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	word_n	14,132	5	4.8692	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27370	A letter written by a minister for the satisfaction of a person doubting in religion shewn to be unsatisfactory.	P. I., Minister.; T. B.; J. W.	1686 (1686)	Wing B185; ESTC R10043	13,702	41

question of Transubstantiation of which if you make good use I shall proceed to the latter Yet I deferred the thing till I could learn that the Person on whose Ability you lean viz. Mr. G. was returning from London that he might be near at hand to furnish you with Answers to the intent I should not be calumniated as a Designer to surprize and lurch you Wherefore I now send these few Lines to desire you to provide your self of a satisfactory resolution about this Question or let me receive intimation how that satisfaction doth arise I abridge you not of liberty to consult with any other person that may add any thing to Mr. G. for I love Truth and am loath you should be carried away with Falshood and nothing will more content me than to receive an Answer of weight to this Paper which shall at this time onely touch a few doubts many more being reserved to be proposed when these are cleared At present I must tell you 1. What you are or must be taught to Believe 2 How hard it will be for you to Believe what you shall be so Taught In the former I 'll note the Doctrines Taught and the Method of Teaching them The latter viz. the Method I begin with That you may believe your Mind must be abstracted as much as possible it may from the judgment of your own Senses Now this method will be hard for you to submit to when you consider that it is about their proper object and your Senses duly disposed to give their judgment and the common Senses of Mankind concurring with yours But yet this will be yet harder to digest John 20.27 1 John 1.1 seeing this new method is directly contrary to the method which Christ used to instruct Thomas which was not to abstract his Mind from the judgment of his Senses but to employ his Mind about the judgment of his Senses The method also of St. John is not to abstract from the judgment of the Senses but he appeals to the judgment of the Senses to beget and confirm Faith Hence therefore the first Question will arise 1. Quest Why the method of your new Teachers is so opposite to the method of Christ and his Apostles Now to the Doctrines taught Three things most admirable are effected in the Eucharist by the words of Consecration which the Catholick Faith believes and confesseth without any doubting 1. That the true Body of Christ even the same which was born of the Virgin and now sits in Heaven at the right hand of the Father is contained in the Sacrament 2. That no substance of the Elements remains in it 3. That the Accidents which are perceived by the Senses are in a wonderful and inexplicable manner without any subject matter the substance of the Bread and Wine are so changed that they wholly cease to be but the Accidents even all of them of the Bread and Wine you may see and perceive which inhere in no substance but consists by themselves The proof of this follows Now the words of Christ are so plain in this matter that none in his sound mind can be ignorant what he must understand when he hears This is my Body Also the words of Paul are plain 1 Cor. 11. Let a man examine c. He that eatech and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself not discerning the Lords body For what need is there of such weighty words if there were nothing in the Sacrament but a memory and sign of Christ's Passion as Hereticks teach The same thing Paul more at large explained in these words The cup of blessing which we bless is it not the communication of the bloud of Christ You hear the Doctrine and the Proof of it from Christ and Paul now for the explication of these words to make out the proof These places of Scripture must be so explained by the Pastors and this must chiefly be taught that nothing of doubtfulness or uncertainty is left of what was above-said especially when the Authority of the Church of God hath interpreted these things the knowledge of which we attain two ways 1. When we consult with the Fathers who flourished from the beginning of the Church and so downward 2. When we see the contrary Opinion condemned This Doctrine thus proved by Scripture and the Scripture they explained you must believe Now to shew how hard it will be for you to believe this these following Questions are proposed 1. Quest Whether the words of Christ being Spiritual it may not suffice to take them in a Spiritual Sense but it be necessary to take them in the literal sense of his natural body and that without a Figure 2. Quest Whether the first Article be not sufficiently believed when the Body of Christ is believed to be really truly present even the same Body but not in the same manner 3. Quest Whether the second and third Articles be of equal Truth and Certainty with the first and must so be believed 4. Quest Whether the words cited for proof are intended to prove all Three Articles equally or the First only and the Second and Third are left to shift for themselves 5. Quest Whether every one in his wits can see such inforcement in the words of Christ or Paul without the especial helps of the Churches Authority and the Fathers 6. Quest If not then whether Reason willeth that not the Church in the Apostles times should be principally heard in this Authoritative Interpretation 7. Quest Whether you are truly taught that we Hereticks say That in the Sacrament there is nothing else but a Memory and a Sign of Christs Passion And whether the Fathers that prove there is something more and condemn such as say there is nothing more do prove any thing against us or do condemn us I should now think it reasonable to request of you to return to us until these difficulties be overcome But if Mr. G. will not yield to this request then I pray you improve all your interest with him for some satisfaction for your self and me what is his true and serious sense of this whole matter and put him to it on his own behalf in this manner viz. Sir seeing if I eat unworthily I eat judgment to my self If I discern not the Lords Body in eating I eat unworthily If I discern not the very same Body form'd in the Womb c. If I discern not accidents without a substance c. I discern not the Lords Body Therefore that I may be confirmed I beseech you assure me concerning your self who are strong in Faith whereas I am but weak Your self who know your own intention in Consecrating whereas I know it not Your self who have looked upon and examined the Elements that they are not corrupted whereas I have not Your self who have uttered the words of Consecration whereas I perhaps heard not perhaps understood not I say That you your self are so right in your wits as to perceive

will see what a heedless Quoter of Scripture you are though it be your best or rather onely Talent You alledge against us 1 John 1. v. 1. where the first words are Quod audivimus That which we have heard as if we forbid you to use your Hearing by which Faith comes For it is evident beyond all need of Proof that as the Church heard Christ so if every succeeding Age had follow'd what they heard from the former Christian Faith must have continu'd till now the self-same the Apostles heard from Christ and as long as this Method call'd by us Tradition is follow'd it must ever continue still the self-same to the Worlds End Now we are so far from bidding you not follow the Advertisements of your Senses that our onely Quarrel to you is that you relinquisht the most certain Sense the Hearing your Lawful Pastors in the Church you left and fell to scan Mysteries of Faith by the less-certain ones employed about Objects not within their cognizance and which is as absurd Glossing Scripture-Texts without any Rule to guide you but your own aukward Fancies Next follow in your Papers the Doctrines taught with Proofs which properly and directly belong onely to the first Article viz. That the True Body of Christ is contained in the Sacrament But such as your self will never he able todisprove viz. the Scripture interpreted by the Church the Testimonies of Fathers witnessing the Tradition of the Church in their time and the Condemnation of the contrary Opinions denying the Real Presence and Transubstantiation as Heretical What should move you thus to shew the weakness of your own Cause which has no other Rule of your Faith but Scripture interpreted by every man's Private Spirit or Reason and can bear no proportion with that of the publick Interpretation of the Church attested by the Authority of the most Eminent Fathers of the Primitive Times and strengthned by the Condemnation of the contrary Heresies I cannot easily imagine but finding them too strong to be combated by so weak a Champion you fairly take leave of them and betake your self to shew in the next place after your fashion that is blindly how hard it will be to believe this Doctrine by asking us Questions And I must confess 't is most insuparably hard if Senses must be admitted to Judge of the hidden and most abstruse Mysteries of Faith which is your darling Method though any wise man would think this would turn Faith into Experimental Knowledge and so rather destroy all the Faith in the world But my Task is set and I must attend to your Questions To the first then I answer That the words This is my Body are to be taken Literally and yet the End of receiving is meant Spiritually And I farther say That this Spiritual Nourishment consisting in raising in us devout Affections is incomparably advanc'd by the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Bloud So that these two are so far from being inconsistant as you would hint that the taking the words Literally does exceedingly conduce to the Spiritual feeding on Christ even as far as the believing him really present is more apt to stir up Devotion in us than the not believing it or the receiving his Real Body is above the receiving a piece of Bread signifying it which is beyond all proportion To the second Question I answer affirmatively If we regard the point of the Real Presence precisely For we grant that 't is sufficient to believe the Body of Christ is really truly present even the same Body but not in the same manner 'T is the very Doctrine of the Council of Trent it self Sess 13. cap. 1. That the Body of Christ is in Heaven juxta modum existendi naturalem according to its natural manner of existing and yet that 't is in other places Sacrament aliter praesens present Sacramentally But I much fear you are not in earnest here when you seem to yield 't is really truly present but that this Kindness of yours will grow cold when it comes to the trial and that these hearty expressions will dwindle away into Christ's Body being here onely in a Sign which is to say the Sign is there and his Body absent Hollow words are but wind and 't is hard to grasp Air. To the Third asking whether the Second and Third Article you put be of equal Truth and Certainty with the First I answer That I was never taught to believe a thing as a half-half-Truth or a three-quarter Truth but all to be True for Truth consists in an Indivisible which the Church has expresly declared to be of Faith by a General Council and accordingly whatsoever the Church thus believes and proposes as an Article of Faith I absolutely believe and embrace as Truths delivered by Christ and his Apostles To the Fourth I answer as above That the Proofs you set down belong properly and directly only to the first Article And as for the Second and Third they may also shift well enough for themselves for any Authority or Reason you have brought against either the one or the other But I would gladly know how all your Faith will shift for it self having nothing to keep it from sinking into an inferiour Assent call'd Opinion nay into a mass of senceless Errours as far as it opposes Tradition but your self and other Fallible Interpreters like your self to buoy it up As for your Fifth I know no enforcement that is beyond Cavil in any one place of Scripture which is Dogmatical while the words are left to be tost by Criticisms Grammar-learning Allusions of places to one another and such like little tricks No one word in those Sacred Books can escape being equivocal or double senc't while the word God which of all others should seem incommunicable is Wier-drawn by such shifts to signifie a Creature as we experience in the Arians and Socinians glosses upon those Texts which concern Christ's Divinity You know well enough already that neither my self nor any Catholic builds our Faith upon any Text of Scripture interpreted by our own private Fancy but onely by the publick Tradition of the Church Your Sixth asks If the Church must be taken in to expound Scripture whether Reason willeth not that the Church in the Apostles time should be principally heard in their Authoritative Interpretation I answer In case you mean the Apostles were of greater Authority than their Successors 't is granted But if your Question relates to the Truth of what the Church delivers 't is the same as to ask whether the Holy Ghost that assists the Church spake truer one time than another Your Seventh Question whether you are truly represented by putting you to say There is nothing else in the Sacrament but a Memory and Sign of Christ's Passion and whether the Fathers that prove there is something more and condemn such as say there is nothing more do prove any thing against you or condemn you I am heartily glad to see some