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A54721 The vvay to heaven most clearly discovered and the manner how to walk in this way exactly described. With a brief vindication of the Church of England against all her enemies. By Nicholas Philips, late chaplain to his Majesty's garrison in the Isles of Silly. Phillips, Nicholas. 1681 (1681) Wing P2038; ESTC R213941 16,756 24

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wherein the Members of it reside and there is the Greek Church and the Latin Church the English Church and the Dutch Church c. who though they may differ from each other in some Circumstantial and Extrafundamental Points of Religion yet so long as they agree in the Substantial and Fundamental Points thereof have all one Lord one Faith one Baptism are all but Members of one and the same Holy Catholick Church One and the same Sun shoots out from it many Beams of Light one and the same Kingdom hath in it many Counties one and the same Tree many Branches one and the same Body many Members so hath also one and the same Mystical Body of Christ one body but many members saith the Apostle 1 Cor. 12.20 Now the true and infallible marks whereby a particular national Church may be known to be a Member of the Holy Catholick One are as our Church of England hath well said in her Articles of Religion Artic. 19. The word of God sincerely preached and the blessed Sacraments rightly and duly administred according to Christs Ordinance and in what ever Congregation of men professing the Faith of Christ the word of God is sincerely preached and the two Essential Sacraments of the Gospel Baptism and the Lords Supper are rightly and duly administred according to Christs Ordinance by persons lawfully called sanctified and set apart for the work of the Ministry there is a true branch of the Holy Catholick Church and with it may any one that professes himself a Christian safely joyn and from it must no man that lives within the bounds and limits thereof presume to separate himself if he will obtain Salvation And that this Member of the Holy Catholick Church wherein we live The national Church of England is such a Church we need not make use of many words to prove since that which is the best of witnesses Her works most clearly approve and manifest it Her Doctrines she confirms n●t by Traditions Miracles or Dreams by the Decrees of Councils or Decretals of Popes but by the Holy Scriptures and she saith not Sic dicit Papa but Sic dicit Dominus The blessed Sacraments she neither sophisticates nor mutilates neither adds to them nor substracts from them In administring the Sacrament of Baptism she makes no mixture of Salt Spittle Oyl Milk c. but makes use only of pure Water and the words of Consecration which Christ himself instituted Baptizing with Water in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost In administring of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper she doth not make a God of the Bread and lift it up for the People to Worship and Adore nor doth she think the Wine too good for any but the Priests to drink but having Blessed and Sanctified both Elements with the very words of Consecration which Christ himself used she according to his Institution and Practice delivers both Bread and Wine into the hand of every particular Communicant Charged is our Church on the one hand by the Papists with Innovation and Separation and on the other hand by the Presbyter and Sectaries wi h Popery and Superstition And I shall crave leave in a word to vindicate her against them both To the Papists who charge us with Innovation and Separation and ask us where our Church was before Luther's time we say at Rome though lying hid there under a great heap of Popish Trash and Luther with his Associates did but that with better success which others before them had attempted As the Berengarians in Italy the Waldenses in France the Hussites in Germany the Wickliists in England c. shake off the Corruptions and Superstitions of the Romish Innovators but did not separate from and forsake the Orthodox Primitive Catholick Doctrines of the Church of Rome The Church of England holds no other Doctrine than that which the Church of Rome Primitively did and which St. Paul taught them in his Epistle unto them viz. justification only by the bloud of Christ If upon this Foundation the Romanists have built up a great heap of Wood and Hay and Stubble added as things necessary to Salvation The Adoration of Images The Invocation of Saints The Supremacy of the Pope The lawfulness of Deposing and Murthering of Kings Masses Merits Pardons Purgatory and a number of the like Trash which were never prescribed by God in his Word never practised in the Church of God no not in the Church of Rome it self for the first Five Hundred Years after Christ they and not we are the Innovators we separated from them no farther than they separated from themselves and their original purity Let the Church of Rome return to her self and her original Purity and though we will not down on our knees and honour her for our Mother yet we will run with open Arms to embrace her and will own her for our elder Sister And though we will not give her a Supremacy over the rest of the National Churches of Christ yet we will grant her a primacy in the Church of Christ and because Rome was the chief City and Empress of the World her Bishop shall have the first place assigned him in a General Council if ever the World be so happy as to have one again To the Presbyters and their spawn of Sectaries who charge us with Popery and Superstition and say that we have borrowed most of our Rites and Ceremonies from the Papists we say That if nothing which the Papists believe and practise is to be believed and practised by us we must go look for a new God a new Christ and a new Heaven as well as a new Religion for they believe all the Articles of the Three Orthodox Creeds as well as we hope to be saved by the same Christ and to go to the same Heaven that we do When the Church of England separated from and renounced the Church of Rome she did not seperate from and renounce what she received from the sacred Scriptures from the four first general Councels and the Orthodox Fathers of the Church but only from what she innovated was brought in and intruded upon the Church of late years by the pride and avarice the superstition and fopperies of the Popes and their Consistories she piously separated the precious from the vile winnowed away the Chaff from the Wheat kept what she found pious and primitive but rejected what she found to be superstitious and novel Did not cast away both because the one was nought and under pretence of reforming utterly deform Religion did not run from one extream into another from Idolatry and the worshipping of Images into profaneness and the not vouchsafing to worship God himself from a bad religion into no Religion She kept such a Decorum in her carriage that when she repudiated and cast off the too too gawdy dress of the Babylonish Harlot she leapt not straight with some of her Neighbour Sisters into the contrary extream of a slovingly Garb but