Selected quad for the lemma: parliament_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
parliament_n	act_n	king_n	title_n	3,788	5	7.4113	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65702	Dos pou sto, or, An answer to Sure footing, so far as Mr. Whitby is concerned in it wherein the rule and guide of faith, the interest of reason, and the authority of the church in matters of faith, are fully handled and vindicated, from the exceptions of Mr. Serjeant, and petty flirts of Fiat lux : together with An answer to five questions propounded by a Roman Catholick / by Daniel Whitby ...	Whitby, Daniel, 1638-1726.	1666 (1666)	Wing W1725; ESTC R38592	42,147	78

That they should talk so much of the Catholick Church and not one title of its infallibility That in their descants on these Passages which are so often pleaded by the Romanist they should never intimate unto us that in the Judgement of the Catholick Church or at least their own they taught infallibility That the Nicene Fathers albeit they had so great occasion from the multiplying of Heresies to have insisted upon this so Fundamental Doctrine that each Mans Soul must bottom on it or be built upon the Sand should not onely wave the stating clearing confirming or the trying of it but compose a Creed and never mention it That the Catechumeni should never be taught this foundation of their Faith That it should never be required at Baptism That none of the Treatises ad Calechumenos Institutiones Mystagogice Enchiridia Doctrina Christianae None of the Treatises of the Church her self should once make mention of this great and principal Funamental is as if a Man should write of the chief Cities in England and leave out York and London or of the degrees of Hierarchy in the Church of Rome and leave out Pope and Cardinal lastly That whereas since the Usurpation of this Prerogative by the Church of Rome there have been hundreds of Disputes touching the subject of its infallibility whether Christ were here or there without determining of which to affirme in gross the Churches infallibility is to leave us perfectly in a maze say just nothing that not any of those disputes should ever be started nor any thing resolved upon These are things morally impossible and consequently this pretended infallibility must be so this being so 't is superfluous to refute the pretence of a General Council to it for besides what already hath been said can it be that what 's so necessary to the welfare to the Church should by an all-wise God be left at infinite uncertainties A general Council is infallible say they provided that it be legitimately called that the members of it be legitimate that they be legally elected and in due number from every part and portion of the Church that being thus convened they vote freely and without constraint and packing after due Means of Study Prayer and fasting used provided lastly that the decree conciliarly have these decrees confirmed by the Pope and accepted by the Church diffused if one of these conditions be wanting to the greatest Councils they take liberty to reject them yet who knows not what animosities and feuds there are in the now present Church of Rome and much more in the Church of God touching the greater part of Councils styled Oeconomical whether all these conditions have been punctually observed by them in the whole and each particular Decree how more then probable it is that like uncertainties should arise touching the definitions of future Councils how impossible it is for any but especially for persons illiterate far removed from the place of their Convention to attain to any tolerable satisfaction in all these particulars This objection is by the wiser sort of Papists handsomely passed over as knowing it to be unanswerable but Fiat Lux hath ignorance enough to warrant his attempts upon it which are these 1. That we may as well except against the obliging power of the decrees and Acts of King and Parliament and say is that power in the King alone or in the Parliament what if they run counter what if they should not be rightly Chosen p. 190. Ans But dares he say that one of these particulars are undetermined by our Law Dares he avouch that the obliging power of our Acts of Parliaments depends on such a multitude of things of which no tolerable assurance can be had If so he evidently stands guilty not only of Rebellion but justifies the late Phanatick assuring him that he may safely question and oppose the power both of King and Parliament as depending on some hundreds of uncertainties as hotly contested and as unresolved by the Lawyers of the Land as the forementioned Decrees of Councils are in the Church of Rome If not how gross most his impertinence and folly be in bringing such comparisons which both his conscience and his reason tell him are vastly different from what his adversary produceth And yet secondly who knows not that a less degree of certainty may suffice in civil then in sacred matters But secondly he takes Sanctuary in Titulus colovatus and moral evidence and tels us that if this suffice not we can be sure of no Authority either Spiritual or Civil in this world ibid. Ans And is this that Fiat Lux who writ a pamphlet of infallibility Made it so necessary for the Churches welfare that without it nothing can hang firm nor Christ be just p. 5 6. had he not provided such assurance for our faith to build upon is he now content to sit down with Titulus Coloratus moral evidence And to confess that Catholick Faith and the Authority of the Church depends upon so many and such various conditions for which they do pretend but moral evidence Is not this moral evidence the very thing at which the Romanist doth so much quarrel in the resolution of our Faith And must it now become the refuge of those very men who do so vehemently cry out against it in the Protestant See here the triumph and the Victory of Truth which forceth her professed adversaries to agnize and own her though to the ruine of their cause and credit and yet manifest it is that few of the particulars objected will admit of moral evidence or any tollerable degree of probability Corol. 1. Hence see the excellency of our Churches method for peace and unity beyond what Rome can boast of seeing then only she require our assent when the revelation is so clear and palpable that he who runs may read it and when the thing is such as hath the testimony and approbation of the whole Christian World handed down from the Apostles to this present age and acknowledged to be such by Catholicks themselves And in other things rests contented with that submission which is consistent with mens liberty of conscience and each mans duty to afford her whereas Rome doth not only bind the conscience to what 's unnecessary unheard of in the Churches Creeds till now of late and so obscure as to be matter of contest through the Christian world but doth all this upon pretence of that infallibility woh were it only questionable must subject us to the peril of embracing the most destructive errors for divinest truths without all hopes of a redress dispose us unto Atheisme and irreligion by making all our Faith and piety depend on what is disputable and lay us open to continnal fears and jealousies doubts and uncertainties Schisms and dissentions about the rule and foundation of our Faith but being evidently false must be most certainly productive of these fatal consequences and yet we must be

insmitely uncertain in matters of obedience to God For seeing 't is as evident as the Sun and lately manifested by Montalius a Catholick that the Doctrines of the Jesuited Papist touching Repentance Good intentions the Love of God c. do cut the sinews of all virtue and null the precepts of true pietie and equally certain that they are maintained by the gravest Doctors of their Church nay styled the common Doctrine of the Church is follows that they interfere not with their Rule of Faith and therefore cannot be reproved by it 4 They must be destitute of all the preservatives against the vilest of Rebellions it being frequently asserted in the Schools and held by most confiderable members of that Church that Catholicks may be absolved from their Oaths Vows and Covenants made to Princes and authorized by his Holiness to depose them From what hath been discoursed it must follow that if Tradition be the only Rule of Faith then 1. Should Catholicks act up to the most desperate consequences of such opinions which pass thus currant in the Church of Rome they could not possibly be condemned by or rationally be said to deviate from her Rule of Faith 2. That the vilest Christian and worst of Subjects may do all that Catholick Religion and his duty doth oblige him too because all that practical Tradition or the Churches living voice requires that what is strangely opposite and scandalous to Christianity and destructive unto Civil Government is yet assistent with their Rule of Faith and that 't is lawful to opine at pleasure in these matters 3. That these diseases must be all incurable and admit of no redress for to make them pass into Tradition and improve themselves into articles of Faith is to impower the Church to coyn new articles and pretend Tradition where it is not to be had 4. That what ever hath been said of some doth equally proceed against all other scandalous opinions of their Church of which nature 't were easie to collect sufficient to tire mine own and the Readers patience CAP. IV. Of the Authority of the Church in matters of Faith THAT the Church is a Society Prop. 1. the very name and notorelty of the thing the definition members discipline and constitutions of it do sufficiently declare Prop. 2. That this society must be invested with a Ruling power is certain both from the nature of all Civil union which implyes a compact and that a Governour whose business it is to see that they who enter into compact do not violate the lawes thereof as also from the ends of this Society viz. The union and due ordering of her Members and execution of her discipline to the correction or exclusion of such persons who cooperate towards her ruine Prop. 3. The Church is a Society of Believers or of men united in the belief of certain Articles as the Foundations of it hence styled fundamental Articles this is the joynt consent of Christians however in the notion and number of their fundamentals they differ much Corol. Hence it must follow that Church Governours must be impowred to require the belief of or positive assent unto these Fundamendal Articles as being otherwise unable to secure the Being and provide against the ruine of that Church of which they are a part When therefore M. S. so confidently gives out without all manner of exceptions that our Church is Shamefac'd of obliging others to believe her p. 194. and that she professeth her self very heartily content with external obedience let the interior assent go where it will p. 199. I cannot but admire that so ingenious a person should vent such things which every day confutes and tell our Church she expects not that her members should believe that Creed which she esteems her fundamentals inserts into her Catechisms requires us to Agnize in Baptisme rehearse in all her Sacred offices and that with a peculiar circumstance designed to signifie our assent unto and readiness to defend it Obj. But do you not in big words ask when did she challenge any power over our minds consciences p. 198. And doth not M. S. well infer that therefore you deny that she requires an interior assent Ans No these things are vastly different require interior assent he may who being authorized to guide me in matters of faith can evidence what he thus requires to be the will of God revealed yea such interior assent is due from Children to their Parents from Servants to their Masters much mere from People to their Pastors when evidencing their duty to them but challenge power over the mind and conscience he only can who is Lord of the conscience whose laws by an immediate virtue bind the conscience for what binds only mediately hath not this obligatory power from any virtue of the Legislator over the mind and conscience but only from that power which commands the conscience to obey such Legislators And if interiour assent may be required I wonder why it should be more irrational to go about to lay an obligation on the Cathol p. 199. by these two Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy then upon the Protestant as my Friend imagines That it should be rational to bind the loyal Subject by those Oaths but irrational to bind those whose Treacheries and conspiracies first made them necessary if difference of Religion be a just exemption then may the Quaker Anabaptist and other turbulent persons which renounce our Church plead for a share in this exemption and King and Parliament must be unjust and tyrannous in laying such a burthen on them Prop. 4. A particular Church cannot require this assent upon pretence of an infallible assistance for seeling all have the like title to it it would be imposisible for any of them to have erred and therefore she must do it because the thing determined is so evident in the Rule of Faith that all denyall of it must be wilful for seeing 't is already proved that she hath power to require this assent and that this power cannot derive from an infallible assistance what remains but that it bottom upon the evidence of the thing But then the query is Who must be judge what is so evident in Scripture as to render the dissertors guilty of flat wilfulness p. 195. Ans Faith being an assent and consequently the result of judgment each private person must be allowed his judgment of discretion much more those who are authorized to require our assent to fundamentals and to preserve the peace and union of the Church inviolable and sure 't would be a great impeachment to our Saviour to intrust persons with the preservation of this Depositum and to require them to give heed to it as they will answer it at the great day and yet afford no means to be assured of it But if each private person must have a judgment of discretion by which he must admit of or reject the laws of his superiors if it should be