Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	authority_n	church_n	prince_n	1,970	5	6.0780	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36252	A reply to Mr. Baxter's pretended confutation of a book entituled, Separation of churches from episcopal government, &c. proved schismatical to which are added, three letters written to him in the year 1673, concerning the possibility of discipline under a diocesan-government ... / by Henry Dodwell ...	Dodwell, Henry, 1641-1711.	1681 (1681)	Wing D1817; ESTC R3354	153,974	372

for that season but unprovided for a Storm so certainly a Magistrate ought to be prepar'd and qualified with abilities for governing a criminal and unquiet people even then when he lies under the actual obligation for exercising them especially considering it as a case so very ordinary and so probably to be expected If therefore a Bishop may not undertake the charge of a Diocese because impossible to be performed by him I may as well by the same points of reason conclude that a Magistrate may not take that of a Province or Kingdom even when in the good humour you suppose them because he must not in prudence venture on that unless he be prepared for them when vicious which you suppose impossible and therefore unfit to be engaged on And 5. You do not propose the case with any equality for if you would do so you should not compare a Prince governing a regular people and a Bishop with an irregular scandalous Diocese but have supposed the Subjects in both cases regular or in both irregular And if you will needs suppose in favour of the Prince that his Subjects are as little criminal in his Courts as you have found them where you have been acquainted to shew the possibility of his governing such a people though in a large precinct why can you not suppose in favour of the Bishop that the Subjects of his Diocese behave themselves as innocently in reference to crimes obnoxious to the publick cognizance of his Courts Is it either because that even persons so supposed equally innocent in relation to the charges of both Courts are yet more difficultly governable by an Ecclesiastical than a Secular Magistrate This is not as much as pretended I am confident not as much as plausibly proved in your present Discourse Or is it that the Supposition it self in relation to Ecclesiastical crimes is more difficult it being more rare and improbable to find a people innocent in crimes of publick Ecclesiastical than Secular cognizance If this later be your meaning I doubt neither of the reasons intimated by you will maintain you in it Not that of your own experience for I believe you would have found those good persons of your acquaintance as little troublesom to the Bishops as the King's Courts as little guilty of incestuous Marriages forging Wills and Testaments Simony c. as of any acts of secular injustice And as for the other concerning our propensity to actual deduced from the original sin you have not as yet proved this propensity greater to Ecclesiastical than Secular crimes But it is rather probable that as the crimes cognoscible in the Ecclesiastical Courts are generally more heinous so they are more easily avoidable If you have any inclination to think so for preventing it I pray remember what I have already intimated that they are not all sorts of sins against God that are cognoscible in the Bishops Courts but onely such as are great and scandalous and notorious And then consider whether it be not as easie to suppose a people innocent of great and scandalous and notorious sins against God and Religion as of injustice towards Men. For this indeed will be the true state of the question 2. Therefore it will not be so easily proved that the crimes cognoscible in the Secular Courts are so few in comparison of those that are Ecclesiastical This I have already proved before and am not willing to repeat what I have there said At present methinks your own Concessions if closely reflected on would have prevented your pretending otherwise For besides that those multitudes of persons guilty of crimes obnoxious to the Bishops Courts which I have said every impenitent sinner is not and have given my reason why I said so are I doubt guilty of many more civil crimes for which I shall onely appeal to your own experience I pray consider how many of the crimes cognoscible in the Bishops Courts are originally civil as those concerning Marriages Wills and Testaments Tithes c. which are mere arbitrary concessions of Princes in favour of the Church as protected by them And the rest that are not yet come under the Princes cognizance as the Churches Canons are made Laws of the Common-wealth and her Censures are seconded by coercive secular penalties imposed by the Prince on such as have proved refractory against her Spiritual Authority Upon which account it is impossible but that the Secular causes must needs prove more numerous as including all Ecclesiasticals and many proper to themselves besides So that this Disparity is every way unconvictive of your purpose For if you mean those persons who are so innocent of secular crimes to be different from those who are supposed so very guilty of Ecclesiasticals then there can be no just disparity pretended because there is indeed no equal comparison But if you mean the same persons in both cases then the Disparity cannot be pretended true because the Supposition is false BUT you object in favour of me That the Parish-priest is to reprove exhort and convince sinners first till he prove them impenitent and that he is to instruct the Ignorant Infidels and Hereticks which must needs considerably lessen the number of criminals who onely in case of their convicted impenitency in the use of these means should be further impleaded in that severer way of proceeding in the Bishops Courts To this you answer 1. That this is more than an executive power If it be so I do not know any that denies it you so that you have no reason that I know of to complain on that account None hinders you from reproving exhorting convincing and instructing whom you please especially such as are intrusted to you as Members of your cure But I am sure this is not more than that executive power which I said was communicated to the inferiour Clergie in opposition to that which I called decretory reserved to our Ecclesiastical Monarch for I believe you will not call this power of reproving exhorting c. decretory I believe you meant a power merely executive But you may remember that that was neither my word nor meaning nor do I for my part think this power mentioned by you to be more than that which were merely executive My reason you will suddenly understand SECONDLY therefore you answer That you desire no more at all from Bishops or any If so you need not desire it for none denies it you But you say You know no other Episcopal power over the people but thus personally to convince men and to declare to the congregation upon proof the fitness or unfitness of men for their communion by penitence or impenitence If you know no other power than this you know none at all For this power of convincing men will as well agree to the meanest Laick who has reason on his side as the greatest Bishop seeing either of them may convince if furnished with such reason but neither can without it And yet