Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
faith_n	apostle_n	church_n	creed_n	6,767	5	10.3283	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64062	B. Taylor's Opuscula the measures of friendship : with additional tracts : to which is now added his moral demonstration proving that the religion of Jesus Christ is from God : never before printed in this volume.; Selections. 1678	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1678 (1678)	Wing T355; ESTC R11770	78,709	214

that is when she suffered for a holy cause and a holy conscience when the Church of England was more glorious than at any time before Even when she could shew more Martyrs and Confessors than any Church this day in Christendom even then when a King died in the profession of her Religion and thousands of Priests learned and pious Men suffered the spoiling of their goods rather than they would forsake one Article of so excellent a Religion So that seriously it is not easily to be imagined that any thing should move you unless it be that which troubled the perverse Jews and the Heathen Greek Scandalum crucis the scandal of the Cross You stumbled at that Rock of offence You left us because we were afflicted lessened in outward circumstances and wrapped in a cloud but give me leave only to remind you of that sad saying of the Scripture that you may avoid the consequent of it They that fall on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporal end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the loss of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandal to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more careful you would have remained much more innocent But I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked and dangerous proposition what defect what amiss did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councils or in any other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of Heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unless a company of Men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian. So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dispute that the Church had for 400. or 500. Years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our belief 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of King Edw. 6. and till the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did believe That Bull enjoyned Recusancy and made that which was an act of Rebellion and Disobedience and Schism to be the character of your Roman Catholicks And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the Faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first general Councils a holy Liturgy excellent Prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the Ten Commandments and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and do so when he requires us so to do We speak honourably of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confess his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all Men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confess our sins to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to God's Ministers in cases of Scandal or of a troubled Conscience We communicate often we are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every Year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and bless their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spiritual But now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence yon went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For do not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particulars of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is than what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may elude ancient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to choose your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Roman Church be the Catholick Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquiries is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so

called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a Cart pressed with sheaves could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still ask where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of Men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more than the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplied the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other than that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent The Council of Trent determined that the souls departed before the Day of Judgment enjoy the Beatifical Vison It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the ancient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendom is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did always reject or held as uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was only a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess. Chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Council says this is fine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation and before the Council of Constance the Doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson says he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your Religion before the Council of Constance and it is notorious that your Council of Constance determined the doctrine of the half-communion with a Non obstante to Christ's institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Prague's time against whom that Council was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not half so much for since you receded from Christ's Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the days of light and ours was invisible in the days of darkness For our Church was always visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith and reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But