Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	believe_v	church_n	infallible_a	7,894	5	10.4883	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B09464	Animadversions on the defence of the answer to a paper, intituled The case of the dissenting Protestants of Ireland, in reference to a bill of indulgence from the exceptions made against it together with an answer to a peaceable & friendly address to the non-conformists written upon their desiring an act of toleration without the sacramental test.	Mac Bride, John.; Pullen, Tobias, 1648-1713. Defence of the ansvver to a paper intituled The case of the dissenting Protestants.	1697 (1697)	Wing M114; ESTC R180238	76,467	116

Animadversions ON The Defence of the Answer To a PAPER INTITULED The CASE of the Dissenting Protestants of Ireland In Reference to a BILL of Indulgence from the Exceptions made against it TOGETHER With An ANSWER to A Peaceable Friendly Address TO THE Non-Conformists Written upon their desiring an Act of Toleration without the SACRAMENTAL TEST Phil. 4. 5. Let your Moderation be known unto all men the Lord is at hand Printed in the the Year 1697. To the Protestant Reader THe Publication of these Animadversions tho design'd some time ago had ceas'd if a late Pamphlet called A Peaceable and Friendly Address c. had not importun'd it For seeing some men judge it their Interest to mis-represent to the world them they 'r pleas'd to call N. Conforming Brethren as a factious and schismatical people whereby we are mis-apprehended and pre-condemn'd We cannot in justice to Truth and Innocence suffer such so to prey upon the Credulity of some and our Reputation as thereby to hazard their Souls and our Safety Yea compassion to our Adversaries in endeavouring the prevention of their being wise in their own conceit a case more despcrate than that of Fools obligeth us to vindicate our selves and inform mis-guided people with words of Truth and Soberness The people we plead for are not the Idle and Consuming Caterpillars of the Nation but Industrious Labourers Ingenious Artists and Honest Traders whose religious Principles will abide in their strength while one j●t or tittle of the Law of God indures becase they adore the fulness of the H. Scriptures as the perfect and only rule of Faith and Manners They believe the necessity of a standing Gospel-Ministry in the Church to whose directive Authority they submit themselves not by an implicit Faith but by a judgment of Discretion All God's holy Ordinances and instituted Worship they embrace but their Fear towards God is not taught by the Commandments of men Their doctrine bears conformity with that of the Reformed Churches abroad and harmoniously agrees with that of Ireland declar'd in her Convocation An. 1615 excepting in what relates to Prelacy and Ceremonies They are willing to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's They profess their Credenda Petenda and Agenda ought all to be regulated by the word of God These Principles we believe are able to abide a Fiery Tryal And as their Principles are true so their Petitions are modest Episcopal Grandeur Jurisdiction or Revenues is not demanded for their Ministers or by them A liberty to serve God according to these foresaid Principles with a relief from some Penal Laws formerly fram'd against them and that no new ones be forg'd to their preiudice is all they require And if such modest Requests may be with Christian Conscience deny'd a people of such Principles we leave to the determination of our Judge that standeth at the Door if Men should give sentence against us Animadversions On the Defence of the Answer to a Paper ENTITULED The Case of the Dissenting Protestants in Ireland c. WHen Diogenes trampled upon Aristippus's Cushion and insulted over himself in these words See how I trample on Aristippus's Pride he had this return thou dost it but with no less Pride So when the Defendant of the Answer c. salutes the Vindicator of the Dissenters Case with a charge of sourness and vanity of temper In the very entrance of his diseourse he discovers so much of the distemper in himself that if Civility coult not yet Conscience of the same evil in himself should have oblig'd him to treat his Adversary more decently But whether the sourness of his temper or his vanity to comprize an Iliad of Railing Accusations in a Nut-shell hath induc'd him with one breath to upbraid the Vindicator with sourness and vanity of temper dexterity in perverting little sincerity dising enuity injustice c. I determine not but if his Reasoning ta●ent be equivalent to his Railing no Dissenter will be able to stand before him Lest he shou'd be suspected of transgressing the 9th Commandment he attempts to make good this charge by as he calls it A remarkable Instance of the Dissenters injustice to him viz. The phrase general Indulgence us'd by him which as he saith doth plainly signify no more than a legal toleration of Dissenting Protestants the Vindicator wrests to import a comprehension of all sorts of Religion Answ If this be Injustice he hath cause to fear that all who have sense to discern words will be injurious to him seeing General Indulgence natively signifies Indulgence to all sorts of Persons and Opinions And 't is improper to say that General Indulgence imports only toleration of Protestant Dissenters which is but Special unless Protestant Dissentors should comprehend all sorts which himself doth not assert As the Vindicator hath not wrested his Expressions so neither hath he misrepresented his Sense seeing all the arguments he useth against the Indulgence pleaded for militat only against an unlimited and general Indulgence of all sorts The next thing disgusts the Defendant is a rule laid down by the Vindicator that these are of the same Religion with the Establish't Church who subscribe her Doctriual Articles this rule he 'll not allow to be true and that because there being three general parts of Religion viz. Doctrin Worship and Government unless we agree in all these we are not of the same Religion A. If the Rule be not good why do the Books of Articles in England an 1552 and 1562 and those in Ireland in 1616 unanimously declare that they were agreed upon in Convocation for avoiding of diversities of Opinions and for Establishing Consent touching true Religion Do not the Subscribers to the 6th Article concerning the sufficiency of holy Scripture for Salvation subscribe to the Worship and Government of the Church as well as to its Doctrin if they do not as the D. insinuates it must be because that Worship and Doctrin is not read in the holy Scripture nor may be proved thereby which is no honor to the Liturgy Ceremonies or Prelacy Dr. Stillinfleet in his Irenicum hath endeavoured to prove that Men may be of the same Religion and yet not under the same particular form of Church Government And I am persuaded 't will be hard for the D. to produce any Church that is or hath been in the world with which the Establisht Church of England doth exactly agree in Form of Worship and Government And thus by his Rule excluding us from the same Religion with the Establisht Church he doth also cut her off from Communion in the same Religion with any Church in the World The Anabaptists against whom the D. excepts as unfit to be comprehended in the Indulgence are of age let them speak for themselves we are none of their Advocates Yet the V's reason for including them and his Charity also was their being included in the Act of Indulgence for England An. 1689. And in a Bill

Employments we are satisfied but are forty that so small a proportion of them fall in the hands of such and that they are treated no better than Dissenters for the most part while some whose Rubrick fitness is shrewdly suspected thrive better As to what the V. says of the modes of Receiving the Sacrament who is against making sitting standing or kneeling the only posture of Receiving we must allow him to abound in his own sense but know that the most part of Presbyterians and Independants in Ireland are otherwise minded who all judge and declare that the Table gesture in receiving the Sacrament and not the Adoration is most agreeable to the first pattern given us by Christ and his Apostles and practised in the Primitive Church and to charge the sitting posture with undecency is an undecent reflection upon Christ and his Apostles That the Receiving in the posture of Adoration was not brought into the Church until the 14th Century and that only into the Latin Church with the opinion of the corporal presence is so well known that it cannot modestly be deny'd And therefore Dissenters wonder that so late an invention brought into the Church upon so bad an occasion and for worse ends shou'd be insisted upon by persons prosessing reverence to Antiquity and declare their abhorrence of corrupting the doctrine of the Sacrament with its ill consequence Yet we do not see what danger the Church is in of having its Authority infringed or Laws nulled by the V's opinion who tho he looks upon sitting standing or kneeling too narrow inclosures to keep people from the Lord's Table yet will it seems allow liberty to Churches to determine in these things as they shall see meet As for the Churches Authority to make Laws 1. We think her power not Legislative but Ministerial and exetuti●● of Divine Laws 2. That her Constitutions at such do not immediately and directly bind the Conscience 3. That her Authority to appoint Rites and Ceremonies of mystical signification or as parts of Worship is none 4. That her power is in determining Circumstances and that these determinations are of the same extent and continuance with the reasons thereof and that all her Conclusions inconsistent with Edification Order Unity and Peace of Christ are ipso facto void and nullities So that the world needs not be so much terrify'd with that great word Church Authority if they truly understand it and the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free When he tells us that he cannot be counted a wise man that wilfully entertains seruples in his mind and suffers himself to be influenc'd by them in his practice we do not comprehend him seeing scruples are fears of the mind which vex the Conscience as a small stone in the shooc doth hurt the foot and are therefore sins of weakness if they be wilfully entertained they are not scruples but wilful wickedness so that we know neither wise man nor fool that will wilfully entertain any such diseases But yet as wise men as himself have had scruples as the Apostles Peter and Barnabas who scrupled converse with the Gentiles Acts 10. Gal. 2. His Principle laid down viz. That it 's more agreeable to the Character of a truly wise man so be scrupulously fearful of disobeying than obeying the commands of Authority will hold good where the Authority is infallible otherwise not for we may as lawfully scruple yea deny obedience to their unjust commands as to disobey their lawful commands and we find it agreed well with the character of the truly wise Apostles to scruple obedience to the commands of Authority It had been Ephraim's wisdom not to have walkt willingly after the command of Jorohoam for which he was broken in judgment Shall we suppose the seven Bishops put in the Tower for 〈◊〉 to obey the late King Ja's Authority were no wise men Seeing therefore we owe no implicit obedience to any man we ought to be as afraid of obeying unlawful as disobeying lawful commands Why he shou'd be surprized with the V's asserting that Non-Conformists have been both before and ever since the Revolution qualify'd with Civil Offices we do not see seeing they had both Physical Moral and Civil Qualifications and are not barr'd as yet by a Sacramental Test but it seems the V. did forget that a Canonical qualification was necessary for being in any Civil Office For there are as he says Ecclesiastical Laws by which tho Dissenters be not wholly unqualify'd for admittance into Civil Offices they are wholly disabled for continuing in them Tho this be possible it seems not reasonable that any cause shou'd disable a man to bear and execute an Office which did not disable him to enter in it when the matter is known before By this the Ecclesiastick Laws are like Decoy Ducks which let in their fellow creatures and then catch them in the Net But it seems Dissenters must pay the thanks for all their Civil Offices to the lenity of Ecclesiastical Governors and not to the bounty of the Civil Magistrate who seems to be as much sub ferula of the Church as Dissenters are for tho they may give they cannot make good their grants If the D's modesty cou'd have allow'd him to suffer others to commend his Answer for its fulness or had he been so patient as to hear what could be said against it he wou'd not have so severely reflected on the V. or boasted of himself as he doth That there might be a symetry in this defence as he began so he ends with hard words in which he taxeth the V. with undecent and profane ridiculing the first Constitution of the Apostles against eating of blood A. To accuse any of so great Crimes without sufficient proof is rather reviling than reasoning which is ordinary with men of stronger passions than reason when they are not able to answer Arguments they fall upon them and the Arguer employing bantering as a succedanium for reason His 2d Accusation that the V. unjustly and irreverently applyeth the words of our Saviour Mat. 7. 10. to the celebrated Parl. of Ireland We believe the Members of Parliament will not look on these words with the D's eyes but will rather consider them as an allusion and that upon supposition that the Parliament shou'd give a toleration to Dissenters clog'd with such a Test it wou'd be as giving a stone when bread is asked To conclude There are some reflections on the doctrine and practice of some Dissenters occasionally communicating with the Establish't Church where he observes the inconsistency of some of the V's words which we not being able to justify leave to their Author to vindicate them and will ingenuously acknowledge with the Author of that Book called Vox Clamantis which he cites That such Non-Conformists as upon occasion to get into places of Honour and Profit will and can take all manner of Tests that have been of late imposed or can on such occasions take the Sacrament according