Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A65235
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Two letters to a friend, concerning the distempers of the present times
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R. W.
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1686
(1686)
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Wing W104; ESTC R222551
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25,813
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36
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to blind them and then he makes them to say Our power is the Law of righteousness And such was the Power and Law of these Tryers and such was their cruel usage of that Power as was too sadly testified by the great suffering of the Conformable Clergy Many whose great poverty and other sufferings were such and undergone with so much patience and so calm a sortitude for many had Wives and many Children that I protest I heard a very considerable Papist say in those times That if their Clergy would have suffered half so much in the days of King Edward the Sixth the Religion of the Protestants had never prevailed in England Which saying seemed to me very considerable And I think this to be considerable also That those Tryers and their Brethren of the several Committees came by degrees to distinguish themselves from others by calling themselves The Godly Party And by degrees came to such a confidence that they only were so that they made God to be as cruel and ill natured a God as they were men Not allowing him to save any but themselves and their Party But I will urge this no farther lest the truth I write seem too bitter But I return to what may seem more considerable and probably less provoking I do observe that your Party that scruple many small things scruple not at the great sin of Schism I think they do scarce consider or think there is such a sin And this is the more to be wondred at because in all the Reformed Churches in Foreign Nations they think otherwise and punish it And they think the Doctrine and Discipline and Publick Worship of God in our Church to be most Apostolical and most agreeable to the Word of God And many of them wish theirs were like to ours And for a testimony of this I refer you to a view of their several approbations of it as they be collected and summed up and lately published by Dr. Durell sometimes Preacher of the Resormed French Church in the Savoy in London And for one testimony that the sin of Schism ought to be better considered and carefully avoided by all people I shall in what follows give you a relation that may prove I am not singular in this opinion Wishing most affectionately that it may proveas useful as-it is true and as I intend it In the late persecution of the Conformable Clergy there was Dr. Eleazer Duncon a Prebend I think of Ely or Durham a man of singular learning and of an unblemisht life but sequestred he was and you may guess why This good man being sequestred and so made useless as to the service of Gods Church publickly And being independent of the world as to Wife and Children and weary of beholding the ruine of so many sacred Structures the cruel usage contempt and poverty of the Conformable Clergy for many of them had Wives and Children resolved to spend some part of the remaining part of his life in travel And thereby to inform himself by conference and observation what the belief and publick Worship of God was both in the Greek and all the Latine Churches not only those that depend but those that be independent on the Church of Rome and he did so to his great satisfaction And after some years so spent in his return homeward which was in the year 1648. he took Venice in his way To which place he came indisposed as to his health and immediately fell into a dangerous Fever This good man was in his long Travel so noted for his learning and the sanctity of his life that the day after his arrival in Venice he was sent to by Father Fulgentio who had been the Pupil and was now the Successor to Father Paul in his Colledge of the Service Father Paul and Fulgentio are both so known and valued by all the learned of Italy and all other Christian Nations that they neither need my Character or Commendations to enquire his health and an offer of advice to procure it And in order to both he would wait on him next day if he pleased to allow it The last of which being thankfully accepted the Father did the next day at a seasonable hour make him a charitable visit And after a loving and quiet Conference the Father having treated him with words of Christian compassion offered him a supply of money if he needed and being ready to take his leave told the Doctor He and his Colledge should pray for him both day and night Which good office the Doctor most humbly accepted of and after giving thanks added this Father your Charity is the more perfect in that you will do this Christian office for one that your Church accounts an Heretick To which the Father's reply was But I do not I look upon you as a true Catholick yea as a Confessor forced out of your Native Country for the profession of the most true Religion for I look upon the Church of England as I know it by your Liturgy Articles and Canons I know not your practice to be the most Apostolical Church in the whole World and the Church of Rome to be at this time the most impure After which ingenuous profession the Father observing the Doctor to grow saint and uneasie left him for that time but after the Doctors recovery and during his stay in Venice the Father and he had many free and friendly discourses of the same subject in one of which the Doctor said Father your Confession of the impurity of the Roman Church and the 18. of your own Objections lately shew'd to me against it require an Apology for your continuing in that Communion To which the Fathers reply was A man may live in an infected City and not have the Plague My Judgment and publick Practice in Religion are both so well known here and at Rome and both to my danger and damage that I may continue in it with more safety than others And separation may be a sin in me who Judge the unity of the Church in which I was baptized and confirmed and the peace of the State in which I was born to be preferred before my private opinion interest or satisfaction and I think to commit a Schism and separate from that Church would make me guilty of the sin of a Scandal justly given and therefore live in it and die in it I must though it be the impurest of Christian Churches But let him that now is not of it never be of that Church which is so far departed from the Primitive purity and now maintained only by splendour and the maxims and practice of polity If you doubt the truth * The truth needs not be doubted by any that shall first know that Father Paul writ the History of the Council of Trent And then reads his Life as it is truly writ by his Disciple and Successour this Father Fulgentio and now Printed before the said History of this relation I will give