Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	believe_v	catholic_n	creed_n	5,499	5	10.3356	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60563	A pacifick discourse of the causes and remedies of the differences about religion, which distract the peace of Christendom	Smith, Thomas, 1638-1710.	1688 (1688)	Wing S4226; ESTC R3425	22,287	40

would be distinguished one from another in compliance of the genius of the age which is concerned more for ingenuity and learning the inventing new hypotheses and satisfying curious enquiries into nature than for the practices of moral honesty and Christian vertue and how we may foyl and baffle our adversaries by our wit rather than adorn our holy profession with suitable lives But alas by how much less pious we are so by degrees we become more and more censorious and uncharitable We bestow all our zeal in lesser matters and lay the great stress of our duty upon it being little solicitous about the ornaments of a Christian life as if by this fallacious and flattering kind of artifice we would compound with God for the want of them It is in vain to complain of and cry out upon the wickedness of the times when we our selves are to blame that they are no better and if we would our selves we might make them so For if the true Christian piety and strict discipline and integrity of manners were but once restored and if we throughly minded the great duties of Christianity which consist in unfeigned devotion and holiness in charity and meekness and patience and forbids all bitterness and wrath and evil speaking and hatred and malice and abstracts from all niceties and subtilities of disputation and quarrels about Scholastick notions and opinions in which the essence of faith is no way interested it will be no vain idle or ill-grounded expectation that we might live to see the different parties of Christendom united and Ecclesiastical peace and unity restored But whilst ill manners and a careless way of living prevail whilst charity and modesty are laid aside and men grow over-wise and conceited in their opinions and despise all others of a contrary judgment whilst to be of a Party and to maintain private phansies with fierceness and heat is accounted a good argument of their being godly whilst being too much concerned for the externals of religion and controversial points we over-look our duty and growing secure and careless seem to have little or no regard to what Christ and his Apostles command us to look after with all possible care and diligence and make our most serious study and business who can be so void of sense or good nature as not to observe with grief and sorrow of mind that by this ill imployed industry and by these furious quarrels Christianity suffers and that new prejudices arising continually the evil distemper grows worse and worse and will soon become desperate and incurable No serious and honest Reader can be so unjust as to imagine that I plead for a toleration of vile sects and opinions or that I think it a matter of meer indifference to what communion of Christians we betake and joyn our selves We of the Church of England are obliged to render unfeigned and hearty thanks to Almighty God for his great mercy and goodness towards us that he has made us members of such an eminently pure and Apostolical part and branch of the Catholick Church that we were born and baptized and live in the communion of a Church whose doctrine is truly Christian and Catholick government primitive and Apostolical and Liturgy conformable to the antient standard and agreeable to the uses of true devotion without the least mixture of superstition and foppery and where the Sacraments are administred according to Christs holy institution and where all things necessary to make a true Orthodox Catholick Christian and to render him eternally happy in the other world are to be found and met with It highly becomes us in point of duty to be very sensible of this great blessing and it ought to be the great comfort of our lives and deaths too yet I cannot but oppose to all unjust censure that expostulation of Saint Paul Romans 14. 4. Who art thou that judgest another mans servant to his own master he standeth or falleth yea he shall be holden up for God is able to make him stand and will further add that I doubt not in the least but that at the dreadful day of judgment a virtuous honest and sober life will be more esteemed by Christ himself than niceness of knowledge and opinion be it never so true that no one who has adorned his Christian profession with an agreeable conversation notwithstanding his errors and misperswasions if they be not aggravated and made pernicious by obstinacy of mind and a wilful resisting and refusing the truth will be rejected and that those who now out of a furious zeal if yet there be any who do this besides some of the fiery men of the Church of Rome who arrogantly call themselves Religious and their credulous infatuated Proselytes deny or scarse own salvation possible to others who are not of their communion which is a most unwarrantable impudent scandalously false and unchristian opinion the wickedness of which cannot be sufficiently aggravated of what party of men soever and are thus uncharitable one to another if an holy and virtuous life be superstructed upon the foundation of faith in which they all agree by the grace and mercy of God and the all-sufficient merits and satisfaction of Christ will be happy hereafter for ever in heaven Hitherto of the causes of those quarrels about Religion which distract the quiet and peace of Christendom Let us now briefly consider the remedies In general it is most evident that all endeavours about composing these differences are in vain and to no purpose and that we cannot entertain the least ground of hope to attain to the unity of the primitive Church unless all parties relax their censures which have hitherto excluded love and charity and make use of the same means in restoring it as the Christians of the first times did in retaining it If with composed and settled minds and affections we would agree in this excellent method we have no reason to despair but that the pacifick counsels and pious endeavours of honest men who labour after the blessed work of union and reconciliation among Christians might be very successful Now the means of obtaining this Ecclestastical peace consist in the removal of the causes above-mentioned which have obstructed it and are these Whereof the first is that the antient simple Christian faith as it is contained in the Scriptures summed up in the Creeds of general Councils and received in all the Churches of Christ be only urged as necessary to be believed in order to salvation For seeing that this common faith was made use of by the Catholick Church as a tye and bond of holy communion seeing the Catechumens after praevious instruction upon their profession of this faith no other condition being exacted were admitted to baptism and had a right to partake of the holy mysteries of the Eucharist seeing that in the profession of the same faith all true Christians do fully agree for the Socinians who go about to overthrow the whole frame

to the first ages are hugely encreased and multiplied as is too too manifest from the present state and condition of the Roman Church and the obscure confessions of other Churches what other effect can we expect should proceed from this mighty industry and zeal but that Christendom being divided into so many parties and factions all just hope of union should be wholly removed and taken away when the effecting of it hereby seems to be rendred morally impossible 3. The arrogant pretensions of the Popes unbounded power contributes not a little to the heightning and augmenting the difference in Christendom It does not seem at this day to comport with the greatness of the Roman Church to be content to be included within the antient limits of the Suburbicary regions For not satisfied with a Primacy of order or with her antient Patriarchate to whose jurisdiction the Britannick Churches were not of right subject or with her other privileges conferred upon her out of a respect to the Imperial city as if the spirit of the old Romans were infused into her she proudly affects an empire over the whole body of Christians throughout the world If the other Patriachs who owe that honour and dignity to the same original the favour of Princes and the decrees and constitutions of general Councils in the assignment of which as it is most evident from the 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon they had onely a regard to the privileges and dignities of cities to which the Ecclesiastical government was accommodated defend their rights and liberties against the attempts and encroachments of the Bishop of Rome if they will not submit to a forraign yoke unless they with a base and a most unbecoming flattery adore Rome as their Mistress and Patroness and obey her decrees and orders presently there is an end of them they are arraigned and accused as guilty of schism nor shall they be thought worthy of the honour and favour of her communion When some time after the Empire was divided into East and West there seemed to be a kind of agreement at least and a fair and amicable correspondence kept up the ambition and pride of the Bishops of Rome who would needs busy and interest themselves in the affairs of the Greek Church spoiled all For to no other cause can the original of that sad and fatal separation be ascribed altho it was afterward heightned and the wound festered more and more when the article of the procession of the holy Spirit from the Son was added to the Constantinopolitan Creed without ever so much as consulting the Oriental Bishops who upon the knowledge of it soon after vehemently opposed it justly alledging that it was utterly unlawful so to do it being expresly against the 7th canon of the council of Ephesus But things were more securely advanced and carryed on in the Western Empire by the artifice and policy of the Popes of Rome for the opposition which was made now and then by two or three honest and stout men to their tyrannical and arbitrary proceedings signified little or nothing and was run down with noise violence and power When then they had no regard to the canons of antient Councils by which the Catholick Church was formerly governed when they had trodden under their feet all divine and humane law and right when they had arrogated to themselves the disposition of all Church-affairs and had usurpt a power over all Christians and nothing for the future was to be admitted and believed but what was agreeable to the Bulls and decrees of the Roman Court can any one wonder when things were brought to this pass that Christendom should at last awaken from its deep lethargy and grown sensible of the miserable slavery of its condition should complain of the exercise of this usurped unjust and tyrannical power and seriously think of recovering its true antient original hristian liberty In the mean time what did they at Rome did they enter upon serious counsels and resolutions honestly and effectually to satisfy the requests and demands of Kings Princes and Republicks concerning a Reformation which were continually sent thither by their Ambassadors and Agents did they restore their ill-gotten goods which they had seized upon most unjustly and as unjustly had detained by force and violence I mean the common rights and privileges belonging to the Bishops and to all Christian people nothing less they exclaim they rage they are furious and mad and let fly their thunderbolts of excommunication from the Vatican hill and devote men to hell and damnation only for this unpardonable fault because they were at last quite tyred with and weary of the slavery which they had laboured under for so many years This is that which troubles and grieves them now at Rome and which they are endeavouring with so much art and policy to effect and bring about and this is that which unless God shall vouchsafe to avert the omen and open the eyes of all such who are deluded by the witchcrafts and sorcery of Rome to forsake her communion which is so dangerous to their salvation will make the schism irreconcileable and eternal For as things stand at present there can be no peace and accommodation with Rome unless we part with our liberties and our laws and our consciences and our religion the true Christian religion and every thing which is dear to us nor yet such is the restlesness of that party and especially of the Jesuits that if the counsels of such fiery Bigots may prevail we shall never be at quiet unless we submit our necks once more most stupidly to the Roman yoke which our Popish Ancestors even both before and after they were enlightned with the knowledge of the truths of God threw off with great indignation as not being able to bear it Lastly we are convinced by sad experience that these differences about religion which have divided Christendom into so many sects to the great disturbance of its peace and quiet owe no small part of their original to the great decay of true solid piety through idleness and carelesness and to the departure from the most holy rules of living which Christ our blessed Lord and master has prescribed us which is every where so visible I need not here labour in the proof of this by heaping up arguments when the fact is so evident nor shall I tragically exclaim or inveigh against the unmanly softness the luxury the prophaneness the wickedness of the age and the evil lives of Christians this reflexion deserving our sighs and tears rather than satyre and invective I do not here mean so much those whose wicked corrupt principles and most scandalous lives sufficiently shew that they have no sense of any religion but I chiefly intend such as make a fair shew of Christianity how little of true piety is found about them but how much of superstition and immoderate zeal for the peculiar tenents of their sect by which they