Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
faith_n	rule_n	scripture_n	tradition_n	12,255	5	9.8749	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40073	The design of Christianity, or, A plain demonstration and improvement of this proposition viz. that the enduing men with inward real righteousness or true holiness was the ultimate end of our Saviour's coming into the world and is the great intendment of his blessed Gospel / by Edward Fowler ...	Fowler, Edward, 1632-1714.	1671 (1671)	Wing F1698; ESTC R35681	136,795	332

good the forementioned charge of Idolatry and of other Impious Practices and Principles against them that it is unimaginable how it should be possible that any who are not stark-blind or resolved that they will not see should not acknowledge them And as for the elaborate tricks whereby they endeavour to justifie themselves from those Accusations and to perswade the World that they are undeserved they may doubtless whensoever they shall have a mind to it devise others no less plausible with as little pains to make forcing of Virgins no Rape lying with other folks Wives no Adultery cutting of Purses no Theft Robbing of Churches no Sacrilege and in one word they may with as little exercise of their brains invent ways to do whatsoever is most flatly forbidden in the ten Commandments without being guilty of transgressing any one of them I might proceed to instance in very many other Doctrines of the Romish Church which by what we have said of the Christian Religion we may be perfectly assured are Anti-Christian but I will onely adde two or three more As their asserting the Insufficiency of the holy Scriptures for mens salvation and denying them to be the Sole Rule of Faith and joyning with them their own paltry Traditions as equally necessary to be believed and this against the express words of S. Paul to Timothy 2 Epist. 3 Chap. where he tells him that the holy Scriptures are able to make him wise unto Salvation through faith which is in Christ Iesus And that All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for Doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in Righteousness That the man of God may be perfect thorowly furnished unto all good works And their teaching that the Gospel is obscure and difficult to be understood even in things necessary to be believed and practised Which as it makes it greatly inefficacious for the purpose which we have proved it is designed for so doth it open a gap for vile interpretations of any part of it and exposeth it to the power of Heretiques and especially of the Romish ones to make it a mere Nose of Wax Which none can doubt that consider also therewith their Doctrine of Implicite Faith and that other upon which it is grounded viz. That of the Infallibility of their Church which as the Iesuites define is seated in the Pope's Chair But whether it be asserted that the Popes have an unerring faculty or they and their General Councils together this Doctrine being received as by them it is without the least ground for unquestionably true doth greatly hazard nay and even necessitate the betraying of men to the very worst both of opinions and practices whensoever this pretended infallible guide shall be pleas'd to propose them to them And whosoever believes it must to use the words of M r Chillingworth be prepared in mind to esteem vertue vice and vice vertue Christianity Anti-christianism and Antichristianism Christianity if the Pope shall so determine And this Doctrine without doubt is that which causeth those of the Papists to stick so fast in silthy 〈◊〉 and to persist so obstinately in their foul errours who are not detained therein by the love of gain with which their Popes and other Ecclesiasticks by the means of diverse of them are mightily enriched or by the dear affection they bear to their other lusts which they are so exactly fitte●… for the satisfaction of Their Doctrines being very many of them so ridiculously absurd plainly false and of such dangerous consequence I say nothing else certainly could hold the sincerer sort of Papists in the belief of them but this consideration that any one of them being let go their great Dagon of the Churches Infallibility must necessarily to the ground with it I might also instance in their Doctrine of the Dispensableness of the most Solemn Oaths which is no less destructive to Humane Society than it is to Piety And in that of the Popes power to absolve Subjects from their Allegiance to their lawful Sovereigns And to them adde a great number of Maximes of the most famous order among them the Iesuites and Resolutions of Cases of Conscience which are as wicked and destructive of a holy Life as the Devil himself can well devise But to be employed with Hercules in emptying the Augean stable would be as acceptable a work as stirring so far in this nasty Sink Whosoever shall peruse the Mystery of Iesuitism may find more than enough there to turn his stomach though it should be none of the most squeamish and quezy and to make him stand astonished and bless him that ever such loathsome and abominable stuff should come from persons that derive their name from the Holy Iesus But to hasten to the conclusion of this Chapter the most pure and holy Religion of our Saviour hath the Church of Rome defiled with as impure and unholy opinions and practices and hath taken the most effectual course not only to render it a feeble and insignificant thing for accomplishing the Design for which it was intended by the Blessed Founder of it but also to make it unhappily successful in serving the directly contrary The great Mystery of Godliness hath she transformed into a grand Mystery of Iniquity and by that means most excessively confirmed its professed enemies the Iews and Mahumetans in their enmity against it And for my own part I should not stick to say as did Averroes when he observed that the Popish Christians adored that they ate Sit anima mea cum Philosophis Let my soul take its fate with the Philosophers in the other world did I think Christianity to be such a Religion as she makes it As much as I admire it now I should then prefer that of Socrates Plato and Cicero very far before it Though I abhor so far to imitate the Papists in the Devilishly cruel uncharitableness as to pronounce them all in a state of damnation yet I dare assert with the greatest and most undoubted confidence that all that continue in Communion with that degenerated and Apostate Church run infinite hazards And moreover that it is impossible that any sincere persons should give an explicite and understanding assent to all her Doctrines but that whosoever can find in his heart to practise upon them can be nothing better than a shamefully debauched and immoral wretch Nor is it conceivable what should induce any to exchange the Reformed for the Popish Religion as too many have of late done that have but a competent understanding of both besides the desire of serving some corrupt interest And we plainly see that the generality of those that turn Apostates from the Church of England to that of Rome are such people as were a Scandal to her while they continued in her And that Atheism and Popery are the common Sanctuaries to which the most abominably vicious and profane of this Age do betake themselves CHAP. XVIII The Third Inference That these two sorts