Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	council_n	general_n	infallibility_n	4,531	5	11.6807	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33458	Notes upon Mr. Dryden's poems in four letters / by M. Clifford .... ; to which are annexed some Reflections upon the Hind and panther, by another hand.	Clifford, M. (Martin), d. 1677.; Brown, Thomas, 1663-1704. Reflections on the Hind and panther.	1687 (1687)	Wing C4706; ESTC R1883	19,057	36

the product of Wickedness and Adultery Or that it should begin upon a shameful Occasion and from the Extravagance of a private Passion He will oppose King Henry's Divorce against what I say But I am not startled at that no more than at the Fable of our Bishops Consecration at the Nagg's-Head-Tavern or at the Kentish-men's having long Tailes for the Murder of Thomas Becket Such frivolous Arguments as these might have served well enough in the Mouths of the Monks Two Hundred Years a-go but they will not pass so easily in an inquisitive Age In brief therefore it is evident that King Henry VIII did never intend to proceed to a much greater Distance from the Roman See than the Gallican Church maintains at this Day There is no Man of our Church that looks on his Breach with the Pope to have been a Reformation We only esteem it to be of the nature of those Quarrels which many Princes in the most Catholick Countries have managed against the Holy Chair The Reformation to which we stand is of a later Date The Primitive Reformers amongst us beheld the Reasons of Men tamely subjected to one Man's Command and the Sovereign Powers of all Christendom still exposed to be check'd and destroyed by the Resolutions of his private Will Upon this they arose to perform two of the greatest Works in the World at once to deliver the Minds of Christians from Tyranny and the Dignity of the Throne from Spiritual Bondage Whatever was the Accidental this was the real Cause of our Reformation and of their Separation from us not ours from them And this was an Event which must needs have come to pass near the time in which it did tho' King Henry had never forsaken his Wise Mr. Bayes therefore ought to know that our Doctrine as bad as he thinks it is was established by Christ and his Apostles and that the Ceremonies of our Worship were not set up by Faction or by popular Fancy but by the deliberate Counsels of Wise Men and by the Authority of that Power which bears the immediate Image of God This may be enough to satisfie our idle Dreamer on Parnassus as to this Point who prides himself in the peculiar Virulency of his Pen and so he may say a tart thing concerning the Reformers and give it the Majestick Turn of Heroick Poesie He cares not what Obloquy he casts upon the History or the Profession of Religion Thirdly Infalibility of the Pope and Council is the next Subject which is one of God's peculiar and incommunicable Attributes and where is no Omniscience there must be Ignorance in part and where Ignorance is there may be Errour And if Mr. Bayes understood any thing beyond his Drama-common-placebook He would see that the Doctrine of Infallibility was not known in the Church for a Thousand Years and it hath been much disputed ever since it was first asserted and will be so let Mr. Bayes affirm never so confidently That this unfailing Guide In Pope and General Councils must reside But how can this be when if Infallibility be placed in a General Council it was not in the Church for the first 320 Years so it has not been in it this last 120 Years It is as certain there was never a General Council of all the Pastours of the Church neither hath the Scripture set down any Rules how this Assembly should be called who should have a right to Vote or what Numbers must concur to make up an Infallible Judgment If then the Pope be not Infallible you have no other Judge that can pretend to it And in what place of Scripture is the Pope named for our Guide If our great Master hath not done it we must not say he hath neglected to do something which He should have done Notwithstanding He is our most perfect Saviour who hath shewed us a sure way to Salvation But still He hath left us to the free use of our Faculties and hath not provided an Infallible Preservative against Errour no not against Sin which is much more mischievous But if our Eternal Safety did depend upon the Judgment and Direction of one Infallible Guide 't is very strange that neither Christ nor his Apostles should give Mankind any Notice whether this Infallibility was to be found in One Man or in a Body And it is as strange that in all the Controversies the Apostles had whilst they lived they should never make use of any such Authority to put an end to them as the Conclave of Cardinals have found out She whom ye seek am I is not a sufficient Warrant for the Church of Rome's claiming an Infallibity in all her Decrees no more than a Mountebank is to be credited who after a deal of Scaffold-Pageantry to draw Audience entertains them by decrying all others with a Panegyrick of his own Orvietan Balsom And indeed Mr. Bayes seems to be but a raw Divine and not to understand well the case of Religion for Jesus Christ is the Sovereign of the Church the Pastours are only as Inferiour Judges in Civil Affairs if they manifestly oppose themselves to the Scripture which is the Law of the Christians particular Persons may be supposed as competent Judges of That as in Civil Matters they may be of the Rebellion of the Judges and in that Case they are bound still to maintain their Obedience to Jesus Christ. In matters indifferent doubtful and of small Consequence we are to acquiesce in the Decisions of the Church but if it is visible that the Pastours teach other Doctrines than what Christ taught the People may put in their Appeal to the great Judge Christ Iesus the Sovereign of the Chruch But this being a knotty Point Mr. Bayes laid his Head close to it with a Snuff-Box in his Hand no doubt when he conceived these Verses p. 39. Who setting Councils Pope and Church aside Are every Man his own presuming Guide However the use of private Judgment is not so bad as the Effects of blind Zeal and ignorant Superstition witness the Wars for establishing the Worship of Images the Croissades against the Saracens Princes deposed by Popes which lasted for many Ages the Butcheries of the Duke of Alva the Massacrees of Paris and Ireland A small Diversity of Opinion about indifferent Matters was never the cause of such barbarous Cruelties therefore the present State of our Church is more desireable than the gross Ignorance and besotted Superstition of Italy and Spain Wherefore I do here admonish you Mr. Bayes not to go on in your Censures of this kind as the Author of Pax Vobis hath done your Brother in Scholastick Duncery before you have replyed to the learned and ingenious Answerer of your Pamphlet which you wrote in Prose in the Case of the Duchess of Y. Your slie Reflection upon Him in this Poem will not do the Business in which you imitate the Hawking of the Magpye when she huffs her Train in token of Courage and Victory whilst

alass 't is her fear all and another way of crying the Hawk Mercy and to the end that the Hawk finding nothing but Feathers to strike at she may so perhaps shelter her Body It is very fit indeed you should have a Guide and a Keeper too but Men in their Wits do believe that God made Man a reasonable Creature who feels as much Pleasure when he can give himself a good Account of his Actions as one that sees does perceive in comparison to a blind Man who is led about and therefore they think that the same merciful God would not contrive his Religion to be dark nor place it beyond the reach of their Faculties when he designed it to perfect their Natures and to raise them to the utmost heights they are capable of Fourthly the next Charge is Novelty and Schism thus expressed p. 66. We can point out each Period of the Time When they began and who begat the Crime Can Calculate how long the Eclipse endur'd Who interpos'd what Digits were obscur'd Mr. Bayes you must know was always good at Eclipses as when he made the Sun Moon and Earth act one in a Dance But I must say that this is a new way of writing Controversie to run us down with Whimsies instead of true Reasoning as He hath been used to astonish the Spectators in the Play-House with Scenes Clothes and Dances instead of giving Mankind a Picture of themselves and thereby making Virtue belov'd Vice abhor'd and the little Irregularities of Men's Tempers call'd Humours exposed to Laughter But seeing He is so exact at the Calculation of Time I would have him inform us how old these following Doctrines are Transubstantiation Purgatory the Merit of Works Invocation of Saints the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome the Authority of the Councils and the Infallibility of the Pope these being the chief Causes for which we dissent from Rome Surely in the beginning these things were not so For according to our Account Infallibility goes no higher than the Scholars of Marcus in Irenaeus or the Gnosticks in Epiphanius Purgatory comes from Origen or at the furthest from Tertullian who had it from Montanus The Denial of Marriage to the Priesthood is derived from Pope Calixtus Transubstantiation is from the Lateran Council The Half-Communion is no older than the time of Aquinas Praying in an unknown Tongue may be fetcht as far as from Gregory the Great St. Austin denies the Invocation of Saints departed to have been in his Days and the Supremacy of the Pope began in Boniface the Third Against Transubstantiation Aquinas argues Oper. Tom. 12. as a novel and an impossible thing for one Body to be locally in more places than one and in all at once The witholding the Cup from the Laity is against our Saviours Institution who hath commanded all Men to drink of this Cup Matth. 26. 27. From the beginning the Holy Scriptures were perused by the People witness the Traditores in the Persecution of Dioclesian who were called so from their delivering up of their Bibles which before they were forced to the contrary they made daily use of therefore the Hebrew Text was read Weekly to the Iews and the New Testament was written in Greek because that Tongue was most known to the Eastern World and to pray in an unknown Tongue is against the plain Sense of the 14th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians Priests also were permitted to have Wives both in the Old and New Testaments and many of the Blessed Apostles were Married Men And St. Paul asserts his Liberty to carry a Wife along with him as well as Cephas These and many more Corruptions which I could mention in point of Practice and Doctrine too awaken'd the Christian World to look out for a Reformation to enquire for the old paths and to walk therein and to reform what was amiss by what had been the Belief and Practice of the Christian Church from the beginning In this Search are discovered the Rise and Progress of all the new-invented Doctrines in the Church of Rome by what Degrees her several Errours have been brought in For to go no further back than the Council of Trent we find new Articles of Faith such as the Sacrifice of the Mass the Doctrine of Purgatory the Invocation of Saints the Worship of Images and the like were enjoyned under the Pain of Damnation And in the Canon of the Fourth Session of that Council Unwritten Traditions are decreed to be of equal Authority with the Scriptures Upon this our first Reformers consulted the Scriptures and the Primitive Fathers of the Church that they might see how things stood from the beginning and only separated from them who had parted with the old and the true Religion Therefore it is in vain for Mr. Bayes to scorn or to complain of us for leaving the Church of Rome unless He can convince us that we have forsaken the Word of God the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles the uncorrupted Primitive Church the Four First General Councils or the Antient Creeds This is old Standard Faith Mr. Bayes and these the first plantations of the Truth of the Gospel from the Profession whereof we are no Schismaticks for Schism must needs be theirs who give the cause of Separation not theirs who do but separate when the Cause is given and we have departed from Rome for this Reason because she hath in many Instances departed from the Faith of Christ Nay had not the Pope affected a Supremacy over all other Churches besides his own we never had cast off a Yoak which had never been put on our Necks and so it is plain that the Vsurper did make the Schism It is indeed a Glorious Design to reconcile all Churches to one Doctrine and Communion but then it must not be done by such Tyranny as the Popes have practised to fetter Men streighter under the Bondage of fictitious Articles of Faith but Unity from this kind of Force is rather to be prayed against than wish'd for God only in his own time and by the inscrutable Methods of his Providence is able to range his whole Church scattered over the Face of the Earth into primitive Unity and Christian Order In the mean time Mr. Bayes should lay aside his Projects of Pillories Rods Gibbets and Inquisitions to make us acquiesce in his Judgment whatever be our private Opinion In some parts of his allegorical Poem one would verily believe that the Poet himself was turned into a Wolfe for his Speech is all howling yelling and barking that you would imagin He would presently pull out the Throats and suck the Bloud of all the Protestant Sheep who are always ready to suffer rather than commit that Errour against their Consciences which must render them Hypocrites to God and Knaves amongst Men. Therefore notwithstanding Mr. Bayes hath thought fit to pass over from one perswasion of Religion to another yet he might forbear to spit thrice at every