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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	father_n	son_n	substance_n	12,161	5	9.0981	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38514	An epistle of a Catholique to his friend a Protestant touching the doctrine of reall presence. Or, the answer to a question propounded in these tearms What should move you, contrary to the plain testimony of your senses, to believe, that after consecration the bread and wine in the sacrament is become really Christs very body and blood.		1659 (1659)	Wing E3164AA; ESTC R222634	19,912	20

short but a short moment even as a drop of a bucket to the whole ocean se● and one gravel stone in comparison of the sands upon the sea shore so are a thousand yea a thousand thousands of years to the dayes of Eternity Therefore O my soul saith Esdras 2 Esdras 8.4 5. swallow down understanding and devour wisdom for thou hast no longer time then onely to live wherein thou must gain eternity Wherefore as the Preacher saith Eccles 9.10 whatsoever thy hand hath found to do to wit of good do it with all thy might for there is no labouring in the grave Let us now resolutely and courageously resign up our selves to all manner of afflictions for heavens sake and by so doing lay hold of eternal life let us not let slip any opportunity for in that way we shall best gather to our selves treasures of glory we may think our selves happy as many of us as in this kind and for this cause suffer persecution Diverse Catholique Countreys want this high favour from God which we in England have Such in other Countreys as fix their eyes upon eternity force themselves to long and sharp Penances in Fastings Watchings hard Labour austere Discipline with other mortifications of the flesh but instead of these we in England have countrey-men and neighbours persecuting us to the loss of goods liberty and life sometimes O let us be content and account that this time is our Fair and Market our Mart-time to get both precious glorious and durable riches to eternity And as for those who are our Persecutours let us mourn and pray for them Our Lord said to the daughters of Jerusalem Weep not for me but weep for your selves and for your children So I would to God these would pitty themselves more then they pitty those whom they persecute which yet sometimes they seem to do Let us pray earnestly for them and fear that it is for some great foregoing sins still aggravated and continued by our own iniquities that hath so incensed and moved the merciful God to permit our neighbours to be our persecuters and that God uses them as his Battle-ax as the Rod of his wrath and the Staff of his indignation to punish Hypocrites but to purge and purifie those whom he loves O 't is a woful condition that such our persecuters are in let us pray heartily for them for their Conversion and amendment before the Altar of our God that it would please the merciful God of all flesh and Father of Spirits to illuminate those that live out of the Church seriously to apprehend the danger of their estate and the great importance of eternal Salvation and that it would please the Almighty to incline the hearts of our Magistrates both rightly to understand our Religion and impartially to consider our Sufferings and however they oppress and persecute us yet O Lord make us ever with exact fidelity to perform our duties to them And also let us pray that God would be pleased to asswage his anger towards our Nation to forgive the sins of our forefathers and ours and to turn away his wrath from us their postetity to deliver the ignorant from being any longer seduced by false Teachers and the learned from being mislead by their worldly interests and passions and the whole Nation from the Spirit of Contradiction Licentiousness and Discord that instead of so many Sects Divisions and changes of Religion they may all again be restored to that One True Religion and to that unity of Minde and steadiness of Faith and tranquillity of Conscience which is no where else to be sought no where else to be found but in the Communion of Gods Church nor by any other means to be attained but by the conduct of his Grace Amen An Appendix to the foregoing Discourse in Answer to an Objection c. Dear Friend WHereas you object that Tertullian and some other of the Arcients do call the Symbols of Bread and Wine after Consecration Figures onely I wonder that you being a knowing man in these matters should thus speak That they call them Figures sometimes it s confest and so do divers Catholick Writers of present times as you may see in Bellarmin Libr. 1. de Sacram. Eucharist cap. 5 but that they called or esteemed them Figures onely and no more or Figures without the Substance as Protestants do is denied The Holy Scripture calls the Son Heb. 1.3 the express Image or Figure of his Fathers Substance or Person Is he not therefore of the same Substance and Divine Nature with the Father The Quakers indeed understand and esteem him onely a Figure because of this Text but the Church and all true Christians believe otherwise namely that though he be the Figure of God yet he is also in the verity of his own Person true and eternal God and that in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Col. 2.9 And therefore for you to say that the Fathers esteemed the Sacrament duly consecrated to be a Figure onely of Christs Body is a great mistake and undervaluing of the Fathers Judgements supposing them to be so stupid that they should both Adore and also Offer up to God as a Sacrifice of such Divine Vertue and Merit and of so Supream and Superlative Excellency above all other Sacrifices whatsoever that had been offered before it that which was in it self but a piece of Bread a thing so much inferiour even to the meanest of the Jewish Sacrifices I say that the Fathers should thus Magnifie and Adore that which they believed to be nothing else but a piece of bread is the greatest absurdity that can be imposed upon men But you wil not believe perhaps that the Fathers Adored the Sacrament To convince you of this I shall alledge some few examples of many out of their Works by which it will undeniably appear what both their judgement and practice was concerning this matter First St. Augustin Epist 118. saith It is he the Apostle saith shall be damned who doth not with SINGULAR VENERATION or Adoration make a difference betwixt this meat and all other meats And again upon the 98. Psalm No man saith he eateth this Sacrament but first he Adoreth it Secondly St. Ambrose lib. 3. cap. 12. de Spir. Sanct. We ADORE saith he the flesh of Christ in the Mysteries Thirdly St. Chrysostome Homil. 24. in 1. ad Cor. We ADORE him on the Altar as the Wisemen did in the Manger Matth. 2.11 Fourthly St. Gregory Nazianzen in Epitaph Gorgon professeth of his Devout and Faithful Sister Gorgonia that being in a distress she ran to the Church and casting her self down before the Altar invocated or called upon Christ who is adored or worshipped thereon Fifthly Theodoret. dial 2. entituled Inconfusus The Mystical Symbols saith he are ADORED as being in truth the things they are believed to be to wit the Body and Blood of Christ Lastly St. Dennis Areopagita Scholar of the Apostles themselves Ecclesiast Hierarch

Christians that they have such an Altar viz. an Altar of a sin-offering as the Jewish servitours of the Tabernacle were not allowed to partake of And by this we may see that all mysteries whatsoever covered in the Law under Types and Shadows whether Burnt-offerings Meat-offerings Free-will-offerings Heave-offerings yea the very Sin-offering it self with the Altars both within the Vaile and without have all relation to Christs Sufferings Passion and Death commemorated at the Christian Altar And not onely these but the Mercy-seat also the Ark which even under the Law to pry into was present death do all contain some mystery of Christ and which alwayes required them not to be look't into by the eye of sense but the eye of faith There the Cherubims stand over the Mercy-seat their faces looking down upon it but their wings spread out Exod. 25.18 19 20. signifying that under a Type which the Apostle St. Peter plainly expresseth 1 Pet. 1.12 namely that the very Angels themselves desire to look into and to be made acquainted with the great mysteries of God revealed in Christ the mysteries I say which were hid in God from the beginning and by his Apostles and Prophets made known unto his Church and by the Church unto the Angels themselves even to the highest Principalities and Powers in heavenly places Ephes 3.9 10. For they are all of them by office ministring Spirits sent out to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation that is for the service and Protection of the Church Heb. 1.14 In the Church saith the Apostle Ephes 3.21 Glory shall be given to God throughout all ages whence it appears that there is not one age or ever shall be wherein the Church of God is not in being in this Church are the mysteries of Christianity celebrated but more especially as the Fathers commonly teach in the adorable Sacrifice of the Altar great mysteries indeed and for the right understanding of which faith and not sense hath its exercise here we must believe not reason and dispute from principles of Sense Nature and Philosophy That is a thing which the Apostle forbids and forewarns us of Colos 2.8 We must believe I say that the Bread duly consecrated is no longer Bread but that very Body of Christ which God the Father Almighty hath fitted and ordained to be a daily Sacrifice offered up to God after the order of Melchisedech according as it is written of Christ Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech Psal 110.4 And when this Sacrifice totally and unversally ceaseth then the world shall end as it is written in Dan. 9.27 compared with Matth. 24.15 But before this can be saith our Lord the Gospel must be preached for a Testimony in all Nations and then shall the end come Therefore saith Christ when you see the Prophesie of Daniel come to pass then let him that readeth understand for the end is near Hitherto comes that saying of the Jewish Rabbins noted by Ainsworth on Leviticus Chap. 5. v. 15. Our wise men have said say the Rabbins that for the service of the Sacrifice the world doth continue whence it may be collected that if the daily Sacrifice of Christs Body of which the Jewish Sacrifices were but Types and Shadows if that comes once to be totally and universally abolished the world will quickly be at an end Moreover the same Rabbins affirm that the mysteries contained in their Sacrifices are so great that the meaning of them cannot be fully attained in this world and therefore saith Mr. Ainsworth they advise people not to be over curious to pry into them presumptuously lest God break out upon them as he threatneth to do Exod. 19.12 24. Thou shalt saith God to Moses set bounds that the people go not up into the mount and it was of such consequence that the people might not presume to prie that God said the second and third time to Moses Go down and charge the people that they break not thorow to gaze and I break out upon them and many perish ver 21. The Bethshemites but onely for looking into the Ark or Chest wherein the Book of the Law was kept God smote of the people no less then fifty thousand and seventy men 1 Sam. 6.19 Surely a terrible warning this must be to us if we duly consider it By all which we may see as the same Aynsworth also notes that inquisitive curiosity to have humane Reason and Sense fully satisfied touching the mysteries of Religion is a thing forbidden by God Men must walk by faith in the things of God and not by sight 2 Cor. 5.7 which considered I leave it to you and to all rational and indifferent men whatsoever whether it be not safer in this great mystery of Christs Body on the Altar whether it be not safer I say with the whole Christian world of all ages to Believe and Adore though contrary to sense rather then to pry and examine by sense or the dictates of carnal reason For in Believing and Adoring I follow the pure word of God both of the Old and New Testament I follow the Doctrine of the Ancient Fathers the Decrees of Councels and constant practice of the universal Church and that from the one end of heaven to the other Is it not safer think you to follow all these sure and infallible Guids rather then contrary to all these to follow the conjectures of my own brain or at best of some other particular Sect-master or Sect-masters one of these three of necessity I must follow either the Catholique Church with the Ancient Fathers and lawful Pastours of it or else some particular Sect-master or Sect-masters divided from the Church and teaching contrary to the Churches sense or lastly my own brain my own private reason spirit or what else you will call it for a fourth I cannot finde And as such a Sect-master is followed in this world so let his followers make their account that they shall stand with him before the judgement-seat of Christ they shall not be separated for ever whom they loved to follow here in this world contrary to duty and contrary to the ordinance of Christ who commands us to hear his Church and not particular Sect-masters either departed or cut off from the Church they shall be made to follow and keep company with against their wills in the next life in eternal flames and miseries I wish all would consider this who so easily put themselves under the tuition of every private and presumptuous Sect-master that they would consider it I say and return in time to the obedience and communion of the Catholique Church which onely hath lawful Authority to teach them and also a faithful promise from Christ to teach them Truth Matth. 28.20 John 14.16 17. And beside all this is it not even miraculous to consider that the universal Church all Ancient Fathers both in and out of Councels and that in all ages since Christ should believe