Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	act_n	faith_n	true_a	1,736	5	5.3011	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49336	A letter to Edw. Stillingfleet, D.D. &c. in answer to the epistle dedicatory before his sermon, preached at a publick ordination at St. Peter's Cornhil, March 15, 1684/5 together with some reflections upon certain letters, which Dr. Burnet wrote on the same occasion / by Simon Lowth ...	Lowth, Simon, 1630?-1720.	1687 (1687)	Wing L3328; ESTC R2901	83,769	93

particulars As That the Church hath no declarative Power in matters of Faith or supposing any Article obscure to us or inverted and involved by Hereticks so that the matter of it hath not been explicitly acknowledged in all Ages of the Church anteceeding when the present Church gives the true meaning of it according to the tradition of Faith evidencing thereby the Sense of the Article or which is the same the sense of Scripture on which the Article is founded and engages the assent of all Christians thereunto That hereby she creates a new Article of Faith pag. 75 945. as if there were no mean betwixt the Power of the single Church of Rome who resolves all her actings into her own immediate Authority and the true Power of the Catholick Church of God which determines antecedent truths that were tho' less known or misinterpreted from the beginning and when the reason of her decree is not from her own Authority but the Tradition of Faith delivering the sense of the Holy Ghost down unto us That the Church representing and the Church diffusive are all one nothing can make the Church teaching and representative but the belief of what is necessary to Salvation Pag. 86 87. I thought a distant Power by Ordination had constituted the Pastors of the Church You go on at the same confused rate Pag. 251 252. I 'll only write out your words at large and let the Reader judge of them That which being supposed a Church is and being distroyed it ceaseth to be is the formal constitution of it but thus it is as to the Church The belief of Fundamentals makes it a Church and the not believing them makes it cease to be a Christian Church I speak of an essential not an organical Church And I know not who those persons are who out of those places Luk. 10.16 Matth. 28.19 20. Joh. 14.16 do infer the perpetuity of an organical Church nor if they did doth it thence follow they must suppose an infallible assistance beyond an essential 't is strange that nothing should be found betwixt these two in your own sense of them to constitute Pastors of Christ's own sending to make it an organical Church for I cannot imagine what necessity can be supposed of infallibility in order to that which may be sufficiently constituted without it The perpetuity of the Church doth rather argue the infallibility of the promise than of the Church Supposing then that the promises by you insisted on should be so far extended as to imply a perpetuity of a Christian Church what doth that argue but only this that to make it appear that promise is infallibly true there shall always be a Succession of Christians in the World Suppose I grant that the being of a Christian Church doth suppose the assistance of God's Spirit is there no assistance but what is infallible If not no one can be a Christian without infallibility for we speak of no other assistance but what is necessary to make Men Christians for what makes them such severally take them conjunctly makes them a Church But if you besides what assistance is requisite to make Men Christians do suppose somewhat more to make them a Church I pray name what it is And whatever it be it will not be own'd by such who infer a Perpetuity But if in order to that no more be meant as no more can be meant than what is necessary to make Men Christians then infallibility will grow so cheap and common I add and Church-Power and Offices together with it it will not be worth challenging by you for your Church neither will a Ministry be worth challenging by us either But this is agreeable enough with the Title you still give the Archbishop in this Treatise and as if he had no other Prelation but what is derived from his Majesty and is purely Secular you call him his Lordship only I much question Whether it might not have discomposed the Calm that most exemplary Prelate died in upon the Scaffold at Tower-Hill if he could then have been aware that he should have had such a Vindicator I cannot here but repeat it again tho' it be so very Offensive How gladly I should see the Church of Rome opposed and our common Christianity not struck at with the same blow and hand Surely the due Power of God's Church might have been vindicated and Rome's Usurpations rejected without this intermingling all as one both Priest and People as you have done here most Scandalously And at the same rate you dispute also against the Monarchical Government of the Church and an infallible judge Pag. 464. because Christ no where that we read of took care that we should be freed from all kind of Controversies and we no where find such a State of Christian Church described or promised where Men shall be of one mind only that peace and brotherly love continue is all that Christians are bound to and that every Man have the same Vnderstanding Which Arguments conclude as forcibly against any other Government even that of our Saviour himself and his Apostles were they upon Earth again and in the same circumstances as when here before Nay you have used these very Arguments against all manner of Government in your Irenicum And farther Pag. 172. you infer Because it is not in the Power of the Church of Rome judicially and authoritatively to determine what Books belong to the Canon of Scripture and what not Therefore the Church in this case is but a Jury of grand Inquest to search into matters of Fact and not a Judge upon the Bench to determine in point of Law And thereby take away all judicial Power from the Church to oblige her Members or Subjects by for their assent and submission to her Acts and Decrees upon a due search of matter of Fact and full evidence of the Truth and Certainty of those Articles Rules and Canons enjoin'd and commanded And thus you particularly affront the Practice of our own Church she having made it Law that only such a certain number of Books of the Old and New Testament be accounted and received as Canonical and withal requiring Subscription thereunto as a judge upon a Bench to be sure by all that are admitted by her into holy Orders And as you have before concluded That whatever Power can be supposed by Christ to be promised and derived to his Church from Matt. 28.19 20. c. is that which each private Christian partakes of So again Pag. 516. you say That whatever Power can be supposed in a General Council must be first in the Church diffusive and from thence be derived to the Council Which in effect is thus That the Bishops of Christendom who by right are only to sit in Council and such Presbyters as have sat and acted there did it only as their Substitutes and by virtue of their deputation receive their Power either from the Presbyters and Deacons or which is worse from the Laity

LICENSED July 19. 1686. A LETTER TO Edw. Stillingfleet D. D. c. In ANSWER to the Epistle Dedicatory before his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination at St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5. TOGETHER WITH Some Reflections upon certain LETTERS which Dr. Burnet wrote on the same occasion By SIMON LOWTH Vicar of Cosmus Blene in the Diocess of Canterbury Sed non idcirco frater charissime relinquenda est Ecclesiastica disciplina aut sacerdotalis solvenda est censura quoniam convitiis infestamur aut erroribus quatimur B. Cyprianus Ep. 55. ad Cornelium Impp. Honorius Theodos A. A. Anthemio P. F. P. Hirenarcharum vocabula quae adsimulata provincialium tutela quietis ac pacis per singula territoria haud sinunt stare concordiam radicitùs amputanda sunt Cesset igitur genus perniciosum reipublicae Cesset rescriptorum Hirenarchas circiter inconsulta simplicitas celsitudinis tuae sedes provinciarum defendenda suscipiat pacis hujusmodi locupletioribus commissura praesidia 12. Cod. Theodos Tit. 14. LONDON Printed by J. L. and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall in Amen-Corner MDCLXXXVII A LETTER TO Dr. Stillingfleet In ANSWER to his Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination in the Church of St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5 Reverend Sir HAVING perused your angry Epistle I am now abundantly satisfied that after all the clamorous Objections and riotous Noises against my Book of Church-Power raised and kept up by Men of your Party and Complexion and all the endeavours of such Champions as your self and that renowned Hero the famous Dr. Burnett you have been able to say nothing in reply to it besides personal remarks and accusations I might add choice Epithets and embellishments of Wit that might have become a Tripas Exercise in the Sophister's Schools but by no means the Gravity of an old exercised Master of Polemicks If you can reap any satisfaction from loading me with the general Titles of a Plagiary ridiculous fool malicious unskillful maker of Controversies a barbarous and rude Disputer with his Brethren an accuser of his Brethren an implacable man uncharitable unjust slanderer proud void of prudence and common discretion the usual Complements you are pleased to bestow upon me you may be happy in the enjoyment of your humor though it hath not an Irenical Complexion But I that design nothing but the pursuit of Truth and Honesty shall only endeavour in an easie method and plain words to come to the true state of the Controversie between us and my reply you may be pleased to take in this order First I shall presume to make some return to those little Pleas and Excuses that you give in for your self and those Accusations of any weight that you are pleased to bring in against me and withal take the liberty to reflect a little upon the Treatment I have received from your Friend and Advocate Dr. Burnett upon the same occasion For I foresee that opportunity will be offer'd Secondly I shall make it appear That the account you give of your Irenicum is not fair nor true and that you conceal your Crime in the very confession of it The whole design and plot being meerly laid against the Re-establishment of the Church of England Thirdly I shall enquire more particularly how far you have recall'd and recanted the principal Errors of it and particularly the Imposture of your Manuscript not doubting to make it appear That you still owe a publick Recantation for it not to the poor Vicar of Cosmus Blene but to the Church of England First I shall consider herein the little pleas you make use of for your self and your trifling Accusations against me together with your Characters of me and also take the liberty of some Reflections upon Dr. Burnet And here your failure is so evident and notorious at the very entrance and your conclusion so inconsequential that it plainly appears you began your Epistle in a passion and without a due consideration of those things which in course follow upon one another Otherwise how could you say to your most Reverend Diocesan That as you have the satisfaction of doing your duty in obeying his Lordship's command for Printing the Sermon you Preached at his last solemn Ordination so you hope others will have so much at least in Reading of it as to be convinced how unjustly you have been not long since represented to the world as an enemy to the very being of Churches in general and to the constitution of this Church in particular Pray how does it follow because you Preached sound and orthodox Divinity at that one time that you had never Preached or Printed any thing Erroneous or Heretical before Or what connexion is there in this such a one is now a sound Divine and therefore he was so always Had you in that Sermon made it appear that my Accusation was not True or that I had said you would never retract those unsound tenents that I accused you of then you might have depended with some tolerable assurance upon the Reader 's conviction of the injustice I had done you But since so it is that you neither attempted to clear your self concerning those things I accused you of neither did I say you would never retract them to infer injustice on my part because some years after that I had accused you you Preached a Sermon which was Orthodox in those points wherein I said you were once defective is a conclusion he alone can be guilty of whose common perceptions are choaked with Choler No Man could suspect that Dr. Stillingfleet made it had not the following part of the Epistle been of his Composure also consisting mostly of the like undecencies I said you were guilty of such Doctrines at the time when I Printed my Book but I did not say you would never retract them It was part of my design in writing that Book to inform you better and that you might come to a sense of those Errors which I apprehended at that time you were not sensible of I told you I judged a retractation necessary and that you ought to make one which was my crime in that I spake so plainly and boldly to you and no Man rejoyces more or thanks you more than I do for what you have performed of that nature in your Sermon You argue on at the same rate and say That my Calumny as you are pleased to call it is groundless and ridiculous because you have since proved the Church a distinct Society and vindicated her power in general and the particular constitution of this Church Now this supposes the truth of my accusation and that you once had asserted the contrary only I am so disingenuous that I take no notice of your retractation but still urge that first Error against you and this is the full of all that you can be interpreted to plead for your self The conclusion indeed seems larger

or Believers in common The Presbyters indeed make the lower House of Convocation in our Church of England but the reason of that is from a particular Law in our Kingdom which imbodies no Canons giving to them the Secular protection but such as pass the Votes of all the inferior Clergy of the Nation represented by the Presbyters that sit there as well as the Votes of the upper Clergy or Bishops Such Stuff have you put together and yet there is worse for you add The utmost then can be supposed in this case is That the parts of the Church may voluntarily consent to accept the decrees of such a Council and by that voluntary act or by the Supreme Authority enjoining it such decrees may become Obligatory As pure Irenicum as any in the World. I 'll add but one instance more by which it will farther appear how you run against or at least evade the true Power of the Bishops and Pastors of the Church vested in them by Christ for the obliging the whole and it is that of Schism which in prosecution of your foregoing notion you assert pag. 290. to be a violation of that Communion which Christians are obliged to upon the acknowledgment of the truth of Christian Religion or upon owning Christianity the way to true Happiness Quisquis ille est qualiscunque est Christianus non est qui in Ecclesia Christi non est Cypr. de Novato Ep. 52. Inde enim schismata haereses oboriuntur dum Episcopus qui unus est Ecclesiae preest superba quorundam praesumptione contemnitur Et homo dignatione Dei honoratus indignus hominibus judicatur Idem Ep. 171. Et non attendisti inter schismaticos haereticos quam magna distantia sit inde est quod ignoras quae sit sancta Ecclesia omnia miscuisti Optat. cont Parmen Donatist lib. 1. Catholicum facit simplex verus intellectus singulare verum sacramentum unitas animorum Schisma verò sparso coagulo pacis generatur deserta matre Catholica impii filii dum foras exeunt se separant à radice matris Ecclesiae invidiae falcibus amputati errando rebelles abscedunt nec possunt novum aliquid aut aliud agere quam quod jamdudum apud suam matrem didicerunt Haeretici veritatis exules sacri symboli desertores c. de se nosci voluerunt ideo falsum habent Baptisma Vobis vero Schismaticis quamvis in Catholica non sitis haec negari non possunt quia nobiscum vera communia traxistis Sacramenta ibid. the very Schism in the days of St. Paul at Corinth For if he that cometh Preacheth another Jesus whom we have not Preached or if ye receive another Spirit which ye have not received or another Gospel which ye have not accepted ye might well bear with him 2 Cor. 11.4 Immanes non habentes Dei dilectionem suam utilitatem potius considerantes quam unitatem Ecclesiae propter modicas quaslibet causas magnum gloriosum corpus Christi conscindunt dividunt quantum in ipsis est interficiunt pacem loquentes bellum operantes vere liquantes culicem camelum diglutientes Nulla enim ab iis tanta fieri potest correptio quanta est Schismatis corruptio Irenaeus l. 4. c. 62. Sed crimine Schismatis à quo immanissimo Sacrilegio nemo vestrum se dicere potest immunem quamdiu non communicat unitati omnium gentium Aug. l. 2. Cont. Petil. Donatist c. 96. Quid ergò prodest homini vel sana fides vel sanum fortasse solum fidei Sacramentum Vbi letali vulnere Schismatis perempta est sanitas charitatis per cujus solius peremptionem etiam illa integra trabuntur ad mortem Idem l. 1. de Baptismo contra Donatist c. 8. Nobiscum enim estis in Baptismo in Symbolo in caeteris dominicis Sacramentis in Spiritu autem unitatis in ipsa denique Catholica Ecclesia nobiscum non estis Ep 48. Vincentio Quisquis ab hac Ecclesia Catholica fuerit separatus quantumlibet laudabiliter se vivere existimet hoc solo scelere quod à Christi unitate disjunctus est non habebit vitam sed ira Dei manet supra eum Ep. 152. And so in the Apostles Canons Can 31. The Schismatick is he that altare aliud erigit nolente Episcopo Can. 6. Conc. Constant 2. Gen. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are called Schismaticks tho' of a sound Faith. Schisma est recessio à proprio Episcopo Can. 13. Conc. 1 2 Constantinop And to the same effect Can. 10. Conc Carthag 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contra proprium Episcopum I 'll add but this one Authority more and it is St. Basil ad Amphiloc Can. 1. Haereses quidem eos qui omnino abrupti sunt in ipsa fide sunt abalienati Schismata autem propter aliquas Ecclesiasticas causas medicabiles questiones inter se dissident Schisma autem est de penitentia dissentire ab iis qui sunt ex Ecclesia Haereses autem ut Manichaeorum Valentinorum Marcionistarum c. statim enim de ipsa in deum fide est dissentio herein contradicting all the ancient Fathers Doctors and Teachers of the Church of God and the whole current of Theology who still speak of Schism as a breach of the Laws and Canons Ecclesiastical of which those are guilty who receive and own the Foundation or the Scriptures as the indispensable Rule of Faith and Manners but recede from their Pastors or Bishop that break the outward peace when owning the same Articles of Faith and for little things make divisions And in this respect it is that St. Austin lays such blame upon the Donatists telling them That a true Faith will avail them nothing nay that they are worse than Idolaters Dr. Hammond in his Book of Schism considers it also in this Ecclesiastical notion and therefore concludes us to be no Schismaticks not because retaining your essentials or being of a Church consisting in a belief in Christ and walking in him but because keeping those due Subordinations in which our Christianity placed us in respect of our Church-Governors whether to the Deacon or Presbyter or Bishop Metropolitan Exarch or Patriarch as also that due co-ordination as fellow Christians without breaches of Charity made upon one another And to what end you should give this notion of it differing both from the Church of God and our own Doctors is not conceiveable only that you designed thereby to gratifie and comply with those amongst us whose Maxime is That to strike a Schismatick is to hit a Saint That Schism in this Church-Sense of it is a meer Chimera invented only by Church-men to keep the People in Dependence and Subjection unto them that Vnity does not consist in Vniformity but in owning the general Truths of the Gospel and obeying them or believing in Christ and walking