Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	article_n	church_n	creed_n	2,425	5	10.1630	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52145	Remarks upon a late disingenuous discourse, writ by one T.D. under the pretence de causa Dei, and of answering Mr. John Howe's letter and postscript of God's prescience, &c., affirming, as the Protestant docrine, that GOd doth by efficacious influence universally move and determine men to all their actions, even to those that are most wicked by a Protestant.	Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678.	1678 (1678)	Wing M884; ESTC R22	46,758	164

's errours and mistakes did likewise lead It to these ominous expressions and like those that discern not the Back from the Edge to wound It self in cutting at the Adversary It 's Dulness therefore or as it is expressed p. 8. the consciousness of It 's own disabilities being so oft attested under It's own hand and to which if necessary It might have another Thousand Witnesses I shall not further pall my Reader on this Subject but return rather from this digression to my first design of obviating that in the Preface which hath all the marks upon it of Malice except the Wit wherewith that vice is more usually accompanied Of that the very Title is an Argument De Causa Dei or a Vindication of the Common Doctrine of Protestant Divines concerning Predetermination c. from the Invidious Consequences with which it is burthened by Mr. John Howe in a late Letter and Postscript of God's Prescience By T. D. Who would have thought that T. D. should have become the Defender of the Faith or that the Cause of God were so forlorn as to be reduced to the necessity of such a Champion It seems much rather to be the Fallacy of Non Causa pro Causa and usurped only the better to prepossess against Mr. Howe such Readers as would be amused by the Frontispiece The Cause of God! Turn I beseech you It 's whole Book over and show me any thing of that Decorum with which that should have been managed What is there to be found of that Gravity Humility Meekness Piety or Charity requisite to so glorious a pretence Graces wherewith God usually assists those that undertake his quarrel and with which Mr. Howe on all occasions appears to be abundantly supplied But a perpetual eructation there is of humane Passions a vain ostentation of mistaken Learning and a causeless Picking of Controversie To that Title under which Mr. Howe is so injuriously proscribed succeeds forsooth an Epistle Dedicatory To the Reverend Mr. John Howe Author of the late Letter and Postscript of God's Prescience An additional Civility and Compellation invented by The Discourse only for greater mockery And a manyfine words It bestows upon him at first to miscall him presently with the more Emphasis praises the Author and then the Book but no otherwise then as a person to be degraded is brought forth in publick attired in all his Formalities to be stripped of them again with further Ignominy Nay even Mr. Boyle himself cannot wholly escape It's Commendation which I do not object as if any thing could be well said of him that is not due to his merit But there are a kind of Sorcerers that praise where they intend to do most mischief And the Occasion the Place the Manner the Person that gives the Commendation make alwaies a difference and cause a great alteration in that matter Nor is it less here For Mr. Howe having taken the Pen on this Subject as The Discourse also observes upon that honourable Gentleman's command the officious mentioning of Mr. Boyle p. 1. seems as if It had a mind too to try his mettle or at least would reproach him for having imployed one so unfit for the service and that was to be so shamefully or rather shamelesly treated for his performance But the summe of all It 's Malice whereby It endeavours to outlaw Mr. Howe not only from Mr. Boyle's patronage but from all Protestant protection is to represent him under a Popish Vizard As p. 2. Old Popish Arguments drest up A-la-mode An averment of the Old Popish Calumny An Affidavit of a Pontificial Accusation Trampling p. 4. on the Venerable Dust which was sometimes animated by truly heroick souls and bore the names of Zuinglius Calvin Beza Penkins Pemble Twisse Davenant Ames c. Then p. 12. still objects to him the opinion of Durandus though Mr. Howe had in his Postscript so fully vindicated himself against it that his first Accuser hath let it fall out of perfect ingenuity Draws a parallel between his and the Papists Arguments against Predetermination And p. 13. erects another pair of Columns to that purpose betwixt which Mr. Howe is to look out as thorow a Pillary Afthis p. 14. saith the point under debate between It and Mr. Howe is a stated Controversie between the Papists and Protestants Gives It self a little pleasure mixed with disdain that because there was no Smith to be found throughout all the Land of Israel he was fain to go down to the Philistines to sharpen his Ax and his Mattock 1 Sam. 13. 19 20. Imitates Bradwardins Piety therefore intituling It's Book de Causa Dei the Cause of God being that which It designs to secure from the impetuous Assaults of its ' Adversaries among which It is heartily sory Mr. Howe should be numbred as to this instance This kind of proceeding does argue rather the strength of Malice than of the Cause For although we live under a rationall jealousie alwaies of Popery yet whatsoever is said by any Author of that perswasion is not forthwith therefore to be clamorously rejected Have not there constantly been among them men fit to be owned for Holy Life Good Sense Great Learning And in many points we agree with them and shall in all whensoever Our Eyes shall be shut or Theirs shall be opened The Discourse had indeed done something to the purpose could It have shown the Doctrine of Predetermination to be one of those Discriminating Causes upon which we have made a separation from that Church that it is an Article of Faith in which our Creeds differ and that it were a fit Test to be imposed upon them in order to their more speedy Conviction Which last if It can bring about for them so that they may be acquitted upon Renouncing this Doctrine imputed to them instead of the Transubstantiation which Mr. Howe too escaped so narrowly I presume they would notwithstanding all the Popery take it for an high obligation For indeed whereas The Discourse affirms this of Predetermination to be a stated Controversie betwixt the Papists and the Protestants the Papists against the Protetestants for it there is not through It 's whole Book a more notorious Falshood For this Debate arose first among the Papists some of them being of one others of the contrary Opinion so that the Controversie was stated betwixt themselves But that which is now T. D' s. was first the Dominican Doctrine and I wonder therefore the less if It continue herein the Dominican Spirit Since and from that original the same Argument hath indeed been also diffused among the Protestasts and they likewise have differ'd about it with one another but it was never taken in holding it either way to be the Protestant Character The Predeterminative Concourse is not to be found in any Confession of the several Reformed Churches But this matter hath been left entire to euery man's best Judgment and one Party is as much Papist in it as the others

do they run themselves upon and their Readers I remember there is a Picture before that Ruler of the Case his Book with this Addition bene scripsisti de me Dive Thomas But let God be True and Iust to his word and every man that saith otherwise a Lyer For the last I shall only transcribe a few lines of it's idle Harangue p. 35. in which I know not whether the malice against Mr. Howe or irreverence towards our Saviour do predominate thorow the whole absurdity We might also observe upon his Rhetorical Amplifications of his Argument that he seems to be no ill-willer to Transubstantiation for if the natural notions of God's Goodness should be infinitely dearer to us than our senses I see not why the notion of God's sincerity that he means as he speaks should not challenge a share in our Indearments and so why hoc est corpus meum should not assure us that the bread is transubstantiated though our senses c. joyn in a Common Testimony against it Viciously and wantonly said as if God wheresoever he speaks in a figure were guilty of Insincerity The Eighth and last Article against The Discourse shall be The Virulence of It's Spirit Whereof one Instance may fuffice p. 122. where closing the Book It saith that Mr. Howe 's Doctrine opens a wide door for Atheism and reckons him by strong Implication among those who acknowledge God in Words but deny him in Deed Whereas what is it that Mr. Howe hath denied but that God doth determine men by Efficacious Influence to those very Actions which he forbids and for which he will punish them But I spare my hand The Discourse all along boiling over foaming frothing and casting forth the like expressions which I refrain to enumerate that I may not incur the fate of him that stirs the Indians Poison-pot who when he falls down dead with the steam and stench they then throw the doors open and dip their Arrows I Should now therefore have concluded were there not something yet in It's Prefatory Epistle so fordid that I reserved it for behind as the most proper place it could be applied to Nor shall I therein only have marshall'd it according to It's dignity but do hope moreover as the Head of the Viper is a specifick against It's Venom so to find out a Remedy against the Book in the Preface wherein it shows so peculiar a malice and despight to Mr. Howe and insinuates the same to the Reader as requires a particular Preservative And had I not already been at the pains of the foregoing Remarks here was I see a more compendious occasion but sufficient to have administred me the same observations For all the other faults that I have objected against the bulk of The Discourse might as easily have been discovered in It's Preface as a good Physiognomist can by the Moles in the face assign all those that are upon any other part of the body But among them all It 's superlative Dulness is here especially the more manifest as usually happens in such cases by how much It endeavours most at Acuteness and Elegancy so palpable that even It self could not be wholly insensible of it but p. 3 4. feelingly confesses both in Latine and English that in reading Mr. Howe 's Letter and Postscript Obstupuit steteruntque Comae and a double Astonishment under which It laboured This doubtless it was like the disaffections derived from the Head to the Nerves which propagated that horrid stupidity that I have already noted thorow It's whole Treatise But that Quality is here so exalted Nature it seems having given It that Torpor for a Defence that in touching it thus lightly I perceive a numness to strike up thorow my Pen into my Faculties and shall therefore point at some particulars rather than adventure to handle them Mr. Howe had in passing Postsc p. 22. glanced upon an improper redundance of words used by a former Adversary The Divine Independent Will of God as he might with good reason take notice of it being as much sense as to have said the Humane Dependent Will of Man But hereupon The Discourse p. 9. having for revenge turn'd over his whole Letter and Postscript to find out the like absurdities highly gratulates It self in three Instances but all of them curtaild from the coherence to make for the purpose One Letter p. 42. In which sense how manifest it is that the perfect all this omitted Rectitude of God's own holy gracious Nature is an eternal Law to him omitted The second Letter p. 59. God satisfies himself in himself and takes highest complacency in the perfect Goodness Congruity and all this omitted Rectitude of his own most holy Will and Way and for these Mr. Howe is arraigned upon a Crime by a Greek word of Law called Pleonasme The third is Actions Malignantly Wicked which The Discourse saith is the same as Wickedly Wicked Postscript p. 22. and 32. as It quotes but is in Letter 32. and here It leaves out also the word most which would have spoiled the exception taken against it for what Mr. Howe there saith is even those Actions that are in themselves most malignantly wicked Are there not some Actions some Men more malignantly wicked than others Or will The Discourse apply It 's old end of Latine here aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus to Paulus Rom. 7. 13. sin exceedingly sinful It was time therefore in all reason to conclude this exercise with saying But these are childish Criminations unfit to be bandied from hand to hand by sober persons owning It self at once to have been guilty herein of an Intemperate Inept and Unmanly kind of procedure Neither can I pass by unregarded that new Invention of rearing up Pillars to mens Infamy but which have sometimes and may now also turned to the disgrace of the Architect It cuts out p. 10 11. several Lines here and there out of the whole Letter and Postscript to post them up in Columns and Mr. Howe upon them as a common notorious Self-contradicter Whereas if any man will take the pains to restore those sentences to their first situation and coherence as I have formerly done there will not be found the least Inconsistency in them But if this Practice be allowable there is not any Chapter in the Bible out of which It may not with the same integrity extract either Blasphemy or Nonsense though I am far from suspecting The Discourse of such an undertaking For indeed It assigns the True Reason and fit to be inscribed over the Portico non est ingenii mei hosce nudos dissolvere and as faithfully translates it I have not the wit to untie these knots which is now the third publick Confession of of It's stupidity in the Preface Yet will I not do It the affront to ascribe it either to It 's Modesty Ingenuity or Self-Conviction for It intended them doubtless all to the contrary Only the same Dulness that first occasioned It