Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	act_n	aforesaid_a	enact_v	4,002	5	10.0897	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56393	Reasons for abrogating the test imposed upon all members of Parliament, anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I A.B. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous : first written for the author's own satisfaction, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1688 (1688)	Wing P467; ESTC R5001	62,716	138

believe or profess that there is a real or corporeal Presence as they Phrase it of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist This Declaration though it seem'd to be aim'd with a particular Malice against the Lutherans and their peculiar manner of Asserting and Explaining the real Presence yet it strikes at the general Doctrine it self held in all Churches And as these were the great Alterations made at that time so who were the Authors and Contrivers of 'em is so utterly unknown to Historians that they are not so much as able to conjecture Doctor Heylin would ascribe it either to the Convocation it self or some Committee appointed by it But this is the officious Kindness of the good Man to help out the poor oppressed Church at that time at a dead Lift having no Record or Authority for his Assertion Doctor Burnet has often heard it said That the Articles were fram'd by Cranmer and Ridley But whoever told him so knew no more than himself I am sure it is the meanest Trade in an Historian to stoop to Hear-says All that can be conjectured of it is That it was done at that unhappy time when Dudley Governed all who when he form'd his great and ambitious Designs first as the Historian Remarks endeavoured to make himself Popular and to this end among other Arts he made himself Head and Patron of the Calvinian Faction and entertain'd the Establish'd Church with Neglect and Contempt and therefore I find not Ecclesiastical Matters referr'd to the advice of the Regular Ecclesiastical Order but were either Transacted by Himself and his Agents in private or some incompetent Lay-Authority As to this matter of the New Liturgy and Articles there is no Record but an Act of Parliament by which they are Impos'd and Authoriz'd Whereas there hath been a very Godly Order set forth by the Authority of Parliament for Common-Prayer and Administration of the Holy Sacraments to be used in the Mother Tongue within this Church of England agreeable to the Word of God and the Primitive Church very comfortable to all good People desiring to live in Christian Conversation and most profitable to the Estate of this Realm upon the which the Mercy Favour and Blessing of Almighty God is in no wise so readily and plenteously pour'd as by Common-Prayers due using of the Sacraments and often Preaching of the Gospel with the Devotion of the Hearers and yet this notwithstanding a great number of People in divers parts of this Realm following their own sensuality and living either without Knowledge or due Fear of God do willfully and damnation before Almighty God abstain and refuse to come to their Parish Churches and other places where Common-Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and preaching of the Word of God is used upon Sundays and other Days ordain'd to be Holy-days II. For Reformation hereof be it enacted by the King our Sovereign Lord with the assent of the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament assembled and by the Authority of the same that from and after the Feast of All-Saints next coming all and every person and persons inhabiting within this Realm or any other the King's Majesty's Dommions shall diligently and faithfully having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent endeavour themselves to resort to their Parish Church or Chapel accustomed or upon reasonable let thereof to some usual place where Common-Prayer and such Service of God shall be used in such time of Let upon every Sunday and other days ordained and used to be kept as Holy-days and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the Common-Prayer Preachings or other Service of God there to be us'd and ministred upon pain of Punishment by the Censures of the Church III. And for the due execution hereof the King 's most Excellent Majesty the Lords Temporal and all the Commons in this present Parliament assembled doth in God's name earnestly require and charge all Archbishops Bishops and their Ordinaries that they shall endeavour themselves to the uttermost of their Knowledges that the due and true execution thereof may be had throughout their Diocesses and Charges as they will answer before God for such Evils and Plagues wherewith Almighty God may justly punish his People for neglecting this good and wholesom Law. IV. And for their Authority in this behalf be it further likewise enacted by the Authority aforesaid That all and singular the same Archbishops Bishops and all other their Officers exercising Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction as well in place Exempt as not Exempt within their Diocesses shall have full Power and Authority by this Act to Reform Correct and Punish by Censures of the Church all and singular persons which shall offend within any their Iurisdictions or Diocesses after the said Feast of All-Saints next coming against this Act and Statute any other Law Statute Privilege Liberty or Provision heretofore made had or suffered to the contrary notwithstanding V. And because there is risen in the use and exercise of the aforesaid common Service in the Church heretofore set forth divers doubts for the fashion or manner of the Ministration of the same rather by the curiosity of the Minister and Mistakers than of any other worthy cause therefore as well for the more plain and manifest Explanation thereof as for the more perfection of the said Order or Common Service in some places where it is necessary to make the same Prayer and fashion of Service more earnest and fit to stir Christian People to the true honouring of Almighty God the King 's most Excellent Majesty with the assent of the Lords and Commons of this present Parliament assembled and by the Authority of the same hath caused the aforesaid Order or Common Service Intituled The Book of Common-Prayer to be faithfully and godly perused explained and made fully perfect and by the aforesaid Authority hath annexed and joined it so explained and perfected to this present Statute c. In this new Office beside the forementioned alterations in the Liturgy it self there was order'd in the Rubrick the Abolition of Copes and Hoods neither is it altogether unobservable that at this time Hopkins his Psalms broke in upon the service of the Church But in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign when the Reformation was setled in that State in which it ever after continued that new Declaration of the Second Liturgy of King Edward was rejected together with the 29th Article and the First old Form of Distribution was restored And that 's a clear Declaration of the Sence of this Church for a real and essential Presence when it was so particularly concern'd to have all Bars against it remov'd And from that time forward the most eminent Divines in it were successively from Age to Age the most Assertors of it It were in vain to recite the numberless Passages to that Purpose it having been so often done by other Hands A List of the Names of the

future Ages think of the Injustice and Barbarity of the present Peerage to suffer English Noblemen to be stript of the greatest Privilege of their Birth-right by so unheard of a Villainy And when it is in their Power to see their injur'd Peers redressed that they should not only suffer 'em to be so basely robb'd of their Peerage but should for ever establish and ratify the Fraud by Authority and force of Law. This wou'd be an eternal National Reproach and such a Blot upon the House of Peers that no length of Time cou'd wear away nothing but the Universal Conflagration could destroy Thirdly It ought to be repealed because of the incompetent Authority by which the Law was enacted It is a Law of an Ecclesiastical Nature made without the Authority of the Church contrary to the Practice of the Christian World in all Ages and indeed to our Saviours own Commission who setled all Power of Government and especially the Legislative which is the highest Act of it upon the Officers of his own Kingdom so that for any other Order of Men to assume the Exercise of any such Authority to themselves is no less than to depose him from his Throne by disowning neglecting and affronting his Commission to his Catholick Church This Power of making Decrees concerning Divine Verities is the very Foundation upon which the whole Fabrick of the Christian Church hath hitherto stood and is to stand to the End of the World. For if it be once taken away as here it is there is no peculiar Government left to the Church it self and without Government there can be no Society or Band of Union and without that there remains nothing but Confusion So dangerous a Trespass is it for the Temporal Powers to entrench upon this sacred Prerogative of the Holy Catholick Church The Civil Power may restrain the Exercise of it as they shall judge meet for the Ends of Peace and the Interest of the Common-Wealth and punish it too at their own Discretion if it shall any way presume to entrench upon the Power of the State. But tho' it may prevent or correct Abuses yet it cannot usurp the Power it self without manifest Sacrilege and Blasphemy in short this is such a daring Invasion of our Saviour's own Kingdom that nothing more imports Christian Kings and Governours than to be wary and cautious how they lay Hands upon it Neither can it be pleaded this Law was consented to by the Bishops to their Shame in the House of Lords For First it being an Ecclesiastical Law it ought to have been antecedently enacted by them without any Lay-concurrence and when they had first decreed it by their own proper Authority Then and not before then was it lawful for the Parliament to take it into their Consideration and as they judged fit to abett it with temporal Penalties Which Practice as I have before mentioned was ever most religiously observed by all Christian Kings and Princes and never before violated but by Apostates and Rebel Parliaments But then Secondly The Bishops sit not in the House of Lords as Bishops but as Temporal Barons and so act not there by virtue of any Power derived from our Blessed Saviour but from the meer Grace and Favour of the King And if they themselves should pretend to exercise any Ecclesiastical Authority in that Place they would most scandalously betray and as much as in 'em lyes destroy the very Being of a Christian Church and profanely pawn the Bishop to the Lord Besides that lastly by the Law of England the Ecclesiastical Power is setled in Convocation so that to Enact any thing of that Nature without their Consent is to betray the Rights of the Church of England as by Law established in particular as well as of the Church Catholick in General Fourthly It ought to be repealed because of the uncertainty and Falshood of the Matters contained in the Declaration it self as First That there is no Transubstantiation in the Sacrament of our Saviour's Body and Blood. And Secondly That the Invocation of Saints and the Mother of God is Idolatry Both which Propositions are by this Law to be solemnly and sincerely in the Presence of God professed testifyed and declared which in Conscience is the same thing with a formal Oath whatever it is in Law. Now to oblige the whole Nobility of a Nation to swear to the Truth of such abstruse and uncertain Propositions which they neither do nor can nor indeed ought to understand and this upon Penalty of forfeiting the Privileges of their Birth-right is such a monstrous and inhumane Piece of Barbarity as could never have enter'd into the Thoughts of any Man but the infamous Author of it neither into his as malicious as his Nature was but in his fierce Pursuit of Princely Blood for that was the only Design of all his Actions after the starting of the Otesian Villainy of which this Test was the first Sacrament to pursue and hunt down the Heir of the Crown which all the World knows and is now satisfied he sought by numberless Perjuries tho' by nothing more than this Test by which he stript his Royal Highness of the Guards of his most faithful Friends and when he was left alone it was an easy matter to come to his Person and in him to the Monarchy so that the very next thing that followed immediately upon it was the black Bill of Exclusion And next to that it was the very Master-piece of little Achitophel's Wickedness But to return to my Argument What is meant by Transubstantiation is a thing altogether unknown and uncertain especially to the Persons chiefly concerned the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom It is a Word and a Notion chiefly handled by the Schoolmen and Metaphysicians Skill in whose Writings is the least part of a Gentlemans Education their Learning is more polite and practicable in the civil Affairs of Humane Life to understand the Rules of Honour and the Laws of their Country the Practice of Martial Discipline and the Examples of great Men in former Ages and by them to square their own Actions in their respective Stations and the like but for the Wars between Scotus and Thomas Aquinas the Nominalists and the Realists and the several Common-wealths in the Metaphysical World they are not more beyond than they are below their Knowledge and yet these numberless Sects of Disputers do not quarrel and differ more about any one thing than the Notion of Transubstantiation How unreasonable a thing then is it to impose it upon the Nobility and Gentry of a whole Nation under Forfeiture of all their Share in the Government to abjure a thing that is morally impossible for them to understand This seems too bold and profane an Affront to Almighty God in whose Presence the Protestation is made and only declares that Men will swear any thing they know not what before the great Searcher of Hearts rather than lose any worldly Interest And I dare

two grand singularities of his History and the main things that gave it popular Vogue and Reputation with his Party and were these two blind Stories and the Reasons depending upon them retrench'd it would be like the shaving of Samson's Hair and destroy all the strength peculiar to the History The Design was apparently laid before the Work was undertaken that industriously warps all things into Irenical and Erastian Principles and the vain Man seems to have been flattered by his Patrons into all that Pains to give Reputation to their Errors And here lay the Fondness for the Stillingsteetian Manuscript that it so frankly and openly asserted Erastian and Sacramentarian Principles as the Bottom of the Reformation But if such an unprov'd and unwarrantable piece of Paper without any certain Conveyance or Tradition without any Notice of so publick a Transaction in any contemporary Writer without any other Evidence of its being genuine than that it was put providentially into the Hands of Dr. St. when he wrote his Irenicum must be set up for undoubted Record against all the Records of the Churches our great Historian would be well advis'd to employ his Pains in writing Lampoons upon the present Princes of Christendom especially his own which he delights in most because it is the worst thing that himself can do than collecting the Records of former times For the First will require Time and Postage to pursue his Malice but the Second is easily trac'd in the Chimney Corner And therefore I would desire these Gentlemen either to give a better Account of the Descent and Genealogy of the Paper than that it came to Dr. St. by Miracle or else to give it less Authority But to proceed a new Office for the Communion-Service was drawn up in the same Year by the Bishops in compiling of which Cranmer had the chief hand and by his great Power over-ruled the rest at Pleasure in this Service he retains the old Form of Words used in the ancient Missals when there was no Zuinglianism or Doctrine of figurative Presence in the Christian World and the real Presence was universally believed as appears by the very Words of Distribution The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for thée preserve thy Body and Soul unto everlasting Life And the Blood of our Lord Iesus Christ which was shed for thée c. This was the Form prescribed in the First Liturgy of Edward the 6th and agreeable to this are the King 's own Injunctions published at the same time where the Eucharist is call'd the Communion of the very Body and Blood of Christ by which Form of Words they then expressed the real Presence as oppos'd to Zuinglianism This Liturgy being thus established and withal abetted by Act of Parliament for some time kept up its Authority in the Church against all Opposition though it was soon encountred with Enemies enough both at Home and abroad out of the Calvinian Quarters At the end of the Year ensuing Peter Martyr a rank Sacramentarian came over and after much Conversation with Cranmer he was plac'd Regius Professor in Oxford where he soon raised Tumults about the Zuinglian and Sacramentarian Doctrines But Bucer that prudent and moderate Reformer came not till some time after though invited at the same time And so either came too late or departed too soon for as he came over in Iune so he dy'd in Ianuary so that tho he were a great Assertor of the real Presence as our Church-Historian himself often observes he had not a Season to sow his Doctrine and Martyr reigning alone and being a furious Bigott in his Principles it is no wonder if Zuinglianism spread with so much Authority But the most fatal Blow to the Reformation of the Church of England was given by Calvin's Correspondence with the Protector and afterwards with Dudley taking upon him to censure expunge reform impose at his own Pleasure the Malignity of whose Influence first discovered it self in the Ceremonial War against a Cap and a Tippet but soon wrought into the Vitals of the Reformation especially as to the Liturgy and the Eucharist both which must be removed to give way to the Zuinglian Errors This Alteration was made in the 5th Year of the Kings Reign tho precisely when and by what Persons is utterly unknown only it is remark'd by our Church-Historian to have followed immediately after the Consecration of Hooper When as he observes the Bishops being generally addicted to the Purity of Religion spent most of this Year in preparing Articles which should contain the Doctrine of the Church of England Among which the 29th condemns the real Presence as the new Liturgy to which they are annexed had before almost run it up to the Charge of Idolatry For they were not content to abolish the old Missal Form of Distribution The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy Body and Soul unto everlasting Life Take and eat this c. But instead of it appoint this Zuinglian Form Take and eat this without any mention of the Body and Blood of Christ in remembrance that Christ died for thée c. Neither were these Innovators whoever they were satisfied with the Alteration of the old Form but add a fierce Declaration to bar the Doctrine of Real and Essential Presence Whereas it is ordered in this Office of the Administration of the Lord's Supper that the Communicants should receive the same Kneeling which order is well meant for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy Receivers and for avoiding such Prophanation and Disorder in the Holy Communion as might otherwise ensue Yet least the same Kneeling should by any Persons either out of Ignorance and Infirmity or out of Malice and Obstinacy be misconstrued and deprav'd it is here declared that no Adoration is intended or ought to be done unto any real or essential Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood for the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural Substances and therefore may not be ador'd for that were Idolatry to be abhorr'd by all faithful Christians and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven and not here It being against the Truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one And whereas a body of Articles was composed at the same time it is declared in the 29th Article That since the very being of humane Nature doth require That the Body of one and the same Man cannot be at one and the same time in many places but of necessity must be in some certain and determinate place therefore the Body of Christ cannot be present in many different places at the same time And since as the Holy Scriptures testifie Christ hath been taken up into Heaven and there is to abide till the end of the World it becomes not any of the Faithful to