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	faith_n	fundamental_a	1,746	5	10.1277	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29199	A just vindication of the Church of England, from the unjust aspersion of criminal schisme wherein the nature of criminal schisme, the divers sorts of schismaticks, the liberties and priviledges of national churches, the rights of sovereign magistrates, the tyranny, extortion and schisme of the Roman Communion of old, and at this very day, are manifested to the view of the world / by ... John Bramhall ...	Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1654 (1654)	Wing B4226; ESTC R18816	139,041	290

diminution Schisme for the most part is changeable and varies its Symptomes as the Chamaelion colours As it was said of the Schisme of the Donatists that the passion of a disordered woman brought it forth Ambition nourished it and covetousnesse confirmed it And therefore it is as hard a task to shape a coat for Schismaticks as for the Moon which changeth its shape every day The reason is because having once deserted the Catholick communion they find no beaten path to walk in but are like men running down a steep hill that cannot stay themselves or like sick persons that tosse and turn themselves continually from one side of their bed to the other searching for that repose which they do not find Hence it comes to passe that Schisme is very rarely found for any long space of time without some mixture of heretical pravity it being the use of Schismaticks to broach some new doctrine for the better justification of their separation from the Church Heretical errours in point of faith do easily produce a Schisme and Separation of Christians one from another in the use of the Sacraments and in the publick service of God As the Arrian heresie produced a different doxology in the Church The Orthodox Christian saying Glo●● be to the Father and to the Son and to the holy Ghost And the heretical Arrian Glory be to the Father by the Son in the Spirit So of later times the opinions of the lawfulnesse of detaining the cup from the Laity and of the necessity of adoring the Sacrament have by consequence excluded the Protestants from the participation of the Eucharist in the Roman Church Thus Heresie doth naturally destroy unity and uniformity That is one Symptome of Schisme But it destroyes order also and the due subordination of a flock to their lawful Pastour nothing being more common with hereticks then to contemne their old guides and to choose to themselves new teachers of their own factions and so erect an altar against an altar in the Church That is another principal branch of Schisme So a different faith commonly produceth a different discipline and different formes of worship A man may render himself guilty of heretical pravity four wayes First by disbelieving any fundamental article of faith or necessary part of saving truth in that sense in which it was evermore received and believed by the universal Church Secondly by believing any superstitious errours or additions which do virtually by necessary and evident consequence subvert the faith and overthrow a fundamental truth Thirdly by maintaining lesser errours obstinately after sufficient conviction But because that consequence which seems clear and necessary to one man may seem weak and obscure to another And because we cannot penetrate into the hearts of men to judg whether they be obstinate or do implicitely and in the preparation of their minds believe the truth it is good to be sparing and reserved in censuring hereticks for obstinacy Fourthly by maintaining lesser errours with frowardnesse and opposition to lawfull determinations Though it be not in the power of any Councel or of all the Councels in the world to make that truth fundamental which was not fundamental or to make that proposition heretical in it self which was not heretical ever from the daies of the Apostles Or to increase the necessary Articles of the Christian faith either in number or substance yet when inferiour question 's not fundamental are once defined by a lawful general Councel All Christians though they cannot assent in their judgments are obliged to passive obedience to possesse their soules in patience And they who shall oppose the authority and disturb the peace of the Church deserve to be punished as hereticks To summe up all that hath been said Whosoever doth preserve his obedience intire to the universal Church and its representative a General Councel and to all his Superiours in their due order so far as by Law he is obliged who holds an internal communion with all Christians and an external communion so far as he can with a good conscience who approves no reformation but that which is made by lawfull authority upon sufficient grounds with due moderation who derives his christianity by the uninterrupted line of Apostolical Succession who contents himself with his proper place in the Ecclesiastical body who disbelieves nothing contained in holy Scripture and if he hold any errours unwittingly and unwillingly doth implicitely renounce them by his fuller and more firm adherence to that infallible rule who believeth and practiseth all those credenda and agenda which the universal Church spread over the face of the earth doth unanimously believe and practise as necessary to salvation without condemning or censuring others of different Judgement from himself in inferiour questions without obtruding his own opinions upon others as Articles of faith who is implicitely prepared to believe and do all other speculative and practical truths when they shall be revealed to him And in summe qui sententiam diversae opinionis vinculo non praeponit unit●●tis that prefers not a subtlety or an imaginary truth before the bond of peace He may securely say My name is Christian my sirname is Catholique From hence it appeareth plainly by the rule of contraries who are Schismatiques whosoever doth uncharitably make ruptures in the mystical body of Christ or sets up altar against altar in his Church or withdrawes his obedience from the Catholique Church or its representative a General Councel or from any lawful Superiours without just grounds whosoever doth limit the Catholique Church unto his own sect excluding all the rest of the Christian world by new doctrines or erroneous censures or tyrannical impositions whosoever holds not internall Communion with all Christians and externall also so far as they continue in a Catholique constitution whosoever not contenting himself with his due place in the Church doth attempt to usurp an higher place to the disorder and disturbance of the whole body whosoever takes upon him to reform without just authority and good grounds And lastly whosoever doth wilfully break the line of Apostolical Succession which is the●very nerves and sinewes of Ecclesiastical unity and communion both with the present Church and with the Catholique Symbolical Church of all successive ages He is a Schismatick qua talis whether he be guilty of heretical pravity or not Now having seen who are Schismaticks for clearing the state of the Question Whether the Church of England be Schismatical or not it remaineth to shew in a word what we understand by the Church of England First we understand not the English Nation alone but the English Dominion including the Brittish and Scottish or Irish Christians for Ireland was the right Scotia major and that which is now called Scotland was then inhabited by Brittish and Irish under the names of Picts and Scots Secondly though I make not the least doubt in the world but that the Church of England before

Schisme is an exteriour breach or a solution of continuity in the body Ecclesiastick Consider then by what nerves and Ligaments the body of the Church is united and knit together and by so many manner of ruptures it may be schismatically rent or divided asunder The Communion of the Christian Catholick Church is partly internal partly external The internal Communion consists principally in these things To believe the same intire substance of saving necessary truth revealed by the Apostles and to be ready implicitly in the preparation of the mind to embrace all other supernatural verities when they shall be sufficiently proposed to them To judge charitably one of another To exclude none from the Catholick Communion and hope of salvation either Eastern or Western or Southern or Northern Christians which professe the ancient faith of the Apostles and primitive Fathers established in the first general Councels and comprehended in the Apostolick Nicene and Athanasian Creed To rejoyce at their well-doing To sorrow for their sins To condole with them in their sufferings To pray for their constant perseverance in the true Christian Faith for their reduction from all their respective errours and their re-union to the Church in case they be divided from it that we may be all one sheepfold under that one great Shepherd and Bishop of our Soules And lastly to hold an actual external Communion with them in Votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all those means which are in our power This internal Communion is of absolute necessity among all Catholicks External Communion consists first in the same Creeds or Symbols or Confessions of Faith which are the ancient badges or cognisances of Christianity Secondly in the participation of the same Sacraments Thirdly in the same external worship and frequent use of the same divine offices or Leiturgies or Forms of serving God Fourthly in the use of the same publick Rites and Ceremonies Fifthly in giving communicatory Letters from one Church or one person to another And lastly in admission of the same discipline and subjection to the same supream Ecclesiastical authority that is Episcopacy or a general Councel for as single Bishops are the heads of particular Churches so Episcopacy that is a general Councel or Oecumenical Assembly of Bishops is the head of the universal Church Internal communion is due alwaies from all Christians to all Christians even to those with whom we cannot communicate externally in many things whether credenda or agenda opinions or practises But external actual communion may sometimes be suspended more or lesse by the just censures of the Church clave non errante As in the primitive times some were excluded a coetu participantium Only from the use of the Sacraments others moreover a coetu procumbentium both from Sacraments and Prayers others also a coetu audientium from Sacraments Prayers and Sermons and lastly some a coetu fidelium from the society of Christians And as external communion may be suspended so likewise it may sometimes be waved or withdrawn by particular Churches or persons from their neighbour Churches or Christians in their innovations and errours Especially when they go about to obtrude new fancies upon others for fundamental truths and old Articles of faith Christian charity is not blind so as not to distinguish the integral and essential parts of the body from superfluous wens and excrescences The Canons do not oblige Christians to the arbitrary dictates of a Patriarch or to suck in all his errours like those servile flatterers of Dionysius the Sicilian Tyrant who licked up his very spettle and protested it was more sweet then Nectar Neither is there the like degree of obligation to an exact Communion in all Externals There is not so great conformity to be expected in Ceremonies as in the Essentials of Sacraments the Queens daughter was arrayed in a garment wrought about with divers colours nor in all Sacraments improperly and largely so called by some persons at some times as in Baptisme and the holy Eucharist which by the consent of all parties are more general more necessary more principal Sacraments Neither is so exact an harmony and agreement necessary in all the explications of articles of faith as in the Articles themselves nor in superstructions as in fundamentals nor in Scholastical opinions as in catechetical grounds Nor so strict and perpetual an adherence required to a particular Church as to the Universal Church nor to an Ecclesiastical constitution as to a divine Ordinance or Apostolical tradition Humane priviledges may be lost by disuse or by abuse And that which was advisedly established by humane authority may by the same authority upon sufficient grounds and mature deliberation be more advisedly abrogated As the limits and distinctions of Provinces and Patriarchates were at first introduced to comply with the civil government according to the distribution of the Provinces of the Roman Empire for the preservation of peace and unity and for the ease and benefit of Christians so they have been often and may now be changed by Soveraign and Synodical authority according to the change of the Empire for the peace and benefit of Christendom Neither the rules of prudence nor the Lawes of Piety do oblige particular Churches or Christians to communicate in all opinions and practises with those particular Churches or Christians with whom they hold Catholick communion The Roman and African Churches held good communion one with another whilest they differed both in judgment and practise about rebaptization Cannot one hold communion with the Fathers that were Chiliasts except he turn Millenary The British Churches were never judged Schismatical because they differed from the rest of the West about the observation of Easter We see that all the famous and principal Churches of the Christian World Graecian Roman Protestant Armenian Abissene have their peculiar differences one with another and each of them among themselves And though I am far from believing that when L●g●machies are taken away their real dissensions are half so numerous or their errous half so ●oul as they are painted out by their adversaries aemulation was never equal Judge And though I hope Christ will say Come ye blessed to many whom fiery Zelots are ready to turn away with Go ye cursed yet to hold communion with them all in all things is neither lawful nor possible Yea if any particular Patriarch Prelate Church or Churches how eminent soever shall endeavour to obtrude their own singularities upon others for Catholique verities or shall injoyn sinful duties to their Subjects or shall violate the undoubted priviledges of their inferiours contrary to the Canons of the Fathers It is very lawful for their own Subjects to disobey them and for strangers to separate from them And if either the one or the other have been drawn to partake of their errours upon pretence of obedience or of Catholique communion they may without the guilt of Schisme nay they ought to reform

swim in abundance were changed into a competent maintenance And lastly So as all opinion of satisfaction and supererogation were removed I do not see why monasteries might not agree well enough with reformed devotion So then Henry the eighth at the time of his secession from Rome and long after even so long as he lived was neither friend nor favourer of the ensuing reformation nor ordinarily of Protestants in their persons As may yet more manifestly appear by that cruel statute of the Six Articles which he made after all this in the one and thirtieth year of his raign as a trap to catch the Lives of the poore Protestants A Law both writ in blood and executed in blood But suppose that Henry the eighth had been a friend to Protestants what shall we say to all the Orders of the Kingdom what shall we say to the Synods to the Universities to the four and twenty Bishops and nine and twenty Abbats who consented to this Act were all these Schismaticks were Heath Bonner Tonstall Gardiner Stokesley Thurleby c. all Schismaticks If they were then Schismaticks were the greatest opposers of the reformation the greatest enemies of the Protestants and the greatest pillars and upholders of the Roman religion These were they that granted the Supremacy to King Henry the eighth Archbishop Warham told him it was his right to have it before the Pope These were they that preached up the Supremacy of the King at S. Paul's Crosse and defended his Supremacy in printed books These consented to the Acts of Parliament for his Supremacy and the extinguishing of the power of the Roman Bishop in England These were they who helped to make the oath of Supremacy and took it themselves and all others of any note throughout England except onely Fisher Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas Moor who were in prison before it was enacted for opposing the Kings Marriage and the succession of his Children to the Crown after it was ordained in Parliament And wise men have thought that the former had taken it if he had not been retarded by the expectation of a Cardinals hatt which was come as far as Calice Or rather what shall we say to the whole body of the Kingdome if we may believe the testimony of Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester a learned person of very near relation to King Henry and in all other things a great Zelot of the Roman Catholick party in his book of true obedience published with a Preface to it made by Bishop Bonner Thus he No forrein Bishop hath authority among us All sorts of people are agreed with us upon this point with most stedfast consent that no manner of person bred or brought up in England hath ought to do with Rome A full confession of an able adversary to which I see not what can be excepted unlesse it be said of him as it was of Aeneas Sylvius Stephanus probavit Wintoniensis negavit Doctour Gardiner approved it but the Bishop of Winchester retracted it Admit it were so as it was indeed what is that to the stedfast unanimous consent of the whole Kingdome which appears not onely from hence but from Tonstal's Epistle to Cardinal Pool and Bekenshaws Commentary of the Soveraign and absolute power of Kings As likewise of the difference between Kingly and Ecclesiastical power And lastly and principally by a book set forth by the English Convocation called The Institution of a Christian man And to shew yet further that Ireland was unanimo●●●●erein with England we find in the three and thirtieth year of Henry the eighth which was before all thoughts of reformation not the Irish only as the O Neales O Relies O Birnes O Carols c. but also the English Families as the Desmonds Barries R●ches Bourks whose posterities do still continue Zealous Romanists did make their submissions by Indenture to Sir Anthony Sellenger then chief Governour of that Kingdom wherein they acknowledged King Henry to be their Soveraign Lord and confessed the Kings Supremacy in all causes and utterly renounced the Iurisdiction of the Pope So the Bishop of Winchester might well say that there was an Universal and stedfast consent in the separation from Rome The second exception weighes so little that it scarce deserveth an Answer Admitting but not granting that any or all the calumnies of that party against Henry the eighth were true whereof divers by their impossibility and by the contradiction of their authors do carry their own condemnation written in their foreheads And although Henry the eighth had been our Reformer as he was not yet all this would signifie nothing as to this present question God doth often good works by ill agents Iehu's heart was not upright towards the Lord yet God used him as an Instrument to reform his Church and to punish the worshippers of Baal We have heard of late of an aggregative treason not known before in the world But never untill now of an aggregative Schisme The addition of twenty sins of another nature cannot make that to be Schisme which is not Schisme in it self We are sorry for his sins under a condition that is in case they were true which for part of them we have no great Reason to believe But we are absolutely without condition glad of our own liberty The truth is God Almighty did serve himself of a most unlawful dispensation granted by the Pope to King Henry the eighth to marry his brothers Wife as an occasion of this great work I say unlawful because it was after judged unlawful by the Universities of England France Italy after mature deliberation and some of them upon oath and by above an hundred forrein Doctours of principal reputation for learning The coales of the Kings suspicion were kindled in Spain France and Flanders no enemies to the Pope and blown by Cardinal Wolsey for sinister ends But it was Cranmer that struck the nail home And God disposed all things to his own glory To their third exception That to withhold obedience is Schismatical as well as to withdraw it I answer first that they cannot accuse us as accessaries to Schisme until they have first condemned their own great Patrons Champions and Confessours for the principal Schismaticks Did Roman Catholicks themselves find right and sufficient reason to turn the Pope out of England at the foredoor in fair daylight as an intruder and usurper And do they expect that Protestants who never had any relation to him should let him in again by stealth at the back-door Turpius ejicitur quam non admittitur hospes It is true Queen Mary afterwards gave him houseroom again in England for a short time But he raged so extreamly and made such bonefires of poor innocent Christians in every corner of the Kingdome that it is no marvail if they desired his room rather then his company I have often wondred how any rational man could satisfie himself so as to make

and of the South Saxons under Kingils their King who did unite the heptarchy into a Monarchy were converted by the preaching of Berinus an Italian by the perswasions of Oswald King of Northumberland Osw●ld King of Northumberland was baptized in Scotland and Religion luckily planted in that Kingdome by Aidan a Scottish Bishop Penda King of Mercia was converted and christened by Finanus Successour of Aidan by the means of a marriage with a Christian Princesse of the Royal Family of Northumberland Sigibert King of the East Angles in whose daies and by whose means Religion took root among the East Saxons was converted and christned in France All these Saxons which were converted by Britons or Scots may as justly plead for their old immunities as the Britons themselves We acknowledge Saint Gregory to have been the first that did break the ice And yet we see how small a proportion of the inhabitants of the British Islands do owe their conversion to Rome in probability not a tenth part Fourthly consider that the conversion of a Nation to the Christian faith is a good ground in equity all other circumstances concurring why they should rather submit themselves or a General Councel assign them to that See that converted them then to any other Patriarchate As was justly pleaded in the case between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople about the right of Jurisdiction over the Bulgarians But the conversion of a Nation is no ground at all to invest their converter presently with Patriarchal authority over them or any Ecclesiastical superiority especially where too great a distance of place doth render such Jurisdiction uselesse and burthensome And most especially where it cannot be done without prejudice to a former owner thrust out of his just right meerly by the power of the sword as the British Primates were Or to the subjecting of a free Nation to a forreign Prelate without or beyond their own consent In probability of reason the Britons ought their first conversion to the Eastern Church as appeareth by their accord with them in baptismal rites and the observation of Easter Yet never were subject to any Eastern Patriarch Sundry of our British and English Bishops have converted forreign Nations yet never pretended to any Jurisdiction over them Fifthly and lastly consider That whatsoever title or right S. Gregory did acquire or might have acquired by his piety and deserts towards the English Nation it was personal and could not descend from him to such Successours who both forfeited it many waies and quickly within four or five years after his death quitted their Patriarchate and set an higher title to a spirituall Monarchy on foot whilest the most part of England remained yet Pagan when Pope Boniface did obtain of Phoeas the usurper an usurping Pope from an usurping Emperour to be universal Bishop Their Canon-shot is past that which remains is but a small volly of Muskets They adde that we have schismatically separated our selves from the Communion of our Ancestours whom we believe to be damned That we have separated our selves from our Ecclesiastical predecessours by breaking in sunder the line of Apostolical succession whilest our Presbyters did take upon them to Ordain Bishops and to propagate to their Successours more then they received from their predecessours That our Presbyters are but equivocall Presbyters wanting both the right matter and form of Presbyterial ordination To extinguish the order is more schismatical then to decline their authority And lastly that we derive our Episcopal Jurisdiction from the Crown First for our natural Fathers the answer is easie We do not condemn them nor separate our selves from them Charity requires us both to think well and speak well of them But prudence commands us likewise to look well to our selves We believe our fathers might partake of some errours of the Roman Church we do not believe that they were guilty of any heretical pravity but held alwaies the truth implicitely in the preparation of their minds and were alwaies ready to receive it when God should be pleased to reveal it Upon these grounds we are so far from damning them that we are confident they were saved by a generall repentance He that searcheth carefully into his own heart to find out his errours and repenteth truly of all his known sins and beggeth pardon for his unknown errours proceeding out of invincible or but probable ignorance in Gods acceptation repenteth of all Otherwise the very best of Christians were in a miserable condition For who can tell how oft he offendeth The second accusation of Priests consecrating Bishops is grounded upon a senselesse fabulous fiction made by a man of a leaden heart and a brazen forehead of I know not what assembly of some of our Reformers at the sign of the Nags-head in Cheapside or rather devised by their malicious enemies at the sign of the Whetstone in Popes-head-Alley Against which lying groundlesse drowsie dream we produce in the very point the authentick records of our Church of things not acted in a corner but publickly and solemnly recorded by publick Notaries preserved in publick Registers whither every one that desired to see them might have accesse And published to the world in Print whilest there were thousands of eye-witnesses living that could have contradicted them if they had been feigned There is no more certainty of the Coronation of Henry the eighth or Edward the sixth then there is of that Ordination which alone they have been pleased to question done not by one as Austine consecrated the first Saxon Prelates but by five consecrated Bishops Let them name the person or persons And if they were Bishops of the Church of England we will shew them the day the place the persons when and where and by whom and before what publick Notaries or sworn Officers they were ordained And this not by uncertain rumours but by the Acts and instruments themselves Let the Reader chuse whether he will give credit to a sworn Officer or a professed adversary to eye-witnesses or to malicious reporters upon hearsay to that which is done publickly in the face of the Church or to that which is said to be done privately in the corner of a Tavern These authentick evidences being upon occasion produced out of our Ecclesiasticall Courts and deliberately perused and viewed by Father Oldcorn the Jesuit he both professed himself clearly convinced of that whereof he had so long doubted that was the legitimate succession of Bishops and Priests in our Church and wished heartily towards the reparation of the breach of Christendome that all the world were so abundantly satisfied as he himself was Blaming us as partly guilty of the grosse mistake of many for not having publickly and timely made known to the world the notorious falshood of that empty but far spread aspersion against our succession As for our parts we believe Episcopacy to be at least in Apostolical institution approved by Christ himself in