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_n	church_n	tradition_n	2,180	5	9.3701	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29214	A sermon preached at the opening of the lecture at Maldon in Essex, lately established by the Lord Bishop of London in vindication of the antiquity of the doctrine of the Church of England / by William Bramston ...	Bramston, William, d. 1735.	1697 (1697)	Wing B4243; ESTC R18304	16,131	26

A SERMON PREACHED At the Opening of the LECTURE AT MALDON in ESSEX Lately Established By the Lord Bishop of London In Vindication Of the Antiquity of the Doctrine of the CHURCH of ENGLAND By William Bramston Late Fellow of Queens-College in Cambridge and Rector of Woodhamwater in Essex Published at the Request of the Auditory LONDON Printed for R. Clavell at the Peacock in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCXCVII A SERMON PREACHED At the opening the Wednesday Lecture in All-Saints Church in Maldon Acts Chap. 24. Verse 14. But this I confess unto thee that after the way which they call Heresie so worship I the God of my Fathers IN the way to my Text I judge it a reasonable tribute of our gratitude to our Diocesan to observe how those blessed Effects and Influences of his paternal care and watchfulness which are conspicuous in all places of his Jurisdiction are in the most sensible manner made apparent to you the Inhabitants of this remote and almost forgotten corner of the Kingdom and that in the occasion of our present meeting wherein you have restored to you a most laudable Privilege which you have long wanted your Weekly Lecture In which you must needs acknowledge your engagements to your Bishop who hath made himself a debtor to many Brethren for your sakes Nor is the Benefaction its self more worthy of your Gratitude than the piety of his Lordships intention in this Lecture may be commanding of your Thankfulness Our Bishops Hopes and Counsels and Prayers are not only that you may have the gracious Arguments of Virtue Patience Righteousness and Holyness without which No Man shall see the Lord unfolded and recommended to your Practice in the most perswasive Applications but also that you may continue in all soundness of Doctrine and become armed against the arts and surprises of false Teachers who do either obtrude their own Traditions for the Commandments of God or attempt to withdraw the Affections of Men from our most excellent Church by false and unwarrantable misinterpretations of her Doctrines I say our most Excellent Church which is loaded by Rome with the imputations of Heresie because the endeavours to shrowd her Members from the taint of Rome's Defilements And has been reviled by another sort of mistaken Christians as being her self Popish because she labours to preserve the Holy Services of God clean from the unhallow'd violence of Man's Profaneness Now there cannot be a greater Service done to the Church of Christ than when his precious Depositum is kept unviolated or to the Edification of his Faithful than when the Instructions tendered to them proceed purely from Truth and Soberness This being our Bishops now Charitable intention in this Lecture which I am to open I have made choice of this passage of St. Paul who here answers the impeachment of the Jews who had censured his Labours in Christ his professing and propagating the Christian Religion just as our Adversaries of the Church of Rome do all our holy Ministrations and Services in the support of the Faith and truth of the Blessed Jesus as a work of Heresie with this Confession But this I confess unto thee that after the way that they call Heresie so worship I the God of my Fathers That which I shall endeavour at present shall be the vindication of the Doctrines and Measures of our Church as to some Matters of her Faith and Practice which are quarrelled at by our Roman Adversaries which in the most insolent Pomp and disdain are exploded by them as Spots and Deformities in our Reformation First then That wherewith they think they shake us most is this that we are of a new Religion a novel and up-start Church not able to make out a continuance for two of sixteen Centuries This I take to be the most gainful plea of the Crafts-men of their Diana that by which she most fatally allures many into the Labyrinth of her Delusions Certainly as to her Doctrines the Monstrosities of Transubstantiation Purgatory of the Sacrifice of the Mass and Prayers in a strange Language these can have no appearances so beautiful and tempting as to prove Charming in themselves and captivate our Souls enlighten'd by the wisdom of the Gospel But when they are told they embrace a new Religion a Religion not heard of in the Christian World till these last two Hundred Years this may possibly startle ignorant Men and justly requires our Consideration In answering therefore this Objection I doubt not to expose the vanity and disappoint the impressions of such light pretences and manifest them to be no other but Noise and Cant. First Then if by a new Church they mean a Church introducing a new Scheme of Faith and Belief methinks that main part of old essential Verities wherein they and we agree together with our explicit belief of all the known Doctrines of the Scriptures and our implicit belief of all things therein contained may in great measure declare the Antiquity of ours especially since we retain all that Faith and religiously adhere to all those Creeds which the third General Council held at Ephesus adjudged to be so material and comprehensive as positively to forbid the imposition or addition of any other if that was the Old Faith which was professed by the Primitive Fathers of that Council how can ours now be denominated a new one who have neither diminished nor added to the Articles of their Belief The Creeds confirmed and authorized in that Council were that of the Apostles and that of Nice and therefore methinks the Faith founded on them may with some face pretend to Antiquity Again if by a new Church they mean a National Church of but late Strength and Establishment we deny not the present Church of England to be a new Church in such a sense but then we answer withal that such a new Church may be said without a Paradox to contain as Old a Religion as the ancientest foundation of Christ though not for the Age of its Establishment yet for the Antiquity of its Truths and Doctrines which only properly speaking can Entitle any National Church a part of the ancient Church of Christ And this is the highest mark of Antiquity our Church pretends to assume that she now professes that very Faith which our Saviour taught which his Holy Apostles profess'd and propagated in the first Ages of Christianity And let Men pretend what they will the only Demonstration and Test of any particular Churches Antiquity as it is a true or a corrupted part of the Catholick Church of Christ must be the Antiquity of her Doctrines and Principles by reason as no Christian Church can be ancienter than Christ the Author and Finisher of our Faith So again no particular Church professing his ancient Faith and Truths can be said to introduce or embrace a Religion younger than that of Christ because it then professes that very truth of Christ which has been professed by his Faithful in all Ages So that

a visible Succession and yet that Church that enjoys it in many respects may be very corrupt and unwarrantable and this I think is sufficiently acknowledg'd by the Church of Rome her self which does so far acknowledge the Succession of the Greek Church as to receive those Ordained by her into her Communion with allowance of Orders received before and yet whoever considers the terms in which the Eastern Church now stands with that at Rome must see little reason to conclude much of its Perfection from the Argument of Succession indeed there cannot be a true Church without true Pastors and Bishops but there may be true Pastors and Bishops i. e. Pastors and Bishops rightly called and truly ordained without a true Church in other respects Such Succession will indeed prove the Antiquity of the Seat and Place and justly denominate it a part of the Catholick Church of Christ but it can be no convincing Demonstration of the purity of its Faith and Doctrines And therefore it must sollow that even from an erroneous Church may be derived a true Ministery and Ordination but yet it can be no greater Argument that such a particular Church namely as the Church of Rome is a pure Church now because an other to wit the Church of England who is really so owes her Orders or first Episcopal imposition to hers than it can be that because such a particular Man for his own personal Virtue and Integrity shall certainly go to Heaven therefore he also shall do so who made him a Christian And this I the gladlier mention because it plainly answers that Sophistical Induction of the Romanists which infer that because we say our Church derives her Orders from her therefore by proving our selves to be a true Church we must necessarily conclude their's to be so which is the same as if a Man in declaring his Opinion of their being Orthodox in some points and particulars shou'd be concluded positively to maintain them to be most regular in all others A more rational Inference from what has been said in this case of Succession must certainly be this that such a Local Succession of Pastors and a settled Establishment from the days of the Apostles to this time is not essential to the constitution of a true Church but rather on the other side whatever Church hath a lawful Ministry and a right Profession of sound Doctrine let her Succession be never so inconsiderable though not exceeding two years must have an equal Right and Title to a Membership in the ancient Body of Christ as any particular Church of the most venerable Succession And the reason of the thing is very plain for if a Church has a true Ministry and a right belief now what signifies it how long she has enjoy'd it she can then want no means to bring Souls to Heaven and what advantage can the ancientest Constitution in the World obtain above her The Seat where the Religion is sixed may be new but the Religion Establish'd as Old as Truth it self And thus I hope the Churches which were the earliest planted in the World were as true Churches the first day after their Plantation as when they had survived various Centuries So that it must be impertinent in our Adversaries to require us to produce a Succession of Protestant Bishops so long as there cou'd be no reason any Bishops shou'd be called Protestant i. e. Such Bishops who protest against Innovations and Corruptions in the Religion of Christ till they had defiled God's heavenly Truths with their Traditionary Pollutions or again so long as we prove our Protestant Faith and Church to be no other but a Professor of that Faith and a Member of that Apostolical Church which they have Corrupted or lastly so long as they are Corruptions introduced by them which we disavow and protest against Let them prove us defective in any one essential point of a true Church and we will yet thankfully receive it but this their own fruitless endeavour towards it may evince they cannot and therefore to talk of Novelty and Innovations where the Truths are as ancient as the Gospel and the Apostles must argue great Folly in them that urge it but more inconsideration in us shou'd we regard it As we are able to justifie our cause from all their foulest Imputations so shall they never be able to prove our Religion a Novelty though its Establishment were but of Queen Elizabeth for it is the Antiquity of true Faith only that we contend for which can never be obscured by the latest Profession because what was truth in the Apostles time must be so now and that Church which cleaves stedfastly to that be its Succession never so late must be both Catholick and Apostolick in the purest meaning After all this stir of Novelty and Antiquity I see no other difference in our case and that of the Romanists but this that our Religion is apparently conspicuous in the best and most Apostolical Centuries and their 's manifest enough in the flourishing Days of Ignorance and Superstition when Scriptures were banished and the least appearance of such Truth as seemed to thwart the progress of an aspiring Monarchy was silenced and disabled That which seems so much to take with inconsiderate Men to wit such Queries as this Had not God his true Church in these days of Blindness and Ignorance which you Protestants allude to if so Then which cou'd be this true Church but that at Rome may easily be removed if they observe First That a local and visible Establishment such as can be pointed to though we have many such to refer to in the Eastern parts of Christendom even in the blindest Ages besides that at Rome is not essential to the proving of a true Church because the true Church of Christ was most illustrious before it had enjoyed any Local Establishment whatever Secondly If we consider that though there were in those times true Christians yet it cannot be imagined that they should have appear'd forward to make Discoveries of themselves in such Seasons when they experienc'd the sharpest Eyes and heaviest Hands ready to destroy them So that though we must believe God had always a true Church yet we stand not necessitated directly to know what numerical and individual People made up that true Church much less to confess it to have been the present Establishment at Rome no we can no more be oblig'd to such a Confession as this than to acknowledge that the visible company of the Jews made up the true Church of God than when they were even swallow'd up of Idolatry and none but the All-seeing Eye of God able to discover the 7000 Knees which had never bowed to Baal it is no Tergiversation therefore it is no Shuffling I say though we can't point to it's individual Members to assert That God had even then a true Church because he has expresly told us he will have a true Church for ever but it must be a