Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	ancient_a	father_n	primitive_a	3,741	5	8.1245	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66403	A manual, or, Three small and plain treatises viz. 1. Of prayer, or active, 2. Of principles, or positive, 3. Resolutions, or oppositive [brace] divinity / translated and collected out of the ancient writers, for the private use of a most noble lady, to preserve her from the danger of popery, by the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Arch-Bishop of York.	Williams, John, 1582-1650.	1672 (1672)	Wing W2711; ESTC R38653	30,581	162

We dignifie them as Saints by celebration we dare not deifie them as Gods by invocation Your own men confess there is for this praying to Saints neither precept nor example in all the Bible And Origen made but a question S. Basil an If Gregory Nazianzene a thinking or an opinion only of this which you make an Article of Faith We are commanded to call upon God upon him only for he is our King of old and we are stark mad if we think to better our selves by changing of Masters Pap. I but how will you answer Antiquity For I have been told that there are found in the writings of the Ancient Fathers prayers made to many of the Saints and Holy men departed Prot. If you please to observe them well you shall find they are no Orisons but Orations A certain kind of passionate and rhetorical exclamations made unto the dead concerning some notable events happened unto the Church in general or the parties themselves in particular This is easily believed of them who use to read the Greek Fathers which are full of such ejaculations in their affectionate Discourses And that their passages are no Prayers this is an argument Because there is not any of all these Fathers when they treat of Prayer as it is their usual theam of set purpose and handle all the objects and kinds thereof that ever mention one syllable of this prayer to Saints This is an answer will never be taken away by any of your side Now if your Priests took an hint hereby to erect Masses for the dead I hope you know they loose nothing by the bargain Pap. You likewise contemn and deride the Reliques of the Saints which are shewed preserved and adored in our Churches Prot. We are so far from contemning any thing in this kind that did we know them to be true reliques and no impostures we should honour them more than you do to wit with an honourable and Christian burial We hear indeed that there were of old b some Christians that attributed too much to the reliques of the Martyrs but we hear from the same Father The better sort of Christians did not so And we hold it very idle to propose for our imitation any other than the best and most absolute pattern Pap. You do also speak basely of the blessed Virgin and compare her to your own Wives and such baggages Prot. A rayling Frenchman doth charge Melancthon with such a comparison but that Book or passage he cites is not to be found among the works of that most learned and modest writer However our Church hath never a Saint Ruffyn as yours hath to heal all frenzies and madnesses and we count no better of those desperate speeches that any one shall vomit against the glorious Virgin Yet I think your men abuse her far more one calling her a Goddess another the Goddess of the sea which is the title of Venus In very deed you all abuse her For as one well observes when you say your Ave Maries you pray for her But we hold as to pray for her to be most injurious so to pray to her to be most unlawful and superstitious Pap. Also you never use to pray for the dead although the Ancients did so Prot. We dare not indeed For if they be in Heaven we shall wrong them if in hell we cannot help them and Purgatory b your own men confess was never heard of amongst the Ancients Now for those prayers for the dead in the old Liturgies they were conceived if you mark them for men dying and passing not dead already and so they are still used in the Church of England and most diligently and devoutly in the Collegiate Church of Westminster But to stretch and extend these Collects to men stone-dead and past their particular judgements was a pretty project of the Monks and Fryars and they were very well pay'd for their wit and invention as you shall find when you shall have occasion to purchase a Mass for any of your kindred departed Pap. Nay say you nothing of the Mass for out of malice and derogation from the Sacrifice therein offered you have bred in the people such a slight opinion of the Blessed Sacrament as they make of it but a bare sign or a token or a figure or I cannnot tell what And dare not conceive Christ to be there for fear of imprisonment or the high Commission Prot. We do indeed acknowledge no oblation in the Blessed Sacrament but a lively commemoration of that oblation of Christ which he offered upon the Cross for our redemption Nor any Sacrifice at all but that Sacrifice of Collects Prayers and Thanksgiving which the Church poures out unto God at the receiving of the Sacrament And these commemorations and Collects are the reason why the Supper of the Lord was termed by the Ancients a Sacrifice an Oblation the Eucharist the Hoast c. But the reverence due to this great Sacrament is as observable as the manner of Christs presence therein is unexpressible The names of a figure a signe a type and the like we keep to expound the words only but not as though they were keys to open and unfold the manner of the mystery The speech is to be expounded figuratively because This and Christs body before the pronounciation of the last syllable of the words are disparats and of a contrary nature But Christ is present there for the matter substantially truly really nay most truly and most really and more truly and more really than the Bread and the Wine but for the manner ineffably and unexpressably And this is that Calvinistical doctrin you so much cavil at and deride 1. We honour the Saints with Ecclesiastical observation but not with a Spiritual adoration 2. The Ancient Fathers made Orations but no Orisons unto them 3. The blessed Virgin is more abused by Papists who make her To give suck to a Priest Vincent Spec. hist l. 7. 84. Mend Thomas a Beckets old hose Cantib l. 2. c. 29. 12. Heal a scab'd Head Caes l. 7. c. 25. Clip a Monk Id. l. 7. c. 51. Kiss another Id. l. 7. c. 33. Sing to a third Id. l 7. c. 22. Lie between Man and Wife Vincent l. 7. c. 8. Supply a Nuns place that was gone to a Bawdy House Caesar lib. 7. cap. 35. Bring an Abbesse to Bed gotten with Child by her Serving-man Vincent Spec. hist lib. 7. cap. 87. 4. We are ready to bury but not to adore reliques 5. We pray for men departing as the Fathers did not for the departed as the Fryars did 6. Christ is the Sacrament really for the matter ineffably for the manner CHAP. V. Some idle personal exceptions Prot. HAve you any other points of our Religion that you stumble at Pap. These are the main points of your Religion

righteously because it is the Will and Commandment of God 7. If you take more delight than you did in praying to God 8. If you thank God privately for these his good motions By these eight points you may soon know whether you have true faith or not Q. What is the infallible mark of true and justifying Faith A. The effectual applying of Christ and all his benefits to your own soul in particular And is then only effectual when it worketh by love an impartial obedience to the Commandments of Christ This application doth make a difference betwixt justifying Faith and all other kinds of Faith which cannot save us As Historical Faith which is a a bare assent Faith of Miracles which is a bare confidence added to assent Temporary Faith which is but a bare profession of the Faith for a time embraced only for the desire of Knowledge Credit Profit Q. What is the meaning of this assertion of S. Pauls that we are justified by faith alone A. It is meant of a practical and working Faith for even as when you give your alms to a Begger it is received by his hand alone and yet his hand is not alone when it receives these alms but accompanied with an arm sinews and arteries Even so when God offers unto you Christ and his righteousness you do receive him by Faith alone as it stands in opposition to the deeds of the Law and yet this Faith which receives Christ is never alone but still accompanied with Charity good Works In a word 1. To hold alms is proper to the hand and not the arm and to hold Christ proper to Faith not good works 2. You are justified by Faith alone and yet if your Faith be alone it cannot justifie you Q. What is the meaning of St. James when he saith That we are justified by works and not by Faith only A. His meaning is clearly that obedience to God's Commands as well as Faith in his Promises is absolutely required to our Justification Q. What is the least and weakest degree of Faith that I may build upon to keep me from despair in case I find not all those alterations in my self which you spake of before A. 1. If you desire Faith or pray unto God that you may desire Faith 2. If you can pray or desire of God to enable you to pray 3. If you find fault with your want of Faith and desire sometimes of God to help this want 4. If you dare not live indulgently in any one wilful or deadly sin but sincerely and earnestly strive against it Then you are for all your doubting the child of God RESOLVTIONS Oppositive DIVINITY OR The ordinary Objections of Papists against them of the Reformed Churches A DIALOGUE Papist Protestant CHAP. I. Of the Church Papist THe Church of England is no Church Protest That were very strange considering your own Writers conclude a Church to be there where there is found 1. Doctrine of salvation according to Scripture 2. the Vse of the Sacraments and 3. outward Discipline or Ecclesiastical Government although the Church-men should fall short of those Apostolical and primitive perfections which flourished in their predecessors Pap. Yea but it is not the Catholick Church mentioned in the Creed I believe in the Catholick Church Prot. 1. No more is the Church of Rome For there was no Church at all in Rome when the Creed was made by the Apostles at Hierusalem every Apostle making his Article when they were to depart to plant particular Churches in Rome England and other places 2. But our Church is a branch and portion of that Catholick Church as is also the Greek Armenian Aethiopian and Syrian as well if not rather than the Roman Church Pap. Peradventure these other Churches may be members of that Catholick Church as joyned and united with us but the union betwixt your Church and ours hath been cut asunder above an hundred years agone and therefore you are quite cut off from the Catholick Church Prot. This is more than you know or than I am bound to believe For This union of the members of the Catholick Church is inward not outward and therefore discerned only by God himself We never sundred our selves from the People or Church of Rome but from the Faction or Court of Rome not from the sincere doctrin of that Church but from the corruptions and innovations foisted into that Church And therefore although we be never so hated and excommunicated by your Priests yet we may be still united in internal society with your Church if you retain those principles of Religion sound and unaltered in the which our forefathers died and as we well ●ope were saved Pap. How are you then gone from us if you be still ●nited with us Prot. As the Prophets went from the corrupt Churches of the Jews and as Christ and his Apostles from the Scribes and Pharises clamando dissentiendo by crying out against your corruptions and dissenting from your innovations and this your own men allowed us to do Pap. I but some of your men say that we had no true Church of God in the West of many years before Luther's time Prot. Their meaning is to be limited in respect of the Predominant and prevailing Faction Your Church held I confess a saving profession of the Truthmof God but your Church-men mingled therewith many damnable impieties And these innovators only carrying the greatest shew of the Church are denied by our Writers to be the true Church of God Pap. This it is we Catholicks observe You dare not for all your malice deny the Church of Rome to have in some sort a saving profession of the truth of God but our Priests conclude directly that your Church hath no truth at all and that none can be saved in that Church Prot. As in every Kingdom the general estate is nothing so forward active quick and peremptory as the private Factions and yet is found at the last more wise and staied in final resolution So in the Catholick Church the Factions are ever more heady and precipitate in their denunciations of Heaven and Hell than the main body thereof Hence it cometh to pass that although the Greek Armenian Ethiopian and Syrian and for the most part the Protestant doth censure charitably of those Laicks who living rather in than of the Church of Rome hold the grounds of the doctrin of Salvation without any notorious mixtures with the late superstitions and impieties crept into the same yet doth the Papist Russeist Anabaptist Familist and Puritan hold no Church a Church of God but his own conventicle and all to be damn'd that are not of his society and combination Now what belief you shall afford these Boutefeux of the Catholick Church that dispose of Heaven and Hell as if it were their own Fee-simple I leave to your wisdom and common understanding Pap. Me thinks

you now put me in mind of another objection which usually we make against the Protestants of England that they bring in too much good fellowship in Religion and make Salvation a flower which grows in every mans Garden Seeing that according to their Tenets Papist Protestant Anabaptist and Familist may every one of them by means offered in his own Church as a portion or fragment of the Catholick Church attain unto Salvation Prot. If you were learned I could answer you in a word that none of these three Sectaries considered in his own Formality Quatalis as he is a Papist Anabaptist or Familist can ever attain unto Salvation but only as he is a Christian man admitted by Baptism unto the visible Church and there made partaker of Gods word and Sacraments For then although these blessed means are very much weak'ned and obscured in their Synagogues by the malice of Sathan and inventions of men yet may that holy Spirit that bloweth where he listeth work in such a mans heart by these weak instruments and the rather the more the Word is faithfully preached and the Sacraments be in those places sincerely administred a true faith in Christ Jesus to bring him to salvation So then we do not hold that Papists Anabaptists and Familists but only that some Christians living in their congregations may though with great difficulty in comparison of this flourishing Church of ours and these admirable means of Salvation tendered in the same by the special mercy of God be saved and preserved If we be in an errour it is safer to erre in Charity than in Malice and precipitancy considering the event hereof is unknown to either of us Pap. I but where was your Church before this reformation began Prot. 1. When our Saviour Christ with-drew the people from the leaven of the Scribes and Pharises to the bread which came down from Heaven and to salvation by faith in his Name was it fitting to demand of him where his Church was before that Reformation 2. When these Churches of Corinth Galatia Pergamus and Thiatyra were full of abuses if some part only upon the preaching of the Apostles had reformed themselves and so a division had grown would you straight waies have tax'd them of Novelty or ask'd them where their Church had been before this reformation 3. When the Apostles cast off the Law of Moses excepting only those three or four Ceremonies and when the primitive Church some hundred years after cast off those Ceremonies also for I find them breathing of their last as it were about the times of Justin Martyr had it not been a poor challenge of the Jews or Traskists of those times to demand where this unceremonial Church lay hid before the reformation I answer then that our Church before this reformation began lived together in one communion with yours with toleration of all those abuses which you have still retained and we most justly rejected Pap. I but I hope you dare not compare in the gifts of the Spirit with Christ his Apostles or those worthies of the primitive Church And therefore how presumed you to reform your selves Reformation being a work fitter for a general Councel to have gone about than for a small handful of Northern people Prot. The Court of Rome had so gained upon the Church of Rome that is the Pope and his Conclave of Cardinals had wriggled in themselves to that transcendency of power over the rest of the Clergy and well minded laity that it appeared both at Constance and Trent there was small hope of Reformation from such a Council where the Pope the party to be reformed became the party reforming and supream Judge and president of the Reformation it self Although poor seduced ignorant women are much carried away with the name of the Councel of Trent yet you will quickly find out this ridiculous absurdity In a general Council as now it is held since the decay of the Empire the Pope is the party to be accused yet puts up his own endictment passeth a jury of his own vassals and find they what they will being to give final judgement he will be sure to do as his supposed predecessor taught our Saviour to do to wit favour himself So as there was no hope of doing good by a General Councel unless it were a generous and free Councel and such a one the Pope you may be sure would never abide And therefore one of your own writers concludes that in such a case several Kingdoms are to reform themselves by National Councels which England and Denmark did put in practise Pap. Yea but it is too well known it was no zeal of Reformation but carnal respects that moved King Henry to touch upon Religion Prot. To you it seems it is given to know these secrets but I see no reason we should think so The King could not be induced to this reformation as a means to possess himself of the Abbeies for they were already swallowed up Nor as a preparative for his woing as Saunders thinks because Fisher the Bishop of Rochester who opposed his Marriage made up the one and twentieth prelate in banishing the Pope out of this Kingdom But without doubt the finger of God was the cause whatsoever was the hint or occasion Festus his popularity and humour of pleasing gave S. Paul occasion to appeal to Caesar and to visit Rome where and when he laid the first Stone of the Romane Church Would you like it well a Protestant should say that your Church was founded upon Courtship and popularity If any carnal respect whetted on the King that was but the opportunity God only was the first mover and prime Agent in this reformation Pap. Nay surely God is the God of unity but your Church being once severed from the Roman was presently can●l'd out into as many factions almost as there are Countries witness the Lutherans soft and rigid the Calvinists Puritans Conformitans Brownists Anabaptists c. So as one may easily ghess from what Lerna and fenny ground this Hydra of so many heads had her first Original Protest This Argument sounds very bigg in a Ladies closet and weighs much with the ignorant and unlearned people but with a man but of a reasonable understanding this seeming division is no scandal at all to our reformed Churches What man of any reading in the Histories of the time but knows well that after the trumpet for this reformation had blown the first warning by Wicklef Hus and Hierome of Prage and then the second by Gerson Peter de Aliaco Cardinal Cusanus Picus Mirandula Savanorola and many others of whom we read in Guicchiardyn when Luther in Germany blew the last and that there appeared no hope of a free and indifferent Council so as several Kingdoms were thus necessitated to provide and take care for themselves this worthy

upon Christ's shoulders by the means of these two fine words Not imputing and imputing and a third swimming notion of your own conceipt which any man may have with a little imagining termed by you faith it would be known therefore where your Church hath found out these words of Art in the Holy Scriptures Prot. We do in all humility confess that the globe of our sins and the World of that righteousness which is to appear in the presence of Gods Justice is too massie for us to sustain that are but dust and ashes and subportable only by that Atlas Christ Jesus upon whose shoulders not our conceits but the goodness of God hath plac'd and pressed them But that these words imputing and not imputing are such Greek unto you I do impute it to your not reading of Scriptures and taking up your Religion by trust and credit from such Fripperers and Brokers as by lending your souls a false opinion of Merits and good works do dive into your purses and eat up your estates by way of interest Not to trouble you as I might with a thousand places ask David whether not imputing of sin and S. Paul whether the imputing of Christs righteousness doth not make us blessed and justified For the words use your own eyes and inspection And for the meaning I refer you to S. Augustin upon the one and St. Ambrose his commentary upon the other passage Now that you fondly imagin that Faith this Heavenly hand that reacheth at this double Act and applies it to our own Souls is such an apprehension as you may command when you please out of your own phantasie it is such a poor opinion that no Soul warmed with the least touch or feeling of religion but contemns with a most holy scorn and reproach I tell you and if you once have it your conscience will tell you no less this Faith is the richest jewel in Gods cabinet and can never be compas'd by any sole endeavour of ours until the Holy Ghost comes down from Heaven to set and enchase it in our hearts with his own fingers as it were And being once obtained it new molds and fashions the whole nature of man so as the understanding becomes more enlightned to know God the will to obey God the affections to love God and our brethren Nor can it be preserved to the comfort of our conscience without daily praying meditating doing good works reading the Scriptures hearing good Sermons and perusing of devout and Godly Treatises My belief therefore is this God not imputing sin and imputing righteousness is the worker The Merits of Christ the procurer Faith wrought by the Holy Ghost the instrument or applier good works or my inherent righteousness poor as it i is partly a concause or a necessary condition and partly an effect of my Justification For Faith it self does sanctifie in part and thereupon it is God that justifies Pap. I have heard some of your side rail against the very name of inherent righteousness which you seem now to acknowledge and embrace Do Protestants therefore challenge any other righteousness besides that of Christ's which is imputed Prot. They do acknowledge a Sanctification or inherent righteousness in the same sense as the ancient Fathers took the Word but not as Jesuits of late mistake it We have righteousness inherent or subsisting in us according to which we shall be judged but not according to which we shall be juctified though we cannot be justified in the whole unless in some measure such as God in Christ accepts we be sanctified first Which yet we cannot be of our selves but by Gods free Grace We cannot therefore plead Merits as you of Rome are wont to do at the Throne of God For Faith it self cannot justifie although without it we cannot be justified That indeed is a Condition but God in Christ is the sole Author of our Justification because by him and by him alone our sins are not imputed to us You make your righteousness to go before as the cause we ours to come after as the effect of justification Pap. But have you any use of your Free-will in either righteousness I mean that imputed or this inherent Or are you as some relate your opinions meerly suffering and passive like so many stocks and stones casting not so much as a sigh grone or short wish towards this great work of your conversion Prot. In our first conversion to be righteous we are not like so many Niobes or images of marble which move not at all but as they are in the whole lump carted and transported Our understandings not affording themselves the least glymps of knowledge nor our wills the least shew of inclination unto this Act but being quickened enlivened by the engines of Grace and motions of the Holy Ghost in our souls and consciences our understandings wills and affections do cooperate and run along with the Grace of God in all our works of piety and devotion The points therefore of this Chapter are these 1. Justification consists in Gods not imputing of Sin and in his imputing of Christs righteousness unto us 2. It is not our conceipt but the justice and mercy of God which layes this load on our Saviour Christ 3. Whosoever is acquainted with the Scripture cannot be unacquainted with imputed righteousness 4. Imputed righteousness is soon appprehended but infused Faith must be first obtained 5. We have an inherent righteousness in part which is the Condition of our Justification 6. Grace alone works our justification grace and we together but we in the second place our Sanctification CHAP. IV. Of Saints Souls of the Dead and those dependant Questions Pap. WE are scandalized likewise at your Church because you give no more reverence to the Saints than you do neither praying unto them nor adoring their images nor giving them any set imployment above in Heaven or the least care of us here on earth Which smells very much of the Heresies of the Cainans and Eunomians condemned so many years agone in the Christian Church Prot. What employment the Saints have in Heaven besides the contemplation of God face to face we know not nor do we deny their praying for us Upon earth they receive in our Church all that honour bespoken for them in the primitive Church We keep duely the memorials of the Blessed Virgin and the twelve Apostles and a yearly panegyrical commemoration of all the Martyrs and Saint of God respecting them as our fellowes and friends though not as our Tutelar gods and young little Saviours We admire their lives and as we do not furiously deface so do we not adore their Images Because S. Augustin would fain know where that Christian may be found that prayeth or adoreth beholding an Image We rear them no Temples as to Gods but trophees only of praise as to deserving men S. Paul himself did all this and he did no more