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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	church_n	pastor_n	teacher_n	2,892	5	9.1963	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54036	Reason regulate[d], or, Brief reflections upon a l[ate] treatise of human-reason by T.P.	T. P.	1675 (1675)	Wing P117; ESTC R25516	24,178	78

it either Pious or Politick to use any other Force but that of Arguments for the Conviction and Reduction of Disputers One may as well try to tame a Tyger with Rational Arguments as by Threats or Violence for a man may be sooner frighted out of his Wits than his Opinion to conquer long-setled Judgments and therefore as the best Physick to cure a Quartane is To be kind to it So if Rational Discourse gentle Perswasions cannot operate upon the intelect mind of man rougher Applications for what 's Reason to one may be Non-Sense to another shall never work a free or plenary assent for those that are perforce Proselyted may become Dissembling Hypocrites but never Real-Converts What Wise or Worthy Spirits therefore would proceed so Irrationally so Ignobly or what advantagious Acquisition or Glory can there be in such a Conquest But this is a point already most amply discuss'd by much abler penns Reply to the Answer of the Catholick-Apology and Advocate of Conscience-Liberty To them therefore I refer the Reader and I le return to the Author Who maintains constantly that sole Reason in all Streights and Exigences must Guide and Steer us in our Course to our Haven Heaven For says he when I ask Why you believe any Mystery of Faith You will answer perhaps Because the Present Church Commands you If I proceed and ask Why do you believe what the Present Church Commands you You will say Because the Former Church Teaches the same Why do you believe the Former Church Because GOD Commands you so to do Why do you believe that God Commands it Because you find it in the Scripture Why do you believe the Scriptures to be the Word of GOD Because they were confirm'd by Miracles Why do Miracles confirm that Because they are Workes which can proceed from nothing but the Absolute and Immediate Power of the Deity Why so Because nothing contrary to or above the Course of Nature can be done by Natural Agents And why should I or any man else say any thing against all this Since he has so pertinently and solidly answer'd all the Why 's himself but I suppose he imagin'd that Syllogistically sounding the depth of the Catholick method or rule of Faith with this chain of Questions and finding Reason at the bottom of it which methinks should make him the sooner embrace it therefore he had invincibly fortifi'd his own arguments for an absolute and independent guidance of private reason in all contingencies but alas 't is triumphing before the Victory because as inconsequent as if one should say my Rulers are no more than rational men and I being a man of reason too therefore my obligation ceaseth to be rul'd by them neither ought any man in reason to command or obey others but is not this cum ratione insanire A Doctrine which if prevalent would in a short time destroy not only Ecclesiastical but all secular Oeconomy and Jurisdictions and in the end leave nothing but outward shape to distinguish Men from Beasts which have no other Superiority or Mastership amongst them but what they get Vi Armis with their Horns and Heels Certainly this is very prodigious I had almost said monstrous Reason and so truly I think is the greatest part of his discourse which in effect teaches that Divinity cannot stand unless Philosophy support it nor St. Peter and St. Paul instruct unless Aristotle and Plato comment consequently no man can be a good Christian that is not a good Philosopher which certainly is a very false and Anti-Christian assertion Authority and Obedience are Correlatives there must be both or neither and therefore his mysterious discourse of Obedience in Spirituals which he calls the most pleasing smell in the Sacrifice I shall never understand which totally invalidates all Ecclesiastical Regiment and Power St. Augustine who I presume wanted not for Humane Reason said peremptorily Ego verò Evangelio non crederem nisi me Ecclesiae Catholicae commoveret Authoritas And to the same Authority leaving the Scepticks to their Identities Idities and Quiddities will I ever submit both my understanding my reason for would it not be very pleasant to hear a man Catechise or Preach to himself and a pretty riddle for Master Schollar Preacher and Auditour to be all in the same man who without some external conveyance or outward aid can no more properly or safely indoctrinate himself than he can possibly put his mouth to his own ear and whisper in it Witty men no doubt may frame arguments against natural and experimental Demonstrations as for example Oral Loquution or Local Motion but certainly none though few perhaps can solve every particular objection will be perswaded that we can neither speak nor move The same I say as to the Church when men are as certainly they may be indisputably satisfi'd that it is and must necessarily be infallible in its Conciliar-Definitions whatsoever riseth in opposion they consequently know though perhaps not precisely How must necessarily be inconclusive fictitious and false without descending to particular disputes which is not only a toilsome but endless labour For I have often thought that since our Revolt from Rome there have been written pro and con-books enough I should not exceed if I said to fill ten Vaticans and yet we are in the same or a worse condition the reason is because Corrosives are apply'd instead of Lenitives Vinegar instead of Oyle wherefore I compare Controversie to Physick which as it cures many that would have dy'd so it kills more that would have recover'd and liv'd without it Whether what I have hitherto said will have the good or ill fortune to be thought Reason or not I am not Prophet enough to know nor concern'd enough to care the principal motive being to employ some spare hours but if it be esteem'd wholly insignificant Solamen miseris c. I am not the first by forty who have written to no purpose yet this I 'le boldly say is to some whatever arguments or engins of Wit are invented and directed to undermine and subvert the Power and Authority of God's Church will but deceive and at last recoile and ruine the Inventor And all these glittering words and gilded reasons which I confess are drest in graceful language this Author has rally'd together against it can be at most but Verisimilities they may possibly delight some amuze and puzle others but solidly and indubitably can inform none for I should take it very kindly from him or any man else that would tell me candidly what those imperative words Feed my Sheep feed my Lambs spoken to St. Peter signifie if not that there should constantly be in God's Church which is essentially compos'd of Docentes discentes Pastors i e. Instructors and Teachers of others For Christ our Lord who never made or said any thing in vain did not speak plurally as this Author interprets Feed ye my Sheep feed ye my Lambs even where your selves

Plenitude of Bliss and Delectation to Himself but 't is as certainly true that he may be pleas'd with one kind of Worship and abominate an other unless Jeroboam who the Holy Scripture more than once saith made Israel to sin committed no Crime nor consequently offended GOD in setting up the Calves in Dan and Bethel Without doubt saith he but that 's no proof He who gave Rules which might accept of several Interpretations when he might have made them as plain to all in one Sense as they seem now to every man in his own is likewise well contented that they shall be Interpreted severally Truly if our Blessed Saviour had not Constituted Select Judges and Expositors of his Divine Laws which no Laws ever were without I might perhaps be of his mind too but since GOD be thanked 't is evidently otherwise without doubt this Author is egregiously mistaken Certainly GOD Almighty if he had intended Reason to be absolute Lord Paramount independently to Rule and Instruct in every particular Emergency Ambiguity must have given all Men the same measure to compass the same end For as a Ship though it lies in the Water if it has not enough to make it Float can no more move forward than if it lay upon dry Land So it can never sink into my Understanding How he that has less Reason should as safely and effectually proceed as he that has more unless this Author could prove a part of any thing to be as much as the whole or demonstrate Reason to be of the Miraculous Nature of the Manna among the Israelites whereof he who gather'd much had nothing over and he who gather'd little had no lack Were this seriously consider'd I am confident upon second Thoughts and they are best this Author would be convinc'd that a Man's Reason alone can never doe the Work I mean steer him securely over that deep Ocean of Scripture to the Port of Eternal Happiness without Embarking in that Ecclesiastical Ship the Church in which if they Conform to her Doctrine the Poor are as safe as the Richest and the Weakest as the Wise and in this Reliance we doe no more desert our own Reason than a Man does his Corporal Strength in taking a Staffe to help and support him in a dangerous and slippery Passage And whatever Arguments are advanc'd to enervate the solidity of this Ground let them never so briskly sally out they can be no better than meer empty Ebullitions or Bubblings of Reason As well says he the Mud by growing hard as the Wax by Melting obeys the Sun nor is it less glorify'd by the one than by the other It is true the same Sun and I grant 't is equally though variously obey'd by both softens Wax and hardens Mud their Natures being by Heat to melt and grow hard but I cannot conceive how the Parity holds exactly between those Inanimate material Substances and our Immortal and Immaterial Souls For certainly the Divine Insuser of Faith created them with Identical Capabilities and fitted them Uniformly for the Reception of their Proper Objects viz. the Mysteries of Christianity which whosoever Obstinately Dis-believes or rejects is deservedly Excommunicated because he wilfully exclude himself from that Mysticall Ark the Church of GOD. But by the way me-thinkes this Author talkes very incongruously of more than one Religion the very word bearing witness against him for the Substantive Religio I take to be deriv'd from the Verb Rebigo to Tye or Bind together but his Latitudinarian or Socinian Doctrine does not onely Untie and Unbind but Blends and Shuffles all into a Chaos Yet Faith with him must still be Properly one and the same though according to the diverse Receptions says he it produces not only divense but contrary Effects This I shall believe when he hath evinc'd that because all things which are potable are comprehended under the Denomination of Liquour therefore White-Wines Rhenish Canary Claret Syder and Muscadine are Certainly that Man would be censur'd to have drunk too much of these that could be brought to swallow so great a Contradiction Yet this the Author must say if he speakes consequently to his own Arguments is as defensible as his Hyperbole that the Diversity of Religious Opinions because injuriously produc'd by him under the Venerable Name of Faith are not several but one and the very self same belief which certainly is as far from right Reasoning as a Confusion of Fancyes is from purely Divine Faith I should have found no fault with His comparing the Vnity of God's Church to Wed-lock but that he spoyles the Similitude in allowing every Particular Member to believe contrary to one another nay to themselves by which he pulls down again what he built up and makes that Conjunction-Disjunctive by a new-found-Negative or Counter-Creed No body at all questions but that a Foot when it hath the Gout as he sayes or a Hand when it shakes with the Palsie remain still Parts of the Body but if they are Irrecoverably useless they are no otherwise so than as a Dead Bough is a Member of a Living Tree there may be Continuity but no Communication between them and this Debility or decay must needs happen through some secret Perversity or Obliquity in the Recipient not any Defect or Deficiency in the Radical Aliment The same I say of those that wilfully persist in Incredulity and Errour but yet withall must add this that they are never Irrevocably GOD's Grace being ever busie Anathematiz'd by this Church which is much more willing and ready upon Submission and Recantation to Re-embrace than for Obstinacy to Excommunicate any There may certainly be though he thinks otherwise a full and intire agreement in all Points of Faith of one Member with an other either Actually or Votively which to GOD is Aequivalent or else the Athanasian Creed admitted by most Protestants is not to be Credited which without Haesitation begins thus Whosoever will be saved it is needful before all things that he hold the Catholick Faith The which unless each one shall keep whole and Inviolate mark that he shall without doubt eternally perish now if this be as certainly it is true he that wilfully disbelieves any one Article forfeits his whole Faith and Consequently the least Defect therein is a total Privation Now as for Controversie at which he briefly touches like the Bloud I know it incessantly Circulates but Alas To no better purpose that I can perceive than to foment the Quarrel and keep it still alive For through the Immoderation and Unnatural heat of some Polemick Writers 't is so far from effecting a Reconciliation or Union which ought to be the Principal Design and end of it that it do's nothing else but breed an Implacable if not incurable Itch the scratching whereof may perhaps afford some present Titillation or Delight but 't is usually perform'd with so much violence and rage that it does not only not allay but more inflame and ferment the