Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	better_a	doubt_v	great_a	88	3	2.0647	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62542	The nullity of the prelatique clergy, and Church of England further discovered in answer to the plaine prevarication, or vaine presumption of D. John Bramhall in his booke, intituled, The consecration and succession of Protestant bishops justified, &c. : and that most true story of the first Protestant bishops ordination at the Nagshead verified their fabulous consecration at Lambeth vvith the forgery of Masons records cleerely detected / by N.N.	Talbot, Peter, 1620-1680.	1659 (1659)	Wing T117; ESTC R38284	70,711	150

The testimony of our witnesses agreeth with the principles of your reformation with the 25. article of your religion with your translations of scripture with the statuts 1. and 8. Eliz. 1. and with the confession of Bancroft and the tacite consent of all your ancient Clergy of England and with the publique testimony of all the Puritans in print the testimony of your one Witnesse and Records are irreconcilable with the foresaid evidences Now judge M. Doctor who deserves most credit one yong gallant in case the earle ever shold have said what Mason pretends invited to a banket or many knowing men eyewitnesses of the fact An ancient and constant tradition of learned and honest men agreable to your owne principles of religion to the confession of your owne Doctors ad to the statuts of the land or a new-found Register never cited nor produced though earnestly called for untill the season and occasion was past diametricaly opposite to your owne articles of faith and to the principles of your Church and to the evidence of your statuts I hope that neither you nor any other will be so obstinate as hereafter to preferre the relation of an obscure scrole hidden for the space of 52. yeares the best and greatest part of the age of your protestant Church be fore the cleere and publique tradition of so many eminent persons that related and credited the Nagshead story But in case that you or any other of your communion should not be perswaded by so evident reasons to a truth so credible I must attribute your blind obstinacy to a most refined heresy which not only depraves the will and obscures the understanding but also deprives men of common sense and makes them walke and wander in darknesse applauding and extolling with as greate zeale and as litle discretion their invisible Records as your protestant forefathers did their invisible Church 13. And now M. Doctor I believe you will pitty the late Kings misfortune and wish that he had guien way to the Parliament to pull doune parliament Bishops who had neither human nor divine right to temporal benefices or spiritual offices Pag. 238. Though it be no pitty that I was not of his Councell its greate pitty that he was not better informed of your Orders had he bin pleased to advise in time vpon this subject your superficiall formality had never bin able to roote out his posterity of their well grounded right to three Kindomes And truly if the Jesuits Colleges had no more right to the plate of their Churches and revenues then yee have to your bishoprickes and benefices I wold not crye out with Ploiden as you imagine the case is altered Pag. 239. but would perswade them to restitution and exhort you to the same if this charitable office had not bin prevented by Divine justice depriving your Clergy of what they so wrong fully possessed Yet notwithstanding your miserable condition you are pleased to say that yee are our feare and hate We love your persons hate your errours wonder at your obstinacy pardon your former cruelties and present contumelies pitty your misery and much more your blindnes the cause of your misery neyther enuy your talents nor feare your power but continually pray to the Father of mercies that he may vouchsafe to enlighten your Clergy and by them open the eyes of others misled by their errours CHAP. IX My Lord Audleys testification vpon oath of Mortons acknowledging the Nags-head ordination in Parliament The reason of beleeving and publishing the said testification which vpon due examination is much preferred before all others alleadged against it 1. I Am confirmed in my Lord Audleys evidence of D. Mortons speech granting the Nagshead ordination by the very ground you offer to him and propose to others to make credible a mistake For if my Lord had not bin well assured that there is none he would have willingly layd hold of your courtesy and of the speech and person of the pretended Bishop of Lincoln who as you say did once mention the fable of the Nagshead in a speech in Parliament Pag. 26. but with as much detestation of it as your ancestors vsed to name the Devil Why might not the mistake both of the person and of the drift or scope of his speech be the occasion of this relation To this interrogation my Lord Audley himselfe will give you an answer But give me leave to aske of you upon what occasion could Lincoln mention your Nagshead consecration in a speech in Parliament which might not as well have moved Durham to speake of the same Once you grant speeches of this subiect in the vpper house you can hardly free D. Morton from having a share in them 2. Pag. 27. But the greatest mistake of all others was sayth the Doctor to publish such a notorious untruth to the world so temerariously without better advise I confesse that though I never doubted of the truth of my Lord Audleys relation yet I did foresee that D. Morton would protest against it and deny the story as you do D. Bancrofts concerning the same subject of the Nagshead But it is a greate mistake in you to thinke that this story of my Lord Audleyes was published temerariously and without consideration and designe For it was considered that either yee would deny it or grant it If yee granted D. Mortons speech I had my intent If yee denied it and produced authentique certificats and testimonies to disprove what was layd to his charge your owne certificats and authentique testimonies would be cleer evidences of the truth of the Nagshead story though tkey should vindicate D. Morton For if the Nags-head story had not bin notoriously true and evident in the beginning of Q. Elizabeths reigne why did not your predecessours produce then authentique Records or at least such Certificats as you now do of your pretended solemnity at Lambeth when some evidence was desired of your first Bishops to cleere their consecrations and the very Registers so earnestly called for Why did not some of your Clergy of those days accuse D. Harding as you do me of calumny rashnesse temerarious credulity c. For publishing and objecting the Nagshead story That yee were vpbraided by him for that ridiculous consecration you may see in your Bishop Goodvins catalogue whose words I cited Why did they not make the like noyse when the puritans told them of the beginning of their Ordination in a corner not in a Congregation Are you more zelous for the honour of one D. Morton then your former Bishops were for their owne credit and the being of their whole Church If they had not wanted matter how could they want minde or meanes to procure and publish such testimonies of the Lords recorded to be present at the solemnity of Lambeth as you have got of nine other Lords members of the late Parliament could they find no testimonies to stop the Puritans clamour The truth is the Nagshead story was

for some exterior shew of a ceremony to amuse the world and raise them in the vulgar opinion to the degree of Bishops Amongst other proofes of this story was produced the credible and publique testemony of a person of honor and ingenuity who declared to many persons of prime quality that he perfectly remembred a speech made by D. Morton called Bishop of Duresme in Parliament wherin hee derived their Episcopal succession from the ordination at the Nagshead This smal scrap D. Bramhall snatcheth vp very greedily as though it were a matter of substance and able to maintaine their decaying Episcopacy He hath obtainedof Morton to disavow the speech and of six others of the same calling to say they doe not remember it and withall a testimony of the lords who also confesse they can not call to memory some antecedēt circumstances of that speech and hereof makes flourishes and triumphs as if forsooth he had got the victory in the maine point or as if vpon à mistake if it were such in so smal and inconsiderable à circumstance depended the matter which is in hand Have patience a while you shall see how much you have got by the bargaine You shall find there was more reason to believe it and publish it then you are aware of and that this stirr you have made and was foreseene you wold make hath raised the dust in your owne eyes VIII But I will first cleerly and briefly refute your exceptions against my chiefe arguments and contrary to your method beginne with and insist vpon that which is most material But I can not omit in a word or two to put you in mind of some of your many impertinent digressions as farre from the truth as from the purpose You frame to your selfe tvvo opponents as if eyther the argument or you the adversary required a concurrence of endeavours You are much mistaken one hand was more then sufficient and no more was imployed Pag. 4. You seeme to be troubled vpon a report of a foile you received vvhich I never knew but by your booke and I wonder your long experience made you not reflect that such things might be maliciously told you therby to sharpen your passion and pen. For my part I never conceived you so forward as to put your selfe into any such danger Pag. 5. Methinks a man of your coate should not blame mingling the interest of religion with matters of state vnlesse it be that some other speakes heere by your pen or that by a secret instinct you vnavvares vtter the hidden mystery of your protestant prelacy vvhich vvas introduced and maintained in England not for religion but reason of state Some late passages you mention I suppose rather vpon instigation of others then your owne inclination however it had bin more for your credit to have donne it vpon better information of the truth and with more connexion to the subject of your booke Pag. 4. in fine for my part while I followed you wandring out of the way both of truth and method about you doe not knowe what imputed to me I was in feare at every step to meete with the ridiculous story Cardin. Bleho of an imaginary Cardinal layd to my charge who hath more affinity with a matter of ordination Pag. 4. then the late Governor of the Lowcountries IX You are much bragging of the learning of your Prelatical English Clergy Pag. 144. 216. and vvill cope vvith our greatost Doctors and feare not to make paralells and other such fond bravados vvhich obligeth me to tell you against my vvill vvhat you are not vvilling to heare I vvould gladly knouvv hovv many Prelatiques have made knovvne to others nations that afther Haeresy came into England there remained any marke or footstep of Divinity or Philosophy Withaker I grant vvas not vnskilful in matters of controversy and could speake in a language vnderstood by schollers of forraine countries but he speakes far from the principles of prelatique Protestancy from that vvhich is called the Church of England Was there ever any amongst you that deserved to carry the bookes after Alensis Scotus Bacon Mediavilla or Midleton Ocham Holcot Waldensis and others not to goe out of our owne Ilands It is no wonder yow burnt their bookes publiquely in the Vniverfity to be rid of so publicke reproachers of your ignorance Some of late I grant have contributed much to the advancement of knovvledge each one in their kind as Gilbert Verulam Harvey but these vvere laymen and medled not vvith any matter of Divinity What can you allege in point of learning amongst you but that which meerly belongs to memory and even that patched vp of rotten rags of corrupted history and smal shreds of scattered collections mingled and mangled turned inside out to make the ancient Fathers in a fevv obscure vvords speake contrary to what they have cleerly delivered in vvhole homilies and bookes If but in this part rather of reading then learning rather memory then vvit you had come to any degree of perfection vvhat need had there bin to have made so much of Casaubon for impugning Baronius and in a later ocasion of an other stranger Salmasius And vvhen out of meere shame one of yours vvas forced to reply to him that answered Salmasius you see vvhat a piece of stuffe was vvouen not only thredbare in point of learning but stained with so many foule Barbarismes and Solecismes that it is a pitty to see what a sport vvas made of it by the adversary and yet there is more reason to thinke that many hads concurred to it then to the booke you vndertake to refute I expect you should attribute al those grosse faults to Erratas of the printer Pag. 175. as you doe the mistake of Bedford for Dover and one moneth for an other or of the Transcriber as Richard for Iohn in another place Pag. 89. to reconcile the contradictions of your solemne consecration as Lambeth And yet forsooth these scrapers of rude indigested rubbish of incoherent historical Notes must be set forth in the false disguise of Doctors of Divinity vvhom this Epithete becomes as much as a Bricklayer or Davvber the name of an Architect I am sure S. Gregory Nazianzen amongst the Fathers and Plato amongst the Philosophers purchased the title of Devines at a higher rate vvith expense of their labour in higher matters X. And it is vvithout doubt vpon the diffidence of their learning that you spread so broad your skill in Conge d'eslires Premunires Actuaries Notaries Signet offices Deane of the Arches Court of Faculties c. Whervvith you vvould blind ignorant Readers of your booke to a persuasion of your misterious knovvledge as either you or your brethren are vsed to doe in sermons and marginal notes with scantlings of Greeke and Hebrew words You shall find that your Conge d'eslires and Actuaries vvill helpe little to cleere your Records from plaine forgery and that you spill your skill to

so nigh a distance without repenting or can he truly repent without recanting Be not amazed that he remains without feeling for no Pharaos no Anthiochus pride and cruelty doth so harden the hart of a Reprobate as a long custome of denving and belying the known truth which Morton hath done for many yeares For albeit his blindnes were so great as not to see the manifest truth of our Religion yet impossible it is he should not see the false calumnies false translations and false allegations he bringeth against our Authors whome he hath read with his owne eyes Let any man marke his manner of perverting them he shall cleerly perceave that it could not be so done without haveing seene the very places and read them at leasure But this hath bin the continual practise of defenders of heresy in all ages and in this last age and in English writers and in the most eminent of them most conspicuous Let the reader who desirs to be satisfied in this point procure as he may easily the forenamed treatise tending to mitigation where in the 12. chap. he shall find the prime Protestant writers in the begining of Q. Eliz. reigne and in the first place Jewel called B. of Salisb. guilty of most enormous unexcusable untruths He shal heare this impudent Minister braging and braving that we cannot alleadge one Author one Doctor one sentence no not two lines in behalf of any one of the 28. articles he attributeth to vs wherin are contained the real presence private Masse images the Popes primacy offering vp of Christ in sacrifice common prayer in a strange language c. Whether we have sufficient authority for these Tenets is not the present question but whether we cannot find one ancient Doctor or two lines in favor of any one oft them He shall heare him cite S. Austin as allowing mariage after vowes made of chastity in his booke de Bono viduitatis the drift of which booke being wholy and plainly to the contrary He shal heare him cry downe another S. Austin the Apostle of Engl. not only against the authority of ancient History but even against the confession of John Foxes Acts and Monuments He shal heare so much that he will not need to goe further to Seeke Harding and others who have at large discovered the false lustre of this counterfeit Jewel this pretious stone layd in the fundation of the English Babilon He shal find the like false dealing of Casshill Clarke and Perkins As for John Foxe the Reader after a short tast of his knavery is remitted to the third part of the three conversions of Engl. where in one chap. are sett downe severally above a hundred and twenty wilfull lyes vttered by Foxe in less then three leaves of his Acts and Monuments and those such as no ways may be excused eyther by ignorance or error but must needs proceed from voluntary fraud and malice himself knowing that it was false which he related I omit what is further alleadged of malicious fraud in the writings of Sir Francis Hastings and Sir Edoard Cooke but a word I must ad of Sir Philip Plessis Mornay a frenchman to shew that it is not a national inclination of the English but of any nation infected with heresy to maintaine heretical errours with voluntary falshood The french Jansenists of late make good my assertion and this french Calvinist will make it better In a booke of his full of authorities against the Masse he was charged by Peron then B. of Eureux after Cardinal with five hundred wilfull falsifications and vpon suite made to Henry the fourth by the said Peron it came to a publick trial in presence of the King of France and great part of his Nobility on the 4. of May 1600. Of these five hundred were exhibited threescore to Plessis to take his choise for the first dayes tryall who tooke nineteene of those which he thought himself best able to excuse Now the straitnes of time permitting only nine to be examined he was both by his owne Protestant Judges and the Catholick Judges on the other side condemned of falsification and untrue dealing in all nine after he had bin permitted to say what he could in his defence And Peron further pressed him to returne to the like trial of the rest of the five hundred but Plessis could not be brought to it This publique trial is largely related and defended in the end of the first tome of the 3. part of the three Conversions of England and appeares in the Kings owne letter in print as also by the publick Acts set forth by the approbation of the said King and his counsel If I should proceed on with the vnchristian and vnhuman proceeding of our English Ministers in their shamfull calumniations and falsifications it wold be an endles worke I shall remit the reader to a booke intituled a search made into matters of Religion by Francis Walsingham Deacon of the Protestant Church before his change to the Catholick where he may find such foule dealing of so many English Protestant Ministers Bel Doves Jewel Sutclif c. that with conferring the praces by his owne industry he will never need to informe himself more by the relations of others Let him but read the Discussion of D. Barlows answer togeather with the suplemēt and adjoynder he shall know the lying spirit of Barlow Reynolds Dunnes and Andrewes and this man 's not only falfities but follies in his answer to Card. Bellarmines Apollogy Infelix puer atque impar Achilli I cannot conceave what excuse a Protestant that hath any sense of Religion can alleadge why he should not endeavour to rectify his judgment vpon so easy conditions The bookes are not hard to be got the places are easy to be found and examined there is no more exacted of him but to beleeve what he sees And in case he be a Protestant of the moderne prelatique fashion who by an indifferency to any Religion whereunto the Apostles short Creed admitted by Arrians Macedonians Nestorians Eutichians Pelagians may be applyed hath little or no regard of any Religion at all yet to satisfy himself in point of curiosity or Policy concerning Religion methinks he should be desirous to try by his own experience whether men by facing about with inconstancy of enterchanging opinions and facing it out with impudency of manifest lies and calumnies may build and vphold an imaginary Church in the fancies of ignorant and careles peeple I can assure him that he shall discover in the practise of Protestant writers more admirable effects of knavery then in the precepts and presidents of his only admired and adored Apostle Machiavel He will prefer English men in this point of wit which he esteems the highest before the Italians for Machiavel the sole Italian he admires could never make such resolutions in Italy although it was the marke he aimed at as English Ministers have made in England Vnles it were not the want of wit in the Minister