Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n
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A67237
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The pretensions of the triple crown examined in thrice three familiar letters ... / written some years ago by Sir Christopher Wyvill ...
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Wyvill, Christopher, Sir, 1614-1672?
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1672
(1672)
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Wing W3787; ESTC R34104
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91,353
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203
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sixth Carthaginian Council so stifly have opposed Zosymus then Bishop of Rome and his successour Boniface till at last they evidenced his pretensions to be false by the attestation which Cyrillus Bishop of Alexandria and Atticus of Constantinople gave to the Nicene Canons The Pope had his Deputy at the Council of Basil Its Decrees together with those of Constance confirmed by Apostolick Letters of Eugenius Anno 1449. ratified by Nicholas 5. In them the Authority of a Council is set above the Pope and he is subjected to it This is certainly to them a very pungent Dilemma Either let them confess that a Council confirmed by the Pope may err or let the Decrees pass for Catholick Doctrine For our parts we think we can bring an infallible instance from this Council I mean of Constance that they may err Since in that very Decree which they dared to make against the Communion in both kinds they acknowledge that they went against the first Institution But the Jesuites now at last for what reason they know best will after all this poother have the whole privilege fitted to the narrow dimensions of the Pope's Breast Bellarmine lib. 2. de Conc. cap. 12. 18. Thus at last all Councils must be brought back to the Bishop of Rome's Examination that what he approves may pass what he is not satisfied in may fall to the ground Gregory de Valentia Ann. lib. 8. cap. 3. Thus the Pope indeed ought to use all good means and diligence to find out Truth But whether doth he so or no If he undertake to determine in a Controversie he always does it infallibly This is well and soundly to the purpose yet before they do vest him with that Prerogative or ascertain it to him they put such conditionary Qualifications upon him he must be duly elected whereto abundance of odd things must concur he must not openly nor in his heart which no body can ever understand be a favourer of Heresie and the like as 't is the hardest thing in the World to know when it is fix'd and therefore no competent ground-work to rear our Faith upon Popery has its several Depths wherein the Members of the Romish Communion however they would bear others in hand and divers of them may themselves believe that there 's nothing but Unity among them are more or less immers'd Yet from a concession made by their daring Vasquez though not made with any design of reconciliation but upon grounds that must perpetuate the Breach I can methinks bring the most of our English Papists and a great part of their more ancient and more modest Writers within the comprehension of true though not in all regards sound Belief That bold Jesuite where he so eagerly contends for the condigne Merit of Works done by infused Grace and scorns to derive it from any Covenant or Acceptation on God's part made thus argues And indeed the consequence is very strong though the use he would make of it be very impertinent His words are If our Works were not of themselves before any Promise worthy but became so by vertue of a Promise the Merits of Christ must necessarily be applied and imputed to bring such Dignification to them Quaest. 1 2. Disp. 3. cap. 6. Now for such among them as do owne a Tenent that will undeniably fetch in the Merits of Christ though it be not in a way so explicit as is proper for the raising the Soul to those discoveries of strong Consolation which may flow from the Doctrine rightly understood I dare not but be so charitable as to think That if they joyned a sincere Piety to that measure of Faith they shall have their share in the Resurrection of the Just at the last Day Their Notions seem as to this great business to run into disorder upon a supposition That the Merits of Christ are applied to the Works not to the Persons of the Regenerate To sift therefore these things a little Consider 1. That the gratious Condonation whereby God is pleased not to animadvert the Obliquities nor the gratuitous acceptation which he vouchsafes to our best Actions can neither of them relate to the Works themselves nor have such influence upon them as to render them now Legitimate which were before Anomious Will any body say or think That those illegal proceedings whereof many in England were guilty ceased to be Treason as soon as the King's Grace had by the Act of Oblivion quitted their Persons from punishment Though God in like manner through the greatness of his mercy do let all our guilt pass into the Land of forgetfulness yet there is an holy just good eternal exceeding broad Law which must not pass away till all be fulfilled which requires the whole heart and reaches the very inmost thoughts Notwithstanding Remission this Law remains unfulfilled still and poor Dust and Ashes in whose hands through the weakness of the Flesh it fail'd of its End would be left groveling on this side heaven if the glorious light of the Gospel did not manifest a new way thither not by patching up or ekeing out the rags of our Works but by putting on us the Garments of our elder Brother and by directing us when we plead with our Maker for the blessing to make mention of his Righteousness only The clearest intimation of this is had from Jer. 23. 6. and 33. 16. laid together where the Spouse and her Heavenly Bridegroom are united and put together under one Appellation He shall be called yea and She shall be called too THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS 'T is prodigiously strange it should seem strange to any that there should be a Communication betwixt the Head and the Members such as may derive the fulness which is in the one purposely for that end unto the other see Colos. 1. 19. John 1. 16. Colos. 2. 9. 10. especially when they admit of a Communication of the Members one with another by Supererrogation whereof Scripture is absolutely silent Of Prayer to Saints THE Agents for the Church of Rome who have indeed a singular Dexterity in adapting their Discourses to the frame of the times wherein and to the temper of the persons wherewith they are conversant do think fit to assault this Generation train'd up to a deplorable inadvertency through the unsetledness and discomposure which lately was upon us by mincing or veiling those Doctrines and Practices most lyable to exception putting upon them such a varnish as may look best to the eyes of transient slight beholders Thus they bear us in hand that the Adoration paid by them to Saints and Angels is an innocent humble safe thing whereby they only bespeak and who will not desire to make a friend in the Court those favourites of Heaven to be on their side If this were all yet since we are sure that he with whom we have to do perfectly discerns all the desires all the necessities of his Supplicants a Prerogative no Potentate on Earth is capable of
the ancient Doctors of the Church When I observe him going on with a kind of indignation thus Now and therefore but newly We learn That Christ in the business committed to him by the Father owed to his Mother Obedience That now in Heaven she may command him according to a Form of Invocation it seems then usual Shew thy self a Mother That Heaven is a Debt to our Works of Condignity When I say such a man as he groans as it were under the burthen of the Innovations in his time it 's enough to establish in me this belief That ab initio non fuit sic The first divinely inspired Workmen upon a good foundation built up a Noble Structure of Gold and Silver but their degenerating Prentices laid thereupon rows of Stone Brick Lome Slime Rubbish Yet though the Church of Rome was in respect of many of the chief Prelates and a Predominant Faction guilty of Errors there were divers disliked them and desired a Reformation though not holding themselves obliged to refuse her Communion till she with open face owned some grosser Tenets and enjoyned them to be received under a Curse about the year 1160. and then came out from her a People professing the same Affirmatives and Negatives with us And there wanted not some who may be said to have even Prophesied long before Luther of that Restauration of Primitive Truth which we and our Fathers have seen I suppose those mens Faith which eyes onely the splendour and outward glory of Professors if they had been to chuse their Religion when God was pleased to support his almost despairing because to his own sight single Prophet with an assurance That there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee unto Baal would have been at a sore loss And however those who sat in Moses's Chair had at our Saviour's Coming made the Law of God of none effect by their Traditions yet many believed on him old Simeon Zachary and Elizabeth c. who Communicated in the outward Sacraments and Discipline of the Church but were the Flock of another Fold You will reply here perhaps The Word of God is large in Promises concerning the great Extent and flocking of the Gentiles to the Church of Christ. How are they fulfill'd The very taking down the Partition-Wall when the whole World was cried free to come to God and the enlarging of the Churches Bounds till then impaled within the Confines of Jury even to as many as the Lord our God shall before his second Coming call was certainly a very glorious Work and the main end of such Predictions Thus St. Paul affirms the Gospel to have in his time been preached to every Creature under Heaven and doubtless there was grand access to the Church by the Labours of the Apostles and their Successors Yet we are told of a Mystery of Iniquity beginning to Creep even then and ought not to forget that we are fore-warned of a season when the Woman was to be forced into the Wilderness The Estate of the Church is like that of the Moon sometimes in the Wane and sometimes by God's permission suffering grievous Eclipses but since by his goodness she can again at other seasons elevate her head the Gates of Hell cannot be said to have prevailed against her Next let me intreat you to put one Question to those ne'er-erring Doctors and if they give you a positive Answer it may incourage you to take more of their advices Is it the Pope is it a Councel or both together or which of them severed is it upon which you ought to Pinn your Belief Believe me and that were a thing worth knowing But let not the Romanists vaunt so much of their Unity so long as in this Cardinal Point for no less than the whole Frame of their Religion turns with it they are at variance amongst themselves The Jesuits for the most part cry up the Pope many others both ancient and modern stand for the Councils in my judgment the third sort who plead for them conjoin'd are the least irrational though 't is evident enough that even their United Results have deviated for we discover them Poynt-blank thwarting one another and that of Trent protested against even by the French domineering over them all Sixtus the Fifth and Clement the Eighth authorized both their very much disagreeing Editions of the Bible both injoyned their own and only that to be used under an Anathema both were back'd with the Authority of a Council What stir has been about the introducing and rejecting Images What Animosities and Bickerings between Stephen the Sixth Formosus Theodorus the Second Romanus John the Tenth and Sergius Even such as would not suffer them to rest in their Graves without being taken thence dismembred and thrown into Tyber The first Nicene Council allowed the Marriage of Priests and Communion in both kinds The later Councils of Constance and Basil forbid the Laity the use of the Cup and Trent interdicteth both Marriage to the Clergy and the Cup to the People The General Council of Constantinople overthrows Images the second Nicene decrees for them again that of Franckford under Charles the Great determines them Idolatrous and goes so far as solemnly to accurse the Council of Nice The third Council of Carthage pronounceth him accursed that shall call himself Universal Bishop and terms such an one the Forerunner of Antichrist The Tridentine Assembly threatens in no lower Phrase all whosoever do deny the Pope that Title which he could never scrue himself into till the Eastern Patriarchs and their Jurisdiction now swallowed up by the Turk and the Western Empire weakned by its own divisions gives him lieve still to think himself secure in it he drove on his Ends by striking such a Bargain with Phocas that Murthering Usurper Lastly to draw off something from the opinion which may I suspect possess you of their perfect Unity at present though their Religion consisting much in the Shell of Outward Rites and Performances is more easily conspired in I shall let you see how even since the Famous Definition of Trent as Vasquez phrases it their disagreements and differences are not inconsiderable Else why could not that Council declare what was its own meaning when it was called on to arbitrate betwixt Dominicus Soto and Ambrose Catherinus who both were present at the drawing the Canons yet Writ in Books now Extant irreconcileably concerning Original Sin and the Doctrine of Justification But those Fathers had it certainly in design to speak ambiguously in most of their Decrees framing them so as every one might take them in a sence best suting to his own apprehension and then forbad all manner of Commentaries to be made upon them so their words were Unisons not regarding what differing Crotchets were retained in their Opinions c. Now for our selves though I do infinitely bewail the differences amongst us it lessens my