Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A27174
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Take heed of both extremes, or, Plain and useful cautions against popery and presbytery by way of dialogue : in two parts / by Luke de Beaulieu.
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Beaulieu, Luke, 1644 or 5-1723.
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1675
(1675)
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Wing B1578; ESTC R7658
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78,624
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146
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greatly indanger but in no wise advance your Salvation What makes us admit of a possibility of your being sav'd is because you hold still the same Creed with us and because though you have much shaken and weakned yet ye have not quite overthrown the Foundation that is Jesus Christ and his saving merits which we hope will avail to those of your Church that trust in them though they ignorantly believe those things as would make them ineffectual if understood or relied on As for your so much cryed up Succession it signifies no more than this that now the Pope is Bishop of the same Town as St. Peter was or at least a Town of the same name for old Rome hath been destroyed long agone But pray supposing that St. Peters Successors were to be the Heads of the Church who told you that he did not leave that priviledge at Antioch where his Sea was first How many Ruptures and Schisms hath there been in your Succession and how many hath there been of your Popes guilty of the greatest Impieties and worst of Heresies Your own Authors can inform you as also how good and bad Orthodox and Heretick Bishops have succeeded one another in all Seas But make the best of it as you can what is it to the truth or untruth of those points we differ about Because now _____ sits in the same Chair as St. Peter did therefore there is a Purgatory and men ought to Worship Images and the Pope is infallible c. A very Logical Inference as good as that of the man who because he sate in Tullies Pew would needs perswade himself and others that he had Tullies Eloquence But there is Miracles daily wrought in your Church by some Saint or other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is something indeed but 't is common to all Religions Monsieur Bernier a man of your Church will tell you as an eye-witness of it that the Turks and Gentiles pretend to the same and are more perswaded of the truth of their Miracles than I believe many in your Church are of the truth of yours But let me tell you that Miracles are for Infidels not for Believers St. Paul could not heal Trophimus to him a beloved Christian though among the Unbelievers he could even raise up the dead We believe the Religion Preached by the blessed Apostles upon the account of those Miracles they wrought when they were yet alive without their Reliques and Images work the same wonders now we are perswaded of the truth of what they then delivered And the truth is you are so your selves You don't pretend your new Miracles to confirm those Essential Doctrines of the Christian Religion which you and we are agreed about Your greatest Miracle-mongers have hardly reported any one Miracle wrought these five or six hundred years in these parts of the World to authorize Christian Religion or to prove the Doctrine of the blessed Trinity or of the two Natures united in Christ into one person about which points were most of the ancient Heresies or any one Article of the Creed they are all to confirm your new-found Doctrines The Cures as the Saints work upon those that worship their Images the appearing of dead Folks to beg for Masses and Prayers the return of Souls out of Purgatory to tell how hot the fire is and how well worth ones money Indulgences are the wonders done by your Fryars or the Founders of their Orders or of some one who is to be Canonized and most of them so ridiculous and so absurd that I believe the most serious Bigot amongst you can hardly hold laughing at the reading of your Legends and Books of Miracles And so of those three things you so much relied on the first is against you the second signifies nothing and the last exposeth to contempt those Doctrines it should justifie P. Well I did not think that you could say so much for your selves and I assure you I shall hereafter have a better opinion of you than ever I had thus much at least shall I be profited by our long Discourse and now Sir fare you well I thank G. Nay don't thank me 't is I should thank you for telling me so plainly those Doctrines of your Church we disagree about and which usually you so misrepresent to those of our Religion that they hardly ever know the truth of what your Church believes But pray don't go away yet I 'll help you to that company as you will like much better than mine I 'll tell you whose 't is when first I have desired these two things of you First that you would consider how greatly suspicious it is that your Church maintains those Doctrines we call Errours more for their profitableness to her than for any other reasons because they all tend to the increasing of her Riches or Authority The Popes Infallibility and his Power of disposing of all the World for the good of Souls the exemption of the Clergy from the power of the Civil Magistrate the requisiteness of their intention in the administring of your Sacraments how powerful how honourable and withal how dreadful must the belief of these make your Church and Church-men The Doctrine of Purgatory of Jubilees Pardons Indulgences and worshipping of Saints the best part whereof is the offering to them what Estates what Riches what a world of profit doth it bring to the Head and all the Members of your Clergy In those points of Christian Religion that concern not her Interest your Church is sound and Orthodox those beggerly Heresies of the Arians Eutichian Macedonians c. are condemned and detested by her as much as ever they were by the first Councils yours are Golden Errours if they are gross and palpable yet they are profitable and advantageous The Pope is none of those mean Souls that will hold erroneous Opinions meerly out of perverseness and obstinacy Si Jus violandum c. si Religio adulteranda regnandi causa if he errs at least he shall reign by it And so now reciprocally the Popes Greatness is the best argument to maintain those Errours whereby he got it the splendor of his own and the interest he hath in the Courts of several Princes the dependency all the Clergy hath upon him the numerous Legions of Souldiers he hath quartered in all Abbeys and Monasteries and the influence they have upon the common people his Inquisitions and his Ravilliacks these be the best proofs to evidence the truth of those Doctrines we have rejected as well as to uphold his Pontifical Chair over the Throne of Christian Princes The other is that remaining in the Communion of your Church you would think those the most substantial Articles of your Faith which were delivered by the Apostles confirm'd by the first Councils and now believ'd by you and us together and that upon them you would lay the greatest stress of your future well-being You cannot but see by what I have objected out of
have respect to the Saints the whole lump of them if you will maintain your interest whole and intire have regard to the Saints small and great More could not have been said to perswade the people to do you good and in this you are in no wise inferiour to the most self-preaching Monks Pr. I scorn your words we are in nothing like your foolish Fryars Presbyterians are a serious and considering people who serve God according to his VVord in spirit and in truth whereas they mind nothing but their fopperies their superstitions and biggotteries whereby they have made Religion ridiculous Pa. Yes you would fain make the world believe that your new-devised Church-Government and every thing you speak and do is Scripture and according to the Spirit and truth and to hear you cry up your Orders and outward circumstances of divine Service one would think you had found Scriptural or spiritual Ceremonies But when all comes to all it is only this that you make Religion and Godliness to consist in rejecting that decent and instructing Order in Divine VVorship which the Primitive Church used and transmitted to us for to follow your irreverent and unseemly manner of worshipping God according to your own minds But that you also have done enough to make Religion ridiculous and fabulous too is easie to be seen by what I have said and shall say further the many intolerabiles ineptias you preached in your best-studied Sermons before your Parliament and printed afterwards as being excellent Discourses are sufficient proofs that your grave out-sides are inwardly full of emptiness or something else and I protest nothing can fully represent how ridiculous you have made the Publick Offices of Religion as being an eye-witness of it in your Private Meetings And had you not besotted your people by making them believe that what others do is all Popish and Antichristian but what you do your selves is Scripture and Gods Ordinance in purity they would hiss you out of your Desks or at least leave you there alone to enjoy your extravagant humours I leave it as a conclusion to be drawn from our whole Discourse when it is ended that you have made Religion ridiculous or rather that yours is a mock-Religion consisting altogether as to the exterior of it in new-made Prayers and Sermons spoken with a certain piteous tone and some affected faces and paroxisms of Zeal such as Mr. Cheynel was in when he told the Parliament 1646. p. 4. I arrest you this day at the Suit of the great Jehovah for a Debt of ten thousand talents nay millions of millions and over and above of High Treason against the three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity and then he was in a Trance pag. 24. Oh saith he I feel I bless God I feel my self transported even beyond my self with raptures and extasies of love I could tell you of Christ-concerning-points and Soul-concerning-points of Parliament-repentance and Sacrament-repentance and Bed-repentance and Shop-repentance and many such new-coined phrases which are none of the least part of the powerfulness of preaching And I could tell you of a receipt which is as the extract of a Book called Parliament-Physick for a sick Nation Licensed by Mr. J. Cranford which makes a mock-Physick or Divinity of all Evangelick and moral Vertues 1644. p. 112. A great deal of fopperies and futilities as you charge us with might be pickt out of the Sermons as you then printed and I doubt not but the Prayers were much after the same sort had they come out in print and if my Notes deceive me not what you preach now is not much better but I will not say any thing except what I have under your hands But this needs not be prosecuted directly any further Pr. What of all this These be personal failings I don't know how we are come insensibly to talk of things that are meerly practical whereas we was to speak of Doctrinal points I 'll give you but two or three instances more of the wide difference that is betwixt us and then let all the world be judge how impertinent you have been in charging Popery upon us And first you make outward splendor and prosperity to be a mark of the true Church whereas we teach according to Divine and Humane Histories that the Church hath her wanes as well as her fulness that sometimes she is fain to flee into the wilderness and that her Glory may be eclipsed without she doth cease to be the true and only Spouse of Christ Pa. Well I hope you love us never the worse for that agreement as you see is betwixt us in practical points for those be the most important But as for what you mentioned last I must confess that after the Kings and the Churches return to their right you taught E. Calamy 1662. p. 10. 14 That the Ark of God was in great danger and very near to be lost gray hairs saith Mr. Calamy are upon the Gospel I say not that the Gospel is dying but that it hath gray hairs I dare challenge any Scholar to shew me an example of any Nation that hath enjoyed the Gospel for an hundred years together now that gray hairs is to an hundred years is no wonder Well gray hairs are here and there and yet no man lays it to heart But then 't is to be observed that your Principles and Doctrines do change according to your condition Th. Good Ph. Nye Sy. Symp. Jer. Bur. W. Bridge p. 10. according as five of your Brethren told us in their Apology to the Parliament This principle we carried along with us not to make our present judgment and practice a binding Law to our selves for the future For in the days of your Power you then followed God and Providence every prosperous success of yours was a mark that yours was Gods Cause and you his beloved ones Behold God in the Mount cries Mr. Vicars at every advantage you had over the Kings party in his Jehovah-Jireh yea and your prosperity was a mark that you were destroying Antichrist Tho. Palmer in that Sermon 1644. dedicated to the Earl of Essex Epist Dedicat hath these brave expressions God hath put you in his own place God hath grac'd you with his own Name Lord of Hosts General of Armies God hath committed to your care what is most precious to himself precious Gospel precious Ordinances a precious Parliament a precious people God hath called forth your Excellency as a choice Worthy to be his General and the Champion of Jesus Christ to fight the great and last battel with Antichrist in this your native Kingdom So Mr. Caryl in a Thanksgiving Sermon for a Victory of yours Jos Caryl 1644. Divine Providence is a leading Cloud to this day it is ill to out-run Providence and it is as bad not to follow it Many things that I have said before will clear it enough that you made your good success and prosperity an argument