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book_n	author_n	time_n	write_v	4,268	5	5.4699	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46649	A sermon preached at the consecration of the Honourable Dr. Henry Compton, Lord Bishop of Oxford, in Lambeth-Chappel, on Sunday, December 6, 1674 by William Jane ...	Jane, William, 1645-1707.	1675 (1675)	Wing J455; ESTC R21231	23,378	49

A SERMON Preached at the CONSECRATION Of the HONOURABLE Dr. HENRY COMPTON Lord Bishop of OXFORD IN LAMBETH-CHAPPEL On Sunday December 6. 1674. By WILLIAM JANE B.D. Student of Christ-Church and Chaplain to his Lordship LONDON Printed by W. Godbid and are to be sold by R. Littlebury at the Kings-Arms in Little-Britain 1675. To the Right Reverend Father in God HENRY LORD BISHOP of OXFORD My Lord ALthough I am too conscious of the manifold defects of this poor Discourse to lay any claim to your Lordships acceptance as the encouragement of its Publication yet I have had such great experience of your Lordships favour as to conceive some hopes that it may find the same shelter with its Author under your Lordships patronage and protection When I first received your Lordships command which engaged me upon this duty I esteemed it a great Honour than my own ambition could ever have aspired to It was happiness enough for me to bear any part how inconsiderable soever in that days Solemnity which in the judgement of all who have a real kindness for the Church was so signal an argument of Gods Care and Providence over it But since by my intire resignation of this weak performance as I was in duty bound to your Lordships Judgement it is no longer at my own disposal and that which I thought too mean to attend your Lordships CONSECRATION has been thought fit to live with the remembrance of it I have this further favour to request for it that I may be allowed to thrust it forth into the world under your Lordships Name I shall only add my unfeigned desires to the God of Heaven that as he has been pleased in this declining Age to raise up to his People such an able instrument of his Glory so he would go on to give success to your Lordships designs answerable to the expectation of your Country and the necessities of his Church Which shall ever be the daily Prayer of My Lord Your Lordships Most humbly devoted Chaplain WILLIAM JANE ACTS 20.28 Take heed therefore unto your selves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood WE read in the 17th vers of this chap. that St. Paul sent from Miletas to Ephesus and called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Elders or Presbyters of the Church In this vers which contains a considerable part of his Visitation Sermon he tells them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Ghost hath made you Bishops This seeming confusion of Names in this and other places of Scripture indiscriminately applied to the Pastors and Officers of the Church was the pretence of Aerius though Pride and Ambition were the reason to inferr a like communion in the dignity of Bishop and Presbyter and a total parity in their Office And though this is surely a very slender argument to any considering men to violate the unity of Christians and to cashier that form of Government which ad been received universally in the Church from the Apostles days unto their own upon a pretence that Antichrist begun betimes yet neither is it so slight and despicable but that it has exercised the greatest Wits in all Ages even those in which it cannot be pretended that Truth was twisted with design in endeavouring a probable solution of it For to omit the interpretation of some that such as were Presbyters when St. Paul sent for them he here consecrates Bishops by telling them that the Holy Ghost had made them so as being a groundless and arbitrary conjecture if we consult those Opinions which carry the greatest vogue and reputation in the World we shall scarce find one in which two have consented when we have excluded those from the number who do not pretend to deliver their own sense but professedly transcribe from others The immediate question wherein our Authors are divided is Whether Bishop and Presbyter were two distinct Orders at the time of the writing the Books of the New Testament or in a small space of time after the one were superadded to the other Those who defend the latter are further subdivided as far as the subject will admit For we are told on the one hand that the names of Bishop and Presbyter were once promiscuously given to the inferiour Order of the Clergy which were afterwards used with distinction when for the future preventing of Schism Episcopacy was introduced upon it● which seems to be the Judgment of St. Hierome And with greater probability on the other that they were indifferent appellations of the higher Order of Church Officers to whom the name of Bishop became then appropriate when upon the increase of their charge by the multitude of their Proselites inferiour Presbyters were universally admitted in some measure to ease them of the burthen An opinion with infinite accuracy and variety of learning first cleared and defended by the Reverend Dr. Hammond They who have pitcht upon the defence of the former part of the main Question That both Orders were Coaeval and distinguished from one another by their Author at the Primitive institution of them are yet more divided in their explications For some tell us which Dr. Hammond admits for probable that the world Presbyter is the Scripture appellative of the inferiour Order of the Clergy whereas both were common to the Bishop in as much as both Offices designed by them were eminently vested in him St. Chrysostom on the contrary thinks it no inconvenience at all that the distinction of Offices should remain inviolate notwithstanding the confusion of names Whereas a third Opinion sufficiently distinguished from the other two asserts that Bishop and Presbyter were common denominations of the second Order of Priest-hood those whom we now stile Bishops being at that time called Apostles A Comment first suggested by Theodoret and since maintained by the Judicious Hooker in the days of our Forefathers and with a little variation by the learned Thorndike in our own I have not produced these Opinions to compare them with one another or to examin the several claims which each of them pretends to truth but only considering them jointly to make these few remarques upon them all And first our Assertors of the Presbyterian Hierarchy may do well to consider whose Cause it is which is with so great eagerness maintained by them No the Cause of God or of his Church but of a noted Heretick infamous upon the records of Epithanius St. Austin Philastrius and other Fathers of the Church for the point in question and consequently branded for the same by the Church it self whose Judgments those Fathers expressly testifie He who was notorious in his own time for the great disturber of the word is now set up by our pretended Disciplinarians for the great Champion of Truth Nor do they so much help themselves by saying that Arrianism was Aerius his Heresie and indeed Epiphanius calls him an Arrian altogether