Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	apostle_n	church_n	successor_n	2,614	5	9.1249	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41807	A brief answer to a late discourse concerning the unreasonableness of a new separation	Grascome, Samuel, 1641-1708?	1691 (1691)	Wing G1568; ESTC R26749	15,441	16

of the present Oaths I wish he had told us what he means by Scruples and what the Scruples are for we commonly account Scruples to be odd troublesome things which proceed from a Mind well inclined but a weak Understanding not able to support it self whereby men are desirous to do well but strangely timorous and over fearful of the lawfulness of every thing they go about So that at first dash he represents all the Non-Swearers to be at best only a Parcel of well meaning Fools For my own part I have no Scruples but am well satisfied without any Scruple that I cannot lawfully take the Oaths And though this Author writes as triumphantly as if he had the Reason Sense and Conscience of all Mankind in his keeping yet am I so nnfortunate as to think my Foundation unshaken But before I can proceed I must inform you that he hath not fairly and truly stated the Case For the Question is not nakedly and simply whether the Oaths may or may not be lawfully taken though I will discourse that with him in fit place but whether Oaths imposed under such unjust and merciless Penalties and attended with such fatal Consequences will not warrant the Non-takers in a Separation from such as do And to clear up this I must crave leave to open the Case more fully After six Months Warning frequent Rabling if we take not the Oaths we are silenced for six Months more so that if the Oaths be not taken all the Churches in England must be shut up I know not any considerable difference betwixt this and a Popish Interdict neither matters it much whether we lie at the mercy of the Pope or a Parliament whether God shall be worshipped in the Land or not This time being elapsed and the Oaths not taken then are we absolutely deprived and not only our legal Estates taken away and our Wives and Children sent to wander like Vagabonds and beg their Bread but our Flocks taken from us and we not suffered to discharge our Duties towards God and his Church and the Souls committed to our Care which our Orders and Institution enable us to and require from us And when without taking the Oaths we are not suffered to discharge our Duties nor act in any Communion as Ministers I desire to know what this wants of being made a Condition of Communion to us quatenus Ministers But perhaps he will say That we are not hereby forced to break Communion but may still joyn in the same Communion as Lay-men I thank him kindly when some men have betrayed their Consciences for large Preferments that they may enjoy them quietly we must part with all and our Ministry to boot But though this may serve their turn it will not ours for if no Lay-power can make or unmake a Bishop Priest or Deacon then the Charge of our Ministry will still lie upon us notwithstanding this depriving Act and necessity will lie upon us to discharge it at our Peril To this end I would desire this learned Author to tell me whether he takes us for Baal's Priests or Jeroboam's Priests or Parliament Priests or Convention Priests or God's Priests If he will with Erastus throw all into the Civil Power I have nothing to do with him nor any more to account of him than as one of the common Herd But if he thinks the Power of the Clergy as Clergy is derived from Christ to whom the Father gave all Power and to be received by a Succession of Authority who received it from them whom Christ sent as the Father sent him and if he think that the Bishops of the Christian Church were the Successors of the Apostles in their ordinary and standing Authority for all Ages and that they were empowered to derive Authority to several Orders of men to exercise Spiritual Offices for the Benefit of the Church still retaining the supream Ecclesiastical Authority in their own Order in their own Churches as all Antiquity thought and most sober men since Then he must acknowledge that a Clergy-man's Authority is from God and that notwithstanding any Civil Act to the contrary he is bound to take care of his Office and give account of his Stewardship though the most bitter Persecutions attend him for so doing And therefore if they will warrant a Civil Act to disable us from doing our Duties they must excuse us if we have these dreadful apprehensions of the Account we have to give That we endeavour to do it as we can at our hazard when we are not suffered to do it in Communion with them And yet this is not all for there is one thing more which seems unavoidably to necessitate a Schism if we are discharged from our Office upon account of these Oaths though the Crime will lie at their Door not ours Our Author has been as great a Trimmer of Ecclesiastical Orders as any man I know but now being commonly styled a Bishop I hope he will prove Strenuus sui Ordinis Assertor and being he is as well seen in Antiquity as any man in Europe I hope he will not quarrel me who am only a Presbyter for asserting that Prerogative of his Order which genuine Antiquity always appropriated to it Now in the Primitive Times whose Example and Rule our Church follows in every Church or Diocess as now called all the inferiour Clergy were subject to their Bishops and the Bishops of their several Churches or Diocesses were not to transact any Ecclesiastical Matter of moment and common concern without the Consent of him who was Episcopus primae Sedis or Metropolitan And though sometimes Persecutions made fearful Squanders amongst them yet it was never thought to take away the Subjection of the inferiour Clergy to their Bishop nor the Dependance of the Bishops upon their Metropolitan And if any Clerk withdrew his Obedience to his Bishop or any Bishop denyed his Dependance upon his Metropolitan he was lyable to and certainly struck with the Censures of the Church though he suffered never so deeply And if either by the Levity or Apostacy of the Clergy or People or the Impetuosity of the Secular Power a Bishop was set over a Church or Diocess in opposition to one there Canonically placed already or a Metropolitan placed over a Province in opposition to one already Canonically placed there it always in course produced a Schism and the Church was ever accounted to be with those who adhered to them who were first rightly fixed and they always were esteemed Schismaticks who sided with that Bishop or Metropolitan who was set up in opposition Now this is very like to be our Case and is the very thing which our Author ought to have stated For our Metropolitan and several other Bishops are now actually by a Secular Act Deprived But are they Deprived by any Canons or Canonical Censures of the Church Or are they Discharged from their Office and Trust which God hath committed to them Did ever any Secular Act