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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	christian_a	church_n	true_a	4,006	5	4.8519	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63840	A defence of the confuter of Bellarmin's Second note of the church, antiquity, against the cavils of the adviser	Tullie, George, 1652?-1695.	1687 (1687)	Wing T3236; ESTC R7422	16,243	26

Club together over the Pot he speaks of in his Introduction for the Confutation of Bellarmin and to instance no farther in this fulsome kind what else is his whole scribble but one continued breach of Good Manners and common Civiliey unless he thinks it the part of the Gentleman to Boffoon a whole Church and all her Clergy I shall not farther recriminate though I justly might from several of their late Papers were it worth the while I shall only therefore tell him that Bellarmin in that very Chapter we are now upon gives his Adversaries the Lye twice very roundly and why should he be angry with a man for copying after such an Original And that I could wish some People were not so deeply concern'd in the Character of those who in the Apostle's homely Phrase shall in the latter times speak Lyes in Hypocrisie 1 Tim. 4. 2. and by lying Wonders 2 Thess 2. 9. impose upon the People as to deserve such plain English But the Lye deserves a Stab they say and therefore we may now expect a keen Pen when pointed with such generous Resentments In the second place therefore he pretends that the Confuter in kicking down the Church of Rome has overthrown his own at the same blow For he having asserted p. 49. not as the Adviser words it That the addition of Articles to the ancient Creed takes of all claim to the ancient Truth as if a Church that coins new and false Articles of Faith does thereby forfeit her Title to those true and ancient ones she before retain'd though not impugn'd by these new ones as the Adviser would suggest but that the present Church of Rome having superadded several Articles of her own contrary to several of those Christian Truths upon which she was originally founded becomes another Church from what she was then and cannot plead Antiquity for her present Constitution the Adviser subsumes that neither then can the Church of England be the ancient Church who besides the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds has another of a later date of nine and thirty Articles besides another Plot-Creed call'd the Test Sure this Man wrote only to make People merry Or is he really not able to distinguish betwixt Articles of the Christian Faith of necessity to be believ'd in order to Salvation and such he cannot but know the Church of Rome accounts all the Articles of the new Trent Creed and those of Communion and external agreement which tho ancient Truths and if we cannot give better proofs of their true Antiquity than they can do of their necessary Articles wee 'l be content to lose them are yet of an inferior Nature And as to our Plot Creed in particular I 'le set another Plot-Creed with a Witness against it and that is the deposing Power by Law establish'd by a Law that 's a Creed in the strictest Sense to them the Definition of a General Council and had it not been for this and other Plot-Creeds of absolving Subjects from their Allegiance and the like I am apt to believe they had never been troubled with ours In the next Paragraph the Adviser leads us such a Dance there 's no keeping Pace with him He frisks and frolicks it so in his Field of Crontroversy that he puts me in mind of the Diversion of another sort of Animal lately come into a good Pasture and in a warm Sun. I was in despair for some time of finding out his meaning in his long Ramble of two Pages but beating about for it laid in a very narrow compass I found it at last in a Corner of the Field of Controversy and 't is in short this That the Confuter's Argumentation which see p. 50. c. do's not prove that when a Change or Alteration in Religion begins publickly to be abetted maintained and propagated c. That then such an Alteration in Religion could spread it self over the whole Christian World and yet the Authors Promoters Abetters and Embracers of it not be known and taken notice of This being a popular tho very weak refuge insisted upon by greater men than the Adviser I shall give it a more distinct tho short Answer First then I say That the Confuter p. 52. has given him one particular Instance of an acknowledg'd Change of which they themselves cannot yet assign the Author by whom nor the time when it was introduc'd and that he has farther p. 53 c. as much as his design'd Brevity would admit evinc'd the Rise and Progress of two notorious changes in Religion establish'd in the Church of Rome and the Opposition they met with and could at h pleasure have farther enlarg'd upon this Subject Now either of these Ratiocinations are a sufficient Confutation of Bellarmin's adopted by the Adviser And how little he has replied to his Instances we shall see by and by 2dly He is mightily out in his Computation unless the old blunder of the Roman being the Catholick Church run still in his Head if he thinks all those Doctrines of theirs which we charge with the want of true Antiquity were ever universally receiv'd over the whole Christian World as he flourishes to exaggerate the Matter What thinks he of one of the Confuter's instances the Papal Authority to go no further But I hope his better Knowledg in this point will supersede me the labour of enlarging upon so copious an Argument 3dly I must tell the Adviser that the Doctrines we complain of being generally such as are calcuted for the Meridian of Rome the greater Veneration Wealth and Grandeur of the Pope and his Clergy 't is no wonder at all that we hear not of so much Bustle and Noise about them in the Western World as we might otherwise have expected And if he asks me as he 's good at such silly questions Where the Church of England was all this time and why She did not Preach and make Laws against such Corruptions and their Abetters I presume to ask his Wisdom again Where She was under the late Reign of Cromwel and why She did not Preach and make Laws against him and his Abetters Why truly She was in both Cases under the invincible Tyranny of an Usurper and therefore methinks the general Answer of the Housholder to his Servants asking him whence came the tares that an Enemy had Sown them might satisfie in this Anti-tipe of the Parable likewise especially since we find neither Master nor Servants any farther sollicitous in particular Enquiries about them even when they grew up and were consequently seen and discern'd for ill weeds to be sure grow fast enough And I shall only in this place desire the Gentlemen who are so ready to boast of the present Continuance of the discriminating Doctrines of the Church of Rome notwithstanding the Opposition they have met with to make this farther Remark with me upon the Parable of the Tares That they were suffer'd to grow up with the Wheat until the Harvest and let them recollect what became

A DEFENCE OF THE CONFUTER OF BELLARMIN's Second Note of the Church ANTIQUITY AGAINST THE CAVILS of the ADVISER IMPRIMATUR May 31. 1687. HEN. MAVRICE LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXVII A Defence of the Confuter of Bellarmin's Second Note of the Church Antiquity c. I Apprehend by this Author's Genius that 't is much easier for some Men to write Farce than Controversy And tho I cannot say whether or no any man ever undertook the Confutation of Bellarmin over a Pot as our Author elegantly begins his Advice yet he seems to me by his ludicrous Behaviour to have engaged in his Defence in that sort of humour He may think it Vanity if he pleases in the Reverend and Learned Author of the Piece he attaques to assail the Roman Champion himself yet even I who never enter'd the Field of Controversy before shall presume to engage with such a Smatterer in the Noble Science as his Second And yet immediately after this fit of Rhetorick he do's not pretend that the Pot-qualifications are the case of him who has undertaken to answer Bellarmin ' s Marks of the Church No Why then do's he commence his Advice with such a Suggestion Did he think fit to publish to the World that he had a mind to be impertinent An humour especially in Conjunction with Buffoonry in serious Affairs I would advise him against for the future if the powerful Influence of an ill habit has not totally over-rul'd his Liberty in the matter And thus after the witty Introduction to his little good Will little enough I dare say we come now to receive the Advice of this grave controversial Counsellor in the Case depending First Then he pretends for I 'le relate his Advice in short-hand as much as I can till I find something worth the transcribing that Bellarmin never meant what his Adversary undertakes to prove that the Plea of bare Antiquity is proper to the Church No! but this Gentleman must own that he did when I have told him only that by bare Antiquity his Adversary understands Antiquity abstracted from the Consideration of Truth those Ancient Truths deliver'd in the Scriptures Now I presume he will not say that Bellarmin any where expresly in his Book of Notes muchless in this Chapter makes the consent of Doctrines with the written Word which is not bare but true Antiquity a Note of the Church tho indeed such is the force of Truth he can hardly keep off of that Argument In his ninth Chapter he makes agreement in Doctrine with the Ancient Church a sixth Note of the Church Ancient he farther explains by Apostolic telling us likewise out of Tertullian that a Church is so call'd as for other Reasons so for her conspiring with the Apostles in their Doctrines and yet after all most pitifully slides off to quite another thing as will appear to any one who shall examine that Chapter But it may be almost worth a man's while to read the Adviser's Comment upon Bellarmin's Text tho I hate transcribing He says indeed says my Author that whoever at this time will find out the Catholick Church profess'd in the Creed amongst so many pretenders must not apply himself to any upstart Congregation which was never visible in the World but of late years but to such a Church which has been of as long standing as ever since Christ and the Apostles days and consequently such a Church to which Antiquity of necessity at this time belongs This Bellarmin asserts Where I observe First that by this last Expression he Represents his own flourishing Gloss as Bellarmin's Words which they are not a thing that looks a little towards a design of putting a trick upon his Readers 2ly That we are here shrewdly directed to find out the Catholick Church by finding out a particular to which we must stick without farther enquiry 3ly That this Man passes a genere ad genus from Antiquity to Visibility which the better Logick of his Master Bellarmin would not probably have suffer'd him to have done And lastly after all that he unluckily says the same thing in substance with what he disproves in his Adversary for what do's all his Gloss amount to but to this That he who would find out the true Church must overlook all such as boast not of Antiquity at all adventures without any regard had to the true Antiquity of their Doctrines or any thing else they pretend to and pitch upon that without any more ado which has been of as long standing of as long standing barely without any farther respect as ever since Christ and the Apostles days And what is such a standing as this but bare Antiquity Unless he can prove a necessary entail of Truth upon a long Succession which all the World can never do And therefore hoping he may be a little more happy in following than in giving Advice I present him with his own and the second he gives That when he would confute his Adversary he say not the same thing that he do's and withal desire him to attend for the future more diligently to the Sense than to the Expression of a Period But wherein do's the Confuter of Bellarmin thus unluckily jump with him Why in explicating and proving the same Antiquity to be a Note of the Church which Bellarmin affirms to be such To which I answer first that if Bellarmin by Antiquity meant such as his Confuter explains p. 45. as is pretended then he understood by that word an agreement in Doctrine with Christ and his Apostles for so 't is plain his Adversary meant but we have shown before that that could not be Bellarmin's Intention 2ly That if the Cardinals Discourse upon this Note do's really tend to prove not Antiquity but as the Confuter compendiously distinguishes Priority to belong to the Church as it seems to do then 't is demonstrable to me that he presently grew weary of his Note which he could not manage without blending and confounding it with another more proper and pertinent to his business tho besides his design The third Inconsistency which he thinks he has found in the Confuter of Bellarmin is this That having prov'd Antiquity not to be a proper Note of the Church because it did not always belong to it as a proper Characteristick of a thing ought to do there being a time when the Church was new p. 42. He should nothwistanding in the 45 p. assert that the holy Scriptures are the true Antiquity there being a time when they were new likewise and here he thinks he has undoubtedly caught him But alas his Pen was more nimble than his thoughts were deep If indeed Bellarmin's Adversary in this point had advanc'd this Proposition That Antiquity is a proper Note or inseparable Property of the Scriptures or written Word and had after this undertaken to prove that Antiquity could not be such a Note of the Church because the Church was