Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	church_n	faith_n	infallible_a	1,453	5	9.5102	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65702	Dos pou sto, or, An answer to Sure footing, so far as Mr. Whitby is concerned in it wherein the rule and guide of faith, the interest of reason, and the authority of the church in matters of faith, are fully handled and vindicated, from the exceptions of Mr. Serjeant, and petty flirts of Fiat lux : together with An answer to five questions propounded by a Roman Catholick / by Daniel Whitby ...	Whitby, Daniel, 1638-1726.	1666 (1666)	Wing W1725; ESTC R38592	42,147	78

insmitely uncertain in matters of obedience to God For seeing 't is as evident as the Sun and lately manifested by Montalius a Catholick that the Doctrines of the Jesuited Papist touching Repentance Good intentions the Love of God c. do cut the sinews of all virtue and null the precepts of true pietie and equally certain that they are maintained by the gravest Doctors of their Church nay styled the common Doctrine of the Church is follows that they interfere not with their Rule of Faith and therefore cannot be reproved by it 4 They must be destitute of all the preservatives against the vilest of Rebellions it being frequently asserted in the Schools and held by most confiderable members of that Church that Catholicks may be absolved from their Oaths Vows and Covenants made to Princes and authorized by his Holiness to depose them From what hath been discoursed it must follow that if Tradition be the only Rule of Faith then 1. Should Catholicks act up to the most desperate consequences of such opinions which pass thus currant in the Church of Rome they could not possibly be condemned by or rationally be said to deviate from her Rule of Faith 2. That the vilest Christian and worst of Subjects may do all that Catholick Religion and his duty doth oblige him too because all that practical Tradition or the Churches living voice requires that what is strangely opposite and scandalous to Christianity and destructive unto Civil Government is yet assistent with their Rule of Faith and that 't is lawful to opine at pleasure in these matters 3. That these diseases must be all incurable and admit of no redress for to make them pass into Tradition and improve themselves into articles of Faith is to impower the Church to coyn new articles and pretend Tradition where it is not to be had 4. That what ever hath been said of some doth equally proceed against all other scandalous opinions of their Church of which nature 't were easie to collect sufficient to tire mine own and the Readers patience CAP. IV. Of the Authority of the Church in matters of Faith THAT the Church is a Society Prop. 1. the very name and notorelty of the thing the definition members discipline and constitutions of it do sufficiently declare Prop. 2. That this society must be invested with a Ruling power is certain both from the nature of all Civil union which implyes a compact and that a Governour whose business it is to see that they who enter into compact do not violate the lawes thereof as also from the ends of this Society viz. The union and due ordering of her Members and execution of her discipline to the correction or exclusion of such persons who cooperate towards her ruine Prop. 3. The Church is a Society of Believers or of men united in the belief of certain Articles as the Foundations of it hence styled fundamental Articles this is the joynt consent of Christians however in the notion and number of their fundamentals they differ much Corol. Hence it must follow that Church Governours must be impowred to require the belief of or positive assent unto these Fundamendal Articles as being otherwise unable to secure the Being and provide against the ruine of that Church of which they are a part When therefore M. S. so confidently gives out without all manner of exceptions that our Church is Shamefac'd of obliging others to believe her p. 194. and that she professeth her self very heartily content with external obedience let the interior assent go where it will p. 199. I cannot but admire that so ingenious a person should vent such things which every day confutes and tell our Church she expects not that her members should believe that Creed which she esteems her fundamentals inserts into her Catechisms requires us to Agnize in Baptisme rehearse in all her Sacred offices and that with a peculiar circumstance designed to signifie our assent unto and readiness to defend it Obj. But do you not in big words ask when did she challenge any power over our minds consciences p. 198. And doth not M. S. well infer that therefore you deny that she requires an interior assent Ans No these things are vastly different require interior assent he may who being authorized to guide me in matters of faith can evidence what he thus requires to be the will of God revealed yea such interior assent is due from Children to their Parents from Servants to their Masters much mere from People to their Pastors when evidencing their duty to them but challenge power over the mind and conscience he only can who is Lord of the conscience whose laws by an immediate virtue bind the conscience for what binds only mediately hath not this obligatory power from any virtue of the Legislator over the mind and conscience but only from that power which commands the conscience to obey such Legislators And if interiour assent may be required I wonder why it should be more irrational to go about to lay an obligation on the Cathol p. 199. by these two Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy then upon the Protestant as my Friend imagines That it should be rational to bind the loyal Subject by those Oaths but irrational to bind those whose Treacheries and conspiracies first made them necessary if difference of Religion be a just exemption then may the Quaker Anabaptist and other turbulent persons which renounce our Church plead for a share in this exemption and King and Parliament must be unjust and tyrannous in laying such a burthen on them Prop. 4. A particular Church cannot require this assent upon pretence of an infallible assistance for seeling all have the like title to it it would be imposisible for any of them to have erred and therefore she must do it because the thing determined is so evident in the Rule of Faith that all denyall of it must be wilful for seeing 't is already proved that she hath power to require this assent and that this power cannot derive from an infallible assistance what remains but that it bottom upon the evidence of the thing But then the query is Who must be judge what is so evident in Scripture as to render the dissertors guilty of flat wilfulness p. 195. Ans Faith being an assent and consequently the result of judgment each private person must be allowed his judgment of discretion much more those who are authorized to require our assent to fundamentals and to preserve the peace and union of the Church inviolable and sure 't would be a great impeachment to our Saviour to intrust persons with the preservation of this Depositum and to require them to give heed to it as they will answer it at the great day and yet afford no means to be assured of it But if each private person must have a judgment of discretion by which he must admit of or reject the laws of his superiors if it should be

the Peace and Union that is unto the Soveraign ends of Christian Government and is it not unreasonable that Men should be excluded by the Church from her Communion for what is very well consistent with our communion with the God of Heaven our union to the Churches Head yea for what is neither necessary to the Churches being peace or unity nor can be prejudicial to them whilest reserved to our selves Besides the conditions of Church communion must bottom upon what is clear and evident for else the Union of the Church and our duty to preserve it must both rest on what 's uncertain and obscure a thing repugnant both to the Wisdom and Goodness of the Churches Head now that in matters remote from the foundation we have mostly no such evidence is but too visible in the Disputes and Contests which are on both sides managed by many Learned and impartial Men. To conclude Let any Man consider the variety of Gifts Affections Prejudices and infinite other Circumstances that are incident to humane Nature and then tell me whether it be not irrational to hope That all the Members of a Church in matters of this nature should conspire and knit into one Faith and Judgement and must it not be more unreasonable to make this Union the condition of communion with the Church If therefore in these matters our Church contents her self with this submission and doth not binde us to declare our inward assent she acts both prudently and safely and as becometh an indulgent Mother Prop 6. The Church hath power to silence such Disputes as tend immediately to break her peace and unity This is so proper a result of civil Union as that without it all Government must shatter into Sects and Factions and therefore most of all may be expected in that Platform which our Savior laid and must be granted by all those who dare not think our Lord defective in his Designs and Contrivances for his Churches Peace and Unity In a word Each Church is bound to look to her own Peace and therefore is impowred to prevent what violates it Prop 7. All Men are bound whatever their private Sentiments may be to submit externally to the sentence of the Church in matters which entrench not on the Fundamentals of their Faith because the teaching of such Doctrines must be of lesser moment then the preservation of the Churches peace for should such Doctrines wholly perish from the Church her Peace Unity and Being might be sufficiently preserved notwithstanding whereas this cannot reasonably be hoped for under an eager violent abetment of them in despite of all Authority and certainly if Church-Governors stand bound unto the preservation of the Churches Peace and Unity they must be bound in many instances to still our mutual Contests and require the submission now intended and then the governed must be obliged to perform it Prop 8. No Church can justly require assent unto her Proposals or account of her infallibility for were this Priviledge vouchsafed to the Church is it not wonderful that a Doctrine so necessary to the attainment of salvation should either be conceased from the four Evangelifts or by them if not concealed yet so obscurely delivered to the Church Can we suppose these wise and holy Men and especially that good spirit which assisted them either so envious as wilfully to deprive the Church of such an happiness for whose prosperity they suffered so much and which they almost Christned with their Blood or so forgetful of the Work they took in hand viz. the writing of the Gospel of Christ as to neglect the clear rehersal of that Doctrine without which if the Papist may be credited all others are not creditable 't is evident they speak perspicuously of many things of small importance in comparison of this and is it possible they should conspire to the deepest silence or obscurity in this most necessary thing this fundamental of all that is so Is it imaginable that S. Luke intending purposely to satisfie Theophilus in these things wherein he had been Catechised and which most surely were believed amongst Christians should neglect this great Foundation of them all without which Faith must necessarily suffer Shipwrack and all his labor be in vain That the beloved Apostle having writ so many signs that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God should neglect that without which nothing that he said could be available to produce Faith in us or secure us from mistaking in it It is possible that our Saviour who foresaw whatever might disturb his Church yea had experience of Mens unwillingness to submit to others and readiness to advance themselves in his own Disciples should yet deliver this Doctrine if at all delivered so obscurely that now it is become the greatest Controversie whether he intended any thing of this nature and the testimonies of Scripture so strangely baffled that Papists dare not go about to vindicate them from our Exceptions That he should constitute that to be the onely means of deciding Controversies which he foresaw would be so determinable without the certain knowledge of some hundreds of Particulars in which whole thousands of Men excellent for Parts and Piety do clash perpetually That under the Old Testament the Judge of matters between blood and blood plea and plea and such Political Transactions should be so punctually set down And in the New Testament this Judge of Faith and the eternal Concernments of our Souls should be passed over in silence or delivered in such terms as are equally adapted to all pretenders to be the Church and altogether unserviceable when 't is doubtful Is it not strange that so great a part of the New Testament should be employed about Antichrist and all the methods he should use to draw Men from the Faith and yet just nothing be delivered of that Guide to which all faithful Christians were to have recourse against him That the Spirit should speak expresly of some great departure from the Faith in these latter times and not admonish us of the sure and onely means to secure our falling That St. Paul amongst all his vehement Exhortations unto Unity all his endeavors against Schism in the Corinthians and elsewhere should not once deliver this unto them as a means infallibly to preserve them from it but spend his time in other matters which without this are not at all available to our souls welfare That having assembled the Elders of Ephesus and told them That after his departure grievous Wolves should enter in among them he should not once direct hem to the onely means for preservation That the Apostles in the compiling of the Creed should give no intimation of that without which nothing can hang firm That Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprians and others purposely delivering the Fundamentals of their Faith should be deficient in the like kinde That never any of the Primitive Fathers in their Comments on this Symbol should inform us of this one thing necessary

the Divine Wisdome in that delivery and is not this attested by the Miracles they wrought the Prophecies they delivered the Doctrine they taught And that by sence Should any of them be questioned must we not recur unto the senses of the Primitive Christians to confirm them And must they not then be the ultimate Foundation of our Faith and your tradition must we not be surer of the proof then the thing proved And consequently of the evidence of sence then that of Faith which deriveth from it If not why secondly doth our Lord pronounce them rather blessed who believe and have not seen then Thomas who first Saw and Felt and then Believed Is it not because they do it upon lesser though sufficient evidence And so their Faith is more illustrious and prayse worthy 'T would be more Generous and Noble to die in the defence of him whom we did only probably believe to be our Prince or Parent then to do it only upon iufallible assurance of his being such because an evidence of greater love even so is it more virtuous and prayse worthy to venture all upon an highly probable hopes of the truth of Christianity it being such a pregnant indication of our true love to Pietie and Vertue that even a probable assurance of it can prevail against all worldly temptations to the contrary Yea this it is which rendreth Faith rewardable that 't is an act of the believers choise and not irrefragably induced however it be abundantly confirmed with arguments extreamly probable and such as render it perversness and obstinacy to resist Thirdly should it be otherwise how cometh it to pass that men are equally assured of what equally they see but have not the like fulness of perswasion in what they believe That being once assured of the objects of sence they can admit of no greater certainty whereas after all our boasts af a plerophory of Faith we have still need to strive and labour to increase it Since then the certainty of Faith is proved inferiour to that of Sense and Science to pretend infallibility which is the highest certainty is to pretend such evidence as is not competible to Faith But that the Folly of this pretence may appeare more signally I shall farther manifest 1. That Humane nature is not capable of infallible assurance in matters of Faith Secondly that to require such assurance unto Faith is contrary to Scripture Thirdly That our Saviour required Faith upon lower motives Fourthly That the Romanists can have no such assurance Fifthly That it is no prejudice to the certainty or reasonableness of Faith that it is built upon foundations not absolutely infallible And Lastly Answer Mr Serjeants Exceptions to the contrary And 1. If Humane Nature abstracted from Divinity be capable of this assurance its certainty must be equal to that of Vision of Angels of Christs Humanity yea of God himself for even their assurance cannot reach beyond infallibility And secondly Reason must give as great assurance of a thing revealed to others 1600. years agon and in it self inevident as it is possible for present sence or revelation to afford all which are monstrous absurdities Secondly each Text of Scripture which mentions any that were weak or strong in Faith any that were of little or of great Faith any that were rich that did abound encrease or grow in Faith any that were grounded established rooted and consirmed in Faith that speakes of having Faith as a grain of musterd-seed and of having all Faith is a demonstrative refutation of this pretence it being certain that infallibility admits of no degrees Such secondly must be every Prayer which the Apostles made to encrease their own and others Faith or in the language of the Catholick to advance it some degrees above infallibility Such thirdly are all those places which tell of Hereticks who overthrew the Faith of some of others that were unstable and wavering in the Faith And lastly Prophecy that men should Erre and be seduced from the Faith or depart from it giving heed to seducing spirits it being as impossible for such who are infallibly assured or guided by what is self-evident even to the un-reflecting person to Waver Erre or be Seduced as to Doubt and Disbelieve that twice 2 is 4 or that if you take equally from equals they will still be equal Thirdly Our Blessed Saviour required this assent from his Disciples without Infallible assurance for doth he not call them Fools and slow of heart Luke 24.26 for not believing all the Prophets had delivered touching his Resurrection and Ascention into Glory Had they infallible assurance that these Prophecyes concerned him yea or no If not then did he look upon them as Fools and slow of heart for not believing upon motives confessedly fallible if their assurance might have been infallible then either as bottomed upon Reason infallibly concluding his Ascention and Resurection from the Prophets or secondly upon Tradition and the Churches living voice if the first why may not we also who have greater assistence of the Spirit of Wisdome be able from the same Principle of Reason working on our Rule of Faith to conclude infallibly the Fundamentals of Christianity For is it not unreasonable to assert that the Resurrection and Ascention of our Lord is more clearly revealed in those places of the Old Testament which are few obscure by reason of the Language more ambiguous then the New and lastly acknowledged by the greatest part of learned Men to refer primarily to other things or persons then the Articles of our Creed are in those numerous and admirably prespicuous places of the New Testament which give in Testimony thereunto Must they be looked upon as Fools for not infallibly concluding the Ascention of our Lord from the obscure items of the Prophets by the help of Reason And must we be damned for holding Reason sufficient from Scripture to conclude our Creed Nay secondly is not this to admit Reason as a competent yea infallible judge of the Sense of Scripture and consequently to approve of in the Jew what you condemn and rail at in the Christian If secondly you flye unto Tradition It is not ridiculous to assert that the Jewish Church should not only Crucifie this Jesus and endeavour with their utmost powerto prevent the Fame of his Resurrection albeit she had infallible assurance of it But that she should at the same time interpret Scripture so as infallibly to attest it and be condemned from her own mouth Nay had they not a contrary Tradition viz. That the Kingdome of their Messias should be Glorious upon Earth sufficient to confront all evidence Tradition could afford them in this case and void her Testimony because repugnant to it self Secondly I desire to know whether that voice from Heaven which testifyed that Jesus was the true Messiah and the Son of God did not oblige the hearers to believe it And to what other end it was sent Whether our Saviour doth not plead

told with so much confidence p. 200. That plainest common sence will teach us and every man who considers it that unless we settle some indisputable method of arriving at Christs sence or faith that is some self-evident and so all obliging Rule of Faith the Protestant Church can never hope for power to reduce their dissenters nor to hold together or govern efficaciously their own subjects that is they can never hope for unity within themselves or union with them that have it Which in effect is thus much That both his sacred Majestie and all his Peers and Prelates Laity and Clergy are profest opposers of what plainest common sence and each mans Reason must suggest unto him as the sole expedient of the Churches welfare for which great charity and worthy thoughts of our whole Nation 't is pitty but it should be ordered by the King and Parliament that due thanks be given to Mr. S. especially seeing he hath been at the vast expence of an ipse dixit to confirm the charge hower contenti sumus hoc Catone nor have we need to add homine imprudenti at que imperito nibil quicquam injustius Cor. 2. This shews what spirit of Divination had possessed my friend when thus he talks Hence we may see confessedly in the Protestant principles the Reason of their present and past distractions and divine of the future for mens fancies being naturally various no power in her to keep them in union they must needs ramble into multitudes of Dissenting Sects which to strive to unite in one were to force both nature and conscience too Nature in striving to unite their understandings in Faith without offering them evidence of Authority conscience in binding them to act as Protestants do whereas they are ready to stake their Salvation upon it that their best reasons working upon the very Rule of Faith Protestants recommend obliges them to the contrary For first in fundamentals in which onely we think it necessary to unite the understandings of our people we have confessedly all the evidence that Scripture and Tradition the Role of Protestants and Papists can afford And secondly in other matters we have power to silence such disputes and prevent the spreading of such opinions as may cause divisions and inflict the Churches censures upon those that do so and consequently have sufficient provisions for that peace and unity which is necessary to the Churches welfare And thirdly either we do not bind the conscience and therefore cannot force it or else we do it upon that pregnant evidence now mentioned and therefore cannot be said to oblige the will against the understanding And lastly we are as ready to protest that our best reason working upon the very rule of Faith which Romanists recommend unto us obligeth us to renounce their faith and that to force us to act with them would be to force our consciences unto sin For a close to cry quit with you this shews the reason of that General Atheism Scepticism and Irreligion which is spread over the face of the whole Roman Church which prevails so much in France and Italy and makes Rome Christian little differ from her self whilst Heathen for having built her Faith upon that infallibility which stands liable to multitude of doubts and is confuted by variety of Arguments and Experiences what remains but that Religion perish in its ruines Once more this shews the reason of the sudden growth of Atheism in this our Nation for Catholicks having by experience found that all their endeavours must be fruitless whilest we have Scripture for our Rule that whilst Christianity stands upon its old foundations their politick profession of it cannot find sure footing in our Nation have at last made it their professed business to draw the night upon her to wipe out Scripture at one dash and pronounce all those arguments which the first Champions of Christianity made use of unsatisfactory and null that being thus benighted even by a fiat lux we might take up with an implicite faith and being first made Atheists be in a nearer disposition to act the Papist And lastly that finding no sure footing in the Scriptures we might run unto Tradition for it An Appendix containing an Answer to those few passages in Fiat Lux which beare some shew of Reason and might possibly deceive the unwary Reader 1. THerefore 't is asserted That the power of appealing to the Bishop of Rome mentioned in the Council of Sardica was ad Julium Romanum not ad Papam Romanum and so a personvl priviledge which might cease on the death of Julius p. 59. that is quoth Fiat Lux not to the pope who then was Julius but to Julius who then was Pope p. 55. Whereas he should have said not to him as Pope but as Julius i.e. as one deposed and reviled by the Fastern Bishops against whom this Council did oppose themselves endeavouring to advance him as much as they endeavoured to depress and vilifie him but alas materialiter and formaliter are terms which the poor man is wholly unacquainted with and this answer was grounded upon History which neither his Don Quixot nor Hudibras would afford him and therefore 't was above his shallow capacity T was secondly asserted that the Doctrine stigmatized by Saint Paul as a Doctrine of Divels was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that of those in general that forbid marriage not condemn it upon such and such particular accounts And therefore though the Encratite Montanist were deeper yet they also did participate in the guilt p. 210. To convince this answer of folly falsehood it is thus rejoyned That if so 't would follow that the Church of England must be guilty of the Doctrine of Divels by prohibiting marriage in the times of Lent and Advent p. 182. A. as if it were all one to forbid the thing and to restrain the doing of it at times unseasonable and S. Paul had been as great a criminal for advising abstinence from due Benevolence at times of extraordinary prayer and fasting as they who alwaies thought it necessary to do so and lastly to forbid flesh in general and to forbid it upon daies of fasting and humiliation were things equivalent t is I confess the same to forbid it at times unfit and unto persons to whom it is so but never will it be evinced that that marriage which is honourable in all be undecent in the Clergy 3. But do you not acknowledge their fundamentals to be so perspicuous as what is written with a Sun beam and therefore such as none but fools can possibly mistake in and is it not then justly wondred by Fiat Lux that any Protestant writers should affirm that general Councils who have Authority from Christ of deciding controversies greater assistance in and means of finding out the truth then others should lye under a possibility of erring in what is so perspicuous and cleare Ans 1. This objection doth as much concern the Catholick as us who albeit he pretends infallible and so the greatest evidence for matters of his Faith yet cannot but acknowledge that they are contradicted not only by the Eastern but a confiderable part of the Western Church Doth not my Friend and all his brother Catholicks assert That the authority of their Church is such a motive to beliefe that only irrational vicious and willfully blind persons can recede from it by disbelief S.F.p. 197. yet have not its definitions been solemnly condemned by Arriau Councils as great as any they stile general And by the Provincial Councils of the Reformed Churches are not these condemnations subscribed propugned and adjusted by far greater multitudes of learned men then ever did convene in General Councils and what is incident to them diffused why may it not be incident to a far less number when convened Nay secondly was not the law of Nature were not the Notions of a Deity so manifest and obvious as to render the offender 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or condemned of his own conscience And yet were not the greater part of men such fools for many hundreds of years together to act in contradiction to them Was not the Doctrine of our Saviour confirmed by such Miracles such Prophecies and other signal evidenes as rendred it unquestionably true and the rejectors of it inexcusable and did not yet the Sanhedrim and Jew reject it and Blaspheme it though convinced of its truth nay is not the generality of the learned world much more the giddy and unruly muititude so inconsiderate as to run headlong to that ruine which dayly lays before their eyes and no wonder that it should be so since the Church story shews too plainly that interest pride and faction prejudice false principles and a mistaken Rule of Faith have but too often acted in the Rulers of the Church yea even Reason and Experience informs us that such persons have most subtilty to elude the plainest arguments and most concluding Reasons to find out contrary pretences to oppose against them and many other artifices to bind their Faith unto their interests FINIS