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A30412
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A relation of a conference held about religion at London by Edw. Stillingfleet ... with some gentlemen of the Church of Rome.
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Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.
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1687
(1687)
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Wing B5863; ESTC R4009
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107,419
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74
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body that hath any sense of Religion or regard to his Soul forsake our Communion where he finds nothing that is not highly suitable to the Nature and Ends of Religion and turn over to a Church that is founded on and cemented in carnal Interests the grand design of all their attempts being to subject all to the Papal tyranny which must needs appear visibly to every one whose eyes are opened For attaining which end they have set up such a vast company of additions to the simplicity of the Faith and the purity of the Christian Worship that it is a great work even to know them Is it not then a strange choice to leave a Church that worships God so as all understand what they do and can say Amen to go to a Church where the worship is not understood so that he who officiates is a Barbarian to them A Church which worships God in a spiritual and unexceptionable manner to go to a Church that is scandalously to raise this charge no higher full of Images and Pictures and that of the blessed Trinity before which prostrations and adorations are daily made A Church that directs her devotions to God and his Son Jesus Christ to go to a Church that without any good warrant not only invocates Saints and Angels but also in the very same form of words which they offer up to God and Jesus Christ which is a thing at least full of scandal since these words must be strangely wrested from their natural meaning otherwise they are high blasphemies A Church that commemorates Christ's death in the Sacrament and truly communicates in his Body and Blood with all holy reverence and due preparation to go to a Church that spends all her devotion in an outward adoring the Sacrament without communicating with any due care but resting in the Priestly absolution allows it upon a single attrition A Church that administers all the Sacraments Christ appointed and as he appointed them to go to a Church that hath added many to those he appointed and hath maimed that he gave for a pledge of his presence when he left this earth In a word that leaves a Church that submits to all that Christ and his Apostles taught and in a secondary order to all delivered to us by the Primitive Church to go to a Church that hath set up an Authority that pretends to be equal to these sacred oracles and has manifestly cancelled most of the Primitive Constitutions But it is not enough to remain in the Communion of our Church for if we do not walk conform to that holy Faith taught in it we disgrace it Let all therefore that have zeal for our Church express it chiefly in studying to purify their hearts and lives so as becomes Christians and reformed Christians and then others that behold us will be ashamed when they see such real confutations of the calumnies of out adversaries which would soon be turned back on them with a just scorn if there were not too many advantages given by our divisions and other But nothing that is personal ought to be charged on our Church and whoever object any such things of all persons in the world they are the most inexcusable who being so highly guilty themselves have yet such undaunted brows as to charge those things on us which if they be practised by any among us yet are disallowed but among them have had all encouragement and Authority possible from the corruptions both of their Popes and Casuists But here I break off praying God he may at length open the eyes of all Christendom that they may see and love the truth and walk according to it Amen FINIS More Nevochim Par. 1. c. 30. Apolog. 2. Lib. 4. adv Her c. 34. * Boniface the 8th Extrav lib. 1. c. 1. de Majoritate Obedientia After he had studied to prove that the temporal and material Sword as well as the spiritual was in the Power of St. Peter from these words Behold two Swords and our Saviour's Answer It is enough In the end he concludes Whosoever therefore resists this Power thus ordained of God resists the Ordinance of God except with Manichee he make two Beginnings which we define to be false and heretical For Moses testifies that not in the Beginnings but in the Beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth Therefore we declare say define and pronounce that it is of necessity to Salvation to every human Creature to be subject to the Pope of Rome And it is plain this Subjection must be that he had been pleading thorough that whole Decretal which is the Subjection of the Temporal Sword to the Spiritual Ord. Rom. in Pascha Greg. Nazian Orat. 1. Apol. 20. Orat. Chrisost. l. 2. de sacr c. 10.
all Faith and Knowledg Now the chief Rule of making true Judgments is to see what Consequences certainly follow on what is laid before us If these be found absurd or impossible we must reject that from which they follow as such Further because no Man says every thing that can be thought or said to any Point but only such things as may be the Seeds of further Enquiry and Knowledg in their Minds to whom he speaks when any thing of great Importance is spoken all Men do naturally consider what Inferences arise out of what is said by a necessary Connexion And if these Deductions be made with due care they are of the same force and must be as true as that was from which they are drawn These being some of the Laws of Converse which every Man of common Sense must know to be true can any Man think that when God was revealing by inspired Men his Counsels to Mankind in Matters that concerned their eternal Happiness he would do it in any other way than any honest Man speaks to another that is plainly and dinstinctly There were particular Reasons why Prophetical Visions must needs be obscure but when Christ appeared on Earth tho many things were not to be fully opened till he had triumphed over Death and the Powers of Darkness yet his design being to bring Men to God what he spoke in order to that we must think he intended that they to whom he spake it might understand it otherwise why should he have spoken it to them And if he did intend they should understand him then he must have used such Expressions as were most proper for conveying this to their Understandings and yet they were of the meaner sort and of very ordinary Capacities to whom he addressed his Discourses If then such as they were might have understood him how should it come about that now there should be such a wondrous Mysteriousness in the Words of Christ and his Apostles For the same Reason by which it is proved that Christ designed to be understood and spake sutably to that design will conclude as strongly that the Discourses of the Apostles in Matters that concern our Salvation are also intelligible We have a perfect understanding of the Greek Tongue and tho some Phrases are not so plain to us which alter every Age and some other Passages that relate to some Customs Opinions or Forms of which we have no perfect Account left us are hard to be understood Yet what is of general and universal concern may be as well understood now as it was then for Sense is Sense still So that it must be acknowledged that Men may still understand all that God will have us believe and do in order to Salvation And therefore if we apply and use our Faculties aright joyning with an unprejudiced desire and search for Truth earnest Prayers that God by his Grace may so open our Understandings and present Divine Truths to them that we may believe and follow them Then both from the nature of our own Souls and from the design and end of Revelation we may be well assured that it is not only very possible but also very easy for us to find out Truth We know the pompous Objection against this is How comes it then that there are so many Errors and Divisions among Christians especially those that pretend the greatest Acquaintance with Scriptures To which the Answer is so obvious and plain that we wonder any body should be wrought on by so fallacious an Argument Does not the Gospel offer Grace to all Men to lead holy Lives following the Commandments of God And is not Grace able to build them up and make them perfect in every good Word and Work And yet how does Sin and Vice abound in the World If then the abounding of Error proves the Gospel does not offer certain ways to preserve us from it then the abounding of Sin will also prove there are no certain ways in the Gospel to avoid it Therefore as the Sins Mankind generally live in leave no Imputation on the Gospel so neither do the many Heresies and Schisms conclude that the Gospel offers no certain ways of attaining the Knowledg of all necessary Truth Holiness is every whit as necessary to see the Face of God as Knowledg is and of the two is the more necessary since low degrees of Knowledg with an high measure of Holiness are infinitely preferable to high degrees of Knowledg with a low measure of Holiness If then every Man have a sufficient help given him to be holy why may we not much rather conclude he has a sufficient help to be knowing in such things as are necessary to direct his Belief and Life which is a less thing And how should it be an Imputation on Religion that there should not be an infallible way to end all Controversies when there is no infallible way to subdue the corrupt Lusts and Passions of Men since the one is more opposite to the Design and Life of Religion than the other In sum there is nothing more sure than that the Scriptures offer us as certain ways of attaining the Knowledg of what is necessary to Salvation as of doing the Will of God But as the depravation of our Natures makes us neglect the Helps towards an holy Life so this and our other Corruptions Lusts and Interests make us either not to discern Divine Truth or not embrace it So that Error and Sin are the Twins of the same Parents But as every Man that improves his natural Powers and implores and makes use of the Supplies of the Divine Grace shall be enabled to serve God acceptably so that tho he fail in many things yet he continuing to the end in an habit and course of well-doing his Sins shall be forgiven and himself shall be saved So upon the same grounds we are assured that every one that applies his rational Faculties to the search of Divine Truth and also begs the Illumination of the Divine Spirit shall attain such Knowledg as is necessary for his eternal Salvation And if he be involved in any Errors they shall not be laid to his charge And from these we hope it will appear that every Man may attain all necessary Knowledg if he be not wanting to himself Now when a Man attains this Knowledg he acquires it and must use it as a rational Being and so must make Judgments upon it and draw Consequences from it in which he has the same Reason to be assured that he has to know the true meaning of Scripture and therefore as he has very good Reason to reject any meaning of a place of Scripture from which by a necessary Consequence great Absurdities and Impossibilities must follow So also he is to gather such Inferences as flow from a Necessary Connexion with the true meaning of any place of Scripture To instance this in the Argument we insisted on to prove the mean by which Christ is received