Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	according_a	church_n	tradition_n	2,646	5	9.0706	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57744	The late act of the convocation at Oxford examined: or, The obit of prelatique Protestancy: occasioning the conversion of W. R. (sometimes of Exeter Colledge in Oxford) to Catholique union	Rowland, William.	1652 (1652)	Wing R2075; ESTC R219949	37,064	142

cast away Masse and Peace together The causes which each of you already alleadge are true enough but I leave your selves to prove them it s more then sufficient for all good Christians who tender their salvations not to adhere to either of you since you are so far from unity in Doctrine that your bodies respectively need Reformation as ye confesse of them and they of you wherein ye have destroyed your selves wholly First from the pretence of being one Christian Church and consequently any Church according as the universall Church teaches us I beleeve one holy Catholique and Apostolique Church If therefore no unity no Church And with no lesse evidence ye have Secondly destroyed either of you to be a Church having declared your severall errours in Superstition and Schisme For according to Holy Scriptures and the consent of all especially old Christians A Congregation which should generally and solemnly teach and professe Superstition and Schisme neither is nor can be a Church of Christ this would render it inconsistent with the light presented in Saint Johns Candlesticks and consequently alienate it from Christ This needs no further proofe to a man who hath observed the hinges of Christianity Doth not the whole world also know by your voluminous writings that ye have condemned the very Ceremonies of the Roman Church as unlawfull and made that amongst the vulgar people a maine argument of our Superstition and now ye say it is Superstition in the Presbyters to condemne them in you I le not presse you for I should presently cast you into Democritus his Well Ye wholly forget the force of an Argument called in the Schooles ad hominem drawne from a mans owne principle as here against you Ye goe on Secondly we are not satisfied in the next Branch concerning the Reformation of Religion in our owne Kingdome in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government how we can sweare to endeavour the same which without makeing a change therein cannot be done It is very well noted that ye cannot reforme without a change Phylosophy would laugh at you to attempt a Reformation without a proportionable mutation whence it followes that you have chang'd your Doctrine whence it further followes that its false you know Gamaliels rule if it be of God it will stand ye know then whence yours comes for if it change it is not of God You pretend to reverence the foure first generall Councells heare what the Councell of Chalcedon saith Act. 1. Sic sancivit sancta synodus c Si quis innovat Anaethema sit sanctorum patrum fidem servemus c. you see your sentence if you change you are gone and yet you must change If your Proselites would without prejudice observe how you tumble and tosse one another in reciprocall recriminations in matter of these high inconsistencies with Christianity they would relinquish such communion Your reasons to the contrary in order to you are important for it cannot be done 1. Papists Independents are equally rejected by the Praelatique party Without manifest scandall to the Papist and Separatist by yeilding the cause which our Godly Bishops and Martyrs and all our learned Divines ever since the Reformation have both by their writings and sufferings maintained who have justified against them both the Religion established in the Church of England to be agreeable to the word of God 2. By Justifying the Papists in the reproaches and scorne by them cast upon our Religion whose usuall objection it hath been and is that we know not what our Religion is that since we left them we cannot tell where to stay that our Religion is a Parliamentary Religion let us not be blamed if we call it a Parliament Religion Parliament Gospell Parliament Faith Harding Consul of Apology part 6. cap. 2. These are very home let me a little dilate them To your first You have indeed scandalized all the world and most of all those whom ye call Papists by yeilding the cause and shewing that hitherto ye have persecuted them to bloud to all manner of cruelties for not adhering to that which now is confessed to be Superstitious and Schismaticall Trajan was a Heathen and a profest enemy of Christian Religion yet he came not neere your cruelties He made a law that no Poursivants should search the houses or looke after Christians or their Priests but onely apprehend them if they should happen to meet them But under your reigne all our houses against the liberties of free borne Subjects as was declared in Master Pims case were disquieted by the very dregs of mankind continually infested with Saint Ignatius his Leopards who the better he treated them the worse they were but as he said Iniquitas eorum mea doctrina est their iniquities taught us patience This permission even of assemblies in point of Religion especially in the exercise of a Religion which was not newly taken up though different from that which was then in vogue was by the Senate allowed as that of the Jewes at Rome Nay Suetonius tells us that even the Christians were tollerated to assemble Eusebius Hist lib. 5. cap. 20. saith that Commodus the Emperour punished even by death such who accused Christians by reason of their quietnesse And in his third booke cap. 15. he tells how Nerva the Emperour did set Christians at liberty generally by publique Proclamation hence Saint John was freed from Patmos In fine he recalled all power given to Poursuivants by his predecessours How much more should Christian Senates allow of innocent meetings in celebration of a Religion which all our forefathers professed But ye persecuted both new and old Religions I feare the bloud of all those who have suffered death either by hanging Loaplanding as the Dutch call it famishing or starving for Religion will call for revenge but we pray with our blessed Saviour and his Protomartyr Saint Stephen ne statuas illis hoc peccatum Saint Paul hath also taught us Rom. 12.5.21 Be not overcome of evill but overcome good with evill Nay Aristotle himselfe in 4. Eth. cap. 3. saith it is a signe of magnanimity to forget injuries For as it is a marke of a weake Stomack not to be able to digest hard meat so it is of a pusillanimous Soule not to be able to indure a harsh word or harder threats Cicero lib. 2. Tusc ques speaking of wise mens patience saith si fortis in perferendo officii satis est ut laetetur non postulo These Christian wise men have gone further even to joy in Persecutions Aristotle when the Athenians were consulting to proceed in judgement against him upon suspition of some impiety in his opinions departed from Athens and removed his Schoole saying to his Schollars Discedamus Athenis ne prebeamus iis secundam occasionem sceleris quale prius perpetraverunt in Socratem neve iterū per impietatem violent Philosophiam Thus tender Aristotle was of Philosophy and of their innocency but our Christian Philosophers here have gone

in them and after the Se● Apostolique But as ve● quivocally use the term Episcopacy as signifying your nothing so I must deny it and connumerate it with your errours Again you strike upon Tradition for your Episcopacy wherein you commit a great soloecism in Divinity If it had been for Episcopacy in it self without restriction to your Idol you had come home indeed but as it was presented in your pide-coloured tincture it was never amongst the Ancient except Colythus and his complices might be admitted into the head of your list from whom you have an Jschyrian generation of Priests which S. Athanasius and as he assures us the generall Councell and I am sure the whole Church ever since condemned for spurious But in good earnest it is strange to see with what modesty you esteem a meer pretences for as much as concerns your Episcopacy of fifteen hundred years possession to be an invincible plea in this point and a reall and clear prescription for so many ages shall not hold for all others as most undoubtedly there was not any considerable opposition against Masse till Calvins time Luther was not so impudent as to take it away and how he fared in the sense of the whole Church we all know and so for many more high Articles of which I speak afterward wherein you are fallen All men carefull of their souls will sadly consider this It was truly and usually said of an eminent Bishop of your Order that he was Puritanus tantùm non in Episcopatu The same is as truly said of these pretenders to Episcopacy that they condemn Antiquity in all things except Episcopacy If novelty be not lawfull in this why in all other doctrines which you relinquisht against Antiquity It 's not Antiquity but fancy and ambition you follow els a true Syllogism in the same form will always conclude You put me in mind of the Asse who wresting Orpheus his sharp out of Apollo's hand played so ill-favouredly that the very dogs barked at him I will not be thought to apply this to you yet I must needs say that you begin to wrest our divine Arguments out of our hands and ye handle them so unhandsomly and jarringly from all our and your principles that all sorts of men will see whence and how injuriously you take them You go on 1. Would give such advantage to the Papists who usually object against us and our Religion the contempt of antiquity and the love of novelty that we should not be able to wipe off the aspersion 2. Would so diminish the just authority due to the consentient judgment and practise of the universall Church the best Interpreter of Scriptures in things not clearly exprest Reader observe what necessity there is for all sorts of Christians to recurre to Tradition for Lex currit cum praxi that without it we should be at a loss in sundry points both of faith and manners at this day firmly believed and securely practised by us when by the Socinians Anabaptists and other Sectaries we should be called upon for our proofs As namely sundry Orthodoxall explications concerning the Trinity and Coequality of the persons in the Godhead against the Arians and other Heretiques the number use and efficacy of Sacraments the Baptizing of Infants National Churches the observation of the Lords day and even the Canon of Scripture it selfe 3. In respect of our selves we are not satisfied how it can stand with the Principles of Justice Ingenuity and Humanity to require the extirpation of Episcopall Government unlesse it had been first clearly demonstrated to be unlawfull to be sincerely and really endeavoured by us To the first Indeed you cannot wipe off the aspersion no more then a Blackmore his colour You have given us a strange advantage and in this one passage put an affront upon all your former abettors An eminent person of your order being urged with the antiquity of our tenets replied that if things were to be salved by antiquity then sin would challenge great pre-eminency Thus far hath this plea been derided by you I could fill and foul many sheets in giving a syllable of your Authors for this Yet all antient Fathers and Councells esteemed this an infallible Plea and therefore the Nicene Fathers as appears in Athan. his Epistle of the Nicene Decrees cryed Ecce nos demonstramus istiusmodi sententiam à patribus ad patres quasi per manus traditam esse They esteemed it enough to shew a constant descent of their faith and this is our challenge against you To the second I see you forget that your 6.20.21 Articles exclude all orall Traditions it hath been the maine pretended cause of scandall and as ye have judg'd it most fundamentall that Catholiques plead a necessity of Apostolicall I raditions with the divine Scriptures Have not all the books of your Writers to this day been filled in proofe of the sufficiency of Scriptures and yet now even in the highest points of Christian Doctrine you acknowledge a necessity to have recourse to Tradition what man could have read this your second reason and not have conceived that this Praelatike slip had been again inserted into the old incorruptible Trunk or Body of the Catholique Church but the truth is that self-interest compells you to speak truth against your old Doctrines this blow hath struck you under the fifth rib and like the poor Pilgrime of Hiericho layed you wholly on your backs as objects of pity You specifie here many of the highest mysteries and to omit the rest you acknowledge that the Orthodox explication of the B. Trinity cannot be had from the Scripture alone without the Church Have not we then reason to confesse the Scripture alone not sufficient If you did stand to this truth there had not been such subdivisions of sects who deny the B. Trinity amongst you I have not indeed heard of many who embrace Arrius his Tenet that is that the Son is God but not co-eternall with the Father nor equall to him as Athanasius shews that he held but there are under the latitude of the Praelatique party who with Paulus Samosatenus Corpocras c. call in question his Deity and restraine him to his humanity and hence some eminent persons taking scandall left you and are joyn'd to the Catholike Church Nay you are not ashamed to run though vainly to Traditions for the chiefest grounds of your own Praelative Sect herein confessing that Scripture cannot reach them But to leave this to your selves let me instance more of our Doctrines which you most calumniate What more universal Tradition was extant then Masse that is the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Body and Bloud of Christ offered daily and perpetually for the living and the dead Read Mr. Perkins his Problemes he tells you that it was universally believed that Christ gave his true Body and Bloud at his last Supper Ask all the Liturgies since Christ In like manner read them for Jnvocation of Saints and Prayers