Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	father_n	scripture_n	tradition_n	1,582	5	9.3519	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

the Father but no news of worshipping the Host But secondly there are not the same grounds to believe Christs presence here as that Christ is God and if that presence be not then is it idolatry without excuse It is here granted that the person of Christ visibly appearing to us in any place may be worshipped but there is not the same reason of believing and seeing And if any reply blessed is he who hath not seen and believed he may know that that word is here impertinent relating not to this matter but to the Resurrection It is also granted that in the celebration of the Eucharist we are to give a spiritual worship to Christ as well as to the Father performing that Religious Act with a due veneration of his majesty and power with a thankfulness for his goodness a trust in his promises and a subjection to his supreme authority We grant also that external reverence may be shewn in the time of receiving the Eucharist in signification of our humble and thankful acknowledgement of his benefits But we deny first that Divine worship is to be given to the Elements on the account of a real presence or that the same adoration is to be given out of Communion as in it And this is the only Controversie For how can one be sure that the object is such in it self as deserves worship sine it seems Bread still The Scripture that sayes This is my Body may be otherwayes interpreted and then the words will not make it out and the sence of them given by Fathers is hard to seek and harder to find the world being full of disputes about it The sence of the present Church can stand in no stead For is it enough that the Pope say so No. If he define it No. If a General Council concurre with him No unless they proceed in a right way and who knows that Besides how can we tell that he who consecrates is a Priest or hath any intention to do it And as we cannot be sure of the object of worship there so neither that we have yet sufficient reason to worship For Divines are not resolved whether the humanity of Christ taken abstractively from the Divinity be capable of Divine worship so that if the humanity be present with the Divinity it is uncertain whether I may worship it and as distinct from the Divinity it is certain I cannot And though out of the Sacrament we may worship Christ safely enough yet not so in the Sacrament where his corporal presence is the cause of our adoration and perhaps without the Divinity at all which is unto no purpose of Christs institution But suppose Christs Divinity be present yet this gives not ground enough of worshipping the thing wherein he is present For how and why should it be Here are their Doctors puzled mightily to shew how their worship is terminated in this case and how God is united to the Sacrament more then to the Sun and Moon and whether there be any hypostatical union in one place more then another What can they urge for any sufficient authority of this their worship The authority of the Roman Church That is nothing worth Catholick Tradition Let them shew it Scripture That cannot do it alone without Council and Fathers as some of their own learned men acknowledge For the words This is my Body may stand with a Metaphorical as well as a real sence But if they chance to be mistaken in the belief of this Doctrine then can they not certainly be excused from Idolatry as their own men Bishop Fisher and others do acknowledge no more then the Manichees and some others who said Christ was the Sun and therefore worshipped it Veneration and Invocation of Saints is another piece of Idolatry c. § 1. The Author having prosecuted in one long Chapter the first piece of our Catholick Idolatry he bestows upon us another here as long as it about two other our Idolatrous parcels the Eucharistian Host and Saints For Idolatry is such a rumbling sound that he thinks not fit to confine it to one Chapter as the other three subjects Indevotion Fanaticisme and Division but we must hear of it on both sides our head unto our double confusion But it is here to be noted that he changes now the mode of his Sophistry in to a new kind I suppose for his Readers refreshment Before he cast beams now he throws motes into our Eyes Our Images he confounds by the Loggs of Heathen Idols but our Eucharist by the dust of Philosophical curiosities which he so spreads abroad that he loseth his own eye-sight § 2. And as he changes his Logick so does he alter his phrase also And he has a reason for that too In his first Chapter he charged us with worshiping God by Images and in Images now he does not say in the like phrase that we worship God in the Host or by the Host And of this his sudden change of phrase I believe every Reader does not take notice or perceive a reason though the Author have one and that a good one for it and I think a couple For first a waggish wit must so provide that he impose upon his adversary not that which is true or sounds true but what is or sounds false To worship God in Images sounds false but to worship God in the Host sounds true and therefore he imposes that upon Catholicks but not this Secondly This his diversity of phrase brings him in all the materials of that his first and this present Chapter which he could never by any force have haled into his paper unless he had carefully so placed his words as here he does The charge of worshipping God in Images gave him occasion to talk how such a worship cannot terminate upon God how that the invisible Deity cannot be represented how the Heathens worshipped God in their Idols how that Aaron and Jeroboams sin was no other c. which materials till up his first Chapter and had all failed him had he spoke singly of the respect which Catholicks bear to their holy Apostles and Martyrs represented either to their ear or eye which is all they do On the other side his charge of worshipping the Host and not God in the Host opens him a passage for all the talk of this his second Chapter how that we have no command in Scripture of worshipping the Host though we be commanded to worship Christ how that we have no ground to worship the Elements how that we cannot be sure that the Host is an object of worship how Schoolmen are puzled to declare the union with the Elements and Symbols c. which are his materials against this second parcel of our Idolatry and had all failed him too had he fairly imposed upon Catholicks a worship of God in the Host as before he did a worship of God in Images For these two great reasons he warily imposes upon them in choice phrases of

owners excluded by violence do preach Fifthly it set out the glebe land and tyths whereon they live Sixthly it founded our Corporations raised our famous Universities and furnished their Libraries with books Seventhly it has preicribed and delivered us the forms not of the Sacraments onely but of any sort either of ecclesiastical or civil instalments Eighthly it has triumphed over Jews and Pagans notwithstanding their power and furious opposition by Gods blessing and her own innocence prudence and constancie and laid asleep the very heresies that have risen up against her in all ages out of her own bowels All these things that I may speak no more are not the works of fanaticism they are not the properties power or gestures of fanaticks Fanaticism rises up suddenly and dies like a mushrom utters a fond defiance and so vanishes destroys but builds nothing chatters a little like a moon calf and is seen no more § 2. That our Doctor may proceed somewhat doctor-like he tells us in the begining of this his Chapter what he means by fan●ticism By it saith he I understand an enthusiastick way of religion or resisting authority under pretence of religion This is his desiartion of it But whether it be one definition or two it is not easie to say Indeed and truth it is no definition at all but onely an obscure dark wording of things so purposely ordered that he may put what he pleases in the circle of fanaticism besides himself It is saith he an enthusiastick way of religion But what is enthusiastick what does way mean in these our affairs and what is a way of religion A definition ought to be plain and familiar without either amphibology or trope and more intelligible than the thing defined This is not so Enthusiasm in Greek is but the same thing as Inspiration Were then the Apostles and Prophets who were inspited and taught that their inspired way of religion the fanaticks here spoken of or no Secondly what is meant by way Is it a way chalked out for a man by his just and legal guids or a way invented by himself This is a main business and perhaps the very essence of fanaticism and yet it is not here exprest Thirdly what is a way of religion Is it religion it self or some certain fanciful gestures in the exercise of it or some odd mode in defending it or some peculiar manner of applying it unto the conduct of our lives A clergy man may either in a pulpit or at an altar have many simple wild gestures and yet be a sound Christian for all that But is such a one to be understood here to have an enthusiastick way of religion He who makes it a part of his religion to defame his innocent neighbours wrongfully persuading people that he does God good service therein is this man a fanatick and yet he practises a very mad way of religion To side first with our English prelacie and when it is overborn by unlawful violence to turn unto them who overthrew it and as soon as it is reestablished to come back again to it is this fanaticism I am sure it is a mad way of religion He that disables his own Protestant Bishops in one book being a Protestant himself and in another inveighs heavily against some Jesuists for resisting their Papist Bishops whom himself also does not approve is this man a fanatick yea or no And yet he follows and treads a very strange mad way of religion So that obscure general and tropical words are so far from keeping him out that they include rather and hem in Dr. Still himself and wholly inclose him in his own circle of fa●aticism Again his other part or other whole definition of fanaticism A resisting authority under a pretence of religion is obscure enough too For there be many sorts of resisting and many sorts of authority and many sorts of pretences and many religions pretended and yet not all of them fanatick All Protestants in their first reformation resisted all authority of the whole Catholick world both ecclesiastical and civil and that under pretence of religion a new way of religion invented by themselves opposite to the Catholick way wherein they had all been born and bred Are all these and their successors unto this very day fanaticks or no He will say no perhaps because they had good reason to do it But do not Quakers whom Dr Still speaks openly to be fanaticks say also that they have good reason to withstand and desert our Protestant English Church O but no body says so but themselves Neither did any but those first Protest●nts say they had any reason at all but the whole Catholick world rose up and condemned them So that we have got but little light by this definition of his left wholly in as much obscurity as ever he was himself after he had been puzling among the Schoolmen Truth is we are neither to seek into logick or into dictionaties for the mea●ing and signification of fanaticks or fanaticism For the word as it relates to religion here in England is of voluntary imposition never before applied unto any Sects of Christianity till my Lord General Monk used it in Parliament some few years ago to express those men who under pretence of their new invented doctrines contemned and rose up against all authority and waged war and overthrew both Church and State before them unto the utter impoverishing and desolation of the Land These our great General never to be mentioned in England without honour called Fanaticks that is to say mad foolish blasted men who preferring their own instable conceits for they had now fallen and shivered into many Sects before solid obedience unto Church and State rooted up what ever was fixt for the general good of all men and contenting themselves with the pillage of the Land could settle nothing at all themselves either of religion or government in the end These he called Fanaticks And in his great prudence he made choice of that new word upon hopes that every one of these several sects would lay the epither upon his neighbour as indeed they did And amongst these men yea the very chief and ringleaders of them did Mr. Still our Doctor joyn himself And yet does he here in his own little subtilty lay the whole ignominy now upon the Quakers as a burthen for the younger brothers to carry And yet were they hardly born when the work of fanaticism in England was accomplished By all this we may easily discern what fanaticism means But yet we must notwithstanding content our selves with the definition he has given us so far as it can bear any fixt or certain sense and so proceed § 3. The Church of Rome saith he is both ways fanatical both in an enthusiastick way of religion and resisting authority A man would wonder how this charge should be made good of a Catholick Church whose religion is ever settled and delivered by tradition from generation to generation still