Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	apostle_n	church_n	succession_n	1,709	5	10.1649	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33215	A paraphrase with notes upon the sixth chapter of St. John with a discourse on humanity and charity / by W. Claget.	Clagett, William, 1646-1688.	1693 (1693)	Wing C4389; ESTC R24224	72,589	201

with the Apostles for ever that is so long as they liv'd to guide them into the knowledge of Truth and by them to guide the Church in all After-Ages There are many things in this Discourse of our Saviour to his Apostles which cannot be applied to any Age of the Church after theirs And therefore what is and what is not limited to them must be argued out from the Nature of the things themselves which are said And lastly though you will not have this Promise limited to the Persons of the Apostles but annext to their Function as in some sence I grant it may be yet you ought to have taken notice that the Promise is however limited by a Condition even in the Words foregoing and following the Promise If ye love me keep my Commandments and there the Condition is once express'd For it follows And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever even the Spirit of Truth And now mark once again what follows Whom the World cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knoweth him Where if by the World be meant worldly and wicked Men as I believe you will grant you see here is no absolute Promise of such a Guidance to a Succession of Pastors as shall make it at any time of the Church Heresie to contradict whatsoever they teach or Schism to withdraw from their Obedience As to the last If you had prov'd such a Succession of Infallible Teachers as you speak of yet I tell you once more that the hardest part of your Task would be still behind which is to prove That you have had all along and still have that Succession which I desire you to do in your next if you can if it be but for the Instruction of a Lay-man that desires to be led into all Truth necessary or even profitable for his Salvation And because I would not have you lose your labour I will open my greatest Difficulty against this Belief I am sure you cannot go about this Work without taking Scripture in to furnish out your Argument Now I desire you to bring me such Scriptures which shall at least make it as evident that your Church was always to have a Succession of Infallible Teachers as it is to me from divers other Scriptures evident that your Pastors have most certainly contradicted the Doctrine of the Scriptures And when you have done this you shall hear farther from me In the mean time your loose Affirmations concerning the Catholick Church have been so often answered that you need not wonder that a Lay-man of our Church can tell what to say to them But to come to that wherein I am particularly concern'd You are disturb'd at my saying That the Worship Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome are so extreamly dangerous that nothing but Invincible Ignorance of which God only can judge can give us any reasonable hopes of their Salvation who live and die in their Communion Now surely the uncharitableness of this does not lie in supposing that Invincible Ignorance will be pleadable in this Case for 't is a Plea which will go a great way amongst those of the Roman Communion which I say with the more Confidence because in the Romish Countries where I have been the People seem to me to have the fairest Claim to the benefit of Ignorance that can be well imagin'd amongst Christians Now since at last you are brought in this Pamphlet of yours to agree with Protestants that Ignorance will save Men and that we yield the greatest part of the People have an indisputable Right to it are not the Protestants charitable to a high degree If this will not please you I do not know what will Surely Sir you do not expect that Protestants should believe and say that you with all your Errors about you are in as safe a way to Salvation as they themselves who have renounced them If this could be what I pray ye made our Fore-fathers suffer themselves to be separated from your Communion or make us that we cannot joyn with you Certainly this was and is still nothing but want of sound Faith purity of Doctrines and Worship And I know nothing else can or ever was pretended to justifie our Separation And this alone one would think might be sufficient to vindicate my Assertion from being uncharitable But perhaps I may do it more by and by But you 'll tell me that nevertheless Protestants are as uncharitable as Papists and come not an Ace behind them Indeed I should be very sorry this were true And though it is I know an untoward Question to Papists yet I must ask How do you prove this Sir Why thus Protestants only allow Salvation to Papists upon Invincible Ignorance and Papists do the same to Protestants I must confess that in this Paper of yours you grant Salvation to Protestants who live piously and repent sincererely of all Offences and through invincible Ignorance remain in that Communion Now whatever Truth there is in the Saying it self yet from you we look upon this Concession as a piece of New Popery The Old Popery was Protestancy unrepented of Damns Neither Invincible Ignorance nor Piety nor any Repentance that included not a leaving the Protestants Communion and joining with the Romish could Save But here we take notice that of this as well as of all the other unreasonable Pieces of Old Popery you begin at last to be asham'd or at least to think it for the Interest of your Design on foot to deny them or disguise and soften them that so they may go the better down with those People who are not so well read in your Controversies and suspect no Snake in the Grass But to go on with my Point Did not the Author of Charity Mistaken and Charity maintain'd Charity maintain'd p. 1. c. 7. Sect. 6. and in divers other places of that and Charity Mistaken which produc'd that incomparable Book of Mr. Chillingworth stiffly and boldly assert That all Roman Catholicks not one excepted Do with unanimous Consent believe and profess that Protestancy unrepented destroys Salvation Did not the Jesuite in his Relation of Bishop Land's Conference swear upon his Soul That there was but one saving Faith and that is the Roman And now in our days has not a * Lucilla and Elizabeth late Paper endeavour'd to make us as great Schismaticks as the Donatists And according to you can Schismaticks dying such go to Heaven And does not that Author force St. Austin to tell us in plain Terms That whosoever is separated from the Catholick Church by which against all Modesty and Truth you always mean your own particular Church how laudably soever he thinks himself to live for this only Crime that he is disjoyn'd from the Unity of Christ that is to say in your Language the Pope he shall not have Life but the Wrath of God abideth on him Pray Sir

shall yield an everlasting Profit and an Increase that he shall live upon it for ever But then says the Apostle Be not deceived God is not mocked for as a Man soweth he shall also reap Tho' a Cup of cold Water given to a Disciple in the name of a Disciple shall not lose its Reward i. e. when either more is not in the hand of him that gives or no farther need in him that receives yet so small a thing is Mockery where there is greater need on the one side and ability to answer it on the other This being remembred it remains true what our Saviour said He that receiveth and therefore he that relieveth a Righteous Man in the name of a Righteous Man or because he is a Righteous Man shall receive a Righteous Man's Reward For to him in some part the Righteous Man's Thankfulness to God and the support of his Faith and Dependence upon God and the making of his perseverance therein more easie and the rescuing him out of Temptation may in good measure be imputed Now Brethren we have in this Life only the opportunity of sowing to the Spirit in this manner and of making Friends to our selves of the Mammon of this World that when it fails we may be received into everlasting Habitations and of turning the things of this World which so often betray Men to Perdition into the Instruments of our Salvation Let us therefore often consider those Words and Exhortations of St. Paul and that when our Reckoning comes to be cast up at the end of our Lives there will be no longer any Profit or Comfort in what we have worn and eaten and drank but we shall find that to be true The Belly for Meats and Meats for the Belly but God will destroy both it and them But that the remembrance of the Good we have done to All Men and especially to the Houshold of Faith will be sweet and pleasant to us and that the Reward of it will endure for ever Therefore my beloved Brethren be ye stedfast unmoveable always abounding in the Work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your Labour is not in vain in the Lord. A LETTER CONCERNING Protestants Charity to Papists Published by W. Claget D. D. SIR I Find that the Translation of the Wholsom Advices from the Blessed Virgin c. which may have help'd to settle the Minds of others has something discompos'd yours For though you are not I dare say pleas'd with the Protestant Preface to it yet however you dissemble your pain Wise Men say that you bite that Preface for grief of the Translation I cannot but admire the Art of you Gentlemen of the Church of Rome in running down Books with bold Contempt which you know not otherwise how to deal with This Translation and Preface for some Reasons is an Eye-sore to you and chiefly for helping to spoil the new Fashion of maintaining Popery by Representing it Something therefore must be done with it and so a little part of the Preface which did not belong neither to the main Design of the Book must be singled out and be made an Example As for all the rest 't is sufficiently answer'd by saying Must I set up for Reader of Anatomy upon all the Pamphlets that come into the World I am highly obliged to you for the Kindness but I think the Scavenger has much the better Office who has nothing but Dirt and Sinks to deal with much less offensive than to be always raking into filthy Calumnies fulsom Incongruities and noysom Impertinencies Which kind of Language one would hardly use but out of a great desire to be unanswerable one way or other After this touch upon the whole you come to touch at some Particulars which seem to fall within your Province of Representing or rather to touch at something which you were the better provided to touch because you had in the very same manner toucht it before in your Fourth Vindication of the First Part. The Particular is That Papists allow no less a possibility of Salvation to Protestants than Protestants do to Papists Now although this is all that I am concerned to oppose yet I shall offer a few Words to your Preparatory Discourse in which you pretend to shew what good Reason you have to pronounce against the Possibility of Salvation amongst us or rather in the new fashion'd Phrase that we as Protestants are guilty of Sins inconsistent with Salvation inasmuch as we are separated from your Communion The short of what you say is That after most serious Considerations and the weighing of all Reasons the Papist believes the Roman Church in which he is to be that one only holy Catholick Church and therefore he does not question but what is truly affirm'd of the Church of the Apostles and succeeding Ages and those that fell from it is most true of the same Church now in being of which he is a Member and of all those who separate from it upon what Pretext soever Now it had been much more to the purpose to have produc'd those serious Considerations than to have spent so much time as you did to prove what none of us make the least Question of viz. That Christ establish'd a Catholick Church that he committed the Care of it to the Apostles that they were inspir'd with the knowledge of Truth that they left Pastors to govern and feed the Flock after their Decease and that the Promise of Salvation is made to Believers exclusively to Unbelievers This I say is all very true but not to your purpose unless you had prov'd also what you do but insinuate That we have separated our selves from the Doctrine and Government of the Church of Christ Which Words I wonder that you were not afraid to use when they lay so fair to be turn'd upon your selves For we are no less sure that many of your Doctrines are no parts of the Doctrine of that Church and that Rome's being the Mother and Mistress of all Churches was not the Government of that Church over which the Apostles were c. Overseers for their time than we are that such a Church was established in the World And therefore if they who separate themselves from the Doctrine and Government of the Church of Christ as it was first establish'd cannot hope for Salvation Pray look to your selves as to that Point instead of contending that you are the only Catholick Church out of which there is no hope of Salvation As to what you would insinuate that there must be in the Church a Succession of Pastors to the Worlds end who should no more err in teaching than the Apostles themselves did and that your Church has that Succession I must tell you as to the first that it is by no means proved from John 14. v. 16. since what is there promis'd to the Apostles is not promis'd to the Church of all Ages so as it was to the Apostles The Spirit of God abode