Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	world_n	worship_v	year_n	59	3	4.7773	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30394	The mystery of iniquity unvailed in a discourse wherein is held forth the opposition of the doctrine, worship, and practices of the Roman Church to the nature, designs and characters of the Christian faith / by Gilbert Burnet ...	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1673 (1673)	Wing B5838; ESTC R35459	60,599	169

the Chalice from the People who in reason should be imagined so tenacious of so great a priviledge that no consideration should have obliged them to part with it and yet we know nor do they deny how it was wrung from them about 250 years ago What may seem less credible then for the People to consent to have their worship in an unknown Tongue and yet we know that all once worshipped in their Mother Tongue but that after by the overthrow of the Roman Empire the Latine Tongue decayed the barbarous worship was obtruded on the World And what piece of worship is both more visible and more contrary to the clearest evidence of Scriptures especially to the commandments in which the people were always instructed then the worshipping of Images And though we know well enough that for the first seven Centuries the Christian World abhorred them yet within a hundredth years after that we find a great part of it bewitched with them And what can be thought more uneasie for the World to have received then the Popes absolute authority over all the Churches and States of the World One should think that though Religion and Reason had lien out of the way yet Interest and Ambition had withstood this yet we see clearly by what steps they crept up from being Bishops of the Imperial City in an equality of power with their neighbouring Bishops into that culminating hight to which they have now mounted In a word we refuse not to appeal to the first four Ages of the Church in these matters that we quarrel the Roman Church for We deny not but humane infirmity begun soon to appear in the Church and a care to gain on the Heathens made them quickly fall upon some rites and use some terms which after-ages corrupted But the ruin of Religion was when the Roman Empire being overturned by the incursion of the Northern Nations in the beginning of the fifth Century both piety and Religion being laid to sleep instead of the Primitive simplicity of the faith and worship of the Christians they turned all their zeal to the adorning of the outwards of Religion hence the corruptions of the Church took their rise But I had almost forgot to name some Revelations which that Church pretends to even for some of her most doubtful opinions which are the visions and extraordinary Inspirations of some of their Saints from which they vouch a divine confirmation to their Doctrines I confess there is a great deal of extraordinary Visions Rapts and Extasies to be met with among the lives of their Saints and I fear a great deal more then truth for really whoso will but read these writings he must confess they are so far from being probable or well contrived that they speak out their forgery Alas whereas St. Paul being put to Glory of Visions and Revelations was to run back fourteen years for one Their Saints are found in them every day Are they not very credible Stories they tell of Christs appearing to some of their She-Saints and kissing them giving them Rings being married to them and celebrating nuptial rites making them drink out of his side and leaving on them the prints of his wounds with many other such like apparitions of the Virgin and other Saints which were either forgeries dreams or the effects of melancholy or histerical distempers and yet these extravagant fables are given out to the people as sacred pieces of Divine Revelations But the inspiration of the holy Writers on which we found our Faith was proved by their miracles which they wrought publickly in the sight of many and in the presence of their adversaries many of whom were convinced by them and it is certain that whosoever offers any thing to anothers belief pretending he comes to him in the Name of God must have some evident proof of his Divine Mission since none are bound to believe him barely on his own Testimony Otherwise there should be no end of Impostures if every pretender to Divine Inspiration were to be believed without proof Now the way it must be proved is by some evidence of Gods extraordinary assisting such a person which appeared alwayes either in Prophesies or Miracles but chiefly in miracles under the New Testament and therefore both Christ and his Apostles appeal to the mighty works they wrought as the great confirmation of their Doctrine If then there be new Doctrines brought into the Church they must have the like confirmation otherwise they are not to be believed But here those of that Church think they triumph For miracles they have in abundance not a Relique they have but hath wrought mighty wonders nor a Countrey-Saint but the Curat of the place can gravely tell a great many deeds of his puissance nor want the Images their marvellous atchievments but wondrously wondrous are the feats the Hosty hath performed Here I am upon a sad Subject of that trade of lies and fictions wherewith the Merchants of that Babylon have so long traffiqued of which the sincerer among themselves are ashamed How ridiculous are many of their miraculous narrations Was it a worthy piece of the Angelical Ministration for Angels to go trotting over Sea and Land with a load of Timber and Stones of the Virgins house till at length they set it down at Loretto that great devotions might be shown to it It is a goodly story for to tell of a Saint that walked so far after his head was cut off with it in his arms resting in some places to draw breath yet he will pass for an Infidel that should doubt of this at St. Denis-Church Who can look on the lives of the late Saints of that Church without nausea Gregories Dialogues begun this trade which indeed hath thriven well since The miracles of the Christian faith were grave and solemn actions but what ridiculous scenical stories not to say blasphemous ones meet us about the miracles of their Saints He that would know this may read the Lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic St. Bridgit and the two St. Catherines and he will be satisfied to a surfeit The Miracles also of Christ and his Apostles were acted publickly in the view of all but most of these narrations of their Wonders were transacted in corners none being witnesses but persons concerned to own the cheat And the Doctrine of Equivocating was a good cordial for the ease of their Consciences though they swore what they knew false according to the natural sense of the words which they uttered Thus we have many fables of Christs appearing in the Hosty sometimes as a child and sometimes as crucified when but a very few of the whole company present were honoured with that amazing sight Further the Miracles of the Christian Faith were written in the times in which they were acted that so enquiries might have been made into their falshood and the powers that then governed being enemies to the Faith it was safe for its opposers to have proved

THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY UNVAILED IN A DISCOURSE Wherein is held forth The Opposition of the Doctrine Worship and Practices of the Roman Church TO The Nature Designs and Characters of the Christian Faith By GILBERT BURNET Chaplain in Ordinary to His MAJESTY LONDON Printed by W. Godbid and are to be sold by M. Pitt at the Angel over against the Little North Door of St. Pauls 1673. THE Mystery of Iniquity UNVAILED HE that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow is an observation which holdeth true of no part of knowledge so much as of the knowledge of Mankind It is some relief to him who knows nothing of foreign wickedness to hope there are other Nations wherein Virtue is honoured and Religion is in esteem which allays his regrates when he sees Vice and Impiety abound in his Country but if by travelling or reading he enlarge his Horizon and know Mankind better his regrates will grow when he finds the whole World lyes in wickedness It argues a cruel and in humane temper to delight in beholding scenes of horrour and misery and certainly none who either honours his Maker and Redeemer or is a lover of Mankind can without sorrow look on and see the indignities done to God and his Son Christ and see the Enemy of the humane race triumphing over the World with such absolute authority and so much enraged cruelty and that not only in the dark Regions of it which the Sun of Righteousness hath not yet visited with his Gospel but that where Christ should have a Throne Satans Seat should also be is justly surprising and astonishing That almost all Christendom hath fallen from their first love is what none whose eyes are open can deny and it is little less evident that the greater part of it hath made shipwrack and erred from the Faith and that the Church whose Faith was once spoken of throughout the World is now become the Mother of the Fornications of the Earth It is true the Scriptures warned us of a falling away of a mystery of iniquity of an Antichrist to be revealed in due time and of a Babylonish Rome which should bewitch the Earth with her Sorceries but should be varnished over with fair colours and specious pretences so that mystery should be on her forehead Being then warned of so much danger to the Christian Religion it is a necessary though painful enquiry to see if this Antichrist be yet come or if we must look for another But because some have stretched the Notion of Antichristianism so far that things harmless and innocent come within its compass and others have so much contracted it that they might scape free we are to take a view of the Nature and Designs of the Christian Religion and to conclude from that what must be Antichristianism It being not only a bare contradiction to some branches or parts of the Gospel for then every errour or heresie were Antichristianism but a design and entire complex of such opinions and practices as are contradictory to and subversive of the power and life of Christianity And if we find any such thing to be broached and received in the World we may with the least hazard of uncharitableness pronounce it to be Antichristianism and if it be acted or animated by any Head he may be concluded Antichrist The Designs of the Christian Religion run betwixt these four heads The first is to give us right apprehensions of the Nature and Attributes of God that we may conceive aright of him and adore him sutably to his Nature and according to his Will and thereby be admitted to a free converse with him and become partakers of the Divine Nature How little of God was known by the twinklings of Natures Light even to the better and wiser part of the World Tullies Books of the Nature of the Gods do sufficiently inform us But if the Philosophers were so much to seek in it what shall we expect from the Vulgar And indeed Homers Iliads and Ovids Metamorphosis were wretched Systems of Divinity and yet such and such like were the sentiments of the Nations about the Godhead It is true the seed of Abraham were delivered from that darkness and knew God by his Name Iehovah and had Laws and Ordinances given them by God yet their Worship was so carnal and did so strike upon and affect the senses that we will be soon satisfied it was not so sublime and free as became the Spirituality of the Divine Nature and so was only fitted for the Infancy of the People of God but by Christ the mystery that lay hid from ages and generations was revealed for he declared the Father and revealed him and taught us to renounce Idols and vanities and to serve the living God commanding all men every where to repent the times of ignorance wherein God winked at Idolatry being then over That so Mankind being Gods Off-spring might feel after him and not worship him any more in the blinding grossness of Idolatry but in a pure spiritual manner and whereas the Law came by Moses by Christ came Grace and Truth Grace in opposition to the severity of the Law and Truth as opposed not to Falshood but to the Figures and Shadows of Moses his Law and therefore God is to be worshipped in Spirit and Truth in opposition to the Carnal Ordinances and Typical Rites which shadowed out the Truth in the Law The second branch of the Christian Religion is to hold forth the method of mans reconciliation with his Maker For the sense of all mankind agrees in this that sin is an indignity done to God which deserveth punishment and cannot be expiated by any service man can do It was therefore necessary there should be a mean found for incouraging sinners to imbrace a Religious life of which all had reason to despair without pardon were offered to penitents upon the change of their lives Now this was that the Heathen could not dream how to procure It is true the Iews had sacrifices for expiating of sin but these could never quiet their consciences since the common sense of mankind tells that the blood of beasts cannot appease God The mystery therefore of the reconciliation of sinners to God is the proper character of the Christian-Religion which holds forth to us how the eternal Word was made man and endured unspeakable sufferings for the sins of men even to the death of the Cross and was raised up by God and carried to Heaven where he is vested with all power and authority and by the merits of his death hath a right to grant pardon give grace and confer eternal life on all that believe on him by whom God conveys all things to us and through whom we are to offer up all our worship to God he being the Mediator betwixt God and man The third head of the Christian-Religion is to teach the perfectest clearest and most divine rules for advancing of the souls of men to the highest perfection of their natures