Selected quad for the lemma: country_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
country_n	bishop_n	city_n	diocese_n	1,568	5	11.4499	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36252	A reply to Mr. Baxter's pretended confutation of a book entituled, Separation of churches from episcopal government, &c. proved schismatical to which are added, three letters written to him in the year 1673, concerning the possibility of discipline under a diocesan-government ... / by Henry Dodwell ...	Dodwell, Henry, 1641-1711.	1681 (1681)	Wing D1817; ESTC R3354	153,974	372

mean it as I doubt you do that they are Servants coequal among themselves that is clearly against the whole current of Ignatius his Epistles and against the supposition of their being distinct Orders and I believe against your own opinion concerning Priests and Deacons whom I think you will not say to be thus coequal But for what you add further as if you had it out of the same Ignatius though indeed you have not scored it as you did the former part That in this one Church the Bishop must enquire all by name even Servant Men and Maids and see that they absented not themselves from the Church whence you ask Why is not Ignatius confuted if he erred and refer me to Mr. Mede on the point I am confident that you will find no such thing in Ignatius or Mr. Mede that will need confuting For this inquiry by name need not have been performed by personal visitation of them but by Schedules delivered to him by his subordinate Clergie which if any of our Bishops would do I should be so far from offering to confute as that I should highly honour and reverence him for it BUT you say 5. That Alexandria and Rome by not multiplying Bishops as Churches or Converts needed it began the great sin and calamity which hath undone us and therefore are not to be our patern If you mean by Bishops your Parish Ministers as you seem to do who must have no greater charge than one particular person unassisted with a Presbytery may give a particular account of then sure you cannot but know that as they are by you thought singular in introducing this distinction of Altars in the same City so they must have been so in multiplying such a kind of Bishops that might attend them at least in more accurately proportioning them to the multitudes of Churches and Converts But if you mean a multitude of Parish Priests whom you would fain call Bishops independent on a principal President then it would concern you to prove 1. That Alexandria and Rome were herein singular which you will find impossible to be done And 2. That their guilt herein was not onely an occasion for occasions of evil cannot be proved evil and so unfit for being paterns but natural causes of that grand sin and calamity you so lament YOU answer or rather argue 6. That were Bishops necessarily to be distributed by Cities the Empires that have few or no Cities must have few or no Bishops and an Emperour might aliud agendo depose all the Bishops by disfranchising the Cities This does not shew the impossibility of a Bishops maintaining discipline in a City that is great and populous which is indeed our question but onely the inconvenience of scrupulously multiplying Bishops according to the multitude of Cities And that as it is not to our purpose so I know no Adversary you have in it For there are no humane Establishments whatsoever that can fit all circumstances yet are not such possible inconvenient cases thought sufficient to abrogate them though known and foreseen And therefore it were not in prudence a sufficient reason for the Church to alter her general rule of multiplying Bishops by Cities because the cases mentioned by you are but rare and improbable which kind are not taken notice of by humane Legislators They are rare for where will you find that Empire that hath few or no Cities at least in those civilized parts of the world they were then acquainted with They are improbable for the administration of justice among Subjects and the encouragement of traffick which are the Governours Interests do require such Privileges to be given to places not too distant from each other But if the inconveniences were greater than indeed they are and sufficient to persuade a deviation from such a general rule in such cases Yet 1. The Church never acknowledged any unalterable divine obligation to observe it but has always reserved a power to her self of deviating in such cases of which she might be satisfied that they were sufficiently momentous And 2. She has in such cases actually taken the liberty of exerting her own power as in those Nations which had but one Bishop though many Cities of which instances were already given and in those places where Cities too numerous and too little frequented against which she has made those express Canons that Bishops should not be placed over them nè vilesceret nomen Episcopi which those of your Persuasion do so often take notice of with offence BUT 7. You say Every Corporation Oppidum like our Market Towns was then truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And if we will procure every such City with us to have a Bishop and the office of such Bishops to be to drive men from sin and not to it and to silence Blasphemers not faithful Preachers of the Gospel all our Controversies of Prelacy are then at an end But I fear though you had your desire that in analogy to Cities Bishops should be multiplied according to the number of Cities which Rule you lately seemed to dislike and that every Market Town should be accounted a City as you conceive it to have been practised among the Ancients and that Bishops discharged their duty as you have described it yet you would hardly suffer our Controversies to end so especially if you acted consequently to your own Principles For you know by the same rule that small Cities as you have described them must have distinct Bishops the greatest that are London it self for example must have but one together with the Villages about it and I doubt that would be found to be a charge as disproportionable to the abilities of a single man as some of our Country Dioceses especially here in Ireland Nay by Captain Grants Calculation London bears a greater proportion to all England than any single Diocese which is onely the 25th part Now according to your Principles our Communion quâ Diocesan that is if I understand you as exceeding the abilities of a single man is not to be embraced Therefore even in this case you must refuse to communicate with the Church of London And considering that in communicating with a particular you do communicate with all with whom that particular Church holds Communion for Communion with a particular Church is no where understood as a profession of union with her alone but also with all such whom she accounts orthodox members of the Catholick Church you must by the same sequel conceive your self obliged to decline the Communion of all particular Churches communicating with London Unless therefore you suppose a Schism of all other Churches from her you must make one from them and so be in the same condition wherein you are at present I confess you do not act consequently to this later Principle whilest you refuse not our Parish Communion which communicates with our Diocesan quà Diocesan and so I had much rather decline

dependence of such a place on such a City from whence they were borrowed And now I pray what an such a Town walled incorporated and having Jurisdiction not onely over Suburbs but a proportion of the Villages and Towns adjacent by special Imperial Charters want of our modern notion of a City even as contradistinct to our Market Towns AND that the Government of the Church was proportioned to that of the State is so commonly observed by learned Men as that I cannot think it necessary to be tedeous in proving it And that in this very particular of the subjection of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the City Bishop appears from the 17th Canon of this same Council where it is not onely for this but all other affairs of a like nature established as a general Rule very probably occasioned by the forementioned Controversie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though we had no express Testimony yet the multitude of the Clergy requisite for the Government of their ordinary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a whole Presbytery in the City besides the Deacons and the other inferiour Orders there and others in the Country subject to the Chorepiscopus or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all subject to the City Bishop do plainly shew that the Bishops Jurisdiction if not as large as now was at least much larger than our ordinary Market Towns which usually have but one Parish and are therefore thought sufficiently governable by an ordinary single Presbyters And this form of governing Cities was so universal as that your Assertion to the contrary is not credible even in Africa or any other place where Bishops or Cities are observed to have been most frequent or numerous But if it had indeed been otherwise in some singular places yet it is plain that the general rate of Cities among the Ancients was equal to ours Whence it will follow that the Dioceses generally designed were such as ours are now though in some particular more anomalous Instances they were it may be as small as you would have them Whence two things will follow very apposite to my design 1. That the Judgment of those Ages themselves were certainly more for us than you seeing their judgment is onely to be concluded from their general rules not from their particular anomalous practices And 2. that the case of discipline must have been the same with them as us For the general observation of discipline cannot be effected by singular but general practices and designs Whence it will be easie to infer that if discipline was then generally observed then it is observable under a Diocesan Government in the sense we are now disputing concerning it For such I have proved to have been generally practised then and if it was observed then you can give no disparity why it may not be so now if Governours would be equally industrious YOUR intimation concerning to Bishops you would have in your Par●chial Dioceses that their office must be to drive men from sin and not to it and to silence Blasphemers and not faithful Preachers of the Gospel as if our Bishops were guilty of the contrary is methinks very sharp and uncharitable We are all agreed you as well as we that this is our Diocesan Bishops office Our onely difference is that you conceive their actual practice to be otherwise But I pray consider seriously what good meaning you can have herein if your desire had been granted Is it that the Bishop must not do that which himself thinks to be driving men to sin You cannot but know that they pretend and how can you know that they do not really believe their prosecutions of Dissenters to be not a driving them to sin but from it from disobedience to that which they think lawful Ecclesiastical Government and from those Separations which themselves judge Schismatical and from the defence and malice of unlawful Oaths And certainly what they think to be Disobedience and Schism and the maintaining of unlawful Oaths your self 〈◊〉 blame them if they believe them 〈◊〉 〈…〉 And the Preachers silenced by 〈…〉 not by them thought faithful 〈…〉 of the Gospel at least not in the 〈◊〉 of their silencing but ●●eachers of 〈…〉 and Founders and Fomenters of parties to the great weakning of the common Interest of the Gospel And can you think it faulty in them to be zealous against them whom they conceive to be such enemies to the Gospel at least while they think them so and profess themselves unable to find any reason to think otherwise Or do you mean that the Bishop must not drive to that which the Criminal will pretend to be a sin or prosecute that which he calls faithful Preaching of the Gospel If so you had dealt more plainly to have denied the Bishop any power at all to drive men from sin or silence Blasphemers than to grant him it and yet to make it useless and unpracticable as it must needs be if he must not practise it till the Sinner or Blasphemers confess themselves so for how rarely do you find real Criminals plead guilty at the Bar Besides that by this means the most innocent if any must onely suffer and the most dangerous must generally escape For they who confess their crime must generally be presumed penitent and they who are so are almost innocent if we may believe the Tragedian but he who denies his guilt aggravates it by the disingenuity of his Apologie Besides he who confesses himself a Sinner or a Blasphemer is onely chargeable with a personal guilt but he who denies sins and blasphemies to be sins sins more heinously not onely sinning himself but teaching others to do so too Nor is the multitude onely more considerable that is drawn aside by this later sort of disingenuous sinners but the quality of the persons seduced and the greatness of their danger is much more considerable than in those who are prejudiced by the former For none are likely to be seduc'd by professed debauchees but such as are ill-inclined themselves But they who are deceived by them who teach ill principles not onely defending sins ad excusing them but pretending them to be duties are usually such who are of the best lives and the most innocent meaning whose Errors are like to be authenticated by their personal authority and reputation And those who acknowledge their sins are more easily recoverable their own consciences being ready upon any occasion to joyn with external conviction whensoever offered to them but they who mistake their sins for the service of God do both alienate their minds from conviction by laying out their zeal against hearing or impartial considering that which they look on as a temptation and in the event resolve their conviction into an issue of more difficult proof For it is generally more easie even to the meanest most popular capacity to prove a matter of fact than a matter of right how unquestionable soever Certainly you would your self acknowledge him to be