Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	church_n	old_a	testament_n	6,574	5	8.1314	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29193	Castigations of Mr. Hobbes his last animadversions in the case concerning liberty and universal necessity wherein all his exceptions about that controversie are fully satisfied.	Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1657 (1657)	Wing B4214; ESTC R34272	289,829	584

Soveraign Neither is he more orthodox concerning the Holy Scriptures Hitherto that is for the books of Moses the power of making the Scripture canonical was in the civil Soveraign The like he saith of the Old Testament made canonical by Esdras And of the New Testament That it was not the Apostles which made their own writings canonical but every convert made them so to himself Yet with this restriction That until the Soveraign ruler had prescribed them they were but counsel and advise which whether good or bad he that was counselled might without injustice refuse to observe and being contrary to the Laws established could not without injustice observe He maketh the Primitive Christians to have been in a pretty condition Certainly the Gospel was contrary to the Laws then established But most plainly The word of the Interpreter of the Scripture is the word of God And the same is the Interpreter of the Scripture and the Soveraign Iudge of all Doctrines that is the Soveraign Magistrate to whose authority we must stand no lesse than to Theirs who at first did commend the Scripture to us for the canon of faith Thus if Christian Soveraigns of different communions do clash one with another in their interpretations or misinterpretation of Scripture as they do daily then the word of God is contradictory to it self or that is the word of God in one Common-wealth which is the word of the the devil in another Common-wealth and the same thing may be true and not true at the same time which is the peculiar priviledge of T. H. to make contradictories to be true together All the power virtue use and efficacy which he ascribeth to the holy Sacraments is to be signes or commemorations As for any sealing or confirming or conferring of grace he acknowledgeth nothing The same he saith particularly of Baptisme upon which grounds a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace may be called Sacraments as well as Baptisme or the holy Eucharist if they be only signes or commemorations of a benefit If he except that Baptisme and the Eucharist are of divine institution but a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace are not he saith truely but nothing to his advantage or purpose seeing he deriveth all the authority of the Word and Sacraments in respect of Subjects and all our obligation to them from the authority of the Soveraign Magistrate without which these words repent and be baptized in the Name of Iesus are but counsel no command And so a Serjeant at arms his mace and baptisme proceed both from the same authority And this he saith upon this silly ground That nothing is a command the performance whereof tendeth to our own benefit He might as well deny the Ten Commandements to be commands because they have an advantagious promise annexed to them Do this and thou shalt live And cursed is every one that continueth not in all the words of this Law to doe them Sometimes he is for holy orders and giveth to the Pastors of the Church the right of ordination and absolution and infallibility too much for a particular Pastor or the Pastours of one particular Church It is manifest that the consecration of the chiefest Doctours in every Church and imposition of hands doth pertein to the Doctours of the same Church And it cannot be doubted of but the power of binding and loosing was given by Christ to the future Pastours after the same manner as to his present Apostles And our Saviour hath promised this infallibility in those things which are necessary to salvation to his Apostles until the day of judgement that is to say to the Apostles and Pastours to be consecrated by the Apostles successively by the imposition of hands But at other times he casteth all this meale down with his foot Christian Soveraignes are the supreme Pastors and the only persons whom Christians now hear speak from God except such as God speaketh to in these daies supernaturally What is now become of the promised infallibility And it is from the civil Soveraign that all other Pastours derive their right of teaching preaching and all other functions pertaining to that office and they are but his Ministers in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns or Iudges in Courts of Justice and Commanders of Armies What is now become of their Ordination Magistrates Judges and Generals need no precedent qualifications He maketh the Pastoral authority of Soveraigns to be jure divino of all other Pastors jure civill He addeth neither is there any Iudge of Heresie among Subjects but their own civil Soveraign Lastly The Church excommunicateth no man but whom she excommunicateth by the authorty of the Prince And the effect of excommunication hath nothing in it neither of dammage in this World nor terrour upon an Apostate if the civil power did persecute or not assist the Church And in the World to come leaves them in no worse estate than those who never believed The damage rather redoundeth to the Church Neither is the excommunication of a Christian Subject that obeyeth the laws of his own Soveraign of any effect Where is now their power of binding and loosing It may be some of T. H. his disciples desire to know what hopes of heavenly joies they have upon their masters principles They may hear them without any great contentment There is no mention in Scripture nor ground in reason of the coelum empyreum that is the Heaven of the blessed where the Saints shall live eternally with God And again I have not found any text that can probably be drawn to prove any ascension of the Saints into Heaven that is to say into any coelum empyreum But he concludeth positively that salvation shall be upon earth when God shall reign at the coming of Christ in Ierusalem And again In short the Kingdom of God is a civil Kingdom c. called also the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Glory All the Hobbians can hope for is to be restored to the same condition which Adam was in before his fall So saith T. H. himself From whence may be inferred that the Elect after the resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned As for the beatifical vision he defineth to be a word unintelligible But considering his other principles I do not marvel much at his extravagance in this point To what purpose should a coelum empyreum or Heaven of the blessed serve in his judgement who maketh the blessed Angels that are the inhabitants of that happy mansion to be either idols of the brain that is in plain English nothing or thin subtile fluid bodies destroying the Angelical nature The unvierse being the aggregate of all bodies there is no real part thereof that is not also body And elsewhere Every part of the universe is body and that which is not

the one shall be a true Prophet the other a false And Christ who had the approbation of no Soveraign Prince upon his grounds was to be reputed a false Prophet every where Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent upon earth and hath next under God the authority of governing Christian men and to observe for a rule that doctrine which in the name of God he hath commanded to be taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance c. And if he disavow them then no more to obey their voice or if he approve them than to obey them as men to whom God hath given a part of the spirit of their Soveraign Upon his principles the case holdeth as well among Jews and Turks and Heathens as Christians Then he that teacheth transubstantiation in France is a true Prophet he that teacheth it in England a false Prophet He that blasphemeth Christ in Constantinople a true Prophet he that doth the same in Italy a false Prophet Then Samuel was a false Prophet to contest with Saul a Soveraign Prophet So was the man of God who submitted not to the more divine and prophetick spirit of Jeroboam And Elijah for reproving Ahab Then Micaiah had but his deserts to be clapt up in prison and fed with bread of affliction and water of affliction for daring to contradict Gods Vicegerent upon earth And Jeremiah was justly thrown into a Dungeon for prophesying against Zedekiah his Liege Lord. If his principles were true it were strange indeed that none of all these Princes nor any other that ever was in the World should understand their own priviledges And yet more strange that God Almighty should take the part of such rebellious Prophets and justifie their prophesies by the event if it were true that none but the Soveraign in a Christian the reason is the same for Jewish Common-wealth can take notice what is or what is not the word of God Neither doth he use God the holy Ghost more favourably than God the Son Where S. Peter saith Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy Spirit He saith By the Spirit is meant the voice of God in a dream or vision supernatural which dreams or visions he maketh to be no more than imaginations which they had in their sleep or in an extasie which in every true Prophet were supernatural but in false Prophets were either natural or feined and more likely to be false than true To say God hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say He dreamed that God spake to him c. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice is to say That he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking So S. Peters holy Ghost is come to be their own imaginations which might be either feined or mistaken or true As if the holy Ghost did enter onely at their eyes and at their eares not into their understandings nor into their minds Or as if the holy Ghost did not seale unto their hearts the truth and assurance of their Prophesies Whether a new light be infused into their understandings or new graces be inspired into their heart they are wrought or caused or created immediately by the holy Ghost And so are his imaginations if they be supernatural But he must needs fall into these absurdities who maketh but a jest of inspiration They who pretend Divine inspiration to be a supernatural entering of the holy Ghost into a man are as he thinks in a very dangerous dilemma for if they worship not the men whom they conceive to be inspired they fall into impiety And if they worship them they commit idolatry So mistaking the holy Ghost to be corporeal something that is blown into a man and the graces of the holy Ghost to be corporeal graces And the words impowered or infused virtue and inblown or inspired virtue are as absurd and insignificant as a round qnadrangle He reckons it as a common errour That faith and sanctity are not attained by study and reason but by supernatural inspiration or infusion And laieth this for a firm ground Faith and sanctity are indeed not very frequent but yet they are not miracles but brought to passe by education discipline correction and other natural waeyes I would see the greatest Pelagian of them all flie higher Why should he trouble himself about the holy Spirit who acknowledgeth no spirit but either a subtile fluide invisible body or a ghost or other idol or phantasme of the imagination who knoweth no inward grace or intrinsecal holinesse Holy is a word which in Gods kingdome answereth to that which men in their kingdoms use to call publick or the kings And again wheresoever the word holy is taken properly there is still something signified of propriety gotten by consent His holinesse is a relation not a quality but for inward sanctification or reall infused holinesse in respect whereof the third person is called the holy Ghost because he is not onely holy in himself but also maketh us holy he is so great a stranger to it that he doth altogether deny it and disclaim it We are taught in our Creed to believe the Catholick or Universal Church But T. H. teacheth us the contrary That if there be more Christian Churches than one all of them together are not one Church personally And more plainly Now if the whole number of Christians be not contained in one Common-wealth they are not one person nor is there an Universal Church that hath any authority over them And again The Universal Church is not one person of which it can be said that it hath done or decreed or ordained or excommunicated or absolved This doth quite overthrow all the authority of general Councils All other men distinguish between the Church and the Common-wealth Onely T. H. maketh them to be one and the same thing The Common-wealth of Christian men and the Church of the same are altogether the same thing called by two names for two reasons For the matter of the Church and of the Common-wealth is the same namely the same Christian men And the form is the same which consisteth in the lawful power of convocating them And hence he concludeth That every Christian Common-wealth is a Church endowed with all spiritual authority And yet more fully The Church if it be one person is the same thing with the Common-wealth of Christians called a Common-wealth because it consisteth of men united in one person their Soveraign And a Church because it consisteth in Christian men united in one Christian Soveraign Upon which account there was no Christian Church in these parts of the World for some hundreds of years after Christ because there was no Christian