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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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and lose their name in this Thus much as to the Doctrinal part From what hath been said may naturally be inferred I. The impossibility of Reconciliation to such an Apostatiz'd Church I know there are some who think that there is little difference between the two Churches of England and Rome and undertake to shew us the several Advances the one hath made towards the other and these are either 1. Some Politick Romanists who hereby would extenuate the foulness of Popery or 2. Some ignorant and loose Protestants who live void of the knowledge and conscience of all Religion men who live tanquam poeniterent non pecudes natos as if they repented they were not made Beasts whose Reason is their burden and light of mind their offence who are so given up to their sensual Appetites as if they were all flesh and had no Spirit who rake up those heavenly Sparks their Souls in ashes never considering their original capacity and end or that Viaticum Aeternitatis provision that is to be made for them unto Eternity These men are moulded for Heathenish as well as Popish Impressions But if we rightly consider the Purity of our own Church and the Apostacy and Corruptions of the Church of Rome you will finde an impossibility of Reconciliation For rebus sic stantibus as the case is that Church must put off it self and cease to be what it is ere it can begin to be once again what it was for Substance Credit Fame Vertue and Honour have at once forsaken her and by long disuse have left her worse than naught Neither can we see how these houses can be repaired but they must be pulled down to the very foundations and then built from the ground But if there be any possibility it must come either from her self or others not from her self because she obstinately defends her Errours not onely with Tongue and Pen but with Fire and Sword and will not yield so much as that she can erre refusing to amend those notorious Abuses which by the moderate Verdict of her elect Cardinals are condemned and by the palpable Flatteries of her last and worst Parasites the Jesuits is grown not onely secure but more proud and arrogant than ever she was Can it be then from others How oft hath this been endeavoured to no purpose Rome may be sacked and battered as it hath often been by Military Forces but purged by Admonitions Convictions and Censures it will never be Now the impossibility of our Reconciliation besides these things I have already named ariseth from the pride and usurpation of the Head of their Church being armed with that Position That he cannot Erre This without hope of Reconciliation divideth Christendom and many other Doctrinal Controversies are subtilly kept on foot to be a Stalking-horse for this Adde to this their hatred against our Religion above all others Jews and Grecians are tolerated in Rome it self their Ceremonies Synagogues Services yea and Circumcision it self administred to the dead as well as to the living by which the Romanists declare themselves to be better friends to the Turks and Jews than to the Protestants not to insist on that detestable Virulence of their Tongues and Gall in their Ink against our first Reformers which hath not stayed there but broken out into their most barbarous Butcheries and cruel Bloud-sheddings They oblige the Consciences of Catholicks to a Separation from all our Ecclesiastical Assemblies are afraid that any of our Books especially our Translations of the Bible should be read in any of their Dominions and where they cannot turn will be sure to burn Protestants O the many miserable Massacres Canibal-like Conspiracies and tragical Murders that they have been guilty of Who are ignorant what Fierceness Fears and Fires were raised to consume the innocent bodies of the Saints living and dead and that in such sort as every corner of the Land seemed as hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace even seven times hotter than it used to be wherein were to be cast whosoever would not fall down and worship the Image which that Romish Nebuchadnezzar had erected Now what Arguments can be used to perswade us of their Reconciliation to us either in the whole or in part of our Religion since they deem it no other than a peccant humour necessary to be purged out every few years either by Murder if it prevail in the Head or by Massacre if in the Body of any Nation And rather than it should not they will not stick with Blassius at the Commandment of their great Gracchus to set on fire the Capitol it self to lay hands on sacred Majesty and to imbrue them in his Royal bloud to subvert Religion to sacrifice our Lives Liberties and all to their ambitious Lusts and Revenge When then you are willing that your Souls shall be damned and Bodies destroyed then think of Reconciliation II. Let us now see our duty which is first to hate and oppose the Popish and to embrace and keep close to the Protestant Religion First Hate and oppose the Popish Religion Let the high praises of God be in our mouths and a two-edged sword in our hands to be avenged on that Scarlet Whore that Mother of Fornications that hath made her self drunk with the bloud of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus They must be punished by us or we shall be so by them Let 's make no friendship with angry men much less with bloody men 'T is the greatest honour that can be put upon us to be Instruments of their destruction This duty respects us in whatever relations we are be we either Magistrates Ministers or private Christians The Magistrates by repressing those Perverters of our Faith and encouraging Protestant Principles and Practices 'T is not Reason of State but Ruine of State to gratifie those men who would rejoyce to see our Glory in the dust Ministers by preaching up the excellency of this way preserving the pattern of wholesome words and speaking the things which become sound Doctrine to take heed of their own mixtures and not adulterate the Doctrine of Faith to please men The beauty of heavenly Truths wants not the paint either of Humane or Heretical Additions The Babes of Christ must be fed with sincere Milk and the soreness of mens eyes must not hinder the Lights of the Church from shining And next by confuting Gain-sayers not onely have a voice to call their Sheep but to drive away Wolves one to establish Truth and another to oppose Errour one of their hands must work the other hold the weapon Their breasts should be Store-houses of Spiritual Armour be furnished with skill in Scripture in which they should be mighty and in the writings of men even of Hereticks themselves to beat them with their own weapons to kill Goliah with his own sword Are we in the lower Orb of private Christians We must oppose this many-headed Monster and that 1. By confuting the debauched Romanists with the Language of our heavenly
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