Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A44535
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The honesty of the Protestant and dishonesty of the popish divinity in a letter to a lady revolted to the Church of Rome / by Anthony Horneck.
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Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing H2844; ESTC R28116
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32,752
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156
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the Sun did shine upon nay the Church of ROME hath at this day few men to equal ours for Learning and knowledge And would all our Learned men be so stubborne and obstinate as not to agree with the Church of ROME if they did not see plainly that there is Death in that Pot and that the Errours in that Church cannot be subscribed to without hazarding the welfare of their Souls I will but use your own Argument when you went over to the Church of ROME and were perswaded by the earnestness of her Priests to yeild to their reasonings what pleasure can we take in promoting your Damnation What can be our interest in deceiving you You used that Argument on their side why will you not use it on our side Judge you whither we that have the Gospel on our side for what we teach are not in a safer way than that Church which for all the new Doctrines they have added to the Old Creedes are forced to run to the broken Cisterns of Tradition and I know not what Fathers whose writings they know not whether they be genuine or no As you are now you live in willful opposition to the Doctrine and Precepts of the Gospel And O Remember what St. Paul doth say 2 Thes. 1. 7 8. That the Lord Jesus will ere long come down from Heaven with all his Holy Angels to take Vengeance on those who have disobeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Once more therefore I charge you before Almighty GOD and our Lord Jesus Christ to repent of your Errours and to return to the bosome of that Church in which you received your life and being and the Principles of Religion and Christianity But if all this seem to you no more but Bugbears I have delivered my own Soul and should be sorry that this discourse should stand as a Witness against you in the Last day which GOD knows was only intended as a motive to draw you back to that Fold from which you have Wandered and gone astray Feb. 20. 1677. I am Madam Your Faithfull Friend to serve You. N. N. FINIS Postscript Madam AS in the publishing of this Letter I had no other design but to prevent the fall of others into the like dangers so I have particularly insisted on those motives which have of late tempted some persons to go over to the Roman Church and though I have represented these motives as yours yet in this I have been so far from doing any thing against the laws of private discourse or friendship or acquaintance that I have only touch'd upon the common stumbling-blocks which make unwary people joyne themselves to that Church blocks which might easily be removed if men or Women would but give themselves leave to think and would prefer the solid dictates of their reason before the suggestions of their soft and sickly passions One thing I had almost forgot and which indeed is the great bug-bear whereby your Church-men fright their people from running over to us and that is that our Church began but about an hundred and fifty years ago that Luther and Zwinglius were the Authors of it and that we had no Church before pittiful shifts indeed to keep people from seeing the Sun at noon suppose our Religion did but begin then why must people be alwayes in an Errour must they never reform when they have done amiss if there were Monstrous Errors in the Church of ROME which the aforesaid persons saw would be the death of Christianity and which they could not subscribe to without debauching their reason or wronging both their own and other mens Consciences was it not rational they should protest against such things to give their fellow Christians warning when the House is on fire would you have no body awake to alarm the Neighbours to look to themselves Did they see so many thousand men ready to be drown'd and would you have had them hold their tongues and barbarously suffered them all to be drown'd Did they see the Christian Religion like to be swallowed up by darkness and Ignorance and was it not time to rouze the slumbering world But however that these men were the first broachers of our Religion is Notoriously false First because long before them there were men that lived in the External communion of the Church of ROME but dislik'd the Errours as they crept in and grew dangerous and though they were overaw'd and silenc'd many times by the higher powers of the Roman Court yet they both detested those corruptions and as they had opportunity protested against them as were an easy matter to prove from age to age if it had not been done already over and over by Divines of our Church so that though these men that lived long before Luther and whom GOD still rais'd to vindicate his truth as it grew more and more polluted were not call'd Protestants by the People yet in effect they were so and consequently there were Protestants many years before Luther and Zwinglius And though they were not suffered by the Ignorant and imperious Ecclestiastical powers to meet and assemble themselves in publick yet they made a Church as much as the followers of Holy Athanasius did when the whole world was turned Arrian as much as Elijah and those seven thousand the Oracle mentions made a Church when the Whole Country was over run with Idolaters These seven thousand we read lay hid and durst not appear in publick being oppress'd by the Idolatrous powers that sat at the stern and thought there was no good fishing but in troubled waters And indeed in this manner our Church was dispers'd long before Luther among the greater multitude of the followers of the corrupted Roman Church as a hand-ful of wheat lies scatterd in a bushel of Chaff and though it did not appear in Pomp and grandeur yet that external splendour is not essential to the truth of a Church your own men may be convinced by the aforementioned examples Secondly if your Champions speak strictly of the Religion which we profess in the Church of England they are under a mistake when they make Luther or Zwinglius the Authors of it for our Reformation began some time after and was both begun and carried on with great deliberation and consideration under Edward the 6. by publick authority whose proper province it is to take notice of what is amiss in a Kingdom or Common wealth whether it be in Church or State and to reform and mend it It 's no great matter when a Reformation begins so the Reformation be but just and if such a Reformation had begun but yesterday that would not have made it unlawful and that our Reformation was just and necessary hath been prov'd by our Divines beyond all reasonable contradiction and how could it but be just when the decrees of the Church of ROME control'd the Word of the Living GOD and vyed with the Oracles of the Gospel How and when the several Errours
the Laity If the substance of the Sacrament and the comfort arising from it may remaine entire without obliging men to beleive a Transubstantiation or Adoration of the consecrated Wafer why will not they for peace sake lay aside such Doctrines which neither themselves nor any creature understands If Heaven and Hell are sufficient motives to a Holy life why will not they for quietness sake renounce their Doctrine of purgatory which by their own confession hath no ground in Scripture Madam I have that charitable opinion of you that if you had but taken a view of the Worship of the Church of ROME as it is practic'd beyond Sea in places where there is no fear of contradiction from any Hereticks where they may freely and securely act according to their principles had you seen the mode of Worshipping the Virgin Mary at ROME or in Spain or Italy the sight of it would have certainly discourag'd you from embracing that Religion which now you seem to be mainly delighted with for indeed the Religion of the Church of ROME at this time if a man were to guess from that which hath the greatest outward Veneration is little else then a Worship of the Virgin Mary The very beggers beyond-Sea in begging of alms beg more for the Virgin Marie's sake then for Christ's sake This Madam I know to be true who am no stranger to forreign parts and I will assure you that in those Cities or Towns where both Papists and Protestants have the free exercise of their Religion you shall live Twenty years in a Town before you hear that any Protestant is turned Papist so few charms are there in the Exercise of their Religion beyond Sea but you shall not be above a year or two in such a Town before you hear that several Papists are turn'd Protestants such a force hath truth The Religion of the Church of ROME as it is practis'd in England lookes harmless Now and then upon some great festival they shew you a Picture of the Virgin Mary or of some other Saint and the honest Priest qualifies every Doctrine makes the Errours soft and plausible and they dare not living in a Protestant Country serve the Host of Heaven I mean Saints and Angels with all their appertenances as they do in places where there are no Protestants to watch them Here their Religion seems to be without a sting and is clad in the fleece of Sheep but if you could but make a Voyage into Spain or Italy I doubt not but you would see the Venome of it and avoid it and the only way not to be of the Church of ROME would be to go to ROME provided you do not go without your Bible In good truth that Church hath turn'd Christianity into a meer outward pomp and splendor which ravishes the eye but can never content a mans reason The glistering Gold in their Temples the curious Images of Saints and Angels the numerons and Stately Altars the mighty Silver Statues the rich and glorious vestments you see up and down in their Churches strike the senses into a kind of ectasie and it must be sense only for a considerate mind that searches the inside of things as well as the outside cannot be so easily gull'd and deceiv'd and this outward pomp they make not the least sign of the truth of their Church not remembring that if this be a good signe the Idolatrous people in Japan and China whose Temples are infinitely more shining and glorious will have a better Title to the true Church than they I must confess that in policy and worldly craft and cunning the Church of ROME exceeds ours for they have not only turn'd the Spiritual Worship of the Gospel into a sensual service into outward Religious formalities a thing strangely pleasing to flesh and blood but they have shooes that will fit all sorts of feet great and small and have remedies for all distempers and you may go to Heaven in that Church either through the straight way or through the broad which you please they can fit the Melancholly person and the Jovial they have Monasteries and Nunneries and severities to content the one and know how to allow greater liberty to the other they can either send a man to happiness through a tedious task of mortification if he likes that method best or help him thither by a quicker dispatch by confession attrition and absolution upon a death bed when the man can hold Sin and the world no longer Live or die you cannot do amiss in that Church for living you may be forgiven and after Death you may be pray'd out of Purgatory sooner or later according as you will spend mony upon Masses for gold doth strangely quicken these supplications Such a Church Madam you have espoused and divorced your self from one that prefers the Wisdom of GOD and of the Gospel before the Wisdom of the flesh and glories in dealing plainly and honestly with all men that keeps close to the Scriptures and yet is not against those Pious customes of antiquity which are not contradictory to the Scriptures that generously maintains the prerogative of GOD and gives no other Honour to Saints and Angels but what may consist with the glory of her Creator that hath made no new Articles of Faith but keeps to the old and thinks it Rebellion against GOD to enjoyn things as necessary to Salvation which GOD never made so that urges the strictest life and encourages nothing but what may promote true piety and devotion that hath no more Ceremonies but what are decent and labours to free Religion at once from slovenliness and superstition that secures the Right of Soveraign Princes and Teaches her Children to live like good subjects and good Christians and though it be her misfortune that too many of her pretended members live like Enemies of Christianity yet that 's not long of her Doctrines and Constitutions but long of the stubborness of men who will not be reform'd by her Precepts As no man blames Christ or his Apostles because Judas was a Hypocrite or because Simon Magus profess'd their Religion so they betray great Ignorance and simplicity that for the Monstrous impieties of many that profess themselves members of our Assemblies despise and slight our Church which in her principles is most averse from all such practices a Church which as for mine own particular I have deliberately and premeditately embraced and chosen so I hope I shall never be so much forsaken of GOD or of my reason as to quit it to become a Papist I have not been altogether a careless observer of the several Christian Churches dispers'd through the world Desire of mine own Salvation hath made me take particular notice what corruption there is in them and what affinity they have with the Primitive Professors of Christianity And I must freely confess upon a serious Examination of the Scripture and the Fathers of the three first Centuries after Christ that from my heart I think there is no Church this day in all the Christian world be it Eastern or Western that in her principles and constitutions bears so much of the Image of the truly Primitive Church or comes so near it as the Church of England a Church which as your fore-Fathers had courage to burn for so I verily beleive that he understands not her Innocent designes and excellent rules that dares not dy a Martyr in her cause Once more your Faithful Friend to serve You. N. N. FINIS Some Books Printed for and Sold by James Collins at his Shop in the Temple passage in Essex street without Temple-bar THe Art of War by the most Honorable George Late Duke of Albemarle Fol. Seven Sermons Preached at White-Hall by Seth Lord Bishop of Sarum His Sermon at the Funeral of George Duke of Albemarle His Sermon Entituled Jorams case before the Peers the 30 of January Quarto An Exact table to Sir John Davis Reports fol. The Voice of the light unto the people called Quakers in relation to Tithes 8. A Discourse of Truth by the Late Reverend Dr. Rust Bishop of Dromore in Ireland together with a discourse of the way to Happiness by Jos. Glanvil Chaplain in ordinary to the King Twelves A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Mrs. Dorothy St. John by Anthony Horneck Preacher at the Savoy A private Conference twixt a poor country Vicar and a rich Alderman by Dr. Pettis Pia Philosophia or the Religious Tendency of Experimental Philosophy by Joseph Glanvil Dr. Parkers answer to Mr. Andrew Marvels book called the Rehearsel Transpros'd Bishop Bramhals confutation of Mr. Baxters Grotian Religion with Dr. Parkers preface annexed 80. Bishop Sandersons seven Cases of Conscience in Oct. Dr. Fords Blessedness of being bountifull 8 The Capucin Fryer exactly described in all his wayes and practices 80. ADVERTISEMENT There is A Library in the hands of the said James Collins to be Sold consisting cheifly of History Philosophy and Politicks c. in divers Languages and a Set of Magick formerly the books of the famous Riolanus in divers Languages FINIS ERRATA Pag 35. lin 18. read eighth's p. 38. l. 4. r. Bishops p. 65. l. 7 r. or to conclude that p. 66. l. 9. r. Sacrament p. 69. l. 19. r. and that they are p. 158. l. 18. r. that are p. 163. l. 17. r. Scripture p. 170. l. 9. r. numerous Other litteral faults and mistoppings the Reader is desired to correct at his leisure