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 presbyter_n 1,664 5 10.2707 5 false
View all documents for the selected quad

Text snippets containing the quad

ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A59811 A defence of the Dean of St. Paul's Apology for writing against the Socinians in answer to the antapologist. Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707. 1694 (1694) Wing S3283; ESTC R8168 44,628 72

There is 1 snippet containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

Scripture and not with Innovations of their own This if he be sincere and plain in what he says is all we desire and if he will promise never to revoke this Grant we will be satisfied In the next place he is for admitting known Socinians into the Communion of the Church The Dean had said He hoped he the Stander-by did not propose this Negative Belief as he calls it as a Term of Communion that though we know them ●o deny the Trinity and Incarnation yet if they will agree not publickly to oppose and contradict this Faith we shall receive them to our Communion Thus far our Author cites but the Dean had said also and fling the Worship of the Holy Trinity and of a God Incarnate out of our Liturgies for their sake This he very roundly answers and utterly confutes with a short Why not This is indeed a short Question and needs no long Answer for in the next Page if he would but look on it the Dean has given him a sufficient Reason Why not But he thinks to evade all by putting an impertinent Case too long to be recited here and indeed not worth it For it doth by no means reach the Point which isc Whether the Governors of the Church ought to make the Terms of Communion so large as that known professed Socinians and Arians may fully communicate with us as compleat and Orthodox Members of the Church and not as our Author gravely puts it Whether every Preacher should stop when he sees a Socinian come into the Church Besides he supposes his Socinian to be a known good liver and professing the common Christianity but it may be we may not agree with him and suppose I should not be so happy as to think so well of his Socinian Friend as he doth will he then give me leave to turn him out of the Church But what is all this to the Publick Constitutions of a Church and the Laws of Communion Must they be made so loose as to admit all sorts of Hereticks because an Heretick of any sort may sometimes appear at least to be a good liver and profess to believe the Common Christianity c. as there have been such Professors of other Heresies and may be of any as well as of this If our Author answers this too with a Why not I desire he will subjoin a Reason for what he says and then he may deserve a Reply And now our great Champion of wrong'd Innocence out of his extraordinary Generosity and love of Peace and Truth cannot forbear observing that the Dean wrongs the poor innocent Socinians and imputes sundry Points very iniquitously stated to them which yet they hold not as he states them And first he tells us If he the Dean as some in the world had had Personal Dealing with the generality of his Parishioners as to matters of Conscience he would say That the Ignorance of many Church-people and so the Errors of their Conceptions touching God and the Three Persons in the Godhead much more alter as to them the Object of the Christian Worship The Dean I believe tho not so unacquainted with his Parishioners while he had a Parish yet never met with such Ignorance as this and yet no man doubts but there are some persons very ignorant who have no distinct Conceptions of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost but yet have no Heretical Opinions about them and I wonder this Stander-by who is so fond of a Negative Belief should not see a difference between a Negative Orthodoxy and professed positive Heresy By the same Argument he might as well prove that all other Hereticks ought to be received into the Communion of the Christian Church because there are a great many Christians that are extremely ignorant in all other Points of Faith But tho a general confused indistinct Knowledge with a sober and pious Conversation may qualify men for Christian Communion yet profest Hereticks ought to be flung out of the Church The first are the Churches Care to instruct them better as Opportunity and their Capacities will admit the others are her profest Enemies and must be removed from the Church to preserve the sound parts from infection and I can t imagine what Notion a man can have of Church-Communion without Unity of Faith tho the same Communion may admit of very different degrees of Knowledge It would be too tedious and not very pertinent here to run thorough these things but I am sure for all his haste the Dean has not in this place imputed any thing to the Socinians but what they avowedly and in Print maintain for it is evident that the Socinians do deny the Meritorious Sacrifice and the Meritorious Intercession of our Saviour that they do also deny that the Eternal Son of God Offered himself that God demonstrated his Love to us by sending his own Son in a proper sense as opposed to a mere Man or Created Spirit and consequently they do deny the Humility and Condescension of the Eternal Son of God in becoming Man c. and therefore these things are not iniquitously imputed to the Socinians which yet are the very things which the Dean's Discourse imputes to them and therefore he has no reason to add That some men Write against them without understanding them but I am afraid 't is too true That some men Apologize for them without understanding th●m As to the Socinians altering the Object of Religious Worship I refer the Reader to that Discourse of the Dean's to which he himself has referr'd in his Apology where he will find that point more largely handled and fully and clearly Proved But now we come to a great Point and which takes up a great many Pages in our Author about the Authority of Parliaments Bishops and Convocations on which Head I have some good Reasons not to be so large and to desire the Reader 's excuse if I do not follow our Author in all he says on this Subject especially since our proper business doth not require it and therefore I do not care to ramble like him unless I had the same advantage as he has to be on the securer side 'T is not safe to define what Parliaments can do without Convocation● or Bishops without Presbyters But I am sure the Church has no cause to thank our Author who would first betray her Faith and then diminish her Authority even in things purely Spiritual First he gives up the Convocation for what reason is manifest and for which the Inferior Clergy are bound to thank him And then he does the same in effect for the Bishops when he allows so much to the Parliament for they have not so much as a Negative Voice there and Articles of Faith may be coined even against the express will of every one of them and though he cannot believe the Body of the Bishops disallowed or did not with good liking consent to the Act of Toleration if