Selected quad for the lemma: opinion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
opinion_n	mortal_a	sin_n	venial_a	597	5	12.4318	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65798	Notes on Mr. F.D.'s Result of a dialogue concerning the middle state of souls in a letter from Thomas White.	White, Thomas, 1593-1676.	1660 (1660)	Wing W1838; ESTC R27876	31,093	81

NOTES ON Mr. F. D's RESULT Of a Dialogue concerning the MIDDLE STATE OF SOULS In a LETTER from Thomas White Gent. PARIS MCDLX To his much esteemed Friend Mr. F. D. Ever honoured Sir FOR such both your Prudence and Learning have made you to me and specially your rich Systeme the citing whereof in this your Result gave me full notice of your Person though many good passages in your Book did partly interpret to me the fairly prognosticating Ciphers of your Name in the Frontispiece I am glad to encounter an adversary who knows what Divinity is and can in due proportion mingle together subtilty with civility Therefore I also intend to my power to joyn the satisfaction I am able to offer you with the respect your grave carriage of the controversy deserves being really perswaded it was no interest nor passion moved you to write nor vain glory to put it in print but the intreaty of such who may command as you ingeniously express your self and a cordial perswasion of the truth of your Tenet To begin then with your Preface give me leave to advertise you of a mistake as I think in the word Aristophanes which I will courteously hope you conceive imports no more then a Divulger of high and mysterious truths among people uncapable of such Doctrins for so your following discourse intimates But because Aristophanes did it with Flouts and Jeers for which the sect of Poets whose writings were called Comaedia prisca was silenced some Readers may possibly interpret you to cast a blemish on a Person whose true worth and vertue as much secures him from deserving it as your discreet and friendly nature can restrain you from meaning it Afterward you add that the Gentleman who rendred that Treatise into English was instrumental of great scandal You are not ignorant that scandals must come nor am I that woe be to him by whom they come But both you and I are bound to understand those words with this necessary caution by whose fault no● by whose act they come Else even our Blessed Saviour himself was an occasion of scandal but such as woe be unto them who are scandaliz'd in Him The Quality therefore of the cause not the effect is chiefly to be examin'd ere we charge on any so foul an imputation Turn then your impartiall eyes on the two sides of the Controversy and see the great and many inconveniences visible and sensible that grow upon the Church in case the Affirmative which you sustain be false You are not one I 'm sure who think Priests cannot be too many but wisely judg their number well contriv'd when the ends they are ordain'd for are fully comply'd with so that the Church be neither over-charg'd by the multitude nor unprovided by the paucity of her spiritual Governours Consider the dignity of the Office and the difficulty of observing its Obligations and you wil soon discover 't is too high and perfect a Calling for a multitude Consider the mischief if the unworthy Priests of which some few I confess must still be tolerated while we live in this World of flesh and blood bear any notable proportion to the number of the worthy ones how the sacredst Profession on Earth is under-valued their Sermons inefficacious their Sacraments neglected and the whole life and vigour of Christianity extenuated and endanger'd Consider what a vast crowd of young Scholars thrust themselves into these holy Orders by occasion of getting Souls suddenly out of Purgatory to which they often think themselves sufficiently qualified with a very mean degree God knows of Vertue or Learning Consider how apt this opinion is to breed in all the World a neglect of venial sins when they shall be taught that a Mass or two or a few prayers put a period to all their pains they can fear in Purgatory And as for mortal sins even they also will find too much encouragement from so slack a Discipline T is but being afraid of Hell and upon that receiving Absolution and then procuring some devotions especially if in a proper place and the Soul that has lived its whole life in folly and worse is instantly taken up into all the glories of Paradise What can more dangerously weaken if not quite abolish that best and onely immediate disposition of our Souls for Heaven the hearty love of God above all things what can be possibly more prejudiciall to them that are in the Church or more scandalous to them that are out of it Consider farther how widows and poor folks defraud their children and Parents of such helps as else they could afford them did not the eager hope of a hasty release from those dreadfull pains divert their charities another way And truly in my conceit with a great deal of reason if your opinion be the right for who to deliver himself from the rack would not think it fit his friends how near soever should suffer a little hunger or who that believes your tenet is not bound in true and wise charity to purchase at any rate even with the disinheriting his posterity so great a happiness to his own Soul as the enjoyment of Heaven within a day or week after his departure from hence nay more what heir is not oblig'd in duty to give away the vain riches of this transitory world to gain so speedy an Eternity for his Father whose over-loving him perhaps made him need it Add to this the unedifying imputation of Avarice and Fraud upon such as gain by these offices and I pray God it be without just cause while they promise far more then they know they can perform The words they expose to the people on the faces of their Churches and Altars speak roundly like fair Chap-men let a Mass be said and the Soul of your friend Shall be deliver'd or to that effect and who can be uncharitable enough or such a silly Merchant as not to disburse a little to procure so great a benefit at so cheap a rate but when you come to examin the performance on their side it amounts to no more then this short payment They have offer'd up their prayers for you and must leave the success to Gods mercy and this is well and the truth but why then did you tell them when you took their mony that their friend should be deliver'd in what Court would so fraudulent a Plea be allowed If you will expresly undertake for my ten or twenty pounds which I really give you to pay my debts and free me out of prison and when I look for Effects as reall as my mony you put me off with this cold comfort that you have intreated for me but must leave the decision of the cause to the sentence of the Judg. May I not expect you should shew me at least some assurance from the Judg himself that he wil effectually release me that within the time you made me believe when I parted with my mony and may I not if you

of as great mutability as time hath mutation is in potentia another thing to the proportion of the changes of time as because a man who walks can stop and the flame of a candle go out in an instant therefore the consistency of a material subject as to our minds consideration is but moment-strong and we can affirm nothing of it in force of contradiction more durable then the unchangeableness or identity of time which is purely a thought or an abstraction Out of this it follows that if we put in spirituall substances a more then momentanean constancy we must also put the force of contradiction in them proportionable to that constancy or identity of it self to it self Now your self seeming to admit this constancy under the name of aeviternity in spirits for a future eternity it seems to me you should admit nothing in spirits that is not compossible together in the subject and by evident consequence that not to have an act and to have one in the same aeviternity is as impossible as not to have and to have in the same instant of time You will peradventure tell me this position ruins some common opinions in Divinity and my brittle Vindicator would tell me it moulder'd away his faith Sir if you be of the opinion that Theology is arriv'd to its non plus ultra I am not I think many now common and probable opinions will in after ages be demonstrated against and prove erroneous and therefore the pure authority of Divines who build upon pure reason hath no farther force with me then their reason And I think I have learned this lesson out of Saint Augustin as I am sure your self also have how ever in practice apparences may seduce you from the exercise of it as if you believe it consonant to Scriptures Fathers Councils c. without a legitimate examination of them which when you go about you find them to be easily eluded by the glosses of blasted Authors many of which kind of Authors nevertheless Saint Hierom in his Comments upon the Scriptures was used to cite that men of understanding might see in the variety of divers conceits what truths might be picked out even of blasted Authors as Aristotle out of the verities mingled among false opinions drew his own demonstrations The rest of these Chapters is but an explication indifferent to both sides in which as you admit in Purgatory a disposition to charity so me thinks you should to the change of affections by it And whereas you say that the soul is extra viam the common Tenet of Divines should admonish you that she is not in state to have new revelations and changes which are the propriety of Via Notes on the tenth Chapter WHich is for its Positions entirely true and holy but you seem to suppose as true some misinformations or misapprehensions concerning your Adversary as that he questions generall traditions and calls them novelties which how you can do who know Saint Austin testifies in his time as yet the question was not agitated and that each part might prove either true or false and that the Authour of the celebrated Dialogues expresly teaches they were unknown till his dayes and from thence till Saint Odilo's time very little esteemed or noysed How such an opinion can chuse but be a Novelty in respect of the Church of God I cannot understand or that six hundred years ago with a known beginning can enroll it into the practices or doctrins delivered by the Apostles passes my reach As for the universall sense of the Church I hope the Council of Florence's act will demonstrate the contrary as you may see in my answer to the Vindicator whither I beg leave to remit you The Text you cite out of Saint Austin is excellently true Quae universa tenet Ecclesia ab Apostolis praecepta bene creduntur quanquam scripta non reperiantur but with these cautions That the Church that is the community of Believers as such not as a multitude of men hold them as of faith not opine them only to be current truths else every common perswasion grounded on any probable Reason or Authority would become an unchangeable Article of Christian Religion and in this I think I have your consent if I mistake not the the 32. Chapter of your Systema which I formerly cited and desire my Reader to peruse the whole Chapter being excellently pertinent to this purpose As also Verons general Rule of Catholike faith which I hear is newly translated into English There you shall see how warily that experienced Controvertist proceeds in separating faith from opinions No doctrin says he begun since the Apostles though confirm'd by miracles and those miracles reported by Saints or approved by generall Councils or attested in the Bulls of canonization can ever be an Article of faith Nor is the practice says the same Auhor even of the universall Church a ground firm enough to build a point of Catholike faith upon because the object of faith is truth and the Church often guides her practices by probable opinions which upon occasion she may change And for Decrees of Councils the same Doctor maintains and cites Bellarmin for his opinion that unless the Council proceed conciliarly that is by due examination c. and define properly not barely affirm a thing by simple assertion and occasionally as it were en passant it does not oblige our belief and which is highest of all though the Council decree expresly and professedly a Doctrin debated yet unless it be defined as a truth to be believed with Catholike faith they are not properly heretiques that hold the contrary What you deliver that one mans satispassion may by way of impetration satisfie for another and profit him is very acceptable and none but they who mistake the words can dislike the sense for we see humiliations accompany solemn prayers both in the Law of Moses and Grace and nature it self teaches us it is a convenient habit for him that intreats mercy Notes on the eleventh Chapter WHere I see very little for me particularly to except against but that you term our Tenet an Innovation which name better becomes your own But this is an Indulgence to be granted to the conceit every one has of his own arguments For the opinion that the sensitive or corporeall part of man is capable of venial sin in it self and so of goodness I neither have nor will have any thing to do with it You say 't is taught by the most speculative Divines as Scotus's Scool and Cajetan c. I dare not meddle with such great men As for your Opiniators you speak of I cannot point you to a fairer example then the Vindicators Creed which he hath declared to be his faith in his Discourse against me To the touch you give about probable opinions the question is too great to engage in on so slight an occasion The place you quote out of Saint Austin seems not to concern the