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A34077
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The plausible arguments of a Romish priest answered by an English Protestant seasonable and useful for all Protestant families.
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Comber, Thomas, 1645-1699.
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1686
(1686)
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Wing C5481; ESTC R16555
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28,548
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65
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No doubtless not where your Church expresly contradicts God and his holy Apostle The Spirit of God by S. Paul commands Men to pray with understanding and forbids any to use an unknown Tongue in Christian Assemblies enjoyning the Priest so to make his Prayers and Praises that the most unlearned may joyn in them be edified by them and say Amen to them 1 Cor. xiv 14 15 16 17. and 26. and your Church bids men pray without understanding and prescribes an unknown Tongue for the Priest to Pray and Praise God in wherein the People cannot joyn and whereby they are not edified yea to which they cannot with understanding say Amen In such a case to obey the Church is to disobey God and a great Impiety Po. You must know Latin was the Language of the ancient Christians at Rome and we have not altered our Prayers but only kept them in that Tongue in which they were made at first by the Apostles who planted our Church Prot. Now you have yielded the Cause for if the Apostles who were Jews did not set up the Hebrew Prayers at Rome but Latin because that was the Language which the People then understood if you were of their Spirit or followed their steps you ought now to turn them into other Languages because the People do not understand Latin and because it is necessary they should pray with understanding Is this your Apostolical Church which acts contrary to the Writings and Example of the Apostles or could the Apostles leave you any Tradition to contradict their own Commands and Practice Po. May not the People think of God and good things and so be very devout at these Prayers though they do not understand the words Prot. They may think of God and good things at home and so need not come to the Publick Service at all if this be sufficient We think Publick Prayers were designed for the People to come and unite their particular and hearty desires to the Petitions made by the Priest and this praying with one accord Acts i. 14. makes them more prevalent than private Prayer S. Math. xviii 20. But your People are thinking of one thing when the Priest is saying another and cannot desire the particular things asked by the Priest because they do not know them So that this turns the publick Prayers into private and the Priest might as well pray without a Congregation Po. It is to God we speak in Prayer and since he understands us it is no marter whether the People understand them or no. Prot. By this Argument you need not Pray at all because God knows your necessities before you ask Yet he bids us ask that by the words of our Prayers we may stir up our Desires exercise our Devotion and excite our Faith not that we may instruct him Wherefore your People are robbed of all that comfort and benefit which ours find so sensibly in our English Prayers meerly because your Church scorns to reform any thing and you can never expect that those who by Experience have found the sweetness and advantage of our pious and plain Liturgy will endure your dry unprofitable Latin Prayers Po. Well but some of your People think Sermons the main thing in Publick Worship and we hope to gain them however because we Preach in English Prot. Possibly some of these may be catcht by this Bait but all wise Protestants will ask you why there is not as much reason for the People to know what they are to speak to God as what the Priest is to speak to them and will also desire to know why you should read the Psalms and Lessons and other parts of Scripture in Latin which God writ for our Learning and Instruction 1 Cor. x. 11. and so make it as impossible the People should learn any thing from it or be instructed by it as for Boys in Horn-Books to be made any wiser by reading a Latin Author to them Po. I have told you before This is lest the People should wrest the Scriptures if they were in a Language they understood Prot. Why then do you preach in English May they not wrest your Sermons as well as Holy Scripture Is there more danger now than in the Apostles times Or is your Church wiser than they Did not they write it in a Language generally understood And was it not soon after turned into Latin because the Romans best understood that Language Did they not deliver it to all and command all to read it and search it to meditate on it and teach it to their Children Though some are Gluttons and Drunkards we must not deny all Men the use of Meat and Drink nor would you thus keep the Scriptures from the People but only for fear that such plain Men as I should discover your Corruptions Po. Methinks you should discover your own Corruptions there For what is more plainly expressed in Scripture than these words concerning the Sacrament of the Altar This is my Body Luke xxii 19. and yet you will not own the real Flesh of Christ to be there Is not this to deny Christ's words and disbelieve the Scripture Prot. We may as well charge you with denying Christs words and disbelieving Scripture since you affirm his real Blood to be there though he tells us This Cup is the new Testament in my Blood Luk. xxii 20. 1 Cor. xi 25. You must confess there is a Figure in this Expression or else you must affirm the Wine is Transubstantiated into the New Testament and if there be a Figure in one Verse why may there not be one also in the other in regard this substantial Change which you pretend is either in both parts or in neither Po. However we have much the advantage of you because we take the Literal sense which is both the more common and the more easie sense whilst you are forced to fly to Tropes and Figures Prot. You must consider this Sacrament is a Mystery and in discoursing of Mysteries it is more common in Scripture to speak Figuratively than Literally yea what is more usual there than to call the Sign by the name of the thing signified and the thing signified by the name of the Sign So the Rock is said to be Christ 1 Cor. x. 4. and Christ is said to be Bread John vi 48. yet none are so absurd to say the Rock is substantially changed into Christ or Christ into Bread And when the Church is called The Body of Christ Colos i. 24. your selves do not affirm that there is any change made of the Church into Christs Flesh and Blood though there be more said of this than of the Sacramental Bread viz That we are Members of his Body of his Flesh and of his Bones Ephes v. 30. So when Christ is called a Vine a Door a Way a Branch c. it is very certain the Expressions are Figurative and there are a thousand places in the Holy Bible which cannot be otherwise understood