Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	defendant_n	land_n	plaintiff_n	1,579	5	10.2055	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A18610	The religion of protestants a safe vvay to salvation. Or An ansvver to a booke entitled Mercy and truth, or, charity maintain'd by Catholiques, which pretends to prove the contrary. By William Chillingworth Master of Arts of the University of Oxford	Chillingworth, William, 1602-1644.; Knott, Edward1582-1656. Mercy and truth. Part 1.	1638 (1638)	STC 5138; ESTC S107216	579,203	450

may justly decline his sentence for feare temporall respects should either blinde his judgement or make him pronounce against it 20 Seaventhly In Civill Controversies it is impossible Titius should hold the land in question and Sempronius too and therefore either the Plaintiffe must injure the Defendant by disquieting his possession or the Defendant wrong the Plaintiffe by keeping his right from him But in Controversies of Religion the Case is otherwise I may hold my opinion and doe you no wrong and you yours and doe mee none Nay we may both of us hold our opinion and yet doe our selues no harme provided the difference be not touching any thing necessary to salvation and that we loue truth so well as to bee diligent to informe our Conscience and constant in following it 21 Eightly For the ending of Civill Controversies who does not see it is absolutely necessary that not only Iudges should bee appointed but that it should be known and unquestioned who they are Thus all the Iudges of our Land are known men known to be Iudges and no man can doubt or question but these are the Men. Otherwise if it were a disputable thing who were these Iudges and they had no certain warrant for their Authority but only some Topicall congruities would not any man say such Iudges in all likelyhood would rather multiply Controversies then end them 22 Ninthly and lastly For the deciding of Civill Controversies men may appoint themselues a judge But in matters of Religion this office may be given to none but whom God hath designed for it who doth not alwaies giue us those things which we conceiue most expedient for our selues 23 So likewise if our Saviour the King of Heaven had intended that all Controversies in Religion should be by some Visible Iudge finally determined who can doubt but in plaine termes hee would haue expressed himselfe about this matter He would haue said plainely The Bishop of Rome I haue appointed to decide all emergent Controversies For that our Saviour design'd the Bishop of Rome to this Office yet would not say so nor cause it to be written ad Rei memoriam by any of the Evangelists or Apostles so much as once but leaue it to bee drawn out of uncertain Principles by thirteen or fourteen more uncertain consequences He that can beleiue it let him All these Reasons I hope will convince you that though we haue and haue great necessity of Iudges in Civill and Criminall causes yet you may not conclude from thence that there is any publique authoriz'd Iudge to determine Controversies in Religion nor any necessity there should be any 24 But the Scripture stands in need of some watchfull and unerring eye to guard it by meanes of whose assured vigilancy we may undoubtedly receiue it syncere and pure Very true but this is no other then the watchfull eye of divine providence the goodnesse whereof will never suffer that the Scripture should be depraved and corrupted but that in them should be alwaies extant a conspicuous and plain way to eternall happinesse Neither can any thing be more palpably unconsistent with his goodnesse then to suffer Scripture to be undiscernably corrupted in any matter of moment and yet to exact of men the beliefe of those verities which without their fault or knowledge or possibility of prevention were defac'd out of them So that God requiring of men to belieue Scripture in its purity ingages himselfe to see it preserv'd in sufficient purity and you need not feare but he will satisfie his ingagement You say we can haue no assurance of this but your Churches Vigilancie But if we had no other we were in a hard case for who could then assure us that your Church has been so vigilant as to guard Scripture from any the least alteration There being various Lections in the ancient copies of your Bibles what security can your new rail'd Office of Assurance giue us that that reading is true which you now receiue and that false which you reject Certainly they that anciently received and made use of these divers Copies were not all guarded by the Churches vigilancy from having their Scripture alter'd from the puritie of the Originall in many places For of different readings it is not in nature impossible that all should bee false but more then one cannot possibly be true Yet the want of such a protection was no hinderance to their salvation and why then shall the having of it be necessary for ours But then this Vigilancy of your Church what meanes haue we to be ascertain'd of it First the thing is not evident of it selfe which is evident because many doe not belieue it Neither can any thing be pretended to giue evidence to it but only some places of Scripture of whose incorruption more then any other what is it that can secure me If you say the Churches vigilancy you are in a Circle proving the Scriptures uncorrupted by the Churches vigilancy the Churches vigilancy by the incorruption of some places of Scripture and againe the incorruption of those places by the Churches vigilancy If you name any other meanes then that meanes which secures mee of the Scriptures incorruption in those places will also serue to assure me of the same in other places For my part abstracting from Divine Providence which will never suffer the way to Heaven to bee block'd up or made invisible I know no other meanes I meane no other naturall and rationall meanes to be assured hereof then I haue that any other Book is uncorrupted For though I haue a greater degree of rationall and humane Assurance of that then this in regard of divers considerations which make it more credible That the Scripture hath been preserv'd from any materiall alteration yet my assurance of both is of the same kinde and condition both Morall assurances and neither Physicall or Mathematicall 25 To the next Argument the Reply is obvious That though we doe not belieue the books of Scripture to be Canonicall because they say so For other books that are not Canonicall may say they are and those that are so may say nothing of it yet we belieue not this upon the authority of your Church but upon the Credibilitie of Vniversall Tradition which is a thing Credible of it selfe and therefore fit to bee rested on whereas the Authority of your Church is not so And therefore your rest thereon is not rationall but meerly voluntary I might as well rest upon the judgement of the next man I meet or upon the chance of a Lottery for it For by this meanes I only know I might erre but by relying on you I know I should erre But yet to returne you one suppose for another suppose I should for this and all other things submit to her direction how could shee assure mee that I should not be mis-led by doing so She pretends indeed infallibility herein but how can she assure us that she hath it What by Scripture●