Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	catholic_n	church_n	society_n	1,852	5	9.5659	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36263	A vindication of the deprived Bishops, asserting their spiritual rights against a lay-deprivation, against the charge of schism, as managed by the late editors of an anonymous Baroccian ms in two parts ... to which is subjoined the latter end of the said ms. omitted by the editors, making against them and the cause espoused by them, in Greek and English.	Dodwell, Henry, 1641-1711.	1692 (1692)	Wing D1827; ESTC R10150	124,503	104

Judgment and Opinions of the Persons concerned in these Instances And yet if this Point were gained it would not suffice for our Adversaries purpose For it is farther considerable sixthly That the Instances here collected rise no higher than the Fourth Century and extend no farther than the Greek Church and therefore cannot pretend to argue the Sense of the Catholick Church nor of those Ages which are most to be regarded not onely for their Antiquity but their Integrity also Suppose therefore we should so far gratifie our Adversaries as to give them leave to believe that all was proved that is so much as offered at in this Collection and proved as solidly and as pertinently to their Cause as themselves can either pretend or wish This would certainly be a great Favour indeed the uttermost they can hope for with regard to this Collection yet still they must not pretend by this Collection to one single Instance that may signifie the sense of the Western Church or consequently of the Catholick Church in any one Age Still we are left a liberty for any thing is said here to challenge the Doctrine of the Church as signified by her behaviour at the first and ancientest Instances of Schism as making for us And this we can do with greater Certainty and Evidence than our Adversaries can pretend to in their more Modern Cases 16. We can say that even in the Age of St. Cyprian which is the ancientest we know of that an Antibishop was set up against a Bishop in the same See it is 1st very notorious that they then owned no such Power of the secular Magistrate to deprive Bishops of their purely spiritual Power and that the Church as a Society distinct from the State subsisted on their not owning it even as to a Deprivation of their particular Districts and Jurisdictions It is notorious and as notorious as any one Tradirion of the Catholick Church in those Ages not excepting that of the Canon of the New Testament it self that Christians then and not only then but in all the former Persecutions that had been from the times of the Apostles to that very Age did own themselves bound to adhere to their Bishops when it was notorious withal that those Bishops were set up and maintained against the Consent of the Civil Magistrate It is as notorious also that this adherence of theirs was not only Matter of Fact which is all our Adversaries pretend here but a Duty owned by them as obliging in Conscience and as the result of Principles This appears not only by the unquestionable Sincerity of the Christians of those Ages who were generously influenced by no Considerations but those of Conscience not only by their suffering those severe Penances imposed on them in order to their recovering the Bishop's Communion even when the Magistrate was against him which no other Considerations could recommend but only those of Conscience but from the Principles themselves insisted on in the Reasonings of St. Cyprian Such were these That all hopes of pardon of Sin of the Holy Ghost of Eternal Life on performance of Duty were confined to the visible Communion of the Church that their visible Communion with the Church could not appear but by their visible Communion with the Bishop as the Head of that Church and the Principle of its Vnity that who that Bishop was to whom any particular Person owed his Duty was not then any otherwise distinguishable but by the visible Districts in which themselves lived and to which he was therefore supposed to have a Title whether the Magistrate would or no. It is also as notorious that these Reasonings were not then the sense of private Persons but the received sense of Christians in general and indeed Fundamental to that Catholick Communion which was then maintained where-ever there were Christians Not only every particular Christian of a Diocess did thus assure himself of his Right to Ecclesiastical Privileges by his Communion with the Bishop of that particular District but he was intitled also to Communion with all the other Bishops of the World and consequently with the Catholick Church in general by the communicatory Letters of the Bishop of his own particular District For it was by the mutual Obligation all Bishops of the World had to ratifie the Acts of particular Districts that he who was admitted a Member of one Church was intitled to the Communion of all and that he who was excluded from one was excluded from others also because no other Bishop could justifie his reception of a Christian of another Jurisdiction to his own Communion if he had not the communicatory Letters of his own Bishop Thus it appears that the Obligation even of particular Districts without consent of the Magistrate was then Catholick Doctrine Whence it plainly follows that this Lay-deprivation which is all that can be pretended in the case of our present Bishops is in the Principles of the Catholick Church of St. Cyprian's Age a perfect Nullity and consequently that in regard to Conscience at least our present Bishops are still Bishops and Bishops of those particular Districts as much as ever and the Obligations of the Clergy and Laity in those Districts as obliging to them now as ever 17. This therefore being so that our present Bishops are by the Principles of St. Cyprian's Age as obliging Bishops in Conscience to the Clergy and Laity of their respective Jurisdictions it will thence be as notorious 2dly that the Antibishops of those same Jurisdictions are by the same Principles to be taken for no Bishops at all It is plain that Novatian was disowned as soon as ever it appeared that Cornelius was canonically settled in Fabian's Chair before him and disowned universally so universally that whoever did not disown him was for that very reason disowned himself This is as clear as any particular mentioned in our Adversaries Collection But we do not satisfie our selves with that It is also further as notorious that he was disowned by Principles obliging them in Conscience to disown him and those again not private Opinions but Principles also Fundamental to the Correspondence then maintained in the whole Catholick Church as the other were that we mentioned under the former Head It was then a Principle that Secundus was Nullus which will as much invalidate the Consecrations of the present Antibishops as it did that of Novatian This is a Principle so universally acknowledged wherever there can be but one that it needs no Authorities to recommend it No Man can convey the same thing twice and therefore if there be two Bonds for the same thing to several Persons the 2 d can never be thought obliging but by supposing the Invalidity of the 1 st So also in all Monarchichal Districts none can suppose an Antimonarch's Title good till he has shewn that the first Monarch's Title is not so Thus this Principle needed no Authority and yet it had all the Authority of the whole

deprived and consequently that the Sees are vacant in Conscience If it should prove otherwise the Clergy and Laity of those some jurisdictions will still be obliged in Conscience as much as ever to adhere to their Canonical Bishops till they be Canonically deprived and to disown such Intruders as are put over them not only without any Canonical Procedure but without any Authority also that can obl●ge in Conscience The only Principle therefore on which they can pretend that their Rival Bishops have lost their Right as to Conscience must be the Power that even the Lay-Magistrate has to deprive Bishops even with regard to Conscience If therefore they will defend their Schism by Principles it will be necessary that they defend this Principle also without which it is not possible that it should ever be defended They have no Ecclesiastical Judicatory Just or Unjust that they can so much as pretend in this Case And the defending this is that which will increase their Guilt and will add to their Charge of Schism the aggravation of Heresie also For in order to the asserting such a Right as this to the Secular Magistrate it will be necessary to assert that the Authority of the Church even as to Spirituals is in Conscience the Right of the Civil Magistrate If it should not be so then the Subjects of the respective Dioceses may still be at liberty in Conscience to adhere to their deprived Bishops And if they may they must because then all their former Obligations in Conscience will still hold as obliging as ever For it is impossible that those antece●ent Obligations in Conscience to adhere to their spiritual Superiors can be dis-annulled or diminished by a Power that can pretend no Right in such Matters with regard to Conscience But if we grant this Power to the Magistrate this will perfectly overthrow the Church as a Society distinct from the State and perfectly disable it to subsist as a Society in a time of Persecution For when the Magistrate persecutes it it cannot then subsist as a Society without a Government and a Government obliging in Conscience and not derived from the persecuting Magistrate But if the Right of that spiritual Government be in Conscience the Magistrate's Right it must be an invading the Magistrate's Right to pretend to it when he expresly forbids it And if so how can spiritual Governors in such a Case pretend to it How can they pretend to a Right that is none of their own consistently with Conscience How can their pretending to it with ill Consciences oblige their Subjects to adhere to them on account of Conscience Nay how can it even excuse them in Conscience for not adhering rather to him whose Right it is supposed to be and that even in Conscience No Necessity whatsoever can excuse a Sin much less lay an Obligation in Conscience on Subjects to abett it least of all lay an Obligation on God to ratifie such Acts of Authority as must be supposed no better than Vsurpations And yet all Acts of Ecclesiastical Authority in a time of Persecution can signifie nothing if they be not such as may oblige in Conscience and such as God as well as Men is obliged to ratifie Thus it had been Sin in the Romans to set up Cornelius as plainly they did not only without the Consent but against the Will of Decius It had been Sin in him and not in him only but in all the Bishops of his Age to pretend to any Districts in the Roman Empire It had been Sin in them to exercise Authority in Districts not belonging to them Thus the Church had been perfectly dissolved as a Society at least within the Roman Empire unless we can suppose a Notion of a Society without Governours without Districts without any lawful Exercises of Authority And yet the Bishops of those Ages never thought themselves obliged in Conscience to go out of the Roman Empire to retrieve the Power which is pretended to belong to them as Bishops of the Catholick Church And very probably it had signified nothing to have done so They could have gone into no civilized inhabited Countreys but they must have expected Magistrates who could pretend to the same Right as well as De●ius and who were as much disposed as he to use their Right to the prejudice of the Christian Religion What therefore would our Adversaries have advised the Christians of those Ages to have preserved themselves in a Society Would they have had them retired into unoccupied wildernesses But how could they make Societies there where there were no numbers of Subjects requisite to make a Society Plainly therefore the Catholick Church had then been dissolved as Societies if these New Principles had been maintained in those earlier Ages And these same Principles do still put it as evidently in the Power of the Civil Magistrate to dissolve the Church as a Society within his own Dominions For how can a Church continue a Society where Bishops are in Conscience deprived of their spiritual Authority and where Subjects are also absolved from their Obligations in Conscience to obey them And this is also a dissolving the Catholick Church as to such as live in such Dominions and as to any Benefits they can derive from the Catholick Church also For Subjects of particular Districts are no otherwise received into the Catholick Church than as they derive a Right to Communion with all Churches in the World by their being admitted Members of the Churches of their particular Districts And they are also deprived of their Right of Catholick Communion when they are Excommunicated by the lawful Authority of their particular Districts I cannot therefore see how our Adversaries can excuse themselves herein from erring Fundamentally if the Church's being a Society be admitted for a Fundamental 29. If there be degrees of Fundamentals I should think the Fundamentals concerning the Church as a Society to be of the greatest consequence and therefore Fundamental in the Highest degree The Church is indeed obliged to keep the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are the Expressions by which our Adversaries thems●lves I believe conceive the Articles themselves call Fundamental to be signified But she is obliged to keep them as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a Trust committed to her How so by avoiding Disputings by stopping the mouths of Hereticks by rebuking them with all Authority b● rejecting and avoiding not their Doctrines only but their Persons also when they prove incorrigible Now these things plainly suppose Governors invest●d with spiritual Authority and a Communion from whence incurable Hereticks are to be rejected So that in order to the keeping these o●her Fundamentals the Church as a Society is supposed antecedently as a Condition that alon● can qualifie her for having such a Trust committed to h●r This No●ion therefore as antecedent must be Fundamental to those other Fundamentals and therefore Fundamental in a higher sense than those things