Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A51956
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The Church of England and the continuation of the ceremonies thereof vindicated from the calumnies of several late pamphlets, more particularly that entitled, The vanity, mischief, and danger of continuing ceremonies in the worship of God, subscribed by
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1690
(1690)
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Wing M65; ESTC R4181
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64,933
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67
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who is dumb and deaf or a Natural who cannot be instructed being born of Believing Parents and baptized may be saved and he who being many Years sick cannot go to Church and yet it is lawful to appoint publick Prayers Catechizing and Preaching A Man born in the Country of a Mahometan or Pagan Prince of Christian Parents may want both the preaching of the Word and administration of the Sacraments and yet be instructed sufficiently to his Salvation and we here not only may but also must use them God himself required other and more perfect Service in the Land of Canaan than he accepted in the Wilderness And accordingly the Christian Church hath practised otherwise in times and places of Danger and Persecution than of Peace and Security Those famous Men of our Reformation mentioned in Pag. 8. being perhaps prepossessed with a good opinion of what they had been used to in their Pilgrimage or exasperated against Popery that being the cause of it by Persecution or perhaps being too far transported by a well-meaning Zeal might approve of the abolishing of innocent and decent Vestments whilst other good Men might think there was too much abolish'd before since the abolishing of any lawful Thing or Custom might by giving offence to the Papists as being the effect of Passion and a perverse Humour and not of conviction of Judgment be an obstacle to the Reformation Every good Man's opinion and judgment cannot nor is fit to be made the Standard of a National Reformation and therefore herein certainly the wise Queen was directed by Providence or at the least more in the right than those good Men for the preserving and continuing the use of them was far more agreeable to that excellent temper and moderation which that great Man Iren. pag 121 c. the then Dr. Stillingfleet so justly commended and all good and wise Men do the same both in our English Liturgy and the French Prayers and indeed it behoved them to act like the Reformers of the Old Church and not the Founders of a New and what was corrupt only needed Reformation and not what was pure It may be observed that those excellent Bishops judged the use of those Vestments a thing in it self indifferent and so complyed with the continuance and injunction of them and if all others had imitated their Piety Peace and Prudence this unhappy strife about them had never been The Apostles did not at all favour the imposing humour Pag. 9. The Holy Ghost and the Apostles were only for requiring necessary things Acts 15 28. Here our Author catches at the word Necessary without any regard to the sense wherein it is used The next Verse enumerates those necessary things That ye abstain from meats offered to Idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication Where of these four things necessary three of them are so only in respect of the Jews which they were obliged not to offend as being a probable course to hinder their conversion but rather to abstain from the lawful use of indifferent things Rom. 14.14 for that the first of them is lawful appears from 1 Cor. 8. and that the two next are Moses's Ceremonial Law being understood as a temporary positive Law obligatory only to the Jewish Nation and that only till our Saviour's Crucifixion is evident by common Reason and Custom I might observe for my purpose against our Author That the same Holy Ghost who enjoined the Gentile Converts to forbear the use of some iudifferent things for fear of giving offence to Jews yet zealous for the Law of Moses amongst which they conversed being always consonant to himself by this Text commands us to continue the use of other indifferent things lest we should scandalize the Papists not only in these three Kingdoms but in all the Western Churches by a wilful perverse and unnecessary secession and departure from them in the use or disuse of lawful and indifferent Things Customs and Ceremonies for where there is the same Reason there is the same Law So that this inconsiderate Author could scarcely have cited a Text more fatal to his Cause This precedent the Apostle's practice 1 Cor. 9.19 c. and the Scripture Canon 1 Cor. 14.40 had they been duly imitated observed and obeyed the greatest part of the Schisms and Divisions which have unhappily rent and distracted the Christian Church had either been prevented or soon reunited 4. The manifold mischiefs of these Impositions Pag. 1â— No Man can shew any good they have done c. I know no other Impositions upon our Congregations but those I have already mentioned and let our Author tell us either which of them is unnecessary and hurtful and he would have abolished or what else he means by Impositions that so we may know whether they are so mischievous as he talks of The good they were designed to do was to testifie our reverence to Antiquity and our holding Communion with the Catholick Church of Christ to justifie our Reformation and prevent giving any scandal to the Papists and to cause all things in our own Church to be done decently and in order of which if they have fallen short we may thank some Men who have been turbulent and unquiet proud peevish and schismatical and troubled with the humor and spirit of contradiction What follows in our Author assigned as the mischief of Impositions is neither true nor of Date ancient enough to be so nor is an Argument fit for a Divine to use in Church-matters but seems to be the passionate resentment of some covetous ambitious Person lately candidate for some Civil or Military Employment and discontented for the missing of it the venting the spleen of some well-willed to the Good Old Cause or the shallow and mistaken observation of some small pretender to Politicks who usually prognosticates the Prosperity or Fate of the Kingdom according to the measures of the Elevation or Depression of his own Sect tho the most factious and seditions in it and of Principles the most destructive to its Government As for that which is cited out of a great Man in our Church Ibid. Or. Stilingfleet â—ren Pref. 9. in these words Without all controversie the main Inlet of all the distractions confusions and divisions in the Christian World hath been by adding other Conditions of Church-Communion than Christ hath made When that Learned Man shall be at leisure to reconcile these words with his own in the two following Pages of the same Preface and 122 c. of his following Book and shall be farther pleased to tell us which are the conditions of Church-Communion that Christ hath made it will be easie to determine whether the adding other hath been the main Inlet of all the distractions confusions and divisions in the Christian World but nothing can be inferred from such general expressions The mischiefs I am speaking of are innumerable some of them are reduceable to these six Heads 1.
concurr'd to the granting of them a Parliamentary Indulgence neither did her kindness end there but she entertained thoughts of making farther attempts to re-unite them to her Communion till their own carriage and ill returns made her pursue those Methods more coldly which by the outward Symptoms appear already to be without any hopes of the design'd success Therefore Pa◠〈…〉 as to the many Dissenters living in the confines of our Church the bringing them back to her Communion and thereby the Restauration of a mutual tranquillity peace and charity among all her Members and the recalling of that Christian Love which seems now to have forsaken us as well as the rest of Europe would be the greatest and most valuable blessing both to our Church and State can be attained on this side Heaven and he doth not deserve to be reckon'd in the number of good Christians who would not part with all his temporal enjoyments or even his Life it self were it at his own disposal to purchase it God forbid that any Clergy-men of the Church of England should hold any Rites or Ceremonies the two Sacraments often so called only excepted Church-Constitutions Canons Customs Benefices or Preferments whatsoever so dear unto them but that they would most gladly Sacrifice any or all of them to the Peace and Unity of the Church were it thereby attainable this Peace and Union are that which every one wishes and desires though few find solid ground whereon to fix their hopes while we mistake the means and methods to obtain them The Dissenters being unwilling to own the real Motives of their Separation from our Church have for a pretence cavell'd and excepted against some few Passages in our Liturgy some of our legal Constitutions and Establishments our Subscriptions Ceremonies Church Customs c. Wherefore several have thought that the alteration and removal of them would effect a Re-union but that this is at the best but a great mistake I shall think my self to have sufficiently proved when I have produced such Reasons as shall be effectual for the proving the following Position viz. Any alterations how many or great soever that can be made in our present Liturgy the utter abolishing all the Ceremonies prescribed or used in our Publick Worship and any alterationâ— that can be made in our Book of Constitutions and Canons or all these together should they be accomplished would never heal the Schisms that are amongst us and reâ—unite the Dissenters to the Church of England For 1. If the Liturgy Ceremonies and Constitutions in use in the Church of England were the causes of these Schisms and Separations then where these are not in use there would be no Schisms but we see the contrary In the United Provinces what a great and formal Schism did the Calvinists make upon the account of Five disputable Articles neither way accounted Heresie and what a severe Persecution did they raise against the Remonstrants which they could neither confute nor convince of error because they would not say as they would have them In Scotland the Church there by Law Established in the Reign of King Charles II. used no Liturgy no Cross after Baptism nor any other Ceremony that ever I could learn and yet the Dissenters there behaved themselves far worse to the Conformists than ever the Jews did to the Samaritans nay so barbarously as undeniably to evince that the true Presbyterian Spirit is no less full of rancour malice spleen hatred and when let loose from fear of Laws of Robberies Persecution and Bloodshed than the Papal If any fay this is nothing to us the English Presbyterians are not like the Scotch I answer God forbid they should but yet that any alterations in our Liturgy c. Abolishing of all our Ceremonies c. would never make an Union in our Church is apparent from hence that some few Years after 1640. and thence till 1661. When the Supreme Authority lodged as was pretended in the House of Commons with the assistance of the Rabble had disowned the King's Authority in Church and State and thrown all our Laws thereunto relating out of doors and our Liturgy Rites Ceremonies Church-customs Constitutions and Canons were all abolished and discharged so that if the cause of the Con-conformity Schism and Separation lay in any or all of them it must necessarily have been removed The Dissenters were so far from an Union among themselves 〈◊〉 â— by â— Mr. 〈…〉 that on the contrary they subdivided themselves into many minute Sects and Opinions and gave birth or revival to about forty more than our Church was formerly troubled with some whereof neither Amsterdam nor the World it self had ever seen before And this is so convincing an Argument being taught us by experience the School Mistress of Fools that I need add no more for the proof of my Assertion but I subjoin ex abundanti If our Liturgy should be altered our Ceremonies abolished and our Constitutions and Canons till they became insignificant so that one or two of the gravest wisest and most moderate of the Dissenting Preachers for the love of Peace and Union having Episcopal Ordination should come over to our Church and conform unto it yet the main Body of the Presbyterians who being unacquainted with Antiquity have credulously embraced the opinion of Lay Elders believe the Ordination of Presbyters by Presbyters to be valid and are too wise in their own Eyes to be informed The Independents who before separated from the Presbyterians and were numerous and powerful enough in Anno 1647. to supplant and displace them The Anabaptists and Quakers whose opinion of Liberty of Prophesying makes them uncapable of being united in Church Polity And all the other subdivisions and lesser Sects and Relicks of Schisms having the same Reasons must be supposed to continue in the same Separation as formerly and consequently by these means would never be reunited to our Communion and Church Some of their Teachers would be conscious to themselves of their own Ignorance and that their whining Tones useful impletives of Hums Huh's spittings Coughings c. Canting Phrases affected and unintelligible expressions so melting and ravishing to the Apron-proselytes would not meet with that applause and Admiration in a more judicious Auditory and a Congregation used to the more pertinent solid and rational Discourses made by the learned Clergy in the Conformable Churches and therefore will think it prudence rather to stay where they imagine themselves highly in esteem than to go where their defects will render them only tolerable Others since our Church is abundantly supply'd with learned and deserving Divines which will and may with good reason expect the best Benefices and their qualifications being none of the greatest they consulting their own interest perhaps will judge the Mens present gratuities together with their Wives superadded and secret kindnesses more eligible than the probability of being provided after a considerable long expectation with a small One Others as if