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	scripture_n	3,566	5	6.5669	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63876	Animadversions upon a late pamphlet entituled The naked truth, or, The true state of the primitive church	Turner, Francis, 1638?-1700.	1676 (1676)	Wing T3275; ESTC R15960	53,553	71

that will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen and a Publican spoken of private differences between man and man to be referr'd to the Determination of the Church that is the Congregation of the Faithful which they usually and by order should assemble in and refer this to the Church in General in matters of Faith not in the least pointed at there He will have much ado to make us believe that a man is not bound to tell his Brother of Heresie a matter of so great Consequence and to tell it to the Church if his Brother will not hear him and yet prove that he is bound to do this in matter of private difference or petty quarrel between them Wherefore to borrow his own Conclusion of this matter I pass this over as very Impertinent And so is that which follows I do not believe nor am I bound by Scripture to believe such Expositions as the Popish Church makes of this place That the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church Who bids him believe the Popish Expositions But if that place be not spoken of the Roman Church therefore does it signifie nothing to prove the Visibility or Indefectibility of the Catholique Church But 't is plain he advances the notion of a Church Invisible a Church that shall be driven into the Wilderness where her Ninety nine Ceremonies are to be left to attend her scarce visible in the World whereas the Learned understand that place of the Churche's Persecutions the first three hundred years which made it the more illustriously visible and our nineteenth Article calls it the visible Church of Christ Now he proceeds to the business of General Councils whether they may Err in some points of Faith The Church of England acknowledges they may Err and have Err'd in things pertaining to God No doubt of it But this Author immediately flies higher with a why not in some points of Faith All the Evangelical Doctors grant says he that the later General Councils have Err'd if so why not the former what promise had the former from Christ more than the later True there is no more promise to a Council of the fourth Age or to that of Nice than to one that should be held in the seventeenth if it were as General and as free He asks concerning this promise The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church what 's this to a general Council which is not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Church We shall find him mistaken in this Account at long running Lastly he shews his charitable Divination in foretelling how much more mischief General Councils would have done if more of them had been conven'd But say you says he No General Council determin'd those errors Why because none was call'd about them had any been call'd who can doubt but they would have avow'd that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches This he says but his Yea's and Nay 's are no Oracles with us For why should they be when a General Council is not so with him Then presently he humbly craves pardon for his bold presumption viz. of these hard sayings against General Councils And I as humbly beg leave to speak for them in behalf of the Church of England and the Law of the Land both which I 'me sure I have on my side and both give much deference to General Councils The twentieth Article of our Church has these words The Church has Authority in matters of Faith And the Statute of the Land runs thus Eliz. 1. c. 1. That none however commissioned shall in any wise have authority or power to order or determine or adjudge any Matter or Cause to be Heresie but only such as heretofore have been determined ordered or adjudged to be Heresie by the authority of the Canonical Scriptures or by the first four General Councils or any of them or by any other General Council wherein the same was declared Heresie by the express and plain words of the said Canonical Scriptures or such as hereafter shall be ordered judged or determined to be Heresie by the Court of Parliament of this Realm with the Clergy in their Convocation But for all this we do not confess or acknowledge all or many of those for General Councils which they at Trent or which Bellarmine is pleas'd to account for such a parcel of eighteen of them But those very few we count for General which the Church Universal before the unhappy breach between East and West receiv'd for General But now to unravel the skein which is much entangled and ruffled in his confused way the diminutions he puts upon general Councils may be reduc'd to these three Heads 1. That General Councils may err in points of Faith because they have no promise to the contrary 2. Because they want Numbers even of the Clergy being not the thousandth part of them and therefore to put this Argument as far as ever it will go are not truly General 3. Because of the prejudices they that should sit in Council would bring along with them then who can doubt but they would avow that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches 1. In answer to his first Exception I premise these limitations If by erring in some points of Faith he means some points belonging to the Piety of Faith as Divines use to speak or to the Perfection of Faith or remotely belonging even to the essence or necessity of Faith and wounding it by far-fetcht Consequences I will not deny but even great Councils may possibly be circumvented for a time yet I may safely venture with our Learned Pious Dr. Hammond in his Paraenesis to reckon it among the pio credibilia or a thing piously credible as we say that God will not permit a Council truly General and Free to err in Fundamentals which thus far only I presume to explain that God will never permit them to deny and declare against any Fundamental Truth and much less to affirm and declare any Fundamental Errour to be a Truth and least of all to declare it a Fundamental Truth And if this Author asks which of God's Promises give us encouragement to hope and believe this I refer him to the Prophet Isaiah ch 30. v. 20. And though the Lord give you the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yet shall not thy Teachers be removed into a Corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers That this Chap. is Evangelical will not I suppose be denied and so is that Isai 54. 17. and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment shalt thou condemn If this be denied to be spoken of the Christian Church I prove it undeniably from our Saviour's application of the Context And all thy Children shall be taught of God It was then a Prerogative of the Christian Church that her Teachers should be driven into

a corner no more that is be always Visible even when the Lord gave them the bread of affliction that is even in times of Persecution as the lawful Catholick Bishops were never more Visible than when the intruding Arrians that were far enough from being Lawful Bishops persecuted them away from their Bishopricks and drove their Persons indeed into Corners yet they held intelligence and kept exact correspondence with one another still and with all their Flock's that persever'd in the Faith and disowned the uncanonical Arrian Bishops This they did by their Literae Formatae by this method the Church preserv'd in her Communion her own Members amidst their Dispersions and before any General Councils except at Jerusalem held by the Apostles themselves though the greatest Heresies arose early by this means they proclaim'd their Faith loudest of all then when they were silenc'd and excluded by the Arrians from their own Pulpits as the Sufferings which happen'd to St. Paul fell out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel So that his bonds in Christ were manifest in all the palace and in all other places and many of the Brethren in the Lord waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the word without fear Phil. 1. 12 13 14. And if the Church has a power of Condemning in judgment every tongue that rises up against her I think this amounts to a promise a glorious promise and there are many such that all or near all the Bishops in the Christian world shall never apparently fall from an Outward Profession at least of the Catholick Faith in Fundamentals and profess the quite contrary Heresies instead of them And he that will not allow thus much at least to the Church must run into wild aery suppositions of sheep without any shepherds People without any Priests a Church without any Orders and as invisible as the Leviathan makes it in his parallel between the Church of Rome and the Kingdom of Fayries Thus sar methinks this Author should go along with me for all his asking What 's this to a General Council for the promise was made to the whole Body of the Church since even he acknowledges that the Gates of Hell would prevail against Her if the Devil could so wound the whole Body of the Church as to destroy the Vitals the Fundamentals And if this be not a mortal wound to the Body to lose all its Pastors and Teachers by their falling into formal and mortal Heresie then nothing at all can wound it deadly but a total Dissolution of all and every one of its members and at this rate this Author may fancy as a certain great Enthusiast did before him that Himself alone might be the Catholick Church and that it might wholly subsist in his Single Person But he would fain avoid this inconvenience though a General Council should fall into such Fundamental Errour and persist in it because Secondly says he 'T is not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Church which in the Scripture is always put for the whole Body of the Faithful though of late it be translated into quite another notion and taken for the Clergy only I answer if the Church be always put for the whole Body yet the Clergy sure are the voice or the mouth of that Body and God has promised Isa 59 20. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion to put it out of doubt that all this Chapter is Gospel and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob saith the Lord As for me this is my Covenant with them saith the Lord my Spirit which is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seeds seed saith the Lord from henceforth and for ever Farther I add out of the Author 's own confession in his Chap. concerning Bishops and Priests The Church was always governed by Bishops that is by one whatsoever you please to call him set over the rest of the Clergy with Authority to ordain to exhort to rebuke to judge and censure as he found cause no other form of Government is mentioned by any Author for fifteen hundred years from the Apostles downwards I make account then that a General Council of Bishops is as Tertullian styles it Representatio totius nominis Christiani a Representative of all that are called Christians Inferiour Clergy as well as Laity And what then if they are not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Laity nay to strengthen his Argument what if there is not actually met in Council the twentieth part of the Bishops that are in the Christian World Suppose that all are invited with assurance of safe conduct to a place of security and time enough allow'd for their convening all which can never be effected without the consent of Kings and Princes and without that it never must be attempted nevertheless because very many cannot possibly take such a voyage and must needs be absent it was never pretended to have the force of a General Council till it was manifestly accepted by those absent Bishops of the Church Universal wheresoever dispersed or at least by the visibly Major part of them so that it might appear to any one at first glympse as they say and without any scrupulous enquiry which way their much greater number had declared themselves If there be still a few Dissenters 't is inconsiderable as what were seventeen Arrian Bishops for there were no more Arrians that were lawful Bishops in the Council of Nice where there were three hundred and eighteen Catholique Pastors equal almost to the number of Servants bred up in the House of Abraham I know not then what they mean that would evacuate and annihilate almost the whole authority of general Councils by sending us to Ortelius's Mapps or Geographical Tables bidding us take a survey of all the great Cathedrals or Metropolitical Churches and then demand of us whether there were ever any Councils so Oecumenical from which above half the Bishops of these Sees were not absent True but if they were present upon their own Charges and did but what would be certainly required and exacted of them there or wherever they were they must needs accept subscribe recite publish and preach and cause to be preacht over all their Dioceses the Decrees concerning the Faith such as the Nicene Creed or the Constantinopolitan Nay the Bishops did many times summon Provincial and National Councils to sit a little before and at the same time with the General on purpose to ratifie and spread their Decrees And if any Council was pretended to be General and Free when it was not so as was the second of Nice which being overaw'd by an Imperious woman Irene decreed Image-worship Immediately two or three other great Western Councils as that of Francfort in Germany