Selected quad for the lemma: sin_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sin_n	heart_n	sorrow_n	tear_n	3,398	5	8.0837	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44952	The triumphs of Rome over despised Protestancie	Hall, George, 1612?-1668.	1655 (1655)	Wing H337; ESTC R17440	89,326	154

force and vertue to dispel all the power of the Devil To what purpose then should any man rack his thoughts to bring and hold them in a due fixednesse upon the matter of his prayer when the very sound of the words will do the feat without the concurrence of the heart And this Antoninus illustrates by a witty example One propounded this Question to a learned Priest whether the prayer which he understood not were equally effectual with those which he spake with understanding and received this answer As a precious stone saith he is of no lesse worth when it is in the hand of an unskilful man then when in the hand of an expert Jeweller so are good prayers Cardinal Cajetan therefore was foulely overseene when he flatly determined that it would be more to the edification of mens souls that prayers should be made in their own Mother tongue wherein it is some marvel to see him seconded by Fisher the Jesuite in asserting of that which his fellow Ledesma termes no better then a profane recitation What Latinity there is in Opus operatum it matters not I am sure there is much ease Well fare St. Dominick therefore who they say by Revelation brought up that order of the set number of our Paters and Aves which costs us no paines but Lip-labour although it seemes he fell somewhat too short in his reckning allotting but 63. Aves to the Corone of our Lady in remembrance of her so many yeares that she is said to have lived upon earth whereas now more accurate search hath found them to be 73. I am sure there is no fervent prayer raised out of a recollected and well wrought heart which requires not more true labour then an hundred formal Rosaries And whereas the Protestant and all religious Christians in all other Churches think it concernes them highly to meditate in the word of God day and night and to labour earnestly to informe themselves in all points necessary to salvation Our holy Mother bids us save that labour also not onely forbearing to encourage Lay persons as St. Chrisostome did of old to read the Sacred Scriptures but absolutely forbidding the use of them in their native Languages upon no small penalty and if any passage thereof be allowed to be publikely read in the Church it is in Latin no lesse familiar to the poor ignorant Auditories then Greek and Hebrew lest they should understand and trouble their heads about it Indeed what should unlettred Laicks do with Scripture more then children with edge-tooles It is not necessary to salvation saith Cardinal Bellarmine to beleive that there are any divine Scriptures And perhaps it had been better for the Church saith Cardinal Hosius if no Scriptures had been written It is abundantly enough for Lay people to cast their soules upon the trust of the Church which cannot erre and to think themselves safe and rich enough if they be furnished with the Colliers faith without any curious and explicite inquisition into the Articles of beliefe And whereas the heaviest load that can be upon the heart of a Christian is his sin which cannot but breed a perpetual unquietness to the soul as that which according to Luthers determination is attended with great concussion of spirit the gentle Casuists of our holy Mother Rome speak better things and like kinde and cunning Physitians give present ease to the troubled Conscience Contritio una c. One act of contrition though never so little is enough to blot out the greatest sin faith Card. Tollet To the perfection of penitence there is onely required an outward grief of heart if never so small saith Maldonat Nay there needs not a full contrition an attrition is enough saith Franciscus Victoria It is not necessary to sorrow for one sin more then another since a general sorow for all our sins in common is sufficient to Contrition and such a sorrow as this is not more intense for one sin then for another saith the same Author Courage therefore say the comfortable Casuists the most sins are venial these break not the peace betwixt God and the soule As for the mortal at the worst they are blowne away by the breath of Confession Yea which is yet more some sins by custome which our simplicity would have thought had rather aggravated them lose their malignant nature and become no sins For example If a man saith the Casuist Rodriguez have a custome of swearing Let him have once done his penance for it although he afterward swears still not considering what he saith he doth not therein sin because to swear thus is not an humane voluntary act Thus he for which he cites Medina also But if Custome do not abate a sin it is no more but confess and be free And though it prove too true which that great Tell-troth Gerson observes that there is scarce any full and sincere confession now a dayes to be had yet that blame is not to be imputed to the Ordinance but to the man who having swallowed the poyson sticks at the Antidote whereby he might be cured Our Bromiard can tell us of a close sinner of whom the Divel could say confidently Tush let that man alone I have his Tongue fast in my purse who having afterwards unloaded his Conscience by a penitent confession and turned over a new leafe the same Divel being expostulated with concerning him could answer I said indeed that I had his Tongue in my purse and so had but his Confessarie hath pickt my purse and got it out The moral whereof is no other then that of wise Solomon He that covereth his sin shall not prosper but he that confesseth his sin shall finde mercy Though I perceive already the Heretiques are here ready to take me short and to pull me by the sleeve and tell me that I have forgot the principal verbe for Solomon saith He that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall finde mercy But it is no matter for that whiles our learned Casuists assure us that not a full and absolute act of the will but a mere velleity to leave a sin is ground enough for a perfect pardon and clear absolution which I hope is an easier way then is proposed by the crabbed opposites who stand peremptorily upon the necessity of an hearty sorrow and deep compunction of the soul with an earnest loathing and detestation of the sin to the obtaining of remission I like not these severe and cruel Task-masters which make the way to Heaven more strait and difficult then it is Give me those plausible and indiligent Doctors that professe by the very act of Sacramental penance to change the eternal punishments of hell into the Temporal of Purgatory and to buy off the temporal torments of Purgatory with the purchase of Indulgences so as now hell is quit Purgatory discharged and Heaven opened and Hey then up go we and is not this a more

easie and pleasing way to glory trow we then striving to resist our sins unto blood to offer an holy violence to our souls in mortifying our evil and corrupt affections to curbe and restrain our sensual desires to labour hard in bringing our rebellious hearts to the obedience of faith to crucifie the old man and to sayle to Heaven in a flood of tears CHAP. VII The triumph of Assurance Let the way be never so smooth and faire yet if we be not sure it leads us aright we walk with diffident steps and know not whether it were not better to repent us of every pace that we measure in that progression But when we are assured of the directnesse of our paths we passe on cherfully though in a more unpleasing ●●ck It is therefore a further praise of the Roman faith that in all her Tenets of Religion it is not more easie and plausible to incertain any then sure to hold How should it be otherwise since it is one of the main Principles of her faith that her head cannot erre and surely let her undertake for her head wherein the Loco-motive faculty lies I dare for the body As a man as a private Doctor as Innocentius he may chance to erre but as Pope Innocentius he cannot now some blunt undistinguishing German would be ready to ask as one of them did in the like case if the man the Doctor the Innocentius should go to hell what would become of the Pope but these cavils are for want of wit and grace to know the infallibility feoffed upon St. Peters chair whosoever he be that fits in it For did no our Saviour say to that Prime Apostle I have prayed for thee that thy faith faile not which though the Heretiques would make us believe that it respected onely the personal faith of Peter which Satan would speedily endeavour to shake by that tempting cribration yet according to the rule of Favores Ampliandi we must know is to be extended to all that should pretend ever after to be his successors whether right or wrong And when he said Literally Thou art Peter he said in effect Thou art Innocentius for his successor and he are all one and upon thee will I build my Church which doubtlesse is no other then the Church of Rome though the peremptory Opposites say Rome was not then thought of for a Church nor many a faire year after so as being then and of a long time after perfectly Pagan she was somewhat likely for that present to stand out againsts the Gates of hell upon these sure grounds by a miraculous traduction of Grace whosoever doth but sit down in the Chaire wherein St. Peter once sate at Rome for Antioch is not worth talking of though there he sat sure enough is as certainly free from error in faith as if he were transformed into the blessed Apostle himselfe what though he be no good or holy man as their Papyrius Massonus truly professes that no man now a dayes requires any holinesse of a Pope since they are held to be the best Popes that are lesse ill then other men use to be Yea let him be an arrant Conjurer as more then one have been acknowledged to be Let him be as proud and arrogant as Boniface the eight who stiled himselfe the Lord of the World Let him be as perjured an impostor and as shamelesly incestuous as Alexander the sixt Let him be as violent an intruder as Llamasus the third Let him be as abominably criminous as John 22 was convinced by a general Council to be Yea what do I nibbling at particulars let it be granted that 150. of them were Apotactical and Apostatical miscreants as Genebrard himself confesseth yet they can no more erre in the Chaire then their flatterers could say true Their Biographer Massonus notes it for a singular providence that no Pope ever sat in that Chair which was blinde lame crook-backed or otherwise deformed in body but the Heretiques are ready to tell him they could rather have wisht he could justly have acquited them from leud lives deformed souls and crooked conditions But let them have been Divels incarnate elsewhere yet if they be once set in the holy Chaire no error in judgement of faith dare offer to fasten upon them Yet perhaps it may be possible to finde some men whose lives may be impure yet their Doctrine sound as on the contrary Bernard could say of Arnoldus of Briria that his conversation was honey but his Doctrine poyson it is yet the greater wonder that let a very boy or an ignorant body be preferred to the blessed Chaire once he is instantly priveledged from errour we have no reason to grant that any such uncapable person hath ever been suffred to disparage that sacred se●t But the Opposites are ready to choake us with a pretty Pope of nine years old with a Boniface the ninth a tall stripling which was as high in the Schole as his Grammer and could hardly write or sing raised to the Papal dignity And cast us in the teeth with that irref●agable word of our own Alphonsus de Castro since it is apparant saith he that many Popes have been so utterly unlearned that they have not attayned to so much as the knowledge of the Grammer how shall we think they can be fit men to give us meet Interpretations of Scripture But the more unlikely the event is the greater is the miracle so as Florilegus need not now to mak● so great a wonder of Joachim who of a Laick unlettred man was on the suddaine become an Altilogu● Theologus since it appears this is no newes at Rome The example whereof cannot but have had a very wholsome influence upon the subordinate Clergie for the priveledge both of their age and ignorance So we finde that Roger Archbishop of York admitted beardlesse boyes from under the ferule to Ecclesiastical promotions yea children more fit to drive a top thē weild a Crosier grave Espencaeus speaking of Nazianzens censure of some abuses in that holy station le ts fall these bitter termes Quid diceret c. What would that father say saith he if he saw instead of reverend fathers in Christ boyes irreverent against Christ And as for the ignorant prelacy of Rome Marforius plaies the Jack sufficiently in Pasquils suite to Eugenius the fourth Good Pope be pleased to bestow An hat on Pasquil for although A marble rude and base he be Yet many Bishops made we see More senselesse every way then he But the best is this businesse is now upon the mending hand for I finde that in a due care of reforming this abuse of admitting young Novices and unlearned persons to Ecclesiastical Benefices it is enacted by the Council of Ravenne that no Parish Church shall be conferred upon any but such a one as can competently read and sing and say his service Neither shall any possesse a Canonship in a Cathedral Church