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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	civil_a	judge_n	law_n	2,710	5	5.1476	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96917	A brotherly and friendly censure of the errour of a dear friend and brother in Christian affection, in an answer to his four questions lately sent abroad in print to the view of the world. Published according to order.	Walker, George, 1581?-1651.	1645 (1645)	Wing W355; Thomason E265_4; ESTC R212426	12,460	13

justice Why then will you not take away all power also of judging from Judges and of pleading and expounding the Law from Lawyers and leave all civil government in the hands of the common people Take heed Sir you be not partiall and unequall to one side more then another Aretius hath given you a very good caveat not to strive so earnestly against this point of Christian discipline in those words of his by you cited impossibile praesentibus moribus colla submittere ejusmodi disciplinae which words tell us That the corrupt manners and profane lives of men desperately bent in these evil times to continue in their lewd and scandalous courses make it impossible to bring them to submit their stiff necks to this discipline of Excommunication and Suspension from the holy Communion which is Christs light yoke to tractable Christians If you proceed to take part with such refractory opposers which I hope your religious heart will not permit you to do and spend your strength in so unworthy a cause in hope by justifying these Questions to prevail against the votes of your best friends and most faithfull lover which you have in this world who truly honour you and wish all good to you I trust in God you shall fail of your hopes as Aretius did in his judgement where speaking of this discipline set up by some in the Churches of Germany he seems to deride it in those words by you rehearsed Cecidit in spongiam ridiculus mus For now this despised mouse is become an high mountain in all the best reformed Churches of Germany 4. As for your addresse to the Assembly whom you charge unjustly with falling into extreams and indeed calumniate them as if they seemed to affect a great lording power over the consciences and priviledges of their Christian brethren which of right belongs not unto them usurping that to themselves which they vehemently declaimed against and caused to be taken quite away from the Pope and Prelates To this I answer that you utterly mistake the matter For they abhorre all affectation and usurpation of lording power over the consciences of any Christians but have condemned it in the Pope and Prelates and their humble Petition to the Houses of Parliament is That none may usurp lordly power as the proud Prelates did over them and the people of their flock compelling them either against their consciences and with great offence and scandall to the godly to admit scandalous sinners to the Lords table and to profane the Sacrament of Christs body and blood by giving the seals thereof to them or else to decline the administration of that holy ordinance and their Ministerie chusing affliction rather then iniquity In plain truth this is the lordly tyrannicall power over their consciences and the iron yoke which you in your Question seek to lay on them After the Preface answered I proceed to your Questions The first of which is Quest 1. Whether those places of Scripture Matth. 18. 16 17. 1 Cor. 5. 5. 11. 1 Tim. 1. 20. Joh. 9. 22. 32. 12. 42. 16. 2. ●Thess 3. 14. 2 Joh. 10. 11. Joh. 3. 10. Numb. 12. 14. Deut. 23. 1. be properly meant of Excommunication which you take upon you to prove from Fathers School-men and others to be an exclusion from all ordinances or of Suspension from the Lords Supper onely The first you hold and we will grant it to you The latter you deny and I affirm that it is here also meant inclusively but not only The first place you seem to weaken and enervate by intimating that our Saviour speaks of private personall trespasse between man and man and not of publike scandalous sins against the Congregation and that the censure is private not publike because it is said Let him be not to the whole Church and all others but to Thee as an Heathen man and a Publican and you quote Luk. 17. 3 4. to prove that such private trespasses must be forgiven if seventy times seven which no man will deny if the trespasser repent as often as he offends But now suppose be stand out and persist in his sin and scorn private admonition yea when he is convented before the Church he will not hear nor obey publike admonition doe you not think that this is publike scandall against the Cong●egation and deserves Excommunication Surely if it were not so our Saviour would not have passed against it that dreadfull censure of Excommunication saying Let him be to Thee as an Heathen man and a Publican And if to the private person for his private wrong much more to all others in the Congregation for publike contumacy and scandalous obstinacy in his sin against the Church It is a dangerous doctrine to teach any private person to censure and judge a brother to be in the state of an Ethnike and as a Publican for a private trespasse if for his contumacie against the whole Church and obstinacie in that sin the sentence of Excommunication be not by the Church publikely given against him Whereas you make it a branch of your Question What warrant there is in Scripture for Ministers to suspend men from the Lords Supper only and not from the Congregation and all other publike ordinances with it I answer this very easily That because Suspension from the Sacrament is a step yea the next degree to Excommunication as reason and the practice of all the best Churches of Christ doe teach us the Scriptures which warrant Excommunication do also warrant it as a profitable and necessary means either to prevent that dreadfull sentence by bringing the sinner to repent and be ashamed or to make his impenitency more evident and notorious and to justifie the more the Excommunication of him But I marvell that you should thinke it so strange and unwarrantable a thing to suspend a man from a Sacrament who hath communion in all other ordinances of the Church seeing it was the practice of all the ancient Churches to exclude the Catechumeni from Baptisme till by catechising and hearing the Word publikely preached they were better instructed And how dare you dispute against that which is resolved in this present Parliament To wit That ignorant and some scandalous persons shall not be admitted to the Lords table Q● Your second Question is the same which you propounded last before as a branch of the first belike you are well pleased and affected with it and have some thing more to say in urging it I omit what I have answered before and here I doe first adde That Christian compassion and moderation in dealing with perverse men is commended and commanded in the Scripture 2 Tim. 2. 24 25 26. Jude 22 23. And this is a maine point of compassion and moderation in Ecclesiasticall rulers to try all inferiour meanes whereof suspension from the Lords Table is one before they proceed to the last and greatest censure of excommunication Though the Popes

encouragement of men to live in scandalous sins without feare of suspension from the Lords table and to intrude boldly thereunto which is a power of grand tyranny and oppression of the Consciences of Ministers may in any but an evil sense be called a matter of grand importance Thirdly I wish with all my heart though now too late that these questions as in the title is pretended had first been propounded to the venerable Assembly For I doubt not but they then should have received such a solid and satisfactory Answer as would have staid the publishing of them in print and prevented the infection of the mindes of the vulgar people of weak judgement and saved us the labour of composing Antidotes against them Fourthly I pity the Author in that he hath so erred from his intended scope of these questions for his handling and carriage of them is so farre from preventing Schismes and setling unity among us in those divided times that on the contrary we finde by experience to our griefe that they worke strongly in corrupt and perverse mindes to the breeding and increasing of Schismes to the disturbance of the desired reformation in a point of greatest concernment and to the raising up of divisions and dissensions not onely among others but also betwen the Parliament and Assembly which is a strange practice in a lover of peace and truth The Preface The businesse of Excommunication and Sequestration from the Sacrament c. The Answer to the Preface before the questions 1. The businesse appeares plainely to be of no difficulty unlesse men will be difficult and through their owne averseness hardly perswaded to grant and establish that which Gods Word expressely holdeth forth and commendeth and which we hope and humbly pray that the Honourable Houses of Parliament will be willing to doe without difficulty You your selfe doe quote divers texts of Scripture which establish Excommunication and you presuppose it in this your paper severall times where you say none is to be suspended from the Sacrament but such as are excommunicated and in your Excommunication for which you cite Tertullian Schoolemen and Canonists you are more rigorous then any Presbyterians whom you closely intimate to be indiscreet passionate oversevere and revengefull which is a point of unchristian jealousy and uncharitable surmise For they dare not by excommunication exclude obstinate offenders from all ordinances but suffer them to heare the Word though not in communion as members of the Church but as infidels may doe or else what hope can we have of an illiterate person excommunicated that he will ever repent and be restored As for suspension from the Sacrament it is a thing more easy in it selfe and may be done orderly with lesse labour then excommunication and with great ease and facility and more frequently and with good successe is practised in all the best reformed Churches which also our late abolished liturgy did allow largely to all Pastors and Church-wardens and it had been more easy to them that were godly and also more usuall in our Congregations if the proud Prelates fathers of prophanenesse had not taken that power wholly to themselves Which intolerable usurpation of theirs we hope is with themselves quite taken away but not the power from the Church nor the lawfull exercise of it according to the rules of Christ Secondly Whereas you make no medium between prophanation and scandall on the one side and Arbitrary tyrannicall papall domineering over the Consciences and spirituall Priviledges of Christians on the other herein passion and partiality seem to blinde you For there is a plain open way between the two extremes that is the lawfull power which Christ hath given to Ecclesiasticall rulers Pastors and Elders in his Church which all godly Ministers and all orthodox members of the Assembly stand plead and petition for that it may be backed and confirmed to them by civill sanction even power to prove and try who are fit and who are unworthy to come to the Lords Table and by admitting the one and puting back the other after strict triall and due proofe and examination prophanation and scandall may easily be prevented and Arbitrary tyranicall papall domineering over the consciences of Pastors and godly Christian people shall have no place in Gods Church Scandalous proud impenitent sinners shall not come desperately to out-face Christ and his Ministers at his own table nor have an action against Ministers who out of tender conscience and fear of God refuse to reach to them judgement and damnation and so to partake with them in the guilt of Christs body and blood The Congregation of the godly shall not be scandalized nor tyrannically forced either to countenance and harden the impenitent in their open wickednes by communicating with them or to separate from our Congregations and abhor the ordinance of the Lord as men did in old Eli's daies when his wicked sons made them to abhor the offering of the Lord 1 Sam. 2. 17. But on the contrary let scandalous obstinate sinners have liberty to intrude and come boldly to the Lords table and the Pastors and Elders have no power to keep back from them the holy signes and scals which belong not to them this is more then arbitrary tyrannicall papall domineering over the consciences of Pastors Elders and godly people 3. But here me thinks you speak very untowardly to the great offence of all godly people against all Christs Ministers and ecclesiasticall rulers for in these words If it fall into indiscreet over-severe ambitious passionate or revengefull hands you either suppose that generally the hands of Ministers and Elders of Christs Church are such and therefore they ought not to be trusted with power of Suspension and Excommunication which if you do your heart is not f●ee from malignity against their holy calling and the Lord Christ who hath trusted them will finde you out Or else your meaning is that as in the daies of the Papacy and Prelacy so now it may again under Presbyteriall Church-government happen that some of the rulers Ecclesiasticall may act with such hands What then Do you infer thence that all of that high calling are to be abridged of that power A desperate inference striking at the prerogative and power of Parliaments and all civil Judges and Courts of Justice For upon the same grounds viz. because under the Papacy Parliaments made Laws for suppressing true religion and establishing Idolatry and superstition you may go about to abridge them And under the late domineering Prelacy and tyranny Judges wrested laws to take away the Subjects birth-right and liberty and to maintain oppression and they made you know whose will and lust law And Lawyers soothed them and you know when not one in all the bunch could be found nor hired to plead in the just cause of an innocent And even then many Presbyters and Ecclesiasticall persons stood out couragiously and feared no persecutions bonds or losses in the cause both of religion and