Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	church_n	err_v	1,967	5	9.6697	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66403	A manual, or, Three small and plain treatises viz. 1. Of prayer, or active, 2. Of principles, or positive, 3. Resolutions, or oppositive [brace] divinity / translated and collected out of the ancient writers, for the private use of a most noble lady, to preserve her from the danger of popery, by the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Arch-Bishop of York.	Williams, John, 1582-1650.	1672 (1672)	Wing W2711; ESTC R38653	30,581	162

to be the ground of your Faith and reason of your believing so as you do therefore believe all the points of your salvation to be true because the Church doth teach and instruct you in the same Or have you any other rule and ground of your faith Prot. The Authority and good conceipt we have of Gods Church prepareth us to believe the points of our Salvation and serveth as an introduction to bring us to the discerning and perfect apprehension of these Mysteries of our faith but the Scripture only is the ground and reason of our believing For as the Samaritans were induced and drawn on to believe in Christ by that talk of the woman but having heard Christ himself profess plainly they believe no longer for her saying but because they heard him speak himself So do we begin to believe moved thus to do by the good conceipt we have of the Church but rest not in it as the ground of our believing but only in the infallible assurance of God's truth in the Book of Scriptures Pap. Then God help you if that be your last resolution For our Church cannot erre but your Scriptures without the help of the Church to tell you so much can never be ascertained unto you to be the word of God and therefore what assuredness of belief can you propose your selves upon so unsetled a foundation Protest The Catholick Church indeed spread over the world cannot erre damnably though the Church of Rome and all other particular Churches may as your own Writers confess But the Scriptures we know to be the word of God not because the Church or Church-men do tell us so much but by the Authority of God himself whom we do most certainly discern to speak in his word when it is preached unto us For if we bring pure eyes and perfect senses the Majesty of God forthwith presenteth it self unto us in the Holy Scriptures and beating down all thoughts of contradicting or doubting things so Heavenly forceth our hearts to yield assent and obedience unto the same And therefore if you doubt whether that which you read in your Bible be the Word of God or find any reluctancy in your understanding to the Doctrin of the same it is in vain to flie unto either Church or Church-men to be perswaded in this point but down upon your knees and pray fervently unto God for Faith and the illumination of the Holy Ghost which can only assure you of the truth of the Scriptures For after we are enlightned by the Spirit we do no longer trust either our own judgement or the judgement of other men or of the Church that the Scriptures are of God but above all certainly of humane judgement we most certainly resolve as if in them we saw the Majesty and Glory of God that by the ministery of men they came unto us from Gods own most sacred mouth Pap. But what certain ground of faith can you place on the Scriptures seeing by the several interpretations of men and women they are turned and wrested like a nose of wax to every private design and purpose Do not you observe how the Catholicks Protestants and especially the Brownists and Anabaptists do fit all their turns out of the Holy Scriptures on which of these senses and imaginations is your faith rooted or peradventure have you some odd capritchious kind of interpretation of your own apprehension to direct you in these businesses Prot. We Lay-folks are licensed in the Church of England to read but not to interpret Scriptures excepting only those passages which contain the necessary points of our Salvation the which passages are so plain and easie every where that any man or woman of the meanest capacity especially if he or she be instructed in their Catechism or grounds of Religion may perfectly conceive and understand them But for the harder and more difficult places we leave them to be interpreted by our Church-men in their Sermons and daily Ministery For the ordering of which interpretations there are as I have been told ten several helps the which if they be followed will be sure and unfallible guides to boult out the true meaning of each place of Scripture 1. An illumination of the understanding by the Holy Ghost 2. A mind free from other thoughts and desirous of the truth 3. Knowledge of the Scriptures Creeds Catechismes Principles and other Axiomes of Divinity 4. A consideration how our meaning suits with other points of Christianity 5. The weighing of circumstances antecedents and consequents 6. Knowledge of Histories Arts and Sciences 7. Continual Reading Meditating and Praying 8. Joint and unjarring expositions of the Fathers 9. Consenting decrees of Synods and Councils 10. Knowledge in the tongues Because therefore Lay-men and women Papists Brownists and Anabaptists are wanting in all or some of these helps they bring forth many times such lame and prodigious interpretations Pap. If we make the Scripture and not the Church the rule of our Faith how shall we believe the Creed the Trinity the Sacraments the unity of Essence the Three Persons in the Deity c. words never read in the Bible and yet necessarily to be apprehended of us upon pain of damnation Prot. I say that all these things are set down in Scriptures either in so many syllables or at leastwise by necessary inferences and deductions And we do not therefore believe them because they are only taught by the Church but because they are rooted and grounded in the Holy Scriptures the only stay and pillar of our affiance To sum up therefore all this Chapter 1. The Church doth prepare us but the Scripture only doth force us to believe 2. The whole Church cannot any part thereof may erre damnably 3. We are taught the Scriptures to be the Word of God by the Holy Ghost moving in our hearts and not by the Church sounding in our ears 4. Lay-men are to read not to interpret Scriptures 5. The miss of some rules causeth wrong expositions of Scriptures 6. All things necessary to be believed are either found in or collected and inferred from the Scriptures CHAP. III. Of Iustification Papist HOw then do you learn out of the Scriptures that you are to be justified and saved before God Prot. I am to be justified before God by an Act single in it self but double in our apprehension which is by Gods not imputing unto me my sins and the same Gods imputing unto me Christs righteousness and withall by his creating of faith in my heart by the Holy Ghost I mean an operative a lively a working Faith to assure my Soul that God for the Active and Passive obedience of Christ Jesus hath accomplished those two former Acts of not imputing my Sin and of imputing unto me Christs Righteousness Pa. A very easie no doubt and reasonable Religion which you have learned out of the Scriptures Here is no burthen left for your own back you cast all

questioned But some aspersions more are cast upon the persons of your Ministers As that they lie wilfully and against their knowledge in points of Divinity and are thus zealous in the cause out of a desire only to preserve their great estates in the Church whereas our Priests have no other worldly comfort but the goodness of their cause and the testimonies of their consciences Prot. Let your common discretion be your judge in this case whether we that ground our doctrins upon the Word of God interpreted by those ten rules I formerly set down or these men that put all to the determination of the Church that is to their own proper phantasies and the gross exposition of an unlearned Pope are most likely to gull the World with crotchets and Chimaeras Besides you know how full this Kingdom is of men well read as in all sciences so especially in Divinity You know and yet none knowes it so well as they that best know him the profound learning and deep apprehension of the King himself as having perfectly digested the very body and bulk of all sacred Knowledge And is this a stage for ignorance imposture to play their parts on Or doth this learned Monarch the Lord of three Kingdoms woed and sought unto by all the Catholick Princes palliate his Religion in hope of a Bishoprick These are poor and toothless aspersions Then for our Ecclesiastical Estates they are so par'de and pol'de with duties and impositions all which had their Original from the Court of Rome that the time of the charge of breeding up a Minister would raise him a better means than he hath in the Church in any other Trade or Traffick whatsoever The King is gracious to his servants of all professions But a Country Minister cannot inne for the harvest of a whole year what a Jesuit can get in an hours confession Lastly concerning these professors of poverty the Priests and the Jesuits it is too well known they want no maintenance What by traducing our Nation abroad and seducing our people at home their bones are full of marrow and their eyes swell with fatness and what the Statute hath taken from us cogging and cheating hath drawn upon them I mean the privy Tithes and Benevolences of the Kingdom But to choke this Objection in one word That our means is no cause to keep us in this profession witness our Brethren in France and elsewhere who without the same means teach preach the selfe same doctrin Pap. They also inform us that your Ministers have neither learning nor honesty Prot. It is true indeed they teach their Novices that the greatest Doctor in our Church doth not understand the common grounds of Divinity and must of * necessity be put to his A B C again But common reason can inform you whether this be true or not Again they are only the base fugitives and discontented runnagates of our own Nation that spread these rumours who think their Countrey-men the grossest fools in Christendome that they dare thus amuse them and lead them by the nose with such impossible assertions And therefore I will give you a touch here how other Papists have ingeniously acknowledged the learning and piety of many Protestants Pope Pius commended Hus for learning and purity of life Alphonsus de Castro Oecolampadius for all kind of knowledge and the tongues especially Rhenanus also Conradus Pellican as a man of a wonderful sanctity and erudition Andradius likewise Chemnitius for a man of a sharp wit and great judgement Costerus all the Protestants for their civil behaviour their Alms their building of Hospitals and forbearing from reviling and swearing Gretzer himself our ordinary writers to be for the most part of great learning and judgement Stephen Paschier held Calvin worthy set his opinions aside to be compared for zeal and learning to the chief Doctors of the Catholick Church Erasmus held Luther of that integrity of life that his very enemies had nothing to cast in his dish Lindanus acknowledged Melancthon to be adorned with all kind of learning In a word your Writers themselves did so applaud the persons of their adversaries for learning and piety that Pope Clement the 8. was fain to command all your Controversie-writers to be reviewed and these graces and praises bestowed on our men to be blotted out and Expunged And therefore when you next hear a Jesuit in this theme think upon these true relations and withall laugh at him and pray for him Pap. Sir I have received some satisfaction that matters are not so far out of square in the Church of England as I have been informed But yet my conscience will not serve me to come to your congregations because there are beside these trivial many other points of doctrine never heard of amongst Protestants which be in very deed the Caballas and mysteries of the Roman-Catholick Religion You have been very tedious in your answers and declarations I pray you therefore bestow the last Chapter upon me to shew the reasons why so many Ladies and good Souls refuse to conform themselves to the Church of England Prot. With all my heart I will therefore end my speach with the summing up this fifth Chapter and leave the event to God and your Conscience 1. The Means of our Church-men are not so great as to make them maintain a false Religion but their Religion is so true as it makes them contented with any means 2. Yet in other Countreys where no hope of preferment appears there appears an equal zeal of our Religion 3. Our Church-men are commended for their lives and Learning by the pens of their prime Adversaries CHAP. VI. Reasons of refusal to leave the Romish Religion collected out of printed Authors Pap. I Cannot leave my Religion I. Reason Because we must simply believe the Church of Rome whether it teach true or false Stapl. Antidot in Evang. Luc. 10. 16. pag. 528. And if the Pope believe there is no life to come we must believe it as an Article of our Faith Busgradus And we must not hear Protestant Preachers though they preach the Truth Rhem. vpon Tit. 3. 10. And for your Scripture we little weigh it For the word of God if it be not expounded as the Church of Rome will have it is the word of the Devil Hosius de expresso verbo Dei II. Reason You rely too much upon the Gospel and S. Paul's Epistles in your Religion whereas the Gospel is but a fable of Christ as Pope Leo the tenth tells us Apol. of H. Stephen fol. 358. Smeton contra Hamilton pag. 104. And the Pope can dispense against the New Testament Panormit extra de divortiis And he may check when he pleases the Epistles of St. Paul Carolus Ruinus Consil 109. num 1. volum 5. And controul any thing avouched by all the Apostles Rota in decis 1. num 3. in noviss Anton. Maria in addit ad decis

excellent worth and made to serve God 9. That thou hast no happiness to the peace of Conscience 10. Think how good thy God hath been unto thee 11. Think of the Cross of Christ who there died for thee 12. Of examples of holy men and Saints who lived before thee Walk about your Chamber a turn or two after your Prayers and meditate upon these points seriously and you shall find that temptations to sin will vanish away and leave to assault you The four last things to be first thought upon by all good Christians 1. The day of thy Death thou knowest not how suddenly 2. The day of Judgment that will come certainly 3. The Joyes of Heaven if thou live Religiously 4. The pains of Hell if thou continuest to do wickedly The end of Morning Prayer Evening Prayer to bed-ward O Lord hear my Prayer And let my cry come unto thee Our Father which art c. A Prayer for Even O Lord I do confess to my shame confusion that this day hath been spent by me with less purity and piety than it should have been I have augmented since this morning the score of my sins My thoughts have been polluted my wit prophane and unsanctified my tongue more rash and unbridled than became any one of that rank and calling wherein thou hast set me I have sinned through idleness ignorance slothfulness and malice And this darkness of the night puts me in mind of that eternal darkness my sins have deserved Pardon and forgive me all my transgressions Let this darkness be a fit time unto me of rest and sleep and no opportunity of snares and temptations Send thy Holy Ghost into my heart to free and purifie the same from all rolling motions suggestions of Sathan and from the usual terrours affrightments of the night Preserve this house in safety O Lord and all the people that are therein Let my prayer ascend up unto thy presence as the incense and let this lifting up of mine hands be as an Evening sacrifice through Jesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour Amen Another HAving spent the day we betake our selves to our repose in the night So after the troubles of this present life we shall rest our selves in death Nothing doth more resemble our life than the day our death than sleep our grave than the bed our resurrection than our awaking in the morning Do thou then O God my protector and defender preserve me in my sleep from the incursions and temptations of the devil in my death from the guilt punishments of my sins I have no strength to resist in the one nor merits of mine own to display in the other Look only upon the merits of my Lord Saviour give me a strong and stedfast faith to apply his righteousness to mine own soul In confidence full assurance of whose satisfactions for all my sins I do for this night lie me down in peace and take my rest for it is thou Lord only that maketh me to continue in safety Amen Another ALmighty and everlasting God who makest the light to succeed the darkness give me the grace to spend this night freed from the snares of sin and Sathan and to be here again upon my knees in the morning to give thee thanks for the same through Jesus Christ my Lord and only Saviour Amen Meditations When your maid is getting you to bed HE that willingly goes to bed should as willingly go to his grave We willingly put off our cloaths being to put them on again in the morning and should as willingly put off our bodies being to put them on again in the Resurrection 2. After the troubles of the day comes the quietness of the night in the which the King and the swain differ nothing So after this life comes death where poor and rich are alike and equal 3. Here is a fit time especially laid in your bed to fall to your Audite for the day past What evil you have committed by 1. Swearing 2. Lying 3. Taunting 4. Being too angry 5. Vain talking especially of Religion 6. Exceeding in fare or apparel 7. Injuring of another Repent of it Detest it Resolve to do it no more What good you have omitted as Saying grace when you eat Praying Releiving of a poor body Respecting your husband parents Spending some time upon Meditations Works of charity Desire Gods grace to be more wary What good you have performed If you have learned any thing that day If you have done any man good that day If you have kept your private and publick Prayers that day If you have given any Alms that day If you have heard the Word or received the Sacrament that day If you have spent any time upon your Meditations that day Rejoyce in it give God thanks for it When you have run over these accompts and find sleep coming say Into thy hands I commit my Spirit for thou hast redeemed me O Lord thou God of truth Amen The end of Evening Prayer Some other Collects For Faith MAn is blinded by fin but thou O Christ by the goodness and mercy of God the Father art become our guide in the way of salvation And yet such is our wretchedness and misery that we stagger for all this sometimes not understanding sometimes not believing many times not applying to our souls with a sure confidence thy promises of salvation set down in the Gospel O miserably blind that we are that can neither see ourselves nor believe our guider and instructer O thou eternal and pure verity vouchsafe so to slide into our hearts that we may be more certainly perswaded of thee thy truth than of those things we see with our eyes hear with our ears and handle with our hands the weak apprehensions of our bodily senses upon which this flesh and blood doth so much depend Appease asswage those rollingthoughts and wandring ●…otions of the flesh that make us to doubt and stagger in those high mysteries of the which we ought most firmly to be fixed resolved Faith is thy gift and therefore work it by the holy Ghost in my heart that all my senses and imaginations may become slaves and captives to the fame Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief O Lord increase my faith Amen Meditations 1. How easily we believe a lewd lying man yet how scrupulous w● are to believe God himsel● 2. We believe a man i● things which nothing concern us we believe no God in matters of our salvation Man is impotent God omnipotent 3. We believe our senses which often delude u● as in all tricks of Legey● demain we distrust Christ who can neither be deceived nor deceive us For the King and the Royal Issue I Humbly beseech thee Almighty God to present with all blessings of goodness our King and His Royal Issue Increase upon them day by day all ●hy