Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	divine_a	faith_n	revelation_n	3,458	5	9.7228	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52018	Roman Catholicks uncertain whether there be any true priests or sacraments in the church of Rome evinced by an argument urg'd and maintain'd (upon their own principles) against Mr. Edward Goodall of Prescot in Lancashire / by Thomas Marsden ...	Marsden, Thomas.	1688 (1688)	Wing M725; ESTC R726	93,249	146

of his Commentators that I have met with excepted against This nor any others of your Church Your self a little beneath grants the point where you say with relation hereunto The means are necessary to the end Several of your men Bellarmine in particular * De Clericis cap. 3. contend that Protestant Churches are no true Churches because as they alledge they want a true Priesthood Besides enough is to be fetcht for this purpose out of your Trent Council | Sess 23 de Sacram. Ordinis but it is needless to do it § 11. From hence then I present you with this Scheme founded on your own Authority you are no surer you have a true Church than you are that you have a true Priesthood you are no surer that you have a true Priesthood even taken in general than you are that you have true Ordination you are not surer that you have true Ordination than you are that your Ordaining Bishops Intend as your Church requires Now in regard you agree not to claim for the Intention the Infallible Certainty of Faith which immediately depends upon divine Revelation I see not how you can reasonably agree to claim the Infallible Certainty of Faith for the truth of your Church Which I commend to the Reader 's observation § 12. You first tell us in general of some Known Principles of your Church from which the Knowledge of the Intention is deducible and afterwards reckon them to be these viz. That the Roman is the only Catholick Church That God will continue and preserve that Church to the Worlds end and all this say you appears from divine Revelation You conclude hence they must have a true Priesthood the Means being necessary to the End. Therefore say you whatsoever Intention of the Prelates is by them believed as Necessary for this End they do certainly believe according to their Principles that God's Providence will secure it his Omnipotence is able to make good his Fidelity § 13. For reply 1. I observe to the Reader That though you have presented us with a list of those Principles from which you pretend to deduce the Knowledge of the Ordainer's Intention yet you only say They appear from Divine Revelation without shewing either what this Revelation is or where it is to be found § 14. 2. As our discourse was at first Personal every one will conceive that if your thoughts had then enabled you to make the above-named distinction I must have asked What the Revelation was and where it appeared on which your said Principles are pretended to rest Nor could you have refused to satisfie my Question without bringing a Cloud upon the Cause you manage And you may easily believe that if I had known what you had been writing at London I should have wisht you would have set down What and Where the Revelation you speak of is that so I might have consented with you or refuted you according to the best judgment I could make of the Thing exhibited I assure you Sir to obtrude upon the World Doctrines under the Notion of Articles of Faith without due proof of their Divine Original is too great an Empire for Creatures to arrogate to themselves nor can one reasonably submit to another in such cases whether they respect God's honour or their own safety Therefore when you talk of Divine Revelation you should have shewed it § 15. You would surely enroll me in the Catalogue of Franticks if I should upon this Occasion spend Years in hunting through all Books for Texts of Scripture which your Popes or their Subjects have fancied to be useful for proving the Roman to be the Universal Church and in confuting their vain Glosses when I have sound them Your Person is not adverse to me but your Cause and therefore you leave the Field and cease to be my Adversary unless you shew me your places of defence and wherein their strength lies and then defy my Assaults But this is not done here Tell me is the Revelation you speak of recorded in the first Verse or Chapter of Genesis or the last Verse of the Revelation or in any Verse between those Have you not read that Pope Boniface the VIII proved the Pope of Rome to be the sole Head of the Christian Church with relation-to which Head you call yours the One and the Whole Church out of the first Verse of Genesis In the beginning God created c. He collected the Argument thus Dicitur in principio non in principiis c. It is said quoth that Pope in the Beginning not in the Beginnings c. And this is urged to prove that there must be One visible Head of the Church and this the Pope of Rome with whom all Christians must believe and to whom all must submit Have you not read how Pope Gregory the VII a great while before that fetcht a proof for the Point out of the 16th Verse of that Chapter God made two great lights the greater light to rule the day c. Illa dignitas quae praeest diebus id est Spiritualibus Major est That is That Dignity that rules the Days that is Spirituals is greater I shall omit the comparison between Popes and Kings which this Text is brought to settle and only apply it to the Point in hand That God made the Pope to Rule all Christians is all that I shall take Notice of as proved by it I have brought these two infallible Interpreters of Scripture upon the Stage and which of you should be such if your Popes be not only to shew it would be endless to seek out those many Texts supposed by Roman Catholicks to tend to make out that the Roman is the One Catholick Church of Christ upon Earth and to expose their extravagant Mis-expositions of them I might soon begin with Genesis but might be long before I had run through the Bible If these two Popes had spoken onely in general words as you do of Divine Revelation for their Headships on which your Matter vertually depends I am so dull I should never unless by chance have found out what Scriptures they referred to for it And so though I had discussed a hundred other Texts if those had been left out it might have been said I had left my work undone But wise Men will not judge I ought to undertake Unreasonable tasks or seek a Needle in a Bottle of Hay But I spend time For it had been enough to say I am only proving a Negative and need do no more than over-turn what you are pleased to erect for your Defence You have set me no more work here than I have considered and so I have no more to do here about your divine Revelation whether you refer to Scripture or any thing else § 16. Yet it cannot but be worth our Notice That your Method of maintaining your Church is most easie and expedite When you find your selves unable particularly to prove your performance of

those things which your Councils require to the making your Institutions valid yet your work is done by saying We are the Catholick Church which God hath promised to preserve to the World's end and therefore all we require will be certainly performed though we cannot otherwise make it out You may also prove all your more speculative Doctrines had you a thousand more than you have by the same easie Method We are the onely Church you may say to which God hath promised his Spirit to lead us into all Truth and therefore our Articles cannot be false tho' we cannot otherwise prove them to be true § 17. If this be sufficient how imprudent have many of your Men been to spend their pains and health and time about evincing your particular Points to be founded on Revelation when a few general Words would have done it to rational Satisfaction Besides as Cart loads of Books on this supposition are unnecessarily written so the Readers of them are at unnecessary expence of Moneys in buying them and of labour in perusing them What an easie World should we have had if this your Method had all-along generally obtained To shorten the way to knowledge is a praise-worthy enterprize and to teach how to defend truth without care and trouble is a mighty thing Well You have shewed us an expedite Art of Controversie and such as may be taught even illiterate Plow-men in half an hours time And I leave it to the Reader to determine whether a Plowman of your Perswasion could have said less in this Matter than you have done We are the Onely Church c. § 18. However consider Sir This you use is but an accidental Argument and can bestead you no longer if any other Body of Christians shall please to call themselves the Catholick Church without offering the least proof of it Which is most apparently your case here The Donatists of old who appropriated to themselves the name of the Catholick Church might have easily quelled all Arguments brought against them at your rate of answering For the said name being arrogated and the premisses belonging to it all the rest will follow readily § 19. If you think to relieve your self by saying I am bound to accept any deductions you shall make from any of your Principles I reply no surely I was indeed to prove a Point from some of them and have I hope done it The more you speak of That I fear you expose your self the more to derision § 20. From the view of your Answer it will appear that though you called to me out of due time for the Explication of more than a few Terms yet you have not had the heart to explain one of them in your Answer neither what you mean by Intention nor what by Certainty nor any of the rest Instead of saying what is the particular nature of the Intention required by your Church you describe it no otherwise than thus Whatsoever Intention of the Prelates is by them believed as necessary Instead of telling us the particular nature of your knowledge of the Intention you only say I deny not that it may sufficiently be known You have no mind it seems to swim out of your depth it being a silly thing to court danger nor are you so hardy a Champion as to step a few paces out of your hold to meet an enemy being mindful enough of the old Proverb It is good sleeping in a whole skin Your frank opening your self this way might have led me if I had mistook any thing of yours to the true mark but could not have caused my digression from it and therefore though you were not bound in rigour further than to make your Answer apposite and useful to have done this yet it would have lookt brave and generous to have done it Whether others shall interpret your carriage in this kind to be due caution or no I shall not concern my self Nevertheless I must say this you knew the point must be beaten out at last and it had been manly to have contributed something towards it whereas he that knew not the particular Nature of the Subject before knows it but very little better by any help you give him in your Answer I hope the Reader will excuse me for staying a little too long here in recompence of the labour I have been at in the first part of this Tractate to make the state of the question plain to him § 20. Whatsoever shall become of any higher Certainty which you cannot challenge me to yield upon Principles you have hitherto barely beg'd without offering the least colour of proof for them you seem to have a mind to secure to your self a moral Certainty of the Intention of your Bishops in general Your words are these It is morally impossible that all the Prelates in the Roman Catholick Church should be so malicious as wilfully to have omitted any thing in Ordination which they believed to be Essential to it and which the Church requires as so supposing it possible for them to do it and not be discovered It is impossible for us to believe according to our Principles that they should all turn devils and conspire to damn the whole Church when withal they could propose no advantage at all to themselves by this but the clean contrary Thus you I Reply The Pillar you have placed here for supporting your moral certainty of the Intention is too weak to bear it up Which will appear by considering the following particulars § 21. 1. You say not It is impossible that any one or several or many of your Bishops should out of Malice withdraw the required Intention You only say It is morally impossible that all should turn devils and conspire to damn the whole Church § 22. 2. I say if Some may withhold their Intention through Malice which you deny not Others may upon other accounts omit it viz. for Unbelief culpable Ignorance gross Negligence natural Inadvertence c. I shall speak a little of some of these § 23. For Vnbelief It is Morally possible that some of your Bishops have internally or mentally embraced Paganism or Judaism notwithstanding their profession of the Christian Religion It is notorious that the Inquisitors of Heretical pravity in Roman Catholick kingdoms have often met with such men after they had many years lain hid under the disguise of the Christian profession and is it any way repugnant that the same Cloak which frequently covers Merchants and Gentlemen and others should cover Priests and Bishops also Now these disbelieving the virtue of all Christian Institutions and that of Ordination in particular nay judging them to be the devices of certain Politick men or the Off-spring of deluded Fancies may omit Intending in their Ordinations without designing to damn or otherwise hurt the Ordained party § 24. For Culpable Ignorance which the Schools call Antecedent It is morally possible that more than a few in your Church have in