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	word_n	2,098	5	4.2654	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36083	A discourse concerning excommunication, as executed by officials, and concerning the common law writts, de excommunicato capiendo and de cautione admittenda, for the punishment of persons excommunicated and their deliverance from the punishment vvherin is examined whether the execution of the former as executed by many, be not a profanation of a great ordinance of God, whether by the second the subjects is many cases be not unwarrantably oppressed : as also by the difficult granting of the other, which is a common law writt, and the right of every subject to be obtained without difficulty : discoursed in a letter to an honourable friend / by one who is a friend to English liberty.	One who is a friend to English liberty.	1680 (1680)	Wing D1579; ESTC R6708	18,986	26

A DISCOURSE Concerning EXCOMMUNICATION As Executed by Officials And concerning the Common Law Writts De Excommunicato capiendo and De Cautione admittenda For the punishment of persons Excommunicated and their Deliverance from the punishment VVherein is Examined Whether the Execution of the former as Executed by many be not a profanation of a great Ordinance of God Whether by the second the Subjects in many Cases be not unwarrantably oppressed As also by the difficult granting of the other which is a Common Law Writt and the right of every Subject to be obtained without difficulty Discoursed in a Letter to an Honourable Friend by one who is a Friend to the English Liberty Wrote before the Parliament which Sat from March 1678 to the end of May 1679 and now published Acts. 19. 15. Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you Job 6. 25. How forcible are right words But what doth your arguing reprove Hujus Scilicet Papae potestatem huic cum divino munere sublatam esse manifestum est ne quid superesset quo non plane fractam illius vim esse constaret leges omn●s decreta atque instituta quae ab Authore Episcopo Romano profecta sunt prorsus abroganda censuimus Epist Hen. 8. praesixa libro cui Titulus Reformatio Legum Eccles impr Londini Anno 1641. London Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheap-side 1680. To his highly honoured Friend J. B. Esq Honoured Sir THE charitable design of this Paper is amongst the many oppressed which His Most Sacred Majesty in conjunction with His two Houses of Parliament hath made to go free to shew you one species of Prisoners whom no Parliament hath had leisure as yet to take notice of who beseech your Honours that you would also allow them to be Prisoners of hope being such as no Act of Habeas Corpus will relieve The Adversaries of the Non-conformists could not be satisfied that their Ministers were outed of their livings and many of them of their whole Subsistence for themselves Wives and Children and by another Act forbidden to reside in any place where they might expect a relief from the Charity of good People but many of them have been pursued to Excommunication upon the Statutes for not coming to their Parish Church though certainly they being Ministers of the Gospel were themselves obliged to Preach on Lords Days and being excommunicated they have had the old Common Law writ de excommunicato capiendo taken out and some of them upon it have been detained 3 4 7 Years nor at the end of that Term have their merciless Enemies been willing to let them out or let them take the advantage of the Law to come out and amongst the ordinary people not a few have been thus used to the ruine of many Families the exhausting great Sums of Money most injuriously from many persons and the prejudicing the Trade and Commerce of the Nation and all this by the abuse and prophanation of a great Ordinance of God that I mean of Excommunication using what was ordained of God for the purging of his Church from persons not fit for its holy communion meerly to serve their Lusts of malice and revenge and to keep worthy Patriots from being chosen Members to represent their Countreys in your Honourable Assemblies among many instances of which nature you had one the last Parliament at Berwick in the case of Mr Rushworth and you have one yet more notorious this Parliament in Leicestershire as if their Excommunications disseised men of their Freehold or which indeed looks more likely the Subjects subjection to their Courts brought them into the Notion of Bond-men A practice which if not timely by your Honours taken notice of and restrained will give the Monoply of suffrages into the hands of Registers Officials and Proctors This Sir certainly will give our Honourable Senators just cause to inquire 1. Whether Excommunication as now practised by Officials in Ecclesiastical Courts be not an horrid profanation of a great Ordinance of God and fit to be reflected on by our Governours 2. Whether the imprisonment of persons Excommunicated by vertue of the writ de excommunicato capiendo be not as practised a great oppression of the Subject and worthy of a Parliamentary consideration and relief 3. Whether the writt de cautione admittenda being the only relief provided by Law for persons so imprisoned hath its just and free course The Honour and Glory of God being the first and principal concern as well of great Councels as of particular persons the first of these questions deserveth and challengeth the preference in disquisitions of this nature Whatever be the Judgment of some Forreign Divines and whatever hath been said by Erastus or others to the contrary It is manifest That our Church looketh upon Excommunication as an Ordinance and institution of Christ for the keeping of the Church pure and unspotted as the Spouse of Christ should be and this appeareth as from other evidence so from the very form of Sentences at this day usual in the Ecclesiastical Courts which they usually begin In Dei nomine in the Name of God and they tell us they proceed to such sentences Christi nomine prius invocato having first called upon the Name of Christ ac ipsum solum Deum praeponentes setting God alone before them Our Articles 1552 tell us That excommunicate persons are to be avoided as being rightly cut off from the unity of the Church and ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as Heathens and Publicans Which Article is also verbatim in those 1562 and manifestly allude to that Text of our Saviour Matth. 18. 17. generally judged to be the Institution of this Ordinance under the Gospel Nor can any thing be clearer then the declared Judgment of Arch-Bishop Cranmer Bishop Goodrick Dr. Cox Dr. Peter Martyr Dr. May Dr. Taylor Mr. Lucas and Mr. Goodrick who were the 8 Persons part of 32 afterward intended who according to Three Acts of Parliament made in the case were appointed by the Letters Patents of Edward the 6th Dat. Nov. 11. in the Fifth Year of His Reign and authorised to revise the Canon Law and out of it to draw up a body of Canon Law which should alone be used in England who did meet and draw up such a body though King Edward lived not to confirm what they had done by His Royal Sanction as may be seen by a Book called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum printed 1670 and reprinted 1641. These great Divines tell us in their Chapter about Excommunication That it is a Power and Authority derived from God to his Church c. and Chap. 2. That the Church receiveth these keys from Christ To multiply words in this cause were vain for none that ever owned Excommunication owned it in any other notion then as an Institution of Christ's And there is no pretence for any to seclude men

from the enjoyment of the means of Salvation but Christ who is the Lord of the Church Which being granted the true notion of excommunication is this It is a power granted by Christ to his Church to remove lewd Persons or such as are Heretical and are pertinacious in their lewd opinions and practices from the Communion of the Church in the holy Sacraments and the fellowship of Christians till they reform Which exactly agreeth with the notion of it given us in these words by Arch-Bishop Cranmer and other of our first Reformers in their Book called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum De Excommun cap. 1. Excommunicatio potestas est authoritas ad Ecclesiam a Deo profecta quae facinorosas personas vel de religione nostra corrupte sentientes ad suam improbitatem adhaerescentes a perceptione Sacramentorum Reform Leg. Eccles Ed. 1641. p. 159. etiam Chhristianorum fratrum usu tantisper summovet donec sensus sanos recollegerint salutarium cogitationum apta signa dederint poenas etiam ecclesiasticas subierint quibus ferocia carnis comprimitur ut spiritus salvus fiat Excommunication being thus universally agreed to be a Divine Institution it must as to the use of it be regulated by the Divine Rule None can Excommunicate but those who are by Christ thereunto appointed None ought to be Excommunicated but by warrant from the word of God and Excommunication must proceed with that gravity and leisure which the same word hath directed And every one seeth that where any thing of this nature is done otherwise It is an horrible profanation of the Ordinance of God and a woful abuse of a power which none but God could give unto any That this power is given to the Church from Christ is agreed on all hands Whether it resteth in the whole Church or in the Governours of the Church is the onely question here That this power according to the institution of Christ belongs to the whole particular Church to whom the offender relateth is to me as clear as the light According to the Primitive direction Matth. 18. If he would not hear the Church he was to be us an heathen and a publican The Apostle speaks to the whole Church at Corinth 1 Cor. 5. 4. That in the name of the Lord Jesus when they were gathered together and his spirit with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ they should deliver such a one to Satan and Excommunication being not only a seclusion of the party from the enjoyment of Ordinances but from the intimate Communion of the Members of the Church It is very absurd for Officers in a Church to think of secluding any from the communion of those who will yet have fellowship and communion with them and consonant to this was the Judgment of the Ancient Church t●at none ought to be excommunicated dissentiente plebe without the consent of the people from whose communion he was to be secluded And without doubt as to the Major Excommunication it is the most rational thing imaginable and our first Reformers in the aforementioned Book called Reformatio legum Eccles pag. 161. cap. 6. on this subject saith Totius Ecclesiae consonsus quanquam optabilis esset That the consent of the whole Church is desireable but because it can very hardly be procured they ordain as there followeth That no one person should exercise this power c. but that the Archbishop or Bishop or some other lawful Judge with a Justice of the Peace and the proper Minister of the place where the party accused dwelleth or some other appointed by him and two or three other Religious Ministers should meet in whose presence after a due and full handling and weighing the cause the party should be Excommunicated Some will have Excommunic●tion the Act of the whole Church onely denounced by the Minister Others will have it the Act of the Presbytery or Governours of the Church Others who fix the Government in Bishops will have it the Act of the Bishop but our Primitive Reformers would not have him doe it but with a Justice of the Peace the Minister of the place and two or three other grave Ministers who all together should hear examine and ponder the cause and agree the person deserving such a punishment which they might then Decree and the Minister of the place might Publish It being an institution of Christs it ought also to be denounced against none but such onely as he hath in his word appointed it for which is not onely determinable from the letter of Scripture but from reason concluding from the End of the Institution In the letter of Scripture there is no pretence for Excommunication of any but for such crimes as shut a man without Repentance out of the kingdom of God those are either damnable Heresies according to St. Pauls direction to Titus Chap. 3. v. 10. An Heretick after the first and second admonition reject and the example of St. Paul 1 Tim. 1. 20. who delivered up to Satan Hymeneus and Philetus having made shipwrack of Faith Or lewd and vile practices for which we have a president in the incestuous person mentioned 1 Cor. 5. and conform to this hath been the constant judgment of the Church and our aforementioned Reformers in the book and place aforementioned determine that they must be personae facinorosae de Religione nostra corrupte sentientes ad suam improbitatem adhaerescentes Leud persons corrupt in their sentiments of Religion pertinaciously adhering to them and yet more plainly in their third Chapter which I shall Translate Excommunication ought not say they to be used in minute offences but upon atrocious horrible crimes when the Church is grievously scandalized either because Religion is overthrown or good manners perverted by them of this sort are those of which St. Paul saith that those who do such things shall not enter into the Kingdom of God or shall not inherit the Kingdom of God or because of those things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience These horrible wickednesses ought to be punished by Excommunication so as they who are guilty of them shall be thus punished unless they in time reform and when they are admonished withdraw themselves from these courses and be willing to satisfie the Church for the dammage it hath sustained from their offences for Excommunication is not to be used but when men have hardned themselves in their wickednesses which happeneth two wayes either when being call'd to answer for such offences they will not appear or if they do appear they will not obey the admonitions of Judges This was the opinion of holy Cranmer and Taylor two of our blessed Martyrs and those other good and learned men that lived in King Edwards dayes in the very beginning of the Reformation and were known to be none that could be justly called Presbyterians by any who understand what Presbyterians are Besides this is evident from the end of

of man can justify any Minister before God in any act of impiety or unrighteousness much less alter the nature of the action and make that pious and righteous which is predetermined by the Law of God impious or unrighteous to assert any such Atheological position is in plain terms to make the Creature paramount to God and a Controuler of his Creator but if it would still the guilt must lie somewhere 2. But Sir Doth it no deserve some further deliberation whether the Civil Magistrate hath any obligation from God upon him thus to corroborate Church-censures I do know that our Common Law Writt de excommunicato capiendo saith qu●a querelis Ecclesiae deesse non debemus But I want one Text of Scripture to prove any such thing The great ends of excommunication are 1. Purging the communion of the Church 2. The Reformation of the offender The first end is obtained by Excommunication if indeed an Excommunicated person will intrude into the Communion of the Church it is a breach of the peace and falleth under the Magistrates cognisance For the Second end A Gaol in ordinary cases proveth a very inadequate medium to the Reformation of any person and where it doth one good it is found upon experience to do hurt to an hundred Humane Nature is rarely tamed by such rough applications I never yet knew any cured of their Nonconformity by being laid up in Prison 'T is such an Anti-Evangelical way of Cure as hath not met with any success that can farther commend it When our Blessed Saviour instituted the purgation of his Church He spake not a word of a Gaol He ordained that his Church should send for an Erroneous and Scandalous person endeavour to convince the Gainsayer of his error instructing him with all meekness rebuking him with all gravity by the Mouths of their grave Pastors and Teachers That if doing this once would not produce the desired effect they should do it a second then a third time waiting to see if God at any time would give him a heart to repent If this would not do That the Church being in the Name of Christ gathered together should declare such a person cut off from the Communion of his People This now done by persons not guilty of the like or worser Crimes and clothed with the Authority of Christ is a probable means to reduce the offender however the Church is cleared from such a person and its Communion is kept pure though the Person be thus cut off from Communion yet the Church shall not count him as an Enemy but mourn over him pray for him admonish him as a Brother How came in the Writt de Excommunicato capiendo as if the Ordinance of God had not sufficient Authority for its ends For 300 years after Christ the Church could have no such assistance nor do we read that it complained for the want of it possibly here and there God might make some pertinacious Heretick or debauchee an extraordinary Example of his Vengeance He hath done so in our Age in the case of Mrs. Hutchinson in New England but that God ever did This ordinarily for the first 300 years can be proved by no Scripture no Authentick Authority But as the Popish Government crept up by degrees so pretended Church Officers began to enlarge their jurisdiction and to excommunicate for slight and trivial causes without any pretence of Authority from God but meerly to subjugate people to their Wills and get fees for Chancellors Officials Registers c. They had no reason to trust God any longer to vindicate their usurped Authority and to justifie their groundless and impious Excommunications and Anathemaes They must therefore now call in the Civil Magistrate to do that which they could not expect that God should ever do Now come Writts to be invented To imprison persons excommunicated To take Apostates To burn Hereticks c. The Ordinance of God was first turn'd into Ridicule by dealing it out as Solomon saith Prov. 26. 18. the mad man casteth firebrands arrows and death and most lewd and vitious persons imployed to dispense this grave sentence principally to be used against lewd persons so as every one that heard them cryed out Physician heal thy self and all sober persons thought they heard God speaking to them What hast thou to do to declare my Statutes and that thou shouldst take my name or my authority or my censures into thy mouth seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee and then the civil Magistrate was called in to help the Church in her male-administrations whose work indeed was to have whipt these buyers and sellers out of the Lords Temple and then the glory of the Lord would again have appeared betwixt the Cherubims Excommunication would have appeared dreadful enough without the appendix of a Gaol There was never any need of Gaoles to punish excommunicated persons till persons came to be excommunicated for not paying Sextons wages Proctors fees Easter two-pences Tythe-piggs and Geese not coming to the Parish-Church not signing with the Cross not wearing Surplices not kneeling at the Sacrament crimes not mentioned in the word of God yea for preaching the Gospel meeting together to pray to God or to hear a good Sermon And it is not a Gaol will convince those offenders that they do evil Obj. But I hear some say These are all acts of disobedience to Authority and disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft Resp Disobedience to the Law of God of which Samuel speakes is indeed as the sin of witchcraft but yet every disobedience to the Law of God is not to be punished by Excommunication It will be hard to justifie it to be the will of God that persons should be excommunicated for every idle word of which they must give account or for an 100 things forbidden by the Law of God much less for all things forbidden by the Law of God Nor is a Gaol the punishment set for every disobedience to the Law of man 3. But Sir admit a person were duly Excommunicated according to the Law of God which not one of a hundred is not one of ten duly according to the laws of men witness the Judges relieving many by Writs of prohibition habeas corpus supersedeas c. and many more would be so relieved were they acquainted with the law or had they purses to take the advantage of it yet I very much doubt whether the Civil Magistrate with a safe Conscience can send him to prison and so be a means of his ruine My reason is because he hath had no knowledg of his crime further than that an Official hath told him he hath been excommunicated 40 dayes I take for granted and I appeal to your reasons whether any Magistrate ought not to do what he doth out of judgment and upon certain knowledge Our law suffereth not the Magistrate to grant an execution against any for forty shillings till he hath been arrested and he hath