Selected quad for the lemma: saint_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
saint_n	article_n	church_n	creed_n	1,359	5	10.1652	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33180	To Catholiko Stillingfleeton, or, An account given to a Catholick friend, of Dr. Stillingfleets late book against the Roman Church together with a short postil upon his text, in three letters / by I. V. C.	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1672 (1672)	Wing C433; ESTC R21623	122,544	282

with so palpably incredible calumnies therein inserted His Account indeed seemes chiefly designed for Vulgar Capacities and therfore he mainly endeavours to captivate their attention and belief with much sophistry and many smooth stories of some Doctors amongst Catholicks whose different Opinions about the Moods of Christian Doctrin which they believe simply as it is delivered them plainly though they Vary in their Explications of Divine Mysteries he makes pass for disagreeing in Articles of Faith of others some who schismatically affected speak the stile of their predominant passions not according to the Religion they received from their Catholick Teachers and are therefore censured by the great Overseers of Christiant●y whom nevertheless the Doctor makes to speak the pure sense of the Roman Churches Faith and Piety And of some too whose Judgments guided by the compass of their ambitious and unclean affections driving at g●eat Names and Places cause division in the outward Hierarchy and Government of the Church for which neither the Canons of our Faith and Manners gives them any authority nor may it be hoped that either the care or power of our chief Pastors may wholly avoid such Wolves since according to Christ's prophesy scandals will still arise though our Catholick Bishops still oppose themselves against them and yet the Doctor will have these either to be our Church Governors or their actions to be destructive of our Catholick Vnity But all these slights of his are to so little purpose that many sober Protestants has been startled at th●se his Cantings and Imputations upon so an●i●nt and grave a Body of Christians whom their former Teachers ever allowed to be members of Christ's Mystical Body and capable of salvation in their own way of Christian observance Whence as the Cruelty of the old Roman Emperours and Presidents against the Primitive Christians moved many Vnbelievers of those times to embrace the Roman Faith so has the severe Accusations of the Doctor against Catholicks moved many of their Adversaries to a more steddy enquiry into our Catholick Truths to confer more reverently with the Dispensers of the Doctrin of that defamed Religion and oft to conclude somewhat more than ordinary of truth and honesty to be found in that Way which being long since banished this Nation by very severe Laws is still so eagerly arraigned so clamorously cryed down in Press and Pulpit and at any Rate exposed to the severity of those whose Interest passion or dulness has ever since engaged them in its suppression The Doctors whole Account amounts to a pulling down and a setting up first he pulls down the Church of Rome then He sets up his Own he makes Vse of four formidable Engins to overturn that our Catholick Church which your TO KATHOLICO amply examines But surely if the Church of Rome falls all Churches which either received their belief from her or now communicate in faith with her must fall too and thus the Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints an entire Article of the Apostles Creed is on a sudden cancelled Indeed it is so proper to all Church Reformers to pull down Churches and such like Monuments of our forefathers Christian piety suckt in with that faith they originally received from their Roman Apostles that our Nati●n has cause enough to bewail the power of th●● Sword of Gospellers in whose sense we may confess The Roman Church in some measure to be no sound Church even no Church at all were their Swords as keen as their Pens and Tongues and as close-laid as Nero once wished His to an Imaginary Neck for we are ever bound to believe each one speaks and writes his own thoughts and hearty wishes The Doctor having endeavour'd to level our Roman Church and not finding One principled according to his own Acephalick passion wherewith to close lays the foundation of his Own properly His Stillingfleet Church Not Roman nor Protestant nor indeed any Church at all for where he leaves neither any constant Rule wherby to square our faith or observance in necessaries not clearly revealed in holy Wri●t nor any power to oblige to a conformity in Belief and Practices nor any One Visible Head for our Direction and Communion there can be no Church of Christ but a Babel and Confusion that which evidently follows from the Doctors Own Principles whereunto he pretends the faith of Protestants must be reduced as to the only true Test of its being Christian and Catholick And thus after our long reproaching that Church as Vnprincipled the Doctor in a full Council of his own thoughts assembled in Vertue of his all-truth discerning Spirit synodically pronounces his Anathema's against Vs and publishes Canons of faith to all the Churches of England and will prove it to be One Holy Apostolical and Catholick by such Rules as neither Scripture nor Councels nor Fathers nor any Church ever men●●on'd before nor will ever be solemnly canoniz'd by any Synod of our Engl●sh P●●lates however he pretends them to be Protestant wherein we may admire at their silence even by those Rules by which a●●●elief built on them not borrowed from the Roman Church may be contradictory and will be cleerly resolved not to have One Mark of the true Christian Church even to be no Church at all but a pure Stillingfleet an phantosm His design in forging these his Principles was thence to shew the Protestant Church as Protestant or as it is by Schism separated from the great Catholick Body of Christians to be Positive Vniform and Principled whereas by them it is clearly Negative Confusive and Begs the question in the root of all Briefly thus As for the first the Dr aims directly at the subversion of all traditional Revelation and of an external visible and infallible proponent of divine credibles and of all power obligeing to acceptance of them as such and consequently at the overthrow of all Articles by the Church of Rome allowed and Canonized as truths revealed upon those grounds As for the next his Canons for the interpreting Gods written Revelations are of that Latitude that whoever admits them if he please may disagree with the Doctor and all others and with himself too at different times by virtue of a pretended Personal infallible-all-truth discerning-faculty which he allows all in all fundamentals and superstructures depending on the controverted sense of Gods written Word after a sober enquiry and sincere endeavours however necessary those credibles be to salvation or the framing one Church of many truth-discerning members whether this their enquiry be performed by the working of reason only which in supernatural Truths revives Pelagianism or by a pretended personal divine assistance in regard of each Believer to which every one may as legally pretend and appropriate it to himself by pretence of having used his best means to understand Scripture as the Dr. himself or any other Teacher which is to erect an Acephalick Enthusiasm or Fanaticism And as for the last if it be a legal proof that there