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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A46860 The Jesuites plea In ansvver to a letter written by a minister, entituled, Lying allowable with papists to deceive Protestants. 1679 (1679) Wing J722; ESTC R216571 7,275 15

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THE Iesuites Plea IN ANSVVER TO A LETTER WRITTEN BY A MINISTER ENTITVLED Lying allowable with PAPISTS to deceive PROTESTANTS LONDON Printed in the Year 1679. THE Iesuit's Plea In ANSWER to a LETTER Written By A MINISTER ENTITULED Lying allowable with PAPISTS to deceive PROTESTANTS I Should be extreamly unjust if I in the least doubted sincerity in the solemn Asseverations of the late Executed Jesuites at Tyburn for I must suppose them either Atheists or no Atheists if Atheists What would they not 〈◊〉 done or confessed to save their Lives for in that supposition their Summum bonum would have been the pleasures of this life If not Atheists they either acted at their Death according to Conscience or against Conscience if against Conscience we must believe that they wittingly went about to damn themselves without remedy dying in Perjury known to themselves as such to Judge this is very uncharitable if they acted according to Conscience professing Innocency for what they were Cōndemned for and yet were guilty then were they the most grosly ignorant or of the weakest Capacity or Judgment of any that ever were Executed and proceeded by palpable Contradictions they must have believed a God and not believed his Essence nor believed his Essential Verity For he cannot believe God to be essential Verity who believes that he can● Authorise a Lye wherefore whosoever calls God to Witness a Lye and acts according to Conscience grosly and palpably contradicts himself and to Judge this of the Jesuites would argue gross folly and ignorance in any knowing Person no reasonable Creature in ●hose Circumstances could have dared to appear immediately before the Throne of the Eternal Great and All-seeing Judge of the Living and the Dead as it were glorying in the most Uncharitable falsities that ever yet were pronounced by Men. If Criminal did they not in vindicating themselves Arraign and Condemn the Law and Common Justice of the Nation and with Vanity Countenance Perjuries Infidelities and Treasons against both King and Kingdom the blackest of all Crimes Can you believe they should think God can comply with any even the least sin in any Circumstance is it not most detestable to his Nature is not sin the greatest ill and even the only ill and God the greatest Good and the only absolute goodness Sin a negation of all good a non Entity a want of all due rectitude in any action done and malum per●se God goodness it self and perfection it self the Essence of Existence as he defined himself in Scripture Ego sum qui sum the only absolute being or entity from whom it emanes or flowes to all Creatures What then more opposite than God and Sin Were it not then Sacrilegious to avouch that God cannot be displeased with a Creature when he sins or that he can approve a Lye Besides if a Lye were in any Circumstance to be allowed by God it would argue deficiency in God as that any thing should be possible to be compassed out of the Sphere of Divine Activity by assistance of the Divel the Father of Lies Nor could his Omniscience be less questionable as reasonably imputing to it an ignorance of effecting his designs but by the unjust ways of iniquity likewise would his Providential Goodness and Justice be censured as allowing sin the medium to obtain Heaven nay himself who is the end of all Righteousness This is Blasphemy and to Arraign God in all his Attributes this is so absurd that it will be folly to spend more time in this Argument or to believe it possible that Men whose Educations and Breeding have been in Schools should be either so ignorant as to hold such silly Opinions or so wicked Christians as to seem to believe the highest Crimes damnable and Sacrilegious Lyes Perjuries Treasons and Blasphemies as meritorious Virtues alleadging God as Witness in justification of such infernal Acts horrid to every Christian Ear abominable to Common sense opposite to the very hight of nature And that this is not only according to the Doctrine of St. Paul alleadged by Harcourt that no ill is to be done that good may come thereof but is also the Doctrine of the Jesuites You may learn from Father Berry an eminent Jesuite and modern Author in his excellent Book called The Sollitu de of Philargie approved by Anthority and not called in again as Mariana's and was wrote for the practice and daily Meditations of all sorts of People where to express the mallice of Sin he says that it were better that the Angels were annihilated and that all the World perish than to offend Godiby the least Sin even of an idle word this considered the inhumane expressions of your Paper no ways touch me nor is my amazement as yours grounded on their Proclaiming themselves innonent for if so then to manifest it publickly to the whole World upon so solemn an occasion was but Justice to others as well as to themselves but at your not crediting such pregnant circumstances at your belying and slandering the Dead and your guilty detractions which I believed inconsistent with the Principles of Christians and therefore admire it in the practice of a Christian Minister Scripture and all true Morality teach us to do as we would be done unto to Judge no otherwise of others than we would be Judged by others and I thought it the Principle and due practice of every Christian to make the best exposition of the Words and Actions of others to make the charitablest Interpretation words will bear especially the words of dying men delivered with Christian Courage Modesty Resolution and Constancy and not Spider-like to suck venome from sweetest Flowers Can you believe they proceeded so maliciously at the hour of Death I have so much Charity for you as to think that were you under the same Circumstances as they were when they pronounced those Speeches immedialely expecting Death not then to be tempted by any Allurements of Pleasure Greatness or Fortune not capable of Worldly Advancement or vanity dreading the consequences of Eternity you would then detract such rash Judgments even of the worst of Men and conclude it a time to be serious and not to use Quirks and Equivocations to deceive or impiously to hide truth Now as to what you alleadge to prove they might well be guilty for all their Protestations to the contrary is very frivolous We must believe say you that every of them received plenary Absolution of all their sins from their Birth to this day upon which Absolution they may affirm themselves as free from and as innocent of any Crime laid to their charge as the Child unborn because whatever the Crime is 't is forgiven So not to count you very malicious I am forced as the less evil to think you very ignorant Where did you ever read in any Cathol Author that after Absolution for any Sin the Penitent might think himself as innocent of it as the Child unborn How then can he swear it who