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cause_n	body_n	call_v	great_a	1,387	5	2.5032	3	false

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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

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

and scorn And Sulpitius Severus his sharp Invective against Ithacius Idacius and the rest of the Bishops in their Synod was that in prosecuting the Priscillian Gnosticks they brought the matter to that pass that if Godly men did but fast and pray and read Scripture the Bishops made them suspected as Priscillianists even St. Martin himself Woe to them that turn the sacred Offices of Magistracy and Ministry against God that did ordain them to be used as in his name and in some representation of himself sacrilegiously blaspheming him as an Enemy to himself Shall the Throne of Iniquity have fellowship with God that frameth mischief by a Law to make sin common and allowed By this the Reader may see that there is a double History needful to the full understanding of this Book and of the nature and causes of Malignity that is 1. The History of Adam's fall and the great depravation of humane nature thence arising and the true meaning of the Enmity thence put between the Womans and the Serpents seed exemplified in the two first Brothers born into the world as also in Ishmael and Isaac Esau and Jacob and frequently mentioned by Christ and his Apostles 2. The History of the advantages that Malignity hath got in England since the Reformation and especially since the return of Charles the second This must contain the sad differences begun at Frankford in Q. Marys days the errours and extreams of both the differing Parties the by assing determinations of Q. Elizabeth the difference between the first Bishops that had been exiles and their Successors the Presbyterians provocations by over-opposing Episcopacy and the Bishops design to root them out and the making of the Canons to that end The rise of a new sort of Bishops begun in Laud Neile Howson Corbet and Buckeridge with Mountague and their growth under Buckingham against the old Churchmen The design of a Coalition with Rome and the French and English attempts thereto The interruption of this design by the first Long Parliament and the Wars The Scots forcing the Parliament that in their straits asked their help to take their Covenant The imposing that Covenant on the whole Ministry and making it a dividing Engine on pretence of Unity The Parliaments casting out with a multitude of flagitious Ministers some Doctors for being against them for the King contrary to the desires of Peace-makers The Presbyterians under Monk restoring King Charles the second The return and preferment of his Doctors and their revengeful resolutions Their design to get all Church-power and Preferment and Academick Rule into the hands of them that most hated Puritans or would endeavour their extirpation and would educate Youth in bitter prejudice and hatred of them The vulgar hatred of serious Godliness in Conformists and Nonconformists under the name of Puritans The power that a few returned Doctors had with the King and Chancellor in the dispose of Preferments and thereby to over-rule the Parliament and to procure the Acts of Uniformity Corporation Oaths Vestry and Militia Oaths and the Acts for Banishments Confinements Imprisonments Fining Ejecting Silencing and Ruining such whose Consciences pleaded Gods Law and Authority against any of their Oaths Impositions and silencing Prohibitions to preach the Gospel The great difference in the Wars I meddle not with the Cause between the Adherents and Souldiers of the K. Ch. I. and the Parliaments in point of Piety and Sobriety The Animosity and implacable heat by which the before Conquered and now Ruling Party proceeded towards the ruine of those that they took for Enemies to the Cause Civil or Ecclesiastick which they had owned The unhappiness of the then present Ministry that being young then had never medled with Wars that they must equally suffer as Enemies for fearing the Imposed Oaths Subscriptions Covenants and Practices The rejoycing of the common sort of the luxurious drunkards whoremongers and Infidels that they had got so many of the Religious into contempt and scorn and ruine The woful increase of Whoredom Luxury and Impiety and Sadducism hereupon The great numbers of Religious people who before hoped for Peace and a pious Prelacy that fell hereupon into an hatred of Prelacy and a great disesteem of the Conforming Ministry and so our Divisions are grown to a fixed factious Enmity and malice and worldly interest will hear no motions or petitions for Peace and yet madly plead all for Love and Peace while they implacably fight against them and accuse those as the Enemies of Peace who beg Peace of them and cannot obtain it This is the sum of the doleful History which this Book presupposeth But should I write it the rage would be increased The foregoing Narrative is as much as is fit for this brief Discourse which if you will you may style Acris correptio with Gildas or Planctus Ecclesiae with Alv. Pelag. Or the Groans of the Church with a late Conformable Divine It hath been cast by four years at first because it would not be endured and after in a vain hope that our Church Reformation would make such a complaint less necessary But now I perceive the Devil will be the Devil and Mankind will be born blind sensual and malignant till there be a new Heaven and Earth in which dwelleth Righteousness Come Lord Iesus August 24. 1689. The fatal Day of Silencing in England in 1662. Chap. I. A Lamentation for the case of the Deluded Malignant Militant World. § 1. THE depraved and miserable condition of Mankind hath long been the astonishing wonder of the sober and inquisitive part of the world Philosophers were puzzled with the difficult questions whence it first came and why it is no more remedied Christians are taught by the sacred Scriptures how to answer both by laying it on mans misusing of his free will supposing Gods permission of his tryal and temptations and on his resistance and rejection of remedying grace in the degree that it is vouchsaft or offered But still there are difficulties and our understandings are dark and hardly satisfied And whence ever it comes the case is doleful and we cannot but think of it with astonishment and lamentation When we saw an hundred thousand made dead corps by the London Plague 1665. it did not take off the terrour to know how it begun And when we saw the City on a dreadful flame which none could stop it cured not the general astonishment to conjecture how it was kindled or carried on No doubt but Hell it self proclaimeth that God is Holy Wise and Iust and Devils and Men are the cause of their own everlasting punishment But yet if we had a sight of it amazement and dread would overwhelm us And alas what a Map of Hell is the greatest part of Earth Hell is a place of Lying Malignant and murderous hurtful Spirits miserable by and for their wickedness And is not this in a lower degree a true description of most of the Earth § 2. Nineteen parts in Thirty