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	priest_n	1,674	5	6.6854	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96976	Meditations upon the marks of the true Church of Christ: or, Motives of credibility in behalf of the true religion: and, the easiest way to finde it out. / By H.W.	H. W.; Wilkinson, Henry, 1610-1675,	1655 (1655)	Wing W36A; Thomason E1666_1; ESTC R208388	95,687	283

Ecclesiastical Prelat but even sense and reason requires to wit that he should use that power for the edification and not to the destruction of that Church which gave him it that he should Preach and Teach her doctrine that he should administer her Sacraments but he went beyond his Commission yea quite contrary to it he preached doctrine contradictory to that of the Church he taught her doctrine was false in many of the mainest points and that her Sacraments were not so many and so efficacious causes of grace as they were he could have no commission for this yea his revolt and rebellion against the Church quite annull'd his former Commission and devested him of all the faculties which had been delegated formerly to him as for Episcopacy though some of his clients stiled him Bishop of Wittenberg as Oecolampadius whose Grave stone expresseth him the first Bishop of Basil and Zuinglius of Tigur and Calvin of Geneva yet neither he nor these other ever gave out or pretended they had Episeopall Consecration or jurisdiction from the Roman Church or from any precedent Bishops so that what they acted in this kinde was by a usurped power and invalid Consider secondly the calling of the English Ministry the Protestant titular Bishops urged alwayes against their Catholick Antagonists that they were true Bishops their proof was because they were consecrated by the old Catholick Bishops Mark here for your comfort Catholicks that your Bishops and by consequence your Priests are acknowledged for true and lawfull even by their adversaries But you Protestants mark in order to your amendment that this very means and the onely argument by which they must prove themselves lawful Bishops which they make use of to establish your cause destroys it and with all confirms that the Roman Catholicks are the onely true Church For since that main thing which Christ gave his Church to wit power to ordain Bishops and Priests and to send them to seed souls with the word of God and the Sacraments is granted to be in the Church of Rome it follows evidently that it is the true Church of Christ and that its doctrine and Sacraments are onely true for Christ could not give that Church commission to Preach doctrin contrary to his nor could the Church which confessedly hath this power ordain others and give them commission to Preach against it self Hence also it followeth if these supposed Protestant Bishops were ordained by the old Catholick ones by going against their commission and preaching and acting against that Church which gave them their power first that their former true commission ceased and was annulled Secondly that Protestants and their Bishops were and still are guilty of Schisme by not holding communion with the Church of Rome and thirdly that they are guilty of heresie these Bishops and ministers to wit in believing and teaching Doctrine contrary to the Roman Church which they say gave them their power Fourthly that they incurred the Ecclesiasticall censures for the forementioned reasons and consequently could not give orders lawfully so that their Successors were not lawfully ordained Fifthly that since the Protestant Bishops neither used the true form nor matter in the consecration of their later Bishops and Ministers with which the first of them was supposed to have been consecrated with by the old Catholick Bishops even upon this score the later were no true Bishops nor Priests Sixthly that since none can lawfully succeed in a Bishoprick unlesse the former Bishop be either dead or canonically deposed even upon this ground all the first of the Protestant Prelates were unlawfull because the old Bishops were living and not deposed when the later usurped their Sees or were intruded by others But the truth is these first Protestants took to themselves that Ecclesiastical honour without being called by God as Aaron was and took upon them the Office of preaching without being sent contrary to the words of Saint Paul It must not be presumed but positively proved by them that they were consecrated by the old true Bishops and that they succeeded them legally they must be able to prove when where and by what Catholick Bishops they were consecrated and what faculties and commission they had All other Catholick Priests can demonstrate in behalf of their Apostolical calling all these particular circumstances but the Protestants could never yet prove their lawful calling thus and yet are obliged to do it otherwise they are to be looked upon as having got into the sheepfold not by entring in at the doore but by elimbing up another way And indeed the Catholicks urge which they are not liged to do very positive and probable arguments to convince the Protestants unlawful calling and that they had not any consecration or jurisdiction from them For first the Catholick Bishops all of them absolutely refused to consecrate any of the Protestants who seeing this and not hoping to obtain it of them by proceeding in a fair way aimed at the getting of it by underhand dealing but that good old and infirm Bishop of whom they thought to have taken orders without discovering that they were Protestants having got some hints of their designe rejected them their next plot was the producing of a Register in which were set down the names of divers Protestants ordained Bishops by such and such Catholick Prelates but the forging and fraud of this Register was soon laid open by the Catholick party and so that attempt ceased The next Machine they moved was by an Order from the Court that so many Divines and Lawyers should enter into consultation and resolve whether some new form of making Clergy-men might not be found out without dependence of the Church of Rome but the ridiculousnesse of this adynaton soon made that conventicle desist from proceeding further in that way at length therefore they resolved to ordain each other without more ado which seven or eight of them ventured upon all on one day not after the ancient Catholick manner publickly and solemnly in the Church at high masse and in the eyes of many hundreds of people but privately in an Inne and without any witnesses And lastly Queen Elisabeth and the Parliament ordained that all who had the Queens Letters Patents for to be Bishops should by the people be acknowledged for true Bishops notwithstanding what soever defect might have happened in the consecration of them Now these instances and particularly the last plainly intimate that all was not well with these Protestant Bishops in point of lawfull calling The fourth Point Out of the precedent points many fruitful consequences may be gathered and first that that Sect which wants Pastors lawfully called cannot possibly be the true Church of Christ 2. That none can be lawfully called unlesse they be consecrated by Bishops lineally descended from the Apostles 3. That since there must be a See Apostolick somewhere for otherwise Apostolical succession cannot be derived down from age to age till the world