Selected quad for the lemma: tradition_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
tradition_n	church_n	find_v	scripture_n	3,607	5	6.0436	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58886	Dr. Sherlock's preservative considered the first part, and its defence, proved to contain principles which destroy all right use of reason, fathers, councils, undermine divine faith, and abuse moral honesty : in the second part, forty malicious calumnies and forged untruths laid open, besides several fanatical principals which destroy all church discipline, and oppose Christs divine authority : in two letters of Lewis Sabran of the Society of Jesus.	Sabran, Lewis, 1652-1732.	1688 (1688)	Wing S217; ESTC R16398	73,086	90

not to be Punished is to declare they value not Gods Love and Grace like Children but meerly fear the Lash like Slaves and all Catholics look on such a Disposition excluding positively all regard to Gods Grace and Love as incapable of receiving forgiveness of Sins Christ hath made Atonement for our Sins but his Blood is to be applied by Baptism and in case of Relapse by perfect Contrition or Penitential Works during Life or Punishment after Death before all Pain due to Sin be remitted thus applied it frees us from the whole Curse of the Law. No Suffering or Punishment is the Death of the Soul as Dr. Sherlock supposes but only the privation of Gods Grace which is her Life and which is enjoyed through Christ as much in Purgatory as by penitent Saints on Earth in their penitential Sufferings and the mercy of our Lord appears as much in purging his Members from all Stains of the least sin by the Fire of Purgatory as here by the toilsom Labors of a penitential Life such as his dearest Servants were ever purified by St. Paul never taught that all things that are not seen or of another World are Eternal or else God would be Eternally Judging and so never Rewarding his Servants or Punishing his Enemies so that Dr. Sherlock's Demonstration hath not so much as the least appearance of a seeming Reason Having thus represented our Faith I conclude with S. Augustin Enchirid. c. 10. against Dr. Sherlock It cannot be denied but that the Souls of the Dead are relieved by the Piety and Devotion of their living Friends as often as the Sacrifice of our Mediator is offered or Alms-deeds are done in the Church for them but these things do bring profit only to those who in their Life-time did merit to receive profit by the like after Death For there is a certain State of Life neither so good that it needeth not these Helps after Death nor so evil but that it may be helped by the same I have already Answered in the first Section all those Calumnies which are repeated here concerning the Blessed Saints Intercessions for us Our Doctrin directly opposite to the slanderous Misrepresentations here offered is 1. We look on the Prayers of Saints as meerly humble Supplications for we hold that Christ only standeth our Mediator challenging he alone in Justice and by his own Merits to be heard in favor of us 2. We conceive Charity to be at least as proper to and inseparable from the Seraphical Souls of Saints as from any of Gods Servants on Earth and as much inclining them to Pray for their Fellow-Members of Christ's Mystical Body engaged here below in Miseries and Dangers 3. We never required the Prayers of Saints to render God good and merciful but only when joyned with our Prayers to render these a fitter Object of Gods Mercy and to reconcile the Effects thereof to his Wisdom and Justice 4. Whatever pity the Saints may have on us we look on it as on a small St●●l●e situ●●e Drop compared to the Ocean of Gods infinite Mercy of which that very Pity and the Intercession of Saints is a free Gift to us given with all other Blessings together with and as an Effect of his greatest Gift to wit his Eternal Son with whom in whom and by whom he hath given us all things This Faith of ours doth I conceive most evidently expose the shameless Calumnies which Dr. Sherlock hath disfigured her by Thirty Misrepresentations and Calumnies offered by Dr. Sherlock in his Third and Fourth Sections and some of his Phanatical Principles NEver did Man speak more without Book without Truth and without any respect to Shame or Conscience this Preservative deserving more the Fate of defamatory Libels than those two which he prises and recommends Fol. 78. No Provincial Letters Jesuite Morals burnt by the Hangman Narrative of the Minister Oats contains more Lies and Calumnies against the Persons of Catholics than the Minister Sherlock's Preservative against their Religion the latter is infinitely more Impudent because he accuses with an equally shameless Scurrility not single Persons but most Princes Bishops Universities Kingdoms of the Christian World and all the General Councils to boot I do own and will maintain it That no man ever Lyed in Print with more Confidence ever was so deafned by Passion to all the Reproaches of Conscience and Honor And had not a long Custom of saying any thing in the Pulpit tho' never so monstrously false that could render Catholic Religion odious or ridicule it by disfiguring it dictated to his peevish Distemper this Second Part of his Preservative it would not I conceive have been possible that all the Gall that can drop from a Christians Pen should in one Pamphlet have heaped so many and so defamatory Calumnies Take the following Instances 1. The Catholics by unwritten Traditions that make up a part Fol. 73 74 75. of their Rule of Faith mean such things as may be concealed from the knowledge of the World for 1500 Years never heard of before in the Church of God kept very privately and secretly for several Ages and totally unwritten By Tradition we mean a Revelation received from God by the Apostles conveighed by the continual teaching and preaching of Lawful Pastors strengthned by the visible practice of Christian Churches found in the Books of succeeding Fathers and Historians though not in Canonical Scripture which St. Paul recommended 1 Tim. 6. 2 Thes 2. de Sp. S. c. 27. Ipsam fidei praedicationem ad nudum nomen Contrahemus to Timothy faithfully to be kept as a depositum And commanded the Thessalonians to observe which if it be laid by says St. Basil We shall retain of the Preaching of the Faith but an empty Name and which is delivered to us as Preached by the Apostles by the same means and with the same security at least as the Letter of the Gospel is conveighed to us as written by them 2. They teach several External Observances to be much more Fol. 79. pleasing to God and therefore much better in themselves than true Gospel Obedience Moral or Evangelical virtues that they supply the want of true virtue Compensate for sin and make men great Saints We teach that Gods inherent Grace only Sanctifies us and that whatever External observance void of Evangelical virtue is a sinful Hypocrisie and only can make one a greater sinner 3. They teach that when a Priest Absolves men that forsake Fol. 81 82. not their sins God must confirm the Sentence of his Minister and therefore they are Absolved and need not fear whence they believe that God can be reconciled to sinners whilst they remain in their sins And therefore they must believe that God hath given power to his Priests to Absolve those whom he could not Absolve himself We teach that to receive Absolution without a real forsaking of our sins in lieu of forgivness of them adds a hainous Sacrilege 4.

so great a Doctor moved many to my knowledge to a happy Imitation of so Learned a Saint but they were too plain and solid to meet with even a seeming Answer from the boldest of their Mercenary Pens The only Trick left them was by some slie Insinuation some Calumny to divert the well-meaning Reader 's Attention and a Minister better known by his Forehead than Wit attempted it boldly in a Postscript He was however afraid of burning his Fingers with touching the Sermon it self but nibled at three Lines of the Introduction to it a Form of Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mother of our Lord taken out of the Thirty fifth Sermon of S. Augustin de Sanctis Then to support himself with big words he accuses me of Forgery and Disingenuity not for citing any thing otherwise than it lay in that Sermon but because forsooth this is not really St. Augustin's Sermon but a Spurious Piece unjustly Fathered upon him Then he as insolently triumphs as a weak Enemy who not daring to attack a Camp should brag of the Victory because he had most couragiously shot at random at an exposed Centinel Now Sir take a view of his Proofs and of those Forgeries he accuses me of in the two Letters which I writ in my own Defence His Proofs were these First the Title A Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption doth not agree at all to any thing that is near S. Augustin's time There was then not only no Feast of the Assumption therefore no Sermon could then be Preached on that Solemnity but not even any belief of such an Assumption This is a most weak pretence of a Proof For as I shewed that Day of Assumption when applied to any deceased Saint ever signified in the Language of Fathers the Day of their Death I cited several Sermons made by the Fathers as S. Cyril Amphilochius Methodius made on our Lady's Purification long before any Solemnity of it were observed in the Church of God That S. Hierom or an Author of the same Age William of Paris S. Bernard made Orations on the Assumption of our Blessed Lady altho' they doubted of her being assumed into Heaven in Body That the Sermon in S. Meliton's name own'd for his in the Fifth Century spake as fully on the real Assumption of our Blessed Lady as any Catholic ever did since And therefore it is evidently false that there was no such Belief in S. Augustin's time Farther I added That as Nicephorus witnesses Juvenal Patriarch of Jerusalem proved the truth of this Mystery as now piously believed in the Catholic Church to have been received of very ancient Tradition and that in the presence of Marcion the Emperor in whose time was the Fourth General Council Next I shew'd what a Cheat this Minister put upon his Readers by insinuating that the Thirty fifth Sermon I cited spake not of the Blessed Virgins Death but of her Assumption in the Sense which that word now vulgarly bears whereas the contrary is most evident and is expressed in such words as are found in all the ancient Writings of the Fathers on this Subject to wit In these the World is honor'd by so great a Virgins departure in what order or manner she passed hence to Heaven the Catholic Church doth no way recount neither is her Body found on Earth neither is her Assumption in the Flesh as it is read in the Apocrypha's found in the Catholic Church This is the true Opinion concerning her Assumption that not knowing whether in her Body or out of it as the Apostle hath it we believe her assumed above the Angels It is not evident from hence that this Minister most falsly imposed upon his Readers To this Accusation of mine he returns not a word of Answer to my Proofs only these insignificant Trifles That Nicephorus comes too late That S. Bernard doubted of our Blessed Lady's Assumption in Body That the first mention we find of Meliton's Book was Sixty Years after S. Augustin's time when it was declared Apocryphal Not a word to the Sermon under S. Hierom's name nor to any of my other Proofs His Second Proof was That very lately some Benedictin's at Paris in their late Edition of S. Augustin's Works had cast it into their Appendix as Spurious and that they told us that in their MSS. it wanted the Name of any Author but that the Louvain Doctors told us that in several Manuscripts which they used in their Edition of S. Augustin this Sermon de Sanctis was intitled to Fulbertus Carnotensis 1. I Answered That these were no Proofs or where they have an appearance of a Proof that 't is grounded on a Mistake 'T is no Proof at all on any side that in many Manuscripts there was no Name to the Sermon this is self-evident 2. That it is evident this Sermon was not of Fulbertus Carnotensis for the Sermon I cited assures us that the Church at that time taught nothing of the Corporal Assumption of the Virgin whereas Fulbertus in his Sermon of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin teaches That Christian Piety believed that Christ raised gloriously his Mother and placed h●r above the Heavens This was an undeniable Proof and therefore the Minister answers nothing to it However I added out of Courtesie that 't is no new thing that a Saint's Sermon should in some Manuscripts appear under other Names than their known Authors the same having happened to several Sermons of S. Chrysologus S. Ambrose c. That Syncletica's Life the undoubted Work of S. Athanasius was in some ancient Manuscripts intitled to Polycarp the Anchoret The Minister disproves not any one of these Instances To his vain Argument that the Style of this Sermon did seem to differ from that of S. Augustin's which is his private Opinion and of few late Writers I opposed the contrary Opinion of S. Thomas Aquinas who owned this Sermon to be S. Augustin's that eminent Doctor so well versed in this Saint's Writings that he was called Augustinus Contractus a Doctor to the defence of whose Doctrin the greatest part of Christian Divines are sworn Was not this a very full Answer Yet to shew how the Louvain Doctors owned the Invocation of Saints to have been S. Augustin's Doctrin I minded him that they receive his Eighteenth Sermon de Sanctis in which he speaks thus Having received these our Vows by thy Prayers obtain Pardon for our Sins What we offer let it by thee be pardonable What we ask with a faithful Mind let it become attainable Receive what we offer return us what we ask c. The Last Proof the Minister offers and which he values most is That one Isidore is quoted in that Twenty fifth Sermon de Sanctis thus Hence Isidore observes it is uncertain by this Saying whether the Sword of the Spirit is meant or the Sword of Persecution Now Isidore of Sevil in his Book of the Life and Death of Saints Chap. 68. hath these words Which indeed is