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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
Commemoration as we say but it cannot be a Sacrificing of Christ again as you say if we refer the matter as we ought to be judged by Scripture wherein there is nothing to shew that is a Propitiatory Sacrifice for the Sins of the Living much less for the Sins of the Dead whose estate can never be altered after this Life Luk. xvi 26 28. But as they fall they must lye for ever Eccles xi 3. Po. The World may now see how unjustly you brag of your Magnifying the Merit of Christs Passion and how falsly you accuse us of diminishing and disparaging it Since we hold it sufficient to pardon both Quick and Dead and you deny it can do any good to the Dead Prot. It is not for want of Merit in Christs Passion but for want of Capacity in those who have not Repented in their Life Time that hinders these Deceased Persons from receiving the benefits of Christs Death Christ hath declared he will pardon none but them that do repent and if Men do not repent before they die they cannot repent afterwards and so cannot receive any benefit of Christs Passion and if living Men be taught they may get a Pardon after Death it will encourage them to put off their Repentance to the very last Nor would so false a Doctrin without any ground in Scripture ever have been taught in your Church but only that the crafty Inventers of it found it would make Masses sell at dear Rates Po. You are very free of your Censures but we despise them being assured our Doctrins and Practices are the true sense of Scripture as it is interpreted to us by the Holy Catholic Church Prot. Do you really think so Pray then before we leave this Subject will you tell me How the making only some that is the Priests to Drink of the Cup can possibly be the true meaning of Christs Words Drink ye all of this Math. xxvi 27. Po. Why it is plain the Apostles were Priests and not Lay Men and it was only to the Apostles that Christ spake these Words and though we forbid the People to Drink of this Cup yet we Command the Priests to do it Prot. Was it not also only to the Apostles that Christ said then Take Eat this my Body Ver. 26. and will it not follow by your way of arguing that none but Priests must Eat of the Bread and that the People must receive neither Bread nor Wine You know the Apostles stood then in the place of Lay-Men and represented the Congregation as Christ did the Priest so that S. Paul plainly applies to the People the Commands both of Eating and Drinking which Christ gave at first only to his Apostles And nothing is more evident than that all the People at Corinth did Drink of the Cup and some of them too largely 1 Cor. x. 21. Chap. xi 21. and Ver. 27 28 29. Chap. xii 13. So that I wonder how you dare call the contradicting Christs Commands and the Precepts and Practice of the Apostles the true sense of Scripture and why you rob the People of one half of the Sacrament Po. We rob them of nothing because we declare we give them whole Christ which is contained fully under either species Prot. This is no more than if one who clipt off half the Kings Coin should say it was still current Money The very declaration it self supposes that our Lord instituted two species when one was sufficient and so to excuse your selves of impiety you accuse him of doing things in vain And since Christ is here set out as having suffered for Sin and so his Blood separated from his Body we cannot imagin how the Bread alone should be sufficient to set forth this Mystery Po. There is danger lest we should spill the Cup in giving it to the People and lest it should be profaned by the rude mouths of Lay-men Prot. This danger may be in giving it to the Priests however you are not of S. Pauls mind who when the Cup was abused at Corinth even to excess durst not alter Christs Institution nor take it wholy away as you do thereby committing a grievous Sacriledge in keeping back part of that whereof God hath made you dispensers and as much as in you lyes depriving the People of the benefit of Christs Blood Po. We can find more fault with your preparation for it than you with our dispensing of it for why do not you all go to a Priest to confess your sins before you do receive as the Scripture doth appoint Prot. The Scripture appoints every Man shall examine himself before he Eat of that Bread and Drink of that Cup 1 Cor. xi 28. Now of this you say very little but our Church strictly enjoyns all thus to prepare But Scripture no where appoints it as necessary for all to go to a Priest and confess before every act of receiving Po. Doth not Scripture declare that penitent Sinners confessed their Sins to a Priest Math. iii. 6. Acts. xix 8. And command us to confess our faults one to another James v. 16. and can there be any fitter time to do this than just before we Communicate Prot. We do not forbid Men at any time to Confess to a Priest but advise them to it in case of a troubled Mind or a violent Temptation and especially if that be their condition who are to receive the Sacrament But we dare not lay such a Snare on our People as to make this always necessary since God hath not declared it is so And those Examples you bring concern Publick Confession of Sins before the Priest and the Congregation and so doth that place in S. James for it orders us to Confess not to the Righteous Man alone but one to another that so the Righteous Man and all the rest may pray for Mercy for the Penitent and I have heard this was the Primitive way of Confessing Sins and is still here in our Church where the Offences are scandalous and the Party censured But this is no ground for your Private Confessing into the Priests Ear and so getting an Absolution of course at Set times Po. Hath not Christ granted to the Priests a power to remit mens sins or retain them John xx 23. and must not the Iudge who is to condemn or set free of necessity hear all the particulars concerning the Criminal Prot. Our Priests will not grant us Absolution in particular Cases unless we do so far confess the Crimes we are guilty of as to shew our selves truly penitent but they do not compel us under pain of Damnation to come and tell them all our Sins which Scripture saith is impossible Psal xix 12. Nor doth the Kings granting a Commission to certain Judges to hear and to determine Causes oblige those who can make up their differences among themselves to come and be tried before them Besides the Priest is not the highest and last Judge nor can he infallibly tell when