Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	age_n	church_n	tradition_n	3,033	5	9.4226	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A71235	The pamphlet entituled, Speculum ecclesiasticum, or, An ecclestiastical prospective-glass, considered, in its false reasonings and quotations	Wharton, Henry, 1664-1695.	1688 (1688)	Wing W1568; ESTC R1230	19,142	32

THE PAMPHLET ENTITULED Speculum Ecclesiasticum OR AN ECCLESIASTICAL PROSPECTIVE-GLASS CONSIDERED In its False REASONINGS AND QUOTATIONS LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXXXVIII IMPRIMATUR Hic Liber cui Titulus The Speculum Ecclesiasticum c. Considered c. Oct. 24. 1687. Hen. Maurice R mo in Christo P. D. Wilhelmo Archiep. Cant. a Sacris THE PAMPHLET ENTITULED SPECULUM ECCLESIASTICUM OR AN Ecclesiastical Prospective-Glass c. THere can be no greater Argument of a baffled and erroneous Cause than when the Assertors of it are forced to maintain it with manifest Impostures The Religion of the Church of Rome is in great measure owing to Legends and Forged Writings With the first they deluded the vulgar and with the second circumvented the wiser part of mankind The Usurpation of the See of Rome was never submitted to nor its Primacy believed in the West till the spurious Decretals of Isidore Mercator were universally received by a blind and ignorant Age and believed to be the genuine Decrees of Ancient Popes No sooner did Learning begin to flourish in the last Age but these Phantasms disappeared were decried and disowned by all learned and ingenuous men To produce them anew upon the stage and urge the Authority of them in this learned age can be no other than the last efforts of a despairing and dying Cause which wanteth both Reason and Truth to uphold it To recur to these Forgeries after the falseness and folly of them hath been detected and demonstrated by learned men of both Communions is an invincible Argument that the Doctrine of the Church of Rome was at first founded on them and cannot now be maintain'd without them It may justly be wondred that men whose office and design it is to uphold the Cause of the Church of Rome and perswade others of the truth of it should make use of such artifices as will infallibly when discovered make all sober men suspect her Cause of falseness and accuse her Agents of dishonesty Yet this hath been lately done by some Gentlemen of the Church of Rome in a little Pamphlet called Speculum Ecclesiasticum or an Ecclesiastical Prospective-Glass wherein all the Ancient Forgeries of the Church of Rome are reproduced and alledged as undoubted Testimonies of Antiquity An Imposture so gross and palpable that if unadvisedly committed the Ignorance of this Author must be deplorable if voluntarily his Fraud must be detestable Such miserable delusions are unfitly calculated for our Age and can serve for no other end than for what they were at first invented to amuse Children and seduce weak people The Author divideth his Prospective-Glass into eight Parts or Columes and in them undertaketh to prove the Doctrines of the Church of Rome from Scripture and the Testimonies of the Fathers of the Church for the first 500 years The proofs of Scripture I shall not consider because they are either wholly impertinent or have been often answered by the Writers of our Church and upon the Testimonies of Antiquity I will only make some few Observations For so idle a Paper deserves not a strict and severe Answer The first Column of our Adversary treateth of the Churches continued Succession and the tradition of all Christian Doctrines through all Ages of the Church This might well have been spared and concerns no more the Church of R●me than it doth any other particular Church In the Church of England we have a Succession of Bishops continued down from the Apostolick times to this day The nomination or particular enumeration of them is neither necessary nor useful None will deny the Churches of Ephesus Smyrna and Philadelphia to have enjoyed a continued Series of Bishops from the Apostles times yet are the names of the far greater part of them unknown Neither is the Succession of the Bishops of Rome certain and undoubted The immediate Successors of St. Peter are at this day unknown Linus most probably died before him Cletus and Anacletus were most certainly the same person In succeeding Ages many great and long Schisms happened wherein two and sometimes three Popes together pretended to the Papal Chair whose right was so dubious and uncertain that Wernerus Rolluinck professeth most learned and conscientious men could not discern to which party they ought to adhere And at this day the French and Italian Writers agree not in composing a Catalogue of Popes the first placing divers among the Popes which the second reject as Antipopes No other eminent See of the Catholick Church hath suffered these divisions So that the Succession of the Bishops of Rome is more doubtful and uncertain than any other Succession of Bishops in the World. St. Irenaeus indeed St. Augustin and Optatus alledged by this Writer disputing against the Hereticks object to th●m that they are upstarts men of yesterday who could not deduce their Succession from the Apostles whereas their Catholicks had a visible Succession of Bishops presiding in their Churches from the Apostles times and to prove this produce the Succession of Roman Bishops not as of so many Heads of the Universal Church but as of the Bishops of the most eminent See of the Western Church For the force of their Argument lay not in the particular Succession of the Roman Bishops but in the several Successions of all the Catholick Bishops of the Universal Church of which they produced that of Rome as an example This appears plainly from the words of Irenaeus who prefixeth this Preface to his Catalogue of Roman Bishops Seeing it is too much to reckon up the Succession of all Churches I will instante only in that of Rome As for Succession of Doctrine we may with far greater justice claim that than do our Adversaries For the Church of England admitteth receiveth and believeth all Doctrines which have been universally taught and delivered down by all Churches in all Ages and proposeth none to her Children as necessary to be believed which have not that universal testimony Whereas the Church of Rome commandeth several Doctrines to be believed upon pain of Anathema which were unknown to Antiquity and are at this day denied by the greater part of Christians The Fourth Column of the Unity of the Church is of the same stamp We no less firmly than our Adversaries believe the Catholick Church to be one We willingly allow that there is no hope of Salvation out of the Pale of that Church and have always asserted Schism to be a damnable sin But that the particular Church of Rome or in Communion with the See of Rome is that Universal Church that a small and corrupt member of it is the whole and that all Churches not Communicating with the Bishop of Rome are Schismatical this we neither believe nor can our Adversaries prove Certainly all the testimonies here alledged insinuate no such thing But if Schism be so great a sin if wilful and unnecessary Separation from any part of the Catholick Church be

they generally believed was not bestowed to the departed Saints till the day of Judgment That Purgatory was anciently believed our Author's Testimonies do in no wise prove Some of them indeed mention a purging Fire But that Fire was not to exist till the Day of Judgment when all Souls were to pass through it and to continue a shorter or longer time in it according to their greater or lesser Purity No intermediate punishment between Death and Judgment was believed besides the delay of Resurrection if that can properly be called a punishment There remains only to consider our Author's Catalogue of general Councils Wherein he hath committed many gross and as I fear wilful mistakes He makes Pope Sylvester preside over the Council of Nice but Eusebius and Socrates whom he citeth say no such thing Baronius indeed saith it but all the World knows the contrary For Hosius Bishop of Corduba presided and subscribed in his own name before the Legates of Pope Sylvester That Damasus presided over the first Council of Constantinople is so egregiously false that that Council was both begun and ended without so much as the knowledg of the Pope or any other Western Bishops That Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria not Pope Celestin presided over the Council of Ephesus is manifest from the Acts of that Council from the Commission given to him by the Emperor for that purpose and from all the Historians of those times Cyril indeed acted for Pope Celestin but not as president but as one Fellow-Bishop manageth the Proxy of another here in England in the House of Lords In the Council of Chalcedon Pope Leo's Legates were so far from presiding that all the Canons of the Council were made in their absence and not only without but against their consent For when the Legates in the next Session protested against the Canons they were over-ruled by the Council and forced to submit That Pope Vigilius presided over the Fifth General Gouucil or Second of Constantinople is so impudent a Falshood that it might with equal reason be pretended that Luther or Calvin presided over the Council of Trent For Vigilius who was then at Constantinople gathered an opposite Convention of Western Bishops wherein publishing a long Constitution or Decree in favour of the Tria Capitula he concludes with a severe Censure and Condemnation of all who should hereafter Write Teach or Propose any thing contrary to his Decree which he knew was then in doing in the General Council The Popes Constitution was read in the Council and notwithstanding it was Decreed Can. 12 13 14. That whosoever defended the Tria Capitula or even did not Anathematize them should be himself Anathematiz'd After the Conclusion of the Council and not till then Vigilius submitted and writing an Epistle to Eutychius Patriarch of Constantinople who had presided over the Council professeth he was now very sorry that by the instigation of the Devil he had dissented from the Council and in contempt of brotherly Charity had openly disagreed from them and contended with them that now he was convinced of his Errors and therefore retracting his former actions ratified and submitted to the Decrees of the Council In the Seventh General Council our Author reckoning up the Hereticks condemned by it as Paulus Sergius Cyrus Theodosius comes off with an c. the meaning of which may easily be discovered for this c. was invented to save the reputation of Pope Honorius who together with the rest was Anathematized by the Council as a notorious and pestilent Heretick The Second Council of Nice was formerly denied to be General by Theodorus Studites altho a great Patron of Image-Worship and was condemned in the same age by the great Council of Francfort The Fourth Council of Constantinople in the Year 869 was ever accounted a Schismatical Conventicle by the Greek Church All the following Councils were confined to the West and wanted both the Presence and Suffrage of the Eastern Patriarchs and consequently were not Oecumenical Many of them are not at this day universally received in the Church of Rome and others are rejected and condemned by the Gallican Church as the First Second Third and Fourth of Lateran First and Second of Lyons as to the Constitutions and Canons injurious to the Civil Right of Princes The Councils of Florence and Fifth of Lateran are wholly rejected by her and the Council of Trent but in part received Our Author pretendeth that in the Council of Florence the Greeks were united to the Church of Rome and subscribed the Union If a forced compliance of a few Bishops compelled by the threats and force of their Emperor can be call'd an union this was indeed one But many of them subscribed for fear of Death and most for fear of starving as Sylvester Sguropulus an Eye-witness assureth us and all of them when returning home were so detested and hated by their Country-men that they were esteemed worse than Infidels and not permitted to be buried in holy Ground I might make some farther Observations upou our Authors Paper as why he left that of Constance out of the number of General Councils and yet afterwards produced its Authority how disagreeing the forms of Recantation prescribed to Berengarius are to the present Belief of the Church of Rome and how little the Testimonies produced by him in favour of Apostolical Traditions concern the Romish Doctrine of Traditions But what I have already said is enough to shew that there is a Generation of men in the World who adding a profound Ignorance to a false Zeal fear not to sacrifice all considerations of Shame and Honesty of Truth and Reason to a present Interest and the poor advantage of a short-liv'd Imposture FINIS Books lately Printed for Richard Chiswell A Dissertation concerning the Government of the Ancient Church more praticularly of the Encroachments of the Bishops of Rome upon other Sees By WILLIAM CAVE D. D. 8vo An Answer to Mr. Serjeant's Sure Footing in Christianity concerning the Rule of Faith. With some other Discourses By WILLIAM FALKNER D. D. 4 o. A Vindication of the Ordinations of the Church of England in Answer to a Paper written by one of the Church of Rome to prove the Nullity of our Orders By GILBERT BVRNET D. D. 8vo An Abridgment of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England By GILB BVRNET D. D. 8vo The APOLOGY of the Church of England and an Epistle to one Signior Scipio a Venetian Gentleman concerning the Council of Trent Written both In Latin by the Right Reverend Father in God JOHN JEWEL Lord Bishop of Salisbury Made English by a Person of Quality To which is added The Life of the said Bishop Collected and written by the same Hand 8vo The Life of WILLIAM BEDEL D. D. Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland Together with Certain Letters which passed betwixt him and James Weddesworth a late Pensioner of the Holy Inquisition of Sevil in Matter of Religion concerning the General