Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	church_n	council_n	trent_n	2,452	5	10.8205	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43661	A letter sent from beyond the seas to one of the chief ministers of the non-conforming party by way of reply to many particulars which he sent to the author in a letter of news / by a lover of the established government both of church and state.	Hickes, George, 1642-1715.; Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1674 (1674)	Wing H1855; ESTC R12608	16,745	38

nothing at all to the dishonour of the Church of England to change or take away those few Ceremonies which her self in the 34th Article confesseth may be altered or removed according to the exigency of times Neither if this were done could the Romish Church have the least apparent reason to reproach us for such a slight alteration seeing her own Missals and Breviaries have been so diverse and different in several times and places and have undergone so many Emendations or rather Corruptions before they were established in the present form by the Authority of Pius V. and the Decree of the Council of Trent But in the mean time I would have all good Christians wait in Peace and Patience till it shall lawfully be done and by that means our Breach would be perfectly made up So that a poor English Traveller would not be tauntingly asked by every Impertinent Priest here Whether he were a true Son of the Church or Presbyterian or Independent or Anabaptist or Quaker And I assure you when they meet with a man that owns himself a true Son of the Church of England they will seem to pity him more than any other but yet they will hardly attempt to convert him But when they meet with one that will own himself of any other sort they will be pleased smile in their sleeves and set upon him as a person not far from their Kingdom of God And I am perswaded had you seen or heard as much of their Idolatries Blasphemies and Superstitons as I have done in one Christmass one Lent and one Easter you would be so far from doing the Church of England any ill office that you would rather like St. Paul after his conversion preach against your own Partizans and thank God that you lived in a Church reformed from Romish Idolatry and Superstition And I cannot but freely confess that I am since my Travels become ten times a greater lover of our own Church and as many times a greater hater and detester of the Romish Church than I was before And therefore I cannot here dissemble the hearty grief I have conceived for the great hopes you have that the Licenses as you express it will be once more authorized by his Majesty or the Declaration revived For as it is that which at first was hammered out by that late Patron and Idol of the Presbyterians the Popish Lord Clifford so 't is that which the Roman Catholicks here especially the Priests do hope and wish for as well as you They desire nothing more than such a Toleration as that was knowing that it must needs tend to the Ruine of the Church of England which is the principal Butt of all their Envy and Malice as being the main support and credit of the Reformed Religion every where and the only Hedg against Popery it self in our unfortunate British Isles We meet with not a few Priests of several Orders that have the confidence in our most familiar conferences to tell us that by the just Judgment of God upon our Church the time of her ruine is at hand the Nation it self being over-spread with Schism and Atheism and the hearts of the faithful being disposed by the Spirit and Providence of God to re-embrace the holy Catholick Truth And therefore they freely confess that this time of Distraction is their Harvest and withal express their intentions and zeal to transport themselves into England at the critical time of Toleration that they may be Fellow-laborers with your selves in that Harvest They seem to lament as much and complain as fast of the prodigious increase of Schism and Atheism among us as you are wont to do of the daily growth of Atheism and Popery And whilst you both complain alike and in the formality of your complaints both alike reflect upon the Church of England it is she only that is the sufferer and she only that truly laments the growth and at the same time sets up banks to hinder the perfect Inundation of all the three among us As for Schism among Protestants you were the first Fathers and continue the chief Fautors thereof all the inferior Sects having sprung from you and dividing both from you and one another under pretence of the same Reasons for which you profess to divide from the Church And 't is from you that even the Quakering Sect it self the dregs of Schism have learned to talk of Illumination and the Spirit and the rest of the Sectaries in what number soever they be differ from you no more than the second third or fourth c. from the first Book of Euclid Not that by this comparison I intend that you have any such Principles or Data among your selves as there are among Mathematicians for I am very well assured that take but any four of the Presbyterian Demagogues and they can scarce agree amongst themselves in any four particulars wherein they differ from the Church of England And therefore if you be not Schismaticks then the Church of England from which you separate and out of which you have gathered Congregations and Preach and Administer the Sacraments unto them I say if you be not Schismaticks then our Church must be the Schismatick in the Controversie between us and be justly chargeable with the same Indictment which she hath drawn up against the Church of Rome An Assertion Cousin which I never knew any other Person except one or two besides your self have the confidence to aver and an Assertion which no Protestant here in France could hear us yet relate without Horror Impatience and Disdain And therefore if the Reformed Church of England from which you wilfully divide and to which by your Divisions you cause so much Scandal abroad and Evil at home be not a Schismatical Church that is a Church which requires some sinful conditions of Communion in what a woful condition will your unpeaceable seditious spirits appear before the God of Peace And how will you answer that at the Tribunal of his Wisdom and Justice which neither your Fathers nor you could ever yet answer to those Instruments of His Glory Judicious Hooker and the Venerable Sanderson But whether you are Schismaticks or whether you are not the Separations which you and your Brood have made from the Church are the apparent Causes of the growth of Popery and both your Separations and your Superstitious Enthusiastical way of Worshipping that God whose People you Emphatically pretend to be are the true Causes of that abundant Atheism which at present makes England an Astonishment and a Scandal to Foreign Nations And if you or any other of the Brother-hood think it strange that I charge yours which is the Capital Sect with Enthusiasm or make Superstition which seemeth diametrically opposite to Atheism the Mother thereof I offer upon the Challenge to make good the Charge in both particulars But in the mean time to shew you how unsafe it will be to provoke me to that trouble I advise you to read