Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	erroneous_a	error_n	writ_n	2,062	5	9.6571	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A32857	The religion of Protestants a safe way to salvation, or, An answer to a book entituled, Mercy and truth, or, Charity maintain'd by Catholiques, which pretends to prove the contrary to which is added in this third impression The apostolical institution of episcopacy : as also IX sermons ... / by William Chillingworth ...	Chillingworth, William, 1602-1644.; Chillingworth, William, 1602-1644. Apostolical institution of episcopacy.; Chillingworth, William, 1602-1644. Sermons. Selections.	1664 (1664)	Wing C3890; Wing C3884A_PARTIAL; ESTC R20665	761,347	567

faith between the Lutherans the rigid Calvinists and Protestants of England So that if Luther were in the right those other Protestants who invented Doctrins far different from his and divided themselues from him must be reputed Schismatiques and the like argument may proportionably be aplyed to their further divisions and subdivisions Which reason I yet urge more strongly out of D. Potter (g) Pag. 20. who affirmes that to him and to such as are convicted in conscience of the errors of the Roman Church a reconciliation is impossible and damnable And yet he teacheth that their differnce from the Roman Church is not in Fundamental Points Now since among Protestants there is such diversity of belief that one denieth what the other affirmeth they must be convicted in conscience that one part is in error at least not Fundamental and if D. Potter will speak consequently that a reconciliation between them is impossible and damnable and what greater division or Schism can there be than when one part must judge a reconciliation with the other to be impossible and damnable 39. Out of all which premisses this Conclusion followes That Luther and his followers were Schismatiques from the universal visible Church from the Pope Christs vicar on earth and Successour to S. Peter from the particular Diocess in which they received Baptism from the Country or Nation to which they belonged from the Bishop under whom they lived many of them from the Religious O●der in which they were professed from one another And Lastly from a mans self as much as is possible because the self-same Protestant to day is convicted in conscience that his yesterday's Opinion was an error as D. Potter knows a man in the world who from a Puritan was turned to a moderate Protestant with whom therefore a reconciliation according to D. Potter's grounds is both impossible and damnable 40. It seems D. Potters last refuge to excuse himself and his Brethren from Schism is because they proceeded according to their conscience dictating an obligation under damnation to forsake the errors maintained by the Church of Rome His words are Although we confess the (h) Pag. 81. Church of Rome to be in some sense a true Church and her errours to some men not damnable yet for us who are convinced in conscience that she erres in many things a necessity lies upon us even under pain of damnation to forsake her in those errors 41. I answer It is very strange that you judge us extreamly Uncharitable in saying Protestants cannot be saved while your self avouch the same of all learned Catholiques whom ignorance cannot excuse If this your pretence of conscience may serve what Schi●matique in the Church what popular seditious brain in a Kingdom may not alledge the dictamen of conscience to free themselves from Schism or Sedition No man wishes them to do any thing against their conscience but we say that they may and ought to rectifie and depose such a conscience which is easie for them to do even according to your own affirmation that we Catholiques want no means necessary to Salvation Easie to do Nay not to do so to any man in his right wits must seem impossible For how can these two apprehensions stand together In the Roman Church I enjoy all means necessary to Salvation and yet I cannot hope to be saved in that Church or Who can enjoyn in one brain not crackt these Assertions After due examination I judge the Roman errors not to be in themselves fundamental or damnable and yet I judge that according to true reason it is damnable to hold them I say according to true reason For if you grant your conscience to be erroneous in judging that you cannot be saved in the Roman Church by reason of her errours there is no other remedy but that you must rectifie your erring conscience by your other judgment that her errors are not fundamental nor damnable And this is no more Charity than you daily afford to such other Protestants as you term Brethren whom you cannot deny to be in some errors unless you will hold That of contradictory Propositions both may be true and yet you do not judge it damnable to live in their Communion because you hold their errors not to be fundamental You ought to know that according to the Doctrin of all Divines there is great difference between a speculative perswasion and a practical dictamen of conscience And therefore although they had in speculation conceived the visible Church to err in some doctrins of themselves not damnable yet with that speculative judgment they might and ought to have entertained this practical dictamen that for Points nor substantial to Faith they neither were bound nor lawfully could break the bond of Charity by breaking unity in God's Church You say that hay and stubble (i) Pag. 155. and such unprofitable stuffe as are corruptions in Points not fundamental laid on the roof destroyes not the house whilst the main pillars are standing on the foundation And you would think him a mad man who to be rid of such stuffe would set his house on fire that so he might walk in the light as you teach that Luther was obliged to forsake the house of God for an unnecessary light not without a combustion formidable to the whole Christian world rather than bear with some errors which did not destroy the foundation of Faith And as for others who entred in at the breach first made by Luther they might and ought to have guided their consciences by that most reasonable rule of Vincentius Lyrinensis delivered in these words Indeed it is a matter of great (k) Adv. haeres c. 27. moment and both most profitable to be learned and necessary to be remembred and which we ought again and again to illustrate and inculcate with weighty heaps of examples that almost all Catholiques may know that they ought to receive the Doctors with the Church and not forsake the Faith of the Church with the Doctors And much less should they forsake the Faith of the Church to follow Luther Calvin and such other Novellists Moreover though your first Reformers had conceived their own opinions to be true yet they might and ought to have doubted whether they were certain because your self affirm That Infallibility was not promised to any particular Persons or Churches And since in cases of uncertainties we are not to leave our Superiour nor cast off his obedience or publiquely oppose his Decrees your Reformers might easily have found a safe way to satisfie their zealous conscience without a publique breach especially if with this their uncertainty we call to minde the peaceable possession and prescription which by the confession of your own Brethren the Church and Pope of Rome did for many Ages enjoy I wish you would examine the works of your Brethren by the words your self set down to free S. Cyprian from Schism every syllable of which words convinceth Luther and his

the Protestant English Church in these Points and what my private opinion Which shall be satisfied when the Church of England hath expressed her self in them or when you have told us what is the Doctrine of your Church in the Question of Predetermination or the Immaculate Conception 29. Ad 21 22. § These answers I hope in the judgement of indifferent men are satisfactory to your Questions though not to you For I have either answered them or given you a reason why I have not Neither for ought I can see have I flitted from things considered in their own nature to accidental or rare Circumstances but told you my opinion plainly what I thought of your Errors in themselves and what as they were qualified or malignified with good or bad circumstances Though I must tell you truly that I see no reason the Question being of the damnableness of Error why you should esteem ignorance incapacity want of means to be instructed accidental and rare Circumstances As if knowledge capacity having means of Instruction concerning the truth of your Religion or ours were not as rare and unusual in the adverse part of either as Ignorance Incapacity and want of means of instruction Especially how erroneous Conscience can be a rare thing in those that err or how unerring Conscience is not much more rare I am not able to apprehend So that to consider men of different Religions the subject of this Controversie in their own nature and without circumstances must be to consider them neither as ignorant nor as knowing neither as having nor as wanting means of Instruction neither as with Capacity nor without it neither with erroneous nor yet with unerring conscience And then what judgement can you pronounce of them all the goodness and badness of an Action depending on the Circumstances Ought not a Judge being to give sentence of an Action to consider all the Circumstances of it or is it possible he should judge rightly that doth not so Neither is it to purpose That Circumstances being various cannot be well comprehended under any general rule For though under any general rule they cannot yet under many general rules they may be comprehended The Question here is you say Whether men of different Religions may be saved Now the subject of this Question is an ambiguous term and may be determined and invested with diverse and contrary Circumstances and accordingly contrary judgements are to be given of it And who then can be offended with D. Potter for distinguishing before he defines the want whereof is the chief thing that makes defining dangerous Who can find fault with him for saying If through want of means of instruction incapacity invincible or probable ignorance a man die in error he may be saved But if he be negligent in seeking Truth unwilling to find it either doth see it and will not or might see it and will not that his case is dangerous and without repentance desperate This is all that D. Potter says neither rashly damning all that are of a different opinion from him nor securing any that are in matter of Religion sinfully that is willingly erroneous The Author of this Reply I will abide by it says the very same thing neither can I see what adversary he hath in the main Question but his own shadow and yet I know not out of what frowardness finds fault with D. Potter for affirming that which himself affirms And to cloud the matter whereas the Question is Whether men by ignorance dying in error may be saved he would have them considered neither as erring nor ignorant And when the question is whether The Errors of Papists be damnable to which we answer That to them that do or might know them to be errors they are damnable to them that do not they are not He tels us that this is to change the state of the Question whereas indeed it is to state the Question and free it from ambiguity before you answer it and to have recourse to Accidental Circumstances as if Ignorance were accidental to error or as if a man could be considered as in error and not be considered as in ignorance of the Truth from which he errs Certainly Error against a Truth must needs presuppose a nescience of it unless you will say that a man may at once resolve for a Truth and resolve against it assent to it and dissent from it know it to be true and believe it not to be true Whether Knowledg and Opinion touching the same thing may stand together is made a Question in the Schools But he that would question Whether knowing a thing and doubting of it much more whether knowing it to be true and believing it to be false may stand together deserves without question no other Answer but laughter Now if Error and Knowledge cannot consist then Error and Ignorance must be inseparable He then that professeth your errors may well be considered either as knowing or as Ignorant But him that does err indeed you can no more conceive without ignorance than Long without Quantity Vertuous without Quality a Man and not a living Creature to have gone ten miles and not to have gone five to speak sense and not to speak For as the latter in all these is implyed in the former so is Ignorance of a Truth supposed in Error against it Yet such a man though not conceivable without ignorance simply may be very well considered either as with or without voluntary and sinful Ignorance And he that will give a wise answer to this Question Whether a Papist dying a Papist may be saved according to God's ordinary proceeding must distinguish him according to these several considerations and say He may be saved If his Ignorance were either invincible or at least unaffected and probable if otherwise without repentance he cannot To the rest of this Preface I have nothing to say saving what hath been said but this That it is no just exception to an argument to call it vulgar and thred-bare Truth can neither be too common nor super-annuated nor Reason ever worn out Let your Answers be solid and pertinent and we will never finde fault with them for being old or common The FIRST PART CHAP. I. The State of the Question with a summary of the Reasons for which amongst men of different Religions one Side only can be saved NEver is malice more indiscreet than when it chargeth others with imputation of that to which it self becomes more liable even by that very act of accusing others For though guiltiness be the effect of some error yet usually it begets a kind of Moderation so far forth as not to let men cast such aspersions upon others as must apparently reflect upon themselves Thus cannot the Poet endure that Gracchus Quis tulerit Gracchum c. who was a factious and unquiet man should be inveighing against Sedition And the Roman Orator rebukes Philosophers who to wax glorious superscribed their Names

obedience and as our Saviour said of some so the Scripture could it speak I believe would say to you Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not that which I command you Cast away the vain and arrogant pretence of infallibility which makes your errors incurable Leave picturing God and worshipping him by pictures Teach not for Doctrin the commandements of men Debarr not the Laity of the Testament of Christ's Blood Let your publique Prayers and Psalms and Hymns be in such language as is for the edification of the Assistents Take not from the Clergy that liberty of Marriage which Christ hath left them Do not impose upon men that Humility of worshipping Angels which S. Paul condemns Teach no more proper sacrifices of Christ but one Acknowledg them that die in Christ to be blessed and to rest from their labours Acknowledge the Sacrament after Consecration to be Bread and Wine as well as Christs body and bloud Acknowledg the gift of continency without Marriage not to be given to all Let not the weapons of your warfare be carnal such as Massacres Treasons Persecutions and in a word all means either violent or fraudulent These and other things which the Scripture commands you do and then we shall willingly give you such Testimony as you deserve but till you do so to talk of estimation respect and reverence to the Scripture is nothing else but talk 2. For neither is that true which you pretend That we possess the Scripture from you or take it upon the integrity of your Custody but upon Universal Tradition of which you are but a little part Neither if it were true that Protestants acknowledged The integrity of it to have been guarded by your alone Custody were this any argument of your reverence towards them For first you might preserve them entire not for want of Will but of Power to corrupt them as it is a hard thing to poyson the Sea And then having prevailed so farr with men as either not to look at all into them or but only through such spectacles as you should please to make for them and to see nothing in them though as cleer as the sun if it any way made against you you might keep them entire without any thought or care to conform your doctrin to them or reform it by them which were indeed to reverence the Scriptures but out of a perswasion that you could qualify them well enough with your glosses and interpretations and make them sufficiently conformable to your present Doctrin at least in their judgement who were prepossessed with this perswasion that your Church was to Judge of the sense of Scripture not to be judged by it 3. For whereas you say No cause imaginable could avert your will for giving the function of supreme and sole Judge to holy Writ but that the thing is impossible and that by this means controversies are increased and not ended you mean perhaps That you can or will imagine no other cause but these But sure there is little reason you should measure other mens imaginations by your own who perhaps may be so clouded and vailed with prejudice that you cannot or will not see that which is most manifest For what indifferent and unprejudicate man may not easily conceive another cause which I do not say does but certainly may pervert your wills and avert your understandings from submitting your Religion and Church to a tryall by Scripture I mean the great and apparent and unavoidable danger which by this means you would fall into of losing the Opinion which men have of your Infallibility and consequently your power and authority over mens consciences and all that depends upon it So that though Diana of the Ephesians be cryed up yet it may be feared that with a great many among you though I censure or judge no man the other cause which wrought upon Demetrius and the Craftsmen may have with you also the more effectual though more secret influence and that is that by this craft we have our living by this craft I mean of keeping your Proselytes from an indifferent tryal of your Religion by Scripture and making them yield up and captivate their judgement unto yours Yet had you only said de facto that no other cause did avert your own will from this but only these which you pretend out of Charity I should have believed you But seeing you speak not of your self but of all of your Side whose hearts you cannot know and profess not only That there is no other cause but that No other is imaginable I could not let this passe without a censure As for the impossibility of Scriptures being the sole Judge of Controversies that is the sole Rule for men to judge them by for we mean nothing else you only affirm it without proof as if the thing were evident of it self And therefore I conceiving the contrary to be more evident might well content my self to deny it without refutation Yet I cannot but desire you to tell me If Scripture cannot be the Judge of any Controversie how shall that touching the Church and the Notes of it be determined And if it be the sole Judge of this one why may it not of others Why not of All Those only excepted wherein the Scripture it self is the subject of the Question which cannot be determined but by natural reason the only principle beside Scripture which is common to Christians 4. Then for the Imputation of increasing contentions and not ending them Scripture is innocent of it as also this opinion That controversies are to be decided by Scripture For if men did really and sincerely submit their judgements to Scripture and that only and would require no more of any man but to do so it were impossible but that all Controversies touching things necessary and very profitable should be ended and if others were continued or increased it were no matter 5. In the next words we have direct Boyes-play a thing given with one hand and taken away with the other an acknowledgment made in one line and retracted in the next We acknowledg say you Scripture to be a perfect rule for as much as a Writing can be a Rule only we deny that it excludes unwritten Tradition As if you should have said We acknowledg it to be as perfect a Rule as a Writing can be only we deny it to be as perfect a Rule as a writing may be Either therefore you must revoke your acknowledgment or retract your retractation of it for both cannot possibly stand together For if you will stand to what you have granted That Scripture is as perfect a Rule of Faith as a writing can be you must then grant it both so Compleat that it needs no addition and so evident that it needs no interpretation For both these properties are requisite to a perfect Rule and a writing is capable of both these properties 6. That both these properties are requisite to a perfect Rule

for this Reason neither may they speaking in their Decrees be Judges for the same Reason If the Pope's Decrees you will say be obscure he can explain himself and so the Scripture cannot But the holy Ghost that speaks in Scripture can do so if he please and when he is pleased will do so In the mean time it will be fit for you to wait his leisure and to be content that those things of Scripture which are plain should be so and those which are obscure should remain obscure until he please to declare them Besides he can which you cannot warrant me of the Pope or a Councel speak at first so plainly that his words shall need no farther explanation and so in things necessary we believe he hath done And if you say The Decrees of Councels touching Controversies though they be not the Judge yet they are the Judge's sentence So I say the Scripture though not the Judge is the sentence of the Judge When therefore you conclude That to say a Judge is necessary for deciding Controversies about the meaning of Scripture is as much as to say He is necessary to decide what the holy Ghost speaks in Scripture This I grant is true but I may not grant that a Judge such an one as we dispute of is necessary either to do the one or the other For if the Scripture as it is in things necessary be plain why should it be more necessary to have a Judg to interpret them in plain places than to have a Judg to interpret the meaning of a Councel's Decrees and others to interpret their Interpretations others to interpret theirs and so on for ever And where they are not plain there if we using diligence to find the Truth do yet miss of it and fall into Errour there is no danger in it They that err and they that do not err may both be saved So that those places which contain things necessary and wherein Errour were dangerous need no infallible interpreter because they are plain and those that are obscure need none because they contain not things Necessary neither is Errour in them dangerous 13. The Law-maker speaking in the Law I grant it is no more easily understood than the Law it self for his speech is nothing else but the Law I grant it very necessary that besides the Law-maker speaking in the Law there should be other Judges to determine Civil and Criminal Controversies and to give every man that justice which the Law allows him But your Argument drawn from hence to shew a necessity of a Visible Judge in Controversies of Religion I say is Sophistical and that for many Reasons 14. First Because the variety of Civil cases is infinite and therefore there cannot be possibly Laws enough provided for the determination of them and therefore there must be a Judge to supply out of the Principles of Reason the interpretation of the Law where it is defective But the Scripture we say is a perfect Rule of Faith and therefore needs no supply of the defects of it 15. Secondly To execute the Leter of the Law according to rigor would be many times unjust and therefore there is need of a Judge to moderate it whereof in Religion there is no use at all 16. Thirdly In Civil and Criminal Causes the parties have for the most part so much interest and very often so little honesty that they will not submit to a Law though never so plain if it be against them or will not see it to be against them though it be so never so plainly whereas if men were honest and the Law were plain and extended to all cases there would be little need of Judges Now in matters of Religion when the Question is Whether every man be a fit Judge and chooser for himself we suppose men honest and such as understand the difference between a Moment and Eternity And such men we conceive will think it highly concerns them to be of the true Religion but nothing at all that this or that Religion should be the true And then we suppose that all the necessary points of Religion are plain and easie and consequently every man in this cause to be a competent Judge for himself because it concerns himself to judge right as much as eternal happiness is worth And if through his own default he judge amiss he alone shall suffer for it 17. Fourthly In Civil Controversies we are obliged only to external passive obedience and not to an internal and active We are bound to obey the sentence of the Judge or not to resist it but not alwayes to believe it just But in matters of Religion such a Judge is required whom we should be obliged to believe to have judged right So that in Civil Controversies every honest understanding man is fit to be a Judge But in Religion none but he that is infallible 18. Fifthly In Civil Causes there is means and power when the Judge hath decreed to compell men to obey his sentence otherwise I believe Laws alone would be to as much purpose for the ending of differences as Laws and Judges both But all the power in the world is neither fit to convince nor able to compell a man's conscience to consent to any thing Worldly terrour may prevail so far as to make men profess a Religion which they believe not such men I mean who know not that there is a Heaven provided for Martyrs and a Hell for those that dissemble such Truths as are necessary to be professed But to force either any man to believe what he believes not or any honest man to dissemble what he does believe if God commands him to profess it or to profess what he does not believe all the Powers in the World are too weak with all the Powers of Hell to assist them 19. Sixthly In Civil Controversies the case cannot be so put but there may be Judge to end it who is not a party In Controversies of Religion it is in a manner impossible to be avoided but the Judge must be a party For this must be the first Whether he be a Judge or no and in that he must be a party Sure I am the Pope in the Controversies of our time is a chief party for it highly concerns him even as much as his Popedom is worth not to yield any one point of his Religion to be erroneous And he is a man subject to like passions with other men And therefore we may justly decline his sentence for fear temporal respects should either blind his judgement or make him pronounce against it 20. Seventhly In Civil Controversies it is impossible Titius should hold the land in question and Sempronius too and therefore either the Plaintiff must injure the Defendant by disquieting his possession or the Defendant wrong the Plaintiff by keeping his right from him But in Controversies of Religion the Case is otherwise I may hold my opinion and do you no wrong and you