Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	bishop_n	ordination_n	presbyter_n	9,874	5	10.5221	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34016	A letter with animadversions upon the animadverter on the Bishop of Worcesters letter by J.C. ...	Collop, John.	1661 (1661)	Wing C5393; ESTC R21084	8,081	16

the Kings power is that the Bishops are good Subjects and good Christians or that they have a preheminence in power that there may not be as many Schisms as Priests Sure the Kings interest stands not with the Devils and a Tyrants to divide by Sects least all may unite against Him but to unite all that they may agree in the service of God and of him who is Gods Vicegerent Thirdly Bishops are little useful to support the Regal Dignity being the greatest enemies to Soveraignty intermedling in Civil affairs and mangling the Church Authority in Church matters leaving the King nothing of Supremacy Had not this trifler been lost as much to good Books as Brains he might have learned of the most eminent B. Saunderson That derived power is so far from destroying the original from whence it is derived as it rather confirmeth and establisheth it The farther it is extended so it be regular the more it serveth to illustrate the honor of the original since the efficient cause is best known by the greatness of the effect For Propter quod unumquodque est tale illud ipsum est magis tale And did not the valor of this Champion proceed only from his ignorance when Protestant Bishops only profess maintain and submit to Regal Supremacy he could not thus whiffle to no greater purpose then the calling of his Brains into question Page 3. The Bishop cannot be Pastor of all the Congregations in his Diocess For since a Bishop cannot otherwise discharge his duty then by Substitutes the Bishop of Rome may as well oversee a Million of Churches as the Bishop of Worcester Five hundred Most Logical and profound A Steward who oversees laborers may with a like faculty employ encourage and take account of five thousand as five He forbears to urge the contrary practise of Paul and Peter hopes the Bishop not angry he calls them not Saints who need no honor from the Popes Calendar The Saintship sure belongs to Peters not St. Peter He need not believe the Scripture since the Pope calls it the Word of God or there was a Saviour he had Apostles and those were Bishops since it comes but from tradition and that from the Pope and who knows how far the Bishop of Rome hath put in his foot into the Pot Page 4. Here this Ridiculum caput tortures in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Overseers or Bishops 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 overseeing or acting like Bishops not like the Bishop of Worcester Lording over Gods heritage but as patterns to the flock Strange Overseers who have no power over deceitful workers He takes no notice of St. Pauls course like the Bishops which he took with Alexander the Copersmith with Demas Philelus and Hymeneus does only tanquam Canis ad Nilum ●ap and away But sure they need not fear Crocodiles who are what we call Crocodiles the worst of Dissemblers The next trouble is Who come in by the wrong door are called Thieves and Robbers He who would be angry with Christ Ignatius would scarce please with a who doth any thing without the Bishops Licence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 serves the Devil nor St. Cyprian with his Unum scire debes siquis cum Episcopo non sit in Ecclesiâ non esse That he who is not with the Bishop is not in the Church The Church maintaining the Ordinations of Presbyters for meer nullities in themselves cannot own their Ordinations without renouncing the Catholick Church Omnis Ecclesia appellata est virgo as St. Austin He who commits a rape by entring by force may be intituled to punishment not matrimony though this fumivendulus A. would have Presbyterian Ordination as little to be impeached as marriage Oh but Christ silenced the Scribes and Pharisees with Arguments only which the Bishop can never do In this only the Mythologist is to be believed We have an honest Fathers word for it St. Austine with a quid promobis exercitatissime Scripturarum si quid defenderis negetur si quid negaveris defendetur Tit contra nihil promoves nisi vocem perdis in declamatione nisi bilem suscitas de blasphematicis All the learning of this most Reverend Prelate gains nothing beside the anger of blasphemous Schismaticks That the Bishops says Presbyterians preach sedition and treason is most false and directly contrary to their declared principles It would be worth the inquiry whether this Declaration was ever in England or Scotland or Calvin made it at the Expulsion of the lawful Prince the Bishop of Geneva The Pharisees taught blasphemy yet our Saviour like the Bishop did not go about to prohibit them by force This Sciamachist will forget both our Saviours power and the Kings and that he called Bishops the Kings subordinate Ministers and rarely infers Sedition Treason and Blasphemy must be all preached and tolerated or else the Bishops usurpe a power Christ never gave and at the last day as our Grand Polemick Christ will not thank them for the exercise of it He seems much concerned in the Bishops distinction about the Act of Indempnity and Act of Oblivion that the King by it only pardoned the corporal punishment but the Church had not nor ought not to forgive the scandal till honorable amends were made her by Confession and Recantation It is evident as the incomparable Thorndike observes that the whole Church was governed by Bishops and that not against Gods Law for then there could have remained no Church and therefore the pretence of Governing the Church by Presbyters is a breach of unitie unless a part may give law to the whole which who do so are by so doing Schismaticks then how should that communion be counted a Church which receive Schismaticks as Schismaticks viz. without renouncing positions destructive to faith obligations for their future not infringing the unity of the Church St. Austine to the Donatists objections that the Church received their Apostates without rebaptizing them could have had no answer had he not had this That the Church received them not as Donatists but converted from Donatists and not refusing to make a profession I wish Mr. B. ejusdem farinae sodales these Donatists for so they were pleased to call themselves Gifted persons would make such professions or else what assurance can be given a Church that when they preach they open not their mouths only to widen our differences Page 8. As for the Chain of Consequences which the Bishop links and ties together as from diversitie in external Rites ariseth dislike from dislike enmity from enmity opposition then Schism in the Church and Sedition in the State the Church cannot be safe without unitie nor unitie without uniformity nor uniformity without a rigorus imposition is a Rope of sand and the parts of the Chain as little hang together as Sampsons Foxes before they were tyed together by the tayls which course the Bishop doth imitate not forgetting to put the Firebrand into the comparison Mentiris Bellarmine Learnedly and Politickly

confuted Sure beloved in Truth and in good Sooth-law you and your fellow Schismaticks are the Rope of Sand twisted into an association you and your Partners are the Sampsons Foxes who divided by the heads without the Bishops chain would be tyed by the tail with Firebrands to the combustion of Church and State Page 9. Nothing is more clear then there hath bin nay ought to be diversitie in External Forms without any dislike at all as to the person of another The greatest Doctors may dissent as St. Austine 〈◊〉 fidei compage and concord may be preserved which is the effect of charitie since it is unio voluntatum non opinionum and as our Incomparable Bishop Land It could be wished all would be what the Apostle exhorts of one mind but it is not to be hoped till the Church is triumphant over humane frailties which here hang thick and close about her the want of unitie even where Relion is pretended proceeds rather from men and humors then things and errors to be found in them In unitate fidei diversa sit consuetudo as St. Gregorie is true in National Churches For as a Father the Multitude and I may say diversitie of Ceremonies is so far from infringing as they commend the unity of the Church while all agree in one Faith The eating of Meats offered to Idols totally restrained the Churches of Syria and Cilicia seems permitted to the Church of Corinth if no body challenged it what was urged upon the Corinthians was not imposed upon the Galatians to shew every one is obliged to observe the Rites of his own Church lest they come under the Anathema of contentious and troublesome Neither Kingdom nor Church can stand which is divided in it self while there is no King in Israel every one doth what is good in his own eyes when there is no Bishop there may be as many Schisms as Priests hence as St. Hierom in Schismatis remedium factum est quod unus electus qui caeteris praeponeretur ne unusquisque ad se trahens ecclesiae tunicam rumperet Page 10. Kneeling at the Sacrament is manifestly most Superstitious for First it varies most from the first pattern Secondly it hath been monstrously abused by Papists to Idolatry Sure this Babe in understanding cannot go above his first rudiments or childes gibberish Why doth he not argue for communion with the Leveller baptizing in Rivers with the Anabaptists making life a peniless pererration with the Franciscan plead for leaning one upon the other at the Lords Supper and lying down at the Table and taking of it after Supper For these were the primitive patterns As Chrysostome Theodoret Isychius Eucherius and other primitive Fathers by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. calling it a Transfiguration Conversion Mutation Translation Transelementation though not a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if they have lent some occasion of error to the Papists yet may instruct us of the primitive reverence at the taking could we neither believe a St. Ambrose nor a St. Austine that we must have Sursum corda nemo digne manducat nisi prius adoraverit But ah the Papists abuse it to Idolatry And oh the Presbyterian abuses the Scripture and makes it what the Papist calls a Nose of Wax therefore they must not be allowed to read the Scriptures This Illogical fellow and Mr. B. must make no more Arguments because some of them have ill consequences must never warm his fingers because some have been burnt with fire or wash his foul mouth because some have been choaked with water We are not to offend weak ones but it is observable none are so ready to take offence as those who are most proclive to give it imperious petulant and envious Sciolists and to fear to offend them is not to have respect to the weak in faith but strong in passions Page 11. Truly Sir I am a little angry Lord help it poor thing art angry Choler spoyls the memory as thou sayest and thou hast but a weak one Et mendacem memorem esse oportet Thou art a lover of the King his Government and the order of Bishops and could you not scruple to pray and pray heartily too Lord deliver us from such Bishops and let all the people say Amen Lord send us more such Bishops and let all the people say Amen that they be no longer worried by Wolves in Sheeps-cloathing For though Sir Politick-would-be will tell him in his ears Page 9. Our Wars did not arise from the separation of conscientious Dissenters but from the violence and fury of inconscionable imposers though cock brained Sciolists know nothing wisemen cannot be ignorant that the want of such Bishops lent occasion to our misery and he speaks truth against his will only it was not conscientious Dissenters they could not turn disloyal but furious and violent imposers on the people by their holy art of jugling while Anti-clergy Lecturers were tolerated to the eternal disgrace of Religion to spit fire like Juglers and preaching which brought in Religion seemed designed to carry it out of the World The hour of temptation was spent in invectives against Church and State whimsies about Antichrist the accomplishing Brightmans Dreams and stuff like these fit only to be studied in Bedlam and practised at Billingsgate I conclude with the ingenious Osborne that story which prosecuted might expunge all villany legible in History Page 11. But the A. too will leave his prosecution to some more able pen in Divinity and policy c. The Bishops more able pen in Divinity and Policy may convince the world this is no time to sow tares and we hope the Age is wiser then to be gull'd by every gut-inspir'd-Ideot who can suppose he vents oracles out of his Belly Next he runs into a furthermore Sermon-maker-like he crives leave to give a taste of deep wisdom or rather his own shallow wit in three particulars 1. In that he declaims so fierce as he would break his girdle against all those who force all Communicants to come unto them and be particularly examined this is a man of straw set up to get him an heat this cold weather 2. He thinks it politickly done to declaim against the Covenant 3. He cannot commend his wisdom enough for resolving angrily to write no more 1. Though the girdle is whose and contains more solid wisdom and sober piety then a Jewish Sanhedrim or whole Assembly of addle brain'd-smectymnuans we cannot doubt the Animadverters brain so crackt as it can retain neither truth wit nor honesty 2. It was zeal not policy made Eliah destroy the Idol of Baals Priests as this good Bishop the Idol of Bawling Priests a Covenant 3. The Scribler might have been more commended for his wisdom had he not writ then thus to have writ without wisdom But because the Bishop will write no more he scribbles thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If an Ass kicks or a Dog barks a wise man neirther kicks the one nor barks at the other if we believe Socrates To be as brief in his Character as he hath been with the most Reverend and Learned Bishop he is what while he would nibble at wit he calls a man of straw set up to be threshed yet not worth the threshing since chaff and dust without a grain of wit is to be gained only by this stramineous Animadverter There is no use to be made of his straw above what cut-purses do to tickle some idle ears to gain the opportunity of picking their pockets as perhaps he hath done to such a person of honour and quality as in this last weeks triumph he might have rid on horseback with his face reversed before the sledges stuffed with such furniture as at first cast dirt on the Fathers of the Church and in their ruine made way for the Murder of the Father of the Countrey our Churches Martyr Charles the first He raves talks of heat and Dog-days and sure the days are present when every over-heated brain or pidler in knowledge Cur-like barks at Coelestial Bodies because they cannot attain either their height or lustre A Dog who bites at stones would be too sober a character for him who hath all the symptoms of a mad Dog raves fomes with malice snatches at every thing meets him and runs on without fear or wit to destruction The shaking of a whip is the fittest weapon for such a Champion for other weapons being useless to the conquest of slaves this cannot be successless against him who is a slave to slaves in vassalage to the worst of passions The Bishop if he hath a sting it is Bee-like for the gathering of honey into the hive of the Church but such Insects as this who are onely quickned out of the putrifaction of an intemperate climate run out into legs for want of blood translate the best things into poyson with the spider or buzze and make a noyse with the fly and taint every thing with their evil breaths If this be the Presbyterian Goliath there is no danger of him for we may be assured he hath got a stone in his noddle or else he could have never ventured with a pepper-box on so eminent a person upon the empty fiction of a Mouses killing an Elephant But lest I should dwell upon nothing or a subject that is worth nothing farewell Onely remember me to the Animadverter who may be better cured by Physick then Divinity What the Letter is defective in the Profession shall supply of him Who is ingaged to serve you and him for your sake J. C. FINIS