Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	ancient_a	church_n	true_a	2,421	5	5.1957	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64030	The measures and offices of friendship with rules of conducting it : to which are added, two letters written to persons newly changed in their religion / by Jer. Taylor, D.D.; Discourse of the nature, offices and measures of friendship	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1657 (1657)	Wing T350; ESTC R41495	50,636	214

consequent of it They that fall on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporall end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the losse of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandall to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more carefull you would have remained much more innocent But I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked or dangerous proposition what defect what amisse did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councels or in any other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unlesse a company of men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dlspute that the Church had for 400 or 500 years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our belief 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of K. Ed. 6 and till the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did believe That Bull enjoyned Recusancy and made that which was as an act of Rebellion and Disobedience Schisme to be the character of your Roman Catholikes And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the Faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first generall Councels a holy Liturgy excellent Prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the ten Commandements and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and doe so when he requires us so to doe We speak honour of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confesse his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confesse our sinnes to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to Gods Ministers in cases of Scandall or of a troubled Conscience We commnicate often we are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and blesse their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spirituall But now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence you went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For doe not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particulars of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is then what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may elude ancient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to choose your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Romane Church be the Catholique Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquiries is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unlesse it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholike that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendome must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can beleeve he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman

of men there are I hope and charitably suppose many pious men that love God and live good lives yet there are very many doctrines taught by your men which are very ill Friends to a good life I instance in your Indulgences and pardons In which vitious men put a great confidence and rely greatly upon them The doctrine of Purgatory which gives countenance to a sort of Christians who live half to God and half to the world and for them this doctrine hath found out a way that they may go to Hell and to Heaven too The Doctrine that the Priests absolution can turn a trifling repentance into a perfect and a good and that suddenly too and at any time even on our death-bed or the minute before your death is a dangerous heap of falshoods and gives licence to wicked people and teaches men to reconcile a wicked debauched life with the hopes of Heaven And then for penances and temporal satisfaction which might seem to be as a plank after the shipwrack of the duty of Repentance to keep men in awe and to preserve them from sinking in an Ocean of Impiety it comes to just nothing by your doctrine for there are so many easie wayes of Indulgences and getting Pardons so many con-fraternities stations priviledg'd Altars little Offices Agnus Dei's amulets hallowed devices swords roses hats Churchyards and the fountain of these annexed indulgences the Pope himself and his power of granting what and when and to whom he list that he is a very unfortunate man that needs to smart with penances and after all he may choose to suffer any at all for he may pay them in Purgatory if he please and he may come out of Purgatory upon reasonable terms in case he should think it fit to go thither So that all the whole duty of Repentance seems to be destroyed with devices of men that seek power and gain and find errour and folly insomuch that if I had a mind to live an evil Life and yet hope for Heaven at last I would be of your religion above any in the world But I forget I am writing a Letter I shall therefore desire you to consider upon the premises which is the safer way For surely it is lawfull for a man to serve God without Images but that to worship Images is lawfull is not so sure It is lawfull to pray to God alone to confesse him to be true and every man a liar to call no man Master upon Earth but to relie upon God teaching us But it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints in certain extraordinary Images or burne Incense and offer consumptive oblations to the Virgin Mary or make vows to persons of whose state or place or capacities or condition we have no certain revelation we are sure we doe well when in the holy Communion we worship God and Jesus Christ our Saviour but they who also worship what seems to be bread are put to strange shifts to make themselves believe it to be lawfull It is certainly lawfull to believe what we see and feel but it is an unnaturall thing upon pretence of faith to disbelieve our eyes when our sense and our faith can better be reconciled as it is in the question of the Reall presence as it is taught by the Church of England So that unlesse you mean to prefer a danger before safety temptation to unholinesse before a severe and a holy religion unlesse you mean to lose the benefit of your prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christs institution and taking half instead of all unlesse you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and Man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawfull trust unlesse you will still continue to give scandall to those good people with whom you have lived in a common Religion and weaken the hearts of Gods afflicted ones unlesse you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a Faith that grows bigger or lesse as men please and a Hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the world but your selves unlesse you will doe all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the Commandments in Faith in Hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supreme you must return to the bosome of your Mother the Church of ENGLAND from whence you have fallen rather weakly then maliciously and I doubt not but you will find the Comfort of it all your Life and in the Day of your Death and in the Day of Judgment If you will not yet I have freed mine own soule and done an act of Duty and Charity which at least you are bound to take kindly if you will not entertain it obediently Now let me adde this that although most of these objections are such things which are the open and avowed doctrines or practices of your Church and need not to be proved as being either notorious or confessed yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my selfe to verifie it to a tittle and in that sense too which I intend them that is so as to be an objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresie or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalf of truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker understandings The first is where was your Church before Luther Now if you had called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a cart pressed with sheavs could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personall For if we can make it appeare that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still aske where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in