Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
faith_n	evil_a	good_a	tree_n	6,434	5	10.3457	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96073	A modest discourse, of the piety, charity & policy of elder times and Christians. Together with those their vertues paralleled by Christian members of the Church of England. / By Edward Waterhouse Esq;	Waterhouse, Edward, 1619-1670.	1655 (1655)	Wing W1049; Thomason E1502_2; ESTC R208656	120,565	278

out the eyes of those their Teachers for whom not many years since they would have pulled out their own But enough of this I return to Traditions which while they contend with Scripture or are made as supplements to inch out Scripture thought too short I wholly disallow Though I confess I love ingenuous freedom and I beleeve Religion is not in many things so stiffgirt as some ridgid people suggest while they portray it clubsisted ready to smite every one it meets with nay in a keenness like Peters sword strait out and off with the ear of every opponent yet do I not comply with the judgment of some who rest on a Counsel-Canon as on Gospel and make less difference between them then is almost discernable because I fear it hath somewhat of a popish smatch in it for were not the Popes infallibility and the Popes virtuall presence and authoritative influence in Counsels in part leaned to some of our Profession would be more nice in that kinde then they are I will contest in reverence and duty to holy Counsels and Synods lawfully called and convened with any he that 's most a servant to them God forbid I should depraetiate worth in any man or judge my self fit to censure and not rather to be censured but this I say Da mihi Magistrum Christum Da mihi Regulam S. Scripturam In matters of this weight I 'le to the beam of the Sanctuary no Master will I own as to imperation over my faith but Christ I like not to crave mens pardons as the Sicilian Ambassadors did Pope Martin the fourths blasphemously Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis While they speak according to Scripture I 'le obey them and take heed not to offend them but if they prove illuminates and eccentrically wilde that they tell me Christ is in this Enthusiasm and that new Light which neither I nor they understand nor doth Gods word clear out to me they are to me but as tinkling cymbals I neither care for their Euge's nor fear I their Anathema's Whatever then becomes of other Writings my zeal and vote shall be ever to preserve the renown of the holy Books of the old and new Testament let loose persons call them by those profane nick-names of Lesbiam regulam Evangelium nigrum Theologiam atramentariam nasum cereum and let Atheists deride them they are the Christians Magna Charta for Heaven cursed be he that violates them to profane uses they are the Christians Canaan Let profane worldlings look with bloody Gardner's eyes upon it not endure to see the Book called Verbum Dei yet the sincere Christian values it as his Canaan the milk and honey of which refresheth him against his tedious march in the wilderness of this sinful and sorrowful life accounting all other Books as Egypts garlick and onyons to its Manna and Quails This this is full of the dew of Heaven as was Gideon's Fleece when all other Writings profit nothing but are dry and sapless 't is the Iliads which every devout Alexander who by faith overcomes the world lodgeth in his noblest Cabinet his heart 'T is the Tree of life on which hangs the Fruit of the knowledge of good and evil 't is the Ark of God in which as it were is the pot of Manna and Aaron's rod comfort and correction therein are Gods staves of beauty and bonds his binding and his drawing cords yea therein the whole duty of man both to God and his neighbour is comprized Now judge O man what could God do more for his Vineyard the Church then he hath done In giving her such an Oracle for her doubts such a Light against her darkness such a Touchstone of her Purity and her rivals adulteration And what can the Church do less in return to God then by signal fidelity maintain the honor and authority of this Canon deposited with her Let that blasphemous new light M r Edwards mentions call the Scriptures the golden Calf and brazen Serpent that set at variance King and Parliament and Kingdom against Kingdom that things would never be well till the golden calf and brazen serpent were broken to pieces yet next to heaven I will venter all I have in the holy war for Scripture He that comes to surprize that Capitol shall have my life his sacrifice and my prayers his curse and let all Christian people say Amen Amen This is the first Jewel in Antiquities Crown her zeal for the reverence of the holy Scriptures Secondly The elder Church Christian was express about a Ministry and the right qualification of Ministers according to the holy Institution of our Lord Jesus the great Head Doctor and Bishop of his Church who left her not as common in which every Christian as to the publick use of gifts had alike right but separated some to instruct to exercise power of the Keys to continue succession and to minister the holy things of the Gospel by virtue of an infallible promise of his cooperation with them to the end of the world This separation has been for many hundred yeers declared by Imposition of hands which the Church calls Ordination and has Apostolique practice to warrant it In Acts 6. 6. Stephen is mentioned to be a man full of faith and of the holy Ghost yet did he not execute any Ministerial Office upon account of his gracious qualifications till he was presented to the Apostles they had prayed for him and laid their hands on him a Scripture well to be weighed by men of contrary judgement especially since backed by the general practice of the Church Catholique For if the Churches fidelity in this Gospel Tradition and Universally received Ordinance should be questioned the Canon of holy Writ and all the Doctrines and Practises of Christianity will become litigious since the Church as the pillar and ground of truth is the deliverer and declarer of them And we are not to doubt but that the holy Ghost who leads into all truth hath rightly guided the Catholique Church to this belief since all holy men of all times and Churches how different soever each from other in Rites and situation have agreed upon it and accordingly declared themselves and nothing hath ever been found against it worthy the sway of our assents in contradiction to so Oecumenical an acknowledgment And truly I much wonder any should be of contrary judgement who ought to know the validity of Antiquities consent echoing to Scripture were Scripture silent had the practice of Antiquity no footing therein I should be as unwilling to follow it as any he that is most against it For that of Reverend Calvin is most true Si in sola Antiquitate c. If Antiquity be only the Judge then prodigious heresies which brake out in Apostolique times will become Catholique faith But when the Word of God gives rise to what in this kinde Antiquity embraceth and

A Modest DISCOURSE OF THE Piety Charity Policy OF ELDER TIMES AND CHRISTIANS Together With those their Vertues Paralleled by Christians Members OF THE Church of ENGLAND By EDWARD WATERHOUSE Esq Conscientiae satis faciamus nihil in famam laboremus sequatur vel mala dum bene moerearis LONDON Printed by A. M. for Simon Miller and are to be sold at his Shop at the Star in S t Pauls Church-yard 1655. TO MY Most Dear and Indulgent Father FRANCIS WATERHOUSE of Grenford in the County of Middlesex Esq SIR I Would fain testifie my reall duty and observance of you by some action that most speaks me grateful to God and you for your extraordinary affection to me And since it is not my happinesse to command an opportunity wherein I might expresse the honest ambition I have to shew to that degree I know becomes me my sense of your favours yet my confidence is that you will accept the humble tender of him who now and ever craves your blessing and subscribes himself Sir Your dutifull and obedient Son E. WATERHOUSE A Short View OF ANTIQUITY AND ELDER TIMES AND CHRISTIANS IT was an old and true complaint that Truth hath ever been crucified between two Thieves those I count Superstition and Innovation the Churches Scylla and Carybdis at which in all her voyages thorow-the severall Centuries of the world she hath been bulged and sometimes neer to a fatall miscarriage while she is threatned by the two rigid adhaesion of her professors who as the Jews of old prefer Abraham before Christ antiquity before verity and had rather have no Religion then not that they have been bred in and accustomed to though it be like the Gibeonites bread dry and mouldy and clouted with unnecessary and vain Ceremonies Another while she is in a storm from those wanderers who will seek abroad when there is bread enough in their Fathers house being discontented at any thing which is not new and desirous of every thing but what is old The vanity of these excesses the utmost angles beyond which mans pride and petulancy cannot go God hath in mercy to his Church and in right to his own glory passive under their Tyrannies discovered in all ages setting notable brands of his displeasure on the ringleaders and impudent chieftains in this wickedness some of them he hath suffered so to be swollen with pride that the earth hath not been able to bear their burden Others he hath so flatted by detecting that brazen face that to cover its effrontery had the veyl of virgin verity Jacobs voice but Esau's rough hands that like decryed actors and bankrupt Mountebanks they departed the stage with a stink and lost their course in that fog by which they designed to annoy the Church As the best state of Man Innocency and the best place Paradise was chosen by Satan to act his first and greatest craft in so ever since hath he taken the purest times of the Church as his harvest and gainfullest season of temptation vitiating and annoying them most dangerously with suppurated Opinions and ulcerous Doctrines He thought that the way to overcome Adam was by Eve the weaker vessell and the Tyrociny and nonage of the Church he took for the fittest time to sowe his tares in because he expected less resistance from Infancy then from further Growth Even in our Lords time the devils Chappel goes up by Gods Church Simon Magus peep● forth and no sooner our Lord ascended but his Disciples have beasts to contend with after the manner of men then came in damnable Haeresies such as that of Elymas in Claudius his time of Menander under Titus and other following Emperours of Ebion Cerinthus and others in which Ecclesiasticall Writers are copious Notwithstanding which torrent of Evil it pleased God to raise up many valiant and pregnant assertors of truth who with great courage confronted these affronters of faith and rendred them so despicable that no man who would be thought any body consorted with them but avoided them as the first-born of Satan sent abroad to pervert souls and subvert Christianity It hath been observed that the authours of errours and scismes in the Church have been Church-men either grosly weak or proudly wilfull whose Ignorance or pertinacy hath wooed them to forsake the wholsome form of words and to take up new Methods both of language and Doctrine under which canting drolleryes they utter the devices of their own brains gain credulous proselytes and dishonour all who differ from them where they themselves disagree with truth and order That as Agrippinus of old perswaded those which he condemned that it was best for them to be condemned For said he I do not give sentence against them as an enemy or one that would ruin them but as a good guardian who dispatcheth them out of that life which they cannot live but in misery so do these seduce and lead away silly souls and yet possess them that the only way to finde heaven above is to lose the Church below and that Christ is not in his Word but in their fictitious dreams where he hath not appointed men to seek for nor promised men to finde him Thus as C. Curio the Plebeian Tribune is charged by Paterculus to be the firebrand of Romes Civil Wars bold prodigal of his own and others modesties and Fortunes ingeniously wicked and able to publique mischiess so may these most justly be stigmatiz'd for the infamous lewd Boutefeues of the Churches peace and purity and therefore praied against in the Prophets words Let them be as chaffe before the winde and let the Angel of the Lord chase them let their waies be dark and slippery and let the Angel of the Lord persecute them Psa 35. 5 6. And as all things produced are of the nature of their Producers as is the Artists skill such ordinarily is the Artifice so happens it with errours and disorders mostly they resemble their Patrons Crafty heads look before they leap and design their march by steps and grand paws setting up as it were with pinns and points the little baubles of their aymes and as those vent so marshall they out greater and more They know forbidden wares must not be sold in market overt therefore skulk they into bye-streets and lodg they in the suburbs out of the freedom where the lewd varlets of wander lye there and to those they put their tinsil follies and with those cheap and new do they outbrave the truth which covets no greater honour then the touch Some mens eyes fail them they beleeve every thing gold that glisters because they are moon-blind and rather dark then clear with such these crafty Merchants bartar freely taking Souls in exchange for their cheats These principled to purposes of seduction like blind stallions accost all comers hit or miss and most an end succeed best with the multitude for the blind must lead the blind how else will they