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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29086	The victory of truth for the peace of the Church to the king of Great Britain to invite him to embrace the Roman-Catholick faith / by Monsieur de la Militiere, counsellour in ordinary to the King of France ; with an answer thereunto, written by the right reverend John Bramhall, D.D. and Lord Bishop of London-Derry.	La Milletière, Théophile Brachet, sieur de, ca. 1596-1665.; Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1653 (1653)	Wing B4097A; ESTC R34379	76,867	210

praises we profess a commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross and in the language of holy Church things commemorated are related as if they were then acted As Almighty God who hast given us thy Son as this day to be born of a pure Virgin And whose praise the younger Innocents have this day set forth And between the Ascension and Pentecost which hast exalted thy Son Jesus Christ with great Triumph into Heaven we beseech thee leave us not comfortless but send un●… thy holy Spirit We acknowledge a Representation of that sacrifice to God the Father we acknowledge an Impetration of the benefit of it we maintain an Application of its vertue So here is a commemorative impetrative applicative sacrifice Speak distinctly and I cannot understand what you can desire more To make it a suppletory sacrifice to supply the defects of the onely true sacrifice of the Cross I hope both you and I abhor The next crime objected by you to us is that we have renounced Transubstantiation It is true we have rejected it deservedly from being an Article of our Creed you need not wonder at that But if we had rejected it 400 years sooner that had been a Miracle It was not so soon hatched To find but the word Transubstantiation in any old Author were sussicient to prove him a counterfeit Your next Article of the septenary number of the Sacraments is not much older Never so much as mentioned in any Scripture or Council or Creed or Father or antient Author first devised by Peter Lombard first decreed by Eugenius the fourth first confirmed in the Provincial Council of Sen●…s and after in the Council of Trent Either the word Sacrament is taken largely and then the washing of the Disciples feet is called a Sacrament then the onely sprinkling of Ashes on a Christians head is called a Sacrament then there are God knows how many Sacraments more than seven Or else it is taken strictly for a visible sign instituted by Christ ●…o convey or confirm invisible Grace to all such partakers thereof as do not set a bar against themselves according to the Analogy between the Sign and the thing signified And in this sense the proper and certain Sacraments of the Christian Church common ●…o all or in the words of our Church generally necessary to Salvation are but two Baptism and the Supper of our Lord. More than these St. Ambrose wri●…es not of in his Book de Sacrament is because he did not know them These we admit for genuine and general Sacramen●…s Their S●… cramental vertue we acknowledge The rest we retain more purely than your selves though not under the Notion of such proper and general Sacraments As Confirmation Ordination Matrimony Penitence though we neither approve of your preposterous manner of Absolution before satisfaction nor of your ordinary Penitentiary tax and lastly the Visitation of and Prayer for the sick which onely is of perpetual necessity The Unction prescribed by St. James being appropriable to the miraculous gift of healing or recovering men out of sicknesses then in use Whereas your custome is clean contrary never or rarely to enoyl any man untill he be past all hope of Recovery The Ordinary and most received custome of preparing sick persons for another world in the Primitive Church was Prayer and Absolution or the benefit of the Keys and the Viaticum of the Body and Blood of Christ which we retain Concerning Justification we believe that all good Christians have true inherent Justice though not perfect according to a perfection of degrees as Gold is true Gold though it be mixed with some dross We believe that this inherent Justice and Sanctity doth make them truly just and holy But if the word Justification be taken in sensu forensi for the acquittal of a man from former guilt to make an offender just in the eye of the Law as it is opposed to Condemnation It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth Then it is not our inherent righteousness that justifieth us in this sense but the free Grace of God for the merits of Jesus Christ. Next for Merits we never doubted of the necessity of good Works without which Faith is but a fiction We are not so stupid to imagine that Christ did wash us from our sins that we might wallow more securely in sin but that we might serve him in holiness and righteousness all the daies of our life We never doubted of the reward of good Works Come ye blessed of my Father c. for I was hungry and ye fed me Nor whe●…her this reward be due to them in Justice Henceforth is laid up for me a Crown of righteousness which the Lord the just Judge shall give me in that day Faithful promise makes due debt This was all that the Antient Church did ever understand by the name of Merits Let Petavius bear witness Antiqui Patres omnes prae caeteris Augustinus cumque i is consentiens Romana Catholica piet as ag●…oscit merita eo sensu nimirum ut neque Dei gratiam ulla antecedant merita haec ipsa tum ex gratiâ tum ex gratuit â Dei pollicitatione tot a pendeant All the Antient Fathers especially St. Austin and the Roman and Catholique faith consenting with them do acknowledge Merits in this sense that no Merits go before the grace of God and that these very Merits do depend wholly on grace and on the free promise of God Hold you to this and we shall have no more difference about Merits Do you exact more of us than all the Fathers or the Roman and Catholique piety doth acknowledge It is an easy thing for a wrangling Sophister to dispute of Merits in the Schools or for a vain Orator to declaim of Merits out of the Pulpit but when we come to lye upon our death-beds and present our selves at the last hour before the Tribunal of Christ it is high time both for you and us to renounce our own merits and to cast our selves naked into the Arms of our Saviour That any works of ours who are the best of us but unprofitable servants which properly are not ours but Gods own gifts and if they were ours are a just debt due unto him setting aside Gods free promise and gracious acceptation should condignly by their own intrinsecal value deserve the joys of Heaven to which they have no more proportion than they have to satisfie for the eternal torments of Hell This is that which we have renounced and which we never ought to admit If your Invocation of Saints were not such as it is to request of them Patronage and Protection spiritual graces and Celestial joyes by their prayers and by their merits alas the wisest Virgins have oyl in their Lamps little enough for themselves Yet it is not necessary for two Reasons First no Saint doth love us so well as Christ No Saint hath

proper value But a friend or child will more esteem the Picture of a Benefactor or Ancestor for its relation The respect of the one is terminated in the Picture that of the other is radicated in the exemplar Yet still an Image is but an Image and the kinds of respect must not be confounded The respect given to an Image must be respect proper for an Im●…ge not Courtship not Worship not Adoration More respect is due to the person of the meanest beggar than to all the Images of Christ and his Apostles and a 1000. Primitive Saints or Progenitors Hitherto there is either no difference nor peril either of Idolatry or Superstition Wherein then did consist this guilt of Idolatry contracted by the Roman Church I am willing for the present to pass by the private abuses of particular persons which seem to me no otherwise chargeable upon the whole Church than for Connivence As the making Images to counterfeit tears and words and gestures and complements for advantage to induce silly people to believe that there was something of divinity in them and the multitude of fictitious Relicks and supposititious Saints which credulity first introduced and since covetousness hath nourished I take no notice now of those remote suspitions or suppositions of the possibility of want of intention either in the Priest that consecrates the Sacrament or in him that Baptized or in the Bishop that ordained him or in any one through the whole line of succession in all which cases according to your own principles you give divine worship to corporeal Elements which is at least material Idolatry I will not stand now to examine the truth of your distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet you know well enough that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is no religious worship and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is coin lately minted that will not pass for current in the Catholick Church Whilst your common people understand not these distinctions of degrees of honour what holds them from falling downright into Idolatry Neither do I urge how you have distributed the Patronage of particular Countries the Cure of several Diseases the protection of all distinct professions of men and all kinds of Creatures among the Saints just as the Heathen did among their Tutelary Gods nor how little warrant you have for this practice from experience nor lastly how you build more Churches erect more Altars offer more presents pour out more prayers make more vows perform more offices to the Mother than to the Son Yet though we should hold our peace methinks you should ponder these things seriously and either for your own satisfaction or ours take away such unnecessary occasions of scandal and dis-union But I cannot omit that the Council of Trent is not contented to enjoyn the Adoration of Christ in the Sacrament which we never deny but of the Sacrament it self that is according to the common current of your Schoolmen the A●…cidents or Species of Bread and Wine because it contains Christ. Why do they not adde upon the same grounds that the pix is to be adored with divine worship because it contains the Sacrament Divine honour is not due to the very Humanity of Christ as it is abstracted from the Deity but to the whole person Deity and Humanity hypostatically united Neither the Grace of Union nor the Grace of Unction can conferr more upon the Humanity than the Humanity is capable of There is no such Union between the Deity and the Sacrament neither immediately nor yet mediately mediante corpor Neither do you ordinarily ascribe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or divine worship to a Crucifix or to the Image of Christ indeed not Terminatively but trans●…untly so as not to rest in the Image or Crucifix but to pass to the exemplar or person crucified But why a piece of Wood should be made partaker of divine honours even in 〈◊〉 or in be passage passe●…h my unde●…nding Th●… Heathens ●…ted not the same 〈◊〉 for all their gross Idolatry Let them plead for themselves Non ego c. I do not worship that stone which I see but I serve him whom I do not see Lastly whilst you are pleased to use them I may not forget those strange insolent forms of prayer contained in your books even ultimate prayers if we take the words as they sound directed to the Creatures that they would protect you at the hour of death and deliver you from the Devil and confer spiritual graces upon you and admit you into Heaven precibus meritisque by their prayers and merits You know what Merit signifies in your language a Condignity or at least a Congruity of desert The exposition of your Doctors is that they should do all this for you by their pra●…ers as improper a form of speech as if a Suppliant intending onely to move an ordinary Courtier to mediate for him unto the King should fall down upon his knees before the Courtier and beseech him to make him an Earl or a Knight or to bestow such an Office or such a Pardon upon him or to do some other Grace for him properly belonging to the Prerogative Royal. How agrees this with the words Precibus meri●…que A beggar doth not deserve an Alms by asking it This is a snare to ignorant persons who take the words to signifie as they sound And it is to be feared do commit downright Idolatry by their Pastors faults who prescribe such improper forms unto them Concerning Tyrannie which makes up the arrear of the first supposed Maxim We do not accuse the Roman Church of Tyrannie but the Roman Court If either the unjust usurpation o●… Sovereign power or the extending thereof to the destruction of the Laws and Canons of the Church yea even to give a Non obstante either to the Institution of Christ or at least to the uniform practice of the Primitive Ages or to them both If the swallowing up of all Ecclesiastical Jurisd●…ction and the arrogating of a supercivil power paramount If the causing of poor people to trot to Rome from all the Quarters of Europe to wast their livelyhoods there If the trampling upon Emperours and the disciplining of Monarchs be Tyrannical either the Court of Rome hath been Tyrannical or there never was Tyrannie in the world I doubt not but some great persons when they have had bloody Tragedies to act for their own particular ends have sometimes made the Roman Church a stalking horse and the pretence of Catholick Religion a blind to keep their Policies undiscerned But if we consider seriously what cruelties have been really acted throughout Europe either by the Inquisitors General or by persons specially delegated for that purpose against the Waldenses of old and against the Protestants of later daies against poor ignorant persons against women and children against mad men against dead carkasses as Bue●…r c. upon pretence of Religion not onely by ordinary forms of punishment and of death

world know to have been none of yours VVhat Faith he professed living he confirmed dying In the Communion of the Church of England he lived and in that Communion at his death he commended his soul into the hands of God his Saviour That which you have confessed here concerning King Charls will spoil your former demonstration that the Protestants have neither Church nor Faith But you confess no more in particular here than I have heard some of your famous Roman Doctors in this City acknowledge to be true in general And no more than that which the Bishop of Chalcedon a man that cannot be suspected of partiality on our side hath affirmed and published in two of his Books to the world in Print That Protestantibus credentibus c. persons living in the Communion of the Protestant Church if they endeavour to l●…arn the truth and are not able to attain unto it but hold it implicitely in the preparation of their minds and are ready to receive it when God shall be pleased to reveal it which all good Protestants and all good Christians are they neither want Church nor Faith nor Salvation Mark these words well They have neither Church nor Faith say you If they be thus qualified as they all are they want neither Church nor Faith nor Salvation saith he Lastly Sir to let us see that your intelligence is as good in Heaven as it is upon Earth and that you know both who are there and what they do you tell us That the Crown and Conquest which his late Majestie gained by his sufferings was pro●…ured by the intercession of his Grandmother Queen Mary We should be the apter to believe this if you were able to make it appear that all the Saints in Heaven do know all the particular necessities of all their posterity upon Earth St. Austin makes the matter much more doubtfull than you that 's the least of his Assertion or rather to be plainly false fa●…endum est nescire quidem ●…ortuos quid hic agatur But with presumptions you did begin your Dedication and with presumptions you end it In the mean time till you can make that appear we observe that neither Queen Maries constancy in the Roman Catholick Faith nor Henry the Fourths change to the Roman Catholick Faith could save them from a bloody end Then by what warrant do you impute King Charles his sufferings to his errour in Religion Be your own Judge Heu quanta de spe decidimus Alas from what hopes are we fall'n Pardon our errour that we have mistaken you so long You have heretofore pretended your self to be a moderate person and one that seriously endeavoured the reuniting of Christendome by a fair Accommodation The widest wounds are closed up in time and strange Plants by Inoculation are incorporated together and made one And is there no way to close up the wounds of the Church and to unite the disagreeing members of the same mystical body Why were Caleb and Joshua onely admitted into the Land of promise whilst the carkasses of the rest perished in the VVilderness but onely because they had been Peace-makers in a time of Schism VVell fare our learned and ingenuous Country-man St. Clara who is altogether as perspicacious as your self but much more charitable You tell us to our grief that there is no accommodation to be expected that Cardinal Richelieu was too good a Christian and too good a Catholique to have any such thought that the one Religion is true the other false and that there is no society between light and darkness This is plain dealing to tell us what we must trust to No Peace is to be expected from you unless we will come unto you upon our knees with the words of the Prodigal Child in our mouths Father forgive us we have sinned against Heaven and against thee Is not this rare Courtesie If we will submit to your will in all things you will have no longer difference with us So we might come to shake a worse Church by the hand than that which we were separated from If you could be contented to wave your last four hundred years determinations or if you liked them for your selves yet not to obtrude them upon other Churches If you could rest satisfied with your old Patriarchal power and your Principium unit at is or Primacy of Order much good might be expected from free Councils and Conferences from moderate persons And we might yet live in Hope to see an Union if not in all Opinions yet in Charity and all necessary points of saving truth between all Christians to see the Eastern and Western Chur●…hes joyn hand in hand and sing Ecce quàm bonum quam jucundum est habitare fratres in unum Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity But whilst you impose upon us daily new Articles of Faith and urge rigidly what you have unadvisedly determined we dare not sacrifice Truth to Peace nor be separated from the Gospel to be joyned to the Roman Church Yet in the point of our separation and in all things which concern either doctrine or discipline we profess all due obedience and submission to the judgement and definitions of the truly Catholique Church Lamenting with all our hearts the present condition of Christendome which renders an Oecumenical Council if not impossible mens judgements may be had where their persons cannot yet very difficult wishing one as general as might be and untill God send such an Opportunity endeavouring to conform our selves in all things both in Credendis Agendis to whatsoever is uniform in the belief or practice in the doctrine or discipline of the Universal Church And lastly holding an Actual Communion with all the divided parts of the Christian world in most things in voto according to our desires in all things FINIS Plut. Sir Henry wotton No differences in the Church directly about the Sacrament for the first 800 years 1 Cor. 11. Theod. ex Ignatio Leo. Ser. 4. de Quad. Epiph. h●…r 30. 46. Aug. l. de H●…re c. 64. ●…el l. 1. de Sac. Euch. 〈◊〉 1. Bel. ibid. Syn. Nic. 2 Act 6. Disp. 179. c. 1 Yet different Observations And different expressions The first difference about the presence of Christ in the Sacrament Exact Syn. Rom. sub Nich. 2. D●… Cons. dist 2 cap. Eg●…●…er Alex. Gab. Bon●…v c. Scot. in 4. sent dist 11. q. 3. T. 3. q. 75. d. 81. c. 1. The determination of the manner of the presence opened a flood-gate to a Deluge of Controversies Lib. de c●…r Theol. Schol. Gloss. de Con. d. 2. cap. Tim●…rem Guidm●…nd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de ver Vasq. dis●… 184. 6. 8. Uasq T. 3. q. 75. d. 181 c. 4. Bel. l. 3. de Euc. c. 3. in fine In 4 d. 44 q. 7. art 〈◊〉 q. 3. I. ib. 4. de Euch. c. 25 Chap. 27. Conc. Uien B●…ll 4. de