Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bishop_n	church_n	roman_a	1,391	5	8.0518	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77522	Letters between the Ld George Digby, and Sr Kenelm Digby kt. concerning religion.	Bristol, George Digby, Earl of, 1612-1677.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.	1651 (1651)	Wing B4768; Thomason E1355_2; ESTC R209464	61,686	137

designe both of that and this It was to express unto you in the generall industriously avoiding particular questions how little certainty or satisfaction I think can be found on either side that shall rely on the Fathers testimonies for a clear determination of our differences I confess I lancht into the Ocean of them with eager hopes of such a discovery and from them at length can draw just as certain conclusions as Sea-men of the Soyle and dimensions of old Brasill The reasons prevalent with me of the uncertainty or rather in my conceipt impossibility of drawing out of the Fathers any such proofs either way in our controversies whereon an inquiring and judicious person should be obliged to relie and acquiesce are so amply and so learnedly set down by Mr. Dailby in Emploides peres that I think little of material or weighty can be said on this Subject that his rare and pierceing observation hath not anticipated But because you will expect from me somewhat more then a bare reverence take in short the chief inducements I will set down as briefly and perspicuously as I can not to insist upon the more frequent ones namely the few writings extant of the Primitive Doctors of the first second and third ages after Christ The many supposititious children that bear the name of Fathers they do not so much as Ore refer the alterations rasures and insertions which through ignorance fraud or maliciousness have defaced maimed and corrupted even those few monuments that remain of venerable antiquity I say not to dwell upon these supposing that in your fair and noble way of ratiocination you will not draw arguments from any but such as are on both sides received for intire and ligitimate pieces differences being rightly reconcileable only by such mediums as both parties consent in those which seem of greatest force with me to invalidate their authority in our questions are these Four First Their contradictions to one another Secondly their variance from themselves Thirdly their repugnances both to Papists and Protestants Fourthly and lastly Their want of ability in many points of our controversies in most of will to decide them Their thwartings of one another both in their writings and votes in Councels will easily appear to any man that shall but with indifferent observation survey their works and this in matters of government of practise and of belief which are the three particulars wherein you advise me out of the Fathers to judge the conformity of your Church or ours to antiquity For their Clashings in point of government to name the superiority of the Sea of Rome will be enough to call to your memory the Epistles of * Epist 53. ad Anatol. 54. ad Martian 55. ad Pul●her 59. ad Martian 61. ad Juvenal Leo contrary to the 28. Canon of the Fathers of the Councel of Calcedon who had elevated that of Constantinople to an equal height with the other And likewise those Epistles of Gregory the great 32. ad Maurit 34. Constant L. 4. wherein he enveighs in sharpe terms against whosoever should take upon him the title of Universal Bishop hardly reconcilable with those passages of the Fathers that the Roman Doctors cite for the Popes supremacy and least of all with the practice of Boniface the 3d that soon after assumed the Appellation To name the question of Appeals to Rome will suffice to draw an acknowledgment from you of the great contestations between the Affrican Bishops and the Roman condemning that point which was likewise oppositely decreed by the Synods of Sardis and Calcedon Concil Sard. Can. 3. 2 Concil Calced Can. 9. To name the election of Bishops will be sufficient to recal to your thoughts the direct opposition in that point of the Fathers of the eighth General Councel in their two and twentieth Canon against what * Epist 68. p. 166 Cyprian taught at large to be Apostolick tradition to wit that the people should have their votes also in the choice of Bishops And lastly not to dwell too long upon the least material point you will easily be put in minde how that which is delivered by many and particularly by Epiphanius p. 908. against Arrius for a received sense of the Church touching the preeminence of a Bishop above a Presbyter is flatly impugned by S. Jerom. Ep. ad Occan. 83. p. 614. and others Their clashings about matters of practice are altogether as obvious Call but to minde Victors heats against the Bishops of Asia touching the observance of Easter day Tatianus and Tertullian's tenents concerning marriage against the opinion of so many Fathers as would be endless to name But because the first was declared an Heretick for holding all marriage pollution the last for esteeming the second unlawful I beseech you turn over S. Jerom's Epistles to Furia to Agerachia and weigh some passages in his first book against Jovinian And then tell me not how far he is from making Marriage a Sacrament of the Church but how far his words are from importing the others Heresy Cast but your Eie upon that passage of Origen Cont. Cels l. 5. to p. 479. Where speaking of Angels he saith that in consideration of their divine nature they are sometimes in the Scriptures called gods but not so as that we should be commanded to adore them or worship them with divine honors although they be the conveyers of Gods gifts unto us for al desires al prayers al deprecations al thanksgivings are to be sent up to God the Lord of all things by the high Priest who is above all Angels who is the living word and God Be pleased likewise to consider the 394. pag. of Athanasius in his first Oration against the Arrians where he teaches that God onely is to be worshipped c. And inform me how I shall comprimise the matter betwixt them and those passages of other Fathers alledged by Bellarmine for the worship and invocation of Saints L. de Beatitudine sanctorum c. 13. Where those which he cites out of Justine and Augustine are not like the rest so impertinent but they may stand in some opposition with the two above mentioned Let me but remember you of the opinion that Hereticks ought to be baptized so contradicted by Optatus by Austine and generally by all that impugne the Donatists which was notwithstanding most peremtorily maintained by Tertullian Cyprian Ep. ad Pompeium Firmilian so far as that Cyprian for this cause brake into most notorious heats against Stephanus Bishop of Rome both Stephanus and Cyprian urging tradition for contrary Doctrines and Firmilian against all the Roman Church in general saying in an Epistle of his which is the seventy fifth among Cyprian's works that Rome did not in all things observe the tradition of the Apostles and in vain boasted of their Authority Accord I beseech you that passage of S. Austin Serm. 17. de verbis Apost Injuria est pro Martyre orare with the practise of the Church in that

the soule perspicatious and considerate of what is profitable Lastly to conclude this point let me set before you Macarius Homil. 17. and Theophylact more remote from one another in this article of faith then in the times wherein they lived Macarius telling us that we offer bread and wine the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his flesh and blood and they which are partakers of the visible bread do eat the flesh of the Lord spiritually And Theophylact teaching the directly contrary doctrin upon the 6. of Saint John Note here saies he that the bread which we eat in the mysteries is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Lords flesh but the very flesh of the Lord and let no body be troubled that the bread should be believed flesh since the bread which he did eate when he walked here was altered into his body and made the same with his holy flesh so would the wafer be turned into his flesh if Christ as man did eat it will the veryest Sacramentary say I have insisted the longer upon this particular as conceiving it the highest point of all our controversies and wherein the Fathers should have most obliged us had they left to posteritie a right and unanimous intelligence of that great mysterie of the Eucharist But the certainest conclusion I can draw from them in this and the rest is of the uncertainty of concluding any thing in our differences from those that differ so much amongst themselves Justin Martyr in Orat. cohort ad Gent. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He should have my vote for a rare Musitian that could contrive those their discords into a Harmony fit to be the measure either of our practise or belief My next Reason is the Fathers variance from themselves a quality of much more prejudice to them then the other for upon contradiction of testimonies how point-blank soever a Judg may fall to examine the fame and reputed integrity of the witnesses in which if he find a difference he will not stick many times to pronounce a sentence according to the intire credit of the men but who will ever give judgement upon ones evidence who in the same businesse is found in contrary tales And here I could run over most of the materialest points wherein I made my former instances and produce almost out of every Father pro con examples not onely of variance but almost of as eminent contradiction as that of St. Augustine concerning Purgatory in Serm. 232. de Tempore where he flatly denies that there is any third place besides Heaven and Hell calling them deceivers that teach it And likewise in his 21. Book de Civitate Dei cap. 16. where he absolutely rejects the opinion of any Purgatory flames before the day of Judgement to another passage in Cap. 24. of Lib. 21. de Civitate Dei where he seemes positively to affirm i● himselfe but I forbear in regard it would be tedious and likewise for that I am unwilling to presse a point of derogation from those holy Fathers whom I reverence further then I needs must it being sufficient for what I intend to inferre that they appeare oftentimes to vary from their owne positions in divers Articles that we dispute of and others fully as important in which I may be well excused from the trouble to us both of alledging examples since Genebrard and Pamelius thought it their best course to purge the one Origen the other Tertullian from grosse and impious errour in many places by shewing how they teach the cleane contrary in others though by the way I must needs say that Pamelius his manner appeares to be very extravagant for as to some poysonous doctrines of Tertullian a Montanist he rightly applies a cure from some other passage of Tertullian a Catholick so at other times to what hee thought venemous in Tertullian a Catholick he preposterously prescribes an Antitidote out of Tertullian an Heretick as you may see in the eighth of his Paradoxes where he confutes an errour in his Apologetique and de Testimonio Animae Bookes which that Father wrote being a Catholicke with a passage of his Book de Anima composed when he was turned Cataphrygian and yet who so forward as Pamelius when any passage in such bookes makes for us to cry out away with it 't was a saying of Tertullian a Montanist I may well help my cause the best I can by this unsetlednesse of the Fathers since the noblest pillar of the Roman Church Cardinall Peron so often wrests their variance from themselves so much to the advantage of his See how in his reply to King James p. 374. he makes bold with Gregory the Great with Ruffinus with Jerome touching the Maccabees reception into the Canon wherein I doe not think him more in the wrong in the particular then I believe him right in the generall to wit that the Fathers did often vary their opinions according to their severall greenness or maturity of studies from whence Vincentius Lyrenensis his directions will follow cont haeres c. 39. That the Fathers depositions are onely to be taken who living in the Catholick Faith and Communion holily and wisely did constantly teach and persist even untill their death in Christ and further such only as did receive preserve and deliver their doctrines all or the greatest part manifestly and in one and the same sense wherein what use soever some Papists make of that passage I professe I thinke we are somewhat lesse beholding to him for the certainty of a rule and evidence to guide our faith by then to Archimedes for his Engine to remove the World For the Mathematitian disabuses us and declares that there is not a solid place to be found wheron to fix his instrument but th' other leaves us to that vain search of an impossibility for truly as the case stands I cannot think it less then an impossibility to know with any competent assurance what in all or almost any of our debated questions the Fathers hold with all those solid circumstances whereon Vincentius his rule is grounded of holiness wisdom catholickness immutability of the teachers and perpetual identitie of the doctrins sense if with years they all improved I might be comforted a little by relying on their last dictamens but as I find a S. Augustin that with age retracted his errors so on the other side I meet with a Tertullian that going forward in years and experience went less in his judgement how happie should we both be in one that could assure us in the Legion of Fathers when was the verticle point of each their erudition whether at their summer or winter solstice if I give you the notes of it and tell you then only you have it certain when they are in a perfect and palpable conjunction with Scripture you will think it but an imperfect indication if you say that then they were ariv'd to the high point of their perfection when they were once exactly instructed in the full