Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	action_n	good_a	law_n	1,011	5	4.8972	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36729	Reflections on the Council of Trent in three discourses / by H.C. de Luzancy.	De Luzancy, H. C. (Hippolyte du Chastelet), d. 1713.	1679 (1679)	Wing D2419; ESTC R27310	76,793	222

understand the most important truths of Salvation This is not contrary to the exercise of the inward praier which St. Austin call● the voice of the heart by which we be● and are supplicants to God for his mercy● and the Church of England is so far from forbidding Christians to prepare themselves for the life to come by a seriou● consideration of the miseries and inconstancy of the present and to learn how to love Christ that by her they are commanded to do all this and the Bishop say to each of them in giving them th● Gospel as the Angel did to the Prophet● comede volumen istud Eat this Book and convert it into your own substance XXVII This makes it appear with how much less sincerity our adversaries who have but a blind zeal think to offer a great sacrifice to God in calumniating their Brethren and accusing all the Protestants of renouncing all the exercises of Christian Piety and of retaining nothing but a meer morality which is to be met with in any honest Heathen And indeed if going in Procession carrying Images about one counting Beads and a hundred such like nothings are counted Piety she acknowledges none of them But if the renouncing of our selves the mortifying our senses the humility of our hearts the love of our neighbor forgiving our enemies the meditation of the Gospel be stiled holiness she teacheth and practiseth them faithfully XXVIII The holy Church of England proceeds farther and the Church of Rome hath no really holy practices which she doth not follow Confession so ancient in the Church is in use here also but the liberty thereof is left to movements which God himself inspires into the hearts of sinners The Church had so done for twelve Ages and until the pretended general Lateran Council there was no Statute made about it She desires it should be wrought by the Holy Ghost that the Spirit of God should throw a sinner at the feet of the Priest and not the fear of Excommunication XXIX She doth as they believe the usefulness and necessity of fasting All Scriptures and Traditions are full of the praises which God and his holy Saints have attributed to it Lent and the abstaining from certain meats on certain daies are practices so ancient in the Church that none can blame them without an insupportable ignorance and temerity She observes all these things with a great deal of edification Her Bishops and many of her Clergy-men fast after the manner of the Primitive Christians that is eat but once and that at night Abstinence from flesh is alwaies injoined with their Fasts They abhor the shameful subtilties of the Casuists of the Church of Rome who retain nothing of it save the name but in effect destroy it Their fasting and abstinence have nothing superstitious He that eateth not is not scandaliz'd by him that eateth Rom. 14. 1. The strong do patiently bear with the weak and pray God that he strengthen them XXX Nor doth the Church of England condemn Monastical life She praiseth them that retire into solitude therein to bewail their crimes who forsake all to find all in Jesus Christ It cannot be denied but whatever irregularities the greater part of the Church of Rome be in there are amongst them a very great number of good people whom God will recompence rather according to their heart then actions Had they when Henry the Eighth suppressed them in England walked in the duties of their Calling they had bin still in being The Popes anger was not because they had bin suppress'd for Popes themselves shew by their examples that these sort of suppressions are somtimes necessary but 't was because it was done without his autority which then becomes a nice point in Law pernicious to all states and contrary to the respect due to Kings This Prince found them in ignorance and corruption They were a burden to the State a scandal to the Church a subject of grief to all good people Their zeal for asserting the temporal autority of the Pope was inconceivable and they treated their Bishops with extreme scorn When so many evils gathered together are incurable who doubts but that the root thereof should be pull'd up and the hazard be run of losing a blessing which cannot be preserved but by greater evils XXXI Good Monks are certainly of great example The conferences of the Priest of Marseilles shew that the East was filled with the fame of their virtue In the West the Order of St. Bennet had during many ages furnish'd all the Sees in the Church and bred up more Saints and Bishops then all the other Orders together had of Religious persons But those were neither insolent Monks who from the bottom of their Cells would condemn all the World besides nor vagabonds who made a trade of their poverty nor people who having renounced the World had yet more intrigues and restless desires then those who had not They that got their livelihood by the sweat of their brows were no less separated from Ecclesiastical emploiments then secular and ●ived in a continual humility and pe●●ance XXXII The Orders in the Church of Rome which continue still in the same state are worthy of Veneration It is a most false argument for looking upon them as people of no use to the Church They serve her in their way and truly it is a very great service they do her of praying and groaning continually for her We must not judg the usefulness of men by their actions but by the station God hath placed them in A person that does ●ut little in his calling is often more useful to the Church then another that does much out of his calling the will of God and not that which appears to men being the rule of the utility or inutility of those that serve him XXXIII It is clear following this principle that though there are yet many good men in the present corruption of Friers Orders nevertheless the Church of England hath done well in not suffering any She rejects them not because they are Friers or Monks but because the greate● part of them is not in that condition they ought to be in It is good to shew clearly and to make the devout of the Church of Rome see that they are injurious in reproching that of England for having banished Friers XXXIV Is there in the World any more effeminate and idle life then that of the Clervaux and the Cisterciens Is not the ignorance idleness and sloth of these Friers beyond all imagination Does there appear the least trace of that laborious and penitent life of their holy Founder Will not a man that hath read St. Bernard's Epistles or Sermons when he sees these Monasteries think himself in another World finding people that call themselves his sons who have nothing either of his spirit or manners For the Mendicants we need but hear the Bishops to be acquainted with their nature They are as great a charge