Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	apostle_n	bishop_n	succession_n	9,913	5	9.7671	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A85839	Analysis. The loosing of St. Peters bands; : setting forth the true sense and solution of the covenant in point of conscience so far as it relates to the government of the church by episcopacy. / By John Gauden ...	Gauden, John, 1605-1662.	1660 (1660)	Wing G340; ESTC R202274	13,622	28

Episcopacy 4. The sad and tragique consequences of it Fourthly It might seem odious to reflect upon this Covenant as to the sad effects and unblest consequents which like black shadows have attended its appearing and prevailing in England and in Scotland too What havocks followed in Church and State what improsperities disorders contempts confusions wars spoils and bloodshed upon all estates and degrees besides the contempt of Religion the neglect of Sacraments the expulsion of the Liturgie and the aviling no less than dividing of Ministers who instead of Okes and cedars of God formerly frequent in this Church I mean Divines of great gravity and excellent learning worthy of double honor everywhere shrunk and dwindled to Plebeian shrubs and popular parasities the pitty of the more pious and scorn of the more petulant sort of men 5. The baflings and annullings of it by counter engagements Fifthly Nor will I insist upon the bafflings of the Covenant before it was adult or many years old how it was soon made Nehustan and reduced to nothing by counter and cross engagements after it had served as one of the great rocks for the Kings shipwrack no less than the Churches and States nor did the Covenant ever thrive after it was watered with the Kings blood wherein many men had an hand who had been zealous Covenanters If it was so easily vacated in point of its express loyalty for the Kings Preservation I do not see how it should be so binding in the case of abjuring or extirpating of all Episcopacy though reformed and regulated as it ought to be 6. ●ts variating from if not crossing former lawful Oathes of King and people Sixthly Wherein it is very considerable how the Covenant if so interpreted must needs grate sore upon and pierce to the very quick those former lawful oathes which had prepossessed the souls and consciences of most of us in England not only of Subjects as those of Allegiance and Supremacy besides that of Ministerial canonical obedience to our lawful superiors in Church and State but even the conscience of the late King as he was bound by his Oath at his Coronation to preserve the rights and franchises of the Church which the King rather than break as some men urged him chose to die and lose all in this world as he declared to many at the Isle of Wight and to Mr. Marshal with others at Newcastle from which Oaths as we know no absolution so nor can there be any superfetation of such a contradictory Vow and covenant without apparent perjury which we presume the Covenant never intended nor included or if it did it is therein of no bond or validity as to any good mans conscience against previous lawful oaths which must be kept 7 It threatens dangerous Schism Seventhly Besides if the Covenant were designed as wilfully exclusive and totally abjuring of all Episcopal order and Government in this Church of England it must needs run us upon a great rock not only of Novelty but of Schism and dash us both in opinion and practice against the judgement and custom of the Catholick Church in all places and ages till of later years from the Apostles days with whom we ought to keep communion in all things of so antient tradition and universal observation nor may we so comply with a few reformed Churches of later daies whose want but not contempt of Bishops also the necessity of times and distress of affairs put upon them either by the policies of Princes or the impatience and prejudice of people or the covetousness and sacriledge of both may excuse while they approve and venerate Episcopacy in others yet with these we must not so comply as to put a reproach scandal scruple or affront upon all other Christian Churches at this day in all the world among whom not one ever was of old or is to this day in any Kingdom to be found without their Bishops as derived by the succession of all times from the Apostles nor is the abolishing of Episcopacy a small wall of partition newly set up to keep all Papists from due Reformation 8. The ●est sense and use of the Covenant Eighthly I might further add how much more equal and ingenuous loyal and religious were it for all sober-meaning Covenanters to reduce and confine their consciences as well as their Covenant from such an extravagant disloyal unlawfull enormious and Schismatical sense to which some do wrest and torture it in which it could neither be lawfully taken nor can be kept with honesty as against all Episcopacy and rather to retire to that sober sense wherein alone it might lawfully be taken if it had been imposed by due authority or were spontaneously assumed which sense can reach no further than those abusive excesses or defects of Church Government under Bishops so far as they were really such either by the inconvenience of the constitutions and customs in England or at least as they appeared such to these Covenanters as to the execution of that authority through the faults or infirmities of some Bishops and their instruments who possibly were not so worthy and good or not so wise and discreet as became Christian Bishops or Ecclesiastical Governors of Christs Church But it is a most irreligious as well as unreasonable Ametry transport for men to covenant against all the right use of things that are good because of the abuse incident to them by men or times that may be evil 9. It s pretended authority-from examples in the O. Test Ninethly It were easie to level to the ground all those fair but fallacious pretences drawn to fortifie the Covenant from Scripture examples wherein the Jews sometimes solemnly renewed their Covenant with God But it was that express Covenant which God himself had first made with them in Horeb and Mount Sina punctually prescribed by God to Moses and by Moses as their supream Governor or King imposed upon them this they sometime renewed after they had broken it by their apostacy to false and strange gods But blessed be God this was not the case of the Church or people of England nor was there any need of such covenanting any more then there was any Moses or Hezekiah or Josiah or any chief Governor commanding it Nor alas was this Covenant any divine dictate or Soveraign prescription but the petty composition of a few politick men Subjects not Princes and very mean Subjects too some of them either as Lawyers or Ministers a great part of whom I and others well knew to be no very great Clerks or Statesmen and fitter for a country Cure than to contrive and compose Solemn Leagues and Covenants to be imposed upon Churches and Kingdoms yea and upon their Kings too in whose Dominions were many thousands equals and Superiors to those Masters whose heads rather than their hearts and their State correspondencies more than their consciences brought forth this Covenant 10. No evangelical example of any such Covenant in any Christian Church of

old Lastly I might truly alledge against the novelty of the Covenant in the Church of England that there is no precept or patern for any such in all the New Testament nor in all succeeding ages of the Christian Church we never read nor heard of any covenanting Christians until the Ligue sainte in France except those who in one baptism were sprinkled with the blood of Christ and so entred into that covenant which God makes with us and we with him in that holy laver of regeneration this is the new and Evangelical covenant of all true Christians this we break by wilful and presumptuous sins this we renew by true repentance and by worthy participation of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper § How vastly different from this sacred covenant this late piece of policy more than piety is and how little the true covenant of a Christian binds him by his Baptism or Repentance or the Eucharist against all Episcopal Government I leave to all sober-minded Christians to judge since both the power of ordaining Ministers and by them to consecrate and celebrate both Sacraments was ever derived from and by Bishops of the Church as the cheif conservators cisterns and conduits of all Ecclesiastical Authority and Ministerial power from the very Apostles the first Bishops of the Church Acts 1. who had the same immediately from Christ who was and ever is the great Bishop and Pastor of our souls to feed and rule his Church not only by his Word and Spirit but by such Shepherds and Rulers as he hath in all ages set over his flock of which Bishops were ever esteemed the Angels Presidents or cheif Fathers whom utterly to destroy and violently to extirpate out of this or any Christian Church is not only to offer signal and intolerable injuries to the persons of such excellent Bishops as England lately had and still may have but further mightily to abate the honor of this whole Church and its Ministry by taking away all the rewards and encouragements of Learning and Religion yea and to scandalize all Churches by abolishing such a venerable order and universal custom in the Church as hath no origine but that of the Apostles and looks very like an immediate institution of Christ either preceptive and explicite or tacite and exemplary The just abatements of Covenanters heats and rigors § So that if this were the sense and intent of the Covenant-makers and takers to extirpate and abolish not the abuses but the very uses of all Episcopal Order and Government the great Boanergesses who thunder out so much terror against Covenant-breaking may do much more justice and execution if they turn the mouths of their canons against such Covenant-taking which is better broken than kept in any unlawful sense and best of all when not at all taken with any such intention which is as presumptuous as it was preposterous § These things being thus premised are sufficient as I conceive to abate the edge and rigor of the Covenant as to its antipathy against all Episcopacy and to ravel that cable or bond of religious obligation which some men do seem to twist and urge upon poor peoples consciences in that point when in good earnest there is neither Law of God or man requiring imposing or comprobating any such Covenant by any National or Ecclesiastical authority so that it appears at best to be but a matter of will worship of humane and private invention void of publique and plenary injunction esteemed by many but as a stratagem of State a flag of faction an engine framed on purpose to batter down Episcopacy and the whole Church of England in order to obtain the spoils of them not to punish and amend the evil that might be in Episcopal Government or in some Bishops and other Ministers but to seize all their estates and all the patrimony of the Church to the great enriching of some sacrilegious Protestants to the gratifying of some Presbyters envy and revenge but most of all to the great joy and triumph of the Romish party and Jesuitick designs which were thought by many wise men to have been if not the Sires yet the Sibs to that Covenant that they might help to spread it as a snare in Mizpeh thereby to catch and destroy the famousest Bishops the most renowned Clergie the best reformed and most flourishing Church in all the world § The best aspect of the Covenant considered in conscience But I will look upon this Covenant in the softest sense that can be made of it as a voluntary Vow or religious Bond which private men and some part only of the Nation spontaneously took upon themselves in order to declare their sense of duty to God the King the Church their Country and the Reformed Religion to make themselves more strictly sensible of the sacred and civil obligations respectively due to them that so they might be more ready to discharge them in their places and callings by taking such a Covenant freely not for fear of prison plunder sequestration and the like wracks of mens souls the terrors of which made many if not most of the takers of the Covenant to take it and yet I believe not one fourth part of the people of England now living ever did take it in any sort and very few but rigid Bigots and virulent spirits in any sense against primitive reformed and regular Episcopacy so reduced to an efficacious conjuction with Presbytery as the most Reverend Primate of Armagh proposed in his Reduction of late and so did the Lord Virulam long before in his considerations touching the Church of England offered to King James in the beginning of his reign § In this aspect of the Covenant Answers direct as a religious obligation either newly made or renewed upon the foul of any that willingly and freely took it and who thereby think themselves eternally obliged to fulfill the letter of it or that sense they had of it as to the matter of Church-government by Episcopacy or Prelacy which they fancied to have abjured and renounced no less than Popery my Answers and Solutions are these 1. What only can bind in it First They are not the bare words of the Covenant which as charms can bind any mans conscience to or against any thing but it is that force of Truth Reason Justice Religion and Duty to God or man our selves or others which morally and really obligeth men either by Gods general or particular precepts which are as iron or admantine bands on every mans soul to chuse good and do it to hate evil and eschew it long before any of these withes or cords of mans combining and tying are put upon them by themselves or others 2. Not the takers fancy or imposers Secondly Nor can any such Covenant bind any man in any consciencious bond meerly by the power of a mans own imagination or by such a prejudice and presumption as he lists