Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	divine_a	faith_n	revelation_n	2,617	5	10.5414	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33231	Animadversions upon a book intituled, Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church, by Dr. Stillingfleet, and the imputation refuted and retorted by S.C. by a person of honour.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.; Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699. Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church.	1673 (1673)	Wing C4414; ESTC R19554	113,565	270

inform his indifferent Reader of the sence of those hard places do but make the understanding thereof the more intricate and that the Commentary is not less obscure than the Text and nothing is more wonderful than that the illustration he makes to facilitate the understanding of what is conceived obscure by the Prayer in our Churches Liturgy which he says was borrowed from the Roman and I say was translated out of our own Lord from whom all good things come grant us thy humble servants that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good and by thy merciful guiding we may perform the same I say it is strange that he does not so far discern that this Prayer is so easie that no one pretends not to understand the perfect meaning and extent thereof whereas he cannot but know that some men of more than common understanding profess not to comprehend the other and therefore it is too magisterial a determination that whosoever hath not a capacity to understand Sancta Sophia is an enemy to mental Prayer which no body can be who understands it or in the least degree hath endeavoured to practise it Since it is the best if not the only way to keep the mind fixed upon the subject it is solicitous for and the object to whom the Prayers are directed which in the loud pronunciation of many words is it may be to many men the most difficult thing in the sacrifice of Prayer especially if there be any affectation of words which insensibly carries the mind away from what it should be intent upon and the least moment of diversion puts a period to mental prayer which without any sensible motion hath a vehemence that cannot bear interruption and as little any prescription of method from another man To the personal reflexions and invectives against the Doctor fuller of causeless passions and of bitterness and virulence than I have ever observed in so little room in any book I shall answer in a more proper place anon After Mr. Cressy hath spent many pages in commending to his friends the having a good opinion of Visions and Revelations and Miracles and very pathetically advises them to read the Histories of the lives of Saints which the more they have done they may probably be the less inclined to conform to his opinions he professes that the only ground of the Catholicks faith is divine Revelation made to the Church by Christ and his Apostles and conveyed to posterity in Scripture and Tradition and we say that the ground of the Faith of the Church of England is the same leaving out the two last words and tradition not that the Church of England is an enemy to or disclaims the use of tradition but is not guided and governed by it by reason of the incertainty of it Where the tradition is universal and uncontradicted we have as much resignation to it as they have and therefore we do acknowledge the reception of the Scripture to be by unquestionable and never doubted tradition and that having thereby received it it hath in it self enough to convince the Reader that it could not be formed and invented by the wit of man nor that it hath not been disguised or corrupted by the malice of man and so we are possessed of the Scriptures by the same tradition that they are and whatever they believe by as confessed a tradition we believe likewise as well as they But when they urge many things as necessary to be believed by the authority of tradition we do not reject the authority but deny the tradition and say there is no tradition that will warrant it and how fallible that pretence is needs no other manifestation than that controversie of the observation of Easter which continued half a hundred years only upon the point of tradition with so much bitterness and animosity the Greek Church alledging that tradition was for them and the Roman Church the contrary and if tradition was so doubtful a guide in those Primitive times when so few years had run out what must it be now when five times as many are since expired They therefore do not deal ingenously who amuse their auditors with telling them that we reject all tradition consider not antiquity submit to no authority but every man chuses a Religion according to his own spirit Whereas they well know that the Church of England doth as much respect tradition when it is agreed upon as all evidence must be that is submitted to and requires as much subjection to authority and leaves as little to the private fancy and imagination of men and pays as much reverence to the primitive Fathers where they concur together in opinion as the Church of Rome doth but denies any subjection to that Church and believes that her own children with others she meddles not should have the same reverence for her determinations as those others have for the Roman since her determinations are made with as much regularity as lawful authority and with the unanimous advice of as learned men as by the others of which we shall say more in the conclusion of this discourse If Mr. Cressy was not very confident that all for whom he writes will confidently believe all he says and had not a marvellous contempt of all other persons he would not so positively say That when examination is made of miracles in order to the Canonization of any Saint the testimony of women will not be received pag. 68. and gives the reason for it because naturally imagination is stronger in them than judgment and whatsoever is esteemed by them to be pious is easily concluded by them to be true which may likewise be the reason that his beloved Sancta Sophia is so much valued by women and his Miracles so much believed by them only and neither the one or the other in any degree regarded by any learned men of the Roman Church But his averment that the testimony of women is rejected in those cases is without any ground Was not the single testimony of the Nurse the only evidence of the first miracle that was wrought by his adored S. Benedict in the mending the Sieve or putting together the broken pieces of the Earthen pot If he were much conversant in the acts of Canonization as he ought to be before he publishes the Rules observed there he would have found that the seventh miracle wrought by Philip Nereus the Founder of the order of the Oratorians for which he was Canonized was that he cured diseases oftentimes by his word as particularly in the case of Maria Felici à Castro in Monasterio Turris speculorum Moniali quae continua febri correpta Philippo jubente statim convaluit And his eighth was that he cured many sick people meerly by his apparition Ac Drusilla Fantina quae praecipiti casuprostrata ac horribili capitis oculorum totius corporis collisione semiviva jacens tribus Philippi apparitionibus mirabiliter

instructors and he may be very confident if he finds neither of those that God hath not called him Sure Mr. Cressy cannot forget the names of very many persons it may be both men and women with whom and in whose conversation he had the honour and the happiness to spend many years of the most innocent part of his life from whose grave and learned information and excellent example he might have led a life more useful to God his Country and himself and in which he would have had less to answer to all three than that which he hath since by worse counsel and example given himself unhappily to And for Books I shall not supply his Catalogue with the names of many more of the same kind which he might as well have mentioned but I shall put him in mind of the excellent pious and devout Sermons which are constantly preached in that Church much better I believe than he hath heard in any other language and there was no restraint upon him but if he had liked other Books of devotion better he might have read the life of Mother Teresa that abounds in those visions he admires and that mystical Theology he delights in and even his own Sancta Sophia if any other man would have taken the pains to have put it together in that Colledge he was bred in with the same liberty he hath done either ever since sure good Books are not wanting in that climate For Miracles whereof he says we do not pretend to one not so much as the curing a Tertian Ague to testifie that our Reformation is pleasing to God I shall say no more than I have done We have not many to boast of and very good Catholicks think they boast of too many and would be glad to be without the mention of most of them and I do believe that very many pious men of his Church do believe that the restoration of the Church of England from that dust and ruines to which the barbarity impiety and sacriledge of the late rebellion had exposed it and in which the Roman Catholicks his Majesties own subjects more delighted and triumphed to see it almost buried than any other Catholicks did is a greater miracle of Gods mercy and power and if we make our selves worthy of it even a testimony of his being pleased with it then all those of which they brag so much are an evidence that he is pleased with what they do I have never had the luck to see his Church History which he is offended with the Doctor for stiling a great Legend which he knows is the stile given to those Collections in all Languages and he challenges the Doctor more scornfully to give to the world a pretty little legend of his reformed Saints The Doctor could very well have given him as large a list of as extraordinary persons of most profound learning and most exemplary lives of the Church of England since the Reformation as any other Christian Kingdom can supply him who it may lawfully be presumed since their deaths have enjoyed those sacred mansions of bliss which God hath prepared for those who please him but we are not ashamed that our Church is too modest to confer the sacred title of Saints which God hath reserved to his own only disposal for them to whom he had before assigned such a proportion of grace as is answerable to that high station and doth not receive the advice nor communicate the power in that particular of or to any person or jurisdiction upon Earth yet it shall be glad and doth pray that all such whom the Church of Rome hath presumed to call to that honour without any ambition or privity of their own may really enjoy the same And we do not in the least degree apprehend the displeasure of God Almighty upon our Church because it doth with all humility and after all possible endeavour to be capable of his favours leave the disposal of all the places and offices and imployments in his own house to his own gracious will and pleasure And though we do not pretend to know so much of their modern Saints as to think that they were of the same Religion with us Yet we do presume to say that the primitive Saints and Martyrs were all as much our Saints and Martyrs as theirs that is that we are as much of the same faith with those as they are We are as firm in the Apostles faith who were the first Saints and Martyrs of Christ as they can pretend to be We adhere as much to all the doctrine they taught and endeavour to practise all the duties which are enjoyned by them as sincerely and diligently as they do During the twelve persecutions which were the times when those prodigious Armies of Martyrs for their numbers were levied it may lawfully be presumed that very much the major part of them for those persecutions raged much more furiously in the East than in any part of Europe never heard of the Church of Rome none of them professed to have any opinion in which we differ from them The first and only subject of their Martyrdom was that they loudly avowed the birth passion and resurrection of our Saviour and their peremptory refusal to offer sacrifice to or to acknowledge the power of the Pagan Gods and the last would have excused them and preserved their lives whatsoever they had thought of the other so that there was no other point of controversie in issue but whether they were Christians and their marvellous and without doubt divine courage in affirming that and asserting that doctrine so soon after they were informed of it and before they were acquainted with any other operation of it than in their courage to lay down their lives for it was the whole ground and merit of their Martyrdom For according to the best evidence we have of those dark times and of that darker affair we may reasonably believe that many thousands of those blessed Martyrs lost their lives within a day an hour or less time according as the wild and brutish rage of the Iudge could find ways for their torture and execution after the moment of their conversion in which the spirit and zeal of the new Christians to die for their faith was little more stupendious than the implacable rage of their persecutors was in the vindication of the honour of their Pagan Gods for which the husband condemned his wife the father his son the brother his brother and all relations those who were nearest and dearest to them to the most exquisite torments that could be devised Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum How the Church of Rome comes to ingross all these Saints and Martyrs to themselves as their peculiar Patrons and Advocates an evidence cannot easily be comprehended except they conclude the because they have a power to make or to declare Saints they have likewise a power to appoint them what they shall do after they are Saints which