Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
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A56384
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A defence and continuation of the ecclesiastical politie by way of letter to a friend in London : together with a letter from the author of The friendly debate.
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Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.; Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707. Friendly debate.
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1671
(1671)
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Wing P457; ESTC R22456
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313,100
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770
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Semipelagians into the Communion of our Church and joyning with a Spanish Plot by opposing the Calvinists to reduce the people again to Popery all which are the Methods of Satan and the Designs of some who sit aloft in the Temple of God to hew at the very roots of Christianity As I. O. expresses himself in the Preface to his Display of Arminianism Yes no doubt it was the great design of our first Reformers to state as he has done the order and succession of eternal Decrees to reconcile a fatal and irresistible determination of our Actions with the Liberty of our Wills to account for the consistency of the Decree of irrespective Reprobation of the greatest part of mankind with the Truth and the Goodness of God when he so plainly protests he would not any should perish but that all should come to repentance and to set up a secret and reserved will in God in defiance to his revealed will and then make it consistent with the honour of his Attributes to profess one thing and at the same time resolve another It was no doubt their Zeal for these weighty and fundamental Truths that was the avowed cause of their Protestations against the Church of Rome and those great Prelates that first arose to that great Attempt chose to fall Martyrs to the cause only to justifie their own absolute Election and to prove the Impossibility of their Relapse from Grace And among Mr. Foxes wooden Cuts we find many Pictures of Martyrs for the supralapsarian way and the chain that tied them to the Stake was no doubt the noose of Election and the Label that hangs out at their mouths the decretal Sentence So that they that will not burn and broil for these Fundamental Articles of the Geneva Zeal are the Iulians and Apostates from the Protestant Faith the Popes or the Devils Instruments as our Author speaks to betray us to the old or a new and it may be a worse Apostasie Men may mince the matter and pretend only a dislike of the Doctrine of Reprobation but alas who knows not this to be the Serpents subtilty wherever she gets in her head she will wriggle in her whole body sting and all give but the least Admission to these Heterodoxies and the whole poison must be swallowed This Apostasie from the single Article of Reprobation unavoidably brings in the whole body of Popish-Arminian Errors And therefore whoever offends but in this particular is absolutely fall'n from the Catholick Faith and the Orthodox Doctrine of the Church of England and then he has pronounced his Doom and pronounced him uncapable of our Church-Communion Admirable Doctrine this for a Patron of Indulgence not to endure a Poor man that dares not dogmatize in the mysteries of Reprobation but to deliver him up without mercy or any sense of Compassion to the exterminating Censures and Anathema's of the Church and what was then more dreadful the Parliament too Thus you see what are the Articles of these mens Zeal and Orthodoxy and by what Doctrines and Principles they take their measure of Reformation making a Rigour in the Calvinian Tenets the only estimate of the Purity of Churches So that because we are willing to clear our Church from the Incumbrance and Incroachment of these innovations and are resolved not to trouble our selves with abetting the modern Controversies and Mushrome Sects of Christendom but to stick fast to the wisdom and moderation of the first design of returning to the antient and unblended Doctrines of Christianity And are therefore careful in our discourses and representations of Religion to avoid all new and unwarrantable mixtures and to represent the Truths of the Gospel with the same simplicity as we should have done before these Novelties were started in the World For this are we taxed by these Imperious Dogmatists of perfidious Designs to betray the Protestant Cause and to return back to the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome and the People must be alarm'd and confounded with hideous Outcries against Popery and Babylon Spanish Plots and Jesuitical Designs and then must they stand upon their Guard and nothing must asswage their Choler but an humble submission to their sturdy humour They must not attend to any Articles of Agreement or Overtures of Pacification and mutual Forbearance and unless we will declare our Assent and Consent to all the curious and perplex'd Opinions of their Sect they will hear of no other Conditions of Peace and there is no Remedy but we must part Communion They must as I. O. speaks proclaim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy War to such Enemies of Gods Providence This is hard measure but yet such as was strictly meted out without a grain of Allowance not only by the Rigid Presbyterians but the Indulgent Tryers those Patriots of our Christian Liberty those renowned subverters of Ecclesiastical Tyranny Now there can be nothing more mischievous or intolerable in any Church or Common-wealth then these peremptory Dictators of Truth and profest Masters of Polemick Skill they are so exact and curious in their own Speculations and impose them with that severity upon the Consent of Mankind and by consequence require such hard and impracticable Conditions of Agreement and Church-Communion as must unavoidably break any society of men into Factions and Parties For what so vain as to expect an Unity of Judgment in such a multitude of uncertain and undeterminable Opinions And therefore those men that stand with such an unyielding and inflexible stiffness upon the admittance of their own Conceits make all reconcilements impossible and all ruptures incurable Every little Opinion must make a great Schism and the bounds of Churches must be as nicely determined as the Points of a Dutch-Compass Their bodies of Orthodoxy are as vast and voluminous as Aquinas Sums and they have drawn infinite numbers of wanton and peevish Questions into the Articles of their Belief and now when they have swoln up their Faith to such a mighty bulk and refined it to such a delicate subtlety 't is unavoidable but that this must perpetuate Disputes and Divisions to all eternity And for this reason it is that these perverse and imperious Asserters are the most insufferable sort of men in any Christian Commonwealth in that they are such incorrigible enemies to peace and are so good for nothing else but to raise disturbances and contentions in the Church So that though we should suppose Liberty of Religion to be the common and natural Right of mankind yet these Persons apparently forfeit all their Claims and Pretences to it not only because their principles are directly repugnant to the quiet of States and Kingdoms but because they invade other mens rights and offer violence to their Neighbours just Liberties And so cast themselves into the condition of Out-laws and Banditi that once indeed had a natural Right of Protection from the Government under which they were born but if they will not submit to the
a praying People zealous for the Lord and his Sabboths they were for the Power of Godliness and spent the greatest part of their time in Communion with God and in attendance upon his Ordinances but as for the Heathen Vertues of Morality they scorn'd to trouble themselves about such low and beggarly Duties but left their practice to the common and prophane Herd of Mankind This was the way and spirit of the Men and the Ingredients of the Pharisaick Leven were false Godliness and Spiritual Pride They were highly conceited of their own extraordinary Attainments and this made them turn so deaf an ear to all our Saviours Doctrines and Reproofs and this was their Selfrighteousness as opposed to the Righteousness of the Gospel They had spun to themselves a Motley-Religion partly out of the Corruptions of the Law of Moses and partly out of their own phantastick Traditions and upon its observance they valued themselves above other Men and challenged their acceptance with God so that it consisted not at all in trusting in their own real but in their own imaginary Righteousness neither is the Righteousness of Faith that was set up by our Saviour and his Apostles in its defiance opposed to true and inherent Goodness but to a false and imaginary Godliness And 't is so far from being any criminal Arrogance either in them or in us to trust in our own Righteousness that if men would suffer themselves to understand common sense in the last Issue of things we have nothing else to trust to For we have no other ground to expect the divine Acceptance but by performing the Conditions of the Evangelical Covenant i. e. a sincere and hearty Obedience to all the Laws of the Gospel and without this to rely upon our Saviours merits is intolerable Folly and Presumption A good Conscience is the only Ground of a Fiducial Recumbency for that is the word upon the Merits and Mercies of Christ for Salvation For though our Saviour died to expiate our Sins yet God knows he never intended to supply our Duties and 't is certain as the Gospel is true that all the Priviledges of his Death and Sufferings are Conditional and entail'd upon some peculiar Qualifications in the Persons to whom they belong otherwise wicked Men and Infidels might lay as fair a claim to the benefit as the holiest Man living and therefore 't is in vain for the boldest Faith to offer to lay hold upon them unless its Confidence be built upon a sincere Obedience so that our Right to Gods Promise and Christs Satisfaction for the pardon and forgiveness of our Sins is the purchase of an Holy Life and imputative Righteousness is part of the reward promised to inherent Righteousness And therefore 't is not Moral Goodness and a well-grounded Trust in it but Immoral Godliness and a proud Presumption upon it that keeps Men off from closing with the Terms and Doctrines of the Gospel 'T is the conceited and mistaken Professor or the vicious and immoral Saint that is of all Men the most desperate and incurable Sinner Spiritual Pride is the Carnal Confidence that hardens him into a final impenitency He thinks himself so full of Grace and Godliness that he needs no Vertue he is already a Child of God and in a state of Grace and then what need of any other Conversion And this was the Case of the Scribes and Pharisees and for this reason were those supercilious and self-confident Professors at a farther distance from the Kingdom of Heaven than the Publicans and Harlots These our Saviour could convince of their Lewdness and Debauchery from the notorious wickedness of their Lives and Conversations and could by his civil and gentle Reproofs soften them into a relenting and pliable temper but as for those their false and mistaken Piety only made them more obdurate and obstinate in sin fear'd their Consciences against the force of his sharpest Reproofs and Convictions and consign'd them up to an unyielding and inflexible peevishness § 7. As for his Animadversions upon the following Pages of this Chapter they are so lamentably feeble and impertinent that as there is not any necessity to encounter so there is no glory to vanquish them and withal the reason of that part of my Discourse is in it self so clearly firm and impregnable that methinks it seems to disdain any other fence and protection against his weak and womanish Talkings And therefore I had once determined to think of no other Reply than barely to request of the Reader what I may justly challenge viz. That he would compare and consider us together and if upon an attentive Perusal my Arguments do not discover themselves to be vastly above the reach and the danger of his vain Attempts I will for ever scorn and renounce such faint and defenceless Reasonings For alas there is nothing of any consequence objected that was not clearly foreseen and abundantly prevented insomuch that the Discourse it self is its own best guard and strongest defence And 't is not a little difficult to contrive Arguments more apposite to baffle his Answers than those very Reasonings against which they are levell'd 'T is not in my Power to keep off the Attempts of Noise and Clamour 't is enough if I can fend and secure my self against reasonable Exceptions as for Impertinencies they do but discover their own folly and weakness and the more bold and boisterous their Assault the greater is the Repulse they put upon themselves not unlike to a Rock which you have seen unconcern'd in the midst of Storms and Tempests it slights and regards not the fury of the Waves and onely suffers them to dash in pieces their rage and themselves together And thus has this Man no where more shamefully exposed the wretchedness of his folly and presumption than by the pertness and French-Confidence of this Attaque for as I know not where his Censures are more peremptory so neither do I remember where their Vanity is more transparent But this is a vulgar stratagem of some Men to make the greatest shew where they have the least strength and to set off what they want of Reason with big Looks and emphatical Confidence But to be short the strength of my present Argument was couched in this method Having first shewn Moral Duties to be the choicest most important Matters of Religion so as to reduce all its Branches either to the Vertues or to the Instruments of Morality I proceeded in the next place that seeing the Civil Magistrate was by the unanimous Suffrage and a vowed Principles of Mankind vested in a Soveraign Power over the main Ends and Designs of Religion to demand what imaginable Reason the Wit of Man could assign why matters of External Worship that cannot challenge any other Use or any higher Office in the Scale of Religion than of Ministeries or Circumstances should be exempt from the Conduct and Government of the same Authority And this I farther both improved and