Selected quad for the lemma: church_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A56659
|
Falsehood unmaskt in answer to a book called Truth unveil'd, which vainly pretends to justify the charge of Mr. Standish against some persons in the Church of England / by a dutiful son of that church.
|
Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.
|
1676
(1676)
|
Wing P796; ESTC R11930
|
17,061
|
28
|
together you will see that this must be your meaning or you did not mind what you wrote about but having something in your Head concerning innovations in our Religion regarded not how you applyed it Look over the earnest request to Mr. Standish read the character of the Men a List of whom I desire him to communicate and then apply it to Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor and you will very hardly hold to speak your own language again from asking your self that question which you observe p. 29. Sir John Sucklin ask'd when he found Sir Toby Matthews in the Session of Poets What do they here Perhaps you will as earnestly reply have I not alledged a strange passage out of one of Bishop Taylors Prayers What do you say to it I say I have taken notice of it my self and do not know what he meant but I am sure he was no Socinian and that there is no Socinianism in the words you quote whatsoever there be else and therefore I know not what you meant to thrust them in here where they have nothing to doe There is no man of the Church of England I believe that will answer for every word in that great Mans Writings But no more will any discreet Man of your way answer for all the hard sayings that are in Mr. Calvins I am sure I find in my small Reading the greatest Men who have undertaken his defence absolutely disclaiming their being bound to make good every thing that he said and therefore had it been more pertinent than it is you might have let it pass and not have disturbed Dr. Taylors ashes as they speak but suffered a person of his merit to sleep in peace But some of those that follow perhaps may be of the Racovian stamp though these two be found as innocent as all you have said about them is impertinent Let us try if you please what you have to say to St. George Champion who next follows If we should allow him to have been as you doubt his Dragon too we shall never find him spitting any such venome as that mentioned in Mr. Standish's Sermon You your self cannot charge him with any such thing but detain your Reader only with along tedious reflection in XVII Particulars upon his Cyprianus Anglicus or The Life of our Great Archbishop Laud which still shows that you are beside the Cushion and without question expert as you say of him that Readers should rest upon your Dictates without any searching whether you write to the purpose or no or else you would never have so determinately called your Book a Vindication of Mr. Standish's his Sermon which in truth is far otherwise It would have saved you a great deal of needless pains if you would but have minded the last words of my Request to him which are not mine but the wise Son of Syrach's 11 Ecclus. 7. Vnderstand first and then rebuke You would not have troubled us if you had heeded this good counsel with a story of his Arminianisme strutting through all the pages of his Book which is no more to the Vindication you undertake than the mysterious agency of Panzani and Con which you talk or afterward and that which was a doing I know not when at Clerken well and behind Drury-lane Nor hath the Ghost of Tilenus whom you bring in next any thing to say about the business It is only a dumb apparition and we have nothing but your word for it that it makes very irregular glances and would let out the hearts bloud of sundry truly Protestant Doctrines All that follows it likewise is but wind against Parker Hickringale and sweet Mr. Sherlock as you are pleased in much civility to term him whose Writings you say contain not much more than Sophistical Harangues Perspicuous Calumnies and Prodigious Drolleries What that much more is you will not let us know It is like that as little as you think it it contains a confutation of your accusations For one of those persons whom you rank with them Georgius Bull I am acquainted withall and know him to be both an Holy and a very Learned person who hath in his last Book thrown off this charge of Socinianisme with as much indignation as you can do the Writings of any of the New speaking Gentlemen And there is no body that knows him but is assured he most sincerely declares his inmost thoughts and would not for a world embrace any Doctrine contrary to what hath been taught by the Catholick Church with which he is certain the Church of England is not at odds But why do I make so many words about this sort of Writers Our Books of Devotion will not down with you neither but upon this that is no occasion fall under your lash If they do but omit any thing which you would have in them straitway you quarrel and think it a sufficient reason for your displeasure at them The method and direction for private Devotion is not for your Tooth And which is more the Whole Duty of Man is not secure from your impotent assaults p. 29. and 32. We must use no other Books but such as you like or else quit our Title to the name of the right Sons of the Church of England Instead of the excellent Book last named we must buy the Practice of Piety though far more liable to exceptions in many wise mens judgements than any Book of Devotion you have mentioned or else you will not be in a good humor What an imperious dictating Spirit is this which rules in Men of this strain who will not allow us so much as to speak out of their phrase Is this the Spirit of true genuine Calvinisme which you so highly commend p. 28 Are those that carp at every thing and can relish nothing but what is of their dressing nor fancy any body but those that are exactly of their own cutt the rightest Sons and Fathers of the Church of England Why will you here I fancy interrupt me and be apt to say what have you to object against what I have writ That an Episcopal Calvinist is the rightest Son or Father of the Church of England the best Protestant and if a good man the best Christian p. 28. I answer if you will not count me impertinent for medling with that which was not my present business with you I have very much to object And first I say that no right Son much less Father of the Church of England will endure to be called or thought either a Calvinist or an Arminian for our Church follows no particular man though never so great neither Calvin nor Luther nor Arminius None of these are the founders of its Faith which is not taught by Calvin's or any other Institutions but by the Holy Scriptures interpreted by the Church of Christ in the best ages of it Or to give it you in the words of an once Father of this Church interpreted not according to the fancies and most what
not their own Mothers Son but he must still be persecuted with the same calumnies now that he is laid in his Grave But it is no wonder that Pen should do it which bestows such commendations on him who reproaches not only our Bishops but the most famous persons of that Order which have been known in the Christian world I mean the facetious and candid Marvel as you praise him p. 34. with whom honest Mr. Standish as you there truly term him will not take it well to be joyned in the very same breath as if he carried on the same design with that Gentleman He is an honester man I dare say than you would have him and hates that which you applaud with all his heart What do you really think a Son of the Church of England can be in love with him that laughs at the primitive times and makes a jest of the venerable Council of Nice and drolls upon the Bishops assembled there as if they were a company of pitiful Dunces whose understandings were sequestred and knew not what to believe but as they were every day instructed by their Chaplains p. 58. Call you this Facetiousness And is it Candor too when he tells us in his Rehearsal Transpros'd that the highest pinnacle of Ecclesiastical Felicity for the Clergy still have most of his kindness is to asswage their lust and wrack their malice p. 10. And when in the conclusion of his last work we read that the Bishops have induced His Majesty to more severity than all the Reigns since the Conquests will contain if summ'd up together What Not Queen Maries Reign excepted No nor the late Reign of the Presbyterians and Independents Were the flames in Smithfield and all the Sequestration I am loth to mention all the rest of the dreadful sufferings which our times have known mere gentleness in comparison with the present rigors When with so much lenity also as was never known in any Reign such Books as these are suffered to confute their own accusations Good God! how partial are the best sort of Christians grown if you may be believed who can swallow all this glibly and merrily with a great deal of smuttiness to boot which I have observed in the Rehearsal Transpros'd but keck at Dr. Hammond and the Whole Duty of Man c. which will by no means down with them What an odd kind of Conscience is this which cryes out How long O Lord how long p. 35. as if you wondred at his forbearance because some men speak of justifying Faith in other terms than you would have them and can not only suffer but countenance him who directly strikes at a main Principle of Christianity viz. That our Saviour is the Eternal Son of God begotten before all worlds of one substance with the Father For he saith the Council of Nice imposed a NEW ARTICLE or Creed upon the Christian world when this was the very thing they stood upon that they only declared the antient belief which had always been from the beginning concerning the Son of God What outcries would you have made had any person of our Church been guilty of such a fact How prophane how impious would you have thought it to call that explication which they made of the antient Faith a gibberish of their own imposing a Cant wherein they forced others to follow them How oft would you have repeated your facinus ante hoc inauditum p. 35. and reiterated your Hen in the next pages whereas you can read this in him and be as calm as a Lamb nay entertain him with the friendly complement of the facetious and candid Marvel Well I see by this what the care is which some most zealously pretend to have least there should be the smallest innovation in the Doctrine of the Church of England which expresly declares in the 8 Article that the Nicene Creed together with that of Athanasius and the Apostles ought to be thorowly received and believed for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture And in the Second Article it asserts in plain words the Son to be the very Eternal God of one substance with the Father c. Such is the gibberish of the Church of England as he and you too in effect call it for which if you were indeed as much concerned as you imagine and did not deceive your self with an unequal zeal you would so reason upon this occasion as you fancy you do upon another to beblur your paper with Tears more than Ink. For you cannot pretend that any of those whom you trouble your self so much withal have affronted her Doctrine in so audacious a manner as this Writer hath done whom you can read not only with dry Eyes but with a merry Heart There would have been no end of your complaints could you have found any thing so black in our Books we should have had our ears filled with clamours from all parts of the Kingdom and nothing sounded in them but that Christianity was betrayed the name of our Lord blasphemed c. by an impious Innovator You your self though now you be silent would have joyned with them and said that he had out-done all others in scurrility calumny and prophaneness as you accuse others that deserve a better character you would have sobb'd and sigh'd and sate down full of Marvel you must give me leave to fancy how you would have spoken and in deep astonishment that such a thing such an inauditum facinus should be committed in our Israel And truly I am so astonished at it and at your partiality that I am able to go no further but must here break oft abruptly After I have told you that I am notwithstanding so charitable looking upon you in an ill fit when you writ this Book that as you take me for an honest Countrey Gentleman so I take you for no less which of us is mistaken let the world judge without giving it any further trouble by either of our scriblings about this business It had not been troubled with mine I assure you but that I thought it was necessary you should see your Zeal cannot be so great for one way but there are men in the Church of England who will equal it and are as much concern'd and can say as much for the other way And now that this is done let us betake our selves to our Prayers which is the best employment That God would enlighten all our Eyes to see the way of Truth and Righteousness Amen Octob. 20. 1676. FINIS