Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	ability_n	according_a	action_n	12	3	5.9144	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45319	A short answer to the tedious Vindication of Smectymnvvs by the avthor of the Humble remonstrance.; Works. 1648	Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.	1641 (1641)	Wing H417; ESTC R4914	50,068	120

innovations as the turning the Table to an Altar and the low crindging towards the Altar so erected but as for the Leiturgy or Service of the Church of England not a touch of either in his thoughts or tongue Now brethren learne you hence just matter of private humiliation for so foule a sclander of a grave and religious Bishop and in him of this whole Church For learned Calvin if those who professe to honour his name would have beene ruled by his judgement wee had not had so miserable distractions in the Church as wee have now cause to bewaile all that I say of him is that his censure of some tolerable fooleries in our holy Service might well have beene forborne in alienâ Republicâ your vindication is that hee wrote that Epistle to the English at Francford Who doubts it The parties were proper the occasion just but not the censure Parciùs ista when wee meddle with other mens affaires I may well be pardoned if I say that harsh phrase doth not answer the moderation which that worthy Divine professeth to hold in the controversie of the English AS for that unparalleld Discourse whereon you run so much descant concerning the Antiquity of Liturgies deduced so high as from Moses time you argue that it cannot be because you never read it Brethren your not omniscient eyes shall see that my eyes are so Lyncean as to see you proudly mis-confident you shall see that others have seene what you did not and shall sample that which you termed unparalleld It is neither thank to your bounty nor praise to your ingenuity that the question is halfe-granted by you but an argument of your self-contradiction An order of Divine service you yeeld but not a forme or a forme but not prescribed not imposed and for this you tell us a tale of Iustin Martyrs Leiturgie and Tertullians Leiturgie how much to the purpose the sequell shall shew In the former you grant that after the Exhortation they all rose and joyned in prayer prayer ended they went to the Sacrament but whether these prayers were suddainly conceived or ordinately prescribed there is the question and whether that Sacrament were administred in an arbitrary and various forme mee thinks your selves should finde cause to doubt But Iustin saies to cleare this point that in the beginning of this Action the President powred out prayers and thanksgiving according to his ability and the people said Amen What ever his ability was I am sure you have a rare ability in mis-construing the Fathers and particularly these testimonies of Iustin and Tertullian To begin with the latter out of him you say The Christians in those times did in their publike assemblies pray Sine monitore quia de pectore without any prompter but their own heart Prove first that Tertullian speaks of publike assemblies Secondly know that if he did the place is to your disadvantage for as a late learned Author well urges would ye have it imagined that the assembled Christians did betake themselves publikely to their private devotions each man by himself as his own heart dictated this were absurd and not more against ancient practise then as your selves think piety Was it then that not the people but the Minister was left to the liberty of his expressions What is that to the people How did they ere the more pray without a prompter How is it more out of their heart when they follow the Minister praying out of unknown conceptions then out of foreknown prescription So as you must be admonished that your Sine monitore without a prompter is without all colour of proof of prayers conceived your Zephyrus blows with too soft a gale to shake the foundation of this argument and indeed is but a side-winde to my Heraldus and the very same blast with your Rigaltius though you would seem to fetch them out of different corners If I give you your own asking you have gained nothing For what would you infer Christians prayed for the Emperors without a monitor as the heathens did not therefore they had no formes of Christian prayers He were liberall that would grant you this consequent when rather the very place shews what the forme was which the Christians then used We are praying still for all Emperors that God would give them a long life a secure raigne a safe Court valiant hoasts faithfull Counsellors good people and a quiet world This was Tertullians Leiturgie wherein the hearts of Christians joyned without a monitor It is small advantage that you will finde in my sense of Sine monitore not being urged by any superior injunction If no injunction you say how could it be a Leiturgie a commanded imposed forme You are unwilling to understand that the injunction here meant is generall a command to pray for the Emperour not a particular charge of the forms injoyned in praying this was therefore the praise of their Christian loyaltie that even unrequired they poured out their supplications for Princes Shortly then after all these pretended senses Tertullian will not upon any termes be drawne to your partie Those other two places of Tertullian and Austine are meerely sleevelesse and unproving not making any whit at all more for conceived prayers then for prescribed Who ever made question whether wee might build our prayers upon our Saviours form or whether we might vary our prayers with our occasions Those Fathers say no more we no lesse Ye dare not say there were no publique Leiturgies in S. Austins time My Margin was conviction enough which ye touch as an Iron too hot with an hand quickly snatcht away Your denial should have drawn on further proofs Iustin Martyr though fifty yeers before Tertullian follows him in your discourse How guiltily you both translate and cite him an Author of no mean judgement hath shewed before me I shall not therefore glean after his sickle But shortly thus take your {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in your own best sense for quantum pro virile potest what will follow The President prayed and gave thanks to the utmost of his power therfore the Church had then no Leiturgie What proof call you this Look back Brethren to your own citation you shall finde Prayers more then once in their Lords-day meetings These latter were the Presidents the former some other Ministers these in the usuall set forms those out of present conception both stand well together both agreeable to the practise as of these so of former ages BUt whiles I affect over-full answers I feel my self grow like you tedious I must contract my self and them Your assertion of the originall of set forms of Leiturgy I justly say is more Magistrall then true and such as your own testimonies confute That of the Councell of Laodicea is most pregnant for set formes before Arrius or Pelagius lookt forth into the world wherein mention is expresly made of three formes of Prayer

by Divine Right 2. Part. 4. and to second it they are challenged in my Defence to name any one of our Writers that hath not proclaimed this truth Where then lyes the contradiction The clear nominall distinction of the three Orders of Bishops Presbyters Deacons I professed to prove onely out of the writings of those who were the next successors to the Apostles What is here of either yeeldance or contradiction And if I have ingenuously granted that the Primitive Bishops were elected by the Clergie with the assent of the people That Bishops neither do nor may challenge to themselves such a sole interest in Ordination or Iurisdiction as utterly to exclude Presbyters from some participation in this charge and Act That they ought not to devest themselves of their Iurisdictive power by delegating it to others That the ordinary managing of secular imployments is improper for them If in all these I have gratified them why do they complain and if I have disadvantaged my cause why is it not urged to my conviction It is warily said of these men that I almost grant Lay-Elders in Antiquity I do so almost grant them in my own sense that I utterly deny them in theirs Why should I make any doubt to yeeld unto the Iustice of their complaints in the Post-script against the insolence and tyrannie of Popish Prelates What lose we by this condescent Or how can they plead they are not justly taxed for diffusing other mens crimes to the innocent when their consciences cannot but flye in their faces for this injustice Lastly I am charged with shamefull self-contradictions which surely must needs argue great rashnesse or much weaknesse of judgement See the instances In the same Epistle I professe not to tax their abilities and yet call them impotent assailants And why not both of these He that taxeth not their abilities doth not therfore presently approve them they may perhaps not want good abilities in themselves and yet be unable to prove their cause they may be able men and yet impotent matches The contradiction they would raise in the words concerning Euangelists is meerly cavillatory May you be pleased to turn to the ninety fourth Page of my Defence you shall clearly acknowledge it The word in a common sense signifies any Preacher of the Gospel but in the peculiar sense of the New Testament it signifies some persons extraordinarily gifted and imployed not setled in any one place but sent abroad by the Apostles on that blessed errand Now to say that any of these latter were such as had ordinary places and ordinary gifts as they do Sect. 13. pag. 48. I do justly blame as a meer fancie not herein contradicting any thing but their light imagination In the contradiction pretended to be concerning the extent of Episcopacie sure they cannot but check themselves In my Remonstrance and Defence they report men to say somewhere but where no man can tell that Bishops had been every where and that all Churches through the whole Christian world have uniformly and constantly maintained Episcopacie Elswhere that I say they were not every where and that there are lesse noble Churches that do not confer to Episcopall government Words are more easily accorded then acknowledged There are not there have not been every where setled Christian Churches Where ever there have been setled Christian Churches there have been Bishops From the Apostles times to this present Age there have been Bishops in all Christian Regions now some late Reformed Churches have been necessitated to forbear them Where I beseech you lies the contradiction I have often granted that the name of Bishops and Presbyters was at the first promiscuously used and yet I do no lesse justly maintain that for this sixteen hundred years the name of Bishops hath been ordinarily appropriated in a contra-distinctive sense to Church-governors in an apparent superiority Distinguish times and reconcile Histories The two next exceptions concerning Diocesan Bishops and Civill government are fully cleared and convinced in the due places of this insuing Answer I shall not blur paper in an unseasonable anticipating my own Discourse Sole Ordination and sole Iurisdiction we so disclaim as that we hold the power of both primarily in the Bishop the concurrent assistance in the Presbyters What opposition is there in an orderly subordination The last contradiction clearly reconciles it self In stating the question concerning Episcopacie I distinguish betwixt Divine and Apostolicall Authority professing not to affirm that Bishops were immediatly ordained by Christ and yet averring that Christ laid the grounds of this imparity in his first agents What discordance is in these two Is the ground-work of an house the whole frame of it Can they finde the roof in the foundation In the Epistles to the seven Asian Churches Christ I truly say acknowledges at least intimates the Hierarchie of those seven Angels Do I imply that he did immediately ordain them Readers ye have seen the poor stuff of these their selected exceptions Beleeve it such are all their contradictions to me as these contradictions which they finde in me to my self groundlesse and worthlesse As I shall make good in this following Discourse concerning the ancient holy and beneficiall use of set-Leiturgies in the Church This subject because as it is untracked with any frequent pens of others so it is that wherein my Adversaries seem most to pride themselves as supposing to have in it the most probable advantages against me I have somewhat largely handled to your ample satisfaction But as for that other head of Episcopacie which hath already filled so many rhemes of waste-paper for as much as I see they offer nothing but that which hath passed an hundred ventilations Transeat I have resolved to bestow my time better then in drawing this Sawe to and fro to no purpose Let them first give a full and punctuall Answer to that which hath been already in an intire body of a Treatise written concerning the Divine Right of Episcopacie and then let them expect that I should trouble my self with sweeping away these loose scraps of their exceptions Till then let them if they can be silent at least I shall as one that know how to give a better account of the remainder of my precious hours A Short ANSWER To the Tedious VINDICATION OF SMECTYMNVVS SECT. I. I Am sorry Brethren that your own importunitie will needs make you guiltie of your further shame Had you sate down silent in the conscience of a just reproof your blame had been by this time dead and forgotten but now your impetuous Defence shall let the world see you did in vain hope to face out an ill cause with a seeming boldnesse I may not spend Volumes upon you but some Lines I must enow to convince the Reader of the justice of my Charge and the miserable insufficiencie of your Vindication It is not your stiff deniall that can make it other then Gods truth which I maintain or that can justifie your