Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	scripture_n	word_n	write_a	2,223	5	10.7210	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63840	A defence of the confuter of Bellarmin's Second note of the church, antiquity, against the cavils of the adviser	Tullie, George, 1652?-1695.	1687 (1687)	Wing T3236; ESTC R7422	16,243	26

A DEFENCE OF THE CONFUTER OF BELLARMIN's Second Note of the Church ANTIQUITY AGAINST THE CAVILS of the ADVISER IMPRIMATUR May 31. 1687. HEN. MAVRICE LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXVII A Defence of the Confuter of Bellarmin's Second Note of the Church Antiquity c. I Apprehend by this Author's Genius that 't is much easier for some Men to write Farce than Controversy And tho I cannot say whether or no any man ever undertook the Confutation of Bellarmin over a Pot as our Author elegantly begins his Advice yet he seems to me by his ludicrous Behaviour to have engaged in his Defence in that sort of humour He may think it Vanity if he pleases in the Reverend and Learned Author of the Piece he attaques to assail the Roman Champion himself yet even I who never enter'd the Field of Controversy before shall presume to engage with such a Smatterer in the Noble Science as his Second And yet immediately after this fit of Rhetorick he do's not pretend that the Pot-qualifications are the case of him who has undertaken to answer Bellarmin ' s Marks of the Church No Why then do's he commence his Advice with such a Suggestion Did he think fit to publish to the World that he had a mind to be impertinent An humour especially in Conjunction with Buffoonry in serious Affairs I would advise him against for the future if the powerful Influence of an ill habit has not totally over-rul'd his Liberty in the matter And thus after the witty Introduction to his little good Will little enough I dare say we come now to receive the Advice of this grave controversial Counsellor in the Case depending First Then he pretends for I 'le relate his Advice in short-hand as much as I can till I find something worth the transcribing that Bellarmin never meant what his Adversary undertakes to prove that the Plea of bare Antiquity is proper to the Church No! but this Gentleman must own that he did when I have told him only that by bare Antiquity his Adversary understands Antiquity abstracted from the Consideration of Truth those Ancient Truths deliver'd in the Scriptures Now I presume he will not say that Bellarmin any where expresly in his Book of Notes muchless in this Chapter makes the consent of Doctrines with the written Word which is not bare but true Antiquity a Note of the Church tho indeed such is the force of Truth he can hardly keep off of that Argument In his ninth Chapter he makes agreement in Doctrine with the Ancient Church a sixth Note of the Church Ancient he farther explains by Apostolic telling us likewise out of Tertullian that a Church is so call'd as for other Reasons so for her conspiring with the Apostles in their Doctrines and yet after all most pitifully slides off to quite another thing as will appear to any one who shall examine that Chapter But it may be almost worth a man's while to read the Adviser's Comment upon Bellarmin's Text tho I hate transcribing He says indeed says my Author that whoever at this time will find out the Catholick Church profess'd in the Creed amongst so many pretenders must not apply himself to any upstart Congregation which was never visible in the World but of late years but to such a Church which has been of as long standing as ever since Christ and the Apostles days and consequently such a Church to which Antiquity of necessity at this time belongs This Bellarmin asserts Where I observe First that by this last Expression he Represents his own flourishing Gloss as Bellarmin's Words which they are not a thing that looks a little towards a design of putting a trick upon his Readers 2ly That we are here shrewdly directed to find out the Catholick Church by finding out a particular to which we must stick without farther enquiry 3ly That this Man passes a genere ad genus from Antiquity to Visibility which the better Logick of his Master Bellarmin would not probably have suffer'd him to have done And lastly after all that he unluckily says the same thing in substance with what he disproves in his Adversary for what do's all his Gloss amount to but to this That he who would find out the true Church must overlook all such as boast not of Antiquity at all adventures without any regard had to the true Antiquity of their Doctrines or any thing else they pretend to and pitch upon that without any more ado which has been of as long standing of as long standing barely without any farther respect as ever since Christ and the Apostles days And what is such a standing as this but bare Antiquity Unless he can prove a necessary entail of Truth upon a long Succession which all the World can never do And therefore hoping he may be a little more happy in following than in giving Advice I present him with his own and the second he gives That when he would confute his Adversary he say not the same thing that he do's and withal desire him to attend for the future more diligently to the Sense than to the Expression of a Period But wherein do's the Confuter of Bellarmin thus unluckily jump with him Why in explicating and proving the same Antiquity to be a Note of the Church which Bellarmin affirms to be such To which I answer first that if Bellarmin by Antiquity meant such as his Confuter explains p. 45. as is pretended then he understood by that word an agreement in Doctrine with Christ and his Apostles for so 't is plain his Adversary meant but we have shown before that that could not be Bellarmin's Intention 2ly That if the Cardinals Discourse upon this Note do's really tend to prove not Antiquity but as the Confuter compendiously distinguishes Priority to belong to the Church as it seems to do then 't is demonstrable to me that he presently grew weary of his Note which he could not manage without blending and confounding it with another more proper and pertinent to his business tho besides his design The third Inconsistency which he thinks he has found in the Confuter of Bellarmin is this That having prov'd Antiquity not to be a proper Note of the Church because it did not always belong to it as a proper Characteristick of a thing ought to do there being a time when the Church was new p. 42. He should nothwistanding in the 45 p. assert that the holy Scriptures are the true Antiquity there being a time when they were new likewise and here he thinks he has undoubtedly caught him But alas his Pen was more nimble than his thoughts were deep If indeed Bellarmin's Adversary in this point had advanc'd this Proposition That Antiquity is a proper Note or inseparable Property of the Scriptures or written Word and had after this undertaken to prove that Antiquity could not be such a Note of the Church because the Church was

once new the Argument would with equal force have recoil'd upon that same Assertion of his in relation to the Scriptures Or if Bell. had affirm'd only that the Church is truely Ancient and his Adversary had denied it upon the Score of its former newness he could not neither if his own Objection were good have rightly affirm'd that the Ss. are the true Antiquity But who can discover the least repugnancy betwixt these two Assertions that Antiquity is a Note of the Church and consequently as the Confuter well argues proper to it and inseparable from it which yet cannot be true if the Church was once new and this that the Scriptures are the true Antiquity i. e. that the Doctrines deliver'd in the Scripures or written Word are the oldest and truest Doctrines in the Christian Church Thus I have often observ'd that a few plain Words will unriddle great Mysteries in appearance and that some Men are unhappily apt to run away with a bare jingle of Words instead of harmony in Sense In the fourth Remark we meet with no less a charge than that of a contradiction and that 's a bad business indeed in so narrow a compass of Pages but where has this starter of difficulties espied it for 't is not easily discernable Why the Confuter of Bellarmin has asserted absolutely p. 42. That Antiquity is not a proper note of the Church whereas p. 45. He has found out an Antiquity that is proper to the Church In good time Bellarmin uses the word equivocally either for that which is ancient or for that which is first the former his Confuter says p. 42. is not a Note proper to the Church but that the latter which Bellarmin did not originally mean by his Note of Antiquity tho he was forc'd to run into it belongs to the Church And is this now ad idem and if not where 's the contradiction If discoursing with this Gentleman I should own my self a Member of the Catholick Church and finding afterwards that according to their usual and presumptuous blunder by the Catholick Church he meant the Roman Catholick Church I should deny my self to be a Member of it should I be guilty of a Contradiction for shame what trifling is this I thought some sort of People had better understood the dubious import of Words used equivocally His fifth Remark wants nothing but Truth to make it a very good one and is this That the Confuter of Bellarmin has produced a Citation out of St. Cyprian which is so far from favouring his own Cause that it really supports his Adversaries and is the very ground of what they maintain and he opposes And in earnest then amongst such great variety he was very unhappy in his choice But how does the Adviser make this appear why by two or three pert Interogations and that 's all To which if I opposed only as many more I might reasonably seem to have given him a just Answer For the place is so extremely pertinent to the Argument the Confuter was upon that for my own part I can scarce perswade my self the Adviser was in earnest when he made his Remark if he knew what he was about The Confuter was showing that bare Antiquity as before explained could not be a proper Criterion to judge of the true Church by for that amongst other Reasons wicked Doctrines running down to Posterity even from the Infancy of the Gospel made use at length of the Plea of Antiquity to give them countenance and support which pretence says he was notwithstanding refuted by the Fathers in several remarkable Words Amongst others of which he alledges that passage in St. Cyprian's Epistle to Pompeius Custom without truth is but Antiquity of error and there is a short way of Religious and simple minds to find out what is truth for if we return to the beginning and original of Divine Tradition Humane Error ceases Thither let us return to our Lords Original the Evangelical Beginning the Apostolical Tradition c. Is not now our Lord 's Original the Evangelical Beginning terms synonimous with Apostolical Tradition that ancient Truth the Confuter desires to appeal to Or is this as the Adviser farther boasts That setting up the very Tradition which Catholicks appeal to Yes says he But why so for no other reason doubtless but because he luckily espied the Word Tradition in that sentence and perhaps found it under that head in his Common-place Book Now seriously if this Gentleman pleases I 'le produce him half an hundred Instances out of the Ancient Fathers Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprian c. where Tradition is used by them for the Scriptures or written Word of God. If he had but consulted that other Epistle to Caecilius Cited by the Confuter in his Margent he would have found it taken there five or six times in that very sense and that 't is really so in the place now before us is so demonstrably evident from the Epistle whence it is cited that none who had ever consulted the Original could with the least modesty or judgment have alledged it in Defence of Tradition as stated in the Church of Rome For the Holy Martyr refuting here what Pope Stephen had replied to him in a Letter concerning the Baptism of Hereticks repeats several Passages of it Of which this is one Si quis ergo a quacunque Haeresi venerit ad nos nihil innovetur nisi quod Traditum est ut manus illi imponatur in poenitentiam To which St. Cyprian immediately replies Whence is this Tradition does it descend from the Authority of our Lord and the Gospel or from the Injunctions and Epistles of the Apostles For God testifies That those things are to be done which are written If therefore it be commanded either in the Gospel or in the Epistles of the Apostles or in the Acts that they who come from any Heresie over to the Church be not Baptized but only have imposition of hands for repentance let this Divine and Holy Tradition be observed But if c. And now what thinks our Adviser of St. Cyprian's Apostolical Tradition which pleased him so wonderfully at first sight and I dare say he never look'd farther Are the Gospels the Epistles and the Acts the only Tradition which Catholicks appeal to Let him remember his Trent-Creed and then tell me We come now in the next place to his Remarks and Advice in relation to the Confuter's second Proposition That the present Church of Rome vainly pretends to true Antiquity i. e. ancient Truth And here we find him all on a sudden taken with a very strong fit of the Gentleman he 's upon his Punctilio's and teaching his Adversary better manners than to charge the Church of Rome with Lyes and yet this Master of Controversial Ceremonies is off of his breeding within two Pages after where we have him ranking the Divines and Disputants of the Church of England with honest Coblers and Tinkers as if they were really at a