Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	catholic_n	church_n	visible_a	2,907	5	9.9387	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33078	The Church of Rome unmask'd, or her false principles briefly detected with some reasons of so many retaining or returning to communion with her, and the great danger of everlasting destruction, that such persons, especially after separations from her, return to her communion, do run themselves on / written by a learned divine, by way of letter to a friend in the country.	Learned divine.	1679 (1679)	Wing C4196; ESTC R18501	78,331	77

reguard the ceasing therefrom or any commands of God requiring it so long as his guides and leaders that pretend to have the keys of Heaven in their hands assure them that if but an hour or two before their deaths they confess their Sins and are sorry that they have endangered their Souls thereby and be a little attrite or troubled for them receiving absolution from the Priest and their extreme Unction they may by the vertue of the Sacraments to convey grace ex opere operato be secured against damnation and be eased too in and freed from their Purgatory pains if they be but bountiful to their Church and its Priests by the benefit of their devotions and the Saints Supererrogations so that by this first part of the Touch-stone they appear clearly convicted of being far from being an Infallible Church yea or a true and right Church of Christ especially if we also take in what some of them assert and their doctrine of probability therefore makes safe for all to believe viz. that no man is bound of necessity to love God but that is a work or frame of more perfection without which observing their Church Orders and receiving their Sacraments they may be saved Surely by our Saviours doctrine to love God is the first and great Commandment and that they that teach that men may be saved though destitute thereof cannot be under the commendation of keeping Gods commandments 2. And as much faulty are they with reference to the other branch of the character of the true Church opposed to the false Church or the Beast and his Image worshippers namely the keeping the faith or testimony of Jesus which they keep not that corrupt it and add their mixtures to and with it as the false Apostles kept not the faith of Jesus though they might hold as truths all the Articles of the Creed and teach them to others while they added thereto the necessity of being Circumcised and of keeping the Law of Moses unto Salvation no more than they would be commended for keeping for any ones use good and wholsome Wine commited to their custody and charge who would indeed deminish nothing of it but yet would mix with it some of those Stygian Waters which had a poysonous nature in them or other poysons whereby they might be made deadly to them that drink thereof such a Person might indeed plead that he had kept by him all the Wine deposited with him and took nothing of it away yea and that he gave out again all that other keepers of it who keep it Pure and give it out such as it is given do and something more but I suppose with no likement or commendation of him that commits it to him for the benefit of those that will drink of it just such keepers that is to say corrupters of the faith of Jesus are the Papists and their Church They retain with them indeed the whole Bible and all the Gospel and Gospel truths therein but so as to keep them in their Bibles from the generallity of the People that they may not read or hear them read to them yea and they retain with them and possibly Preach to the People and Teach them all the Articles of the Creed at least in an unknown Latin Tongue or if they also interpret them yet to be sure they teach them many other things as matters of faith necessary to be believed by them as much as any of the said Articles though they be quite different from all that Christ and his Apostles delivered to the Church to be believed by us as for instance they teach that God the Father and Christ and the Holy Ghost are one God in three Persons to be believed on and called upon by Men but they corrupt that with this addition of their own that the Saints also are to be called on and that they ought to believe on them to receive help by their intercessions being worshiped by them they teach that Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World that he dyed for our Sins and offered up a Propitiatory Sacrifice to God for the whole World but then they add and mix of their own therewith that their Priests can do dayly make him of a Wafer and offer him up as an effectual unbloody sacrifice for the quick and dead to and that they ought to believe and expect to receive the forgiveness of their Sins through their Sacraficing him a most horrible impiety and indignity to his Cross and Passion and the alone virtue and efficacy thereof and a monstrous addition to and corruption of the faith once delivered of God to the Saints in his Apostles doctrine They hold and teach that Christ is risen from the dead and ascended into Heaven and sits at the Right Hand of God but they mix therewith and teach their Children and Followers to believe that the same very real Body that suffered and is in Heaven is also dayly in the Host at their Mass and is hung up in the Pix or Box that they put him into and that they carry up and down when they please in Procession and that they really tear him with their Teeth and eat him Lib. de Natura Deorum and therein they do what the Heathen Cicero abhorred to think of in their Pagan worship for he said quem tam amentem esse putas qui illud quo vescatur Deum credat esse that is who thinkest thou is so mad as to think that to be a God that he eats or is fed with those Papists are so mad as to think and teach so they hold and teach that there is a Heaven to reward the righteous and a Hell to Punish the wicked and so our Saviour delivered in his faith or testimony but withal they add that there is a third place between both called Purgatory wherein Souls that are not fit for Heaven when they dye may be purged by enduring pains and torments there and that the Pope hath the keys of this place to and can let Souls out of it c. And this Christ never taught nor his Apostles they believe and teach that there is a Holy Ghost and that he is to be believed in but they teach also corruptly that he is confined as it were to them of the Church of Rome and that their determinations or the determinations of their Popes out of St. Peters Chair are his infallible Oracles to be as much believed and held as fast as or more than the sayings of the holy Prophets Apostles in the Scriptures They teach that there is a holy Catholick Church but they add and mix with that also this Poysonful Doctrine that the Church of Rome only are that Church and that men are to resolve their faith into its sayings and conclusions and that the Pope is the visible Head of the whole Catholick Church and Christs Vicar on earth they teach a Communion of Saints but they teach also

reasons both 1. Of the continuance of so many still to cleave to her after she hath been so detected 2. Of the falling of any to her after so great and long a discovery of her and declining from her 1. To the first of these with respect to her self and those that are more properly the constitutive and essential parts of her the Church as distinguished by her self from the Laity or people adhering to her and especially the Court of Rome she being as she is called and as we have shewed a Whore a Harlot it fares with her as it doth with other Whores that is as such a one that is a Whore getting gain and profit to her self by her Whoredom and finding pleasure and sweetness therein is hardned against the discoveries of her false practises and usually goeth on impenitently in her Trade because of the profit and gain accruing to her thereby and especially if She be Courted by great and rich Persons or Princes they give her considerable gifts of Riches Honours and Dignities and makes but a Tush at the Laws Threatning Punishment or Death for such practises she finding no effect or Execution of them for a long time to appear against her by occasion whereof She flatters her Self that it will be never otherwise with her than it is but that She shall always escape punishment So fares it with this Adulterous Church she hath found and finds so much gain and profit of worldly Interest Riches Honour Dignity accruing to her since her trucking with Kings and Princes and Emperors and obtaining of them to be owned and honoured in all her pretensions as the Catholick Church the Church that all persons ought to comply with and submit to and that her Head and Bishop should be taken to be the Vicar of Christ the highest power on earth that it s no marvail if She repent not of her so sweet and gainful a Trade but by all means endeavours to keep up her credit that she may be still so courted and caressed and if she hath gotten a wound that hath threatned her life that she endeavours to get cured and to recover her Pristine strength which if she do recover we expect she will follow her old trade of Strumpetry and Blood-shedding as hard or harder than ever that so she may secure her self if possible from the threatned punishment and judgment ordered of God and denounced in his Name against her by us which maugre all her power and pollicy she shall not be able to escape for strong is the Lord God that judgeth her the brightness of whose appearing that Man of Sin shall not be able to endure To this purpose that she may recover her Pristine strength and vigour and follow her accursed Trade with the greater fervour or fury her Politicians as so many Physitians are at work very hard beating their brains and using all their skill and Industry to make her whole again and wo to us for a while if her disease be cured and the Beasts deadly wound be healed for then will be indeed accomplished more fully that which is written in Rev. 13.15 16 17. but in the mean time there are many cleave to her and have all along cleaved to her Because 1. Many of them are kept from or have not the opportunity of seeing and hearing what is evidenced against her though perhaps they have heard some rumour of the Gospel Preached to them that dwell on the Earth and of the Fall of Babylon in part from her Pristine power and splendour many are kept in ignorance both of the Scriptures and of the Sermons and Discourses in Writing of the Protestant parties and many neglect to inquire into them and so come not to know what is evidenced against her her Pandors or Merchants setting themselves to keep them in Ignorance and Error to keep up their own grandeur and worldly Interests 2. The cunning Sophistry and deceits of her Priests and Jesuits men of a seared Conscience and stiff Impudence who like Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses from or in his discovering the truth of God to Pharaoh and the Egyptians do stand against the truth and the Preachers of it and the discoverers of the Romish Frauds and Impostures prevail much with many who are apt to resolve their faith into their learning subtlety authority and appearing Piety and wisdom even as the slights of James and Jambres prevailed with Pharoah and many of the Egyptians so as that though they hear and may hear or read the discourses of the learned Protestants wherein they have detected their abuses yet they do not seriously Ponder or weigh them or are blinded from discerning the truth by the mists they cast before them 3. Worldly interest holds in many both of the Kings and Greater Persons their interest being interwoven with those of Rome and where the Kings and Princes of the earth commit fornication with her they do by their Laws in many places made against them that reject her Communion and their rigour and cruelty deter many from listening to and considering what is said against her yea and they keep out such discoverers or discoveries of her lewdness that otherwise would be afforded to them as was predicted in Rev. 13.15 16 17. and where their Laws are not so cruel yet by their bad examples and their indulging their favours to her followers they keep in many from listening to what would tend to withdraw them from her the most of men not searching so much with sincere endeavors after what is true and right as minding and resting in what is uppermost in the world and worshipping in truth its Power and Grandeur which I take to be that which the Holy Ghost in the Apocalyps calls the Beast more than any other God besides 4. The dependance that the younger persons have upon the Elder or others related to them the Children upon their Parents and Kinsfolks and Friends one upon another and the respect they have one for another is some cause also of many being detained therein being carryed away with such as they have such dependance upon or respect unto especially the being Educated under such Principles as have been maintained by and transmitted to them from their Ancestors and Progenitors for many generations proves a powerful motive to retain and not reject those principles what ever may be offered to detect and discover the evil of them few being so redeemed from the vain conversations received by tradition from their Fathers and Forefathers or from the Earth and Men even from earthly affections and from their respects to and dependances on men by the Blood of Christ minded and regarded by them as it hath been shed for them as to renounce all such respect to Fathers and Forefathers earthly affections and dependance on and respects to men and to follow after Christ singly and sincerely where-ever he by his Word and Doctrine would lead them or so as to make such due and diligent