name upon all Christians among them that were notably serious in practical Godliness perswading themselves that they were all but Hypocrites And so the name among the vulgar Rabble grew common to godly Conformists and Non-conformists And as if loquendum cum vulgo had been a Law by this means the Devil did more hurt both to godliness rendring it among the vulgar to he but odious Hypocrisie and Singularity and to Episcopacy making Multitudes that disliked the wickedness of the Rabble to think that all this came from the Bishops and it did more to advance and honour the Non-conformists because the name was formerly theirs as such than by any one thing that I remember in all my younger days This the godly Conformists grievously complained of as Bishop Downame in his Spit●le Sermon called Abrahams Tryal and Mr. Robert Bolton who saith that he believeth that never poor persecuted Word passed through the Mouths of wicked Men with more bitter scorn since Malice first entred into the Heart of Man Really the permitting of the common Rabble of all the debauched Sinners of the Land to make serious godliness a common scorn under the name of Puritanisme had as great a hand as any thing I know in all our Confusions Fourthly and it added Fuel to the Fire when some brought up a fourth sence of the Word some say Mar. Ant. de Dom. Spalatensis was the inventor of it and that was Doctrinal Puritanes by which name they understood those by some called Calvinists by others Anti-Arminians who held the Doctrine of your Dominicans or of the Jansenists Now who can well tell which of these sorts of Puritanes you were and talk of while you Characterize the second sort as well as the first and yet distinguish them from Prelatick Protestants 2. But which ever it is observe here that you own the Puritanes Religion still and say I have not so much left Puritanism as Prelaticks call it as added that to it wherein I found it come short of the holy Apostles Doctrine and Institutions p. 1. And when you have described the Puritane as one seriously conscionable and regardful of his Salvation at large you add If this be to be a Puritane would to God all the World were Puritanes I am so far from being Converted from thus much of a Puritane that I most heartily wish I could Convert all the World to it 3. But yet your description of him is so very false that I may conclude when you turned as you think from being a meer Puritane to be a Papist you never knew what a Puritane is nor indeed ever were a Puritane your self unless you take the word as fitted to your self and such as you If you had meant by a Puritane a meer Non-conformist as such you would not so laudably have described the work of God upon his Soul and Life as you have done For if most Non-conformists be such yet so are many others as well as they And it 's easie to see what a deceitful course it is to take up a name of many significations and such as signifieth no different Religion at all as to any one Article of Faith nor any more difference in or about Religion than such as is among most Christian Churches and much less than is among your selves Besides that the plainer name of a Non-conformist is of no determinate nor certain signification save only in general to notifie one that Conformeth not to all that is imposed on him but what that is the name doth not signifie A Non-conformist in Scotland is one thing in England another thing as the Impositions are different Non-conformity twenty years ago or fourty years was one thing Non-conformity since 1662. is quite another thing And Non-conformists differ among themselves If twenty things be imposed as necessary to the Ministry he is a Non-conformist who consenteth but to nineteen of them and so is he that consenteth but to eighteen or to seventeen or to sixteen and so on as well as he that consenteth to none of them And that there is so much difference among them is no wonder to them nor any considerate Man for they hold Christian Love and Communion with those that agree with them in the foresaid common Principles and Practice of Christianity as far as they require not them to sin And they are not of a different Religion from every one that fasteth not on Fridays or Saints Vigils c. as you seem to be nor from every one that doth so nor from every one that thinketh not in every thing as they think or that prayeth in other words than they for no two Men in the World