Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	bread_n	remain_v	substance_n	8,998	5	9.2009	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33078	The Church of Rome unmask'd, or her false principles briefly detected with some reasons of so many retaining or returning to communion with her, and the great danger of everlasting destruction, that such persons, especially after separations from her, return to her communion, do run themselves on / written by a learned divine, by way of letter to a friend in the country.	Learned divine.	1679 (1679)	Wing C4196; ESTC R18501	78,331	77

rather argues them guilty of being a lying Church 4. There is a brief character of the true Church and her Children in the book of the Revelations by which we may better judg of the truth and rightness of any Church than by any or all those fair Pleas that Rome makes for her self namely that the true Church and its Children are that society and company of men that keep the commandments of God and the faith or Testemony of Jesus Rev. 12.17 and 14.12 But now if we bring the Church of Rome to this test I am sure she will be cast only let us mind that by keeping the Commandments of God is meant both the careful observation of them to walk after them and also the holding them forth sincerely and purely without corrupting them that others may know and walk after them also and by keeping the faith and testimony of Jesus is meant the keeping it without spot or mixture of corruption with it either by adding to or taking from it And surely if we take a little view of their carriage in either of them we shall find them not a little faulty in both 1. First as to the keeping of Gods commandments which of them do they keep in the sences above mentioned not the first for they have other Gods in the Scripture Language beside the only true God the maker of all things in Scripture Language they are called other Gods to whom men give that adoration that belongs to God and unto whom they perform religious worship or service asking of and expecting from them what is proper to God to give so the Calves made by Jeroboam to be sacrificed to though intended as mediums to worship the true God by yet they are called Gods that he made to himself 2. King 14.9 and so the golden Calf in the wilderness though it was to Jehovah they pretended to Sacrifice keep a feast by it yet they were charged with changing their glory that is their God therein into the similitude of an Ox that eateth grass and so intimately of making a new God to themselves Exod. 32,4.5 Psal 106.19.20 now how many there are in the Roman Church that according to those Notions they make Gods to themselves it is not easy to determin The host in the Sacrament they stick not to own as God God-man to give divine adoration unto insomuch as one of their own Doctors acknowledges that the errors of those that worship some Golden or Silver Statues or some Images of any other materialls for their God as the Heathen worshiped their Gods or a Red Cloth hung upon the Top of Spear as is reported of the Laplanders or some live Animal as of old the Egyptians did Fran. Coster Enchir. contro vers Cap 12. were more tollerable than of those who worshiped a piece of Bread as hitherto the Christians have done all over the World for so many hundred years if the Doctrine of Transubstantiation be not true And that that Doctrine is not true we have as good evidence as Christ gave to his Disciples that he was not a Spirit that is we may handle and see it yea and tast and smell it too as was said above yea we have the same that we have that the Cup is not transubstantiated into the New Testament and we have no more authority from the Scripture that the Bread is Transubstantiated than that the Cup is so Transubstantiated nay rather we have more ground to believe that the Cup is changed into a divine writing than that the Bread is changed into the Body the very real and substantial Body of Christ For it is expresly said this Cup is the New Testament but it is not said this Bread is my Body nor this that was Bread is become my Body and for ought that appears to the contrary in the Text his Body being visibly present he might point to or speak of it in saying this is my Body as he speak of the Temple of his body when walk-in the Temple he said to the Jews Destroy ye this Temple and in three days I will raise it up again as our sences tell us the Cup is not the New Testament but a Silver or Golden Cup or Challice so the very same sences tell us as plainly that the Bread still remains in the nature of Bread non substantiâ aut naturâ mutatus not changed in substance or nature into God or into the person of God-man the Lord Jesus besides it is their own Doctrine that the change of the Elements depend upon the Intention of the Priest so that if the Priest intend not in saying the words to make the body of Christ it is not the Body of Christ but Bread still and then they are Idolaters that worship it as God and who can be certain of the Priests Intentions not to mention again the many Saints both Hees and Shee s that they give such adorations to as belongs only to God and ask such things of as God only can give so that they are notorious transgressors of the first commandment of God and keep it not and as to the second they are so far from keeping it and act so grosly contrary to it that they expung it out of their Catechisms The third also they grosly violate in their Doctrine and practice about sacred oaths dispenceing with them and loosing men from the obligation of them enacting them by mental reservations and breaking solemn Oaths and promises as in their breaking their promises with John Hus and in the Popes dispensing with the Oath given by Ladislaus King of Poland to Amurath the Turkish Emperour or grand Sultan and causing him to break his Truce with him to the great scandal of Christian Religion and slaughter of the Christians The Turk himself appealing to Christ if he were indeed God to revenge the perfidious Perjury of the Christians towards him which he also did in the ensuing slaughter and destruction of them but such abuse of Gods name in dissolving and dispensing with religious and solemn Oaths yea and with mens rash swearing they give allowance of in their Doctrines and treatises as well as in their practices yea it was a thing that the above cited Fryer Aegan tells us gave him one of his first disgusts at their Religion that when at his first being made a Fryer he took one and twenty Oaths and among them that he would never come on Horseback that he would never ware shoes that he would obey his superiours in what ever he commanded never examining the lawfulness of his commands not to be ashamed to beg never to be out of his Fryers habit c. yet after all these oaths taken his superiour told him that he must take his former garments and return in the same Posture that he came in which was on Horseback with Sword and Pistols and gay Apparrel and go see his friends though quite contrary to his oaths from which he would absolve him If

threatned to give up their wise and prudent men on whom the people leaned to an infatuation of their understandings Isa 29.9 10 11 12 13 14. and the fault charged by our Saviour on the Scribes and Pharisees and the Jewish Church as depending on them Math. 15.1 3 7 8 9. Mark 7.6 7. to vers 13. and it will be as great or a greater evil in us than in them if we make our selves guilty of it in as much as God having now spoken to us by his only begotten Son hath declared his Name more plainly and expresly than he had done in former ages and therefore greater heed and acquiescence in his words and sayings is expected from us for us then to forsake the fountain of Living waters which is Christ speaking in his Servants the Apostles and Prophets in the Scriptures to dig up Cisterns broken Cisterns as all men with their inventions and decrees and all their authority and power that are not his are would be a more astonishable madness than what of that nature was practised under Moses and the Prophets by the Church of Israel Jer. 2.12 13. Our Saviour in the Relation of the Rich man and Lazarus introduces Abraham directing the Rich mans five brethren to Moses and the Prophets and not to the Jewish Sanhedrim or High-Priest or any other persons claiming an infallible authority distinct from them though they might have had more colour by far for claiming such a thing either from that in Deut. 17.8.11.13 appointing men in case of doubt or controversy to stick to and observe the determinations of the High-Priest or chief Ruler of the People or from that promise in Isa 59.21 where God promiseth to put his Spirit upon Zion or some persons in it and his words into their mouth so as to continue it from generation to generation than any the Pope or the Church of Rome can shew for their claim yet I say Abraham directs them to no such person or persons but onely to Moses and the Prophets and if he so directed them then surely now that we have Christ and his Apostles also added as a compleatment of the revelation of Gods mind and will and as infallible Interpreters of Moses and the Prophets it behoves us to take heed to them as speaking in their words and writings and not to neglect or refuse them under pretence of insufficiency in them to direct us now aright without some other infallible Guide that he no where directs us to to determine us And that Rome or her Head the Pope is not Infallible in her doctrine of Transubstantiation the thing last insisted on is evident from hence that Gelasius one of their Popes or Bishops hath taught the Church that the bread in the Sacrament is not naturû or substantiâ mutatus changed in its nature or substance and others of them have taught and determined that it is substantially changed so as the flesh of Christ it is that is eaten and torn with the Teeth of the Communicants as in the Luteran Council was defined and in contradictories one part must needs be false which things duly considered may imbolden us to reject the Pleas and pretence of that Church as more groundless Usurpations Inchroachments by which they pervert men from the right ways of God which our Lord Jesus hath delivered to us Nay our Lord Jesus in the Book of the Revelations instead of directing us to Rome doth clearly call us off from it and hath revealed that to us concerning her which being taken heed to by us will admonish us to flee from her for by the concurrent consent of Interpreters as led to it by the Scripture it self compared with the state and condition of Rome it is Rome deciphered in that Book not by the Name of Jerusalem the beloved City of God in the light whereof the Nations of the saved should walk but by the name of Babylon the Enemy of Jerusalem and her Inhabitants and the subject of the deepest died sins and heaviest judgments mentioned in that Book Yea the Papist writers themselves are also forced to confess the truth hereof it is so palpable and evident yea rather than they will not prove St. Peter to have been at Rome Babylon shall signifie Rome too in his 1. Epistle 5.13 surely she was the City that then ruled over the Kings of the Earth and was built upon seven Hills or Mountains and that 's the City called Babylon Rev. 17.9 18. and its evident that she ruled over the Kings of the Earth not only in her Pagan but also as much or more in her Papal State wherein their Popes or Bishops have exacted Homage of them made them kiss their Toes hold their Stirrups wait at their Doors and do things far below their Majesty and Grandeur in subjection to them Now in all that Book no good is spoken of Babylon nor any direction is given to Gods people the followers of the Lamb to resort to her for any thing but much is spoken of its Wickedness Whoredom Idolatry Bloodiness while it remains and of its woe and misery irreparable in its fall as that that shall for ever Perish with express and vehement command to Gods people that are in her to come out of her lest pertaking with her in her sins they should also pertake with her in her Plagues Rev. 18.4 which one consideration also quite overthrows that corrupt interpretation that would confine what is said of her to her Heathen state only as the Papists to excuse themselves do or rather to blind themselves from seeing their own guilt for if it were so then she should have found her not as a City or Harlot destroyed for ever but by a glorious Metamorphosis or dispossession of the Spirit of Whoredom and Resurrection from her falls in Heathenism changed into the holy City or the Lambs Wife whereas there is not the least intimation of any such thing but a vehement assertion of her sinking like a mighty stone in the waters never to rise again Rev. 18.21 whence it is evident which I shall mention as a farther distinct charge and a farther instance not only of her fallibility but also that she is fallen foully already in that it is thereby evident That 7. She is guilty of Idolatry for that 's it that in Scripture is represented by Whoredom and she is called the great WHORE and the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth And she is certainly as great a WHORE from Christ as ever the old Babilon or the old Pagan Rome was and more truly so also being not so espoused to Christ in her Pagan state as since she turned Christian Indeed she is a Mystical WHORE corrupted from the purity of the Faith and Worship of God in Christ yet giving out herself to be a Queen and Lady the Queen or Darling of Heaven the only Catholique and Infallible Church In her Pagan state she was more openly and grosly a Harlot a gross Idolatress