Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A43788
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The grand apostacy of the church of Rome, from her primitive purity and integrity with a vindication of the Church of England, in her separation from her, and the hazard of salvation in communion with her : discoursed in a sermon preached at St. Mary le Bow, London on Sunday the 28th of December, 1679 / by John Hill.
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Hill, John, d. 1709.
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1680
(1680)
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Wing H1996; ESTC R12819
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28,385
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79
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Consciences By this we can both live upon the Truth and when God calls die for it 3. As it helps to fetch strength from Christ to do and suffer to live and die for him This invests the Soul with a kind of Omnipotency insomuch that other mens Impossibilities are Faiths Triumphs Secondly Love Your love will hold fast the Truth when happily your learning may let it go You may not with the Martyr be able to dispute for the Truth but if you love it you will die for it Learning lies in the head but Love lies in the heart This will make you say to the Protestant Interest as she to her Mother-in-law Ruth 1.16 17. Whither thou goest I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge thy people shall be my people and thy God my God Where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried the Lord do so to me and more also if ought but death part me and thee 'T is for want of this that God gives men over to believe a lye to be led captive by divers lusts and pleasures to follow cunningly devised fables and to hold the truth in unrighteousness Let us now love the Protestant Truth both in the Purity and in the Professors of it And truly if ever there were a time for our Union this is it May we not fear that the neglect of Protestant Unity will make way for Popish Unity That Party cannot be strong but by our weakness nor armed but by our nakedness or come in amongst us but by that lane of our own divisions O that we might consider these things that by so much the greater her subtilties are to divide us we may the more firmly be united in our Prayers to God and in concord between our selves that we may not expose our Persons Estates Lives Posterities Religion and all to the crasty and Bloudy advantages of these Enemies of the Protestant Church Shall Joseph and Benjamin Moses and Aaron Abrahani and Lot fall out especially when the Canaanites are in the land Shall Gebal Ammon and Amaleck and the Philistims at Tyre agree And shall Lambs and Doves rend tear and scratch one another O let it not be spoken in Gath nor published in the streets of Askelon Let us now endeavour to keep the nuity of the spirit in the bond of peace It will be our Duty and Honour as well as Happiness and Safety to love one another and appear as one man against the common Enemy O that now we might beging Go on and prosper 't is not the Contention but Constancy that sets the Grown on the Christians head It will be an unanswerable Dilemma If the Protestant Religion were had why did you profess it if good why did you desert it To consirm you the more in the constant Profession of it consider that 1. We have the Scriptures on our side in most places free from ambiguiry we live under the cleareft dispensations of the Gospel-covenant and the Light thereof is not yet eclipsed and we hope never will with lewish Mifts or Popish Fogs 2. We have the Principles of Religion which directly lead to every point of our Faith and instructs us in our way to Salvation 3. We have the antient Fathers the Majesty of elden times and reverend countenanor of the first Antiquity so that all their glory therein hath by our Reformers been turned into their shame 4. And lastly which may perswade any man not drunk with prejudice we have had the mercies of God to plead for us whereby our Church hath been miraculously upheld When Rome and Hell threatned us then God defended us when our Neck hath even been on the block and the instruments of death prepared to cut off our lives and hopes together then God disappointed them and rescued us What remains now but that we break off our Iniquities by Repentance put a Bill of Divorce into the hands of our dearest Lusts run them thorough with the sacrificing Knife of Mortification that we no longer turn Grace into Wantonness nor these miraculous Preservations into ingrateful Apostacies By this way onely it is that we can be true to our own happiness be lasting Monuments of Mercy unto Posterity and erect Trophies of Victory over all Antichristianism amongst us Then would the several Foundations of the Kingdom be settled in a sound and flourishing Constitution For then Piety would be the Pillar to every Profession Learning adorned with Piety Law administred with Piety and Councils managed with Piety then would Religion flourish Peace settle and the Gospel ring in the Ears of the Generations unborn How quickly would our Darkness be dispelled our Shades flee away our Distractions be removed and an happy Calinness and Serenity cover the face of the whole Nation Which that it may the Lord of his infinite mercy grant To whom with the Father c. FINIS * In Praefatione in Apocalypsin In locum Prosper de prem praed cap. 7. Comment in Apocalypsin cap. 14. v. 8. in cap. 17 c. * Coelius Aventinus Exquilinus Tarpeius Capitolinus Viminalis Palatinus Quirinalis D. F. in Rhem. Test p. 892. Chap. 17.6.11.8 * M. P. Nar. Nicephorus Eusebius Ecclesiast Hist Isaacs Chron. Theodoret. Sophronius Anno 177. Rev. 17.8 1 Cor. 6.9 Clem. Alex. Strom. Dr. W. in his Preface to the way of the true Church * Rev. 12. B.N. in his Epistles * Eph. 2.8 Fox Acts Monum 2 Tim. 3.6 2 Pet. 1.16
she can fulfil the Royal Law and so brave God in the face as if she needed no pardon from his hands O how sweet a Lesson is this to flesh and bloud even enough to make her run mad of Self-conceit 3. That of commending Ignorance as the Mother of Devotion And thus when they had taken away the Scriptures they set up Pictures in their room All their Religion is no other than a pack of Complements meerly outward and sensible adapted to the humour of their ignorant and sensual Votaries for homo est magis sensus quam intellectus to worship God in Spirit and Truth can no more be understood by them than an Eye can see Spirit How ridiculous are their superstitious Cuâ—toms Yet not to do what Fathers and Grandfathers have done is to profane their Canonized dust And indeed had not the Scripture foretold what an Eclipse would be upon the whole Church we should think it impossible that such ridiculous things should be taken up Because Christ is the Light therefore they have Light at Noon-day and because Christ said We must be like little Children therefore the Monks wear Cowls like childrens Swadling-clouts And one Pope made a serious Motion in the Conclave That he and his Cardinals might ride in a solemn day on Asses in imitation of Christs humility but the Conclave thought that the As too much rode the Pope already And thus you have had the several Instances and Causes of Rome Defection from her Primitive Purity and Integrity I now proceed to the third thing proposed to be shewn viz. III. The grounds of our Separation from and the impossibility of Reconciliation to that Church This I will consider 1. More generally 2. More particularly More generally and that by asserting these three things 1. The lawfulness of the Church of England's Separation from the Church of Rome 2. That this Separation the Romanists themselves cannot justly charge as Schismatical 3. That our Compliance with that Church is dangerous and borders on Ruine and Destruction I. The lawfulness of the Church of England's Separation from the Church of Rome The Church of Rome is confessed to be antient but not her Errours neither do we in any thing differ from her wherein she hath not departed from her self Here consider these two things 1. That the Church of Rome was never a Mother to our Church and we never had such dependance on her as the Romanists pretend we had Our Christian Faith came not from the seven Hills neither was it derived from Austin the Monk or Pope Gregory Britain had a worthy Church before either of them look'd into the world built on the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles And the account that Historians give of it is thus viz. That Christianity was propagated here immediately after the death of that Proto-Martyr St. Steven Which appears by divers passages out of Origen and Tertullian Gildas the Historian of our own Nation called Sapiens affimeth That in the time of Tiberius who died thirty seven years after Christ was crucified this Island of Britain received the Faith Some there are and not improbably who conjecture that St. Paul himself preached the Gospel here after his first Imprisonment at Rome which was quinto Neronis This is confirmed by a Passage of Venantius Honorius viz. Transit oceanum vel qua fuit Insula pontum Quasque Britannus habet Terras atque ultima Thule Beronius himself one of their own Authors cells us That he found it in a Manuscript in the Vatican Library that the Gospel was first preach'd in this Nation by Simon Zelotes and Joseph of Arimathea In what state Christianity stood afterwards appears not in any footstep of History till King Luoius time who is said to send to Eleutherius the then Bishop of Rome for some Pastors to instruct his People in the Christian Religion Fugatius and Damianus were the persons sent over with his Letters to the King which acquainted him That as Christ's Vicar he might settle matters for Religion a thing which his Successors will not now allow within his own Dominions And thus Christianity flourished for several hundred years here And notwithstanding all the affrightments of Pensecution that was then on the Church and the Heathen Princes spilt the bloud of the Christians like water yet those sanguine showers have ever since made the Church the more fruitful And in the Borders of this Island the Primitive Christian Religion had publick encouragement and profession even to the time of Austin the Monk who found here at his entrance one Archbishop seven Bishops and a Monastery at Bangor with twenty one hundred Monks in it So that several hundred years did intervene between the first planting of Christianity and Austin's coming hither I should not be so large in 〈◊〉 Historical Narrative but that I know 't is objected to us by the Romanists That we had our Religion from them and the Conversion of the English Nation was by Rome and her Agents We own that the Antient Roman Church was Sister to ours but no Mother there was neer Kindred but no Dependance But 2. Though we should grant them such a Dependance yet still we assert our Separation lawful because they have separated and departed from their first Purity We hold with the Antients from whom they are departed and we hold with them as far as they hold with Christ This will evidence it self if you consider these four things 1. That the Modern Papists maintain sundry Articles opposite to that which hath been formerly believed by the most eminent Doctors of the Roman Church as that of the merit of Condignity opposed by St. Bernard and Anselme and now defended by the Modern Jesuits Images at first were onely motivum objectum an inducing means to move people to adore the Samplar and no material Object of adoration which now is opposed by their present Church 2. Sundry Popish Assertions now obtruded are manifestly repugnant to the Teners of the Primitive Church as That the Popes Judgment is infallible That he is Lord over the whole World That publick Service doth bost edifie in an unknown Language That Lay-men must not read Scriptures c. 3. Many of their Opinions are improbable unreasonable and absurd as That the Scripture hath no greater authority to binde or loose the Faithful than the Church will That the definition of the Pope is as authemtiek as the facred Scripture That Fornication in the Clergie is a smaller offence than Marriage That to worship Images is meritorions With innumerable other such-like Absurdities 4. Some of our Adversaries more ingenuous than their fellows confess That we believe and hold the fundamental Truths of the Gospel the main and vital matter of Religion And if we do thus who is to be faulted the Church of Rome or the Church of England But herein she discovers her self to be that body of which Antichrist is the Head and that Whore and Mother of