Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	day_n	law_n	sabbath_n	2,914	5	9.8028	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79784	Fiat lux or, a general conduct to a right understanding in the great combustions and broils about religion here in England. Betwixt Papist and Protestant, Presbyterian & independent to the end that moderation and quietnes may at length hapily ensue after so various tumults in the kingdom. / By Mr. JVC. a friend to men of all religions.	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1661 (1661)	Wing C429; Thomason E2266_1; ESTC R210152	178,951	376

living Honourable mention of Saints deceased proves an immortality of the soul and this immortality renders the saints even after their deceas still more honourable so that he that honors them must needs believ this and he that truly beleevs this will be apt to honour them I am God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living so argues and disputes our Lord Christ proving the souls immortality by the honourable mention of souls departed And his argument is good and very subtile for if God be the God even of souls departed then souls departed are not nothing but som subsisting thing for God cannot be said to be the God of that which is not And these two effects a beleef of our immortality and a pronenes to imitate their good works so highly crowned hath this memorial of saints wrought all over the catholick world where ther is not a man but will urge himself somtime or other for the respect he bears to such a glorious saint who by shedding his blood or mortifying his body magnified God and his religion upon earth to do somthing either of pennance or charity superabundant over and above what he should have thought upon himself without that help in imitation of the good pattern of him who being once a man compassed with the same infirmities that we now be hath shewed us notwitstanding both by his life and doctrin that such good works are both feasible by frail man and very commendable too and beneficial even to the reward of never ending glory And to this end do Catholicks read their saints lives labouring each one to the degree of his devotion to rais up in himself the lively sparkles of hope and faith and charity by those examples which he sees not confined only to the one age of the apostles but translucent in all times and places by his continued goodnes to his Church whose mercy endureth for ever Nor are those saints lives so prodigious and incredible as we in England take them to be I speak of solid authenticated legends For I have my self seen with mine own eyes and known hundreds of living men that have equalled them in those practises And he that knows the vigorous nature and life of Gospel where it is really put to practise and not only verbally profest will wonder at nothing If ye say to this mountain remove hence saith our Lord to aright beleever all things are possible and I am confident by what I have seen my self that ther be now as bad a world as it is an immens number of people among Catholicks as eminent in all perfections as ther have been in any age and som of them equall too even to the glorious saints of old whose legends we read For thousands of people do make it their very profession even as people here in London set up and profess a trade to lead their lives exactly according to the tenour of gospel noting every evening before they sleep all the deviations even of their very thoughts and making resolutions in the morning for the renewed practis of all such vertuous actions that may probably lye in their way and in particular such a vertue to day that to morrow this in the third and so they end their lives All the Catholick world knows I do not lye And all this is don not by any force of nature but against it by the meer power and vertue of their religion whereby I have known many men to subdue corrupt nature even to amazement and miracle And the various examples both of good people yet alive and of eminent saints departed whose cells and vestments and beads and books are yet reserved amongst them incourage Catholicks unto this vertuous adventure while not only by sight of their lives who live amongst them and of the mortified figures of the holy persons deceased and bloody necks of their martirs but also by sermons and the continual rites of the Church prefiguring before them the conversation and passion both of Jesus himself and his many glorious followers who have imitated his steps that none might think but that the same life might be led though not in the same degree and the same valour be shown in undergoing both carnal castigations and death even by meer man through the grace of him who strengthens us to all things they are made continually to remember and seriously lay to heart both what they are to do and whom to imitate by which reflections they are more moved towards all the good works of piety than without them such a poor weak spirit as mans is housed in mouldring clay could ever bee And that this hath been the practis of the Christian Church in all times to set before the people the lively pourtraits of their holy and well deserving foregoers for their greater incitation unto semblable good works unto which their religion calls them I could easily show throughout all ages but that I intend here to speak no more than what may somwhat allay the preconceived prejudice we have taken up against the Popes religion especially in the few particulars I touch upon of which I speak no more than what I think may suffice to unbeguile such as list seriously to ruminate upon the truth And if in these things which seem harder to us their caus be just I should think the lesser prejudices should fall away of themselvs and we at length love one another as we ought for no man I think does willingly hate the innocent Only two testimonies of the primitive respect unto saints and their images amongst Christians taken not out of the bowels of the Church but from her enemies one from the Jew the other from the Pagan sufficiently known in history I cannot but here mention The Jews in the first three ages of the Church even from the apostles to Constantine the great accused the Christians not only in private but even before the Roman emperours and Senate of three great violations of Moses law first that they broke the sabboth and had turned it from the seventh day of the week unto the first making that holiday which Moses ordained for work and that a working day which Moses made holy secondly that they worshipped images of their saints and kept them not only in their houses but in their oratories and chappels thirdly that they brought in a strange God Jesus Christ they meant which neither they nor their forefathers knew all which seemed expresly against the letter not only of the general law but of the two tables of the ten commandements The pagan all over the empire laughed at the Christians for three ridiculous worships of theirs namely of a breaden God of the priests genitals and of an asses head the first whereof proves the primitive sacrifice of which I have already spoken the second their confession the third their use and respect they had of images for the Jewes had defamed Jesus Christ our Lord whose

necessary unto any effect either in the Protestants way which is fals or in the Catholick way which is true In the Protestants doctrin all the effect of communion is wholly attributed to the operation of faith and Christs words say they are to be taken spiritually and not literally for flesh and bloud profiteth nothing And therefore according to them one kind is enough nay if we have neither kind there is no loss but only of a ceremony which may be supplied well enough at our ordinary tables According to catholick doctrin whole Christ is really under either kind and so it is indifferent in which kind we receiv But it is not expedient ordinarily to communicate under the liquid species for danger of effusion as would somtimes happen in assemblies severally disposed And yet there may be reason by circumstance of the person to communicate rather in the liquid kind than the other as when the communicant is young or sick and not able to take down the other and therfore in antient times such people were ordinarily communicated in the liquid species only by the help of a spathula linguae or little pipe made on purpos for that use and for aught I know it may so be done still upon the like occasion As for any precept of communicating under both kinds I never heard or read of any none hath the great mother Church delivered either in her gospel or out of it For all the whole passage of the last supper whence Anticatholicks do principal ground their reasonings concerns only the sacrifice how the apostles and their successours should consecrate and bless it what they should take to bless and consecrate and how they should consummate after consecration And ther is not there any word or fact concerning the communicating of people nor were ther in that time and place any lay people at all to be communicated either man woman or childe but they were all excluded and if a man would draw negativ arguments as som do out of scripture he might conclude out of that place that lay people are to receive in neither kind sooner then in both And although learned Saint Paul may insinuate in his epstles that even the laiety did partake of Christs body yet it may readily be answered in the Protestants own grounds if he did plainly say so that he spake not of a corporall but spirituall communion Indeed the whole manner of giving communion to the laiety is wholly left to tradition and to the judgment and disposition of the Church which appears more probable for that the catholick Church hath according to her own prudence unto some persons in som times and places used only the communion of the challice to others only the sacred bread to others both no man ever finding fault therewith or startling at it as any new thing and if we consider the scrupulousnes of former ages we cannot but think they would have risen up and excepted against this if it had been deemed either new or ill or if it had not been in the breasts of all good Christians preconceived and fully known to be totally arbitrary and in the Churches power to communicate the laiety either in both kinds or only one and of the two in which she pleased or thought most fitting for the condition of the communicant This was certainly the opinion which Christians ever had concerning communion But as for consecration it seems necessary to the integrity of the sacrifice and the fruit thereof to the whole Church and determined under a precept that it should be made in both kinds for so it was instituted to declare and set forth before our eyes the Passion of Christ and his blood effused of which it could not be a compleat figure or representation except both kinds were consecrated and so the effusion exprest It was to exhibite whole Christ crucified both quoad continentiam and quoad significationem which signification is not requisite in communion where the thing contained is received and not the signification or mode exprest This indifferent use of communion amongst the antient Christians in either kind somtime one somtime the other somtimes both is enough to verify that of Saint Paul if it be taken as it ought to be in the literal sense We are all partakers of one bread and of one cup For though either kind were lawful for any one yet that any one kind was sufficient one may easily see was the opinion of that good apostle by what he speaks in the foregoing comma Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink this cup of our Lord unworthily c. and v. 24. and v. 25. repeating the institution as our Lord delivered it makes him after the consecration of the bread say absolutely Do this in commemoration of me but after the consecration of the challice he speaks with a limitation Do this as oft as ye shall drink it in commemoration of me So that the particle And in the other text must needs be taken disjunctively when he saith we are all partakers of one bread and of one cup that is to say all of us either partake of both or each one at least either of one or the other which manner of speech is very ordinary in all languages Mulier est domus salus ruina A woman saith the proverb is the safety and ruin of a hous yet not conjunctively or both together but either the one or the other according as she is her self either wise or foolish and nothing is more usual in common speech than to use this particle And disjunctively when we speak unto many at once or of many thus ten men rising from a feast may say we have fed heartily to day of flesh fish and fowl though one might haply eat only of one kind another of another as it chanced and yet not any one of all If a man do seriously peruse either the gospel or Acts of the apostles wherein is delineated the primitive religion of Christians he may easily gather that communion then was thought sufficient under one kind and that the species of Bread was most usual to such as were in health For first gospel speaks of as much effect of this one kind as of both This is a bread com down from heaven that if any eat thereof he dies not Joh. 6.50 again he that eats of this bread shall live for ever v. 25. If any one eateh me the same shall live by me v. 58. and he never there compares himself to wine as he does to bread nor mentions the drinking as he does the eating of him We are one bread and one body saith S. Paul all that do partake of one bread 1 Cor. 10.13 And what is there more to be expected but union with Christ and his mystical body immortality and life eternal with him which all follow upon our worthy communicating of the sacred bread Secondly when our Lord brake bread with his disciples in Emaus and so disappeared very great

and antient divines do teach that he did before them the same sacramental act he had himself instituted and done aforetime before his apostles and by that he was discerned which interpretation is very probable for there be set down the same words and gestures He took bread and blessed and brake it and gave it to them Luke 24.30 And if it were so then it seems the cup was not thought necessary either by Christ himself or his disciples otherwise neither Christ would have done his work imperfectly and vanished before he had given them the cup nor would the disciples have judged him by so doing to be their master but som evil spirit or impostour as who had kept the cup from them against their right Nay by this example it seems that the very consecration it self may be dispenced in case of necessity to be don only in one kind though the complete sacrifice and mode of signication would be unexprest Thirdly in the first and second chapters of the Acts of the apostles where mention is purposely made of the religious assemblies of the Christians and their sacred Synaxis ther is much speech there of their breaking of bread but not any word of the use of a cup amongst the people And it is enough insinuated as well directly in these forenamed places that that was the religious work of the primitive Christians as it is indirectly afterwards c. 20. One day of the sabboth saith the text when we came together to break bread No mention being made any where in all that book of the challice at all So that I must conclude as I said before that the communion of the challice is neither necessary to any effect of the sacrament nor expedient to be generally practised nor is there in gospel or sacred writ any either precept or president for it But the autority and practis of the catholick Church descended from the apostles is in this as in all other points the best and most irrefragable convincing argument which S. Paul in another case kept for his best and last refuge 1. Cor. 11. If any one saith he will be contentious we have no such custom nor the Church of God And if there be no such custom in the Church of God let not any of us be any further contentious §. 27. Saints I Do not remember that ever I took into my hands any catholick Breviary or Missal or other prayer book but it had prefixed before it a calendar or catalogue of great saints amongst them apostles martyrs confessours virgins of whom the Catholicks keep a very respectful memory as of the temples wherein God did once dwell and work wonders in the Church And although this act and custom of theirs be made by our voluntary interpretation a thing of much offence and scandal against them yet looking upon it with an unprejudiced eye I cannot discern it to be any other than the civility of a due respect For what ingenuous noble spirit would not do as much for the great heroes of his own family that have upheld and innobled the hous And what sayes Christ would he not have it done so to his surely if these things had not been don in his Church but all memorials of him and his blotted out according to the fansy of every reformer we had had by this no more certainty of him than of Jove or Mercury But what sayes he therefor He that loves me shall be loved of my Father and I will love him and make my mansion in him c. he that leavs father or mother for my sake shall sit upon thrones c. he that shall overcome and keep my words unto the end I will give him power over nations as I have received from my father and I will give unto him a morning star c. and the like promimises of glory I stand not now to mention And I should think whom God and Christ so highly honours that we may honour them too nay I beleev we should for a good servant ought to respect him his maister loves And what are we afraid of least people by much reflecting upon such eminent examples of vertue should be moved therby to imitate them what can it be els If saints were proposed and described unto us like Mars Jove and Venus eminent both actours and patrons of vice then we might justly blame it But who can dislike of an example of heroick vertue though it were in a Romance And all those saints even from the first of January to the last of December are so commended for their sacred retirements ravishing contemplations of Gods love and the life to come carnal mortifications and castigations of body fastings abnegations of themselves excessive charity daily renewed resolutions against the world flesh and devill and valorous attempts for the love of Jesus to justifie his truth and gospel even to the effusion of their bloods that we read nothing els of them all which is but what Christ and his apostles both by example and word either prescribed or at least counselled both them and us to do And who can make bitter gibeing invectives against them and their legends but only he who is an enemy to the vertues there commended What my self and others in England have read and heard against Popish Saints it would be tedious to speak but I find it to be the spirit and genius of them that depart from the Popes religion Luther the Hectour rampant was excellently dextrous at this feat of disabling persons of renown and before him his grandsire Wicleph who publickly affirmed that St. Austin St. Bennet St. Bernard and other such like men were damned in hell for founding religious orders yea and even John Calvin himself that holy faced man was so intemtemperatly given to this theiomachy that he opened his mouth not only against all saints and their memorials in the register of the Church but even the renowned persons both of the old and new testament canonized in holy writ Noah Abraham Rebecca Jacob Rachel Job Moyses Josuah David Elias Jeremias Daniel The B. Virgin Mary S. Joseph S. Mary Magdalen Martha the haemorroiss Woman who touched Christs garments S. Peter S. Paul S. Matthew S. Luke S. Zacharias the husband of Elizabeth and S. Denyse Areopagite c. and his own words against all these I could easily set down but that I would not tire my reader nor foul my paper with his detracting unseemly speeches But I should being left to my own reason shrewdly suspect him to be an enemy to vertue whom I find to calumniate and disable all those persons who by authentick history are so much commended for it and by the same proposed unto us as an ensample of our lives It is not only their due but our benefit to keep the memory of saints before us Besides that man cannot easily forget his own imortality after our deceas who often ruminates upon such vertuous presidents whom being dead he honours as yet