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	rome_n	succession_n	9,910	5	9.8153	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66403	A manual, or, Three small and plain treatises viz. 1. Of prayer, or active, 2. Of principles, or positive, 3. Resolutions, or oppositive [brace] divinity / translated and collected out of the ancient writers, for the private use of a most noble lady, to preserve her from the danger of popery, by the Most Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Arch-Bishop of York.	Williams, John, 1582-1650.	1672 (1672)	Wing W2711; ESTC R38653	30,581	162

Act of Reformation begining in sundry estates by reason partly of their divers shapes and forms of governments and partly of a great disadvantage thatone part of Christendom knew not what another did nor consulted with their fellows that so they might with unanimity proceed in the same did necessarily produce a seeming difference in the outward forms of particular Churches But loe the goodness and providence of Almighty God Although these Churches have several faces yet have they all but one heart there being no essential fundamental or material difference amongst any of us of the reformed Religion as you may easily find by reading the confessions of our several Churches And therefore for these odious Nick-names of Lutheran Calvinist Huguenot Zuinglian and the like be more sparing of them until you have reconcil'd your own Church-men as your Minorits and Dominicans about the conception of the Blessed Virgin your Jesuits and Dominicans about predestination and those dependant questions Your Sorbonists and Jesuits about the bounding and meeting out the Regal and Papal Authority and you shall find more doctrinal oppositions in your own than you can imagin ●n our Churches But keep you at home in your ●ative Country and look without envy or partia●ity upon this flourishing Church of England and ●ame me one Kingdom in all Europe that hath continued ●ery neer this hundred years in that constancy and ●mmutability of Doctrin or Discipline We are ordered with that consecration that Archbishop Cranmer was we renounce the Pope by that abjuration that Archbishop Cranmer did we subscribe to those Articles of Religion which Arch Bishop Cranmer in the Reformation pitch'd upon before we can be admitted to any Ecclesiastical function Some wild coults we have that start and boggle at the first if they see but their own shadows but by the discipline of the Church they are curb'd and fetch'd about again and taught in a little while to come on gently to this uniformity and subscription So that malice it self cannot challenge the Church of England this most glorious portion of that Catholick Church of any fractions or divisions in points of Doctrin Pap. Nay but I have often heard that you have no Bishops or Priests at all in your Church But that in the beginning of Q. Elizabeths reign Lay-men in the Parliament did appoint you Bishops who consecrated one another in a Tavern at the Nags-head in Cheapside and that your Priests were ordered only by these Parliamentary Prelates Prot. This tale of the Nags-head Harding Sanders and Stapleton have forged out of their own Nags-heads without any grounds or likelihood at all And yet as easily as they came by it put a Minister of our Church to an infinite deal of learned pains Who by His Majesties special commandment did search out the ancient Records of the Arch-bishop of Canterbury agnized since by many Priests and Jesuits in the Clink and other prisons and out of them hath composed a learned Book shewing the successive Consecrations of all the Bishops of England from that first convocation that banish'd the Pope about the year 1536 so as any Minister looking out that Bishop who gave him Orders may presently ascend in a right line of Bishops to those Prelates that lived in the Reign of Henry the eighth before the reformation And therefore if your own Priests be lawful you may not quarrel with ours differing only from yours in their renouncing of your impieties and superstitions Pap. This Record you speak of is somewhat to the purpose unless the heresie of those first Bishops did disable them for granting of lawful Consecrations and Orders Prot. Heretick indeed is a common word for us in the mouth of every Woman that is but a little Romaniz'd But is it not strange how he should be an Heretique that saies the Creed and the Lords Prayer in that literal and explicate sense and meaning that all the Fathers of the Church for the first 500 years understood the same Yet this is nothing to the point in hand For first if the Bishops in Queen Maries time were lawful notwithstanding their being consecrated by Cranmer and other tainted Bishops as you term them why may not the Bishops in Queen Elizabeth and King James his time expect the same priviledge And secondly your own Writers confess that Heresie which we suppose but not yield these Prelates fallen unto cannot rase out from that Character of a Bishop this inseparable power of consecrating and ordering Pap. Yet there remains an objection against your Church that it cannot possibly be a true Church because it is severed from the true visible head thereof the Pope of Rome Prot. This is a stale objection and soon answered The Church of Asia severed from Pope Victor in the year 200. Athanasius and his fellows from Faelix and Tiberius in the year 375. Cyprian and his Brethren yea and three National Councils from Pope Stephen in the year 250. the Bishops of Carthage Schismatized from all Popes of Rome for an hundred years together about the year 409. lastly the Greek Church cut off from the Roman for 300. years are sufficient testimonies there may be a true Church of God though severed and divided from the Pope of Rome And here in this Kingdom it was no Protestant but Popish Bishops that concluded in a National Synode our King might if he pleased create a Pope of his own in his own Kingdoms and Dominions and yet remain a member of the Catholick Church Pap. Well the best is you have been so tedious in your answers that I have I thank God forgotten all that you have said for your reformed Church Prot. But I will help that quickly by summing up of all into these twelve Positions 1. We have a Church as having Doctrine Salvation Discipline 2. It is a portion of the Catholick Church 3. It hath a Spiritual union of Doctrin with the untainted members of the Church of Rome 4. And yet hath severed her self from the Church of Rome by crying against and dissenting from her Superstitions 5. Which some of us hold no true Church of Gods in regard of the prevailing Faction 6. Although we judge charitably of the Salvation of some in that Church 7. Who notwithstanding are saved not as Papists but as Christians 8. And in one lump or Communion with this Church lived ours before the Reformation 9. Which then for want of a General did sever her self by a National Council from the same 10. Nor was it any by-respect of the Kings but God and the cry of that age that caused this reformation 11. Nor do our reformed Churches dissent amongst themselves in Doctrine but in outward policy and discipline only 12. Our Bishops and Priests come by a lineal Succession from Henry the eights time nor can a supposal of Heresie cut off this discent CHAP. II. Of the Scriptures Papist DOe you then hold this Church of yours