Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bishop_n	church_n	council_n	3,236	5	6.7056	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26871	Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1689 (1689)	Wing B1195; ESTC R2643	73,886	164

can so easily sting what will the old ones do And if your infancy here begin with such destructive zeal what will you do when you are at full growth Qu. 3. You cannot be ignorant what cause to accuse your Church with Cruelty and Blood hath been given the world by your Church Laws and Practices By the Council at the Laterane under Innocent 3d the Council for damning Henrician Hereticks even Kings that claim Investiture of Bishops and those that decree the burning of all that you call Hereticks By the murder of so many thousand Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians c. By the Inquisitions more inhumane cruelties in Belgium and Spain c. By the Massacres in France and the murder of Henry III. and IV. By Queen Maries flames By the two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland And there be many among you who disown all this and say it is not from the principles of your Religion when yet General Councils approved are your Religion it self This being copiously opened as I said before by Henry Fowlis Bishop Barlow c. had it not been more prudent for you to have begun with Lenity and Love to have drawn men to think that you are better minded than to perswade them that you are of your rulers and forefathers mind and mean to imitate them Qu. 4. Have you not observed that all parties have faln by forcing multitudes to be their enemies by seeking to destroy or hurt them Most men love quietness and will live in peace if others will give them leave But when they see that they must offend others or not defend themselves it sets all their wit and power on work against their intolerable enemies There are few creatures in the world that have not some power and inclination to hurt others for their own defence The Bee hath a Sting to defend her Hive and Honey And do you not remember that your sufferings in England came most by Queen Maries flames and the Spanish Invasion and the many Treasons against Queen Elizabeth and by the Powder Plot And how the French Massacre and Murders of Kings and the horrid Inquisition set all our Parliaments against you And how the Murder of 200000 in Ireland drove many thousands into the Parliaments Army that else would not have gone And will you yet stir up all the Land to fear and hate you Qu. 5. Is it not both imprudent and unrighteous for you of all men to turn those Laws against us which were made against you and have so much slept and little troubled you You will by this call people to take notice of them that did not before For my own part as I never hurt any of you so I know not that any of the Ministers did whose ruine you endeavour We hear of none of your sufferings by any such Indeed these late years many have died as for the Plot so much talkt of But by whom did they die Was it not by the accusation and witness of Papists Were not Oats Bedlow Dugdale Turbervile Prance Dangerfield Ienison Smith alias Barry the York-shire Witnesses and the rest besides the Irish all men of your selves that came out of your own Bosoms whether the men died justly or unjustly I leave to God But sure it was men of your own selves that did it And will you be revenged for this on such Protestants that medled not in it And you should remember that you and we have a Protestant King who hath sworn all his Kingdom against all forreign jurisdiction and all endeavour of any alteration of Government in Church or state and so much abhors Popery that he hath made a law severely to punish all that shall but raise any suspicion that he is a Papist And you must in reason take heed of dishonouring and defaming him by defaming Protestants in general And sure since Queen Elizabeths days we have had no Kings whom you can justly accuse of cruelty towards you No not King Iames when the Powder Plot had provoked him if half be true that the Bishop of Ambrun saith of his conference with him or that Rushworth and others say of the Oath of the King Prince and Council for Toleration you are disingenuous if you accuse them of cruelty or rigorous severity In you Philanax Anglicus as formerly in the Image of both Churches you make all called Protestants of sincerity to be of Rebellious principles and their Religion introduced by it and yet profess that you honour the King as if you would have men doubt whether he be a Protestant of sincerity or else were as bad as you describe Had the severe Laws been executed against you especially for meer Religion no one could wonder if you desired relief But while you live quietly and Words and Paper hurt you not that I hear of to begin with so much hurtfulness to them that medled not with you will disserve your cause Qu. 6. And is it consistent with reasonable modesty to go about to make the World believe that the Protestant Doctrine is less loyal than yours Do you think your Books are invisible all your practices forgotten It is none of the business of this writing to accuse you herein of any thing but falsly accusing others and seeking to destroy us on such accusation Though you may thus deceive the ignorant that know no more of you than what you tell them that will but turn to your dishonour at last Are not your foresaid Council Canons which are your Religion visible Have not the forecited writers truly cited them and multitudes of your Doctors which may better inform men Are all the Wars of Italy Germany c. against Princes and Emperors for the Pope forgotten Was it not a Council of your Bishops that decreed that all the carcasses of those Bishops that were for the Henrician Heresy that is for the Emperors power of investing Bishops and his exemption from being excommunicated and deposed by the Pope should be digged out of their Graves and Burnt Was it not a council that deposed Ludovicus Pius How many more such acts have they done And are not your most learned Doctors allowed to publish the justification of the Popes power to excommunicate depose Kings if they deserve it in his judgment Do not your politick Writers Casuists and Divines ordinarily hold that the people give Kings their power and may take it away when they forfeit it and that tyranny is such a forfeiture And that the people should not suffer a Heretick to reign And that subjects may be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance according to the foresaid Laterane and Greg. 7. Roman Councils But too much is said of this by many and the case is past a modest denial Even those Protestants that were in Arms for the Parliament and restored the King were so far from thinking that their Oaths of Allegiance may be dispensed with that if I knew any thing of those men and times it was principally the Conscience of two

Prelates against their Oaths and against the known truth and against their duty to God and the King. § 10. But though it be notorious that Domination and Jurisdiction be the things which cause the Papal Clergy to trouble and tear the Christian world what is it that makes the Laity so mad getteth this Clergy such a militant crowd against their own Tranquillity and Salvation It 's as visible as any moral thing that the Churches Divisions and Wars and Miseries have about a thousand years risen from Satans thrusting such worldly fleshly unholy men into holy Offices who seek them but to serve their Pride and Covetousness and Fleshly Appetites and Ease and who are Enemies at the heart to the serious obedience to Christ which formally they preach Christs own Apostles in their time of ignorance began to strive which of them should be greatest of which we have recorded his sharp rebuke which St. Peter himself did after second in 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. in words so plain that if his pretended Successours had not first claimed a power as the Church to be the determining expounders of all the Bible they had lain under the Condemnation of Christ and Peter Naked without a Defence or Cloak But this Church-expounding authority sets them above all the Word of God which is now but what they please to make it and an instrument to execute their wills And indeed it is now rather the Pope and his Prelates and Councils than Christ that are the Law-makers to the Church For it is not he that maketh the words only that makes the Law but he that giveth them their sense The words are but as the body and the sense is the Soul of the Law. The Ministerial Church now scorn the name of Ministers and being become Pretorian and Magisterial they give Christ and his Spirit in the Apostles leave to make the words and body of the Scripture or Divine Law as God formed Adams body of the dust so that they may give it the breath of Life and also may make far more Voluminous Laws of their own and cut off and condemn all the Children of God that cannot believe that it 's lawful to obey them And though the Ignorant think that the claim of universal Legislation and Judgment in the universal Church and General Councils be no Service to the Domination of particular Clergy men no nor to any seeing there will never be a General Council They understand not the mystery of iniquity and mistake We have English Writers that have told them 1. That indeed Power is first given to the body fine doctrine for Royalists but by the Body it is given to the Prelates to use for them 2. That as a General Council hath the Supream power so the Prelates under them have the Inferior Ruling power and the executive in the intervals of Councils 3. That as Councils represent the Church in Soveraignty so every Bishop is by his office the true Representative of the Clergy of his Diocess and every Metropolitan the Representative of his Province and every Patriarch of his Patriarchate And then are not the Patriarchs at least with the Metropolitans Universal Rulers in such Intervals 4. And the Pope is the Patriarch of the West and hath a primacy in the Church universal and must be confest to be principium unitatis Catholicae and say some to be the President of Councils 5. To which others add that it belongs only to the president to call Councils and to Iudg which are Lawful without whose call they are so far from binding us that they are themselves but unlawful Routs And what would you have more But what 's all this to the poor Priests What Why 7. The people know not what the volumes of Councils say and it is the Priests or no body that must tell it them both what their exposition of Scripture is and what their own additional Laws are without which they cannot be obeyed so that indeed the peoples Faith is ultimately resolvedly into the authority of the Priest who tells them what the Bishop saith who tells them what the Metropolitan and his Synod saith who tells them what the Patriarch and his Synod saith who tells them what the chief Patriarch and a General Council saith who tell them determinatively what Christ and the Scripture saith and meaneth But what 's this to Councils when there are none Yes 8. Those that are past and gone have left all those binding Laws by which the present Bishops as an Aristocracy must govern all the Christian World. But are not they for Monarchy in the state How come they then to plead for a Soveraign Aristocracy over the Catholick Church and how come even the French Clergy to be for the power of a Church Parliament above the Pope I cannot answer that let the Pope and they debate it But I wonder that A. Bishop Laud should be for the derivation of all power from the Body as Richard Hooker is See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence of him p. 544. 545. c. No Body collective whensoever it assembled it self did ever give more power to the representing body of it than a binding power upon it self and all particulars Nor ever did it give this power otherwise than with this Reservation in nature that it would call again and reform and if need were abrogate any law or ordinances upon just cause made evident that the representing Body had failed in trust or truth And this power no Body collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self or give away to a Parliament or Council or call it what you will that represents it The power which a Council hath to order settle and define differences arising concerning faith it hath not by any immediate institution of Christ but it was prudently taken up by the Church from the Apostles example See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence I confess that the generality of Politicians and Lawyers Heathens Papists and Protestants go much this way as to Civil Government and say that the Majestas personalis is in the King or Senate but the Majestas realis in the Body which giveth the Organical power and on just cause may take it away It is no honour to be singular in Politicks and I have said enough of this elsewhere Christ. Direct p. 1. But if it be the Body of the whole Church on Earth that must give Church Officers and Councils their power and recal it when there is cause if ever the whole Christian World meet together to vote it when it cometh to Poling we will give both the Monarchical and the Aristocratical Conciliar Papists three for one to try who hath the power given by the Body But while two or three parts do already disown almost all their Councils the case is decided But if an old Councils Heresies Errours or Tyranny can be invalidated only by a new one that is truly General or a new one as Papal as the last we confess that Trent