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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	apostle_n	church_n	true_a	1,505	5	5.2874	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61294	A discourse concerning the devotions of the Church of Rome, especially, as compared with those of the Church of England in which it is shewn, that whatever the Romanists pretend, there is not so true devotion among them, nor such rational provision for it, nor encouragement to it, as in the church established by law among us.	Stanley, William, 1647-1731.	1685 (1685)	Wing S5244; ESTC R1838	44,628	70

ought to be estemed a very bad Man and so the Commands of Scripture enjoyn us to take Care to do Good as well as to abstain from Evil else we shall be reckoned among the unprofitable Servants We are sure that publick Service ought to be preferred before private the Glory of God and the Good of Men being more advanced by it and therefore though that man that lives in a Wilderness and serves God there when he is forced to it by Persecution may hope for a Blessing tho' he be alone and neither worshippeth God in Publick nor gives a good Example to the World yet he that runs into a Wilderness to be wondred at and admired and neglects the ordinary and most useful way of serving God there is too much reason to fear he hath his Reward At least how far soever it may please God to pardon his blind Zeal and want of Discretion yet certainly this Example of his ought not to be recommended to all as a Rule for them to walk by The first Monks we grant were very good and pious Men and were compelled to forsake their Houses and live in Solitude but it is very unreasonable to make their manner of Life a Pattern to be followed in the quiet and peaceable Ages of the Church For this would be to shew our selves insensible of the goodness of God to us in giving us the Liberty of serving him freely and openly and that we dare profess our Religion without fear of losing our Lives And for the same reason we should still chuse to celebrate the Sacrament in an upper Room because our Blessed Saviour and his Holy Apostles did so and should have our religious Assemblies in Crypts and Vaults under Ground because the first Christians in times of Difficulty and Persecution often durst use no other And as the Solitude of a Monastick Life is no proper Asfistnce or Expression of true Devotion was not known in the first Ages of the Church and afterwards was not taken up of Choice but by Necessity So also in the last place I observe that the Gospel of Christ and the Rules of Living which are given us by himself and his Holy Apostles never enjoyn or suppose any such thing We are always supposed to live in Company and Society and accorpingly the Precepts of our Saviour and the Apostles are adapted to the common Cases of Men and the Concerns of such as converse freely in the World And therefore I must needs say that it hath been very wisely ordered that there should be new and distinct Rules made for those that delight in this solitary and Monastick way of Life For they are such a kind of men as the Gospel of Christ hath no proper Rules for Secondly And I am afraid that there is as little true Devotion in their so frequent and constant Prayers enjoyned and practised in their Monasteries though this be confessedly what is most commendable in their way of Life and is the only way by which they themselves can pretend to do any Good in the World If I except those which are but very few that workwith their Hands Praise and Prayer is therefore acceptable with God as it is in the volunrary Expression of our Souls a Free-will Offering and Sacrifice which we offer to God in consideration of his infinite Excellencies and Perfections in himself his former undeserved Goodness to us and our Liableness to him Now the constant Prayers used in their Monasteries in more particulars than one come short of that true Devotion due from Men to their Maker For first they are as much as can be forced on a rational Being and on that account must needs lose much of their Worth and Acceptableness The Monks are obliged by the Rules of their several Orders to say such and such Prayers and just at such and such times whatever Devotion or Intention of Mind they have and they are severely punished if they fail of them Exactly at Midnight at two or three a Clock in the Morning so very often and at so very unseasonable times that many have confessed this strictness of their Devotions to be of all the greatest Burden of their Lives And yet this they must do in Imitation of some holy Man of Old who is recorded to have pray'd at these Houres whereas these Mens Devotions is not warm enough to keep them awake when they are at Prayer And therefore these Prayers not being the free Emanations of their own mind methinks the praise of them is not so much due to the Monks themselves as to the head and founder of their Order who obliged them to such Rules And their Devotion is little more praise-worthy than that of the Jews at Avignon and several other Places who are once in a Week forced to go to Church and hear a Sermou as these Monks are at least to sit there whilst a Sermon is preached and return home as good Christians as they went thither But then they are not only thus strictly obliged to such Hours of Prayer for that were somewhat tolerable they might possibly be intent on their Prayers notwithstanding But they are at the same time taught that they need only say the Words with their Mouths it is not absolutely necessary that their mind should go along with them and this together with the other must needs spoyl all true Devotion The frequency and unseasonableness of their Prayers will make it very difficult for them to attend as they ought and their Doctrine concerning the No-necessity of attention at Prayers will certainly make them to yield to these difficulties and so there may be abundance of Words said but no Devotion perform'd Besides all this they have a way of being eased of this trouble of the Prayers for according to their Casuists it is allowable for a man to get or hire another to say his Prayers for him At least he may be dispensed with by his Superiour and this Dispensation is good whether there be a just Reason or Occasion for it or no according to an excellent Maxim of theirs Non ad Valo rem sed ad Justitiam requiritur Causa And if after all this Men still will be more than they need strict in their Prayers according to the Rules of their Orders they almost constantly offend in the End and Design of their Devotions For they do them not so much to benefit the World or work themselves up to a better temper of Mind But to perform a task imposed on them and which they have vowed to perform or especially to merit by their works For they do not so much as pretend that this strictness in Devotion is absolutely Necessary for their Salvation for else why do they not enjoyn it to all seeing all have the same need of Salvation and therefore the sole end of all this strictness and constancy in Prayers is only to get Heaven for others Which Opinion besides that it will mightily discourage Men of an ordinary Charity

nor whether the Stock be spent and yet they spend as freely now as if they had been only laying up till this time and that the Treasure were now first opened Many other such Absurdities and unanswerable Difficulties there are in their Doctrine of Merit and in their practise of applying these Merits to the use of others And is it not a dismal thing that the Priests of the Church of Rome should teach men to trust in and as to Salvation depend assuredly on these of which they themselves have no manner of Assurance nor Ground to hope Is not this to play with Men's Souls and Eternal Salvation And especially can this be urged as an Encouragement of Devotion when if it were as true as it is false it tends directly to make Men vicious and to neglect Devotion For so a Man will think if there be such a Stock in the Church why should not he have a Share of it as well as another And if one can merit for another why should not he depend on others as well as they on his Merits And seeing Merits may be bought as the Roman Casuists have adjudged he may think it very reasonable that other's Merits should be given him in exchange for his Money So the Result of all is this according to this Doctrine and the supposed Church-stock only one thing is needful and that is Money and this will fully make up all lack of Piety and Devotion 10. And the belief of Purgatory and of the validity of Prayers for the dead is no proper Encouragement of true Devotion For true Devotion is such as we perform to God agreeably to his Will when we know what we do and for what ends and have a promise or hope of Success but when a man prays to God to deliver a Soul out of Purgatory he must suppose as true several things which are either false or at least very uncertain so that he can never pray in Faith or without great perplexity and distraction of mind for he knows not whether there be any such place or state as Purgatory For Scripture says nothing of it nor the Fathers of the three or four first Centuries He knows not whether the Soul that he prays for be in Purgatory if there should be such a place for it may be in Heaven or in Hell for ought he can tell And if the Soul be in Purgatory he knows not whether it be Useful or Lawful to pray for it for God hath given us neither Command nor Encouragement nor Liberty so to do Nay there are several particulars which they themselves cannot agree on concerning Purgatory viz. What Sins are promised there How the Soul without its Body can be tormented there with a material Fire Who are Gods Instruments in punishing the Souls there For the Devils are not and how the Pope by his Indulgences can apply the Satisfactions of Christ and of the Saints so as to deliver any Soul out of Purgatory And if there be such a place the Pope himself by his Example doth enough to dishearten all Men from endeavouring to deliver the Souls of their Friends from thence For it is not doubted but he can deliver all out of Purgatory he having the Command of the Treasure of the Church And it must needs be a wonderful Discouragement to a Devout Mind that among so many hundred Popes there should not be one found so Charitable as to release so many thousands of poor Souls that lye under intolerable pains and so must lye till the last day or till the debt of their temporal punishment be paid If the Pope can do so much with so little Charge or Trouble to himself and yet will not do it surely I have less Reason to do any thing Nor doth it follow that because it is a part of acceptable Devotion for one Man to pray for another whilst living here on Earth that therefore it is as pleasing to God for us to pray for Souls departed For our Prayers for others on Earth are either for Temporal Blessings or for the means of Grace We pretend not to desire God to reverse his own Laws and save such a Man let him be as bad as he will but to make him Holy first and then to make him Happy And to Pray any otherwise for another Man naturally tends to represent it as feasible to reconcile a wicked Life with the hopes of Heaven but when a Man is dead he can Work no more nor make any use of the means of Grace and therefore there is no room for this Prayer to God for him he is not capable of Repentance and Glory and Amendment and of being made fit for Heaven Lastly If they boast of the validity of the Orders of their Bishops and Priests as an Encouragement to Devotion the validity of the Sacraments dependnig so much on the Legality of the Ministry We answer that we have a Clergy as properly and truly of Christ's sending as any Church in the World against whose Ordination and Mission nothing can be objected We deriving the Succession of our Bishops not only from their own Austin but from the British Bishops before his time which is the only Regular way of Mission that we know of except that of an extrarodinary Commission from Heav'n as St. Paul had And I would not that there were that to be objected against us that is justly objected against them as to the Succession of their Popes even since the Reformation began For the Election of Sixtus V. was most notoriously Simoniacal and yet one that comes by Simony into the Popedom is by their own Canon Law by the Bull or Constitution of Julius II. approved in the Council of Lateran An. 1513. to be looked on as a Magician Heathen Publican Septimi Decretal Lib. 1. Tit. 3. and Arch-Heretick and his Election can never be made valid by any after Act and yet several of the Popes since were either made Cardinals by this Sixtus V. or received that Dignity from those that received it from him which is the very Case of this present Pope Innocent Eleventh As for their Vnity it is plain that they have more divisions among themselves then they can charge us with For they have not only such as openly dissent and separate from them but great and violent dissentions among their own Members and such as live in the Communion of their Church one against another and each party pleads the Doctrine of the Church and Decisions of its Councils And yet the Pope himself notwithstanding his Infallibility and Authority either cannot or dare not determine which is in the Right or which Opinion is True So that whatever Power and Authority their Church hath it hath no good effect to such ends and purposes to which Church-Power is designed to serve the encouragement of Holiness and Vertue and the discountenancing of Vice the Preservation of the Doctrine in Purity and of the Members at peace one with another It is