Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	catholic_a	church_n	communion_n	2,111	5	9.0012	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93958	Ad clerum. A sermon preached at a visitation holden at Grantham in the county and diocess of Lincolne, 8. Octob. 1641. By a late learned prelate. Now published by his own copy.	Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663.	1670 (1670)	Wing S580; ESTC R228093	21,750	45

that rightly understandeth the Tenets of the Romish Church but will easily grant if he shall duly consider what a masse of humane Traditions both in point of belief and worship are imposed upon the judgments and consciences of all that may be suffered to live in the visible Communion of that Church and that with opinion of necessity and under paine of damnation The Popes Supremacy Worshipping of Images Invocation of Saints and Angels the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass Purgatory the seven Sacraments Transubstantiation Adoration of the host Communion under one kind Private Masses forbidaing Priests Mariage Monastical Vowes Prayer in an unknown tongue Auricular Confession All these and I know not how many more are such as even by the confession of their own learned Writers depend upon unwritten Traditions more than upon the Scriptures True it is that for most of these they pretend to Scripture also but with so little colour at the best and with so little confidence at the last that when they are hard put to it they are forced to fly from that hold and to shelter themselves under their great Diana Tradition Take away that it is confessed that many of the chiefe Arcicles of their Faith nutare vacillare videbuntur will seem even to totter and reel and have much adoe to keep up For what else could we imagine should make them strive so much to debase the Scripture all they can denying it to be a Rule of Faith and charging it with imperfection obscurity uncertainty and many other defects and on the otherside to magnifie Traditions as every way more absolute but meerly their consciousness that sundry of their doctrines if they should be examined to the bottome would apeare to have no sound foundation in the Written Word And then must needs wee conclude from what hath been allready delivered that they ought to be received or rather not to be received but rejected as the Doctrines and Commandments of men Nor will their flying to Tradition help them in this case or free them from Pharisaisme but rather make the more against them For to omit that it hath been the usual course of false teachers when their Doctrines were found not to be Scripture-proofe to fly to Tradition do but enquire a little into the Original and growth of Pharisaical Traditions and you shall find that one egge is not more like another than the Papists and the Pharisees are alike in this matter When Saduc or whosoever els was the first Author of the Sect of the Sadduces and his followers began to vent their pestilent and Atheistical Doctrines against the immortality of the Soule the resurrection of the Body and other like the best Learned among the Jewes the Pharisees especially opposed against them by arguments and collections drawn from the Scriptures The Saduces finding themselves unable to hold argument with them as having two shrewd disadvantages but a little Learning and a bad cause had no other means to avoid the force of all their arguments than to hold them precisely to the letter of the Text without admitting any exposition thereof or collection therefrom Unlesse they could bring clear Text that should affirme totidem verbis what they denied they would not yeild The Pharisees on the contrary refused as they had good cause to be tyed to such unreasonable conditions but stood upon the meaning of the Scriptures as the Sadduces did upon the letter confirming the truth of their interpretations partly from Reason and partly from Tradition Not meaning by Tradition as yet any doctrine other than what was allready sufficiently conteined in the Scriptures but meerly the Doctrine which had been in all ages constantly taught and received with an Vniversal consent among the People of God as consonant to the holy Scriptures and grounded thereon By this means though they could not satisfie the Sadduces as Heretikes and Sectaries commonly are obstinate yet so farre they satisfied the generality of the people that they grew into very great esteem with them and within a while carryed all before them the detestation of the Sadduces and of their loose errors also conducing not a little thereunto And who now but the Pharisees and what now but Tradition in every mans eye and mouth Things being at this passe any wise man may judge how easy a matter it was for men so reverenced as the Pharisees were to abuse the credulity of the people and the interess they had in their good opinion to their own advantage to make themselves Lords of the peoples faith and by little and little to bring into the VVorship whatsoever doctrines and observances they pleased and all under the acceptable name of the Traditions of the Elders And so they did winning continually upon the people by their cunning and shewes of Religion and proceeding still more and more till the Jewish Worship by their means was grown to that height of superstition and formality as we see it was in our Saviours dayes Such was the beginning and such the rise of these Pharisaical Traditions Popish Traditions also both came in and grew up just after the same manner The Orthodox Bishops and Doctors in the antient Church being to maintain the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead the Consubstantiality of the Sonne with the Father the Hypostatical Union of the two Natures in the person of Christ the Divinity of the Holy Ghost and other like Articles of the Catholike Religion against the Arians Eunomians Macedonians and other Heretikes for that the words Trinity Homoüsion Hypostasis Procession c. which for the better expressing of the Catholike sense they were forced to use were not expressely to be found in the holy Scriptures had recourse therefore very often in their writings against the Heretikes of their times to the Tradition of the Church Whereby they meant not as the Papists would now wrest their words any unwritten doctrine not conteined in the Scriptures but the very doctrine of the Scriptures themselves as they had been constantly understood and believed by all faithfull Christians in the Catholike Church down from the Apostles times till the several present ages wherein they lived This course of theirs of so serviceable and necessary use in those times gave the first occasion and after-rise to that heap of Errors and Superstitions which in processe of time by the power and policy of the Bishop of Rome especially were introduced into the Christian Church under the specious name and colour of Catholike Traditions Thus have they troden in the steps of their forefathers the Pharisees and stand guilty even as they of the Superstition here condemned by our Saviour in teaching for doctrines mens Precepts But if the Church of Rome be cast how shall the Church of England be quit That symbolizeth so much with her in many of hir Ceremonies and otherwise What are all our crossings and kneelings and duckings What Surplice and Ring and all

those other Rites and Accoutrements that are used in or about the publike Worship but so many Commandments of men For it cannot be made appear nor truly do I think was it ever endeavoured that God hath any where commanded them Indeed these things have been objected heretofore with clamour enough and the cry is of late revived again with more noise and malice than ever in a world of base and unworthy Pamphlets that like the frogs of Aegypt croake in every corner of the Land And I pray God the suffering of them to multiply into such heaps do not cause the whole Land so to stink in his nos-thrills that he grow weary of it and forsake us But I undertook to justifie the Church of England and hir regular and obedient children in this behalf and it will be expected I should do it If any of the Children of this Church in their too much hast have over-runne their Mother that is have busied themselves and troubled others with putting forward new Rites and Ceremonies with scandal and without Law or by using hir name without hir leave for the serving of their own purposes have causelessely brought an evil suspicion upon her as some are blamed let them answer it as well as they can it is not my businesse now to plead for them but to vindicate the Church of England against another sort of men who have accused her of Superstition unjustly Set both these aside and hir defense is made in a word if we do but remember what hath been allready delivered in the Explication of the Text to wit that it is not the commandments of men either Materially or Formally taken but the Opinion that we have of them and the teaching of them for Doctrines wherein Superstition properly consisteth Materially first There is no Superstition either in wearing or in not wearing a Surplice in kneeling or in not kneeling at the Communion in crossing or in not crossing an infant newly baptized even as there is no superstition in washing or in not washing the hands before meat So long as neither the one is done with an opinion of necessity nor the other forborn out of the opinion of unlawfulness For so long the conscience standeth free The Apostle hath so resolved in the very like case That neither that eateth is the worse for it nor he that eatethnot the better for it A man may eat and do it with a good conscience and he may not eat and do that with a good Conscience too As in the present case at this time it is certain Christs disciples did eat and washed not it cannot be doubted but at some time or other they washed before they ate Not for conscience sake towards God either but even as they saw it fit and as the present occasion required and they might do both without superstition But if any man shall wear or kneel or crosse with an opinion of necessity and for conscience sake towards God as if those parts of Gods service wherein those Ceremonies are used in our Church could not be rightly performed without them yea although the Church had not appointed them doubtlesse the use of those Ceremonies by reason of such his opinion should be Superstition to him Because a man cannot be of that Opinion but he must believe it to be true doctrine that such and such Ceremonies are of themselves necessary parts of Gods worship As on the contrary if any body should refuse to weare or kneel or crosse out of an opinion of their unlawfulnes as if those Ceremonies did vitiate the whole act of that worship whereunto they are applied I cannot see but upon the same ground and by reason of such his opinion the refusal of those Ceremonies should be to him also Superstition Because a man cannot be of that opinion but he must believe this to be true doctrine that such and such Ceremonies are of themselves unlawful to be used in the Worship of God But the obedient children of the Church of England having no such opinion either of the necessity or unlawfulnes of the said Ceremonies but holding them to be as indeed they are things in their own nature indifferent are even therefore free from Superstition in both the kinds aforesaid So then in the things commanded taken materially that is to say considered in themselves without respect to the Churches command there is no Superstition because there is nothing concerning them doctrinally taught either the one way or the other Now if we can as well clear these things taken also formally that is to say considered not in themselves but as they stand commanded by publick authority of the Church the whole businesse is done as to this point Nor is there in truth any great difficulty in it if we will but apprehend things aright For although the very commanding them do seem to bring with it a kind of necessity and to lay a tye upon the Conscience as that of St. Paul implieth both you must needs be subject and that for conscience sake yet is not that any tye brought upon the Conscience de novo by such command of the Church onely that tye that lay upon the Conscience before by virtue of that general Commandment of God of obeying the higher powers in all their lawful Commands is by that Commandment of the Church applied to that particular matter Even as it is in all Civil Constitutions and humane positive Laws whatsoever And the Necessity also is but an Obediential not a Doctrinal necessity But the Text requireth a Doctrinal necessity to make the thing done a vain and superstitious worship Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men Which the Church of England in prescribing the aforesaid Ceremonies hath not done nor by her own grounds could do For look as the case standeth with private men for doing or refusing even so standeth the case with publick Governours for commanding or forbidding As therefore with private men it is not the bare doing or refusing of a thing as in discretion they shall see cause but the doing of it with an opinion of Necessity or the refusing of it with the opinion of Unlawfulness that maketh the Action superstitious as hath been already shewed So with publick Governours it is not the commanding or forbidding of a mutable Ceremony as for the present they shall deem it fit for order decency or uniformities sake or such other like respect but the commanding of it with an opinion as if it were of perpetual necessity or the forbidding it with the like opinion as if it were simply unlawful that maketh the Constitution superstitious Now I appeal to any man that hath not run on madly with the cry for company but endeavoured with the spirit of Charity and Sobriety to satisfie his own understanding herein if the Church of England both in the Preface before the Book of Common Prayer and in the Articles of her Confession and in sundry