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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42451	Five captious questions propounded by a factor for the papacy answered by a divine of the Church of God in England by parallel questions and positive resolutions : to which is added an occasional letter of the Lord Viscount Falkland to the same gentleman, much to this present purpose.	Gataker, Charles, 1614 or 15-1680.; Falkland, Lucius Cary, Viscount, 1610?-1643.	1673 (1673)	Wing G306; ESTC R24961	63,053	90

Canonical Scripture The Catholick Church being quickly after enlarged and spred through many regions of the earth did together with the Gospel preached receive Copies of the Scriptures which had been communicated by the particular Churches to which they were directed at first unto their neighbour Churches These Scriptures were by all Churches reverenced and preserved as the Grand Charter of their Salvation and the Laws and Records of their Society as the Church was the Kingdome of Christ distinguished from the world The zeal of Christians for their Laws and their knowledg of them which were frequently read in the publick Assemblies according to an * Col. 14.16 Appostolical order to which we must add above all the Providence of Gods watching over the Church for the preservation of Scriptures being more pretious to God than to Man and as pretious to God as the world it self these being well considered may assure us that it was morally impossible that the whole Church of God should be cousened into the reception of any forged Scriptures And if the Church in following ages could not combine together to coyn counterfeit Scriptures then the Church universal could never obtrude any thing upon the world for Canonical Scripture which was not received from the Primitive Church at first But how doth it follow from hence that the Church is an Infallible Judg in this point A creditable witness is not presently an Infallible Judg. A faithful Depositary that keeps Records is not the same thing with an unerring Judg. The Tradition of the Church Universal which hath derived the Holy Scriptures from age to age is not an Act of Judicature The Nation of the Jews is at this day a credible witness of the divine Original and authority of the Old Testament at least at the first plantation of the Church Christian the Jevvish Church did preserve and deliver the Holy Scriptures in tire so much at least as God thought necessary or expedient and if any book vvere lost that by being lost became unnecessary and vvas secured by Gods Providence in the conveyance of his Oracles to Christians Doth it hence follovv that the People of the Jews was a visible Infallible Judg in that point and if so then in all matters of Faith For thus the Papist proceeds If so I require some satisfactory reason says the Querist why the Church should be infallible in this and fallible in other points of Faith c. I have already shewed that the Case is not so as this man imagines therefore I am not bound to give him the satisfaction which he requires Yet for your further information I add this 1. The reception and tradition of Scriptures by the Church is a fact which God orders as expedient for the preservation of Religion 2. The certain number of the Books written by inspiration is not a point of faith necessary for every Christian to know and believe unto Salvation 3. The Catholick Church cannot err in any point of faith necessary to salvation 4. But any particular Church may believe and teach erroneous Doctrine for matter of Faith The Church of Rome which is not the sole keeper of Scripture may and doth err in several points of their Religion and doth impose upon her children uncanonical Books for Scripture and false Doctrines for matters of faith as is evident by the Canons of the Conventicle of Trent And yet it is not in the power of the Church of Rome to abuse the whole Christian world by the imposition of counterfeit Scriptures upon it I shall yet persist in my reflexion upon the Jews that I may shew that the keeping of Scriptures without forgery falsification and corruption is a thing distinct and separable from erring teaching errors The Jews cannot be denied to have been good keepers of the Books even then when they corrupted the Religion enjoyned by the Law written in those Books Never yet was any man so weak as to conclude that the Priests and Rabbies of the Jews were Infallible Judges of the Doctrine concerning the Messias even those who condemned Christ the Son of God to be guilty of blasphemy and worthy of death because they kept the Books of Moses and the Prophets There is now less reason why we should take the present Church of Rome which we evidently see to teach Doctrines and set up a worship as contrary to the Scriptures as darkness is to light to be an infallible Judge of faith upon this account because the Primitive Roman Church in communion with other Churches did hand down to posterity the holy Scriptures without any falsification since the Church of Rome at this day doth both accept and impose upon her own Children and would but cannot upon others Apocryphal Books for Canonical I have now shewed that these Queries are not unanswerable by Protestants adhering to their own principles or Axioms I desire you to consider the result of the whole design Except you allow him at first that the Roman-Church is in propriety of speech the Catholick Church this disquisition can advance you not an hairs-breadth to a better opinion of the Roman Church for a Guide then you had before For after all the clamour made for resolution of these Queries concerning the Catholick Church the main Question stands as it did Whether the Church of Rome at this day be to be subjected unto as an infallible Guide and to be communicated with all other Churches being abandoned and particularly the Church of England whereof you are now a setled member Till this be resolved you that know the frame of our Church and the module of our Religion may stay safely where you are It remains now that I examine his Answer to my conclusive Querie And I shall briefly note what you may by your own reason or experience discover either absurd or false in it He doth not require you to desert the Reformed Church of England for adhering to the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith For the Roman Church doth that as well as the Protestant as he says If this Querist do not pretend to Infallibility and Authority over you he will out of modesty allow you to examine whether Papists do as well that is as fully and firmly adhere to the Scriptures as English Protestants Certainly they do not well own them for a Rule who accuse them of obscurity and imperfection and make it a point of faith that the defectiveness of Scriptures must be supplied with unwritten Traditions And as certain it is that we who maintain the fulness of Scriptures in delivery of all things necessary to salvation and the perspicuity in that delivery and therefore admit of no point of Religion that is a meer stranger unto the Scripture do more closely stick to that Rule then the Papists But because you are free to examine the adherence of Papists to the Scriptures in particulars by comparison with the English Protestants try whether a mangled Eucharist the real Sacrifice of Christ by a Priest

FIVE CAPTIOUS QUESTIONS Propounded by a Factor for the PAPACY Answered by a DIVINE of the Church of God in ENGLAND By Parallel Questions and Positive Resolutions To which is added An occasional Letter of the Lord Viscount FALKLAND to the same Gentleman much to this present purpose Job 34.3,4 The ear trieth words as the palate tasteth meat Let us choose to us judgment Let us know among our selves what is good Luke 12.57 Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ says Yea why do ye not even of your selves judge what is right LONDON Printed by T. R. for Hen. Brome at the Gun at the West end of St. Pauls 1673. A Premonition TO THE READER THe Title Page of a Book doth commonly hold forth a Bill of Fare as I may so speak whereby Passengers who are either hungry after sound knowledge or delight to feed on the thin and airy Diet of Wit or are greedy of Novelty are invited to the Stationers Ordinary But a Preface to the Reader is often necessary to excite and prepare his mind for the kindly reception and good digestion of the Treatise it self Give me leave therefore Courteous Reader to arrest you before you sit down to your enterteinment with giving you an Account concerning the Questions here agitated the Answerers Engagement and the occasion with the design of this Publication First As for the Five Questions they have been of late years thrown about in several Families where Popish Huntsmen or Fowlers take the boldness to set their toyls or snares to catch souls insomuch as they make near as much noise and yield as much matter of discourse in England as the Five Propositions in Jansenius did lately in France We may by this see the truth of * Eph. 4.14 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 St. Paul's observation that false Teachers are cunning Cheaters like to common Gamesters who are skilfull in all the tricks of Dice true and false and have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a methodical course of imposture † Apoc. 12.9 Joh. 8.44 Mat. 13.38,39 The old and subtil Serpent who is the Father of lyes and active sower of tares in Gods husbandry is the grand master of this art of deceiving The Papists are the most diligent students and the most unlucky proficients in this School of darkness whose principal study it is to obscure the light and to hinder the power of truth And their method is the same that the adversaries of our Blessed Saviour used who attempted often to insnare him by insidious Questions vainly presuming that their shallow wit could baffle him who unknown to them was the eternal Wisdom of God vailed under a cloud of a mean † Mar. 6.3 Joh. 7.15 illiterate Carpenter But * Mat. 23.8 our only Master the Christ quickly put them to silence and shame either by propounding cross questions or by parables wherein they might with little study read their own malice and folly See Mark 11.27 12.13 And as then they that thus lay in wait to intangle Christ in his discourse were the Emissaries of the High Priest and his Councel who were in appearance the visible Church of God but did set themselves in opposition against Christ and the Gospel and those Antichristian Ministers acted by instructions given forth by those who set them on work Thus the Popish Circumforanei that go up and down like the juggling Exorcists at Ephesus Act. 19.13 do not act meerly by their singular private fancies but as they are taught and prescribed by their superiors and the well-head of their Sophistries is the Court of Rome Septem urbs clara jugis toti quae praesidet orbi Propert. Apoc. 17.9 18. There are indeed in the seven headed or seven-hilled City which is the seat of the Mother of abominations more shops then one where these weapons are forged The Congregation for the propagation of the Tridentine Faith the Schools of the Loyolists the English Seminary without doubt are all deep in Counsel and hard at work now or never for England's unhappy divisions fomented secretly by Papists are Rome's most advantageous opportunities to reduce this lost Nation to become once more enthralled and tributary to the Pope's spiritual usurped Monarchy which indeed is an Antichristian Kingdom of this World Hence comes that consent in the way which Romanists now take to gain Proselytes But we may further observe that by order they alter their course and shift their weapons every forty years or thereabouts since the Reformation which indeed is no light argument of a weak Cause which cannot stand without shifting the ground and the defences of it But still they accommodate their persensions to the different temper and humour of our Countreymen that are variable in several ages taking advantage also from the changes in the state of the Kingdom in which the Church cannot but suffer some alteration in the outward form of Ecclesiastical Administrations I can upon a good occasion offred produce five Popish Propositions cast abroad in A. D. 1623. and also the Answer of a learned and pious Divine then living and still of happy memory Those were of a fashion somewhat different from these Questions but tended to the same purpose For the chief aim of all such writings is to amuse Protestants especially those who are unacquainted with true antiquity and to put them off from applying the Rule of faith delivered in the holy Scriptures to the present Religion of Rome and from attending on that Ministry which is Gods Ordinance for our instruction and under which Gods providence hath seated us and to make men gape after an infallible Guide which Papists say is necessary but for no other reason but because they hope as they endeavour to cosen credulous people to mistake the Papacy for that infallible Guide These men are so blinded with self-interest and pride that they strongly presume that these five Questions as being the two-horned Arguments of the Beast are so subtilly framed that whether we answer Yea or Nay we are catched for certain and shall be forced to deny our own principles and to confess the existence of an infallible Guide somewhere though it be in some undiscovered corner of the earth And they have such a mean opinion of us for shortness of sight and easiness of belief that being once drawn to the acknowledgement of an infallible Guide we cannot choose but take the bare word of a few Italian Factors that the most magnificent Whore of Babylon described by St. John to the life and designed evidently to be the Papal Power of Rome as it appears at this day is the infallible Guide of Gods Institution I shall add but one Advertisement concerning the preposterousness of this procedure This Questionist in the close of his Reply says that till his Questions are answered he hath nothing to do with the proof of any thing It is a remarkable thing that all Papists by the instruction common to all their Schools of deceit dispose