Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	catholic_a	church_n	communion_n	2,376	5	9.1446	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63876	Animadversions upon a late pamphlet entituled The naked truth, or, The true state of the primitive church	Turner, Francis, 1638?-1700.	1676 (1676)	Wing T3275; ESTC R15960	53,553	71

that will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen and a Publican spoken of private differences between man and man to be referr'd to the Determination of the Church that is the Congregation of the Faithful which they usually and by order should assemble in and refer this to the Church in General in matters of Faith not in the least pointed at there He will have much ado to make us believe that a man is not bound to tell his Brother of Heresie a matter of so great Consequence and to tell it to the Church if his Brother will not hear him and yet prove that he is bound to do this in matter of private difference or petty quarrel between them Wherefore to borrow his own Conclusion of this matter I pass this over as very Impertinent And so is that which follows I do not believe nor am I bound by Scripture to believe such Expositions as the Popish Church makes of this place That the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church Who bids him believe the Popish Expositions But if that place be not spoken of the Roman Church therefore does it signifie nothing to prove the Visibility or Indefectibility of the Catholique Church But 't is plain he advances the notion of a Church Invisible a Church that shall be driven into the Wilderness where her Ninety nine Ceremonies are to be left to attend her scarce visible in the World whereas the Learned understand that place of the Churche's Persecutions the first three hundred years which made it the more illustriously visible and our nineteenth Article calls it the visible Church of Christ Now he proceeds to the business of General Councils whether they may Err in some points of Faith The Church of England acknowledges they may Err and have Err'd in things pertaining to God No doubt of it But this Author immediately flies higher with a why not in some points of Faith All the Evangelical Doctors grant says he that the later General Councils have Err'd if so why not the former what promise had the former from Christ more than the later True there is no more promise to a Council of the fourth Age or to that of Nice than to one that should be held in the seventeenth if it were as General and as free He asks concerning this promise The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church what 's this to a general Council which is not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Church We shall find him mistaken in this Account at long running Lastly he shews his charitable Divination in foretelling how much more mischief General Councils would have done if more of them had been conven'd But say you says he No General Council determin'd those errors Why because none was call'd about them had any been call'd who can doubt but they would have avow'd that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches This he says but his Yea's and Nay 's are no Oracles with us For why should they be when a General Council is not so with him Then presently he humbly craves pardon for his bold presumption viz. of these hard sayings against General Councils And I as humbly beg leave to speak for them in behalf of the Church of England and the Law of the Land both which I 'me sure I have on my side and both give much deference to General Councils The twentieth Article of our Church has these words The Church has Authority in matters of Faith And the Statute of the Land runs thus Eliz. 1. c. 1. That none however commissioned shall in any wise have authority or power to order or determine or adjudge any Matter or Cause to be Heresie but only such as heretofore have been determined ordered or adjudged to be Heresie by the authority of the Canonical Scriptures or by the first four General Councils or any of them or by any other General Council wherein the same was declared Heresie by the express and plain words of the said Canonical Scriptures or such as hereafter shall be ordered judged or determined to be Heresie by the Court of Parliament of this Realm with the Clergy in their Convocation But for all this we do not confess or acknowledge all or many of those for General Councils which they at Trent or which Bellarmine is pleas'd to account for such a parcel of eighteen of them But those very few we count for General which the Church Universal before the unhappy breach between East and West receiv'd for General But now to unravel the skein which is much entangled and ruffled in his confused way the diminutions he puts upon general Councils may be reduc'd to these three Heads 1. That General Councils may err in points of Faith because they have no promise to the contrary 2. Because they want Numbers even of the Clergy being not the thousandth part of them and therefore to put this Argument as far as ever it will go are not truly General 3. Because of the prejudices they that should sit in Council would bring along with them then who can doubt but they would avow that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches 1. In answer to his first Exception I premise these limitations If by erring in some points of Faith he means some points belonging to the Piety of Faith as Divines use to speak or to the Perfection of Faith or remotely belonging even to the essence or necessity of Faith and wounding it by far-fetcht Consequences I will not deny but even great Councils may possibly be circumvented for a time yet I may safely venture with our Learned Pious Dr. Hammond in his Paraenesis to reckon it among the pio credibilia or a thing piously credible as we say that God will not permit a Council truly General and Free to err in Fundamentals which thus far only I presume to explain that God will never permit them to deny and declare against any Fundamental Truth and much less to affirm and declare any Fundamental Errour to be a Truth and least of all to declare it a Fundamental Truth And if this Author asks which of God's Promises give us encouragement to hope and believe this I refer him to the Prophet Isaiah ch 30. v. 20. And though the Lord give you the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yet shall not thy Teachers be removed into a Corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers That this Chap. is Evangelical will not I suppose be denied and so is that Isai 54. 17. and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment shalt thou condemn If this be denied to be spoken of the Christian Church I prove it undeniably from our Saviour's application of the Context And all thy Children shall be taught of God It was then a Prerogative of the Christian Church that her Teachers should be driven into

a kind of Chest that was fram'd for the purpose and plac'd them so that their Tayls should be gently screwed up through certain holes in a board and so they should be fastned all along in a row and Needles under their Tayls so dispos'd or plac'd that as the Musician struck the Keys the Needles prickt their Tayls which so nickt the Cats when the Organist came to play a lesson upon them that still as they were toucht they set up their Notes some high some low according to their several Capacities which made such harmony saies he as made the Rats dance and the men ready to burst with laughing Just such a Machine of a Church would this Author make us as this Musical Instrument if instead of our Screwing up the Non-conformists which we do not or their Screwing us up which once they did sufficiently he could screw them into the Church without more ado by this Project of his for Universal Toleration at least of all or very many Sects except the Papists for by what he delivers not only concerning the Ceremonies but also concerning Articles of Faith we may well conclude that he would not only have the Presbyterians who seem to stand out only upon Punctilio's of Ceremonies but also Independents Anabaptists and I know not how many more Sects if they call themselves Protestants taken into the Church or rather into the Drag-net as Bishop Laney calls it in his Sermon about Comprehension large and capacious enough to hold the Leviathan himself whom this Author follows a great way in his Notions of Sufficient or Insufficient Means for Peoples Conviction And when all such are received into the Church what will they do but set up their Cries and make their rude Noises in it if any thing in it afterward happens to pinch them Then instead of any Harmony or Concord I doubt there would be nothing in the Church but such a Discord as would make us only ridiculous to all that come near us Animadversions upon his Chapter concerning Church-Service HIS next discourse concerning Church-Service is all of a piece with the foregoing one about Ceremonies but one comfort is 't is not of so great length and every whit as remarkable for shortness of Reason Yet here as he makes his entrance he is a pretender to Reason for he slights and passes by some with whom he has no Reason to expect that reasonable Arguments should prevail Is he then for Reasonable Arguments But he should have added this Caution Provided they be not deduc'd from Scripture for you have seen he thinks it unsafe to make Deductions that is to Reason from thence Well he Supposes there is nothing in our Common-Prayer-book that is directly contrary to the Word of God and I may justly suppose till the contrary be proved that there is nothing in it contrary to the Word of God either directly or indirectly and p. 29. He also Conceives it absolutely necessary to have some Form prescribed to be used by all c. But now In Christ he humbly beseeches the Governours of the Church calmly to consider Were it not better to have such a form of Service as would satisfie most It is to be doubted or rather 't is out of doubt that most who are so unsatisfied with this are disgusted with all Sett Forms or would not be satisfied with any other Therefore we must be excus'd from trying his trick till he or some other Undertaker have corrected Magnisicat and the People the People whom he would have so caress'd have declared themselves satisfied with it or else have subscribed a Blank to be satisfied with whatever the New Projectors shall introduce His next Pique is at our saying the Second Service at the Altar which he saies was retain'd by the Fathers and first Reformers from Popery as carrying some resemblance with the Mass the Peoples delight which being now become the Peoples hate should for the same Resemblance by the same Reason be taken away For our Reading the Second Service at the Altar any one that can but read and is not a mere stranger in the Old Liturgicks knows that the Prayers were at the Altar many whole Ages before Popery either Name or Thing was heard of Therefore unless this Author knew the Reformers thoughts he can have no reason to put it upon them not at all for their honour though he would fain have it so that they prescribed this as carrying some resemblance to the Mass the peoples delight Why should he dream they did it to follow the Multitude in the Novelties of Popery and not rather to follow the Primitive Church I suppose the Reformers meaning in prescribing the Priest's going up to the Altar still was to declare and testifie to the Christian World that the Church of England highly approves Communion upon all High Daies as the Christian Sacrifice of Commemoration and the most Sacred Office in our Publick Worship and as it was constantly used in the Ancient Church upon every Lord's Day and every Solemn Festival They would no longer allow the Priest to receive the Sacrament alone because there was no ground either in the Scripture or the Fathers for such a Solitary Communion The very terms sound like a Contradiction But for all that the Refor●ers from Popery kept up the Communion Service at the Communion Table and so the Rubrick orders it still where the Place will bear it for it must be confess'd many of our Parish Churches are so built that the Second Service cannot be audibly read from the East end But where it can there it ought to be for a very sufficient reason that the mem●ry at least of Weekly if not Daily Sacraments might not be lost and that if the Peoples Devotion could be raised again which the Monkery of those times had turned into the Formality of Communicating once a year as the Roman Church requires no more of Lay persons then the Priest should be in his station to shew himself ready to Administer not only thrice a year which is all our Church has thought fit to exact hitherto but every Sunday and Holy-day It were better then that we fell to our prayers and endeavours that the People may be so well fitted and prepared to Receive as the Primitive frequency of Sacraments may be restor'd than to sit and make wishes that Reading the Second Service at the Altar may be taken away How consistent he is with himself in that which follows in the same page requiring Uniformity and Conformity after such and such Amendments I have already discoursed and shew'd it unpracticable even upon his own Principles As for his varying the Phrase and saying that again p. 24. which he had said over and over that Certainly his Religion is vain that would abandon the substance for want of the Ceremonies which he acknowledges to be no way necessary I answer that certainly his Religion is as vain if not vainer that would abandon the Substance as they do