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	word_n	1,785	5	4.1063	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57744	The late act of the convocation at Oxford examined: or, The obit of prelatique Protestancy: occasioning the conversion of W. R. (sometimes of Exeter Colledge in Oxford) to Catholique union	Rowland, William.	1652 (1652)	Wing R2075; ESTC R219949	37,064	142

cast away Masse and Peace together The causes which each of you already alleadge are true enough but I leave your selves to prove them it s more then sufficient for all good Christians who tender their salvations not to adhere to either of you since you are so far from unity in Doctrine that your bodies respectively need Reformation as ye confesse of them and they of you wherein ye have destroyed your selves wholly First from the pretence of being one Christian Church and consequently any Church according as the universall Church teaches us I beleeve one holy Catholique and Apostolique Church If therefore no unity no Church And with no lesse evidence ye have Secondly destroyed either of you to be a Church having declared your severall errours in Superstition and Schisme For according to Holy Scriptures and the consent of all especially old Christians A Congregation which should generally and solemnly teach and professe Superstition and Schisme neither is nor can be a Church of Christ this would render it inconsistent with the light presented in Saint Johns Candlesticks and consequently alienate it from Christ This needs no further proofe to a man who hath observed the hinges of Christianity Doth not the whole world also know by your voluminous writings that ye have condemned the very Ceremonies of the Roman Church as unlawfull and made that amongst the vulgar people a maine argument of our Superstition and now ye say it is Superstition in the Presbyters to condemne them in you I le not presse you for I should presently cast you into Democritus his Well Ye wholly forget the force of an Argument called in the Schooles ad hominem drawne from a mans owne principle as here against you Ye goe on Secondly we are not satisfied in the next Branch concerning the Reformation of Religion in our owne Kingdome in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government how we can sweare to endeavour the same which without makeing a change therein cannot be done It is very well noted that ye cannot reforme without a change Phylosophy would laugh at you to attempt a Reformation without a proportionable mutation whence it followes that you have chang'd your Doctrine whence it further followes that its false you know Gamaliels rule if it be of God it will stand ye know then whence yours comes for if it change it is not of God You pretend to reverence the foure first generall Councells heare what the Councell of Chalcedon saith Act. 1. Sic sancivit sancta synodus c Si quis innovat Anaethema sit sanctorum patrum fidem servemus c. you see your sentence if you change you are gone and yet you must change If your Proselites would without prejudice observe how you tumble and tosse one another in reciprocall recriminations in matter of these high inconsistencies with Christianity they would relinquish such communion Your reasons to the contrary in order to you are important for it cannot be done 1. Papists Independents are equally rejected by the Praelatique party Without manifest scandall to the Papist and Separatist by yeilding the cause which our Godly Bishops and Martyrs and all our learned Divines ever since the Reformation have both by their writings and sufferings maintained who have justified against them both the Religion established in the Church of England to be agreeable to the word of God 2. By Justifying the Papists in the reproaches and scorne by them cast upon our Religion whose usuall objection it hath been and is that we know not what our Religion is that since we left them we cannot tell where to stay that our Religion is a Parliamentary Religion let us not be blamed if we call it a Parliament Religion Parliament Gospell Parliament Faith Harding Consul of Apology part 6. cap. 2. These are very home let me a little dilate them To your first You have indeed scandalized all the world and most of all those whom ye call Papists by yeilding the cause and shewing that hitherto ye have persecuted them to bloud to all manner of cruelties for not adhering to that which now is confessed to be Superstitious and Schismaticall Trajan was a Heathen and a profest enemy of Christian Religion yet he came not neere your cruelties He made a law that no Poursivants should search the houses or looke after Christians or their Priests but onely apprehend them if they should happen to meet them But under your reigne all our houses against the liberties of free borne Subjects as was declared in Master Pims case were disquieted by the very dregs of mankind continually infested with Saint Ignatius his Leopards who the better he treated them the worse they were but as he said Iniquitas eorum mea doctrina est their iniquities taught us patience This permission even of assemblies in point of Religion especially in the exercise of a Religion which was not newly taken up though different from that which was then in vogue was by the Senate allowed as that of the Jewes at Rome Nay Suetonius tells us that even the Christians were tollerated to assemble Eusebius Hist lib. 5. cap. 20. saith that Commodus the Emperour punished even by death such who accused Christians by reason of their quietnesse And in his third booke cap. 15. he tells how Nerva the Emperour did set Christians at liberty generally by publique Proclamation hence Saint John was freed from Patmos In fine he recalled all power given to Poursuivants by his predecessours How much more should Christian Senates allow of innocent meetings in celebration of a Religion which all our forefathers professed But ye persecuted both new and old Religions I feare the bloud of all those who have suffered death either by hanging Loaplanding as the Dutch call it famishing or starving for Religion will call for revenge but we pray with our blessed Saviour and his Protomartyr Saint Stephen ne statuas illis hoc peccatum Saint Paul hath also taught us Rom. 12.5.21 Be not overcome of evill but overcome good with evill Nay Aristotle himselfe in 4. Eth. cap. 3. saith it is a signe of magnanimity to forget injuries For as it is a marke of a weake Stomack not to be able to digest hard meat so it is of a pusillanimous Soule not to be able to indure a harsh word or harder threats Cicero lib. 2. Tusc ques speaking of wise mens patience saith si fortis in perferendo officii satis est ut laetetur non postulo These Christian wise men have gone further even to joy in Persecutions Aristotle when the Athenians were consulting to proceed in judgement against him upon suspition of some impiety in his opinions departed from Athens and removed his Schoole saying to his Schollars Discedamus Athenis ne prebeamus iis secundam occasionem sceleris quale prius perpetraverunt in Socratem neve iterū per impietatem violent Philosophiam Thus tender Aristotle was of Philosophy and of their innocency but our Christian Philosophers here have gone

to be lawfull against Scriptures Fathers and Councells and the very Catechismes wherewith we teach our children yet this he said on Sunday the 25. of Jan. 1651. at Lincolns-Inne I would not mention so high a crime to his dishonour if it had not been committed in that publique Theater and so first published by himselfe And by this we see what ground the other Bishop had for his ingenuous Confession To your third Still it runs right Here is poem talionis which God inflicts upon you Reflect upon this well and se● how justly God hath retorted upon you what your Pulpits belched constantly against us for so many years and through our sides against your and our parents and against the whole Catholique world in respect of which ye deserve not the imaginary title of a Shadow But you go on 4. And we desire it may be considered in case a Covenant of like form should be tendered to the Citizens of London wherein they should be required to swear they would sincerely really and constantly without respect of persons endeavour the extirpation of Treason the City Government by a Lord Mayor Aldermen Sheriffes Common Councell and other Officers depending thereon murther adultery theft cosenage and whatsoever shall be c. left they should partake in other mens sins whether such a tendry could be looked upon by any Citizen that had the least spirit of freedome in him as an act of justice meekness and reason How still it runs alike and justly to be retorted upon you from Catholiques and with some notorious advantage for this plea of yours is but a pretty fancy and ends in words but you have gone further with us we have been publiquely and ignominiously hanged with murtherers thieves and reputed Traytors and these have been looked upon by you as acts of justice meekness and reason as appears in my L. of Canterbury his Epistle to the late King But we will hear you further Secondly for Episcopall Government we are not satisfied how we can with a good conscience swear to endeavour the extirpation thereof first in respect of the thing it self concerning which Government we think we have reason to believe 1. That it is if not Jure Divino in the strictest sense that is to say expressely commanded by God in his Word yet of Apostolicall Institution that is to say was established in the Churches by the Apostles according to the mind and after the example of their Master Jesus Christ and that by vertue of their ordinary power and authority derived from him as deputed by him Governours of his Church 2. Or at least that Episcopall Aristocracy hath a fairer pretention and may lay a juster title and claim to a divine justification then any of the other forms of Church Government can do all which yet do pretend thereunto viz. that of the Papall Monarchy that of the Presbyterian Democracy and that of the Independents by particular Congregations or gathered Churches How feebly do these however learned men argue in this radicall point which cuts the very sinews and heart strings of their Idol their motions are unequall like a hen when her head is struck off they skip and leap inordinately with If 's and Ana's B. Vsher at the Isle of Wight gave a short come off saying that the Government by Bishops was not so necessary as to break the peace for it yet he scruples not to break the peace of the universall Church for things which they all confess less necessary In fine all of you are very short in this fundamentall point I love Lypsius his Laconisme rather then Cicero'es Dilatations but this must be considered promateria substrata this matter needed all possible to picks to strengthen it if you had them but I see your pantry is slenderly provided forasmuch as concerns your title to Episcopacy which is your aim to defend I will afterward shew the weaknesse of your title Had you consulted the Archives of the University and retrived the businesse now in hand to Wickliffs time and Tenets you would have found another kind of solution registred of the Convocation house and I believe much more savouring of well-grounded Divinity as applied to Episcopacy in it selfe not to yours For the comparison you make of Episcopall Aristocracy and Papall Monarchy are termes which your young Sophisters call Oucategorimaticall they signifie nothing as to this purpose For the question is not which is best but whether the first can be without the last you must first secure us de re then de modo For example there is a controversie betwixt Aristotle and Galen whether the seat of the soul is in the head or heart it were little to their purpose to assert one of these to be better then the other as separate from the other in its own nature but the way to determine it is from the operations of the soule to see first if it will give life to one without the other and therefore Averroes saith that he saw a ram walk a little when the head was struck off Truly this proof will hold in you you have made a great bluster for a time since the Popes head was taken off by Harry the VIII but ye see now you could continue no more then Averro's ●●am because your life was from the Pope and upon this supposition the second question ceaseth Ye go on 2. But we are assured by the undoubted testimony of antient Records and later Histories that this forme of Government hath been continued with such an universall uninterrupted unquestioned succession in all the Churches of God and in all the Kingdomes that have beene called Christian throughout the whole world for fifteen hundred years together that there never was in all that time any considerable opposition made thereagainst That of Acrius was the greatest wherein yet there was little consideration beside these two things that it grew at the first but out of discontent and gained him at the last but the reputation of an Heretique From which antiquity and continuance we have just cause to fear that to endeavour the extirpation thereof c. Excuse me that I tell you here again you speak high words without sense as they are applied to your pretence of Episcopacy It is a great truth that Gods Church was universally govern'd by Bishops but this is not the question but whether your Schismaticall Bishops succeeded lawfully from that old Episcopacy that is whether the Church of God acknowledged Episcopacy lawfull which erected Altar against Altar which stood in division from all Bishops throughout the rest of the world and could not give letters Communicatories to Rome or to the other Patriarchs Your Proposition I deny not being in it self true as in the Councell of Constantinople where under Arcadius Origen's books were questioned the Fathers rejected not such books as wer● found Orthodox notwithstanding his others were full of err●●s and ●oth S. Hierome Ep. 75. and S. Aug. Ep. 9. followed the same method