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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29077	Vindiciæ Calvinisticæ: or, some impartial reflections on the Dean of Londondereys considerations that obliged him to come over to the communion of the Church of Rome And Mr. Chancellor King's answer thereto. He no less unjustly than impertinently reflects, on the protestant dissenters. In a letter to friend. By W.B. D.D.; Vindiciæ Calvinisticæ.	Boyse, J. (Joseph), 1660-1728.	1688 (1688)	Wing B4083; ESTC R216614	58,227	78

invite such to take the Pastoral care of their Souls as are duly qualified that such qualified persons should not accept Ordination on such wicked terms is past doubt But what if they live so remote from any other Christian Kingdom that they cannot have Ministerial Ordination elsewhere Wi●l any say that in this case those qualified persons for want of this Ordination ought not to ●●ke on them the Pastoral charge of those people which God h●s given them such abilities for and such a Call by his providence 〈◊〉 To say this were to set up the Rule about the regular orde●ing the Ministry above the ends of the Ministry it self and o● 〈◊〉 circumstances of the Duty to the substance of it Wher● 〈◊〉 ●sitive precepts must always yield to moral and matters or 〈◊〉 order to the end of the Duty ordered and the former must n● be pleaded against the latter Ordination by Pastors is no● therefore there necessary where it cannot be had without sin and yet without a Ministry the interest of the Gospel and the salvation of Souls are like to suffer the most visible prejudice and detriment For these are matters infinitely more precious and valuable than any Rules of external order and the very end those Rules aim at and are subservient to And if this be not granted it must be left to the pleasure of such corrupt Pastors whether the people who cannot joyn in communion with them shall enjoy the means of their salvation or be obliged to live like Atheists without any publick worship of God. And he that asserts this may next assert that God has left it to their pleasure whether the people shall be saved or damn'd and that 't is better they should be canonically damn'd than uncanonically sav'd I propose these Cases to shew the vanity and falsehood of that Notion some make such a noise about viz The necessity of an uninterrupted succession of Ordination And if that principle be false much more is theirs who assert the necessity of Successive prelatical ordination But tho in such extraordinary Cases The extraordinary call of God's providence is sufficient to authorize a man to the sacred ●ffice and sup●lies the defect of Ministerial Ordination Yet the command of God which enjoyns such Ordination does oblige where it may be had and the neglect of it wou'd bring great confusion and disorder into the Church and expose it to the danger of being corrupted and divided by unqual●fied Intruders The only thing that remains to be consider'd under this Head is Who are entrusted with the power of ordination Or whom has Christ appointed to approve and invest others in the Ministerial office Answ Those are entrusted with this power and appointed to this wo●k Who are themselves such Bishops or Elders or Pastors as the holy Scriptures describe He that denies this is oblig'd to acquaint us what other Officers the Apostles left in the Church to whom this sole power of ordination was entrusted then or what other officers claimed and exercised it in the primitive Church Which none that I know of ever pretended to do But now those whom the holy Scriptures call Bishops or Elders were the stated pastors of particular Congregations That the same persons are in Scripture call'd Bishops and Elders is too palpable to be denied However the Authors of the Preface to the Book of Ordination are pleased to say the contrary viz. That 't is evident to all men diligently reading the holy Scriptures and ancient Authors that from the Apostles time there have been these orders in Christs Church Bishops Priests and Deacons as several offices and even this palpable mistake among the rest we are required to declare our assent to Those who are 20 Acts. 17. called the Elders of the Church of Ephesus are commanded v. 28. to take heed to all the Flock over whom the holy Ghost had made them overseers or Bishops The description of a Bishop 1 Tim 3 ch and of an Elder 1 Tit. are the same And Titus when directed to ordain Elders must see that they be blameless for a Bishop must be blameless as the Steward of God v. 6 7. That these Bishops or Elders were Pastors of single congregations is evident from the Duties enjoyned them towards those under their care and from the Duties which the Flocks are required to pay them They are to labour among the people and admonish them And the people were to know and esteem them highly in love for their works sake 1 Thess 5 12 13. They were to rule their Flock speak the word of God to them and to watch over their Souls as those that must give an account 13 Hebr. 7 17 24. They were to take heed to all the Flock over whom the Holy Ghost had made them overseers 20 Acts 28. Wherein the Apostle proposes his own practice while he stay'd among them as their temporary pastor for their imitation viz That he taught them publickly and from house to house and ceased not to warn every one with tears day and night 20 Acts 20 31. v. They were to bee ensamples to the Flock who were to follow their Faith considering the end of their Conversation 1 Pet. 5. v. 3 compar'd with Heb 13.7 They were to visit the sick and pray for them James 5 14. see Dr. Hammond's Annotations on these places applying them to Bishops Now let us consider whether these mutual duties betwixt Pastor and Flock were to be performed betwixt the Pastor or Pastors of a single congregation and the congregation committed to their care or betwixt a Diocesan Bishop and so vast a Flock as his Diocess That one or more Pastors of a single congregation associated for personall communion are capable of performing these duties to their Flock and their Flock to them is past all doubt But can these mutual Duties be perform'd betwixt a Diocesan Bishop and his Diocess Is he capab●e of labouring amongst them in word and being esteem'd of them highly for his Works sake when very few comparatively of his Diocess ever saw him or heard him preach Can he watch over the souls of all in his Diocess as his Flock and warn them of their evil courses when he knows not one of them in many score thousands Can the Diocess follow the Faith of such Bishops and consider the end of their conversation and propose them as their patterns when not one in many thousands know any more of the life of their Bishop than if he lived at the other end of the World Are such Bishops obliged to visit the sick of their Diocess Can they rule them by the exercise of Church-discipline against the notoriously scandalous when perhaps there are forty or fifty thousand such in their Diocess Can they use all the due process of serious reproofs and perswasions that are requisite to be u●ed for reclaiming such sin●ers when there is so vast a number of them and those so remote in their habitations and the Bishops wholly

Vindiciae Calvinisticae OR SOME IMPARTIAL REFLECTIONS ON THE DEAN of LONDONDEREYS CONSIDERATIONS That Obliged him to come over to the Communion OF THE Church of Rome AND Mr. Chancellor KING's Answer thereto IN WHICH He no less Unjustly than Impertinently Reflects on the Protestant Dissenters In a Letter to a Friend By W.B. D.D. 3 Ep. Joh. 9 10. But Diotrephes who loveth to have the Preeminence among them receives us not Neither doth he hims●lf receive the Brethren and forbiddeth them that would and casteth them out of the Church DVBLIN Printed by A. Crook and S. Helsham Printers to the Kings most Excellent Majesty on Ormond-Key and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1688. TO THE READER THOV wilt find the worthy Author of this ensuing Tract opposing two persons of a very different Character M M. whose scru●les are so mean and so often answered that as they could have little influence in his Change so they deserved no new Consideration The most material of his Questions may be reduced to this Being that the Church of Rome by her usurping shifts propagated her Apostacy to her neighbour Churches how can any of those belong to the Catholick Church if they ceas that Apostacy and regain their former state The answer is easie unl s● infection do for ever subject a Church to that Church which infected it Can any man doubt whether the British Churches had equal authority to reform themselves for Christ's sake as they had to admit these corruptions for the Popes sake The other Person is M K who hath needlesly yea to the apparent dammage of his cause bitterly censured the whole body af Nonconformists Whether his novel notions or the unseasonable publication of matters of debates among us be most culpable it 's hard determining The sad consequences were so obvious that great importunity fail'd to encline my undertaking our vindication though the charge against us is great and the proof attempted from mistaken principles But seeing the Author with others judged a reply needful and represented our silence as turned to our reproach I am perswaded to preface the ensuing Book wherin thou wilt find both evidence and candor I shall only hint at what the Book is concerned in and insist on some Criminations the Author overlooks Mr K's excluding us from the Catholick Church can harm us little when he gives us a discription of this Church so entirely Popish and opposite to the joynt testimony of Protestants S. 68 of the Church in a controversy betwixt the Romanists and us The Articles of the Church of Ireland define the Catholick Church in the Creed 4. Bell de Eccl milit lib 3 Cap 2. to be the invisible body of Elected Saints in heaven and earth But all of M K ' s. description is Bellarmines own who strangely confounds a particular Church with the Catholick Church visible out of which particular Churches are formed unless you admit Infidels for Members and into which they are resolved unl●ss they cease to be Catholick Members when their Pastors dy or remove Wheras M K. might have known that the Catholick visible Church as entitive is made up of professing Christians and particular Churches are but secondary members of this body as Organical by Aggregation But the Dissenters will deny his charge by further proving that they are subjects to their lawfull Pastors that such are not their Pastors whom he chargeth them with separation from And they can justify their Seperation to be a duty and so no bar to their Catholick priviledg if they had some times been subject to such Yea it 's manifest the Church of England account us within the Pale of the Church by her calling us Brethren departed in the Faith when dead and too oft Excommunicating us when alive His charge of Ecclesiastical Rebellion cannot yet affect us when we think that we justly deny the Convocation to be a fit Representative of all the Pastors in England and not a supreme power over all our Churches yea and suspect a definition of the Catholick Church by such regent Officers as what favours the Vniversal Headship and may well end in the Pope as principium unitatis His positiveness in our duty to be silent when suspended without regard to justice of the ground of it imports he hath forgotten that Casuists generally determin that an unjust sentence bindes not before God or the Church and that Pastors power in the church is not of the same extent as a Kings in the State but under the limits of many more instituted laws But these matters being debated in the book I proceed M K 's Sarcasm against our cant from M M ' s. allusion to a plain scripture p. 13 may call him to suspect what spirit himself is of Luke 9 55. and others of his sort who redicule scripture passages though used in the sence of the spirit that inspired the writers of the scriptures and condemn in us those principles which were the common sence of Protestant Bishops but yet these must be the only Protestant Successors because they keep up the ceremonies tho they despise many important doctrines which they more vallued themselves by Reader thou maist wonder how M K. that affirmeth no ministers may reform no nor preach against the Establisht Church can publish these thoughts of his so repugnant to the sence of the Church and undertake to reform the very Catholick Church by a definition of it so opposite to that his Church hath published He Reproacheth us with the favours we new recieve from men of M M 's perswasion M K. P 39. Reply We thankfully own the Kings Favours without ungrateful enquiries into the grounds of it nor yet doubting but we shall take care not to forfeit what he thinks meet to grant But why should you that dislike an Inquisition grudg us a little ease I believe you are not for blaming the Magistrate when the Rods and Axes are disused Are not the miseries great enough which we have endured at your hands for refusing to sin in doing things which you had nothing but the bare authority of the imposer to plead for But I heartily wish all our hardships so forgoten by us as that they neither abate charity nor prevent union on Christian Catholick terms I confess it 's no small amazement to hear the Prelatists reflect on the present liberty of Dissenters Are we blameable for meeting now we do it with safty when we suffered so much rather than forbear it Can they that have refused Preferments endured prisons reproach and loss of estates for their principles be suspected apt to renounce or betray them for a smile How can these men that t' other day resolved all law into the Kings meer will now brand our meetings as unlawful But this will convince the world that that party will allways Skrew up the point of Loyalty whose Interest the Government p●omotes and yet may challenge their own sentiments when the Throne is