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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	person_n	scripture_n	trinity_n	3,376	5	9.9610	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93958	Ad clerum. A sermon preached at a visitation holden at Grantham in the county and diocess of Lincolne, 8. Octob. 1641. By a late learned prelate. Now published by his own copy.	Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663.	1670 (1670)	Wing S580; ESTC R228093	21,750	45

that rightly understandeth the Tenets of the Romish Church but will easily grant if he shall duly consider what a masse of humane Traditions both in point of belief and worship are imposed upon the judgments and consciences of all that may be suffered to live in the visible Communion of that Church and that with opinion of necessity and under paine of damnation The Popes Supremacy Worshipping of Images Invocation of Saints and Angels the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass Purgatory the seven Sacraments Transubstantiation Adoration of the host Communion under one kind Private Masses forbidaing Priests Mariage Monastical Vowes Prayer in an unknown tongue Auricular Confession All these and I know not how many more are such as even by the confession of their own learned Writers depend upon unwritten Traditions more than upon the Scriptures True it is that for most of these they pretend to Scripture also but with so little colour at the best and with so little confidence at the last that when they are hard put to it they are forced to fly from that hold and to shelter themselves under their great Diana Tradition Take away that it is confessed that many of the chiefe Arcicles of their Faith nutare vacillare videbuntur will seem even to totter and reel and have much adoe to keep up For what else could we imagine should make them strive so much to debase the Scripture all they can denying it to be a Rule of Faith and charging it with imperfection obscurity uncertainty and many other defects and on the otherside to magnifie Traditions as every way more absolute but meerly their consciousness that sundry of their doctrines if they should be examined to the bottome would apeare to have no sound foundation in the Written Word And then must needs wee conclude from what hath been allready delivered that they ought to be received or rather not to be received but rejected as the Doctrines and Commandments of men Nor will their flying to Tradition help them in this case or free them from Pharisaisme but rather make the more against them For to omit that it hath been the usual course of false teachers when their Doctrines were found not to be Scripture-proofe to fly to Tradition do but enquire a little into the Original and growth of Pharisaical Traditions and you shall find that one egge is not more like another than the Papists and the Pharisees are alike in this matter When Saduc or whosoever els was the first Author of the Sect of the Sadduces and his followers began to vent their pestilent and Atheistical Doctrines against the immortality of the Soule the resurrection of the Body and other like the best Learned among the Jewes the Pharisees especially opposed against them by arguments and collections drawn from the Scriptures The Saduces finding themselves unable to hold argument with them as having two shrewd disadvantages but a little Learning and a bad cause had no other means to avoid the force of all their arguments than to hold them precisely to the letter of the Text without admitting any exposition thereof or collection therefrom Unlesse they could bring clear Text that should affirme totidem verbis what they denied they would not yeild The Pharisees on the contrary refused as they had good cause to be tyed to such unreasonable conditions but stood upon the meaning of the Scriptures as the Sadduces did upon the letter confirming the truth of their interpretations partly from Reason and partly from Tradition Not meaning by Tradition as yet any doctrine other than what was allready sufficiently conteined in the Scriptures but meerly the Doctrine which had been in all ages constantly taught and received with an Vniversal consent among the People of God as consonant to the holy Scriptures and grounded thereon By this means though they could not satisfie the Sadduces as Heretikes and Sectaries commonly are obstinate yet so farre they satisfied the generality of the people that they grew into very great esteem with them and within a while carryed all before them the detestation of the Sadduces and of their loose errors also conducing not a little thereunto And who now but the Pharisees and what now but Tradition in every mans eye and mouth Things being at this passe any wise man may judge how easy a matter it was for men so reverenced as the Pharisees were to abuse the credulity of the people and the interess they had in their good opinion to their own advantage to make themselves Lords of the peoples faith and by little and little to bring into the VVorship whatsoever doctrines and observances they pleased and all under the acceptable name of the Traditions of the Elders And so they did winning continually upon the people by their cunning and shewes of Religion and proceeding still more and more till the Jewish Worship by their means was grown to that height of superstition and formality as we see it was in our Saviours dayes Such was the beginning and such the rise of these Pharisaical Traditions Popish Traditions also both came in and grew up just after the same manner The Orthodox Bishops and Doctors in the antient Church being to maintain the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead the Consubstantiality of the Sonne with the Father the Hypostatical Union of the two Natures in the person of Christ the Divinity of the Holy Ghost and other like Articles of the Catholike Religion against the Arians Eunomians Macedonians and other Heretikes for that the words Trinity Homoüsion Hypostasis Procession c. which for the better expressing of the Catholike sense they were forced to use were not expressely to be found in the holy Scriptures had recourse therefore very often in their writings against the Heretikes of their times to the Tradition of the Church Whereby they meant not as the Papists would now wrest their words any unwritten doctrine not conteined in the Scriptures but the very doctrine of the Scriptures themselves as they had been constantly understood and believed by all faithfull Christians in the Catholike Church down from the Apostles times till the several present ages wherein they lived This course of theirs of so serviceable and necessary use in those times gave the first occasion and after-rise to that heap of Errors and Superstitions which in processe of time by the power and policy of the Bishop of Rome especially were introduced into the Christian Church under the specious name and colour of Catholike Traditions Thus have they troden in the steps of their forefathers the Pharisees and stand guilty even as they of the Superstition here condemned by our Saviour in teaching for doctrines mens Precepts But if the Church of Rome be cast how shall the Church of England be quit That symbolizeth so much with her in many of hir Ceremonies and otherwise What are all our crossings and kneelings and duckings What Surplice and Ring and all

customs in matters wholly or in part Ecclesiastical partly concerning the use of sundry pastimes and recreations partly concerning sundry usages and customs in vita communi in things meerly Civil and not sacred or Ecclesiastical the particulars whereof would amount to many scores if not hundreds I shall present unto your view a dozen onely which I have selected from the rest of those that I have observed to have been most urged of late in Sermons and Pamphlets by which you may in part judge of the rest And they are these 1. First that the appointing of a set forme of Prayer or Liturgy to be used in the service of God is unlawful or Antichristian or that it is a straitning or limiting of the Holy Spirit of God 2. That it is not in the power of the Church to ordain any Rites or Ceremonies in the service of God which the people are bound to observe other than such as God hath commanded in his Word 3. That Rites and usages devised or abused either by Heathens or Idolaters may not be lawfully used by Christians in the service of God 4. That it is unlawful or superstitious to kneel at the holy Communion in the act of receiving the Sacrament 5. That Instrumental Musick may not be used in the service of God as well as Vocal 6. That Episcopacy is Antichristian or repugnant to the Word of God 7. That the Presbyterian discipline is the very Scepter of Christs Kingdom or the order appointed by Christ himself for the perpetual Government of his Church which ought of all particular Congregations to be inviolably observed unto the Worlds end 8. That it is simply unlawful for a Minister to be possessed of two Benefices 9. That Ecclesiastical persons may not meddle in secular affairs nor can with a good conscience exercise any Civil office or Jurisdiction although by humane authority Law or custome allowed them 10. That it is not lawful in preaching Gods word to recite sentences out of the Fathers much lesse from the writings of Heathen Writers 11. That the Election or consent of the people is of necessity required either to the ordeining of Ministers or to the appointing of them to their particular charges 12. Lastly which though I find not positively delivered in terminis nor is the danger thereof so generally observed as of sundry of the former yet for that I find it often touched upon in these late Treatises and conceive it to be an Errour of no lesse dangerous consequence than many of the former I thought meet not to omit it That the Examples of Christ and of his Apostles ought to be observed of all Christians as a perpetual Rule binding them to Conformity even as their Precepts doe unto Obedience 23. Concerning which Positions I do here in the face of this Congregation take God to witness who shall judge us all at the last day that I do verily believe and in my conscience am perswaded that all and every of them are the vaine and superstitious inventions of men wholy destitute of all sound warrant from the Written Word of God rightly understood and applied and till they shall be better proved ought to be so esteemed of every man that desireth to make Gods Holy Word the rule of his opinions and actions Many and great are the mischiefs otherwise that come to the Church and people of God by the teaching of these and other like groundless Positions As amongst others these three following First great scandal is hereby given to Atheists Papists Separatists and other the enimies of our Religion especially to the Papists who will not onely take occasion thence to speak evil of us and of the way of truth and holiness which wee profess but will be themselves also the more confirmed in their own wicked errors by objecting to us that since we left them we cannot tell where to stay Secondly many sober and godly men both Ministers and others who cheerfully submit to the established Lawes and Government as they take themselves by the Law of God bound to doe in things which they believe not to be repugnant to his Word are by this means unworthily exposed to contempt and miscensure as if they were time-servers or inclined to Popery or Superstition at the least But if they shall farther endeavour in their Sermons or otherwise to shew their just dislike and to hinder the growth of these unlawful impositions and to hold the people in their good beliefe by instructing them better they shall be sure to be forthwith branded as opposers of the Gospel As if there were such a spirit of Infallibility annexed to some mens Pulpits as some have said there is to the Popes Chaire that whatsoever they shall deliver thence must needs be Gospel Thirdly hereby many an honest-hearted and well-meaning Christian is wonderfully abused by being mis-led into Error Superstition and Disobedience by having his conscience brought into bondage in those things whereunto it was the good pleasure of God to leave him free and by being disposed to much uncharitablenesse in judging evil of his brother that hath given him no just cause so to doe Besides these and sundry other mischiefs of dangerous consequence too long now to repeat the thing that I am presently to affirme concerning all and every of the positions aforesaid and other like them pertinently to the Text and business in hand is this That whosoever shall doctrinally and positively teath any of the same doth ipso facto become guilty of the Superstition here condemned by our Saviour and so farre forth symbolizeth with the Pharisees in teaching for doctrines the commandments of men And I doubt not but there are in the Church of England sundry learned iudicious and Orthodox Divines no way suspected of favouring Popery or Popish Innovations that by Gods help and the advantage of Truth will be ready to maintaine what I now affirme in a fair Christian and Scholar-like trial against whosoever are otherwise minded whensoever by authority they shall be thereunto required I have now finished what I had to say from this Scripture by way of Application From the whole premisses would arise sundry Inferences as Corollaries and by way of Use In the prosecution whereof had we time for it I should have occasion to fall upon some things that might be of right good use for the setling of mens judgments and consciences in a way of Truth and Peace And truely my aime lay chiefly here when my thoughts fixt upon this Text. But having enlarged my self so far beyond my first purpose allready I shall onely give you a short touch of each of them and it may be hereafter as I shall see cause and as God shall dispose I may take some other occasion here or elswhere to enlarge them further The first should be an earnest request to such of my Brethren as through inconsideration zeale against Popery or profanenesse or any other cause have been a little