Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	ghost_n	holy_a	spirit_n	3,926	5	5.5026	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49714	A relation of the conference between William Laud, late Lord Arch-bishop of Canterbury, and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite by the command of King James, of ever-blessed memory : with an answer to such exceptions as A.C. takes against it.	Laud, William, 1573-1645.; Fisher, John, 1569-1641.	1673 (1673)	Wing L594; ESTC R3539	402,023	294

is not Infallible F. The Question was Which was that Church A Friend of the Ladies would needs defend That not only the Roman but also the Greek Church was right B. § 4 When that Honourable Personage answered I was not by to hear But I presume he was so far from granting that only the Roman Church was right as that he did not grant it right and that he took on him no other defence of the poor Greek Church then was according to truth F. I told him That the Greek Church had plainly changed and taught false in a Point of Doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost and that I had heard say that even his Majesty should say That the Greek Church having erred against the Holy Ghost had lost the Holy Ghost B. § 5 You are very bold with His Majesty to relate him upon Hear-say My intelligence serves me not to tell you what His Majesty said But if he said it not you have been too credulous to believe and too sudden to report it Princes deserve and were wont to have more respect then so If His Majesty did say it there is Truth in the speech the Errour is yours only by mistaking what is meant by losing the Holy Ghost For a particular Church may be said to lose the Holy Ghost two ways or in two degrees 1 The one when it loses such special assistance of that Blessed Spirit as preserves it from all dangerous Errours and sins and the temporal punishment which is due unto them And in this sense the Greek Church did perhaps lose the Holy Ghost for they erred against him they sinned against God And for this or other sins they were delivered into another Babylonish Captivity under the Turk in which they yet are and from which God in his mercy deliver them But this is rather to be called an Errour circa Spiritum Sanctum about the Doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost then an Errour against the Holy Ghost 2 The other is when it loses not only this assistance but all assistance ad hoc to this that they may remain any longer a true Church and so Corinth and Ephesus and divers other Churches have lost the Holy Ghost but in this sense the whole Greek Church lost not the Holy Ghost For they continue a true Church in the main substance to and at this day though Erroneous in this Point which you mention and perhaps in some other too F. The Ladies Friend not knowing what to answer called in the Bishop who sitting down first excused himself as one unprovided and not much studied in Controversies and desiring that in case he should fail yet the Protestant Cause might not be thought ill of B. § 6 This is most true For I did indeed excuse my self and I had great reason so to do And my Reason being grounded upon Modesty for the most part there I leave it Yet this it may be fit others should know that I had no information where the other Conferences brake off no instruction at all what should be the ground of this third Conference nor the full time of four and twenty hours to bethink my self And this I take upon my Credit is most true whereas you make the sifting of these and the like Questions to the very Bran your daily work and came throughly furnished to the business and might so lead on the Controversie to what your self pleased and I was to follow as I could S. Augustine said once Scio me invalidum esse I know I am weak and yet he made good his Cause And so perhaps may I against you And in that I preferr'd the Cause before my particular Credit that which I did was with modesty and according to Reason For there is no reason the weight of this whole Cause should rest upon any one particular man And great reason that the personal defects of any man should press himself but not the Cause Neither did I enter upon this service out of any forwardness of my own but commanded to it by Supreme Authority F. It having an hundred better Scholars to maintain it then he To which I said there were a thousand better Scholars then I to maintain the Catholike Cause B. § 7 In this I had never so poor a Conceit of the Protestants Cause as to think that they had but an hundred better then my self to maintain it That which hath an hundred may have as many more as it pleases God to give and more then you And I shall ever be glad that the Church of England which at this time if my memory reflect not amiss I named may have far more able Defendants then my self I shall never envy them but rejoyce for her And I make no question but that if I had named a thousand you would have multiplied yours into ten thousand for the Catholike Cause as you call it And this confidence of yours hath ever been fuller of noise then proof But you proceed F. Then the Question about the Greek Church being proposed I said as before that it had erred B. § 8 Then I think the Question about the Greek Church was proposed But after you had with confidence enough not spared to say That what I would not acknowledge in this Cause you would wring and extort from me then indeed you said as before that it had erred And this no man denied But every Errour denies not Christ the Foundation or makes Christ deny it or thrust it from the Foundation F. The Bishop said That the Errour was not in Point Fundamental B. § 9 Num. 1 I was not so peremptory My speech was That divers Learned men and some of your own were of Opinion that as the Greeks expressed themselves it was a Question not simply Fundamental I know and acknowledge that Errour of denying the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son to be a grievous Errour in Divinity And sure it would have grated the Foundation if they had so denied the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as that they had made an inequality between the Persons But since their form of speech is That the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father by the Son and is the Spirit of the Son without making any difference in the Consubstantiality of the Persons I dare not deny them to be a true Church for this though I confess them an erroneous Church in this particular Num. 2 Now that divers Learned men were of Opinion that à Filio and per Filium in the sense of the Greek Church was but a Question in modo loquendi in manner of speech and therefore not Fundamental is evident The Master and his Scholars agree upon it The Greeks saith he confess the Holy Ghost to be the Spirit of the Son with the Apostle Galat. 4. and the Spirit of Truth S. John 16. And since Non est aliud it is not another thing to say The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father and the Son then that he is or proceeds from the Father and the Son in this they seem to agree with us in eandem Fidei sententiam upon the same Sentence of Faith though they differ in words Now in this cause where

yet we yeeld as full and firm Assent not only to the Articles but to all the Things rightly deduced from them as we do to the most evident Principles of Natural Reason This Assent is called Faith And Faith being of things not seen Heb. 11. would quite lose its honour nay it self if it met with sufficient Grounds in Natural Reason whereon to stay it self For Faith is a mixed Act of the Will and the Understanding and the Will inclines the Understanding to yeeld full approbation to that whereof it sees not full proof Not but that there is most full proof of them but because the main Grounds which prove them are concealed from our view and folded up in the unrevealed Counsel of God God in Christ resolving to bring mankind to their last happiness by Faith and not by knowledge that so the weakest among men may have their way to blessedness open And certain it is that many weak men believe themselves into Heaven and many over-knowing Christians lose their way thither while they will believe no more than they can clearly know In which pride and vanity of theirs they are left and have these things hid from them S. Matth. 11. Fourthly That the Credit of the Scripture the Book in which the Principles of Faith are written as of other writings also depends not upon the subservient Inducing Cause that leads us to the first knowledge of the Author which leader here is the Church but upon the Author himself and the Opinion we have of his sufficiencie which here is the Holy Spirit of God whose Pen-men the Prophets and Apostles were And therefore the Mysteries of Divinity contained in this Book As the Incarnation of our Saviour The Resurrection of the dead and the like cannot finally be resolved into the sole Testimony of the Church who is but a subservient Cause to lead to the knowledge of the Author but into the Wisdom and Sufficiencie of the Author who being Omnipotent and Omniscient must needs be Infallible Fifthly That the Assurance we have of the Pen-men of the Scriptures the Holy Prophets and Apostles is as great as any can be had of any Humane Authors of like Antiquity For it is morally as evident to any Pagan that S. Matthew and S. Paul writ the Gospel and Epistles which bear their Names as that Cicero or Seneca wrote theirs But that the Apostles were divinely inspired whilst they writ them and that they are the very Word of God expressed by them this hath ever been a matter of Faith in the Church and was so even while the Apostles themselves lived and was never a matter of Evidence and Knowledge at least as Knowledge is opposed to Faith Nor could it at any time then be more Demonstratively proved than now I say not scientifice not Demonstratively For were the Apostles living and should they tell us that they spake and writ the very Oracles of God yet this were but their own Testimony of themselves and so not alone able to enforce Belief on others And for their Miracles though they were very Great Inducements of Belief yet were neither they Evident and Convincing Proofs alone and of themselves Both because There may be counterfeit Miracles And because true ones are neither Infallible nor Inseparable Marks of Truth in Doctrine Not Infallible For they may be Marks of false Doctrine in the highest degree Deut. 13. Not proper and Inseparable For all which wrote by Inspiration did not confirm their Doctrine by Miracles For we do not find that David or Solomon with some other of the Prophets did any neither were any wrought by S. John the Baptist S. Joh. 10. So as Credible Signs they were and are still of as much force to us as 't is possible for things on the credit of Relation to be For the Witnesses are many and such as spent their lives in making good the Truth which they saw But that the Workers of them were Divinely and Infallibly inspired in that which they Preacht and Writ was still to the Hearers a matter of Faith and no more evident by the light of Humane Reason to men that lived in those Days than to us now For had that been Demonstrated or been clear as Prime Principles are in its own light both they and we had apprehended all the Mysteries of Divinity by Knowledge not by Faith But this is most apparent was not For had the Prophets or Apostles been ordered by God to make this Demonstratively or Intuitively by Discourse or Vision appear as clear to their Auditors as to themselves it did that whatsoever they taught was Divine and Infallible Truth all men which had the true use of Reason must have been forced to yeeld to their Doctrine Esay could never have been at Domine quis Lord who hath believed our Report Esay 53. Nor Jeremy at Domine factus sum Lord I am in derision daily Jer. 20. Nor could any of S. Pauls Auditors have mocked at him as some of them did Act. 17. for Preaching the Resurrection if they had had as full a view as S. Paul himself had in the Assurance which God gave of it in and by the Resurrection of Christ vers 31. But the way of Knowledge was not that which God thought fittest for mans Salvation For Man having sinned by Pride God thought fittest to humble him at the very root of the Tree of Knowledge and make him deny his understanding and submit to Faith or hazard his happiness The Credible Object all the while that is the Mysteries of Religion and the Scripture which contains them is Divine and Infallible and so are the Pen-men of them by Revelation But we and all our Forefathers the Hearers and Readers of them have neither knowledge nor vision of the Prime Principles in or about them but Faith only And the Revelation which was clear to them is not so to us nor therefore the Prime Tradition it self delivered by them Sixthly That hence it may be gathered that the Assent which we yeeld to this main Principle of Divinity That the Scripture is the Word of God is grounded upon no Compelling or Demonstrative Ratiocination but relies upon the strength of Faith more than any other Principle whatsoever For all other necessary Points of Divinity may by undeniable Discourse be inferred out of Scripture it self once admitted but this concerning the Authority of Scripture not possibly But must either be proved by Revelation which is not now to be expected Or presupposed and granted as manifest in it self like the Principles of natural knowledge which Reason alone will never Grant Or by Tradition of the Church both Prime and Present with all other Rational Helps preceding or accompanying the internal Light in Scripture it self which though it give Light enough for Faith to believe yet Light enough it gives not to be a convincing Reason and proof for

Assembly it is probable 't is no Demonstration and the producers of it ought to rest and not to trouble the Church Num. 2 Nor is this Hooker's alone nor is it newly thought on by us It is a Ground in Nature which Grace doth ever set right never undermine And S. Augustine hath it twice in one Chapter That S. Cyprian and that Councel at Carthage would have presently yelded to any one that would demonstrate Truth Nay it is a Rule with him Consent of Nations Authority confirmed by Miracles and Antiquity S. Peter's Chair and Succession from it Motives to keep him in the Catholike Church must not hold him against Demonstration of Truth which if it be so clearly demonstrated that it cannot come into doubt it is to be preferred before all those things by which a man is held in the Catholike Church Therefore an evident Scripture or Demonstration of Truth must take place every where but where these cannot be had there must be Submission to Authority Num. 3 And doth not Bellarmine himself grant this For speaking of Councels he delivers this Proposition That Inferiours may not judge whether their Superiours and that in a Councel do proceed lawfully or not But then having bethought himself that Inferiours at all times and in all Causes are not to be cast off he addes this Exception Unless it manifestly appear that an intolerable Errour be committed So then if such an Errour be and be manifest Inferiours may do their duty and a Councel must yeeld unless you will accuse Bellarmine too of leaning to a Private Spirit for neither doth he express who shall judge whether the Errour be intolerable Num. 4 This will not down with you but the Definition of a General Councel is and must be infallible Your Fellows tell us and you can affirm no more That the Voice of the Church determining in Councel is not Humane but Divine That is well Divine then sure Infallible yea but the Proposition sticks in the throat of them that would utter it It is not Divine simply but in a manner Divine Why but then sure not infallible because it may speak loudest in that manner in which it is not Divine Nay more The Church forsooth is an infallible Foundation of Faith in an higher kinde than the Scripture For the Scripture is but a Foundation in Testimony and Matter to be believed but the Church as the efficient Cause of Faith and in some sort the very formal Is not this Blasphemy Doth not this knock against all evidence of Truth and his own Grounds that says it Against all evidence of Truth For in all Ages all men that once admitted the Scripture to be the Word of God as all Christians do do with the same breath grant it most undoubted and infallible But all men have not so judged of the Churches Definitions though they have in greatest Obedience submitted to them And against his own Grounds that says it For the Scripture is absolutely and every way Divine the Churches Definition is but s●o modo in a sort or manner Divine But that which is but in a sort can never be a Foundation in an Higher Degree than that which is absolute and every way such Therefore neither can the Definition of the Church be so Infallible as the Scripture much less in altiori genere in a higher kinde than the Scripture But because when all other things fail you flie to this That the Churches Definition in a General Councel is by Inspiration and so Divine and Infallible my haste shall not carry me from a little Consideration of that too Num. 1 Sixthly then If the Definition of a General Councel be infallible then the Infallibility of it is either in the Conclusion and in the Means that prove it or in the Conclusion not the Means or in the Means not the Conclusion But it is infallible in none of these Not in the first The Conclusion and the Means For there are divers Deliberations in General Councels where the Conclusion is Catholike but the Means by which they prove it not infallible Not in the second The Conclusion and not the Means For the Conclusion must follow the nature of the Premisses or Principles out of which it is deduced therefore if those which the Councel uses be sometimes uncertain as is proved before the Conclusion cannot be Infallible Not in the third The Means and not the Conclusion For that cannot be true and necessary if the Means be so And this I am sure you will never grant because if you should you must deny the Infallibility which you seek to establish Num. 2 To this for I confess the Argument is old but can never be worn out nor shifted off your great Master Stapleton who is miserably hamper'd in it and indeed so are you all answers That the Infallibility of a Councel is in the second Course that is It is infallible in the Conclusion though it be uncertain and fallible in the Means and Proof of it How comes this to pass It is a thing altogether unknown in Nature and Art too That fallible Principles can either father or mother beget or bring forth an infallible Conclusion Num. 3 Well that is granted in Nature and in all Argumentation that causes Knowledge But we shall have Reasons for it First because the Church is discursive and uses the Weights and Moments of Reason in the Means but is Prophetical and depends upon immediate Revelation from the Spirit of God in delivering the Conclusion It is but the making of this appear and all Controversie is at an end Well I will not discourse here To what end there is any use of Means if the Conclusion be Prophetical which yet is justly urged for no good cause can be assigned of it If it be Prophetical in the Conclusion I speak still of the present Church ● for that which included the Apostles which had the Spirit of Prophecie and immediate Revelation was ever Prophetick in the Definition but then that was Infallible in the Means too That since it delivers the Conclusion not according to Nature and Art that is out of Principles which can bear it there must be some Supernatural Authority which must deliver this Truth That say I must be the Scripture For if you flie to immediate Revelation now the Enthusiaesm must be yours But the Scriptures which are brought in the very Exposition of all the Primitive Church neither say it nor enforce it Therefore Scripture warrants not your Prophecie in the Conclusion And I know no other thing that can warrant it If you think the Tradition of the Church can make the world beholding to you Produce any Father of the Church that says This is an Universal Tradition of the Church That her Definitions in a General Councel are Prophetical and by immediate Revelation Produce any one Father that says it of his own Authority that he thinks so