Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A44536
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A letter from a Protestant gentleman to a lady revolted to the Church of Rome
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Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing H2845; ESTC R1400
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32,717
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156
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have no solid peace but if you did truly repent as you say you did what could hinder you from applying the promises made to penitent Sinners to your self which are the true grounds of comfort and satisfaction may be you wanted a Voice from heaven to confirm the promise of the Gospel but have you since heard 〈◊〉 Voice from heaven in the Church of ROME I think not if you truly repented in our Church then certainly by the word of God you were assured that your Sins were pardoned and if they were pardoned why should you not comfort your self with that pardon That which makes you rejoyce now is because you believe your Sins are pardoned but if when you were of our Church you verily believed you truly repented you could not but believe that your Sins were pardoned and consequently you might have taken as much comfort as you doâ—â—yw But the Ministers some Church of Englâ—nd you say gave me no absolution which the Roman Priest did Why Madam did any of our Ministers deny you absolution when you could assure them that your Repentance was sincere did you ever ask absolution and were you refused Nay I appeal to your Conscience did not those Ministers you conversed withal assure you over and over that you need not doubt of the pardon of your Sins so long as you did detest and abhor them and watch and strive and pray against them and were sincerly resolved to commit them no more and did avoyd the very occasions of Evill and what was this but absolution which however you might have had performed with greater Ceremony if you had had a mind to it It is no very hard matter to guesse at the rise and progress of your peace and satisfaction in the Roman Church All new things please and provided they have but a good face allure our fancy and this being pleased It s very natural to defend them and having once defended them our Love to them advances and by degrees we think our honour and Credit is too far engaged to part with them We see how Children are quieted with new trifles pardon the uncourtly comparison I know not how to shun it and the new object they never saw before surprizes and charmes them makes them fix their Eyes upon it and cry if they cannot have it In the nature of Children we see our own and embraceing new objects which our sickly fancy is roving after is but the Scene of Childrens longing for new play things changed the Novelty of the thing you were venturing upon the new Church new indeed new to you and new to Almighty God which you were to joyn your self to the Stool of Confession in the Church and the Priests new habit and mortified face which perhaps he owes more to his Country than to his Vertue and affected gravity and assuring of you that their absolution had a wonderful Vertue and efficacy all these together surprized you and raised your expectation and struck some kind of reverence into you Your mind being thus possessed with the Idea's of these new thing 's you never tried before and working upon your affections and moving your will to confess to this man of Wonders you naturally fell into a fancy that so much formality and Ceremony different from that you had been used to in our Church had more charmes in it than our plain and honest way and then laid the stress of your pardon upon the new Priests absolution in that formal manner wherewith your fancy being impregnated it soon diffused a cheereful air in your countenance and raised some gladness in your heart because you had now done something more than ordinary as an Antidote against your Sin And from hence arose your pretended peace and satisfaction or delusion rather because you layd the stress of your pardon upon the absolution of that Roman Priest and not upon the sincerity of your repentance If a Priest could forgive Sinn 's whether men Repent or no Then indeed you might have layd the stress of your pardon on that forgiveness of the Priest but since by your own confession that absolution of the Priest signifies nothing except people truly repent for you to build your comfort on that absolution when it should have been founded upon your sincere repentance cannot but be a false fire and a conterfeit comfort if you say you did not fetch your peace from that absolution but from the sincerity of your repentance you catch your self for if your true repentance must be the foundation of it then you might have taken the same comfort in our Church if you still reply you could not you only mean you would not for true repentance is true repentance in any Church and if true repentance causes true comfort it would have caused true comfort in our Church as well as in the Roman and therefore there must be some cheat in this comfort The fancy you have since taken up that the reason why you found comfort in the Church of ROME upon your confession and absolution and none in ours must needes be because the Priests of that Church are true Priests and those of ours are not is as solid as your peace If we have no true Priests in the Church of England then most certainly the Church of ROME hath none The Bishops which in the beginning of our reformation did ordain Bishops Priests and Deacons among us were ordained by Bishops of that Church and if the Character of Orders by their own confession be indeleble then it was not all the thunders and Lightenings of Excommunication at ROME could annul it It 's true your ghostly Father very confidently tells you a Quality incident to that sort of men That our first Protestant Bishops never received Orders from Bishops of the Church of ROME but one would admire what Spirit doth possess these men that they dare contradict all the publick authentick Records we have of their being consecrated by Bishops of the Church of ROME they might as well deny that there were no such Kings of England as Henry 7th and Henry 8th for we have nothing but publick Records to shew for it as deny that the Bishops of the Reformation were never consecrated by Bishops of the Roman perswasion I am perswaded that if any Papist should come into trouble about the title of an Estate he hath and did but know that the name of his Ancestors the manner of the Conveyance and his just title were in some publick Record or Register he would soon make use of it alledge it as a sufficient proof and thank God for preserving a Record that is so much for his advantage I know not what can be a better testimony in matters of fact next to Revelation than publick Records and Registers and we dare venture our reputation upon it that in the Authentick Registers of the respective Arch-Bishops of Canterbury where fear of being counted Knaves and Fools for putting in things contrary to what was publickly known
may justly be supposed to have kept the publick Notaries from asserting things notoriously false In these Registers I say it will be found what succession our first Protestant Bishops had how Arch-Bishop Parker the first Arch-Bishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizbeth to go no higher was consecrated December 17. 1559 by four persons then actually Bishops and who had formerly been Ordained by Bishops of the Church of ROME Viz. William Barlow in Henry the 8th dayes Bishop of St. Davids under Edward the 6th Bishop of Bath and Wells under Queen Mary driven into Exile and returned under Queen Elizabeth John Scory formerly Bishop of Chichester Miles Coverdale formerly Bishop of Exeter and John Hodgkins Bishop Suffragan of Bedford not to mention that the Queens Letters Patents in case any of the other should be sick or forced to be absent were directed to three Bishops more that had formerly been Popish Bishops and were turned Protestants Viz. Anthony Bishop of Laudaff John Bishop Suffâ—agan of Thedford and John Bale Bishop of Oâ—â—ery But all this hath bâ—en sâ—â—learly demonstrated out of 〈◊〉 â—ublick Records first by Mr. Mason and â—nce by Arâ—â—-Bishop Brambal that hâ— that writes of it can onely transcribe out of them and those that deny these Records must be men of strange Foreheads and of the greatest disingenuity From these men that had their Priesthood from the Church of Rome our Priesthood is lineally derived so that if our Priesthood be not valid theirs cannot be and if Heresie doth not make the Episcopal office void nor disable a man from conferring Episcopal order on other men as is evident from the second Councel of Nice with your Church an Oecumenical Counsel which received Bishop Anatolius tho consecrated by Dioscorus a Heretical Bishop if i say Heresie doth not make the Episcopal order void then suppose We were Hereticks our Priesthood which is derived from Popish Bishop that turned Protestants must be a true Priesthood still and to thiâ— purpose I remember one oâ— your Church said lately once a Priest for ever a Priest Madam if your desire to know the truth be honest and sincere you should Act like a person that hath a mind to be satisfied and search the Publick Records and tilâ— then believe not every Talâ— that 's told you the Common Plea of your Priests that ouâ— Records are sophisticated and that we have put in what we please argues only boldness and ignorance when they can shew neither where nor when nor by whom they they were corrupted Those that talk so seem neither to understand what a publick solemne thing the Consecration of a Bishop is in England nor to reflect how difficult it is to fill a publick Register with falsities as to matters of fact when there are so many hundered men that know what is done at such a time and View the Records and would most certainly speak of it if they found a flaw in the Relation But if we should deal thus with the Church of ROME question all their Registers in the Vatican and say which we might do with far greater reason thaâ— they are things packed and invented by men that have a mind to keep up a faction â— know what Language we should meet withal But will you boast say you oâ— having derived your orders from the Chuch of ROME when you believe the Church of ROME to be an Idolatrous Chuch Madam It is not the Office of a Bishop in youâ— Church we find fault withal but the abuses of it A Church that 's guilty of very great corruption both in Doctrine and manners may have something that 's good and allowable and he that retains that is not therefore guilty of her corruption nor espouses her Errours Your Idolatry is one thing and your Orders are another The Jews did take many good things from the Heathens and the Christians many commendable things from the Jewes but that neither made the Jewes approve of the Heathenish Worship nor the Christians allow of the Jewish Errours We are not so disingenious as to make the breach between you and Us wider then needs So far as you go with Scripture and true Antiquity we hold with you where you contradict both We cannot with a safe Conscience bear you Company He that sees a Pearl lye among a great deal of Trash if he take the Pearl is not therefore obliged to take the Rubbish too and if we have derived our Orders from you that inferrs no necessity that we must therefore consent to your Notorious depravations of the ancient simplicity of the Gospel The Christians heretofore that approved of the Baptism of the Donatists did not therefore presently acknowledge the truth of their opinions and he that should take a good custome from the Turks cannot be therefore said to approve of all things that are in the Alcoran Madam there is nothing more easie than to cavil at the most prudent Action in the World especially where People take a slight survey of things and do not with seriousness and deliberation weigh the circumstances of the fact and do not examine the inside as well as the outside and I must confess upon the best examination of your actions and proceedings in this Revolt to the Church of ROME you never took the Right way to be satisfied for instead of pondering the Arguments and Motives of Our departure from the Church of ROME and of the reasons we alledge for our Church and Doctrine you made it your chief imployment to read their Books and believed what they said to be Oracles for no other reason but because they talked with greater arrogance and confidence If you say that you could not judge of Arguments having never been bred a Schollar I would but ask you how you durst change your Religion then Did you change it without reason and without ground and if you are not able to Weigh the strength of Arguments how can you be sure that you are in the true Church at this time It is not talk but Arguments that must demonstrate the truth of a Religion and if you have not sufficiently weighed the Arguments of both sides It is a thousand to one you may still be in the wrong way and you know not but you may be as much out now as you were formerly Mâ—dam so great a thing as the change of your Religion upon which no less then Eternity depends might justly have challenged some years study before you had resolved upon it To do a thing of this nature upon so slight a Survey Consider whether it doth not argue rashness and weakness rather than Piety and Devotion To leave a Religion you have been bred and born in a Religion founded upon the Word of GOD and which you had Liberty to Examine by the Scripture upon reading a Popish Book or two without diving to the Bottom of the several controversies without reflecting on the importance of the points in question without studying a considerable time which Religion