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
A66484	An address to those of the Roman communion in England occasioned by the late act of Parliament, for the further preventing the growth of popery.	Willis, Richard, 1664-1734.	1700 (1700)	Wing W2815; ESTC R7811	45,628	170

of the former for it will be very difficult to shew how the Church can exert it's Infallibility so as to be a Guide but either by means of it's Head which you make the Pope or else by the way of a General Council there is no other way whereby those of your Communion can be certain what is the Doctrine and what are the Traditions of your Church but one of these and therefore having considered both of them already I shall proceed to consider the way of Reasoning your Divines commonly make use of to prove that there either is or ought to be such an Infallible Judge As for what they say from Scripture it is commonly urged so coldly and with so much diffidence that we may see they do not lay any great stress upon it But that you may not be amused only with some general Words in truth nothing to the purpose I desire you would consider that there being no Infallibility which can serve to be your Guide but only that of the Pope or a General Council nothing from Scripture can be pertinent but that which proves either the one or the other No Man or Number of Men can be Infallible without a particular Assistance and we cannot be sure they are so without a particular Promise And therefore when you hear any thing alledged from Scripture only ask your selves What does this prove Does it prove the Pope to be Infallible Or does it prove a General Council to be so If it do not prove one of them it proves nothing in this Matter for you are never the nearer your Guide for any thing else Now as to General Councils I have shewed already that there is not the least hint of them in Scripture and as for the Title of the Pope to it I shall consider it presently in examining his Supremacy And in the mean time shall take notice a little what they urge from Reason to prove that there ought to be such a Judge ought to be I say for all the Reason in the World without a Revelation from God can never prove that there is one it being a thing that depends meerly upon the appoinment and good-pleasure of God The Writers of the Romish Church it must be confessed talk Plausibly enough when they expose the weakness of Human understanding and the Infirmities of Human Nature and I must say that in reading of them I could hardly forbear at least to wish that if it had pleased God some effectual Remedy had been provided to secure Men from Error But this did not at all influence me to think that God had done so and that upon these Three Accounts 1. Because we see in fact that neither Mankind in general nor Christians in particular have been secured from Errors that there have been as many Contests and Differences among Christians as we can suppose there would have been taking it for granted that they were left in the State we say they were without any Infallible Guide to direct them and therefore whatever force such a Consideration from the necessity of ending Controversies might have had in the first Times of our Religion the matter of Fact does now in a great measure take it off because in 1700 Years the Church has not been freed from them From whence as I said before we may inferr either that it is not the Will of God that Controversies should be ended or that an Infallible Judge will not end them or that there is no Infallible Judge either of which takes away the force of this Argument 2. Because this whole way of Arguing from the weakness of our Understanding and proness to Error and the like proves nothing in particular and consequently does not bring us at all nearer Satisfaction than we were before The most natural Inference from it is That every Man is to be of the Religion of his Country for that makes through work and excuses us from using our Fallible Reason at all in the Matter whereas in your Way however you may cry out of the uncertainty of our own Reason yet you must use it in a great many material Points and indeed found all the certainty you have upon it you must for instance Judge by your own Reason whether the Christian Religion be true or not whether among all the Professors of Christianity yours be the True Church whether there be any Infallible Judge or no and who he is and what his Determinations are These are things of great weight and of a great latitude and indeed take in the chief Points of Religion and yet these things must be judged of by that Reason which God has given every Man or they cannot be judged of at all whereas your whole way of Arguing from the fallibility of our Understanding either proves that we cannot judge with certainty of these Matters or it proves nothing 3. This whole way of talking is to me a strong prejudice against what you would prove by it For if you had a plain Institution or a Promise of such a Judg to shew there would be no need of this Arguing that would be Sufficient and without that no Man can be Infallible and we may be sure that Men have no such Commission or Promise to shew when they are forced to use so much Cavilling and Dispute about the matter which is indeed nothing to the purpose without the other We do with much more reason inferr that since God has not thought fit to give any such Commission that therefore we must make the best of those other means which he is pleased to allow us to search the Scriptures and endeavour to understand them as well as we can And this is the Method that our Saviour directed Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life and they testifie of me From which Words we may plainly infer these following things 1. That the Jews had at that time no Infallible Guide in Matters of Religion for if they had our Saviour would have directed them thither but we see he directs them to the Scripture 2. We may inferr that the Persons our Saviour spoke to had without an Infallible Guide sufficient Abilities to understand the Scriptures and to have true Faith otherwise we may be sure he would not have sent them thither and if they could understand the Old Testament without such a Guide much more may Christians understand the New which is much easier 3. We may inferr that Private Persons for such our Saviour spoke to may have sufficient assurance of Divine Truths from examining the Scriptures tho' they go against the Governors of the Church for our Saviour tells them that they might find in the Scriptures that he was the True Messias tho' the Chief Priests did at that time reject him and were afterwards the Authors of his Crucifixion All which do absolutely overthrow the necessity of an Infallible Judge in order to True Faith And there cannot be one thing said against

be contained wholly in that which is less and that not once only but as many times over as there are Points in the Bread and Wine That the same thing at the same time should be wholly above it self and wholly below it self within it self and without it self on the right Hand and on the left Hand and round about it self That the same thing at the same time should move to and from it self and lie still or that it should be carried from one place to another through the middle space and yet not move That to be One should be to be undivided from it self and yet that one and the same thing should be divided from it self That a finite thing may be in all Places at once That there should be no certainty in our Senses and yet that we should know some things certainly and know nothing Corporal but by our Senses That that which is and was long ago should now begin to be That the same thing should be before and after it self That it should be possible that the same Man for Example You or I may at the same time be awake at London and not awake but asleep at Rome there run or walk here not run or walk but stand still sit or liedown there study or write here do nothing but dine or sup there speak here be silent that he may in one place freeze with cold in another burn with heat that he may be drunk in one place sober in another valiant in one place a coward in another a Thief in one place and honest in another that he may be a Papist and go to Mass in Rome a Protestant and go to Church in England that he may die in Rome and live in England or dying in both Places may go to Hell from Rome and to Heaven from Fngland That the Body and Soul of Christ should cease to be where it was and yet not go to another place nor be destroyed These are some of those monstrous Contradictions which are involved in this Doctrine of Transubstantiation I shall only observe these few things more about this Matter and then conclude this Point 1. That you ought not for the avoiding of these Difficulties to content your selves to believe in general that somehow or other you don't know how this Sacrament is the Body of Christ for your Church has determined the Matter that it is the very Body of Christ which was Born of the Virgin Mary and was afterward Crucified and that there remains no substance of Bread but only this Body of Christ after Consecration 2. I would observe that none of these Difficulties are taken off by considering Christ's Body as glorified for besides that if it be a Body still it must have the Properties of a Body this Sacrament was Instituted while our Saviour lived in the World and had just such a Body as other Men of the same bigness and all other qualities as to his Body the same And therefore in interpreting these Words This is my Body all the Difficlties are still the same as if he were now living or as they would be were they spoken of the Body of any other Man 3. I desire that you would consider that you may be sure we do not mis-understand nor mis-represent your Opinion because these Absurdities are what your own Divines take notice of as well as ours and do not pretend to be able to give any direct Answer to them 4. I would observe That tho' these Contradictions are so apparent and staring that no Body that hears of this Doctrine can well miss of them yet they are new and none of them ever heard of in the Church for many Hundred Years from whence we inferr that the Doctrine it self was as little heard of 5. We do not find that any Christian for many Hundred Years ever denied or disputed the truth of this Doctrine from whence we cannot but conclude that it was then unknown in the Church for it must have had strange good fortune to escape without any Contradiction when all the Articles of the Creed had been Disputed round 6. As this was not disputed or denied by any Christians so neither was it objected against the Christian Religion by any Heathen not even by Julian himself who as being an Apostate must have known all the Secrets of our Religion whereas in truth there had been Ten times more weight in this than in all the Objections together which they made use of against Christianity 7. There were several things in the Primitive Church inconsistent with the belief of this Doctrine in particular that of mixing Water with the Wine the Water to represent the People as the Wine represented the Blood of Christ of which St. Cyprian gives us a full Account Vid. Cypr. Epist 63. 8. I would observe That the Church of Rome can assign no peculiar necessity or usefulness of this Sacrament above others that should give a probable Reason of the mighty difference betwixt this and others and of such a strange wonderful Dispensation as the eating our Blessed Saviour himself Nay with them both Baplism and Confession are esteemed much more necessary and the omission of them more dangerous than the omission of this Sacrament 9. To conclude this whole Matter I think I have sufficiently shewed that this Doctrine has no foundation in Scripture I would have considered at large the Sense of the Primitive Church in it and I do not question but to have been able very clearly to make out that it was a Doctrine quite unknown to the Church of God for many Ages but that was not consistent with the Brevity I am at present forced to use I would therefore only observe this one thing That we ought not to conclude this to have been the Doctrine of the Fathers only from some accidental or general Expressions which they sometimes make use of It 's plain that none of them designedly treat of this Matter or explain it to us none of them recite it among the Articles of their Faith none of them take any notice of the difficulties of it no Christians appear to have been shocked at this Doctrine and no Heathens to have Objected it all which could hardly have been avoided had this been the constant Doctrine of the Catholick Church And as for General Expressions the calling what they received the Body and Blood of Christ that could not be avoided the Nature of the thing requiring them even according to our Opinion of this Matter And we see that notwithstanding we have made such express Declarations against the Doctrine of the Church of Rome and that by reason of this Controversy we express our selves more cautiously than we may suppose the Fathers would do before any Controversy was moved ved about it yet some general Expressions of our own Divines are often turned against us by those of the Church of Rome and there is no question but were the Authors of them as Old as the