Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	article_n	catholic_n	creed_n	3,489	5	9.9234	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64364	Of idolatry a discourse, in which is endeavoured a declaration of, its distinction from superstition, its notion, cause, commencement, and progress, its practice charged on Gentiles, Jews, Mahometans, Gnosticks, Manichees Arians, Socinians, Romanists : as also, of the means which God hath vouchsafed towards the cure of it by the Shechinah of His Son / by Tho. Tenison ...	Tenison, Thomas, 1636-1715.	1678 (1678)	Wing T704; ESTC R8	332,600	446

numbered Amongst them beyond the Seas I will name only Danaeus and Hottinger Daneus in his Appendix to the Catalogue of Heresies written by St. Austin recounteth the Hereticks who had offended as he thought in particular manner against the several precepts of the Decalogue And under the second Commandment he placeth the Simonians the Armenians the Papists and some others as notorious violaters of it Hottinger distributeth the false worship of the Papists into six kinds of Idolatry under the Greek names of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bread-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Marian-worship to wit that of the Blessed Virgin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Saint-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Angel-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Relick-worship and lastly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the worship of Images PART 2. Of the mitigation of the charge of Idolatry against the Papists THE learned Hugo Grotius especially in his Annotations on the consultation of Cassander in his Animadversions on the Animadversions of Rivet and in his Votum pro Pace The learned Mr. Thorndike in his Epilogue and in his Just Weights and Measures Curcellaeus in his Epistle to Adrian Patius These three together with some others have pronounced a milder sentence in this cause though they approved not of such Invocation of Saints and worship of Images as is practised in the Church of Rome But it is not my design to decide the controversie by the greater number of modern Authorities but rather to look into the merits of the cause And this I purpose to do so far only as Angels or rather Saints and Images are the Objects of this Disquisition Of Relicks and the Sacramental bread I forbear to say more than that little which follows For the first that which will be said concerning the worship of Images will help us sufficiently in judging of the worship of Relicks If they be made Objects of Religious adoration if they be honoured as pledges of Divine protection if they be trusted in as Shrines of Divine virtue at adventure and in all ages they become as the Manna which was laid up for any other than the Sabbath-day useless to the preservers offensive to God and unsavory to men of sagacious Noses Concerning that substance which after Sacramental consecration appeareth as Bread that excellent Church in whose safe communion I have always lived doth still call it Bread For the Priest after having consecrated the Elements and received the Communion himself in both kinds is required by the Rubrick of that Office to administer to others and when he delivereth the Bread to any one to use this Form The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy Body and Soul to Everlasting life Now a Discourse concerning the worship of that Substance which appeareth as Bread will in effect be a Discourse about the Corporal presence of Christ under the shews of that creature and run the Disputant into another Question which hath been industriously sifted by Thousands Neither are the printed Volumes touching this subject few or small There is a great heap of them written by the learned Messieurs Arnaud and Claud and Monsieur Aubertin hath obliged the World with a very large and laborious work about Transubstantiation in which may be seen the sense of the Ancients Forbearing then any further Discourse about the Worship of Relicks or the Sacramental bread I proceed to the Worship of Saints Angels and Images inquiring how far the Church of Rome doth by her Veneration render them Idols At the entrance of this Inquiry the trueness of her Faith in one God and three Persons is to be acknowledged and observed The Creed which is formed by order of the Council of Trent beginneth with the Articles of that of Nice though it endeth not without Additions And Dr. Rivet in his Reflections on those excellent Notes with which the acute Grotius adorned the consultation of Cassander doth in this point own the Orthodoxy of the Roman Faith In the Article of the Divine Trin-unity there is nothing saith he controverted betwixt Papists and Protestants And thus much is true if spoken of the generality of them for they herein adhere to Catholick Doctrine Thus do the Protestants of the Church of England but all do not so either here or beyond the Seas who commonly pass under the name of Protestants Curcellaeus for instance sake is called a Protestant yet may seem no other than a Tritheite as may appear by the first of those four Disputations which he wrote against his sharp Adversary Maresius The Romanists then professing the true Catholick Faith in the Article of the blessed Trinity and owning the second Synod of Nice which though it favoured Images so very highly yet it ascribed Latria to God only they seem injurious to them who do not only charge them with Idolatry but also aggravate that Idolatry as equal to the false Worship of the most barbarous Gentiles They seem unjust I say in so doing unless this be their meaning that the least degree of that crime under the light of Christianity be equal to the greatest under the disadvantages of Heathenism It is certain that the Romanists who worship the true God do not worship Universal Nature or the Sun or the Soul of the World in place of the Supreme Deity as did millions of Pagans Also for the Angels which they worship they justifie only the adoration of those Spirits who persisted in their first estate of unspotted Holiness and they renounce in Baptism the Devil and his Angels after the manner of the Catholick Church And when an Heathen is by them baptized the Priest after having signed him first on the Forehead and then on the Breast with the sign of the Cross does exhort him in this Form Abhor Idols Reject their Images But the Gentiles sacrificed to Devils and to such who by the light of nature might be known to be evil Daemons because they accepted of such Sacrifices as were unagreeable to the justice and charity and piety of mankind Sacrifices vile and bloody such whose smoke might be discerned by a common nostril to smell of the stench of the bottomless pit Yet some of the Heathens expresly denied the practice of such worship and made to the Christians this following profession We worship not evil Daemons Those Spirits which you call Angels those we also worship the Powers of the Great God and the Ministeries of the Great God For Hero's they worship those only whom they believe to have professed Christian Religion and to have been visible Members of the Catholick Church For into that whatsoever particular communion it was which afterwards they visibly owned they were at first Baptized Whereas the Gentiles worshipped many who had been worshippers of false gods Such worshippers were Castor Pollux Quirinus among the Romans These first worshipped false Deities and were afterwards worshipped themselves with the like undue honour

we are daily delivered from the greatest dangers of Soul and Body For the Books of publick Offices their Forms have been already produced neither can I see where the Comment of any Rubrick removeth the scandal of their Text. Concerning Manuals they are usually composed by private Doctors or devout Students who often intermix the Glosses of their own Reason But nothing less than the Church it self can authentickly explain its Universal practice And for such Manuals as are authorized by the Church to me they seem to transcend rather than to come short of the Forms of the Missal and Breviarie Such a Manual is that of the Hours of of the Blessed Virgin in which if there had been any such Explication of the Forms used to her it had been shut up together with other Manuals from the common view of the Christian world by the Interdict of any vulgar translation of it For to every Country has not been granted the Sclavonian priviledg That people have been allowed the Books of their Religion in their vulgar tongue with advice notwithstanding to embrace the Latin though to them an unknown language In the Province of Mexico it was decreed by the Synod That no Books of Religion should be read without the permission of the Ordinary And the Manuals which were appointed for the use of the people whether Spanish or Indian were not likely to expound to them the meaning of the Roman Forms for their Contents were these The Lords-prayer The Salutation by the Angel The Apostles Creed The Articles of Faith those in the Creed of Trent The Precepts of the Decalogue The Precepts of the Church The seven Sacraments the seven deadly Sins and the Salve Regina This Antiphona called Salve Regina has been already repeated and it is one of the higher Forms of the Worship of the Virgin And Father Paul did in some measure shew his dislike of it in forbearing to repeat it as did his Brethren at the end of the Mass. But it is true that he coloured his aversness with such an excuse as this that he was not to observe a Decree of Thirty Fryars against the Order of the whole Church Now in the abovesaid Synod of Mexico there is a special inforcement of the singing of Salve Regina daily and with all solemnity during a great part of Lent And the Bishops are there much pressed to procure in this manner with all solicitude the increase of pious devotion towards the holy Virgin The English Romanists have had often in their hands the Manual of Godly Prayers published at St. Omers by John Heigham In the sixth Edition of that Book I find no Explication of the Worship of Saints but much which seemeth to advance it to a degree too high for it Under the first or in our account the second Commandment the Penitent is there taught to confess this as one breach of it that he hath not daily recommended himself to God and his Saints In the Litany of our Lady he hath these Forms O holy Mary stretch abroad the hand of thy mercy and deliver our hearts from all wicked thoughts hurtful speeches and evil deeds O holy Mary we worship thee we glorifie thee Words which are a part of that Religious Thanksgiving which the ancient Church offered to God and called the Angelical Hymn Horstius in his Manual called the Paradise of the Soul reprinted lately at Colen and adorned with Sculptures seems as devout as Heigham now cited for thus he prays or comments on Gratia Plena O blessed Virgin be graciously pleased to pour forth that Grace of which thou art full that the vein of thy benignity overflowing the guilty may receive absolution the sick medicine the weak in heart strength the afflicted consolation those that are in danger help and deliverance O that I could but deserve one drop of such great fulness for the refreshing of my dry and parched heart For the private Oral Instructions of the Romish Ecclesiasticks concerning the use and intent of such Forms I pretend not to be well acquainted with them But as to their publick Preaching I am not ignorant of one very common and no less scandalous usage For the Preacher after a short Preface which introduceth his Text or Subject exhorts the Congregation to say Ave Maria in order to a blessing upon that holy business about which they are assembled And this the Reader may see not only in the more private Sermons of Monsieur de Lingendes but likewise in the more publick one of John Carthenius a Carmelite at the Provincial Synod of Cambray By this Discourse it plainly appeareth that the Letter of the Roman Forms in the Invocation of Saints does to the most vulgar ears sound as Idolatrous as also that that Church hath not provided any publick direct clear Interpretation of them in its subsequent Synods Missals Breviaries Catechism Decretals Authentick Manuals or what I likewise may add in its Bullarium which as shall anon be shewed exalteth the Canonized into the condition of Patrons and Guardians of men There then remaineth this only to be said by the learned of that Communion That they who hear the Church professing plainly its Faith in one supreme God in Trinity cannot think it meaneth by any words whatsoever to give to the Creature the supreme Honour of that Trinity which it so solemnly acknowledgeth And indeed seeing all the Romanists believe the Apostles Creed seeing many of them appropriate all Latria to God seeing they teach in their Manuals that therefore all Prayers are ended with Through Jesus Christ our Lord to signifie that whatsoever we beg of God the Father we must beg it in the name of Jesus Christ by whom he hath given us all things some allowance is to be made them in the Exposition of those Forms which sound as if the Saints were invoked with Latria But yet it may be demanded whether the Forms and practice of a corrupt Church may not contradict their general Rule of Faith Whether the Roman Forms be applied to that Rule of Faith by any but prudent Ecclesiasticks and Laicks who are not the greater number Whether amongst them they take not away some honour from God though not that which is absolutely incommunicable And whether a Church which calleth it self Christian and Catholick should not be more careful of publick Forms of speaking in Prayer such as may render the Supplicants Idolaters in themselves in the ignorant use of them and to others by the external scandal whatsoever license the world takes in phrases of common speech And here it were well if those who so often alledg Mr. Thorndike in favour of their cause would weigh the words of a Letter of his said to be written about a year before he died To pray to the Saints saith he for those things which only God can give as all Papists do is in the proper sense of the words Idolatry If they

cannot be expressed by a pencil of light it self though one very lately reviving the error of the Manichees hath made the Sun his Throne and the right hand of God The Crucifix was made of old and admitted into private houses and at last into Churches But it was first used as a Picture for the help of memory not as a statue in formal place on a Pedestal at which it might be worshipped Hear in this matter St. Gregory the great a man of some insight into the practice of the Church This is part of his Letter to Secundinus We have sent to you Images and we do not amiss if by visible things we represent things not seen I am perswaded that you desire not the image of Christ with intent to worship it as a God but that by remembrance of the Son of God you may be more warmed in his love whose image you think you look upon And for our selves we are not prostrate before it as before a God but we worship him whom we call to mind by his Image not as born or crucified but as sitting on his Throne And whilst the Picture like a writing brings to our memory the Son of God it either rejoyceth our mind with the Resurrection of Christ or asswageth it by his Passion The same St. Gregory when Serenus Bishop of Marseille had in an holy zeal broken those Images which he saw adored does wish he had not broken them but that preventing the worship of them he had still retained them as Historical Monuments helpful to the memories of the vulgar I am not against any thing which may be serviceable as an help to devotion Men stand enough in need But there are better helps by far than these And in the Church which is the house of oral and living instruction they serve not much further than for ornament unless the Lay-people come and view them attentively before the beginning of publick service After that the Objects which cause the eye to gaze prevent too much the attention of the ear And yet to say with men who run into extremes that Devotional Pictures are no helps to excite memory and passion is to forget that they are called mute Poems to speak against common sense and to impute less to a Crucifix than to the Tomb of our friend or to a thread on our finger They may be useful as Monitors in a Christian Commonwealth where their worship is plainly and frequently forbidden and by all understood to be so prohibited And it was high superstition in those who in our late unhappy Revolutions defaced such Pictures and brake down such Crosses as Authority had suffered to remain entire whilst it forbad the worship of them and was in that particular so well obeyed that none of them it may be ever knew one man of the Communion of the Church of England to have been prostrate before a Cross and in that posture to have spoken to it In the Church of Rome there is greater pretence for that violence which vulgar Reformers presume to be holy For the Council of Trent retaineth Images in Churches as Objects of Veneration and the practice both of Priests and people does strangely dilate the words of that Council The Article of the Creed of Trent is this I most firmly profess that the Images of Christ and of the Mother of God always a Virgin as also those of other Saints are to be had and retained especially in Churches and that due honour and veneration is to be given to them Due honour and veneration are in themselves modest words and where we admit the Pictures and Images of Christ we refuse not the honour which is due to them We do not chuse to put them in vile places we do not use them in vile offices we esteem them as ornaments we value them as the Images of persons more honourable than our Prince or our Friend We use them as Remembrancers of the great mystery of mans Redemption which we cannot too frequently be reminded of We condemn the indiscreet zeal of our late pretended Reformers who judged him worthy sequestration who had kept a Picture of Christ in his Parlour and confessed it was to put him in mind of his Saviour We honour such Pictures in a negative sense by being unwilling to have them contemned We think them not fit to be placed in the Pavements of Churches where as St. Bernard in his Apology to Guilielmus Abbas complaineth they are trodden under foot Where people spit into the mouth of the Image of an Angel and tear the face of the Image of a Saint with their clouted shoon We observe and commend the discretion of many Romish Synods since that of Trent which have made Laws against lascivious improper fabulous absurd Images We inveigh not against the first Council of Milan for requiring the Ordinary to summon Statuaries Engravers and Painters and to require them to use their art to the dignity of the Prototype We condemn those Zealots among the Albigenses if such there were who are said in scorn to have framed deformed Images and to have dishonoured the Virgin in a monstrous statue with one eye The zeal of the Church of England has been much more temperate and discreet and so God be thanked it continues at this day It is not rude to any thing set apart for Gods service it would not have a consecrated Chalice quaffed in as a common Bowl it abhorreth the memory of Julian Prefect of the East and Uncle to the Apostate who shewed his irreverence towards the Eucharist by spurning and sitting upon the Communion-Plate of the great Church of Antioch But the Council of Trent seemeth to mean something more than all this by its due honour and veneration It doth not indeed mean absolute Latria or direct Divine honour to be exhibited to the Image it self It hath otherwise explained it self and it condemneth such worship of them It would not have the people believe that there is any Divinity in them or virtue for which they should be worshipped or that any thing is to be asked of them or that trust is to be put in Images after the manner of the Gentiles A like caution is given by the Synod of Cambray Let the people be taught saith a Decree of that Synod that there is no worship due to the Image either for the matter or the beauty or the price and value of its work or for any other thing which may be in the Artifice or substance of the Image but to the thing signified to which this worship and honour is especially referred In like manner they are to be admonished that the mind of the person that prayeth or worshippeth is to be carried to the thing signified and not to the sign which neither hears nor sees nor perceives And some of the Church of Rome do pursue this caution in their Manuals of instruction which they give to

That it is a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but rather repugnant to the Word of God Now what can we judg of that Worship which hath for its object something else besides God and is contrary to the Scripture We cannot but think it not a mere impertinence but a wicked act an act which by contradicting his Authority diminisheth his honour and being an act of Worship nothing less than one degree of Idolatry Again in its twenty-eighth Article it teacheth concerning the consecrated Elements That they were not by Christs institution or ordinance reserved carried about lifted up and worshipped By which words it noteth the Adoration of the Host in the Church of Rome not as an innocent circumstance added by the discretion of that Church but as an unlawful worship though it doth not expresly brand it with the name of Idolatry In the Rubrick after the Communion the Adoration of the consecrated Elements is upon this reason forbidden Because the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances And it is there added That they so remaining the Adoration of them would be Idolatry to be abhorred by all faithful Christians This Rubrick doth in effect charge the Church of Rome with gross Idolatry for it supposeth the Object which they materially worship to be in its natural substance still a creature and a creature disjoined from Personal union with Christ and not according to the words of their St. Thomas inserted into their Missal a Deity latent under the accidents of Bread and Wine And it concludeth that the worship of such a substance is such Idolatry as Christian Religion abhorreth It doth not indeed affirm in terms that the worship of such a substance by a Romanist who verily thinks it to be not bread but a Divine body is Idolatry but it saith that whence such a conclusion may be inferred It saith that the bread is still bread in its substance and if it be really such whilst it is worshipped the mistake of the worshipper cannot alter the nature of the thing though according to the degrees of unavoidableness in the causes of his ignorance it may extenuate the crime Upon supposition that still 't is very bread in its substance Costerus and it may be Bellarmine himself would have condemned the Latria of it as the Idolatrous worship of a Creature even in Paul the simple of whom stories say that he was extreamly devout but withal that he knew not which were first the Apostles or the Prophets And here it ought to be well noted that there is a wide distance betwixt this saying That Idolatry is a damnable sin and this assertion That Idolatry in any degree of it and in a person under any kind of circumstances actually damneth I would here also commend it to the observation of the Reader that the Church of England speaketh this of the worship of the corporal substance of the Elements present in the Eucharist after consecration and not of the real and essential presence of Christ. And for this reason it left out the terms of Real and Essential used in the Book of King Edward the sixth as subject to misconstruction Real it is if it be present in its real effects and they are the essence of it so far as a Communicant doth receive it for he receiveth it not so much in the nature of a thing as in the nature of a priviledg But I comprehend not the whole of this Mystery and therefore I leave it to the explication of others who have better skill in untying of knots In the Commination used by the Church of England 'till God be pleased to restore the Discipline of Penance a curse is denounced against all those who make any carved or molten Image to worship it And it is the curse which is in the first place denounced on Ash-Wednesday It is true that it is taken out of the Book of Deuteronomy and it is the sense of a verse in that Book used at large in the former Common-Prayer-Book in these words Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten Image an abomination to the Lord the work of the hands of the craftsman and putteth it in a secret place to worship it That is though it be done without scandal to men and in such private manner as to avoid the punishment which the Law inflicteth on known and publick offenders But the Church of England repeating this Law in its Commination doth thereby own it to be still of validity and to oblige Christian men The Homilies which are an Appendage to our Church do expresly arraign the Roman-Catholicks as Idolaters in the learned Discourses of the peril of Idolatry Also English Princes and Bishops have declared themselves to be of the same perswasion King Edward the sixth in his Injunctions reckoneth Pictures and Paintings in the Churches of England as adorned by the Romanists amongst the Monuments of Idolatry Of the Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth this is the Thirty-fifth That no persons keep in their houses any abused Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition Of the Articles of Inquiry in the first year of her Reign this is one and pertinent to our present Discourse Whether you know any that keep in their Houses any undefaced Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned and false Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition and do adore them especially such as have been set up in Churches Chappels and Oratories This likewise is one of the Articles of Visitation set forth by Cranmer Arch-bishop of Canterbury in the second year of Edward the sixth Whether Parsons c. have not removed and taken away and utterly extincted and destroyed in their Churches Chappels and Houses all Images all Shrines Pictures Paintings and all other Monuments of Idolatry and Superstition Bishop Jewel's opinion is so well known that his words may be spared And that Confession of Faith which he penned and which maketh a part of his Apology for the Church of England and in which he calleth the Invocation of Saints in the Church of Rome a practice vile and plainly Heathenish is put into the collection of the Confessions of the Reformed under the Title of the English Confession But the Churches Confession it cannot be called with respect to her Authority which did not frame it whatsoever it be in its substance and in its conformity to her Articles For others of the Church of England a very Learned person the Hannibal and Terrour of Modern Rome hath named enough T. G. hath indeed excepted against many of the Jury but whether he hath not illegally challenged so many of them remaineth a Question or rather it is with the Judicious out of dispute The sentences of private men spoken on this occasion both here and beyond the Seas either broadly or indirectly are scarce to be