Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	good_a	great_a	see_v	2,610	5	3.2126	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42568	An answer to the compiler of the Nubes testium wherein is shewn that antiquity (in relation to the points of controversie set down by him) did not for the first five hundred years believe, teach, or practice as the Church of Rome doth at present believe, teach, and practice : together with a vindication of the Veteres vindicati from the late weak and disingenuous attempts of the author of Transubstantiation defended / by the author of the Answer to Mr. Sclater of Putney.	Gee, Edward, 1657-1730.	1688 (1688)	Wing G453; ESTC R21951	96,934	107

quae est Phrygiae Metropolis lege prohibuit NE PRECARENTVR ANGELOS in hodiernum usque diem licet videre apud illos eorum finitimos Oratoria Sancti Michaelis Theodoret. in Ep. ad Coloss c. 2.18 p. 766. Edit Lat. Paris 1608. of the second Chapter to the Colossians which speaks about the Worshipping of Angels makes this Canon to forbid the praying to Angels and farther that they that were so fond of this Superstition were forced to leave the Churches wherein it seems Invocation of Angels much less of Saints was not to be had nor any such Practices in their Liturgies I will conclude this Chapter and discourse with St. Austin who speaking of the honour due to the Martyrs says that they did not erect Temples to them as if they were Gods but appointed Commemorations of them as dead men whose Spirits are with the Lord that they were named in their place and order but not Invocated by the Priest who sacrificed m Nos autem Martyribus nostris non Templa sicut Diis sed Memorias sicut hominibus mortuis quorum apud Deum vivunt Spiritus fabricamus suo loco ordine NOMINANTVR non tamen à Sacerdote qui sacrificat INVOCANTVR Aug. D. de Civ Dei. l. 22. c. 10. SECT II. The very same Arguments that I had against the Invocation of Saints I must also use against the paying any Worship to their Reliques if the Saints themselves were never admitted by God into any share of his Worship we cannot think their bones or ashes were if the first ages of the Church never robbed God of his Honour by dividing of it betwixt him and his Servants we have much more reason to believe that they would not impart it to the mortal Remains of those Servants This we are certain of that in all the accounts we have of the History and Writers of the first ages of the Church when she certainly was in her greatest purity we find nothing of their solicitude about searching for the Bodies and enshrining the Reliques of Saints not a syllable about any worshipping of them or seeking to them for help and deliverance from diseases or troubles The Apostles and Virgin-Church of Christ had undoubtedly as great a value and as large apprehensions of the vast merit of the first Christian Martyr St. Stephen as any age since can have for any Martyrs or ought to pretend to and yet we find them onely decently interring their Martyred Brother no care about getting Reliques or mangling his Body to have fingers teeth or toes to shew in order to be kissed and prostrated to such foolish and Superstitious Actions were the issue of more degenerate and fancifull times When the blessed Martyr Ignatius had according to his intense desire finished his course with Martyrdom and was delivered a Prey in the Amphitheatre to the cruel Lions who devoured all of him but some hardest bones the Brethren then attending his Martyrdom took up those q Sola enim asperiora sanctorum ossium derelicta sunt qua in Antiochiam reportata sunt in capsa reposita sicut thesaurus inappreciabilis Martyrium S. Ignat. p. 6. Edit Usser 1647. most valued bones carried them to his beloved City and buried them there And not long after when his Fellow-bishop St. Polycarp had glorified his Redeemer in the same way and the faithfull notwithstanding the inveterate groundless malice of the Jews had gathered up all the bones that the fire had left they committed r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. Polycarpum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eccl. Smyrnensis Epistola de Martyrio Polycarpi p. 28. Edit Usser those bones which they valued more than costly Pearls or Gold to burial and celebrated with Joy and Praises the Birth day as the Church then called the day of Martyrdom of this Saint in Memory of him and such as had in the same victorious fights finished their courses and for an incitement and preparation to all that were to combate in such bloudy encounters I cannot pass here the observing of that in this Golden Letter of the Church of Smyrna which will give us the true sentiments and innocent practices of the then Christians the Devil and the malitious Jews by his instigation persuaded the Praefect to deny the Christians leave to take and bury the body ſ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. Diabolus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eccl. Smyrn Epist de Martyrio Polycarp p. 27. Edit Usser 1647. of this blessed Saint Polycarp after the Executioner had done that office upon this Saint which the fire would not lest they should leave their Crucified Saviour and fall to worshipping of him This cheat and malice of the Devil and his Instruments the Church of Smyrna take notice of in this Epistle and shew that spite and ignorance together were the Causes of this Calumny t 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibidem since Christians never could leave the worship and service of Christ who had suffered all for their sins nor pay any worship or adoration to any other person or as the Old Latin Translation hath it nor offer up the supplication of prayer to any other person The Son of God say they we worship and adore but his Martyrs we justly love as being not onely his Disciples but Imitatours of his Sufferings we love them for that very great good-will which they have shewed to their King and Master I have often wondred how they of the Church of Rome who reade this Epistle either dare practise the Worshipping of Saints or Reliques or can pretend to say that Antiquity did doe the same I am sure this Apostolick Church of Smyrna was so far from it that they make it the spite and malice of the Infernal Fiend and the Devilish Jews to say they would and I am as sure that it is little less to say they did worship Saints or Reliques But to return to the Grave of that glorious Martyr we find his bones committed to the Earth after which it was the Care and Practice of the Church to dispose thus of the Bodies of their Martyred Brethren and so very carefull the Church was in the first Ages in this point that the Clergy of the Church of Rome v Et quod maximum est corpora Martyrum aut caeterorum si non sepeliantur grande periculum imminet eis quibus incumbit hoc opus Cleri Rom. ad Cler. Carth. Ep. 8. inter Cypriani Ep. p. 18. Edit Oxon. in their letter to the Clergy at Carthage among a great deal of good advice about Discipline and other things speak of this as a thing of greatest Concern that the Bodies of their Martyrs should be carefully buried by those who had the charge of that business and make it a dangerous fault in these persons to neglect their duty herein After this account of the Practice of the first Ages of the Church about their care of the dead Martyrs and Brethren

Let us now see whether our Compiler can shew us the Practice of the Church to be contrary to what we have here set down and whether he can shew that the Primitive Church did use those Acts of Worship those Prostrations and Kissings those Processions and Resorts to them for Cures and Assistence in Distresses which are now the ordinary stated Practices in the Church of Rome during the three first Centuries which He knows we always insist upon and demand as the surest Witnesses of the Doctrines and Practices of the Apostles and the Church from the beginning Our Compiler is not able to produce even one Instance of any Reliques of Saints treasured up in order to cure Maladies or be prostrated unto but that he may not appear quite destitute of a Testimony from those purest Ages of the Church he brings us in the old Chair of St. James Bishop of Jerusalem but how comes this to be the Relique of that Saint were St. James and his Chair * Nub. Test p. 75. N. Alex. p. 231. so near a-kin as to be both of a piece the world is very low with such people when they are forc'd to bring in old Chairs instead of the Saints Bodies or any parts of them but let it pass for a sort of a Relique does it appear from Eusebius out of whom the quotation is brought that the Christians then worshipped it carried it about in solemn Processions or that it was resorted to for Cures or that it did any great Cures This our Compiler should have shewn and without it I must tell him that this is worse than trifling because we are now about the Defence of the present Practices of the Church of Rome by shewing that the Primitive Church practised the same But F. Alexandre told him and he doth tell us that the Faithfull of the Church of Jerusalem did shew great Reverence to this Chair 't is true Valesius his Translation which Father Alexandre follows here though Christopherson is his man at other times says this but the Mischief is Eusebius himself does not what Eusebius says is that the faithfull at Jerusalem were wont and to that day did shew to all Comers the x 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Euseb Hist Eccl. l. 7. c. 19. Chair it self which St. James sate Bishop in which I think is pretty different from Valesius his translation about shewing great reverence to the Chair it self as to the Honour they then payed to the Memories of the Saints themselves it was but what was highly just and that wherein they are imitated by us as well as any other Christians His next Testimony from St. Cyril y Nub. Test p. 75. Nat. Alex. p. 232. of Jerusalem is so far from being for them that I think it may and ought to rise up as a Witness against them for when God had given such a virtue to the bones of Elisha as to raise a dead man and when that Miracle was wrought by God's permission can our Compiler shew or dare any of his Church pretend to doe it that the Jewish Church did thereupon take up and enshrine the Prophets bones that they appointed Processions to them or did command the Worship of prostration or kissing to be paid to them or that they used to frequent his Monument for the same or like Miracles This they ought to reflect upon and to consider how far the Scriptures are from mentioning or the Jewish Church from practising any religious and superstitious addresses to those bones notwithstanding so extraordinary a Miracle effected by them How happy had it been for the Christian Church if Christians had kept within the same bounds and not given such a helping hand to the Superstitions and Idolatries of after ages by their hunting out and searching so much for the Ashes and Remains of the Servants of God some of whom had been buried above a thousand years before This therefore we must grant to the Members of the Church of Rome that Superstition taking root in the end of the fourth Century of the Church a great part of Religion began to be placed in searching for Martyrs bones in building Churches where they found or fixed them especially when they found that God was pleased at those places I dare not say by those ashes and bones to work Miracles upon which they did pay an Honour to those Reliques but that they did worship them as they now do in the Church of Rome is what themselves so often deny St. Hierome z Nos autem non dico Martyrum Reliquias sed nè Solem quidem non Angelos non Archangelos colimus adoramus D. Hieron adv Vigilant ad Riparium in particular who contended so earnestly for them with Vigilantius Had the Church of Rome stayed here and not proceeded so much farther in these things I do not see that we could have broken Communion with them upon such an account and therefore I need not examine by retail his Testimonies from the latter end of the fourth and fifth Centuries the design of which he himself makes onely to prove that the Fathers kept the Reliques of Saints with Respect and Veneration and believed that God often wrought Miracles by them which we do grant the Fathers of those latter ages did and might doe it too as long as they kept as they said of themselves that they always did from paying Religious Worship unto them but we say withall that what the Christians of those Ages did about these things does no ways defend the present Extravagancies of the Church of Rome the excesses wherein about Reliques are come to that Scandalous height as to make the learned men of their own Church ashamed of them As to the Practice of the Church of England which inquires not after nor is solicitous about the Reliques of Saints this may be said in her Defence that she finds no Practice or Command about any such searching after the bones of the Dead in any part of Scripture of either Testament but that their whole care then was to commit them to their Sepulchres in hopes of a future Resurrection and never to disturb their Ashes and therefore she thinks it must needs be her greatest commendation that she is more carefull to imitate what she finds written and practised in the Scriptures themselves than to imitate what the fourth Age of the Church began to practise when the Church of Christ was near four hundred years old The Holy Scriptures themselves are the Rule of her Faith and for any Apostolical Practices she inquires among them who lived with the Apostles or nearest to them among whom finding nothing of any searching for Reliques or any Miracles done by them in those first three hundred years she is resolved to practise what the Christians of those first and purest Ages did rather than what after-ages did wherein plenty and prosperity let loose the reins to some peoples fancies and made that a part of Religion which was