Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	agree_v	church_n	true_a	1,693	5	5.5079	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34067	Friendly and seasonable advice to the Roman Catholicks of England by a charitable hand.	Comber, Thomas, 1645-1699.	1677 (1677)	Wing C5468; ESTC R1768	62,503	180

That it was expedient the people should be deceived in their Religion as Scaevola the Pagan Pontifex M. in S. Augustine saith and no doubt your Church agrees with the Heathen Varro in the same Author where he saith There are many Truths in Religion which it is not expedient for the people to know and though divers things therein be false yet the people ought to think them true The instances of some particulars will make this more evident 1. Miracles were the foundation and most authentick proofs for Invocation of Saints Veneration of Images and Relicks Pilgrimages Purgatory Monastical Vows and most of the gainful Articles of the Roman Church and yet S. Chrysostome saith that there were no footsteps of the power of Miracles left in the Church in his time And your S. Gregory thinks them unnecessary among Believers and so do many others Yet in the dark Ages nothing was more frequently pretended than Miracles wrought by Saints living and dead as appears by the stories of their Lives and the Legends of your Church which Relations are so senseless and so ridiculous so impossible and unlikely so little agreeing with Chronology History or Geography that the Modern Writers of the Roman Party are ashamed of them Hence your own Canus complains that these Authors of Saints Lives with false and counterfeit Fables have blemished the Lives of Saints And the same Writer saith there that the Author of your so famed Golden Legend was a man of an Iron forehead and a Leaden soul Harding also affirmeth That there be many vain Fables in it Simeon Metaphrastes is another of these Miracle-Writers and is so eminent that he is read in the Modern Roman Breviaries and yet Cardinal Bellarmine blames him for incredible stories and relations not agreeing to Ancient Writers He adds saith he many things out of his own wit not as they were really done but as they might have been done And is not this notorious forgery Yea the Popes themselves in the latest sort of Breviaries have left many of these fabulous Miracles out since they have done the work now for which they were invented the Doctrines supported by these lies are now generally embraced and when the Arch is compleated the Props on which it was raised may be laid aside yet still you ought to ask If these stories were false how came the Infallible Church to put them into her Offices if they were true why doth she now reject them And it is observable that the Roman Church at present pretends but to very few Miracles and the Doctors thereof in this knowing Age are very shy of believing any at all as one of your own Priests proves at large The Reason of which must needs be because they fear this Inquisitive and learned Generation should discover the fraud of them For since Miracles are especially necessary to convince unbelievers there is far more need of them since the Reformation when so many disbelieve the Religion of your Church than was before when all the Nations of the West were at the Devotion thereof Yet then many Miracles are recorded and now few or none an Argument sufficient to make a wary man believe there were few real Miracles at any time since the settlement of Christianity only the superstitious and ignorant credulity of the former Ages was fit to be abused with such Pretences And now why are you so stiff in maintaining those Opinions which were believed at first upon so slight and false inducements as these Legends and Miracles are confessed to be But this Argument is of late so fully handled by two excellent Pens that I may dismiss it with my hearty wish you would read those Tracts without Prejudice being not written to abuse real Religion as some tell you but to undeceive you and unmask that hypocrisie which hath long walked in the venerable Mantle of Truth Nor ought you to be angry at the Relators but at the Inventors of such falshoods who have got many fair Houses and Lands vast sums of Mony and innumerable costly Oblations by these Fictions to the scandal of Christianity it self My second instance shall be of the Artifice of Forging Records for to attest their Novel Doctrines especially that of the Pope's Supremacy they put out divers spurious Tracts under illustrious names which served to wheadle an illiterate Age into a Reverence for the Roman Church and her Opinions whereas now the cheat is so palpable that your modern Doctors though they keep the Conclusions disown those feigned books that were the Premises from whence they were inferred Of this nature are the Decretal Epistles of all the Popes from Clemens down to Pope Syricius An. 385. formerly cited as good Authorities and transcribed some parts of them into your Canon Law but now the most learned Romanists confess a great part of them to be meer forgeries Baronius styles divers of them Apocryphal And Cardinal Cusanus saith That being applied to the times of those Holy men they do betray themselves And indeed these Epistles were never cited by any good old Author and were first brought into France by one Riculfus Arch. B. of Ments five hundred years after those Popes were dead as Hincmarus Arch. B. of Rhemes a Writer of that Age affirms and Baronius also confesseth Nor did the Roman See blush some Centuries ago to alledge for its Supremacy the most fabulous Donation of Constantine the Great wherein he is pretended to make the Pope head over the whole Church and superiour to all the four Patriarchs of the East naming Constantinople for one which City was not yet built giving him in fee the City of Rome and all Italy with all the Provinces of the Western Empire though he gave all these to one of his Sons afterwards This senseless Edict was pleaded by several of the Popes in former times to countenance their ambitious pretences and of Old was received without suspicion by the gravest and learnedst Doctors saith Binius who yet confesseth there it was a meer forgery devised he thinks by the Greeks and now adaies all Romanists generally disown it and indeed it is as ridiculous a forgery as ever the world saw My Brevity will not allow me to enlarge upon this Subject otherwise I could add innumerable Examples of like dealing The absurd Council of Sinuessa The monstrous Recognitions of Clement The threescore new Canons father'd by Turrian and others upon the famous General Council of Nice The Pontifical ascribed to Pope Damasus with innumerable other Tracts of the same Metal being all apparent Forgeries and yet were long countenanced by Rome to support her unjust Supremacy and other Innovations My third Instance shall be of Suppressing or corrupting true Records of which take a few Examples The Legates of Rome within less than a hundred years after the general Council of Nice did produce two Canons to prove the Popes Right