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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	father_n	person_n	trinity_n	5,937	5	9.9723	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91004	Syneidēsilogia ̇or, The doctrine of conscience, framed according to the points of the catechisme, in the Book of Common-Prayer. / By the Right Reverend Father in God, John Prideaux, late Lord Bishop of Worcester, for the private use of his wife.	Prideaux, John, 1578-1650.; N. Y.	1656 (1656)	Wing P3436; Thomason E1697_2; ESTC R203209	47,433	193

this life and can receive no benefit by our prayers others may have sinned against the Holy ghost and God's decree is past upon them for whom we are not to pray An evill man D. in an evill way petitioning for an evill thing may speed no better then Bathsheba did for Adeniah in her suit to Solomon to give him Abishag to wife charity in our praiers is to be understood to extend no further then Gods word doth limit it To pray for the dead who have their immutable doom we have no warrant It is sufficient ground therefore for our conscience in this behalf that God would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledg of his truth to make it a petition in our Litany that it may please him to have mercy upon all men we beseech thee to hear us good Lord. Wherein we expresse our charitable desires leaving it to God to distinguish for whom our prayers shall be effectuall A further direction may be that of our Saviour to his Disciples Mat. ●0 11 13. if ye come into a house salute it and if the house be worthy let your peace come upon it but if the house be not worthy let your peace returne to you So our devotion in prayer for all shall be acceptable to our father who maketh his sun to rise on the evill as on the good and his raine to fall on the unjust as on the just though the saving benifit thereof shall redound only to those whom God hath appointed it shall take with The second word in our Lords prayer is C. II. Father which sheweth to what person in the blessed Trinity we should direct our prayers This prayer then being not only a prayer to be used of all but also a patterne to all what warrant then hath a scrupulous conscience to direct its prayers not to Saints or Angells or any other creatures for that good Christians are easily satisfied in but either to the Son or holy Ghost in as much as we are precisely to keep to the rule which our Saviour hath left us and not to frame other devotions how religion soever they may seeme to be according to the model of our owne fancies This ground being laid in our Creed D. that the three Persons howsoever distinguished are but one God it will necessarily follow thereupon that whosoever prayeth to one prayeth to all and all the persons howsoever distinguished in themselves yet in relation to the creatures may be called Father And beside for the directing of our prayers to the Son we have that of Saint Stephen Lord Jesu receive my spirit Act. 7.59 And for that of the holy Ghost who gave a commandement separate me Barnabas and Saul to the worke which I have called them which must needs be taken for the command of a person that was God It follows after they had fasted and prayed 3. to whom can we imagine that they have prayed but to him who gave the command Matth. 28. This is confirmed by our baptizing equally in the name of the holy Ghost as of the Father and Son and by S. Pauls blessing taking in equally the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son Where he maketh this as his ordinary blessing The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 2 Cor. 13.14 and the love of God and the Communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all Where the putting of Jesus Christ before the Father plainly sheweth that as we have it in Athanasius Creed in this mysterious and sacred Trinity none is afore or after another none is greater or lesse then other That which is done therefore to one is done to all For which that attribute in the prayer of the Apostles may be taken for a further ground The Text is they prayed and said Act. 1. thou Lord which knowest the hearts of all men To him that knoweth therefore our hearts and to no other we may safely direct our prayer and who will deny that the Holy Ghost knoweth our hearts which is said to guide and lead into all truth That petition therefore in our Liturgy with the like O God the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son have mercy upon us miserable sinners and the Doxology so often repeated glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost cannot be excepted against but only by such wretches which deny the Sacred Trinity Notwithstanding as some prayers are private of or by our selves others publick with the congregation As private prayers are usually not necessarily directed to either of the Persons So publick are most orderly in the first place tendered to the Father through our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus that he will vouchsafe us his Holy Spirit to furnish us with all blessings to accomplish all our warrantable petitions And according to this are all or most of our Liturgicall petitions framed which in an uniformity shew the order of the Persons in the Trinity and prevent distractions which might arise amongst the weaker by reason of variety From the first petition C. III. hallowed be thy name may arise this doubt That in as much as our Saviour approved of such as cast out devills in his name yet followed him not and would not have them forbidden and the Jewes attribute even at this day a virtue to the name Jehovah that miracles may be done by it in regard whereof in reverence they dare not to utter it Why may not we thinke that the name of God used by Magicians and exorcists gathered by Cabala from the Scripture may worke wonders in casting out divills curing diseases and foretelling events and thereupon with a safe conscience have recourse to wizards for aid in that behalfe The name of God in the scripture especially importeth propriety authority and ability So that being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost we are made Gods peculiar to submit to his authority under the protection of his omnipotent ability In this petition therefore it is as foolish as superstitious by the name of God to understand from the coupling of the letters the sound resulting from it or to imagine an hidden virtue to be in the characters or sound of words to terrifie spirits or worke other wonders The hallowing of Gods name is the setting forth of Gods glory in all his attributes to which all our petitions must be referred that his kingdome in his Church may be promoted here to be perfected hereafter in heaven and his will be done in order according as is prescribed in his word Which warrantable directions we have from that guide that will not deceive Saul will get cold comfort by consuting with the witch of Endor 1 Sam 28. 2 Kings 1 or Ahaziah by sending to Beelzebub of Ekron Our Saviour reproveth rather the aemulous jealousie of his disciples then approveth of the parties that made use of his name whom they would

in this behalfe as any need learne or professe of God the Father God the Son Redeemer by taking mans nature upon him God the Holy Ghost proceeding from them both which in a Trinity of persons make but one God to be mercifull to us miserable sinners and informe us further when we shall come to see God face to face not as now as it were in a glasse but to know as we are known 1 Cor. 13.12 C. IV. The Article of the descent of Christ into Hell is thought supposititious of some and expounded at pleasure by others either for suffering hellish Agonies in the Garden before his Passion or for remaining in the state of the dead after his buriall untill he arose again or for his descent into Limbus Patrum to fetch thence the fathers or for descending into the place of the damned to proclaime his satisfaction for sin and triumphing over Death and Hell of which it was not possible he should be holden Act. 2.24 Among all which distractions where is it safe for a scrupulous Conscience to rely and quiet it selfe D. On the generall believing of the thing as it is laid downe out of this and the Athanasian Creed in the third Article of our Church in these words As Christ died for us so it is to be believed that he went down into Hell and not further to trouble our selves about the precise manner of it which particularly not revealed in Scripture intangleth rather the curious searchers then affords satisfaction for the conscience If then from the consideration of this one more evident place Col 2.15 Christ blotting out the hand writing of Ordinances that was against us which was contrary to us and took it out of the way by nailing it to the Crosse spoiled upon it principalities and made a shew of them openly triumphing over them in it we collect that after his going in the Garden through wrath against sinne which he had undertaken and Sufferings on the Crosse by Satans instruments upon the consummatum est or finishing the worke of our Redemption his Soul encountred Satan in a spirituall way who found nothing to except against and therefore was conquered and triumphed over with his complices with O Death where is thy sting O Grave where it thy victory We may well retaine this Article as having the like ground with the rest and to continue to sing in the Te Deum when thou hadst overcome the sharpnesse of Death which was done by the descending and triumphing over all hellish forces thou didst open the Kingdome of Heaven to all believers Upon the Article concerning the Catholick Church C. V. the weaker Consciences by Romish emissaries are thus ensnared out of the Catholick Church there can be no Salvation as all sides grant upon that in the Act. 2.47 And the Lord added to the Church such as should be saved but the Roman Church is onely the Catholick Church therefore whosoever will be saved before all things must first turn Roman Catholick This grand imposture in depraving the Article of Unity D. wherein the Saints community and forgiveness of sinnes consisteth is as a Spiders web set up to catch Flies thus swept off Acknowledging that out of the Catholick Church Salvation is not to be expected it will be denyed in the next place that Rome is the only Catholick Church and made evident that it is only a particular member of it as the Churches of Corinth Galatia Ephesus and the rest were when S. Paul wrote to the Romans These were not then members of the Church of Rome but sisters with it not subordinate to the Church of Rome but coordinate with it To omit Logick quiddities in discovering the fallacy what a piece of reasoning is this because Rome is Catholick therefore the Church of England France and Spaine cannot be Catholick as much as to say your nag ambleth mine may not or must doe it in subordination to yours and yet the Catholick Church is the Creed is not made by us an imaginary idea as some put upon us but a generall that includs many particulars under it as the generall notion of a City doth this or that City to which it doth equally impart the name and nature where the particular is the object of sense and set on an hill cannot be hid but the generall the object of faith which is of things understood or to be believed The Article of the forgivenesse of sinnes C. VI. may much trouble a weak conscience in that we read the sin against the Holy ghost shall never be forgiven beside there are sins which waste the conscience and destroy it that admit of no repentance and surmount the absolution of the Minister of the Gospell which is acknowledged to worke by prayer not power what peace then may be had or pacification in such distraction That which Gods word holdeth forth unto us First D. this ground must be laid that forgivenesse cannot be expected without repentance except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish Luke 13.3 Then that the sin against the Holy ghost may be committed by two sorts of people First by such as being unbelievers by reason of their education and condition have the word so evidently laid home to their capacities that their consciences are convinced that they heare the right and yet for by respects of pleasure pelf promotion or the like knowingly and maliciously set themselves against the light of it and prefer darknesse before it This was the course of the Pharisees who were convinced sufficiently that our Saviours casting out of divells could not be but by the over-mastering divine power as Nicodemus ingenuously acknowledged we know that thou art a teacher come from God for no man can doe those miracles which thou doest except God be with him Jo. 3.2 yet they maliciously gaine-said it and bore the people in hand that it was by Beelzebub the Prince ef the devills Matth. 12. By a second sort the sin against the Holy ghost is committed that have listed themselves in the Church tasted of the heavenly gift and word of God yet then wilfully fall away and renounce Christianity Heb. 6.4 and 10.26 neither of these can be renewed by repentance because the forgivenesse of sins is only to be had in the pale of the Church and those sons of Belial the first sort refuse to enter and the second out themselves from the safe condition they were in the first are termed blasphemers the other Apostates whose case is far different from the greatest offender who remaineth still in the Church whereby repentance and remission of sins may be had though never so much crying for vengeance and tearing the conscience Though your sins are as Scarlet I will make them as white as snow though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool Isai 1.18 Come unto me take my yoke though seven nay though legions of devils possesse you I will give you rest Matth. 11.28 When

from the sense and directions no more then we can imagine the leaves of a Physick book will cure a disease or wound if it be applyed to the part ill affected Those pieces therefore of Scripture or names of God or Angels thence pretended to be deduced by Exorcists and Magicians or names of the three Kings of Cullen or the beginning of Saint Iohns Gospel or the like hung about the neck of any are delusions of Satan The words that I spake unto you are spirit and life saith our Saviour John 6.63 and were written that ye might believe and that believing ye might have life through his name Iohn 20.31 not for charms to doe mischiefe or seeming cures upon the body which Satan useth as a bait to destroy the soule Let the Pythonists in the Acts say never so truly concerning S. Paul and Silas these men are the servants of the most high God which shew to us the way of Salvation Act. 16.17 yet Saint Paul would not endure such she-Chaplains of the Devills ordering who take up good to do mischief and act the Devils part in the attire of an Angell The punishment of the mongrell-blasphemer Lev. 24. should make all conscionable men afraid how they adventure to make bold with Gods Sacred name or word lest perchance as the Sons of Sceva they meet with some mad Devils that will wound and strip them for their folly and terrifie others causing them to burne such damnable books of curious Arts though of never so much esteemed value Act. 19.18 19. On the contrary a Conscience must be made for the abusing any parts of the Bible or things once consecrated to God to prophane and sordid uses lest Belshazzers proscription stand against them to their sodaine ruine for non est tutum ludere cum sanctis as the common saying is it is not good to dally with a Deity CHAP. III. Cases concerning the Apostles Creed THree Creeds are received in all Catholick Churches the first called the Apostles Creed the second the Nicene and the third the Creed of Athanasius The two latter of these are but expositions of the Apostles Creed composed more especially to withstand the Arian Heresie which denyed the Deity of Christ and had then well-nigh over-spread the whole face of Christianity Into the Apostles Creed as our Liturgy hath hitherto led our fore-fathers we were baptized To make then this the first case of Conscience it may be well enquired Whether the rejecting this Creed C. I. out of our Liturgies and Catechismes into which we were baptized and to which our sureties undertook for us we should alwayes stand to be not a kind of renouncing or rather plain Apostacy from the Faith we were baptized in whereto may be applyed that speech of God to Samuel they have not rejected thee but me 1 Sam. 8.7 They can best give satisfaction to this that have been the actors in it To say they supply it in the Doctrine of their preaching their auditors will tell them that they have not the art nor are taught it by them how to pick out so punctuall Articles for their Belief and so to order them that they may have them by heart to be ready alwaies to give an account to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in them as Saint Peter chargeth 1 Pet. 3.15 upon which they may ground the good Conscience that followes in the next verse Now those that have a touch of Conscience reason thus with themselves either the new Articles we are to expect from the Sermons of our new Lights are the same which we had in our old Creeds or different If they prove the same why might not the old have stohd but if we shall have new Articles of our Creed which the Papists themselves hold to be above his Holinesse authority to make then woe to our ancestors that have so long misled and to our dull capacity which cannot with a safe conscience yet cease to contend for the Faith which hitherto we have conceived was once delivered to the Saints Jud. 2. How may the Conscience be assured C. II. that this is the Apostles Creed which is stood somuch for seeing the tradition that it was made by the twelve Apostles before their separation to preach the Gospel hath no warrant to confirme it Though it may not be call'd the Apostles Creed as divers D. of the ancients would have it because it was made immediately by the Apostles themselves yet modern Divines are forced to agree in this that the Articles in it are clear deductions from the Doctrine of the Apostles in which sense it is rightly called the Apostles Creed in substance though not for composure A true translation is held with us for the Word of God though not so immediately yet as undoubtedly as the originall Christ is said in this Creed to be conceived by the Holy Ghost C. III according to that of Saint Matthew that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost cap. 1.20 and of Saint Lute cap. 1.35 the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee therefore that Holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God Whence an ungrounded Conscience may gather that Christ should be rather called the Son of the person of the Holy Ghost then the onely Son of the first person the Father Almighty which confoundeth the believed doctrine of the sacred Trinity and is urged by Novellists to puzzle weake Consciences The Nicene Creed clears this D. by putting a plain difference between begetting made and incarnate Begetting hath relation onely to the Father begotten of the Father saith the Creed not of the Holy Ghost before all worlds that is from eternity as God of God Light of Light very God of very God being therefore of one substance with the Father that begot him infinitely of a higher pitch then any thing that was made For things made are all sorts of Creatures and so the Son that begotten from eternity was made Man in the fulness of time when it is said he was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and this incarnation is appropriated to the Holy Ghost though it be the worke of the whole Trinity united ever in all outward operations in regard this power of the Highest proceeds from the Father and Son and is next in order and more conspicuous to the producing of the greatest effects Whence as in the Creation the spirit of God is mentioned moving upon the waters so in Christs baptisme the Spirit is visible in the shape of a Dove and in inspiring the Apostles in cloven tongues where the Father was onely heard or heard of not seen and the Son not seen as the begotten Word but as he took flesh and dwelt amongst us Joh. 1. But these mysteries are more submissively rather to be believed then curiously pryed into The beginning therefore of our Letanie expressing as much