Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	church_n	people_n	2,810	5	4.5931	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59899	A vindication of both parts of the Preservative against popery in an answer to the cavils of Lewis Sabran, Jesuit / by William Sherlock ...	Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1688 (1688)	Wing S3370; ESTC R21011	87,156	120

he can be infallible in nothing Protestants believe Christ to be an infallible Teacher and the Christian Faith to be infallibly true and this they believe with all the firmness and certainty of assent but this is not what the Church of Rome used to call Infallibility though the Jesuite if it be not meer want of understanding in him seems to be hammering out a new notion of Infallibility but it is but a rude and imperfect Embryo yet we shall see what they will make of it in time And here I find my self obliged to look a little backwards to see how he states the Churches Infallibility for he mightily complains of Protestant Misrepresentations about it Our Guide then he tells us is the Catholick Church either diffusive in its whole extent that is as it contains or signifies the whole number of Christians all the World over or representative in its Head and Bishops the Pope and a General Council The Church diffusive or the whole number of Christians on Earth is most certainly the true notion of the Catholick Church on Earth is that Church to which most of the Promises made to The Church in Scripture are made but how this Church diffusive should be our Guide wants to be explained if the Church diffusive or the whole number of Christians is the Guide who is to be guided unless the Guide is to be a Guide only to himself However I hope then every particular Christian will be allowed a private judgment of his own for the Church diffusive will be a very strange Guide if it cannot use its own reason and judgment and how the whole which consists of all particular Christians should judge for itself when no particular Christian must judge is somewhat mysterious that is that all Christians must judge and yet none must judge But I will not dispute with him about this but whenever he will collect the Votes of the Church diffusive or of all the Christians in the World I promise to subscribe to their Definitions The Representative Church is the Head and Bishops the Pope and a General Council I thought the Pope in Jesuits Divinity had been the Church virtual and a General Council the Church representative But I have in a late Discourse proved that the Pope is not the Head of the Catholick Church nor a Council of Bishops the representative of it and he may try his skill upon it when he pleases Now it seems the Church diffusive has the keeping of the general faith of Christians first received from Christ and his Apostles and preserved by all Bishops in their respective Diocesses and in the minds and actions of each faithful Believer in the whole Catholick Church Strange that our Jesuite should now at last turn a meer Blackloist or Traditionary Divine This general Faith of Christians he compares to the common Laws of the Land to shew I suppose his skill in the Law and make the learned Gentlemen of the Temple to pity or scorn The Master's ignorance well let that be as it will for I pretend to no skill in Laws but as for this general Faith of Christians whatever it be like I would gladly learn from the Church diffusive what it is for I matter nothing else but the General Faith of Christians but how to learn this he has not told us it is preserved he says by all Bishops in their respective Diocesses and in the minds and actions of each faithful Believer in the whole Catholick Church Well then must we examine all Bishops and every particular Believer about this this is impossible to be done will any one Bishop or any one particular Believer since every Bishop and every particular Believer has it suffice to tell us what this general Faith of Christians is is this an infallible Conveyance of the Faith to depend upon the Tradition of Bishops and Christian People is there no faithful and authentick Record of this Faith from whence we may learn what Christ and his Apostles delivered to the Church So one would think by this Jesuit's account who takes no notice of the Holy Scriptures as if the common Faith of Christians could not be learnt from them but from the tradition of the Church diffusive Thus much for Common Law but the Church has her Statute Laws too and they are the Decisions or Canons of General Councils declaring and applying to particular Instances the Common Law and Belief of the Church but how does the Pope and a General Council or the Church representative as he calls it come to have the power of declaring and applying the common Faith of Christians which is in the keeping of the Church diffusive and therefore one would think could be declared by none else do the Pope and a General Council infallibly know the Sentiments and Opinions of all the Christian Bishops and People in the World This they must do or else they cannot declare the common Faith of Christians unless they can infallibly declare what they do not know If their Authority be only to declare the common Faith of Christians how shall we know that they declare nothing but the common Faith of Christians for if they do their Decrees are not valid for they declare that which is false This Jesuit has greatly intangled and perplexed the Cause by laying the whole stress upon the declarative and applying Power Had he said that the Pope and a General Council had Authority to declare what is the Christian Faith and though they declared that to be the true Faith which the Church diffusive never heard of before yet after their decision it must be received as the common Faith of Christians though it had not been so formerly there had been some sense in this though no truth but when he says the Church can only declare what is and always has been the common Faith of Christians if I can find by ancient Records that what the Council declares to be the common Faith of Christians now was either not known or condemned in former Ages if I certainly know that she declares that to be the Faith which at the very time of the Council was so far from being the common Faith of Christians that it was not the common Faith of the Council but was contradicted by the wisest and best part of it then I certainly know that the Council has not declared the common Faith of Christians and therefore that its Decrees are of no Authority But he proceeds We hold that this general Faith received from the Apostles and preserved in all the Members of the Catholick Church explained upon occasion by the Church representative is infallibly true and this is all the Infallibility the Catholick Church pretends to And there is no Protestant but will own this Infallibility That the Faith at first received from the Apostles the same Faith which was delivered by the Apostles preserved in all the Members of the Catholick Church and the same Faith explained upon occasion

an Argument and yet this is the utmost that I say that the supposed necessity of an infallible Judge does not prove that there is such a Judge but only that there ought to be one and I must conclude no more from it and does this overthrow the use of Reason to conclude no more from an Argument than the Argument will prove whatever any man apprehends necessary to be sure he is mightily inclined to believe but whoever will believe like a reasonable creature must have good evidence for what he believes and yet that we believe it necessary is no evidence that it is not that God will not do what is necessary to be done but because that may not be necessary which we vainly and presumptuously imagine to be so which is the very reason I assign for it in the words immediately following Indeed this is a very fallacious way of reasoning because what we may call useful convenient necessary may not be so in itself and we have reason to believe it is not so if God have not appointed what we think so useful convenient or necessary which is a truer and more modest way of reasoning than to conclude that God has appointed such a Iudge when no such thing appears only because we think it so useful and necessary that God ought to do it Which is not to excuse a bad Saying with a good one as the Jesuite pretends in answer to the Footman Preservat Consider p. 36. but to justifie a good Saying with a good Reason But if it were such blasphemy in Alphonsus to say that he thought he could have ordered some things better than God did at the first Creation let the Jesuite consider what it is to mend what God has done in the work of our Redemption upon a meer supposition that it may be mended for Popery is nothing else but a mending or more properly speaking a corrupting the Gospel of Christ with a blasphemous opinion of mending it And I think to say that God has done what there is no other proof he has done but only that we think he ought to have done it is to say that God ought to have done what it does not appear he has done and if not to be and not to appear be the same in this case then this is equivalent to saying that God ought to have done what he has not done And this I hope is sufficient for the Vindication of those Principles which are pretended to overthrow the Use of Common Sense and Reason SECT II. The Principles pretended to make void all Faith vindicated HE begins with proving the Protestant Faith not to be a Divine Faith because it is not a certain one which if it were true is like proving a man not to live because he is weak for if there be as much certainty as is absolutely necessary to the essence of Faith it may be a true Faith though weak as a weak man is alive still and Faith receives its denomination of Divine or Humane Faith not from the Certainty or Uncertainty of it but from the Authority on which it rests a Divine Authority makes a Divine Faith Humane Authority an Humane Faith and both these may be either certain or uncertain or to speak properly strong or weak so that to prove that the Protestant Faith is not Divine because it is not Certain is like disproving the Essential Properties by Changeable Accidents that a Man is not a reasonable Creature because he is not strong for there is no more necessary connexion between Faith being Divine and being Strong or Certain than between Reason and Bodily Strength a weak Man may be a reasonable Creature and a weak Faith may be Divine if it be founded on a Divine Authority But I wish the Jesuite had told us what that degree of Certainty is which makes a Faith Divine whether any thing less than the certainty of Infallibility can do it for this used to be the old Argument that our Faith is not Divine nor Certain because it is not infallible but if they will abate any thing of Infallibility we will vie all other degrees of Certainty with them and that he very fairly quitted before when he owned and proved that there could be no more than Moral Evidence for the Infallibility of their Church and then I am sure they can have no more than a Moral Evidence for the rest of their Faith which is all founded upon their Churches Infallibility Well having proved that our Faith cannot be Divine because it is not certain he next undertakes to prove that our Faith is not certain because we cannot have an Act of Faith of any One Article till our Rule of Faith proposes it i. e. till we know certainly what Scripture teaches of it not by any one Text but by comparing all the Texts that speak of that Subject Very well we cannot believe any thing upon the Authority of Scripture which is our Rule of Faith till we know that it is in Scripture wisely observed and we grant it Let us see what follows 1. Then a Protestant must certainly know that he hath all the Books of Holy Writ 2. That all those he owns for such were really written by inspired Pens The second we accept of but there is no need to submit to his first Condition That a Protestant must certainly know that he hath all the Books of Holy Writ that is he must be able to prove that there never were any other Books written by the Apostles or other inspired Men but what we receive into our Canon of Scripture which is to prove a negative which is always thought unreasonable and at this distance from the Apostolick Age is impossible but whenever the Church of Rome will prove this of their Canon of Scripture we will prove it of ours In the mean time it is sufficient that we reject no Books which have been always acknowledged by the Universal Church and that the Books we receive have been received for inspired Writings by the Universal Church and if ever there were any other Books written by the Apostles or Evangelists which are now lost we have reason to believe that the Church does not need them but has a perfect Rule of Faith and Manners without them for the Divine Providence would never permit that the Church should want any necessary part of the Rule of Faith. He proceeds 3 ly And since the Letter kills that he understands the true sense of each Text which relates to the Object of that Act of Faith. 4ly That he remember them all so as comparing them to see which is the clearer to expound the obscurer and what is the result of them all for any one he understands not or hath forgotten may possibly be that one that must expound the rest he cannot have one Act of Faith. Now not to take notice of his ridiculous not to say blasphemous misapplication of Scripture in that Parenthesis the Letter kills by