Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A44536
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A letter from a Protestant gentleman to a lady revolted to the Church of Rome
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Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing H2845; ESTC R1400
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32,717
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156
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eating and drinking that is believing in him and obeying him and hoping for pardon through his death which is the Spiritual food of the Soul is evident from the 54 th and 56 th Verse where every one that eats of his flesh and drinks of his blood is said to have actually eternal life in him and Christ dwelling in him and he dwelling in Christ. That is Christ loves him with a love of complacency he is a Child of GOD and beloved of him and an heir of Heaven But since Wicked men come to the Sacrament not only in our Church but even in the Church of ROME it would follow if a corporal eating were understood that Wicked men eating Christs body and drinking his blood have Eternal life in them and that Christ dwels in them and are true Children of GOD and heires of Heaven contrary to the unanimous consent of the Holy Prophets and Apostles who call Wicked men Children of the Devil and blinded by the Devil the GOD of the World and Heirs of damnation And indeed it is strange that people should contend for this corporal and sensual eating of Christs flesh and drinking his blood when Christ himself saith v. 63. That the flesh profiteth nothing and that this eating and drinking must be understood spiritually i.e. of Spiritual eating and drinking which is believing as it is said v. 64. You see Madam what it is not to make use of your own reason but to enslave it to the Faith of a Church which loves to act in the Dark and would have her Children Colliers and believe what the Church believes and know little more than the great Mystery of an Ave Maria or a Rosary Time was when you were pleased to tell our Ministers that though you were gone over to the Church of ROME yet you had liberty not to pray to Saints nor to fall down before Images for that was not thought necessary by the Church of ROME which only recommends praying to Saints and Veneration of Relicks and Images as a thing useful and which men have received much benefit by And indeed I remember I was told you thought that praying to Saints was a kind of Idolatry and therfore were glad they would excuse you from that Worship but since I hear that you are grown as devout a Worshipper of Saints and peculiarly of the Virgin Mary and do prostrate your self before them as much as the most tractable Papist in the World I confess I did smell a Rat at first when your Priests assured you that Invocation of Saints was not a thing commanded but recommended as useful and was then confident that before a year came to an end for all these soft expressions and dispensations with your omission of this worship they would perswade you to that worship which then you thought unlawful My prophecy is come to pasâ— and the Pill which seemed very bitter at first is swallowed and become sweeter than hony and look'd upon as an excellent Medicine And this I must needs say is more than you could have in our Church But this is our Comfort that the more ingenuous men of the Church of ROME confess that this praying to Saints or Angels was not heard of or used in the Christian Church for the first three hundred years after Christ and if the Christian Church for the first 300 years did not think it useful at all it is a strange degeneration from their principles to press it now as useful Certainly if GOD had thought this invocation so useful as your Church pretends it is He would not have so peremtorily commanded Call upon me in the day of trouble I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorifie me Psalm 50.15 and it 's probable the Apostles in prescribing so many useful things of far less concern would not have left us in the dark as to the mighty usefullness of this invocation especially when they had occasion to mention the spirits of men made perfect and did so often converse with Angels The Angel Revel 22.8.9 thought it a very useless thing and would not admit of so much as a Religious prostration of the Evangelist before him because it look'd like Sacriledge and robbing GOD of his due But since your Church in this adoration takes pattern so much by the Courts of Princes give me leave to suggest to you how you think a Soveraign Prince would take it if a Subject should give any of his servants the title of Majesty or any other title which properly belongs to him There are few titles that GOD hath and inspired men have given to him but you give them to the Blessed Virgin and though when you are charg'd with it you fall to distinctions and turn and wind your selves to get out yet that shews only a bad cause because it requires so much artifice and cunning to defend it but alas â— it must be Children that are perswaded and coaxed to believe that the Church of ROME onely counts it useful not necessary when it is well known that the generality of that Communion pray to Saints more than to GOD which in the Scripture phrase is honouring the creature more than the Creator and they never leave that person that goes over to them till they have brought him to that Worship of Saints and Angels It s pretty to hear these Men talk that it is only recommended as useful when the Bishops and Preachers of that Church are injoyned and take their oath upon 't to commend this invocation to the People as profitable and the People are obliged to hearken to their Priests in all things so that though a Man at first may think this Invocation not necessary upon the account of its being onely useful yet from that other obligation he hath to obey the Priest in all spiritual things it becomes necesssary But from this scruple we are delivered Madam by the Confession of Faith which the Roman Catechisme doth prescribe for there it is that it is not only useful but that we ought to pray unto Saints and indeed should any man live in that Communion and omit it he would soon be looked upon as prophane and but a half Convert to their Church they would soon let him know their displeasure and either fright or flatter him into conformity And is this the Worship Madam which Christ and his Apostles have injoyned the World Are not you afraid of doing things that do so nearly border upon robbing God of his honour and glory Idolatry is a frightful word and you do not love to hear it and therefore I will trouble you with it as little as I can But when God hath commanded you to come to him directly without mentioning the intercession of Saints and Angels how dares your Church of her own head bring in a Worship so dangerous who should prescribe the way how God is to be worshipped but God himself And if God requires you to address yourself to him without any other Mediator but Christ
as not to agree with the Church of ROME if they did not see plainly that there is Death in that Pot and that the Errours in that Church cannot be subscribed to without hazarding the welfare of their Souls I will but use your own Argument when you went over to the Church of ROME and were perswaded by the earnestness of her Priests to yeild to their reasonings what pleasure can we take in promoting your Damnation What can be our interest in deceiving you You used that Argument on their side why will you not use it on our side Judge you whither we that have the Gospel on our side for what we teach are not in a safer way than that Church which for all the new Doctrines they have added to the Old Creedes are forced to run to the broken Cisterns of Tradition and I know not what Fathers whose writings they know not whether they be genuine or no As you are now you live in willful opposition to the Doctrine and Precepts of the Gospel And O Remember what St. Paul doth say 2 Thes. 1.7 8. That the Lord Jesus will ere long come down from Heaven with all his Holy Angels to take Vengeance on those who have disobeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Once more therefore I charge you before Almighty GOD and our Lord Jesus Christ to repent of your Errours and to return to the bosome of that Church in which you received your life and being and the Principles of Religion and Christianity But if all this seem to you no more but Bugbears I have delivered my own Soul and should be sorry that this discourse should stand as a Witness against you in the Last day which GOD knows was only intended as a motive to draw you back to that Fold from which you have Wandered and gone astray I am Madam Your Faithfull Friend to serve You. N. N. Feb. 20. 1677. FINIS Postscript Madam AS in the publishing of this Letter I had no other design but to prevent the fall of others into the like dangers so I have particularly insisted on those motives which have of late tempted some persons to go over to the Roman Church and though I have represented these motives as yours yet in this I have been so far from doing any thing against the laws of private discourse or friendship or acquaintance that I have only touch'd upon the common stumbling-blocks which make unwary people joyne themselves to that Church blocks which might easily be removed if men or Women would but give themselves leave to think and would prefer the solid dictates of their reason before the suggestions of their soft and sickly passions One thing I had almost forgot and which indeed is the great bug-bear whereby your Church men fright their people from running over to us and that is that our Church began but about an hundred and fifty years ago that Luther and Zwinglius were the Authors of it and that we had no Church before pittiful shists indeed to keep people from seeing the Sun at noon suppose our Religion did but begin then why must people be alwayes in an Errour must they never reform when they have done amiss if there were Monstrous Errors in the Church of ROME which the aforesaid persons saw would be the death of Christianity and which they could not subscribe to without debauching their reason or wronging both their own and other mens Consciences was it not rational they should protest against such things to give their fellow Christians warning when the House is on fire would you have no body awake to alarm the Neighbours to look to themselves Did they see so many thousand men ready to be drown'd and would you have had them hold their tongues and barbarously suffered them all to be drown'd Did they see the Christian Religion like to be swallowed up by darkness and Ignorance and was it not time to rouze the slumbering world But however that these men were the first broachers of our Relâ—gion is Notoriouâ—â—y false First because long before them there were men that lived in the External communion of the Church of ROME but dislik'd the Errours as they crept in and grew dangerous and though they were overaw'd and silenc'd many times by the higher powers of the Roman-Court yet they both detested those corruptions and as they had opportunity protested against them as were an easy matter to prove from age to age if it had not been done already over and over by Divines of our Church so that though these men that lived long before Luther and whom GOD still rais'd to vindicate his truth as it grew more and more polluted were not â—call'd Protestants by the People yet in effect they were so and consequently there were Protestants many years before Luther and Zwinglius And though they were not suffered by the Ignorant and imperious Ecclestiastical powers to meet and assemble themselves in publick yet they made a Church as much as the followers of Holy Athanasius did when the whole world was turned Arrian as much as Elijah and those seven thousand the Oracle mentions made a Church when the Whole Country was over run with Idolaters These seven thousand we read lay hid and durst not appear in publick being oppress'd by the Idolatrous powers that sat at the stern and thought there was no good fishing but in troubled waters And indeed in this manner our Church was dispers'd long before Luther among the greater multitude of the followers of the corrupted Roman Church as a hand-ful of wheat lies scatterd in a bushel of Chaff and though it did not appear in Pomp and grandeur yet that external splendour is not essential to the truth of a Church your own men may be convinced by the aforementioned examples Secondly if your Champions speak strictly of the Religion which we profess in the Church of England they are under a mistake when they make Luther or Zwinglius the Authors of it â—or our Reformation began some time after and was both begun and carried on with great delibâ—ration and consideration under Edward the 6. by publick authority whose proper province it is to take notice of what is amiss in a Kingdom or Common wealth whether it be in Church or State and to reform and mend it It 's no great matter when a Reformation begins so the Reformation be but just and if such a Reformation had begun but yesterday that would not have made it unlawful and that our Reformation was just and necessary hath been prov'd by our Divines beyond all reasonable contradiction and how could it but be just when the decrees of the Church of ROME control'd the Word of the Living GOD and vyed with the Oracles of the Gospel How and when the several Errours crept into that Church is not Material to determine it 's enough we found them there and it was GODS mercy not to give all the learned men of that age over to beleive a lye