Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A60334
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True Catholic and apostolic faith maintain'd in the Church of England by Andrew Sall ... ; being a reply to several books published under the names of J.E., N.N. and J.S. against his declaration for the Church of England, and against the motives for his separation from the Roman Church, declared in a printed sermon which he preached in Dublin.
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Sall, Andrew, 1612-1682.
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1676
(1676)
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Wing S394A; ESTC R22953
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236,538
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476
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perpetual assistance This assistance of Christ to his own true Church following the steps and doctrine of the Apostles we believe with joy but cannot approve the Arrogancy of Mr. I. S. and his brethren in appropriating all such promises to their own Faction and perpetually taking for granted in his Debates with us that to be the only Church favoured by such gracious promises being indeed but a very corrupt Member of the Church Universal to whom these promises were made a thing which we do not say barely but prove evidently Another example of their skill in clipping and corrupting Scripture he fetches out of the same Store-house upon the words of John XIV 16. I will pray the Father and he will give you another Comforter the spirit of truth that will abide with you for ever who will lead you unto all truth I discovered their abuse of this Text by restoring it to its integrity which according to their own Bible goes in these words If ye love me keep my commandments and I will ask my Father and he shall give you another Paraclete that he may abide with you for ever even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive By the first words we see this to be a conditional promise limited to such as love God and keep his Commandments by the latter words worldly and sinful men are expresly excluded from receiving that gracious assistance of the Spirit of truth for which meaning of these words I related the Gloss interlineal and ordinary This discourse our Adversary opposes thus that after the former clause if you love me keep my commandments there is a punctum and then follows a distinct verse and I will ask my Father and he will give you another Paraclete c. which makes an absolute sense independent from the former This is indeed a subtilty well becoming a Sophister as if a punctum may not be interposed betwixt several clauses of one discourse tending to the same end or betwixt premises and a conclusion deduced from them as if the copulative particle and did not signify a conjunction of both clauses and an influence of the one upon the other as if all that were not cleared by the words I quoted in the Margin of the Gloss interlineal Mundus i. e. remanens amator mundi cum quo nunquam est amor Dei and of the Gloss ordinary non habent spirituales oculos quibus Spiritum Sanctum videant mundi amatores Here we see both Glosses denying the effect of that glorious promise to profane worldlings and consequently the promise made only to lovers of God and keepers of his holy Commandments If our Adversary were ingenuous he would spare his silly subtilties seeing them obstructed by this stating of the case CHAP. VIII Mr. I. S. his horrible impiety against the sacred Apostles and malicious imposing on the Church of England reprehended ANother grand Argument he has which he saies resolutely I can never answer is this that if the foresaid promise John XIV 16. was conditional as above-mentioned it follows we cannot be sure the Gospel is infallible whereas no Text of Scripture saies he pag. 89. tells us that the Evangelists were in the state of Grace when they wrote the Gospel nor nothing else gives us assurance of it My first answer to this so unanswerable Argument is that if this man had delivered this expression in Spain and were accused to the Inquisition his body would suffer for it if his intellect were not reduced to acknowledg and repent the horrid impiety of it And I am certainly perswaded that there is no Christian that has any sense of piety in him whether Protestant or Papist but will cry out with horror against the insolent impiety of this man in speaking so irreverently of those sacred Organs of the Holy Ghost and blessed Disciples of Christ confirmed by him in grace as is the common apprehension and expression of Christians and replenished with the Holy Ghost Act. 2.4 for whose perseverance in grace our Saviour praied so fervently to his heavenly Father as we see in John the XVII 11. Holy Father keep through thine own name those thou hast given me Upon which words Maldonate delivers this Gloss Non rogat Christus ut nunc à peccatis liberentur sed ut jam liberati in eo statu quo erant conserventur ne quis ab eâ decedat gratiâ quam consecutus suo erat beneficio quemadmodum Judae contigerat That our Saviour praied for their perseverance in grace that none of them should fall from it as Judas did And will this rash man say that the praier of our Saviour was not heard nor his request granted by his heavenly Father in favor of his beloved Disciples If he will not be so profligately impious how dares he say that no Text of Scripture tells us that the Evangelists were in the state of Grace when they wrote the Gospel nor nothing else gives us assurance of it If his Book did contain no other crime then this unchristian expression any true disciple of Christ and believer of his Gospel ought to judg the said Book more worth the burning then the reading He is not yet contented with the damnable expression fore-mentioned but must raise his censure against the truth of the Gospel of Christ to a higher degree p. 89. saying that not only we are not sure of the Infallibility of the Gospel but that we are assured it is not infallible and this horrible Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost and the Gospel dictated by him he must father upon the Protestant Church but upon a ground so much of his own making that any dispassionate man and not blind may see the whole assertion to be his own and a product of his inclination which appears here and in many other places of destroying the foundations of all Christian Belief The ground he gives for this latter most damnable Blasphemy is That the common doctrine of the Protestant Church is That it is impossible to keep Gods Commandments therefore saies he The Evangelists when they wrote did not keep Gods Commandments and consequently they could not have the Paraclete to lead them into truth I never yet heard any Protestant deliver such a desperate proposition as this he fathers upon them which thus delivered categorically without further declaration or limitation were to say it were impossible for any man to be saved our Saviour often declaring that the only way to life everlasting is to keep Gods Commands It were also to give the lie to our Redeemer saying that his yoke is easy and his burden light Mat. XI 30. and that his Commandments are not grievous 1 Joh. V. 3. If he knows any Protestant Writer to have delivered that position in that latitude why do's not he tell me who he is and where he saith it that I may judg accordingly of the Author and of the Doctrine Must I take it upon his credit having so many experiences of
those indirect means which other solicitations of men tending to the like purchase are capable of All this being so how can you defend at least from blindness and imprudence your practice of more frequent recourse to your supposed Saints then to the supreme undoubted Saint of Saints Jesus Christ Not to treat at present how much this doctrine of the Invocation of Saints is in it self injurious to God by giving that worship to Creatures which belongs only to himself as may appear by all those places of Scripture which appropriate our Invocation to God only in regard of his incommunicable Attributes of Omniscience infinite goodness and power nor how dishonorable it is to Christ both in regard of his infinite merit and office of Mediator And finally the silence of such a practice in the first and better Ages of the Church so as Cardinal Perron confesses that in the Authors who lived nearer the Apostles times in the three first Centuries no foot-steps can be found of the Invocation of Saints this silence I say is a sufficient Argument of the unlawfulness of this practice how unsuitable it is to the spirit of the Apostles Origen is not only silent of such a practice but directly protests against it in several places assirming that Praiers and Supplications are to be directed only to God by Jesus Christ For being inquired by Celsus what opinion Christians had of Angels he answers That tho the Scripture somtime calls them Gods it is not with intention that we ought to worship them For all â—raiers and Supplications saies he and Intercession and Thanksgiving are to be sent up to the Lord of all by the high Priest who is above all Angels being the living word of God And reflecting often upon the unreasonableness of making addresses to Angels by reason of the little knowledg we have of their condition he adds That even such a knowledg if we were furnished with it * Origen contra Celsum lib. 5. p. 233. Edit Cantab. would not permit us to presume to pray unto any other but God the Lord of of all who is abundantly sufficient for all by our Saviour the Son of God And after he declares how Angels and Saints may assist us and pray for us to God if we be in the favor of God and do endeavor to please him We must endeavor to please God only saies he who is over all and pray that he may be propitious to us procuring his good will with piety and all kind of virtue And reflecting upon Celsus his proposal of worshipping Demons or Angels he addeth these remarkable words †Lib. 8. pag. 120. But if he will yet have us to procure the good will of any other after him that is God over all let him consider that as when the body is moved the motion of the shadow doth follow it so in like manner having God favorable to us who is over all it followeth that we shall have all his friends both Angels and Souls and Spirits favorable to us for they have a sympathy with them that are thought worthy to find favor with God ....... so as we may be bold to say that when men who with a resolution propose to themselves the best things do pray unto God many thousands of the sacred powers pray together with them uncalled upon Here and in other such Testimonies of Origen and others of his time we find mention of Angels and Saints to pray for men and to help them by Gods appointment but we find no mention at all of such a thing as an Invocation of them He saies they pray together with us when we pray to God himself and that not because we prai'd first to them to pray with us but uncalled upon Here we have the Spirit of that Church truly Catholic and Apostolic declared to us that we are to make our Addresses of Praiers and Invocations to God alone and thereby win the assistance and praiers of heavenly Spirits in our favor For as all the world shall fight with him against the unwise sinners so all the Court of Heaven will assist their King in favoring his Saints and Servants CHAP. XXV A great stock of Faults and Absurdities discovered in Mr. I. S. his defence of Purgatory SIR as you shew your special study to be to soure your Pen with all manner of sawciness even without occasion given to you and starting often from the point and purpose for to pleasure your self in the Sea of bitterness so it is my no small care and certainly a harder task then to answer your Arguments to refrain my Pen from pouring upon you continual showers of heavy Censures whether reflecting upon your boldness in asserting manifest untruths or upon your rudeness or malice in mis-understanding or mis-representing the state and terms of the Question in every point of my Discourse you pretend to answer or shunning shamefully or childishly the point and purpose and proposing another of your own instead of answering as Schole-boies do with riddles or hard questions as they call them when they want an answer to one of them they return for answer another of that kind of Questions Of all these faults I could easily convince you guilty in every point you handled from the beginning of your Book to the end I have abstained from doing it in formal reflexions tho in my replies faced with your Proposals the discreet Reader may easily see your foresaid faults really contained out of my aversion to offensive expressions and because I fear to offend my friends and Patrons on this side as you hope to please yours by bitter Language But when you tell palpable untruths shall I desert the defence of truth not to make you a liar when you clearly abandon the question proposed and misrepresent the case or misunderstand it shall I desist in my serious and close enquiry of the truth not to discover your ignorance and weakness So much complacency you are not to expect from me and by shewing you are guilty of all these faults in your reply to my discourse upon the point of Purgatory you will perceive I have bin indulgent to you in not enlarging upon a formal discovery of them in all the points hitherto treated upon among us Now to the proof of so much I begun my Discourse upon the point of Purgatory with the method and order that exact Disputants are wont to observe in handling seriously any subject First examining what we are to understand under the notion of Purgatory Seeondly whether such a thing be really extant As to the first I told how I did not find the more learned Men of the Roman Church so confident as the Vulgar in taking for Purgatory a determinate place in the bowels of the Earth with those frightful qualities their Legends do specify being contented to conclude from some places of Scripture by conjecture that after this life there must be some place to expiate sins without determining whether