Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	church_n	pope_n	rome_n	5,434	5	6.6788	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47666	Of the art both of writing & judging of history with reflections upon ancient as well as modern historians, shewing through what defects there are so few good, and that it is impossible there should be many so much as tolerable / by the Jesuit Father Le-Moyne.	Le Moyne, Pierre, 1602-1671.	1695 (1695)	Wing L1046; ESTC R26152	66,036	250

Consequence to the Conscience and Reputation of an Historian that he has regard to his Birth Religion and Life Though the Tribunal of History be Sovereign and the greatest Persons are there Sovereignly judged he must not forget notwithstanding the Respect due to the Memory of those Princes have governed his Native Country And if the Instruction of their Successors and the Truth of History will have him pronounce upon their Conduct he must not spare Censure where they have deserved it But he must abstain without Necessity or Profit making a Scandalous Spectacle in the Eyes of the People of their Secret Debauches Above all not to condemn them from the Voice of the Vulgar always Enemy and Calumniator of their Masters or from the Voice of Fame always Detractor and Lyar or from his own ill Disposition It may be with an Illness not unlike the Yellow Jaundice where they think every thing Yellow they see What I say is occasioned by Henry the Third who more Unhappy and more decried from the Vices of his Age than his own has been unworthily blackned by the Historians of the League and Hugonots and more unworthily yet by those that have collected the Impostures of one and the other and thrown them upon his Memory But if something be due to his Birth much more to his Religion This Duty being the first and most Obliging when he is to write of the Church and Ecclesiastical Princes the Court of Rome and Popes Clergy and Religious he must not make his Historick Liberty a ground for Licentiousness I confess there is always Weakness where there is Humanity that all those that approach the Sanctuary are not Saints nor all those that are near the Altar Cherubims But does it belong to an Historian to judge his Judges to condemn those have a Jurisdiction to which the Angels themselves are Subject 'T is much the same as if the Serjeants should cite the Judges of the Court to the Bar and pretend to make their Process And what Conscience has an Historian that writes of Popes and Cardinals as if he writ from the Memoirs of Beza as if hired by the Booksellers of Amsterdam and Geneva In the third place He must have regard to his Life If he would not be slighted by his Readers he must make an Agreement between his Judgments and his Manners his Reputation and his Pen. Let not a Libertine make himself Severe or a Debauche preach Sobriety and Continence such like Sermons are turn'd into Ridicule and the least they say of the Preacher is he would do better at a Table than in the Pulpit The Disagreement cannot be pardoned in Salust what he says against the Corruption and Disorders of his Age cannot be better said but he ought to have left it to Cato or some other that valued himself for ancient Discipline And in my opinion a Declamation against Luxury and Profuseness of Life was not a less Incongruity in the History of Salust accused of Debauchery by the Censor in full Senate and twice of Adultery before the Pretor than had been in the Commentaries of Cesar an Invective against Ambition and Government CHAP. IV. Of Elogies and Characters of Illustrious Persons in what Places they ought to be put ELogy and Censure are the Principal Parts of Judgment and the Historian that forgets them in some Occasions is accountable to the Publick They are usually placed either after the Relation of some signal Action of great Fame or at the Death of Persons that have most appeared and made the greatest Figure in the Theatre of History And this hinders not but they may also find a place where the Historian prepares himself for Relations of great Account Salust Livy and Tacitus often use them after this manner The first begins his two Histories by the Characters of Catalin and Jugurth that were the Principal Actors in these two Pieces The Second by Hannibal before he placed him at the Head of the Carthaginians and let him loose as a Torrent descending from the Alps upon Italy The Third being To introduce Vespasian and Mutius that were to be the Authors of a new Revolution in the Empire gave the Character of one and the other in such a manner the most Faithful and most exact Pencil could not have arrived to But these Pictures ought not to be in great two or three Colours and as many touches are enough and less must they be made at Fancy and drawn Beautiful when Ugly or on the contrary And as Truth permits not the Historian should do more for any Person than Vertue and Nature have done neither does she allow him to rob any one of the Advantages they have received from them an Historian is usually the Drawer of this fort of Picture and sometimes contents himself with designing only and commits the Finishing to other Persons to whom he lends his Colours and makes speak in his place And this Prudence is principally used when he has nothing to represent but Faults and Censure to put into his Representations I ought not to forget telling you in this place that our Strada in his History of the Wars of Flanders has drawn Figures of greater Proportion than the ancient Models In these Figures the Abridgments of Life he recites many things Curious and Singular that gives a perfect Knowledge of the Man leaves no particular in the Dark of his Birth Education Conduct or Fortune The Portraitures he has made of John d' Austria Margret of Parma Cardinal Granvill Duke of Alva Prince of Orange and some others are after this manner And the Approbation they find amongst the most polished Wits make me believe it will not be disagreeable to France to see the like in the History I have undertaken Dissertation V. Of Sentences CHAP. I. That History demands Sentences What are Sentences and the Kinds I Cannot think to finish my purpose without treating of Sentences or if only in passing with a stroke of my Pen. In History and in Poetry throughout which they are found they make so great an Eclat and pierce too lively not to make themselves regarded I know they offend some chagrin People and are censured by the Severe But is there any thing so good against which some ill Nature will not bring an Objection There are that Fancy the Poppy and hate the Rose Nay the Graces themselves have their Enemies and some-body finding nothing to blame in the Person of Venus reprehended her Dress We will not then reject Sentences upon the Condemnation the Chagrin and Severe pass upon them Their ill Nature ought not to prevail above the Reason Example and Authority of the Fathers of History who often make use of them Nor must we abandon our selves to the Excess and Liberty of some that abuse them But because many take for Sentences certain little playing with words either ambiguous opposite or sharp which seem to comprehend much and have nothing in them 't is here necessary to disabuse those