Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A27370
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A letter written by a minister for the satisfaction of a person doubting in religion shewn to be unsatisfactory.
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P. I., Minister.; T. B.; J. W.
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1686
(1686)
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Wing B185; ESTC R10043
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13,702
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41
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will see what a heedless Quoter of Scripture you are though it be your best or rather onely Talent You alledge against us 1 John 1. v. 1. where the first words are Quod audivimus That which we have heard as if we forbid you to use your Hearing by which Faith comes For it is evident beyond all need of Proof that as the Church heard Christ so if every succeeding Age had follow'd what they heard from the former Christian Faith must have continu'd till now the self-same the Apostles heard from Christ and as long as this Method call'd by us Tradition is follow'd it must ever continue still the self-same to the Worlds End Now we are so far from bidding you not follow the Advertisements of your Senses that our onely Quarrel to you is that you relinquisht the most certain Sense the Hearing your Lawful Pastors in the Church you left and fell to scan Mysteries of Faith by the less-certain ones employed about Objects not within their cognizance and which is as absurd Glossing Scripture-Texts without any Rule to guide you but your own aukward Fancies Next follow in your Papers the Doctrines taught with Proofs which properly and directly belong onely to the first Article viz. That the True Body of Christ is contained in the Sacrament But such as your self will never he able todisprove viz. the Scripture interpreted by the Church the Testimonies of Fathers witnessing the Tradition of the Church in their time and the Condemnation of the contrary Opinions denying the Real Presence and Transubstantiation as Heretical What should move you thus to shew the weakness of your own Cause which has no other Rule of your Faith but Scripture interpreted by every man's Private Spirit or Reason and can bear no proportion with that of the publick Interpretation of the Church attested by the Authority of the most Eminent Fathers of the Primitive Times and strengthned by the Condemnation of the contrary Heresies I cannot easily imagine but finding them too strong to be combated by so weak a Champion you fairly take leave of them and betake your self to shew in the next place after your fashion that is blindly how hard it will be to believe this Doctrine by asking us Questions And I must confess 't is most insuparably hard if Senses must be admitted to Judge of the hidden and most abstruse Mysteries of Faith which is your darling Method though any wise man would think this would turn Faith into Experimental Knowledge and so rather destroy all the Faith in the world But my Task is set and I must attend to your Questions To the first then I answer That the words This is my Body are to be taken Literally and yet the End of receiving is meant Spiritually And I farther say That this Spiritual Nourishment consisting in raising in us devout Affections is incomparably advanc'd by the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Bloud So that these two are so far from being inconsistant as you would hint that the taking the words Literally does exceedingly conduce to the Spiritual feeding on Christ even as far as the believing him really present is more apt to stir up Devotion in us than the not believing it or the receiving his Real Body is above the receiving a piece of Bread signifying it which is beyond all proportion To the second Question I answer affirmatively If we regard the point of the Real Presence precisely For we grant that 't is sufficient to believe the Body of Christ is really truly present even the same Body but not in the same manner 'T is the very Doctrine of the Council of Trent it self Sess 13. cap. 1. That the Body of Christ is in Heaven juxta modum existendi naturalem according to its natural manner of existing and yet that 't is in other places Sacrament aliter praesens present Sacramentally But I much fear you are not in earnest here when you seem to yield 't is really truly present but that this Kindness of yours will grow cold when it comes to the trial and that these hearty expressions will dwindle away into Christ's Body being here onely in a Sign which is to say the Sign is there and his Body absent Hollow words are but wind and 't is hard to grasp Air. To the Third asking whether the Second and Third Article you put be of equal Truth and Certainty with the First I answer That I was never taught to believe a thing as a half-Truth or a three-quarter Truth but all to be True for Truth consists in an Indivisible which the Church has expresly declared to be of Faith by a General Council and accordingly whatsoever the Church thus believes and proposes as an Article of Faith I absolutely believe and embrace as Truths delivered by Christ and his Apostles To the Fourth I answer as above That the Proofs you set down belong properly and directly only to the first Article And as for the Second and Third they may also shift well enough for themselves for any Authority or Reason you have brought against either the one or the other But I would gladly know how all your Faith will shift for it self having nothing to keep it from sinking into an inferiour Assent call'd Opinion nay into a mass of senceless Errours as far as it opposes Tradition but your self and other Fallible Interpreters like your self to buoy it up As for your Fifth I know no enforcement that is beyond Cavil in any one place of Scripture which is Dogmatical while the words are left to be tost by Criticisms Grammar-learning Allusions of places to one another and such like little tricks No one word in those Sacred Books can escape being equivocal or double senc't while the word God which of all others should seem incommunicable is Wier-drawn by such shifts to signifie a Creature as we experience in the Arians and Socinians glosses upon those Texts which concern Christ's Divinity You know well enough already that neither my self nor any Catholic builds our Faith upon any Text of Scripture interpreted by our own private Fancy but onely by the publick Tradition of the Church Your Sixth asks If the Church must be taken in to expound Scripture whether Reason willeth not that the Church in the Apostles time should be principally heard in their Authoritative Interpretation I answer In case you mean the Apostles were of greater Authority than their Successors 't is granted But if your Question relates to the Truth of what the Church delivers 't is the same as to ask whether the Holy Ghost that assists the Church spake truer one time than another Your Seventh Question whether you are truly represented by putting you to say There is nothing else in the Sacrament but a Memory and Sign of Christ's Passion and whether the Fathers that prove there is something more and condemn such as say there is nothing more do prove any thing against you or condemn you I am heartily glad to see some
A LETTER Written by a MINISTER For the Satisfaction of a PERSON Doubting in RELIGION Shewn to be Unsatisfactory LONDON Printed by Henry Hills Printer to the King 's Most Excellent Majesty for His Houshold and Chappel 1686. TO THE READER I Know it will be expected by the Reader I should inform him what it was that occasion'd these following Papers J. W. a young man of Preston in Lancashire fell into some doubts about the main concern of his Soul Whether he had hitherto the right Faith or were in the true Church Mr. T. B. whose Parishioner he was us'd his best endeavours to disswade him from embracing the Catholic Communion For which I should not discommend him for it was precise duty in him in case he verily judg'd the Negatives in which Protestants differ from Catholics were True and that he had any solid Grounds for judging so Nay he offer'd too to dispute with any Roman-Catholic before him to settle his Doubts and give him satisfaction that the Protestant Religion was True which was a very fair Proffer had it been as candidly perform'd Whereupon I was invited to give him a meeting And when I came to make the Dispute short I began with the first Principle in Controversie The Rule of Faith I told him that all our Contest was summ'd up in this one Enquiry What it was that Christ and his Apostles taught and that if the Rule which was to acquaint us with that were not absolutely or infallibly Certain all our Faith must by consequence be Vncertain and might possibly be an Errour I alledg'd that all His Rule that grounded His Perswasions about what was Faith depended on Interpretations of Scripture made by himself or the Protestant Church both which being confessedly fallible or possible to be deceiv'd he might possibly that is perhaps was actually in an Errour as to all his Faith for ought he or they knew When I expected an Answer he stept to his Study and fetch 't down a great Book biding me read that and offering me to lend it I admir'd at this strange method of answering that instead of replying when he was prest by my Reasons he could think it a competent satisfaction to tell me he would lend me a Book to Read Whereupon I prest him for a positive Reply to my Discourse telling him that since he had now Preach't a Doctrine pretended to be Christ's so many years it was incredible he should not be able to give an account of his Faith and the Ground it was built on without the assistance of a Voluminous Book the tossing over which I saw was very convenient for him to avoid answering and to turn our Dispute into an endless Wrangling which was all he aym'd at but never to bring the point to any Issue He still insisting upon my Reading that huge Book I desir'd him to turn to any particular place in it which he would undertake gave an Answer to my former Discourse and I would be contented to excuse him and consider what it said But it would not be granted so that I saw plainly this was onely an invention to ward the blow from himself and let it fall upon another I prest him again to make out to us by Grounds of His he could be absolutely certain of any one point of Faith nay even that Christ was God He reply'd he believ'd it because it was in the Creed I could have told him the Socinians grant those words in the Creed and yet deny Christ to be truly God but I wav'd this and urg'd him to declare upon what inerrable Rule he believ'd what was contain'd in the Creed Vpon this to avoid answering he began the most disingenuous cavil that ever man heard and fell upon me as if I believ'd not the Creed my self whereas I onely prest him to show us by His Grounds or by any Rule of Faith proper to Protestants as they are distinct from Catholics how He could rationally believe even the Creed to be certain and know the certain sense of it since it's Letter is as liable to misconstructions as the Scripture is I could do no less than tell him how unhandsome this procedure was to put upon me without the least show of reason or common sense a thing that never yet was said or thought of any Roman Catholic in the World But he with much heat still insisted that I did disbelieve it because I urg'd him to show how by His Principles He did or could believe it and fell into a high passion Vpon which perceiving plainly that all this pother and dust was rais'd to get clear of disputing and despairing to bring him to give any account of his Faith even so much as pretending to show it to be as true Faith ought to be Infallibly certain I came away with the young man he having first declar'd before Mr. T. B's face that he was fully satisfi'd he could give no account of his Faith and consequently was not to be follow'd and upon this became a Catholic These things having past on in this manner here related as soon as I saw a Paper from him to the young man which here follows I durst have sworn it had been some Account of the Certainty of his Faith in regard that was still incumbent on him having been left in so great a passion about that Point at our last Interview But it seems it was too hard a morsel for his tender skill to nibble upon and instead of that other points though never so remote are fetcht in by head and shoulders to keep off that discourse How ill he handles these too will appear by the following Answer But all these diversions shall not serve his turn That is the point about which our Discourse was then 't is that which stuck on his side 't is that concerning which he yet owes satisfaction and consequently 't is that to which with all right and reason I must still demand an Answer and challenge him to run the Lists if he do not perform it P. I. Mr. T. B.'s PAPER To J. W. PRESTON Aug. 3. 1686. Poor Soul IT is now more than six Weeks since I observed your Apostatizing from our Church during which time I have not been remiss in praying for your Recovery and now think it seasonable by this short Paper to endeavour it The pretended cause is you cannot obtain satisfaction among us about those two points Transubstantiation and Purgatory but mostly the former Your Soul being in my opinion in great danger by the course you take I could not with any quiet see you so expose your self and wished that you might rather bestow your thoughts on what more immediately touched you and was more suited to your Capacity But seeing it verified in you which is in most persons that you are most busie about what least concerns you and nothing pleaseth your Fancy but what flies above your Understanding I purposed to let you know my thoughts even in the remote