Selected quad for the lemma: judgement_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
judgement_n	authority_n	church_n	holy_a	1,913	5	5.0202	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41160	Janus Alexandrus Ferrarius, an Augustine friar, his epistles to the two brethern of Wallenburgh, concerning the usefulness and necessity of the Roman Catholick faith wherein the ambition and avarice of the Church of Rome are lively demonstrated in a mathematical method, by a continued series of connexed propositions / from the original Latine.	Fabricius, Johann Ludwig, 1632-1697.; Fabricius, Joannes Ludovicus.	1673 (1673)	Wing F73; ESTC R32018	52,870	158

so macerated and dried up that he becomes fitter for fuel and men gather up those branches and cast them into the fire and they are burnt Nor indeed is there any other way since from a common School-prescript Contra negantem principia non est disputandum There 's no disputing against a denier of Principles We have already found out that the authority of the Church ought to be reckoned among those things which the Philosophers call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or indemonstrables which though they cannot themselves be proved yet may serve to prove others Nor ought it to trouble us though Hereticks make such a clamorous babbling that Indemonstrables may be three wayes called so For there are some which for their falsity or obscur'd perplexity and incertainty cannot be demonstrated Others may be called Indemonstrables though they have such and so plain a light of Truth that our heart if never so little intent upon them constantly approves them and nothing can be propounded that seems then them more firm and evident Others again may be called so not that they are utterly not to be demonstrated but which already have been demonstrated so that they want not the utmost probation but are taken in the progress of resoning as Principles already certain and evident They therfore i.e. the Hereticks that the authority of our Church is in the first sense Indemonstrable out of derision easily grant But the second and third they deny nay from thence they conclude taking it from your own hint Judgment without evidence or proof of the matter is but rashly given That it is a rashness to believe the authority of the Church Yet am I of the mind that it is all those three wayes and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 simply and perfectly indemonstrable For that it is so in the first signification from hence manifestly appears that by universal confession it pertains not to Knowledge but to Faith and therefore according to St. Basil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an assent is required to Faith not made apparent for as Clemens Alexandrinus truly sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We embrace Faith from an indemonstrable Principle for what he speaks of the word of God as it manifests it self to him by its own light we much more commodiously pronounce for the Church Whence it is no wonder whilst Faith by general consent is so obscure that 't is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of things not seen that likewise that proposition The Church of Rome is Mistress of Divine Faith and manners appears not of such evident certainty There is therefore both for its falseness and obscurity between this and other indemonstrable Propositions this vast and terrible difference That the rest onely cannot be demonstrated but this neither can nor ought For certainly That ought not to be done which whilst any one undertakes he both makes himself a laughing-stock and exposes the whole matter to danger and debate But whosoever endeavours to demonstrate the Authority of the Roman Church out of its vulgarly known Principles must as Experience witnesses of necessity run into many wild mazes and windings or fall into greater obscurities and uncertainties Wherefore assenting herein with the very Hereticks themselves we conclude That the Divinity of the Roman Church is in the first sence indemonstrable But how that may likewise be said of the second signification will be of somewhat more difficult disquisition for as you have very well hinted Most Reverend Brothers In vain do we seek for the evidence of things in the Roman Faith as things which do not appear that is by the interpretation of the Apostle things that have no being from whence it happens that when we hear those words The Roman Church is Mistress of all we do not immediately yield stedfast assent to it as if it were an undoubted Truth nor find we any force upon our Souls to constrain our belief of it Wherefore this proposition seems not to deserve any place among those which with one single prospect of the Mind are at once perceived and approved of by us But yet indeed to remove that difficulty it should diligently be weighed that the Mind of Man may be two several ways affected for either it is simple and unbyassed by any thing of prejudice or otherwise disposed to some agreeing temper and as it were seasoned with some savour for the most part it has not light proper for discerning this Truth nay sometimes is so absolutely indocible to any belief that without that light which proceeds from a flaming Faggot it can never be effectually illustrated but this is so ordained and established without any arguing or fear of Error that though as the Proverb says The Church should sheep with both Eyes yet it hath conclusively both for knowledge and all faith that manly magisterial Ipsa Dixit But of such a mind the perception is like to that which when quickest sighted deny the seeing of Phantasms Visions it does pretend distinctly and accurately to see every thing no otherwise then those who beholding their first Vital Light on a Sunday are reputed to see Fayries and Hobgoblins and other Spirits of the Night Wandring Fires and Terrors of the Grave which others in the clearest light and under what Star soever born nay though they had Lynceus his Eyes cannot at all discern Nor ought any one to derogate from this Judgment of ours that in the manner we have declared many Spirits are so senseless and insipid as to adhere without any discernment or Examination to what has from their tenderest age been taught them or rather commanded them by their Nurses and Tutors For it does not from thence follow that in those kinds of knowledge they should not see as clear as others for even Experience it self teaches That those who are weak-sighted do in the thickest darkness see a thousand strange and discoloured Figures which fly before a quick and piercing Eye Thus as those who with the violence of a Feaver grow distracted often fancy things in their imaginations which the soundest minds could never conceive yet neither weakness of Eyes nor Feavers nor Distractions are reckoned among Vices So though neither stupidity nor folly nor an unapt propension to Faith in any thing are accounted among Virtues of the Mind yet they are used so to instruct and perfect Man as to make him at first view embrace this Principle of the Churches Authority and firmly adhere to it for it is necessary that between our Faculties and those Observations laid down to us a certain due reason or proportion should interpose that as it is in the Proverb Time and Straw ripens Medlars that is brings them to a perfect rottenness and corruption None therefore need think it a wonder if what we have asserted concerning the Divinity of the Roman Church do seem a little obscure to an Understanding not yet initiated or at all accustomed to our Principles whilst that I may use the solemn words of our

Janus Alexandrus Ferrarius An Augustine FRIAR HIS EPISTLES To the TWO BRETHREN OF WALLENBVRGH Concerning the VSEFVLNESS and NECESSITY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICK FAITH Wherein the Ambition and Avarice of the Church of ROME are Lively Demonstrated in a Mathematical Method by a Continued Series of Connexed PROPOSITIONS Ridenti dicere verum Quis vetat From the Original Latine LONDON Printed by Thomas Ratcliffe and Nathaniel Thompson and are to be Sold at their House in Newstreet near Shoe-Lane 1673. To the Right Honourable ANTHONY EARL of SHAFTSBVRY c. Lord HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND My Lord IF those High and Weighty Employments to which your Great Worth and Abilities approved by the Judgment of the most Experienced King of Christendom have Called you can Admit of any Divertisement it will not I hope be thought a Sin in me if I have Attempted thus to Contribute something towards it or if it should yet be pardoned as the Fault of a too hasty Zeal in a Person desirous to thrust himself amongst the croud of your Adorers For deservedly have you my Lord Drawn the Hearts and Affections of the whole English Nation to your Self and never did King and People so Unanimously agree in the Choice of such a great Minister of State Your Virtues making all the World Admire the Kings Judgment and the Kings Judgment confirming to all the World their long before entertained Opinion of your Virtues The King is my Lord notwithstanding all Popish pretences sole Vicar and Vicegerant under God in his own Realms and Dominions and he has Chosen you his Substitute in the Management of his Highest and Greatest Affairs wherein your Conduct has been such as has given him every day new Encouragement to approve the Work of his own Hands and he cannot but with Delight and Satisfaction hear with what Acclamations of Joy and Content the whole Body of the Nation Applaud your Justice Prudence and Equity whereby you have almost quite removed all Misapprehensions they had sometime conceived against Chancellors Nor has your Zeal in the Protecting and Defending the Settled and Established Protestant Religion in this Kingdom appeared less then your great Abilities in State you having largely Contributed your Counsel and Assistance both to King and Parliament for the Weakning the hands of our common Enemy and may therefore claim a Right to Divertise your Self at their Follies But however my Lord this small Present of mine prove let not my Duty and Devotion be accounted a Crime nor that be Blemished as a Presumption which is a sincere tender of my part of that Service and Affection which all men pay you and which shall ever be Paid you by My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful most Humble and most Obedient Servant J. D. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THat Ignoble pair of Wallenburgh Brethren to whom the following Epistles are written Treacherous Hollanders and Popish Renegado's Created indeed Titular Bishops the one of Adrianople the other of Mysia but in troth corrupt Pentioners of the Popes and sworn Slaves to that Servant of Servants have for a long time exercised their mercinary Pens and with united Forces diligently Employed all their Skill and Power to settle and at length Establish that Synagogue of Satan which has so long stood Tottering And when all the old Deceits and Devices were Detected and Exploded advanced new Methods and Ways Hammered out of their own Brains and among others that Form in use among forreign Civilians of Probation by Witnesses not ancient and pure ones but Corrupt ones of the Church of Rome as if the Testimony of that Queen and Mother of Harlots were abundantly sufficient to confirm all her Ridiculous and for the most part Impious Tenents whilst she Exhibited all things under the Regal Signature of Teste meipsa a Priviledge which even Christ Himself the reverenced Head of the Catholick Church truly called so when conversant on Earth scarce ever assumed or thought worth the Claiming These Epistles are Scourges to those Brethren in Iniquity nor as the title of the Book seems to declare are they so much Demonstrations as Derisions of the Roman Catholick Faith under a vail of Kindness and pretence of Reverence smiting it as we say under the fifth Rib For throughout the whole course of the Epistle the Irony is pleasantly play'd with Sharp Taunts witty Jests and biting Reflections every where mixed which the Author chose rather to couch in the Latine Tongue as most proper for treating of things concerning the Roman Church and more applicable to the Wallenburgh Brethren those two new Atlas 's of the Papal Heaven But our Author both bears another name and is by Nation an Englishman and why then should so much Wit and Ingenility of their own be hid from the English or only revealed to a few of no Ignoble Family who enticed by the crafty Arts of those Emissaries was not only initiated in the Mysteries of the Papal Iniquities but bred up in them even to Surfeit and Lothing till growing up to riper Judgment they could no longer impose upon him those portentuous principles of Popery which not only holy Writ but sober Reason utterly abhors and which are even so repugnant to sense that they are rather to be hist at and lasht by bitter Sarcasms then otherwise taken notice of or endeavoured to be confuted by any thing of solid Argument JANUS ALEXANDRUS FERRARIUS OF THE AUGUSTIN ORDER HIS First Epistle Concerning the Usefulness and Necessity of the Roman Catholick Faith To the Right Reverend ADRIAN and PETER of WALENBVRCH MAny have valiantly Most Reverend Sirs and with Various Success contested for the Welfare of the Church against Hereticks but scarce any with a caution and dexterity like yours For when Reason and Experience had taught us that nothing hitherto hath been more pernicious to our Sacred Republick then that the most material and weighty Points contended for should be maintained by the authority of the Scriptures ancient Principles of Christianity You from your admirable immense height of wit have made right discoveries that things are not to be debated with positive Arguments or absolutely pertinent to the matter which the subtilty of Hereticks might easily either pervert or evade but dilatory Exceptions are to be made use of the Court of Scripture to be waved and all Judges besides the Pope to be refused Or else what before all pleased you best That title of long possession and prescription was to be stretch'd upon the tenters and tedious cavils for worldly profit and advantage started Which manner of acting of use indeed in Courts and Seats of Judicature but in matters relating to Faith and the understanding of Divine things utterly unheard of till now when I more curiously considered I could gather nothing else from it but that you by an uncredible perspicuity of understanding had found out that the Controversies to be handled between Catholicks and Hereticks were not to be treated in a Sacred and Religious but

may its preservation be ascribed to God by what a Mass of studied Snares and Devices by what a Power and Multitude of Engines have the Lords of the Earth studied in all Ages to pull in pieces and overthrow this Sacred Empire but all in vain and to no purpose that the whole World might take notice that the most just Judge of all things presides over this Monarchy whose Oracles have foretold its power to last many Ages and to that end how liberally has he promised to enlarge among Mankind the Spirit of Error and Power of Seducing But whither am I wandring 'T is not out of the Scriptures as forreign and not at all pertinent to the present purpose but out of the proper and genuine Principles of the Universal Faith of the Roman Catholicks as far as it is by Protestant Hereticks opposed that it is to be demonstrated which I hope will be the more commodiously dispatched if we distinctly contemplate the admirable frame of this Religious Empire diligently deliberating all its Laws and all those Opinions repudiated or rejected by the Hereticks In the treating of this I had proposed for my Method to follow Euclide and from a few Fundamentals raise the whole structure of this Sacred Monarchy but taught by Experience I found the Materials so various so divers and so contrary to themselves thrown into one mighty Pile of Rubbish by the Architects but all with such wonderful and cunning Arts closed and cemented together that it was not possible to expose them all at one view for though some did appear some were hid and covered over by others that it would be too difficult in the Order wherein they are joyned to represent them fingly Three only Fundamentals omitting all other I have therefore pitcht upon One Definition One Axiom or Proposition And one Postulatum or Request THE DEFINITION The Church is a Spiritual but visible Rule or Empire wherein Men follow the prescribed Faith under one spiritual or visible Head to wit the Pope of Rome and yield him conformable Obedience The AXIOM or PROPOSITION Whatsoever contributes to the Defence and Increase of this Church that and that only ought to be adjudged True Holy and Pious The POSTULATUM or REQUEST May this Church extend it self even to the ends of the Earth Though these be indeed the first Principles which of themselves do not furnish out the whole matter for demonstration yet they suffice to include all the other Principles which in due time we shall bring to such light that not the most obstinate Hereticks shall be able to doubt of them But the Reasons by which I was induced more especially to write to you concerning this matter Right Reverend Brothers do already from what I have said so abundantly appear that it would be superfluous farther to explain them and if you in your judgments shall approve this Holy Design what I have now only vailed in Epistolary brevity I shall more diligently hereafter digest into better order and enlarge with comments endeavouring as much as in me lies with all plainness and ingenuity to explain all the arts of the Catholick Religion So Farewell in the Lord. Paris Cal. Aug. From the Birth of the Blessed Virgin MDCLxvi JANUS ALEXANDRUS FERRARIVS OF THE AUGUSTIN ORDER HIS Second Epistle Concerning the Usefulness and Necessity of the Roman Catholick Faith To the Right Reverend ADRIAN and PETER of WALLENBVRGH WHat I lately promised you Most Reverend Sirs to demonstrate in order the Usefulness and Necessity of all the several Heads of the Roman Catholick Faith now under your favour and protection I attempt Pardon that delay which the interposition of other affairs that distracted me hath hitherto caused which I promise again to redeem by a future complyance and diligence and in the mean time let what I now offer receive your favourable Censure In the first place therefore since the very Rule of Doctrine does require those things to be prefer'd before all others which will either afford the amplest light or give the best assurance of accord We judg we ought to take our beginning from the WORD of GOD for though that may afford the Hereticks never so ready and commodious occasions to maintain their errors yet by the incredible and almost divine dexterity of ours it has been used to be so well wrested and turned that our most advantageous Tenents seem as aptly built upon it as their most pernicious Opinions Wherefore not only Catholick Writers and amongst those the most renowned Bellarmine but even the Fathers of the most holy oecumenical Council held at Trent adjudged all Treaties of Religion should thence have their original and the Legat Cardinal de Monte proposed The Word of God to be the first matter of all such arguings Hist concil Trid. Lib. 6. c. 11. per Istabilire con quali Armi si dovesse pugnare contra gli Heretici ed in quali base dovessere fondare la lor credenza i Catholici to use the most eminent Pallavicini's own words for the establishing with what arms the Hereticks were to be combated and on what Foundations the Catholicks were to ground their Faith we shall effectually show what a stedfast confidence the Doctors of the Roman Catholick Faith ever had of forming the Scriptures as though they were of wax to their own party and purpose For though at that time Er. Vincentius Lunellus following the example of Sylvester Prierius Eckius and others their Predecessors was of opinion the Church was to have the first place in dispute as the main and more solid Pillar of Theology to which both Holy Writ and Traditional Authority should only bowe yet that counsel though not proceeding from an evil mind but certainly very imprudent and dangerous was rejected by the other Fathers because the authority of the Church as then esteemed was to be fixed and determined and ought not to be exposed to the least stretch of controversy for fear some impious or unwary mind should chance to fall into or start a doubt Therefore neither have we placed this Divinity of the Roman Church amongst those truths that are to be demonstrated but even in our former Epistle ●et it down as the first and indubitable Principle and such that whoever durst deny or call in question was not to be chastised with weak and ineffective words but furious stripes and unless he soon and seriously repented As a violater and defiler of the Spouse of Christ a disturber of the Holy State and a Traytor both to the divine and half-divine Majesty have his blaspheming tongue cut out or he taken from the number of the living and burnt in expiatory flames according to Christs own command If any one abide not in me that is in the Church which together with the head constitutes the body he is cast forth as a branch Joh. XV. Verse vi and is withered that is being thrown out of the Communion of the Church he is by various torments