Selected quad for the lemma: church_n
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A64791
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The vain insolency of Rome, challenging salvation to her own faction discovered in two letters : the first whereof was written by a priest of the Church of Rome to a gentlewoman of York, that had got out of the snares of the popish superstition : the second sent by the same gentlewoman (instructed by a divine of the Church of England) in answer thereunto.
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Priest of the Church of Rome.; Gentlewoman of York.
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1673
(1673)
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Wing V18; ESTC R5313
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8,557
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40
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their Snares and got through the goodness of God their feet out of them and publickly given the account of their change I refer you to their Books better known possibly and I wish accordingly considered to your self than me I cannot urge you upon more weighty terms than you are pleased to prompt unto me the due remembrance of the worth of your immortal Soul Sir I desire to emulate your own Charity to my self and say in your behalf as you say in mine I should be glad to suffer death that you would accept of life No loss you say and you say truly in it for you speak in conformity to the language of Christ himself What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole World and lose his own Soul like the loss of a Soul Precious it is to God and should it be vile to our selves to whom the damage will be only prejudicial God the Father sent his Son to redeem it God the Son shed his blood to ransom it and the Holy Spirit is plased to seal it with his signature as the peculiar treasure of God Now then I beseech you Sir 〈◊〉 weigh with your self the dangeâ—… you expose this precious Soul of yours unto and not your own only but the Souls also of as many as you win to your own errour whilst you tell them as you do me that Salvation is not to be had out of St. Peter 's Fold meaning thereby the present Church of Rome in which to speak my mind freely to you I think that Salvation can very scarcely if at all be procured by those of it that dye in the constant defence of the pernicious errours maintained generally by all that adhere unto it To speak nothing of the manifold and gross deviations of your Church from both Sacred Scripture and primitive antiquity as half-Communion the absurd doctrine of Transubstantiation Purgatory Divine Service in a tongue not known to the people that should perform it c. I say to speak nothing of these what strange â—xpressions fall from your own Pen in the little Note which you sent me Sweet Jesus and his unspotted Mother grant you grace to do well by St. Francis Xaverius his Intercession Had you commended me to the grace of Christ alone you had done it with good warranty from St. Peter in whom you boast Thus speaketh he Epist I. 5. 10. The God of all grace c. make you perfect stablish strengthen settle you Christ with the Father and the blessed Spirit are one God you know from any of the blessed Persons we may ask Grace and wish it for others securely But to crave it from Creatures such is the Blessed Virgin though never so glorious is very dangerous if not blasphemous If I be not mistaken Divines make it an argument of the Divinity of the second and third Persons in the Holy Trinity that in the Scripture stile Grace is wished from them in conjunction with the first Thus the rest of the Apostles salute and thus they frequently take their leave of the Churches to which they write No mention in these forms of the Blessed Virgin she is never joined to the Holy Trinity in such prayers for Grace and indeed if God as St. Peter speaks be the Author of all Grace what Grace need we ask of the Blessed Virgin And then again I am a little startled at these words unspotted Mother if you mean no more by it than that the Blessed Virgin since her death is discharged from all sin and defilement incident through the fall of our first Parents or rather unavoidable to our humane Nature I can easily admit the term unspotted but if by the word unspotted you insinuate our Ladies immaculate conception I expect better reasons than ever yet I have heard alledged before I can sign such an Article with my faith I am told that Saint Anselm saith that the Mother of our Lord was conceived in sin and why we should not believe him speaking so agreeably to the language of the Holy Spirit which exempts none but our Lord himself from the common Contagion I see no reason What were the Vertues of your Saint Francis Xaverius to whose intercession also you think fit to commend me to me is uncertain but this I am most sure of that the intercession of our Blessed Saviour with his Father is sufficient for me that he hath commanded all that labour and are heavy laden to come unto him Mat. 11. 28. and that such as do come unto him he will in no wise cast out John 6. 37. I confess when I made my application to you I was in great trouble and for my sudden ease was ready to flie unto any profession that would offer me present relief Alas you know people falling from an high place catch at any thing within their reach if sharp Swords or red hot Irons were in their way they would lay hold on them It was I now perceive no small stupidity and blindness in me that I did not so fully as I should have done consider the excellent constitution and pure doctrine of our Church of England For therein I now see all the comforts that can be imagined requisite unto distressed Souls are abundantly offered unto me I have the Scriptures accurately translated I have the sense of my dear Mother in exact conformity to them laid before me in our 39 Articles I may have access unto my Confessor in all cases of my perplexities and I find such of our Priests to whom I have made my applications compassionate grave and faithful unto me But they tell me and I am very well pleased to hear it from them that I must not be discouraged though I find not that present ease that I long for Upon my profession of repentance and faith in Christ they are ready to dispense unto me the benefit and blessing of their absolution but if I find not presently that transport of rejoycing which it may be I too hastily catch at they advise me not to be too much discouraged but to wait the Lords leisure who will have us even after he hath received us to pardon sometimes by experience find the truth of that speech in the Holy Prophet Jerem. 2. 19. It is an evil and bitter thing that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God and that my fear is not in thee saith the Lord God of Hosts They support me with this assurance that if I repent and believe the Gospel I shall certainly be saved and if any offer me Consolation upon other terms they do but delude me Whatsoever my discouragements are they exhort me to patience and the doctrine is the more satisfactory unto me because I see it to be agreeable to that meek resolution of the Church in the holy Prophet Mic. 7. 9. Where in her affliction I see her pitching upon this conclusion and saying I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him I am not at
all affrighted at your denial of Salvation to all out of Saint Peter 's Fold I am sure that all penitent Believers are of the Fold of Christ in which except St. Peter himself had been a Sheep as well as a Pastour under the great Shepherd he had undoubtedly perished He preached as well and as good doctrine at other places as he did at Rome and the rest of the Holy Apostles wheresoever they preached delivered the same truths that he did to the Church of Christ If Rome in succeeding times by being the seat of the Emperours became a more eminent City than her Sisters and the Bishops of it obtained any extraordinary priviledges by their favours all these things are extrinsecal to the substance of the Christian Faith which when Rome ceased to deliver in that purity wherein St. Peter taught it she can with no better pretensions lay claim to Saint Peter than the Jews of old did to Moses Whom Christ tells notwithstanding all their boasting in him that they did not believe his writings And truly I think the same might now be said in several instances to those of Rome in reference to St. Peter of whom she glorieth Had they believed St. Peters writings they would never condemn those Churches as Heretical which in no point deny them I do not Sir profess my self able to contest with one of your profession neither have I to provoke you to disputation written so large an answer to your few lines But Saint Peter to whose Fold you invite me and in whose Fold not excluding the rest of his Fellow-Apostles for the names of all the Twelve were written in the twelve foundations of the Holy Jerusalem Apocal. 21. 14. because we adhere to his doctrine we believe that we of the Church of England now live giveth me warrant to speak what I here declare when he thus exhorteth us 1 Epist Chap. 3. Vers 15. Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear In that meekness and fear thus commended unto us by ours as well as your Saint Peter nay more ours than yours nay give me leave to say it ours and not yours in our matters of difference I humbly give you this Answer and rest Sir Novemb. 27. 1672. Your assured Friend and humble Servant in Christ Postscript Sir BEcause you tell me in effect that I must be damned if I should die out of the Communion of your Church give me leave in regard that I am not so well able to argue rationally as to observe Historical passages which sometimes are Commentaries upon disputable truths to acquaint you with a short History which I minded when I heard it the more heedfully because it discharged me from that fear which your Severity is apt to beget in the minds of unsettled Protestants 'T is this and you will find it as my Friend who translated it out of Latin for me assureth me in the third part of Solomon Glassius his exposition of the Gospels page 277 and 278. Jacobus Latomus was in exceeding great reputation amongst the Divines of our time because he had written against the Lutherans somewhat more learnedly than either Clitopheus or Eckius or Roffensis and all thought him a person of candour and that he had written according to the conviction of his own conscience This Person when he drew near his death commanded our Masters to be called and as they stood by him with groans and deeep-fetcht sighs said I therefore commanded you to be called that I might testifie unto you that the doctrine of Luther which you furiously persecute is the true doctrine of Christ the Apostles and the Church and this which you defend is impious and diabolical and I my self for certain writings of mine which I have lately against the conviction of my conscience and knowledge set forth against the Lutherans to gratifie you am a damned man When in horrour and astonishment at this speech they looked one on another and those that were more ingenuous exhorted him not to dispair of the mercy of God although he were perswaded that he had done wickedly He commemorating many passages concerning the punishments and exile of godly men who by his instigation were either slain or banished at last with groanings added in vain you labour to comfort me for I certainly know that I am damned and with these words gave up the Ghost Glassius affirmeth that he received this History out of D. Alesius in his Exposition of the 41 Psalm And truly Sir though you may perhaps condemn it as a Fable yet for my part I am so far from distrusting the truth of it that I wonder that many of your best Scholars do not leave this World in the same convictions and indeed it is very probable that they do and some times declare as much But such confessions are like the Guard of Souldiers Narratives of our Saviours Resurrection they are strangled as the Male-children were commanded to be in Egypt as soon as they are born if not by bribery yet by interest which knows no ingenuity nor will admit of any discoveries against its own concerns though never so pernicious I wish you a better temper and in that hearty desire commend you to the God of truth assuring you that I will never be by Gods assistance moved from the profession of that holy Religion wherein now I stand though I shall ever be ready to testifie my thanks to you for your charitable affections and remain Yours in all Christian affection and service Sir AFter my Letter was written but before it was sealed I considered a little what your Saint Francis Xaverius his merits might be unto whose Patronage you are pleased to commend me I am informed that he is a Saint of a late Canonization first a Proselyte of and then a Confederate with Ignatius de Loyola and truly I think not far from some of his Enthusiastical raptures He with Ignatius indeed got Pope Paul the thirds approbation to be allowed with some others as a Religious Society in the year 1540. But there is an expression in that Popes Letters of Grant which may beget a jealousie that the Pope had an eye to the service he might have from them as well as to the devotion of the men if at least he thought them devout His words I hear run thus We have lately heard that Ignatius de Loyola and Peter Faber and Francis Xaverius c. inspired as 't is piously believed with the Holy Ghost coming from several quarters of the World met together and being confederate into a Society have renounced the snares of this World and for ever devoted their lives to the service of our Lord Jesus Christ and of us and of our successours the Bishops of Rome c. I suppose the Pope might have so much of humane frailty in him as to take all in good part that such sworn Servants of his should enterprise Upon these grounds I believe the following Popes Gregory the fifteenth and his successor Vrbanus the eighth had such high estimation of this Francis insomuch that the one declared him a Saint and the other Canonized him I am told that he had so behaved himself in preaching to the Indians that he is called their Apostle But truly to speak my mind freely to you his atchievements there seem to me very difficult to be believed I doubt whether all the miracles of Christ and his Apostles recorded in the Scripture may be equal to those mentioned in Vrban's Letters for the Canonization of your Xaverius 'T is said in them that he defixed his eyes in his exstatick raptures on the Heavens that his whole body by divine force would be elevated from the earth and his face so inflamed that it would represent Angelical clarity and he would cry out it is enough Lord it is enough And when he said Mass the abomination as 't is now celebrated of your Romish Service as the Learned Doctor Brevint excellently shews us he would be so alienated from his senses which indeed I believe that the Ministers present in the service could not in some competent time by pulling his Garments excite him to his attendance on the Work he had in hand And otherwise the people could observe him advanced wondring at the miracle a Cubit above the earth He wore such tattered Rags and is this a piece of merit that the Boys sometimes would mock and deride him Of the like nature is his frequent walkings on the hot Sands and on Thorns themselves drinking the polluted waters with which he had washed the soars of diseased people And then his ability to speak the Languages which he never learnt and to be understood some times by men of several tongues when he spake one that was strange to the Auditours till he began to preach is as much if not more than what was granted to the blessed Apostles at the Feast of Penticost 'T is strange to me that he should cast a Crucifix into the Sea to still the Waves and stranger yet that having lost it by violence of the storm it should be brought to him as he walked on the Shore in the mouth of a Sea-Crab I marvel though you read this and much more as Romantick in the Popes Letters that you can credit all this done by a person about an hundred years since especially seeing the Learned Fathers about four hundred years after Christ judged the age of miracles to be past and our belief of those only that are recorded in the Holy Scriptures to be sufficient now for our present Satisfaction Besides were the miracles reported to have been done by him true and the man as good as you think him to have been I conceive his intercession for any particular person to be a point uncertain and truly as long as we have the intercession of Christ altogether superfluous I am resolved therefore to leave your Xaverius to the quiet enjoyment of the felicity which he hath obtained if at least he be in a state of bliss and to give him no interruption in any concerns of my Soul FINIS Errata IN the second Page to the Reader l. 20. for third r. fourth vid Concil Lateran sub Innocentio 3 o cap. 3. de Haeretic * Sealed with Crosses * 1 Cor. 1. 3. 2 Cor. 13. 14. * Vid. Regul Jesuitic