Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	apostle_n	believe_v	creed_n	5,306	5	10.2365	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66403	A manual, or, Three small and plain treatises viz. 1. Of prayer, or active, 2. Of principles, or positive, 3. Resolutions, or oppositive [brace] divinity / translated and collected out of the ancient writers, for the private use of a most noble lady, to preserve her from the danger of popery, by the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Arch-Bishop of York.	Williams, John, 1582-1650.	1672 (1672)	Wing W2711; ESTC R38653	30,581	162

righteously because it is the Will and Commandment of God 7. If you take more delight than you did in praying to God 8. If you thank God privately for these his good motions By these eight points you may soon know whether you have true faith or not Q. What is the infallible mark of true and justifying Faith A. The effectual applying of Christ and all his benefits to your own soul in particular And is then only effectual when it worketh by love an impartial obedience to the Commandments of Christ This application doth make a difference betwixt justifying Faith and all other kinds of Faith which cannot save us As Historical Faith which is a a bare assent Faith of Miracles which is a bare confidence added to assent Temporary Faith which is but a bare profession of the Faith for a time embraced only for the desire of Knowledge Credit Profit Q. What is the meaning of this assertion of S. Pauls that we are justified by faith alone A. It is meant of a practical and working Faith for even as when you give your alms to a Begger it is received by his hand alone and yet his hand is not alone when it receives these alms but accompanied with an arm sinews and arteries Even so when God offers unto you Christ and his righteousness you do receive him by Faith alone as it stands in opposition to the deeds of the Law and yet this Faith which receives Christ is never alone but still accompanied with Charity good Works In a word 1. To hold alms is proper to the hand and not the arm and to hold Christ proper to Faith not good works 2. You are justified by Faith alone and yet if your Faith be alone it cannot justifie you Q. What is the meaning of St. James when he saith That we are justified by works and not by Faith only A. His meaning is clearly that obedience to God's Commands as well as Faith in his Promises is absolutely required to our Justification Q. What is the least and weakest degree of Faith that I may build upon to keep me from despair in case I find not all those alterations in my self which you spake of before A. 1. If you desire Faith or pray unto God that you may desire Faith 2. If you can pray or desire of God to enable you to pray 3. If you find fault with your want of Faith and desire sometimes of God to help this want 4. If you dare not live indulgently in any one wilful or deadly sin but sincerely and earnestly strive against it Then you are for all your doubting the child of God RESOLVTIONS Oppositive DIVINITY OR The ordinary Objections of Papists against them of the Reformed Churches A DIALOGUE Papist Protestant CHAP. I. Of the Church Papist THe Church of England is no Church Protest That were very strange considering your own Writers conclude a Church to be there where there is found 1. Doctrine of salvation according to Scripture 2. the Vse of the Sacraments and 3. outward Discipline or Ecclesiastical Government although the Church-men should fall short of those Apostolical and primitive perfections which flourished in their predecessors Pap. Yea but it is not the Catholick Church mentioned in the Creed I believe in the Catholick Church Prot. 1. No more is the Church of Rome For there was no Church at all in Rome when the Creed was made by the Apostles at Hierusalem every Apostle making his Article when they were to depart to plant particular Churches in Rome England and other places 2. But our Church is a branch and portion of that Catholick Church as is also the Greek Armenian Aethiopian and Syrian as well if not rather than the Roman Church Pap. Peradventure these other Churches may be members of that Catholick Church as joyned and united with us but the union betwixt your Church and ours hath been cut asunder above an hundred years agone and therefore you are quite cut off from the Catholick Church Prot. This is more than you know or than I am bound to believe For This union of the members of the Catholick Church is inward not outward and therefore discerned only by God himself We never sundred our selves from the People or Church of Rome but from the Faction or Court of Rome not from the sincere doctrin of that Church but from the corruptions and innovations foisted into that Church And therefore although we be never so hated and excommunicated by your Priests yet we may be still united in internal society with your Church if you retain those principles of Religion sound and unaltered in the which our forefathers died and as we well ●ope were saved Pap. How are you then gone from us if you be still ●nited with us Prot. As the Prophets went from the corrupt Churches of the Jews and as Christ and his Apostles from the Scribes and Pharises clamando dissentiendo by crying out against your corruptions and dissenting from your innovations and this your own men allowed us to do Pap. I but some of your men say that we had no true Church of God in the West of many years before Luther's time Prot. Their meaning is to be limited in respect of the Predominant and prevailing Faction Your Church held I confess a saving profession of the Truthmof God but your Church-men mingled therewith many damnable impieties And these innovators only carrying the greatest shew of the Church are denied by our Writers to be the true Church of God Pap. This it is we Catholicks observe You dare not for all your malice deny the Church of Rome to have in some sort a saving profession of the truth of God but our Priests conclude directly that your Church hath no truth at all and that none can be saved in that Church Prot. As in every Kingdom the general estate is nothing so forward active quick and peremptory as the private Factions and yet is found at the last more wise and staied in final resolution So in the Catholick Church the Factions are ever more heady and precipitate in their denunciations of Heaven and Hell than the main body thereof Hence it cometh to pass that although the Greek Armenian Ethiopian and Syrian and for the most part the Protestant doth censure charitably of those Laicks who living rather in than of the Church of Rome hold the grounds of the doctrin of Salvation without any notorious mixtures with the late superstitions and impieties crept into the same yet doth the Papist Russeist Anabaptist Familist and Puritan hold no Church a Church of God but his own conventicle and all to be damn'd that are not of his society and combination Now what belief you shall afford these Boutefeux of the Catholick Church that dispose of Heaven and Hell as if it were their own Fee-simple I leave to your wisdom and common understanding Pap. Me thinks

to be the ground of your Faith and reason of your believing so as you do therefore believe all the points of your salvation to be true because the Church doth teach and instruct you in the same Or have you any other rule and ground of your faith Prot. The Authority and good conceipt we have of Gods Church prepareth us to believe the points of our Salvation and serveth as an introduction to bring us to the discerning and perfect apprehension of these Mysteries of our faith but the Scripture only is the ground and reason of our believing For as the Samaritans were induced and drawn on to believe in Christ by that talk of the woman but having heard Christ himself profess plainly they believe no longer for her saying but because they heard him speak himself So do we begin to believe moved thus to do by the good conceipt we have of the Church but rest not in it as the ground of our believing but only in the infallible assurance of God's truth in the Book of Scriptures Pap. Then God help you if that be your last resolution For our Church cannot erre but your Scriptures without the help of the Church to tell you so much can never be ascertained unto you to be the word of God and therefore what assuredness of belief can you propose your selves upon so unsetled a foundation Protest The Catholick Church indeed spread over the world cannot erre damnably though the Church of Rome and all other particular Churches may as your own Writers confess But the Scriptures we know to be the word of God not because the Church or Church-men do tell us so much but by the Authority of God himself whom we do most certainly discern to speak in his word when it is preached unto us For if we bring pure eyes and perfect senses the Majesty of God forthwith presenteth it self unto us in the Holy Scriptures and beating down all thoughts of contradicting or doubting things so Heavenly forceth our hearts to yield assent and obedience unto the same And therefore if you doubt whether that which you read in your Bible be the Word of God or find any reluctancy in your understanding to the Doctrin of the same it is in vain to flie unto either Church or Church-men to be perswaded in this point but down upon your knees and pray fervently unto God for Faith and the illumination of the Holy Ghost which can only assure you of the truth of the Scriptures For after we are enlightned by the Spirit we do no longer trust either our own judgement or the judgement of other men or of the Church that the Scriptures are of God but above all certainly of humane judgement we most certainly resolve as if in them we saw the Majesty and Glory of God that by the ministery of men they came unto us from Gods own most sacred mouth Pap. But what certain ground of faith can you place on the Scriptures seeing by the several interpretations of men and women they are turned and wrested like a nose of wax to every private design and purpose Do not you observe how the Catholicks Protestants and especially the Brownists and Anabaptists do fit all their turns out of the Holy Scriptures on which of these senses and imaginations is your faith rooted or peradventure have you some odd capritchious kind of interpretation of your own apprehension to direct you in these businesses Prot. We Lay-folks are licensed in the Church of England to read but not to interpret Scriptures excepting only those passages which contain the necessary points of our Salvation the which passages are so plain and easie every where that any man or woman of the meanest capacity especially if he or she be instructed in their Catechism or grounds of Religion may perfectly conceive and understand them But for the harder and more difficult places we leave them to be interpreted by our Church-men in their Sermons and daily Ministery For the ordering of which interpretations there are as I have been told ten several helps the which if they be followed will be sure and unfallible guides to boult out the true meaning of each place of Scripture 1. An illumination of the understanding by the Holy Ghost 2. A mind free from other thoughts and desirous of the truth 3. Knowledge of the Scriptures Creeds Catechismes Principles and other Axiomes of Divinity 4. A consideration how our meaning suits with other points of Christianity 5. The weighing of circumstances antecedents and consequents 6. Knowledge of Histories Arts and Sciences 7. Continual Reading Meditating and Praying 8. Joint and unjarring expositions of the Fathers 9. Consenting decrees of Synods and Councils 10. Knowledge in the tongues Because therefore Lay-men and women Papists Brownists and Anabaptists are wanting in all or some of these helps they bring forth many times such lame and prodigious interpretations Pap. If we make the Scripture and not the Church the rule of our Faith how shall we believe the Creed the Trinity the Sacraments the unity of Essence the Three Persons in the Deity c. words never read in the Bible and yet necessarily to be apprehended of us upon pain of damnation Prot. I say that all these things are set down in Scriptures either in so many syllables or at leastwise by necessary inferences and deductions And we do not therefore believe them because they are only taught by the Church but because they are rooted and grounded in the Holy Scriptures the only stay and pillar of our affiance To sum up therefore all this Chapter 1. The Church doth prepare us but the Scripture only doth force us to believe 2. The whole Church cannot any part thereof may erre damnably 3. We are taught the Scriptures to be the Word of God by the Holy Ghost moving in our hearts and not by the Church sounding in our ears 4. Lay-men are to read not to interpret Scriptures 5. The miss of some rules causeth wrong expositions of Scriptures 6. All things necessary to be believed are either found in or collected and inferred from the Scriptures CHAP. III. Of Iustification Papist HOw then do you learn out of the Scriptures that you are to be justified and saved before God Prot. I am to be justified before God by an Act single in it self but double in our apprehension which is by Gods not imputing unto me my sins and the same Gods imputing unto me Christs righteousness and withall by his creating of faith in my heart by the Holy Ghost I mean an operative a lively a working Faith to assure my Soul that God for the Active and Passive obedience of Christ Jesus hath accomplished those two former Acts of not imputing my Sin and of imputing unto me Christs Righteousness Pa. A very easie no doubt and reasonable Religion which you have learned out of the Scriptures Here is no burthen left for your own back you cast all

you now put me in mind of another objection which usually we make against the Protestants of England that they bring in too much good fellowship in Religion and make Salvation a flower which grows in every mans Garden Seeing that according to their Tenets Papist Protestant Anabaptist and Familist may every one of them by means offered in his own Church as a portion or fragment of the Catholick Church attain unto Salvation Prot. If you were learned I could answer you in a word that none of these three Sectaries considered in his own Formality Quatalis as he is a Papist Anabaptist or Familist can ever attain unto Salvation but only as he is a Christian man admitted by Baptism unto the visible Church and there made partaker of Gods word and Sacraments For then although these blessed means are very much weak'ned and obscured in their Synagogues by the malice of Sathan and inventions of men yet may that holy Spirit that bloweth where he listeth work in such a mans heart by these weak instruments and the rather the more the Word is faithfully preached and the Sacraments be in those places sincerely administred a true faith in Christ Jesus to bring him to salvation So then we do not hold that Papists Anabaptists and Familists but only that some Christians living in their congregations may though with great difficulty in comparison of this flourishing Church of ours and these admirable means of Salvation tendered in the same by the special mercy of God be saved and preserved If we be in an errour it is safer to erre in Charity than in Malice and precipitancy considering the event hereof is unknown to either of us Pap. I but where was your Church before this reformation began Prot. 1. When our Saviour Christ with-drew the people from the leaven of the Scribes and Pharises to the bread which came down from Heaven and to salvation by faith in his Name was it fitting to demand of him where his Church was before that Reformation 2. When these Churches of Corinth Galatia Pergamus and Thiatyra were full of abuses if some part only upon the preaching of the Apostles had reformed themselves and so a division had grown would you straight waies have tax'd them of Novelty or ask'd them where their Church had been before this reformation 3. When the Apostles cast off the Law of Moses excepting only those three or four Ceremonies and when the primitive Church some hundred years after cast off those Ceremonies also for I find them breathing of their last as it were about the times of Justin Martyr had it not been a poor challenge of the Jews or Traskists of those times to demand where this unceremonial Church lay hid before the reformation I answer then that our Church before this reformation began lived together in one communion with yours with toleration of all those abuses which you have still retained and we most justly rejected Pap. I but I hope you dare not compare in the gifts of the Spirit with Christ his Apostles or those worthies of the primitive Church And therefore how presumed you to reform your selves Reformation being a work fitter for a general Councel to have gone about than for a small handful of Northern people Prot. The Court of Rome had so gained upon the Church of Rome that is the Pope and his Conclave of Cardinals had wriggled in themselves to that transcendency of power over the rest of the Clergy and well minded laity that it appeared both at Constance and Trent there was small hope of Reformation from such a Council where the Pope the party to be reformed became the party reforming and supream Judge and president of the Reformation it self Although poor seduced ignorant women are much carried away with the name of the Councel of Trent yet you will quickly find out this ridiculous absurdity In a general Council as now it is held since the decay of the Empire the Pope is the party to be accused yet puts up his own endictment passeth a jury of his own vassals and find they what they will being to give final judgement he will be sure to do as his supposed predecessor taught our Saviour to do to wit favour himself So as there was no hope of doing good by a General Councel unless it were a generous and free Councel and such a one the Pope you may be sure would never abide And therefore one of your own writers concludes that in such a case several Kingdoms are to reform themselves by National Councels which England and Denmark did put in practise Pap. Yea but it is too well known it was no zeal of Reformation but carnal respects that moved King Henry to touch upon Religion Prot. To you it seems it is given to know these secrets but I see no reason we should think so The King could not be induced to this reformation as a means to possess himself of the Abbeies for they were already swallowed up Nor as a preparative for his woing as Saunders thinks because Fisher the Bishop of Rochester who opposed his Marriage made up the one and twentieth prelate in banishing the Pope out of this Kingdom But without doubt the finger of God was the cause whatsoever was the hint or occasion Festus his popularity and humour of pleasing gave S. Paul occasion to appeal to Caesar and to visit Rome where and when he laid the first Stone of the Romane Church Would you like it well a Protestant should say that your Church was founded upon Courtship and popularity If any carnal respect whetted on the King that was but the opportunity God only was the first mover and prime Agent in this reformation Pap. Nay surely God is the God of unity but your Church being once severed from the Roman was presently can●l'd out into as many factions almost as there are Countries witness the Lutherans soft and rigid the Calvinists Puritans Conformitans Brownists Anabaptists c. So as one may easily ghess from what Lerna and fenny ground this Hydra of so many heads had her first Original Protest This Argument sounds very bigg in a Ladies closet and weighs much with the ignorant and unlearned people but with a man but of a reasonable understanding this seeming division is no scandal at all to our reformed Churches What man of any reading in the Histories of the time but knows well that after the trumpet for this reformation had blown the first warning by Wicklef Hus and Hierome of Prage and then the second by Gerson Peter de Aliaco Cardinal Cusanus Picus Mirandula Savanorola and many others of whom we read in Guicchiardyn when Luther in Germany blew the last and that there appeared no hope of a free and indifferent Council so as several Kingdoms were thus necessitated to provide and take care for themselves this worthy