Selected quad for the lemma: reason_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
reason_n	believe_v	faith_n	revelation_n	2,830	5	9.5573	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A74667	An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere his impertinent dedication of his imaginary triumph, to the king of Great Britain to invite him to embrace the Roman Catholick religion. / By John Bramhall D.D. and Lord Bishop of London-Derry.	Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.; La Milletière, Théophile Brachet, sieur de, ca. 1596-1665. Victory of truth for the peace of the Church.	1653 (1653)	Thomason E1542_1	53,892	235

Deut. 29.29 Secret things belong to the Lord our God but things revealed unto us and our Children for ever This is the reason why we rest in the words of Christ This is my Body leaving the manner to him that made the Sacrament we know it is Sacramentall and therefore efficacious because God was never wanting to his own Ordinances where man did not set a bar against himself But to determine whether it be corporeally or spiritually I mean not only after the manner of a spirit but in a spirituall sense whether it be in the Soul only or in the Host also And if in the Host whether by Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation whether by Production or Adduction or Conservation or Assumption or by whatsoever other way bold and blind man dare conjecture we determine not Durand Motum sentimus modum nescimus praesentiam credimus This was the belief of the Primitive Church this was the Faith of the antient Fathers who were never acquainted with these modern questions de modo which edifie not but expose Christian Religion to contempt We know what to think and what to say with probability modesty and submission in the Schools But we dare neither scrue up the Question to such an height nor dictate our Opinions to others so Magisterially as Articles of Faith Nescire velle quae Magister maximus Docere non vult erudita est inscitia O! Against multiplying of questions and controversies how happy had the Christian world been if Scholars could have sate down contented with a latitude of Generall sufficient saving Truth which when all is done must be the Olive branch of peace to shew that the deluge of Ecclesiasticall division is abated without wading too far into particular subtilties or doting about Questions and Logomac●ies whereof commeth envy strife raylings evill surmisings perverse disputings Old controversies evermore raise up new controversies and yet more controversies as Circles in the water do produce other Circles Now especially these Scholasticall quarrels seem to be unseasonable when Zenos School is newly opened in the world who sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted Arguments Now when Atheism and sacrilege are become the mode of the times Now when all the fundamentals of Theology Morality and Policy are undermined and ready to be blown up Now when the unhappy contentions of great Princes or their Ministers have hazarded the very being of Monarchy and Christianity Now when Bellonia shakes her bloody whip over this Kingdom it becometh well all good Christians and subjects to leave their litigious questions and 〈…〉 to bring water to quench the fire of civil dissention already kindled rather than to blow the Coals of discord and to render themselves censurable by all discreet persons like that half-wirted fellow personated in the Orator Qui cum Capit is mederi debuisset reduviem curavit when his head was extremely distempered he busied himself about a small push on his fingers end But that which createth this trouble to you and me at this time is your Preface The Occasion of this Discourse and Epistle Dedicatory wherein to adorn your vainly imagined Victory in an unseasonable Controversie you rest not contented that your Adversary grace your Triumph unless the King of great Britain and all his subjects yea and all Protestants besides attend your Chariot Neither do you only desire this but augurate it or rather you relate it as a thing already as good as don P. 37. for you tell him that his eyes and his ears do hear and see those truths which make him to know the faults of that new Religion which he had sucked in with his milk you set forth the causes of his Conversion The tears of his Mother and the Blood of his Father whom you suppose against evident truth to have dyed an invisible Member of your Roman Catholick Church And you prescribe the means to perfect his Conversion which must be a conference of your Theologians with the Ministers of Charentou If your charity be not to be blamed The Authors indiscretion to wish no worse to another than you do to your self yet prudent men desire more discretion in you than to have presented such a Treatise to the view of the world under his Majesties protection without his licence and against his conscience Had you not heard that such groundless insinuations as these and other private whisperings concerning his Fathers Apostatising to the Roman Religion did lose him the hearts of many subjects If you did why would you insist in the same steps to deprive the Son of all possibility of recovering them To no purpose If your intentions be only to invite his Majesty to embrace the Catholick Faith The King is already a better Catholick than himself you might have spared both your Oyl and labour The Catholick Faith flourished 1200. years in the world before Transubstantiation was defined among your selves Persons better acquainted with the Primitive times than your self unless you wrong one another do acknowledge that the Fathers did not touch either the word or the matter of transubstantiation Discursus modestus Jesuitarū p. 13. Watsons quod lib. l. 2. Art 4. Mark it well neither name nor thing His Majesty doth firmly beleeve all supernaturall truths revealed in sacred Writ He embraceth cheerfully whatsoever the holy Apostles or the Nicene Fathers or blessed Athanasius in their respective Creeds or Summaries of Catholick Faith did set down as necessary to be believed He is ready to receive whatsoever the Catholick Church of this age doth unanimously believe to be a particle of saving Truth But if you seek to obtrude upon him the Roman Church with its adherents for the Catholick Church excluding three parts of four of the Christian world from the Communion of Christ or the opinions thereof for Articles and fundamentals of Catholick Faith neither his reason nor his Religion nor his charity will suffer him to listen unto you The Truths received by our Church are sufficient in point of Faith to make him a good Catholick More than this your Roman Bishops your Roman Church your Tridentine Councill may not cannot obtrude upon him Listen to the third generall Councill Par. 2. Act. 6. c. 7. that of Ephesus which decreed that it should be lawfull for no man to publish or compose another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene Councill Not lawfull to add to the old Creed And that whosoever should dare to compose or offer any such to any persons willing to be converted from Paganism Judaism or Heresy if they were Bishops or Clerks should be deposed if Laymen anathematized Suffer us to enjoy the same Creed the Primitive Fathers did which none will say to have been insufficient except they be mad Concil Flor. Sess 10. prof sid in bulla Pti quarti as was alleged by the Greeks in the Councill of Florence You have violated this Canon you have obtruded a

insolent forms of prayer conteined in your books even ultimate prayers if we take the words as they sound directed to the Creatures that they would protect you at the hour of death and deliver you from the devill and confer spirituall graces upon you and admit you into Heaven precibus meritisque by their prayers and merias You know what merit signifies in your language a Condignity or at least a Congruity of defer● The exposition of your Doctors is that they should do all this for you by their prayers as improper a form of speech as if a suppliant intending only to move an ordinary Courtier to mediate for him unto the King should fall down upon his Knees before the Courtier and beseech him to make him an Earl or a Knight or to bestow such an Office or such a Pardon upon him or to do some other Grace for him properly belonging to the Prerogative Royall How agrees this with the words Precibus meritisque A begger doth not deserve an Alms by asking it This is a snare to ignorant persons who take the words to signifie as they sound And it is to be feared doe commit down-right Idolatry by their Pastors faults who prescribe such improper forms unto them The Roman Court most Tyrannicall Concerning Tyranny which makes up the arriere of the first supposed Maxim Wee do not accuse the Roman Church of Tyranny but the Roman Court If either the unjust usurpation of Sovereign power or the extending thereof to the destruction of the Laws and Canons of the Church yea even to give a Non obstante either to the Institution of Christ or at least to the uniform practise of the Primitive Ages or to them both If the swallowing up of all Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction and the arrogating of a supercivill power paramont If the causing of poor people to trot to Rome from all the Quarters of Europe to wast their livelihoods there If the trampling upon Emperours and the disciplining of Monarchs be Tyrannicall either the Court of Rome hath been Tyrannicall or there never was Tyranny in the world I doubt not but some great persons when they have had bloody Tragedies to act for their own particular ends have sometimes made the Roman Church a stalking horse and the pretence of Catholick Religion a blind to keep their Policies undiscerned But if we consider seriously what cruelties have been really acted throughout Europe either by the Inquisitors Generall or by persons specially delegated for that purpose against the Waldenses of old and against the Protestants of later dayes against poor ignorant persons against women and children against mad-men against dead carkasses as Bucer c. upon pretence of Religion not onely by Ordinary forms of punishment and of death but by fire and faggots by strange new devised tortures we shall quickly find that the Court of Rome hath died it self red in Christian blood and equalled the most Tyrannicall persecutions of the Heathen Emperours Our second supposed Maxim The other Maxim whereupon you say that our Reformation was grounded was this That the onely way to reform the Faith and Liturgy P. 21. and government of the Church was to conform them to the dictates of holy Scripture of the sense whereof every private Christian ought to be the Judge by the light of the Spirit excluding Tradition and the publick Judgement of the Church You add P. 26. that We cannot prove Episcopacy by Scripture without the Help of Tradition And if we do admit of Tradition we must acknowledge the Papacy for the Government of the Catholick Church as founded in the Primacy of St. Peter Your second supposed ground is no truer than the former Much mistaken we are as far from Anarchy as from Tyranny As we would not have humane Authority like Medusa's head to transform reasonable men into sensless stones So we do not put the reigns of Goverment into the hands of each or any private person to reform according to their phantasies And that we may not deal like blunderers or deceitfull persons to wrap up on involve our selves on purpose in confused Generalities I will set down our sense distinctly When you understand it I hope you will repent of your rash censuring of us of whom you had so little knowledge The Scripture the rule of supernatural truths Three things offer themselves to be considered first concerning the Rule of Scripture Secondly the proper Expounders thereof and thirdly the manner of Exposition Concerning Scripture we believe That it was impossible for humane reason without the help of divine Revevelation to find out those supernaturall truths which are necessary to Salvation 2. That to supply this defect of naturall reason God out of his abundant goodness hath given us the holy Scriptures which have not their authority from the writing which is humane but from the Revelation which is divine from the holy Ghost Thirdly that this being the purpose of the Holy Ghost it is blasphemy to say he would not or could not attain unto it And that therefore the holy Scriptures do comprehend all necessary supernaturall truths So much is confessed by Bellarmine that All things which are necessary to be believed L. 4. de verbo Dei cap. 11. and to be done by all Christians were preached to all by the Apostles and were all written 4. That the Scripture is more properly to be called a Rule of supernaturall truths than a Judge or if it be sometimes called a Judge it is no otherwise than the Law is called a Judge of civill Controversies between man and man that is the rule of judging what is right and what is wrong That which sheweth what is streight sheweth likewise what is crooked Secondly Who are the proper expounders of Scripture and ho●… far concerning the proper Expounders of Scripture we do believe that the Gospell doth not consist in the words but in the sense non in superficie sed in medullâ And therefore that though this infallible rule be given for the common benefit of all yet every one is not an able or fit Artist to make application of this Rule in all particular cases To preserve the common right and yet prevent particular abuses we distinguish Judgement into three kinds Judgement of Discretion Judgement of Direction and Judgement of Jurisdiction As in the former Instance of the Law the ignorance whereof excuseth no man every subject hath Judgement of Discretion to apply it particularly to the preservation of himself his estate and interest The Advocates and those who are skilfull in the Law have moreover a Judgement of Direction to advise others of less knowledge and experience But those who are Constituted by the Soveraign power to determine emergent difficulties and differences and to distribute and administer justice to the whole body of a Province or Kingdom have moreover a Judgement of Jurisdiction which is not onely discretionary or directive but authoritative to impose an Obligation