Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	catholic_n	particular_a	union_n	3,907	5	9.8315	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45122	An answer to Dr. Stillingfleet's book of The unreasonableness of separation so far as it concerns The peaceable designe : with some animadversions upon the debate between him and Mr. Baxter concerning the national church and the head of it.	Humfrey, John, 1621-1719.; Humfrey, John, 1621-1719. Peaceable design.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Of national churches.; Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699. Unreasonableness of separation.	1682 (1682)	Wing H3667; ESTC R28713	17,588	40

and I Judge not But I do perceive this that it hath exposed him much and that not only to such a sawcy Man as Mr. Alsop to style him This Weather-Cock but to such a serious Man as Mr. Baxter to drive him into such distress For so long I must still say as the Doctor is engaged to hold the Government of Episcopacy as it is exercised in the Church of England to be of Divine Right he must maintain also her proper Constituting Officers to be of Christs appointment and then find out a Constitutive Head of it or he is gone And seeing he cannot do this but is forced to grant there is no such Head and that there is no need of any it is plain that his Cause is lost I will sum up my Answer again The Doctor 's Determination is We deny the necessity of any such Regent Part. For a National Consent is as sufficient to make a National Church as an Universal Consent to make a Catholick Church It is well he sayes As Sufficient because That may excuse him something if neither of them be Sufficient as it appears they are not without a Head I have distinguished therefore two Consents A Consent that goes to the Making a Society or Church and a Consent for coming into the same when it is Made A Consent that goes to the Constitution and a Consent that goes to put a Man under the Administration When the Doctor Argues from the Catholick to a National Church that As an Universal Consent makes the Catholick Church So a National Consent the National Church he must not be understood to mean it of the Former Consent because there is no such Consent as that imaginable in regard to the Catholick Church There can be no coming together possibly of the Community of the whole Christian World to agree to such a Constitution The Catholick Church is not made by the consent of men but is of God's Ordination altogether Nor can he be understood of the Latter consent because a consent to be a Member of a Church or Society already Made is not that consent which goes to the Making it A consent to be a Christian or of the Church Catholick is to consent to have Christ for my Lord and Head But how a consent to have Christ for ones Head should prove that Consent makes a Church without a Head is a reasoning I am yet to understand For the former consent there is here none of it And from the latter there can be no Argument Again The Catholick Church Visible in its Nature can never be Organical It hath a Head and all the Particular Churches in the Earth are the parts of it Nay there were at first Universal Officers gifted with proper Gifts as the Gifts of Tongues sutable to such an Office But these were only to gather Particular Churches throughout the World and it never was the designe of the Head that there should be a Form of Polity introduced into an Oecumenical Society that by the Organs of Bishops Arch-Bishops Patriarchs General Councils and a Pope a Catholick Visible Government should be Administred so as to make the whole Earth a Political Church And consequently the Doctors Arguing from the Catholick to a National Church cannot be good Not only because there is no such Constitution as this by consent imaginable which I shall say principally as to the Catholick Church The True Head of this Church being not chosen by Man's consent and the False Head I hope we are never like to choose But because upon supposition that the Doctors Consent some way or other as he means did make it he must suppose this Universal Church as such to be on Earth a compleat Organized Body or he must make the National Church an In-organical Body and by either way he drops his Cause I do now wonder therefore at the Doctor what these first Apprehensions of something indeed he knew not what in his mind should mean How a man whose Parts are so great should be so slender in his Reasonings and why he should undertake the Resolution of such a Point as he is no body at at all The Doctor certainly has no reason therefore to insult over any body or contemn any and much less to Pity Mr. Baxter which Pity by interpretation is Slight Mr. Baxter is a man that is not to be Pityed nor indeed to be Envied for we usually don 't aspire to be equal to Singular persons The Doctor has his Excellencies other ways but he hath not Mr. Baxter's The Doctor 's Soul is made of Free-stone you shall have from him Polished Learning Mr. Baxter's is made of Flint you shall have from him Acute Truth It is the Flint not the Free-stone that strikes Light A quick Apprehension a d●ep Judgment a vast Invention Exquisite Notion A Pen consequently that is but turning the cock and it will run at any time a Sermon full or a Book full as he hath Occasion There is a Book I understand of his now sending out which hath been many a year in Study He is usually too sudden it is a Methodical system of Divinity fit for Students at the University I believe that many of our Episcopal-Divines will speak lightly of it but not read it For my part through his having this one Chief Work happily in Latin I rejoyce from my heart that Forreign Divines who are not yet Prejudiced as Ours are will come to know him Above all yet Mr. Baxter is a Holy Man who will be for ever greater in his own Refusing a Bishoprick than the Doctor can be in Getting one if the present ill managing of this Cause does not preclude his having any And now I could not Answer it to my self if I should leave this Discourse without returning to the Matter to make some Improvement of it From this piece of Doctrine then before wherein I wonder how the Doctor should stumble so at noon day that the Church of England is so far Erastian that She will not admit of Two Co-ordinate Powers with respect to the Church and the State of this Nation but doth choose to Own and Acknowledge the KING to be the only Head of Both we have a Dore open'd for Union which hath hardly been thought on by any of those Pious and Learned men whose Souls heretofore have so much breathed after it Archbishop Usher hath left us his Model for an Accommodation And it hath been upon the hearts generally of all Moderate Persons that a reduction of such a Government into our Church as was in in the Primitive Times when there was a Consessus Presbyterorum joyn'd with the Bishop in all his Acts of Ordination and Jurisdiction were the Way and only Effectual Way to our True Happiness and Reformation Unto which if one thing more might be Added that is If the Common-Prayer might be new Cast it being fit that such a Vessel for the Sanctuary should be all of Pure Gold so as the whole

perfectly assign to us such a Head as Mr. Baxter seeks But forasmuch as there is no Authority in the Convocation when they have Composed their Canons to Impose any of them upon the Church or to oblige the Conscience of any by them until they are ratifyed by the Authority of the King it is manifest both that this Hierarchy of the Nation is but of Human Right and that the King alone the Power of Legislation which proves it lying only in him is and must be the Head of the Church in this Kingdom And that this certainly is so it is declared in the Statute of Henry the Eighth That the King shall be taken for the only Supream Head of the Church called Ecclesia Anglicana To understand this The Church may be consid●red we are to know as Universal and so is Christ the Head of it and can only give Laws to it Or as Particular and so the Pastors are Heads and Rule it Or as National to wit as it is according to the Statute Ecclesia Anglicana and so the Magistrate is Head and makes Laws for it I will add There is something Essential to the Church of Christ and something Accidental That there should be Persons who Meet to Worship God and Christ and be put in Order for it is of Christ's Appointment and Necessary to his Church Of these Particular Persons and Churches the Catholick Church consists To be Particular then or Universal is of Essential Consideration to Christ's Church But to be National is of Accidental Consideration That all the People of a Land should be Christian and the Magistrate also is I say an Accidental thing to the Church which may Exist where that is not Upon which account though the Magistrate be none of Christ's proper Officers yet may he be Head of his Church and Constitutive Head of it as undet his Dominions because he is Head not in any Essential but in this Accidental Consideration of it I will now set down the Doctor 's own Words Pag. 301. We deny any Necessity of any such Constitutive Regent Part or one Formal Ecclesiastical Head as Essential to a National-Church For a National Consent is as sufficient to make a National-Church as an Universal-Consent to make a Catholick-Church In this Determination of the Point when the Doctor denyes any Necessity of such a Head I hope he is not so frivolous as to believe One in this Nation and not to tell it So long as the Church of England is a Political Church and hath a Government establish't it must have its Regent Part as well as the Part Ruled and to deny the Necessity of One is all one as to say there is None I press the Doctor Is it a Political-Church or no If it be he must find it a Head If it be not then it is only a Community of Christians amongst whom it must be supposed there is no Government as yet introduced and then shall our Ecclesiastical Laws Canons and Constitutions our Bishops and Arch-Bishops with the whole Constitution we have already be hurled in the Dust. The Doctor will be a fine Champion for the Church if he persists to say this We deny any Necessity of any such Constitutive Regent Part or one Formal Ecclesiastical Head as Essential to a National-Church The Doctor here who is posed with the Question is confounded with the Terms He should distinguish between a He●d and a Formal Ecclesiastical Head a Regent Part and an Ecclesiastical Regent Part a Constitutive Regent Part and a Formal Ecclesiastical Head of the Church of England Though a National Church hath no Ecclesiastical Head it hath a Head a Regent Part a Constitutive Regent Part under this Accidental Consideration of the Church as National though not under the Essential Consideration of it as the Church of Christ. If the Doctor had light upon it in some of his Books that the King of England represents Two Persons an Ecclesiastical Person while He presides by His Authority in the Convocation and so is Head of the Church and a Civil Person while He sits with the Parliament and so is Head of the State and upon the account of both the Fountain of all Obligation upon the Subject both from the Canons of the Church and Statutes of the Realm I cannot tell how he might have put Mr. Baxter to it But so long as the King is not indeed both Supream Magistrate and High-Priest as the Maccabees were and neither of them think otherwise of the King than Magistrate only that is Supream Coercive Governour it is this which is here said must be the Expedient to remove the Bone from between them It is said in Scripture That Kings and Queens shall be Nursing-Fathers and Nursing-Mothers to the Church As they are Fathers they are Heads As Nursing-Fathers it shews their Power is not Internal to the Church but External as Divines speak that is of another kind than that which is proper to Spiritual Fathers the Pastors or Christ's own Officers The Authority of Kings over the Church is Objective they say Circa Sacra not Formal That is it is Objectively Ecclesiastical and Formally Civil And as this is so I apprehend in like manner that the Society of Christians in a Nation as the whole Nation are such is Objectively a Church and Formally a Kingdom or Common-Wealth of Christians and so may the Christian Magistrate be the Constitutive Regent Part of it Well! But what Argument hath the Doctor to prove that there is no necessity for a National Church to have a Constitutive Head essential to it that is essential to it not as the Church of Christ but under a National Consideration He hath no Argument but brings another Instance and that is of the Catholick Church visible which he saith hath no Head neither The Doctor is miserably driven to the Wall when he is driven hither There was never any Protestant doubted but that Iesus Christ is the Head of the Catholick Church and if he be the Head of it as Universal he must be the Head of it whether Visible or Invisible But Christ is not sayes he a Visible Head Poor If this were true it is enough that he is the Head of those who are Visible but yet he is out even in this for though Christ be not Caput Visum he is Caput Visibile He is not seen on Earth but he is seen in Heaven Nay he was seen on Earth by Paul and Stephen and will Appear as he is at the Great Day And what thinks the Doctor of Christ before his Ascension was he Head then Nay did not Christ while upon Earth give Laws for his Church appoint Officers and Commission his Apostles to gather Christian Societies in the World And is not his Government over them a Visible Ecclesiastical Government where the Officers are Visible and the Members Visible and is not he the Head then of the Church Visible Are not making Laws and Appointing Officers the Rights of a

Head When that Article was put in the Creed I Believe the Catholick Church I would ask the Doctor Whether this Distinction of Visible and Invisible was used in the World And if it was not when it arose it could not take off any thing of Christ's Headship When both Visible and Invisible were but one he must be Head of both Again there are some Learned Men deny a Catholick Church Visible The Doctor does hold it And what if they should advance against him this Argument If there be no Catholick Visible Head there is no Catholick Church Visible But there is no Catholick Visible Head The Minor is the Doctors and the Major is to be denyed of no other but the Doctor Let us proceed to the bottom We have sounded the Doctors Invention let us try his Reason There is no necessity of such a Head sayes he for a National Consent is as sufficient to make a National Church as an Universal Consent to make a Catholick Church This is the Doctors Reason It is Consent alone makes a Church or Society though it hath no Head The Consent of a Nation makes a National Church the Consent of All Christians the Catholick Church the Consent of a Particular Company a Particular Church or Congregation This is his bottom and it is something but exceeding rawly spoken Let us understand therefore where there is a company of Persons who have no power one over another that might receive mutual Advantage if United to that end such a Company are called a Community If they agree together for the obtainment of that end to come into an Order of Superiority and Inferiority that makes it a Society or Political Body If the end be for that good which is only Temporal it is called a Common-Wealth if for that which is Spiritual it is a Church The Doctor now is to be askt What Consent it is that he means If he means by his Consent the Agreement which People make at first when they enter into Society it is true that their Consent is the Foundation but the Doctor here I hope does see that this Consent is for the having a Head and Government and the pitching upon the Sort or Manner of the Government they would have which Agreement is called the Constitution It is not this Consent therefore the Doctor should mean which is not also applicable to the Catholick Church in which he Instances whose Head and Government is not of Mans Election but of the Will of God only By the way for the National Church It is true that Particular Churches in a Nation being of Divine Appointment the Pastors or Ministers who have the Rule over their Flocks In Actu Primo that is the Right of Discipline and Censure may agree to a delegating that power In Actu Secundo or the Exercise of it for Reasons of Prudence to a Superintendent called a Bishop who shall be Supervised by an Arch-Bishop and that the Arch-Bishop Bishops and Clerks chosen out of themselves met in a Convocation shall have the Power of making Laws or Canons by which they will be Governed Upon such a Consent as this here appears a Political National Church in the Constitution wherein is an Ecclesiastical Formal Constitutive Regent Part or Head over an Organical Body for the Administration and that founded upon the true Bottom upon which all rightly constituted Societies do stand the Agreement of the Community The Regent Part here is placed not in One Person which does not need but in One Corporation or United Assembly whereof the Arch-Bishop is but a chief part as the Bishops are and I would humbly ask Mr. Baxter what he thinks of it For as for the Doctor I think not him a Competent Judge not so much because he is not versed in that sort of Study as the other is but because of his departure from himself in the Prudentials of his Irenicum and being thereby now engaged to maintain the Government of our Church to be of Divine Right he must not receive this Notion which let it shew him never so clear and firm a Ground to build the same upon does make it of Human Institution If by his consent he means the consent of every Man in particular to be of such a Church or Society it is true that a Mans consent does make him a Member so as without it he could be none but the Church or Society must be supposed to be Formed before of the Ruling and Ruled Part and his Consent to be a Member is a consent to be Ruled and to own such a Head as well as to enjoy the Benefits of such a Society This Consent is the Condition upon which he hath right to be a Member it is the Ratio Fundandi of his Membership and the Condition upon which the Ruler hath Authority over him in particular when we suppose he may otherwise be at his own choice but if a Man shall fancy that this Consent does make a Church or Society as the Form that Constitutes it as they must do who suppose a Society to be Made Formed or Constituted by this Consent without a Head or the necessity of one it is such a raw injudicious indigested Conception as could have never once swum in the Thoughts of so Learned a Person if he had a faculty for beating out a Notion so good as he has for Books and negligence toward others that endeavour it It is true there is no Political Society whether Civil or Ecclesiastical but there must be Consent and Union but it is not this Consent and Union only makes it a Church or Common-Wealth A Vicinity may have Concord nay a Herd and there is Consent in a Society in Fieri not yet Organiz'd or Unform'd There is something that gives the Name and Being and makes a Society to be that which it is in specie different from others which is not I say Consent but it is an Order of Superiority and Inferiority upon Consent that does this and that is all one as to be the Form that Constitutes the Society And Consequently when I find the Doctor being at last drawn to it come to such a Determination as this about the Point that There is no necessity of a Constitutive Head because a National Consent makes a National Church I must pronounce it such a grave Nothing such a speaking Nothing with Gravity and pretence of being Wiser too than his fellows that if he do not come to be ashamed before Mr. Baxter has done with him or has reason to be so I will be exposed to shame my self for my speaking thus freely plainly and honestly as another person perhaps would not do The truth is it is pity the Doctor did declare his Heart while he was Young against the Divine Right of Episcopacy seeing he hath occasion now for another Opinion Whether out of Prudence or Conscience whether for want of more Light then or more full Light now it is God and himself knows