Selected quad for the lemma: father_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
father_n	believe_v	holy_a	son_n	32,892	5	6.1615	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42453	The papists bait or their usual method in gaining proselites answered by Charles Gataker ... ; to which is added, a letter of the Lord Viscount Falkland to the same gentleman, much to this present purpose.	Gataker, Charles, 1614 or 15-1680.; Falkland, Lucius Cary, Viscount, 1610?-1643.	1674 (1674)	Wing G308; ESTC R9378	63,487	89

by God to the Church and looks upon Universal Tradition whensoever it appears fair and full with reverence as being the sense of the Church He proceeds to abate the force of my dissuasive of you from entrance into the Roman Church when the condition of your entrance is the renouncing of your senses reason and charity For the two former though the terms seem hard yet his rigour abates nothing of them You must be contented to lose the use of your senses and reason when you become a vassal to Rome To mitigate the severity he tells you this is no more than Scripture and the Protestant Church requires He abuses Scripture in two instances 1. He says was not Lot to deny his senses when he perceived them to be Angels c. I say no and the Scripture doth not say any such thing as this man supposes When God thought fit either to appear himself to the Patriarchs in humane shape clad with flesh in a transitory manner which is generally taken to have been a Praeludium of the words or the Son of God his incarnation or to send Angels invested with humane bodies the servants of God to whom those heavenly messengers were sent so fitted for converse were not bound to renounce their senses but by their reason and their knowledge of Gods way of enter course with his choice servants by Angels they were to regulate the notices of the object which their senses represented unto them 2. He cries out How could our Saviour pass through a croud of People and neither be seen heard or felt without a deception of the senses Judg I pray whether it suits with the Faith and Reverence we owe to Christ the truth it self in his Person Doctrine and Actions to ascribe unto him the deception of the Peoples senses which comes very near to the practise of Magicians and will if admitted diminish the credit of Christs Miracles Our Saviours passage through the multitude so that he escaped their fury and left them in amazement might be wrought many wayes which we are not concerned to imagine and must not determine though we could devise because the Gospel hath not recorded the manner of it But it is rashly and irreverently said to be effected with a deception of the senses But how is Christs action at that time an obligation laid upon Christians to the worlds end to deny their senses in the Eucharist where Christ instituted the material objects of our senses to be the instruments of our faith and the Bread and Wine are designed to be sensible Symbols of spiritual things even as the Water in Baptism is Briefly since our Blessed Saviour the Angels and the holy Apostles have made our senses competent instruments to assist our faith and reason in judging of the truth and presence of Christs Body even after the Resurrection and Christ hath not any where by himself or his Apostles limited the free exercise of our senses nor lessened the credit of their Verdict in the Sacrament of the Eucharist more then in Baptism is it not a horrid tyranny over Christians to require that we renounce both senses and reason and at the command of a Romish Priest believe that there is no Bread and Wine where all our senses almost● conspire to inform us of their presence and the very nature of the Sacrament requires it and on the other side to believe that Christs Body is in every consecrated Host and in every crum whole and entire and continues one though divided from it self in a million of places when our senses can give us no information of this presence and our reason assures us that it is inconsistent with many Articles of our Creed But observe the confidence of this Factor who with a fore-head well rubbed tels you that Protestants require you to renounce your senses whereas we think that our Saviours command He that hath ears to hear let him hear holds by proportion in the rest He that hath eyes to see let him see with assurance that the God of truth who fitted man with senses for the service of his Maker as well as for his own benefit doth secure him from deceit in the use of them about their proper objects in Religion as well as in civil conversation As for our Reason this he would perswade you must be renounced in the belief of the Trinity that you may renounce it for the easie swallowing the Camel of Transubstantiation Think what advantage this man gives to Heathens Socinians Anti-Triniarians and indeed all the adversaries of the Gospel by confessing that the prime Article of our faith concerning the God whom Christians worship is more opposite to reason then the scandalous Monster of Transubstantiation The Doctrine of three Persons in one God is indeed a sublime mystery which is beyond the discovery of reason before it is revealed and incomprehensible by reason after revelation as many secrets in the very course of nature cannot be accounted for by our dark and narrow understandings Reason it self tels us that the infinite nature of God is not to be measured by the limited being of the creatures and also that the glory of the invisible God cannot be discovered but by his own manifestation of it and that according to his own good pleasure with different degrees of light as Gods wisdom thinks fit to impart unto man the knowledge of God And lastly Reason resolves that Gods Word especially of himself who like the Sun is seen by his own light is to be believed without dispute Since therefore God in his Word written hath clearly revealed that the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are one God it is a kindly office of enlightened reason to bring down every vain thought and weak reasonings that lift up themselves against the knowledge of God and to lead them captive under the obedience of faith But there is no cause why we should struggle with our reason and un-man our selves that we may admit the divelish figment of Transubstantiation whereof there is not the least shadow in the Word of God This subtil Sophister aggravates the difficulty that may be fancied in the Trinity to the greatest advantage of Atheistical cavillers but he would lessen the absurdities of Transubstantiation by an imperfect and false representation of his own Doctrine which hath no ground in Gods Word All that is with any colour alleadged out of Scripture to give countenance to the lie which we are required to believe is the sentence of Christ This Bread is my Body This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood or My Blood of the New Testament Mark now what a vast difference between the speech of our Blessed Saviour The Bread is my Body that is signifies and represents my Body as God himself says Ezek 37. 11. These bones are the whole house of Israel and Ezek. 25. 3. This to wit the Hair before-mentioned is Jerusalem and the definition of the Tridentine Fathers The whole

written with a pen of Iron and graven with the point of a diamond upon the horns of their altars yet this Querist would have told a Jew that inquired for the good old way that the Prophets of the Lord were mistaken For he says he hath clearly shewed a Jew of those times that the High Priest then in being suppose for example Vriah the Priest who to please King Ahaz set up an Illegitimate Altar according to the pattern of one at Damascus and set aside the Altar of the Lords appointment with his crew of Court-parasites was the true visible Church to whose word and practise the whole people of God were bound to stand and conform SIR I know not what apprehensions you may have of this mans extolling the Jewish Priest with contradiction to Gods Prophets But I cannot without horror look upon the discourse because I foresee the consequence of it and discover the drift of it which is to palliate yea too justify the Doctrines of Devils taught and the Superstitious and Idolatrous practices in the present Church of Rome which are as reconcileable to the second Commandement and that of Christ Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve as the Calf in the desert and those at Dan and Bethel and the worship of Baal were consistant with the Law of Moses But that which the Prophets have done he says is impossible for me to do unless I enervate the words of our Saviour Mat. 23. 2 3. God forbid that I should attempt to enervate the words of him that is the Truth it self but give me leave to shew you if you do not already clearly perceive that there are no sinews in his discourse strong enough to tye Infallibility to the Chair in which the Scribes and Pharisees sate To pass by the observation of some learned expositors that by the chair of Moses our Saviour did not mention the chair of Aaron the High Priest to whom alone this man no friend to Soveraign Magistrates confines the recourse of Gods people is meant not so much the Spiritual Authority as the Querist presumes as the Civil Power the Remains whereof yet indulged by the Roman Conqueror to the Jews our Saviour would have preserved Let us allow that Christ enjoyns Obedience both to the Civil and to the Spiritual power then exercised by the Governors of that Nation What then Do precepts of Obedience to our mortal superiors necessarily infer Infallibility in Parents who are but the Fathers of our flesh or in Princes who though they be the Sons of God and as the Angels of God yet may fall as one of those celestial Princes Are they thereby so priveledged that they can never enjoyn any thing so repugnant to Gods word as that the inferior shall be driven for tryal of his Faith to the choice of obeying God rather than man But though Kings are not made infallible when they are invested with a divine power albeit Solomon says that a Divine Sentence is in the lips of the King and his mouth transgresseth not in judgement and their subjects are tyed by the Oath of God to keep the Kings commandement yet Priests it may be have a priviledg above Kings You see what these men would be at and you may quickly discover their intention to seclude Magistrates from medling with Religion when he says that the Jews in questions about Religion were not to have the last refuge to the Kings But the sacred History informs us abundantly that the Kings of Gods people were the Guardians of the Law and governed the Priests and the Religious Kings by their severe edicts established the true Religion and reformed the Church as well as the State and prest the Priests of themselves otherwise backward to attend their charge and to teach the people so that a zealous Jew might with better success have made his resort to an Ezekiah or a Josiah then to some cheif Priests and Pastors that had been infected with the fashions of an Idolatrous Court But not to insist more on that consider the impudence of this man who fastens upon our blessed Saviour that which he was so far from saying that he says elsewhere the contrary For he affirms that Christ sayes that the Scribes and Pharisees were infallible because they sate in Moses's Chair and so governed the Church of God successively and faithfully in matter of doctrine whence he concludes that neither their predecessors nor they could teach Error in faith or manners As I have evinced by the Prophets that the Predecessors of the Scribs and Pharisees or rather the Priests and Elders which commonly bear the name of the Church were so far from Infallibility that God himself for their teaching lies overthrew their Chair and for their prophaning the Temple in which they vainly trusted when they turned it into a den of thieves God deserted his own habitation and laid it wast So he that reads the Gospel will quickly perceive this figment of Infallibility not so much usurped by Scribs and Pharisees themselves as pinned upon them by Papists overthrown by our Saviour Christ were they secured from error in expounding the Law and teaching the people the sense thereof whose partial righteousness our Saviour condemns as inconsistent with true justice and whose corrupt glosses Christ confutes and opposes his own authority to their comments which adulterated the meaning of Gods law But because it may be said that this was a defect in them for want of light and spiritual obedience was the proper Doctrine of the Gospel so that this is not enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees of error in Doctrine I answer that St. Paul says the Law is in it self spiritual and it was a gross seducing the people in faith and manners to teach such carnal Doctrines as incouraged and hardned men in sin and kept them from repenting of their vain thoughts and vile lusts which lodged in their hearts But to go a step further Christ that commanded obedience to them which necessarily must be limited by the standing and known Laws of Gods people expresly warns his Disciples to beware of the Leaven of their Doctrine If Christ did by the Precept alledged evidently suppose as the Querist says that the Scribes and Pharisees could teach the people no error in faith and manners then why did our Saviour go about to secure his Disciples by such a Caution whereas they had no reason to suspect that which the Scribes and Pharisees offered them for the food of their souls Their very sitting in Mose's Chair was a sufficient assurance that they were as faithful in the House of God as Moses if you will take this mans word Christ meant and said so and were so wise as they could not be mistaken and so honest as they would not give sowr Leaven instead of heavenly Manna Oh brave Patron of the accursed Scribes and Pharisees But Sir I believe you have read the

as I though he doth worse than dissemble his own knowledg that the Popes Bull enjoyns this Creed to be sworn to by all Ecclesiasticks vvhich are more then Teachers in Universities all dignitaries in Churches all Regulars c. and it strictly charges all Clergy-men to endeavour as much as in them lies that all men under their care and charge shall learn and hold this Faith These animadversions I offer to your assistance in the giving a right judgment of the Gentlemans Reply to mine Answers If you please to offer a Copy of my Letter to the unknown person you may do well And if he shall return any thing that you shall think fit to impart unto me I shall peradventure be at leisure to consider it and tell you what sense I have of it as freely and plainly as I have dealt in the examination of the precedent discourse I conclude in St. Pauls words The Lord give you a good understanding in all things So I rest SIR Your very faithful Servant C. G. THe emptiness of this spare Paper tempts me to recite the Exposition of that acute Commentator Maldonate who though a Jesuite expounds our blessed Saviours Precept Mat. 23. 2 3. far otherwise than this Advocate for the Jewish Chairmen doth His words are these Ergo cum jubet servare facere quae Scribae Pharisaei dum in cathedrâ Mosis sedent dicunt non de ipsorum sed de Legis Moysis doctrinâ loquitur Perinde est enim ac si dicat Omnia quae Lex Moyses vobis dixerunt Scribis Pharisaeis recitantibus servate ac facite secundum autem opera illorum nolite facere ut Hilarius Hieronimus videntur intellexisse The sense of his words is this Therefore when Christ bids them keep and do what the Scribes and Pharisees say whiles they sit in the Chair of Moses he speaks not of their own doctrine but of that of the Law and of Moses For it is all one as if Christ say All those things which the Law and Moses have told you when the Scribes and Pharisees recite them do ye keep and perform but do ye not according to their works as Hilarie and Hierome seem to have understood the Text. Mark that this learned Papist is constreyned by the force of truth and uncontrollable evidence of the false doctrines of the Scribes and Pharisees to imply tacitely that those Chairmen could teach a Doctrine far different from that of the Law and of Moses and openly to averr that the Doctrine of the Law and Moses that might then be well known was to be the Object and limit of the Observance and Obedience enjoyned as due to the Ministery of the Scribes and Pharisees The Commentator to justify his Exposition alleges Hilarie and Hierome two ancient and very learned Latine Fathers seemingly at least to have been of his sense in the understanding our Saviours words A Letter of Sir Lucius Carie Lord Viscount Falkland to Mr. F. M. An. Dom. 1636. Frank I Have received not your Letter but your Declamation for I would rather believe that you had a mind to exercise your stile then that you are likely to make Mr. Lees prediction a Prophesie But if it be possible that having carried up Baronius you should be in earnest that you should be moved by the Authority of a Father living 400 years after Christ to the choice of that Religion which I have shewed you in that question of the Chiliasts opposeth seven Fathers the youngest more antient than he and the rest the most antient that are That their Sanctity should move you which not only their own learned Salmeron makes a false Note of the Church but which as I find by their own Authors they have had but so lately that their Piety is but the effect of their Emulation who till we reformed their Doctrine reformed not their lives and owe the purity of their Church to him whom they stile the Author of ours That you should choose them for the convenience of an Infallible Guide when they neither know her Infallibly to be Infallible nor Infallibly what Definitions are hers when those are yet more hard to be understood than to be known and those who have the convenience of so infallible a Director neither agree by what Notes she is to be known nor what Doctrines she teaches and cannot but confess that there are infinite Questions which concern the Duty of our lives of which she is wholly silent and concerning which they are in the same miserable estate in which we are who have none That their Multitude should move you who cannot but know that almost all the world hath been Idolaters and most Christians have been Arrians Indeed if any such Topical Arguments should seem to you worthy to enter the lists with those at least much more apparent Vnreasonablenesses which are in so many of their doctrines as Transubstantiation c. If I say this be possible I doubt not but either at the end of this week or the beginning of the next to say so much more to you as will serve to let you see that those Works of theirs are very weak which may be demolished by a Potgun Till then I pray consider That if God as we say requires our Assent to nothing but to what is apparent to be his Will then there is no necessity of a Guide since those who would deny apparent Doctrines would as well resist an apparent Guide And that they confess that it is Obstinacy in which Heresie consists and which damnation follows and that sure this secret I mean who is guilty of Obstinacy is fitter to be reserved for Him to discover who made the heart then to be judged by them who cannot know it and both parts may keep their Opinions till it shall be made there infallibly appear both whose Opinions are erroneous and whose errors are guilty whereas the subsistence of the Common-wealth will not suffer Criminal matters to stay for so long though a more certain tryal I am in hast for it is late which time I was fain to take lest your Mother should come in Your very affectionate Brother and Servant FALKLAND Pray read Baronius over and carefully Not the Cardinal Baronius whose Annals are compacted to serve the Popes Interest without any regard to truth but a learned Divine of Scotland who hath written solidly De object● formali fi dei and hath defended his Discourse against Turnbull a Jesuit FINIS * Eph. 4. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 † Apoc. 12 9. Joh. 8. 44. Mat. 13. 38 39. † Mar. 6. 3. Joh. 7. 15. * Mat. 23. 8. See Mark 11. 27. 12. 13. Act. 19. 13. Septem urbs clara jugis toti quae praesidet orbi Propert. Apoc. 17. 9 18. Eph. 2. 20. Luk. 16. 29. 31. They have Moses and the Prophets let them hear these If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they be perswaded if one arise