Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	bind_v	church_n	communion_n	1,436	5	9.0889	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33124	An account of Dr. Still.'s late book against the Church of Rome together with a short postil upon his text.	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1672 (1672)	Wing C426; ESTC R18260	35,205	79

of them do keep they have them all from us we borrow nothing from them And the negative points which separate them from us seem to us as false and impious as they can possibly appear true to them They have as many Articles to believe as we onely some of them which made the separation are affirmative to us and negative to them And one Affirmers word is to be taken in Judgment before ten Deniers And yet will they neither read our Books nor suffer us to print any when we are falsified and mis-interpreted and challenged and obliged to do it for fear I think our Religion should prove true All rejoyce when a Book is written against Popery but no man seeks to be informed They will have it by all means to be esteemed false be it in it self what it will or can be And in that strange prejudice men venture to die onely for the pleasure of a Minister and his VVife and Children who must needs have it so The occasion of this his present book intitled A Discourse concerning the Idolatry c. was it seems a question or two propunded unto Mr. Stillingfleet by I know not what Gentlewoman who having heard the Doctor say That Protestants if they turned Roman Catholicks would lose their Salvation told him That if Protestants say so then are they full as uncharitable as Papists themselves who aver the like of Protestants She therefore consults some Catholick Gentleman in the business I do not know whom neither But he it seems put into her hand two questions to show to Doctor Still in her next encounter First was Whether the same motives which secured one born and bred in the Catholick Church to continue in it might not also serve to secure a Protestant who convinced by those motives should embrace it The second was Whether it suffice to be a Christian in genere or it be also necessary to adjoyn to some Church of Christians in particular These be the two questions The second of these two questions the Doctor resolves affirmatively I affirm saith he that a Christian by vertue of his being so is bound to joyn to the Communion of some Church or Congregation in particular Thus he resolves it and speaks not a word more of that business Yet here we may take notice that the said Resolution of his is quite contrary both to a book of his called Irenicon written in the times of our late Anarchy and also to his first work written more lately against Popery For all the whole scope of both these books is to show that a Christian by vertue of his being so is not bound to joyn in the Communion of any one Church in particular or any Organical Body as he calls it And that because every such body either that is or has been in the world is liable to errour falshood and corruptions And what necessity indeed can there be in me to joyn in any Communion which may go astray and mislead me since I cannot do worse if I remain free and all alone and may perhaps do better But these contradictions are small matters So long as the Doctor opposes the Catholick Church out of which they are all fallen he is a Protestant good enough whatever he hold in particular either contrary to himself or any others The first question which is the occasion and subject of this his present book he resolves negatively averring that the same motives which might secure one born and bred in the Catholick Church to continue in it cannot secure a Protestant convinced by them to imbrace it And this his Assertion he discourses at large and confirms by various Syllogismes because invincible hinderance may perhaps excuse the one but not the other because the Protestant is safe in his own Church and therefore has no necessity to leave it because there is imminent danger in the Roman Church where there is so much Idolatry so many hinderances of good life and devotion so much divisions so much uncertainty of faith in it Unto these resolutions and argumentations of his the Catholick Proposer adjoyned presently his own reply a very rational me thinks and good one Hereupon the Doctor wrote and set forth this his present book called A Discourse against the Idolatry c. both to inlarge his own arguments and to disable the Catholick Gentlemans Reply And this was the occasion purpose and subject of the book you put in my hand to peruse and write to you the substance of it with some few brief thoughts of my own upon it Indeed the whole book is a kind of Academick Act or Commencement such a one as we have once a year in our famous Oxford Cambridge written and printed for peoples delight and pastime and if so it please the Stars for his own honour and preferment by our Doctor And it came forth very seasonably about a fortnight before the Oxford Act to save the wits living here abouts the great charges and some kind of pains of a Journey thither being now furnished well enough aforehand with as subtile and good an Act as that may haply be at our own Doors and which may please the women somewhat better in our mother tongue The conclusions defended in this Holborn Act are these three 1. Popery is idolatrous And this is accomplished in two of his positions which he calls Chapters 2. Popery is a hinderance to a good life and devotion And this is dispatched at one other breathing named his third Chapter 3. Popery is divided and disunited in it self And this pust out in his fifth Chapter which concludes his book And in midst of this great Act rises up a prevaricating Tripos to refresh our wearisomeness and make a little sport And he takes up the whole Scene of his fourth Chapter And his Theme is Fanatiscime the Church of Romes Fanatiscisme or the Fanaticism of the Roman Church And upon my word it has made many people merry not the softer sex only but the rougher and more serious mankind And all do so clap and commend the man that one may well believe he has received his reward Idolatry ill life and divisions of the Roman Church which are his three less wild conclusions we have in part already heard of even as we have heard talk of Europe Asia and Africa But Fanaticisme his merriment is I think the proper and peculair discovery of Dr. Stillingfleet himself And he may deserve either to give or take a sirname from it as Scipio Africanus took from Africa and Vesputius Americus gave to America his new found Land What is it that wit and industry cannot bring to light if they be joyntly bent both of them upon the search And a new discovery especially of a rich pleasant Country full of curiosities is so pleasant to the Discoverer himself so naturally pleasant that I cannot but think that Doctor Stillingfleet at his invention of Fanaticisme wherewith he hoped to make many others merry laughed heartily