Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n
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A42580
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A vindication of the principles of the author of the answer to the compiler of the nubes testium from the charge of popery in answer to a late pretended letter from a dissenter to the divines of the Church of England : as deceivers, and yet true, 2 Cor. 6. 8.
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Gee, Edward, 1657-1730.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing G464; ESTC R3563
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22,276
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42
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Bishops challenge as their Right To let him see how loosely he manages this debate betwixt us I can with putting in two or three necessary words subscribe to all our Compiler says for the Pope and yet be as far from owning the Popes Supremacy as the Church of England is or ever was The Fathers teach says our Compiler (a) Nubes Testium p. 22. that Christ Built his Church upon Peter So say I too if by Fathers here be meant two or three of them and not the Fathers unanimously as he hath it before or generally That the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of Saint Peter is what I can also grant and that that See is the Centre of the Catholick Communion if I may but put in here what is absolutely necessary while possessed by an Orthodox Bishop and that whosoever separates himself from it I add professing the true Faith and possessed by a Catholick Bishop is guilty of Schism I CAN I SAY SUBSCRIBE THOUGH I DO NOT TO ALL This without any Obligation in the least of believing the Popes Supremacy All that our Compiler puts down here reaching no farther than a Primacy of Order does not at all suppose in the Popes any Jurisdiction or Authority over the Catholick Church Having dispatched my Vindication against the Charge of the three first Articles of Popery I come now to examine the fourth which doth charge me with doubting whether there be really any Controversy about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England Well then are these my expressions in the place quoted Or is this the sense of them there I must profess to the world that had I not already discovered the cheats of the malicious Representer in the former Articles I could not have believed that any person of common sense or learning would have been guilty of such tricks I had the same occasion in my chapter about the Tradition that I had in the former chapter about Supremacy of shewing how loose a Writer our Compiler is and exposing him for putting that down as an account of the Controversy which I could subscribe to if taken in that sense which the words would fairly bear and yet be never the nearer to Popery than I now am or ever intend to be Upon this coming to examine what he had put down at the Head of his Collections about Tradition I have these expressions To state therefore the Controversy about Tradition if there really be any betwixt us he should not have put down that for the account of the debate herein betwixt us which is agreed to by both sides nor should have omitted that wherein WE REALLY DISAGREE and that is about the Scriptures being a certain and Perfect Rule of Faith WITHOUT THE HELP of TRADITION which the Council of Trent hath made to be of Equal Authority with the Scripture One would think such clear expressions as these would have prevented my being accused of doubting whether there really be any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England but no clearness it seems can be protection against the Malice of such an Adversary as is fallen upon me and therefore he puts down those expressions as mine doubting whether there be really any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England when in that very paragraph I say that We meaning the Churches of England and Rome Really Disagree about Tradition's being part of the Rule of Faith. And therefore any other Reader less spiteful than my angry Adversary would easily have seen and observed that the expression in the beginning of the paragraph if there really be any was used and intended for an allusion to that state of the Controversie which had been set down by the Compiler about Tradition and ought not to be wire-drawn to make me doubt that in the beginning of the paragraph the contrary to which I did directly assert within three lines after The fifth Article of the charge against me is that I did say that the Tradition of the Catholick Church is to be received and the sixth is of the same kind that I confessed there That by Tradition we receive the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Suppositious Writings I do freely own that these are my expressions in that place and these I am sure are far from looking like Popery if I that wrote them may be allowed to tell in what sense I did mean and intend them All the service that my Adversary could expect from the citing and insisting upon them was onely to amuse the common Readers with the Word Tradition that they not understanding the Ambiguity of the Word nor in what several senses the Word Tradition was used might be tempted to believe that I was for setting up there that Tradition which they used to hear preached against so much by the Clergy of the Church of England By Tradition here which I said we receive or admit of I did not mean that Tradition which is set up as part of the Rule of Faith in the Church of Rome nor did I any more mean Tradition as it is taken for any Doctrine of the Church of Rome which they say was from the beginning delivered to them All that I meant by Tradition there was no more than the bare means of delivering down to us the Word of God and any Rites or Customs in the Ancient Church When I said therefore that by this Tradition we received the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Supposititious Writings The full and clear meaning of those expressions was that the Canonical Books of the Holy Scriptures or to speak to the meanest capacity that the Bible was delivered down from time to time and from hand to hand in all Ages unto us that we did receive them from our Forefathers in the Church as they had received them from theirs up unto the beginning and that since they delivered down to us onely those Books which the Church of England does believe and admit for the Word of God we do thereby know that no other Books could be part of the Scriptures which were not handed down to us for such This is as much as I need to offer either in Vindication of my self or explication of my words when I spoke of Tradition but because I cannot clear my innocence too much herein I will shew the world that I had very good Vouchers for every word that I said thereabout and will produce the sense of Arch-Bishop Usher who never was thought by any Sort of Protestants to be any ways inclineable to or guilty of Popery This most learned Prelate in his Reply to the Jesuits Challenge hath these words about (b) p. 35. Tradition This must I needs tell you before we begin that you much mistake the matter if you think that Traditions of all sorts promiscuously are struck at
wrought Miracles by them which WE do grant the Fathers of those latter Ages did and might do it too as long as they kept as they said of themselves that they always did from paying Religious Worship unto them But we say withal that what the Christians of those Ages did about these things does no ways defend the present Extravagancies of the Church of Rome the Excesses wherein about Reliques are come to that scandalous height as to make the learned men of their own Church ashamed of them They that will compare this passage with the Representer's Extracts out of it in the 13th Article against me cannot but discover what usage every one must expect that dares to provoke so very angry a man. But that I may also shew my own Judgment about Reliques I will trouble the Reader with the next paragraph wherein if I did not set down exactly as I designed the Opinion of our Mother-Church of England about those things yet I am sure I did that of my own Soul. As to the Practice of the Church of England which inquires not after nor is solicitous about the Reliques of Saints this may be said in her defence that she finds no Practice or Command about any such searching after the bones of the Dead in any part of Scripture of either Testament but that their whole care then was to commit them to their Sepulchres in hopes of a future Resurrection and never to disturb their Ashes and therefore she thinks it must needs be her greatest commendation that she is more careful to imitate what she finds written and practised in the Scriptures themselves than to imitate what the fourth Age of the Church began to practise when the Church of Christ was near four hundred years old The Holy Scriptures themselves are the Rule of her Faith and for any Apostolical Practices she inquires among them who lived with the Apostles or nearest to them among whom finding nothing of any searching for Reliques or any Miracles done by them in those first three hundrid years she is resolved to practise what the Christians of those first and purest Ages did rather than what After-ages did wherein plenty and prosperity let loose the reins to some peoples fancies and made that a part of Religion which was never any before The fourteenth Article of Popery against me is that we freely grant That the Fathers practised praying for the Dead and owned it as advantageous to the Souls departed And that I should say that no body denys That the Fathers in the first Ages us'd Oblations and Prayers for the Dead and that these Prayers were offer'd up also for pardon of sins I am extremely at a loss to find how I am drawn in for Popery here and which way it is proved upon me All that I have done here is to own that the Fathers did practise those things which I could not deny without betraying a greater Ignorance than I must pretend to in those Writers or that I have no conscience at all But must my Ingenuity then be made my crime and must I be made a Papist for granting that which I could not in my Circumstances deny without making my self a bold Lyar I am fallen it seems into very bad hands into the hands of One who is resoved to blacken me without having any regard to Truth or Justice or Conscience I do not say one word there of my approving what those Fathers did I do not in the least hint that I am for such Practises or that I ever use such Prayers or Oblations for the Dead or ever intended to do it So that this terrible Charge depends onely and must rest upon my granting such Practices in former days But is this dealing either just or reasonable at this rate he may make me a defender of any the most contrary things when I grant as every man of conscience must that the generality of Fathers in the first Centuries believed a Millennium am I to be made a Millenary for this when I grant that for many Ages the Communion was given unto Infants must I be concluded to be one that is of opinion that it ought to be so still or must I be represented thereupon to the world as one that does still practise the thing and gives the Communion unto the little Children How ridiculous soever such false and extravagant conclusions appear to the world yet the Usage that I find from the Representer's hands is exactly the same and altogether as groundless as the other As for the Doctrine and Practices of the Church of England her self which I do heartily subscribe to so far is she from either encouraging or practising Prayers for the Dead that whereas in the dawning of the Reformation in King Edwards first Common-Prayer Book there was a direct Praying for the Dead in that Prayer for the whole Estate of Christs Church in the next Review of the Liturgy the Petitions for the Dead were quite left out of that Prayer and out of the whole Service In the Common-Prayer Book printed at London in March 1549 the Prayer for the Dead is to be met with and so it is in another Edition in June following in the same year at London And in a Third Edition of 1551. at Dublin but upon the Review which was made about that time we find it omitted and quite left out of the Common-Prayer Books printed in 1552 and afterwards down to our times not any usage or revival of that Practice among us As to the Reasons for leaving off that Practice which could pretend to so much Antiquity I am not at leasure nor have Room here to set them down I must confess that I am not at all satisfied of it from the best Instances for it I cannot but look upon S. Ambrose's praying for the Soul of the Emperor Theodosius and his resolution not to leave him till by his Tears and Prayers he had brought him unto the Mountain of the Lord where he might enjoy Life for evermore as a Thing that might very well have been spared nay that ought to have been spared since we know by the very same Oration that Saint Ambrose did believe that the Soul of that Emperour was in Bliss was placed in Heaven did enjoy at that time perpetual Light and a never ceasing Tranquillity and was admitted into the Society of the Saints in Glory I have no other defence to make for this extraordinary Action of this Father than to say that all this was done in a Rhetorical Harangue wherein the Custom of all times hath allowed the Orators to speak things that were not strict truths and things which they neither properly speaking believed themselves or were desirous that others should And so in that celebrated Instance of Saint Austins praying for his Mother Monica after her decease that God would not enter into Judgment with her and yet professing in the very next words that he did believe that God had already done for her