Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	ancient_a	church_n	father_n	3,954	5	5.0522	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46626	Ad clerum a visitation sermon preached at Beckonsfield in the county of Bucks, April the 9th, 1678 / by John James ...	James, John, b. 1649.	1678 (1678)	Wing J427; ESTC R35427	26,308	47

sacred Offices of so Divine an Institution be handled with the most awful Solemnity and Celebrated with the greatest reverence and most Religious adoration imaginable And when many stumble at this Rock of offence and miscarry at the sight of those wonderfull things represented therein is it not extremely necessary that men of the greatest wisdom and gravity be Consecrated for the work of the Ministry that they may improve their time and abilities for a right understanding of the Mysteries of the Christian Faith and then employ the Talent of their Wisdom and Knowledge for the information and direction of others that men may not promiscuously intermeddle with those Holy Offices nor any man after the strictest distinction of Pastour and People go astray through want of instruction and perish for want of understanding But because the subject of our present Argument respects a Matter of Fact and to discourse only de Jure concerning the Ordinances of Christ is insufficient to our present purpose let us consider what the Master of our Religion hath de facto determined concerning the Ministerial Office the first remarkable Instance that affords any light to this disquisition is the Election and nomination of Apostles recorded Mark 3.13 Luk. 6.13 Whose Commission is granted by their Lord and Master Matth. 10.1 Luk. 9.1 After this Luk. 10.1 He called his Seventy Disciples to whom he gave Commission to Preach the Gospel these were the only Persons which that supreme Head of the Church Ordained in Person and to these he gave Commission to execute the Ministerial Office as their proper and peculiar Function the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy-two Disciples And that these sacred Orders might remain in the Church to the end of the World when he first appeared to an Assembly of his Apostles after his Resurrection he breathed on them the Holy Ghost and thereby invested them with full Authority to execute the Pastoral Office for the Ordering and Governing his Church which his Father had committed to him Joh. 20.21 22. As my Father hath sent me even so send I you which immediately before his Assention he again renews with a plain intimation of the continuance of that Order and consequently the necessity of Ordaining men to succeed them in it till all things should be fulfilled Mat. 28.18 19 20. And that the Apostles understood their Master in this sence is apparent because as necessity required through the death of the present Officers or the larger groweth and extent of the Church they Assembled together and exercised Episcopal Authority in Ordaining others to that Holy employment Thus they Consecrated Matthias though he were Elected by God himself into the place of Judas and he was numbered with the Eleven Apostles Acts 1.25 And though St. Paul was a singular Instance of an immediate miraculous Call when by a voice from Heaven he was made an Apostle yet he began not to Preach the Gospel till Ananias had put his hands on him and prayed over him that he might be filled with the Holy Ghost Acts 9.17 And when the Gentiles had received the Gospel through the dispersion of the Christians upon the prosecution of St. Stephen the Apostles remaining still at Jerusalem sent forth Barnabas that he should go to Antioch who finding Saul at Tarsus joyned together and mightily confirmed the Believers there Acts 11. And in the Thirteenth Chapter these Two men were solemnly Ordained Apostles of the Gentiles by those Apostolical Persons mentioned Vers 1 To all which agrees that Rule of the Apostle comprised in the Interrogation of St. Paul Rom. 10.15 How shall they Preach except they be sent i.e. They have no Authority and can expect no blessing upon their labours till they have a lawful Commission to set them on work To which practice of the Apostles the Primitive and all succeding Churches in Christendom till some Zealots of late have justly confirmed as all Ecclesiasti●al Histories do fully testifie and thus St. Clemens contemporary with Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians hath left on Record 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Apostles first Ordained Ministers in Churches and gave command that as any were removed by death the most deserving Persons should be Chosen into their place and Ordained to execute their Office Now certainly the Example and approbation of so great a Cloud of Witnesses is not only a sufficient Warrant but a just Authority to regulate the affairs of the Church according to their Pattern to the Worlds end So that I may lawfully assume my designed Proposition and confidently deliver it as a just and regular Conclusion that whatever Persons have been successively Ordained into or at present invested with the Sacred Order of the Ministerial Office by imposition of hands from Regular Bishops and their Presbyters such men from the Authority of Apostolical practice are to all intents all purposes the Ministers of Christ and most properly Stewards of the Gospel and that all other persons whatever be their Natural abilities their Supernatural Graces their acquired parts or their great experience in Church-affairs have lot or portion as Agents in these matters till they receive Commission from good Authority and which is more considerable do willfully cast themselves out of the Church of Christ whilst they reject and disown his lawfull Ministers which was the Judgment of that most ancient Father St. Ignatius Epist ad Trall P. 50. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that it was not without great reason that that blessed Martyr called upon the Church of Philadelphia with such zeal and importunity Epist ad Philad P. 43. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What shall we then think of the insolence of those men who Sacrilegiously usurp the Ministerial Authority being neither sent by men nor as they pretend called by God I mean those illiterate but conceited Mechanicks who being ingaged in some civil Calling as the business and employment o their lives presume to be Masters of Divinity and Teachers in the business of Religion as if Divine Knowledge were in this latter and declining age of the World conveyed into the minds of men by the working of Miracles through an immediate inspiration or the Sacred Mysteries of Christianity were exposed by Christ without any Guardian to the open World to be prostituted to and desecrated by any the most common or unsanctified Persons 'T is true that the Prophecies of the Old Testament might be fulfilled and to illustrate the glory of the New in the beginning of the Christian World God did communicate extraordinary gifts even to mean and ordinary persons who being inspired by the Holy Ghost did extraregularly Prophesie or Interepret or speak with Tongues Acts 2.17 For so it was spoken By the Prophet Joel 2.28 But as they were but few beside the Officers of the Church to whom God dispensed those miraculous gifts so they did not pretend to assume the Ministerial Office nor presume to execute any part thereof but only altered the inspired