Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	believe_v	church_n	interpretation_n	3,657	5	10.5181	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66403	A manual, or, Three small and plain treatises viz. 1. Of prayer, or active, 2. Of principles, or positive, 3. Resolutions, or oppositive [brace] divinity / translated and collected out of the ancient writers, for the private use of a most noble lady, to preserve her from the danger of popery, by the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Arch-Bishop of York.	Williams, John, 1582-1650.	1672 (1672)	Wing W2711; ESTC R38653	30,581	162

to be the ground of your Faith and reason of your believing so as you do therefore believe all the points of your salvation to be true because the Church doth teach and instruct you in the same Or have you any other rule and ground of your faith Prot. The Authority and good conceipt we have of Gods Church prepareth us to believe the points of our Salvation and serveth as an introduction to bring us to the discerning and perfect apprehension of these Mysteries of our faith but the Scripture only is the ground and reason of our believing For as the Samaritans were induced and drawn on to believe in Christ by that talk of the woman but having heard Christ himself profess plainly they believe no longer for her saying but because they heard him speak himself So do we begin to believe moved thus to do by the good conceipt we have of the Church but rest not in it as the ground of our believing but only in the infallible assurance of God's truth in the Book of Scriptures Pap. Then God help you if that be your last resolution For our Church cannot erre but your Scriptures without the help of the Church to tell you so much can never be ascertained unto you to be the word of God and therefore what assuredness of belief can you propose your selves upon so unsetled a foundation Protest The Catholick Church indeed spread over the world cannot erre damnably though the Church of Rome and all other particular Churches may as your own Writers confess But the Scriptures we know to be the word of God not because the Church or Church-men do tell us so much but by the Authority of God himself whom we do most certainly discern to speak in his word when it is preached unto us For if we bring pure eyes and perfect senses the Majesty of God forthwith presenteth it self unto us in the Holy Scriptures and beating down all thoughts of contradicting or doubting things so Heavenly forceth our hearts to yield assent and obedience unto the same And therefore if you doubt whether that which you read in your Bible be the Word of God or find any reluctancy in your understanding to the Doctrin of the same it is in vain to flie unto either Church or Church-men to be perswaded in this point but down upon your knees and pray fervently unto God for Faith and the illumination of the Holy Ghost which can only assure you of the truth of the Scriptures For after we are enlightned by the Spirit we do no longer trust either our own judgement or the judgement of other men or of the Church that the Scriptures are of God but above all certainly of humane judgement we most certainly resolve as if in them we saw the Majesty and Glory of God that by the ministery of men they came unto us from Gods own most sacred mouth Pap. But what certain ground of faith can you place on the Scriptures seeing by the several interpretations of men and women they are turned and wrested like a nose of wax to every private design and purpose Do not you observe how the Catholicks Protestants and especially the Brownists and Anabaptists do fit all their turns out of the Holy Scriptures on which of these senses and imaginations is your faith rooted or peradventure have you some odd capritchious kind of interpretation of your own apprehension to direct you in these businesses Prot. We Lay-folks are licensed in the Church of England to read but not to interpret Scriptures excepting only those passages which contain the necessary points of our Salvation the which passages are so plain and easie every where that any man or woman of the meanest capacity especially if he or she be instructed in their Catechism or grounds of Religion may perfectly conceive and understand them But for the harder and more difficult places we leave them to be interpreted by our Church-men in their Sermons and daily Ministery For the ordering of which interpretations there are as I have been told ten several helps the which if they be followed will be sure and unfallible guides to boult out the true meaning of each place of Scripture 1. An illumination of the understanding by the Holy Ghost 2. A mind free from other thoughts and desirous of the truth 3. Knowledge of the Scriptures Creeds Catechismes Principles and other Axiomes of Divinity 4. A consideration how our meaning suits with other points of Christianity 5. The weighing of circumstances antecedents and consequents 6. Knowledge of Histories Arts and Sciences 7. Continual Reading Meditating and Praying 8. Joint and unjarring expositions of the Fathers 9. Consenting decrees of Synods and Councils 10. Knowledge in the tongues Because therefore Lay-men and women Papists Brownists and Anabaptists are wanting in all or some of these helps they bring forth many times such lame and prodigious interpretations Pap. If we make the Scripture and not the Church the rule of our Faith how shall we believe the Creed the Trinity the Sacraments the unity of Essence the Three Persons in the Deity c. words never read in the Bible and yet necessarily to be apprehended of us upon pain of damnation Prot. I say that all these things are set down in Scriptures either in so many syllables or at leastwise by necessary inferences and deductions And we do not therefore believe them because they are only taught by the Church but because they are rooted and grounded in the Holy Scriptures the only stay and pillar of our affiance To sum up therefore all this Chapter 1. The Church doth prepare us but the Scripture only doth force us to believe 2. The whole Church cannot any part thereof may erre damnably 3. We are taught the Scriptures to be the Word of God by the Holy Ghost moving in our hearts and not by the Church sounding in our ears 4. Lay-men are to read not to interpret Scriptures 5. The miss of some rules causeth wrong expositions of Scriptures 6. All things necessary to be believed are either found in or collected and inferred from the Scriptures CHAP. III. Of Iustification Papist HOw then do you learn out of the Scriptures that you are to be justified and saved before God Prot. I am to be justified before God by an Act single in it self but double in our apprehension which is by Gods not imputing unto me my sins and the same Gods imputing unto me Christs righteousness and withall by his creating of faith in my heart by the Holy Ghost I mean an operative a lively a working Faith to assure my Soul that God for the Active and Passive obedience of Christ Jesus hath accomplished those two former Acts of not imputing my Sin and of imputing unto me Christs Righteousness Pa. A very easie no doubt and reasonable Religion which you have learned out of the Scriptures Here is no burthen left for your own back you cast all

questioned But some aspersions more are cast upon the persons of your Ministers As that they lie wilfully and against their knowledge in points of Divinity and are thus zealous in the cause out of a desire only to preserve their great estates in the Church whereas our Priests have no other worldly comfort but the goodness of their cause and the testimonies of their consciences Prot. Let your common discretion be your judge in this case whether we that ground our doctrins upon the Word of God interpreted by those ten rules I formerly set down or these men that put all to the determination of the Church that is to their own proper phantasies and the gross exposition of an unlearned Pope are most likely to gull the World with crotchets and Chimaeras Besides you know how full this Kingdom is of men well read as in all sciences so especially in Divinity You know and yet none knowes it so well as they that best know him the profound learning and deep apprehension of the King himself as having perfectly digested the very body and bulk of all sacred Knowledge And is this a stage for ignorance imposture to play their parts on Or doth this learned Monarch the Lord of three Kingdoms woed and sought unto by all the Catholick Princes palliate his Religion in hope of a Bishoprick These are poor and toothless aspersions Then for our Ecclesiastical Estates they are so par'de and pol'de with duties and impositions all which had their Original from the Court of Rome that the time of the charge of breeding up a Minister would raise him a better means than he hath in the Church in any other Trade or Traffick whatsoever The King is gracious to his servants of all professions But a Country Minister cannot inne for the harvest of a whole year what a Jesuit can get in an hours confession Lastly concerning these professors of poverty the Priests and the Jesuits it is too well known they want no maintenance What by traducing our Nation abroad and seducing our people at home their bones are full of marrow and their eyes swell with fatness and what the Statute hath taken from us cogging and cheating hath drawn upon them I mean the privy Tithes and Benevolences of the Kingdom But to choke this Objection in one word That our means is no cause to keep us in this profession witness our Brethren in France and elsewhere who without the same means teach preach the selfe same doctrin Pap. They also inform us that your Ministers have neither learning nor honesty Prot. It is true indeed they teach their Novices that the greatest Doctor in our Church doth not understand the common grounds of Divinity and must of * necessity be put to his A B C again But common reason can inform you whether this be true or not Again they are only the base fugitives and discontented runnagates of our own Nation that spread these rumours who think their Countrey-men the grossest fools in Christendome that they dare thus amuse them and lead them by the nose with such impossible assertions And therefore I will give you a touch here how other Papists have ingeniously acknowledged the learning and piety of many Protestants Pope Pius commended Hus for learning and purity of life Alphonsus de Castro Oecolampadius for all kind of knowledge and the tongues especially Rhenanus also Conradus Pellican as a man of a wonderful sanctity and erudition Andradius likewise Chemnitius for a man of a sharp wit and great judgement Costerus all the Protestants for their civil behaviour their Alms their building of Hospitals and forbearing from reviling and swearing Gretzer himself our ordinary writers to be for the most part of great learning and judgement Stephen Paschier held Calvin worthy set his opinions aside to be compared for zeal and learning to the chief Doctors of the Catholick Church Erasmus held Luther of that integrity of life that his very enemies had nothing to cast in his dish Lindanus acknowledged Melancthon to be adorned with all kind of learning In a word your Writers themselves did so applaud the persons of their adversaries for learning and piety that Pope Clement the 8. was fain to command all your Controversie-writers to be reviewed and these graces and praises bestowed on our men to be blotted out and Expunged And therefore when you next hear a Jesuit in this theme think upon these true relations and withall laugh at him and pray for him Pap. Sir I have received some satisfaction that matters are not so far out of square in the Church of England as I have been informed But yet my conscience will not serve me to come to your congregations because there are beside these trivial many other points of doctrine never heard of amongst Protestants which be in very deed the Caballas and mysteries of the Roman-Catholick Religion You have been very tedious in your answers and declarations I pray you therefore bestow the last Chapter upon me to shew the reasons why so many Ladies and good Souls refuse to conform themselves to the Church of England Prot. With all my heart I will therefore end my speach with the summing up this fifth Chapter and leave the event to God and your Conscience 1. The Means of our Church-men are not so great as to make them maintain a false Religion but their Religion is so true as it makes them contented with any means 2. Yet in other Countreys where no hope of preferment appears there appears an equal zeal of our Religion 3. Our Church-men are commended for their lives and Learning by the pens of their prime Adversaries CHAP. VI. Reasons of refusal to leave the Romish Religion collected out of printed Authors Pap. I Cannot leave my Religion I. Reason Because we must simply believe the Church of Rome whether it teach true or false Stapl. Antidot in Evang. Luc. 10. 16. pag. 528. And if the Pope believe there is no life to come we must believe it as an Article of our Faith Busgradus And we must not hear Protestant Preachers though they preach the Truth Rhem. vpon Tit. 3. 10. And for your Scripture we little weigh it For the word of God if it be not expounded as the Church of Rome will have it is the word of the Devil Hosius de expresso verbo Dei II. Reason You rely too much upon the Gospel and S. Paul's Epistles in your Religion whereas the Gospel is but a fable of Christ as Pope Leo the tenth tells us Apol. of H. Stephen fol. 358. Smeton contra Hamilton pag. 104. And the Pope can dispense against the New Testament Panormit extra de divortiis And he may check when he pleases the Epistles of St. Paul Carolus Ruinus Consil 109. num 1. volum 5. And controul any thing avouched by all the Apostles Rota in decis 1. num 3. in noviss Anton. Maria in addit ad decis

favours vanquish with ●hy mighty hand all open enemies and privy Conspirators who oppugn ●heir Religion Life Diadem or Dignity Crown each of them with all virtues these virtues with ●ong lives and their lives at the last with eternal glory Amen For Charity or the works of Mercy O Lord of mercy and compassion I beseech thee by the tender bowels of thy Son Christ Jesus to move my stony heart to the works of mercy that I may keep my hours of Prayers mourn with them that mourn counsel them that are amiss help them that are in misery relieve the poor comfor● the sorrowful help the oppressed forgive them tha● trespass against me pray for them that hate me requite good for evil despise no man or woman reverence my betters respect my equals be humble and courteous to my inferiours Imitate those that are good shun those that are bad embrace virtue eschew vice Be patient in adversity modest in prosperity thankful in either Keep a watch over my tongue Scorn this world and thirst after Heaven Amen For the receiving of the Blessed Sacrament O Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God through whom only is granted forgiveness of sins and life everlasting who didst justifie the Publican when he confessed the woman of Canaan when she prayed Peter when he repented and the thief upon the Cross when he called upon thee grant unto me a most miserable and wretched sinner pardon and forgiveness of all my transgressions which I most humbly confess I have committed against thee that I may receive this Communion of thy Body and Blood not to my judgement and condemnation but to my everlasting comfort and salvation who livest and reignest with the Father and the holy Ghost one God world without end Amen Meditation When you have newly received O Lord increase my faith O Lord let the Body and Blood of Christ be fixed in my soul to my comfort in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come Amen For that day you expect to hear a Sermon or when you read upon your Bible ALmighty and everlasting God whose Word 〈◊〉 a lanthorn to our feet and a light unto our paths open and enlighten my understanding that I may learn the mysteries of thy Word so far forth as is necessary to my salvation purely and sincerely And be so transfigured in my life and conversation unto that which I shall learn as to please thee in will and deed through Jesus Christ my Lord and only Saviour Amen For Sickness and all other Vses you have excellent Prayers in the Book of Common-Prayer PRINCIPLES Few Notes for the private Use of a most Noble LADY A Prayer to be said upon your knees before the reading over of these Notes ALmighty God the Fountain of true Wisdom and Knowledg send thy Holy Spirit into my heart that I may sufficiently understand and stedfastly believe all the Doctrins necessary to my Salvation and adde such practice and obedience to this Faith through the whole course of my life and conversation as I may so serve thee in thy Kingdom of Grace that hereafter I may be made partaker of thy Kingdom of Glory through the only merit and mediation of thy dear Son and my dear Saviour Jesus Christ Amen I. MAn since his fall in Adam hath no hope of salvation but by the Covenant of Grace betwixt God and Man Whereby God promiseth unto man Mercy and Forgiveness of Sins and man unto God true Faith in Christ and holiness of life and conversation II. CHrist is the Saviour as of all so especially of them that believe and these alone are of God's Church Now the Church of God is Any Company or Congregation of men wheresoever living called by God through the sound of the Gospel unto the Faith of Christ and distinguished from other Societies by these five Marks especially 1. hearing and reading the Word 2. Faith thereunto 3. the use of the Sacraments 4. Prayer and 5. Sanctity of life Where these five things are there is ever a Church of God and sufficient means of salvation III. THe Word must be read often upon your Bible with modesty and short desires of the heart unto God to give you grace to understand it to believe it and to practise it It must be heard upon all convenient occasions especially in those two hours of the Lords day appointed by the Church and the State for that Divine Worship and then you must observe four Rules 1. Observe the Preacher with attention and modesty 2. Secondly apply unto your self in particular the Doctrins and Uses which are delivered in general 3. Examin your conscience if you be guilty of the sins there reproved and presently call to God for grace to amend them 4. Think upon these things again when you come to your Chamber IV. THis outward hearing and reading of the Word together with the inward working of the Holy Ghost in your hearts doth beget a true lively and saving faith which is A full belief without doubting that all is true which God hath spoken or promised in the Scripture and that you rest wholly and confidently upon God that he will grant unto your self in particular forgiveness of sins upon your Repentance and Amendment and perseverance unto the end This is the main point you are seriously to meditate upon and therefore observe these precepts 1. If you do not believe or if you do doubt of any thing in Scripture presently pray unto God to strengthen and enlighten you 2. If you doubt whether you may have any particular interest in those general promises of grace in Christ propounded in the Gospel fall again to your prayers for an increase of Faith 3. If you doubt and yet can find in your heart to pray for more faith let your conscience never be troubled with such a doubting 4. Mark well when the Creed is in reading and give an assent with your heart to every Article And as I doubt not you have learn'd it so keep it still in memory V. NOw as this practical and working Faith is wrought in us by the reading and hearing of the Word joyned with Prayer so is it signed and sealed in our hearts by the two Blessed Sacraments Baptism The Lords Supper Observe in either Sacrament two parts A visible sign Water in Baptism Bread Wine in the Supper An invisible grace Remission of sins in Baptism The benefit of Christ passion in the Supper VI. BAptism is the first Sacrament of the New Testament to wit An outward washing of Water appointed by Christ in his Church with this promise that upon your being Baptized you were as certainly washed from your sins Original being an infant and actual if you had been of years by the Holy Ghost and the Blood of Christ as you were rinsed outwardly in body by this Element of Water Mark then these Vses of Baptism 1. It assures us we are washed from our sins by the Holy Ghost