Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	authority_n	church_n	office_n	1,059	5	7.1206	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A80839	Berith Anti-Baal, or Zach. Croftons appearance before the prelate-justice of peace, vainly pretending to binde the covenant and covenanters to their good behaviour. By way of rejoynder to, and animadversion on Doctor John Gauden's reply or vindication of his analysis, from the (by him reputed) pitiful cavils and objections; but really proved powerful and convincing exceptions of Mr. Zach. Croftons Analepsis. / By the author of the Analepsis, and (not by the Dr observed) Analepsis anelephthe, to the continuing of St. Peter's bonds, and fastning his fetters against papal and prelatical power.	Crofton, Zachary, 1625 or 6-1672.	1661 (1661)	Wing C6988; Thomason E1085_6; ESTC R208062	67,248	104

gradual difference between Englands Prelacie and Romes Papacie this being in specie the same with that and so a formal papatus alterius mundi 9. Under this usurpation Presbyterie sensible of its intrinsecal power did resist and often complain and when it was by force acted by fraud restrained yet made and continued its contests and its paritie in order and authority and hath ever been dogmatically asserted and polemically debated by not only the enemies but friends of the Papacie by Canonists Schoolmen Commentators and open discourses in Councils where the Pope durst never admit a free dispute not so much as in the Councel of Trent and as the Reformation of the Church proceeded Presbyterie not only pleaded but reassumed its own proper power and authority and managed the affairs of the Church as against the Pope so without Bishops and England it self though through the policie which too much attended and acted its reformation it retained an Episcopacie yet did dethrone its spiritual jurisdiction and resolve it into a meer humane and civil constitution acting circa ecclesiam and most plainly avowed the intrinsecal power of Presbyters in the act of the submission of the Clergie and other Statutes disavowing any ecclesiastical or scriptural constitution of Prelacie and baring them from all juridical acts otherwise then by the Kings commission and in his name And all our English Divines have openly asserted and polemically defended the power and authority of the Presbyters in their contests against Papists concurrence with and defence of the reformed Churches and their Presbyterial acts and at length our late learned Primate of Armagh in his grave Reduction affirmed it to be the Presbyters right to rule and govern the Church and propounded an expedient in order to the restitution thereof too long held from them the which being in its natural tendency desperata causa papatus as Voetius hath well termed his defence of the Presbyterated reformed Churches the man of sin doth under a Cassandrian accommodation withstand and endeavour to stifle it in which however he succeed to oppose he shall not prevail Presbyterie being Christs own ordinance and the primitive constitution of the Church and mediate discharge of his pastoral and Episcopal office whilst this is a plain humane constitution conform to the course of the world and contrary to the charge of our great Shepherd Matth. 20.25 The Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise authority over them but it shall not be so among you Sir consider well this Climax I will assure you it is to me so obvious and apparent in Ecclesiastical story that he that will not see must turn Sceptique and must say Non persuaseris etiamsi persuaseris and how much soever Presbyterie be sleighted and represented to the world with the insignificant odious charge of Schism and superstition Christs kingly Office in and over his Church is bottomed in it and the recovery of its full liberty to the exercise of its just authority is not only justice but duty that may that which must be pursued pleaded for unto bonds yea death it self and therefore to match your number I upon these undeniable premises make these conclusions which if you will turn your Rhetorick into Reason and with a calm and composed spirit debate it I will be bound logically and theologically to defend against you Hierarchia Anglicana non est ecclesia nec ad ecclesiae entitatem aut gubernationem necessaria adeo ut ejus extirpatio estimetus schisma Hierarchia Anglicana est nullo modo divina aut ecclesiastica sed mere humana civilis cujus abolitio extirpatio sit licita sub juramento faederanda Englands Hierarchy is not the Church nor necessary to the being or government thereof so as that the extirpation thereof should be accounted schism Englands Hierarchy is neither divine or ecclesiastical but meerly civil and humane whose abolition and extirpation may be lawfully sworn and covenanted Until Sir these be confuted you who blame others do your self build upon a plain petitio pincipii Dr. Gauden being well considered will be found no less erroneous in his Politiques then in his Ecclesiastiques running away with certain general notions as if universally granted and undoubtedly true and agreed upon by all whilst indeed they are openly and generally denied I shall gather them together as the former and leave the Reader to take notice of them as he reads his book they running as a line through his book some of them being obvious in every page where his passion would give him leave to speak like a reasonable creature As that 1. The Hierarchy or Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England which I have in my Analepsis Analepthe denyed and the Covenanters plea hath more fully and judiciously expostulated and contradicted in Cap. 6. pag. 22 23 24. I do aver that the English Laws finding Episcopacy conversant about the Church doth restrain its exorbitancies and direct its administrations but neither Canon nor common law doth establish it and in terminis declare and authorize it to be the Government of the Church of England 2. No Oath may be fully sworn which shall bind to an endeavour to extirpate what is established by law and therefore although sworn by the legislative authority and command or by the sharers in the legislation it is ipso facto void and yet endeavour of alteration is to every man sui juris no way inconsistent with that passive obedience which we owe to laws in force and all Laws lye vailed and at the legislators feet to take up or refuse and void and an Oath is the most positive authentique repeal of a law vailed and at the least binding the sharers in the legislation and such as shall succeed into their capacity to repeal those laws which establish the thing which they have sworn to extirpate 3. There is no legislative power de facto operating and exerted binding the subject to any action or obedience unless all things concur which may constitute a full and formal statute law and so all Votes Orders and Ordinances Resolves and Judgment of any the Estates of Parliament are of no force power or authority during their session Which all Lawyers acquainted with Englands constitution will deny unless their Oracles of divinity have at the Temple taught them new notions of law which the constant practice of Lords and Commons and subjection and obedience of those whom they represent doth ordinarily contradict 4. That Lords nor Commons severally nor both conjunct can impose on themselves or others whom they represent any Oath without the knowledge consent and command of the King and if they do it is ipso facto void therefore you suggest that the protestation which is apparently sworn by Parliament and Kingdome without the King to be precarious whilst there is nothing of petition in it but much of legislation and that manifest by the subjects obedience even to your

see and say this was not from the beginning You do indeed profess to the first six hundred years but I dare say the last three hundred of them are those you would chiefly cleave to And what do you mean by Ecclesiastical Laws where are these recorded and by what authority were they composed When you have given me a plain clear and distinct resolution to these if I mistake your meaning let me be blamed till then blame me not I love not the Rhetorick which contrary to its end proposeth objects with that obscurity that they cannot be with certainty determined and that under a profession to clear and convince the conscience Yet Sir to do you right When I observe you page 114. eat your own words and offer as if your Brethren Prelates had brought you now into Cassanders School and charged you to make an Apology for your over-friendly proposal to Presbyterians which you pursue by telling us All Presbyterians do hug Bishop Ushers Reduction of Episcopacy which in your Analysis you assured us did reduce Episcopacy to an efficacious conjunction with Presbytery and on which Mr. Cr. concluded that sence which you say he seemed in a sober mood to own An Episcopacy consistent with the Covenant pag. 191. but now say will reduce Bishops to primitive poverty the estate which attended and enforced their piety and therefore tell us That humble learned and pious Lord Primate propounded that reduction not in order to binde the hands of or limit Bishops in England and Scotand but as a condescention and expedient at present to disarm and binde the hands of Presbyters and people Sir who told you that this was the politick stratagem of that pious Bishop did not Bishop Wren Sure I am he came not down from heaven to authorize you in your Book to call him hypocrite and to tell all the world he had in Machiavillian policy by his grave and judicious authority affirmed That it was apparent out of the Word of God and practice of the primitive times that Presbyters had an intrinsecal power unto all Jurisdiction and order in the Church and by after Vsurpation were thrust out and therefore he proposed an expedient prudendentially to restore them to their just authority but never intended it to be believed as a truth or ever be put in practice as a duty but to only be jingled in the ears of crying children Are you not ashamed to cast such a blot on the precious name of him who I know was by some Cassandrian Prelates judged Puritan whilst alive Do you measure every man by your own temporizing principles and think they are onely in a good mood till they have opportunity to be bad and base do not you blush to offer this reduction in one book and call it in in another But whilst I see you thus play fast and loose I know how to trust to you and am holpen the better to understand what you mean by Episcopal Government and when I observe the soveraign power by which Mr. Crofton you say and that truly is not willing to be ruled pag. 216. Coordination with Kings as cheif Governours by Divine appointment pag. 205. Honourable fatherhood and government p. 203. The legal constitution by the Laws of England to which our Episcopacy doth pretend the continued practice and exercise of it in this Nation the superiority above and authority apart and distinct from Presbyters whose advice may be good and useful but not necessary as that which would make every Presbyter suffragan Bishop and the Bishop without his Presbyters a meer ●●pher All which I finde predicated up and down your tedious discourse of that Episcopacy you would advance and which you say is not so obscure as Mr. Crofton would pretend but in express terms you tell us is That Church polity honour order and government which our Bishops had and now have and that we must not by an equivocal and levelling fence confound Bishops and Presbyters by a silly ●●gomac●ie or cavil of names distinguished by a real rational difference of place honor office authority and use in the Church of Christ which you say no learned man can doubt of or deny but sure you mean affirm when I consider these things I must confess I should mistake you and do my self wrong by suspending yea stifling my judgement if I should not see clearly the Episcopacy which you pretend to reconcile to the Covenant is no other then that very frame and fabrick of government which Smectymnuus tells us was of humane invention and diabolical occasion by which the man of sin was made manifest and did advance himself in the Temple of God innovated by Austin the Monck so exercised that it appeared papatum alterius mundi which my Analepsis told you I was jealous you meant in your Analysis I have Sir with tiring difficultie discovered the ratio formalis objecti which you profess to reconcile to the Covenant and make consistent with it and in my eyes it doth seem to be the very same with that which in terminis was covenanted to be extirpated viz. Prelacy that is to say the government by Archbishops Bishops their Commissaries Chancellors Deans Deans and Chapters Archdeacons c. depending on that Hierarchy But let us see how you answer the third part of Mr. Croftons Analepsis and acquit your self from the imbecillity of argumentation charged on you And sir you seem to me to take a very preposterous and strange course to commend the strength of your reason by a tedious and long confused discourse of rage enmitie and opposition at the Covenant or by a general hypothesis that it must bind to what is good pious just lawful and not against reason religion justice pietie morallitie duty to God and man whereas you ought to remember that generalia non pungunt these may be all admitted and Episcopacy never the nearer reconciled to the Covenant whereas you ought to have given us a grammatical construction logical resolution genuine interpretation of that Article which seemeth cross to your Episcopacy and by a clear acceptation and vulgar apprehension or general scope of its words make it appear that the words will without straining admit such a sence and signification but it may be the simplicitie which becomes an oath of the terms extirpation or reformation being incompetible except in a fools fancie might strike you off this But them you should Sir have given a point blank charge against that Article which clasheth with your Hierarchy as binding to injury injustice immorality irreligion against the duty we owe to God and man and pursued that closely by clear and convincing demonstrations then had the Bishop shewed himself a workman who needed not to be ashamed but let little Mr. Crofton be never so great a Dictator he must finde è quovis ligno non fit Mercurius every tongue well hung cannot be well tuned nor will natural fluencie be easily kept to rules of art or under the command of

I mistaken in the poverty of the Primitive Bishops and the parity at least of Presbyterie to Episcopacy I must borrow your Spectacles when I look into any thing of antiquity but sure Sir Smecty●●nuus will not think you modest to charge impudence and falsity on such as deny it they were bold to contradict your opinion in this very poynt asserted by the remonstrant your predecessour and assign several things in which the English Bshops differ from the primitive when you have reconciled them we will find you more but they will be enough for one book of forty sheets 7. This universal custome is not to be despised by any sober Christian yet this Episcopacy is not onely tradition and universal observation for it hath further the stamp and impression of divine order and wisdome Scripture precept and Apostolique pattern all right reason prudence and policie pag. 247. we need not go far to find the precepts can●ns commission power and authority of this Episcopal jurisdiction given by Jesus Christ and his Apostles pag. 228. such Bishops rooted in Christ branched in the twelve Apostles and spread in all the Christian world and endowed with honorary supports pag. 220. I like you Dr that you speak out most Episcopal men stand stammering at a divine right as if afraid to say it were to be found in Episcopacy and yet Dr. Gauden can plainly see the stamp and impression not onely of right reason prudence and policy but of divine order and wisdome yea Scripture precept and Apostolique pattern the very canons and commission of Jesus Christ I must confess I am so dark sighted I cannot see it I dare not encline to say or think as Dr. Gauden doth that the Apostles were proper Bishops or such as are our English Bishops because our learned and judicious Whitaker whom I judge no way short of Dr. Gauden declareth it to be the fancie of a crack brain Patres cum Jacobum Episcopum vocant aut etiam Petrum non proprie sumunt Episcopi nomen sed vocant eos episcopos illarum ecclesiarum in quibus aliquando commorati sunt si proprie de episcopo loquuntur absurdum est Apostolos fuisse episcopos nam qui proprie episcopus est is Apostolus non potest esse quia episcopus est unius tantum ecclesiae at Apostoli plurium ecclesiarum fundatores inspect●res erant non multum distant ab insania dicere Petrum fuisse proprie episcopum aut reliquos Apostolos I hope Dr. Gauden will not charge Dr. Whittaker with impudence and falshood and I think he strikes at the very root of his supposed Divine impresion and Apostolical practice and precedent to which you refer us for proof but that this may be believed you must needs proceed 8. The testimonies of the Fathers Councils and Historians are so necessary to the Scriptures that without them no man can receive satisfaction concerning the distinct offices of the Church the difference between the community of Christian duties as professors and believers of the common verity and specialty of the office of Preachers pag. 247 248. But Sir is a charge of imperfection in the Scripture the only support of your Prelacy or doth it abide as a mark of its papacy I apprehended the Scriptures profitable for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works which it can never be if we cannot by it receive satisfaction concerning the distinct offices in the Church which are the only means of intercourse between God and the soul or the common Christian duties of professors and beleiving of the common verity or specialty of the off ce of preaching certainly if the word be in this too short the writings of the Fathers Councils and Historians must needs aedisicare in Gehennam guide us like a dark lanthorn into inevitable danger for whence did they know these if not from Scripture this you stumbled on to divert the dispute of the Office name degree order and authority of your Bishop which Mr. Crofton put you upon Sir I am sorry I should be an occasion of your divulging such an error which your Anatomist will readily pick up as piece of blasphemy incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim you would avoid the dispute of the Divine right of your Episcopacy as that which was dangegerous to your See and have laid a foundation for another dispute concerning the perfection of the Scriptures as to the common duty of Christians and special office of Preachers and that on a fancy too For Sir Mr. Crofton would have you know he hath an audience and credence for the Fathers Councils and Historians as venerable witnesses in matter of fact but cannot receive them as judges in matter of right and sole Dictators of duty Mr. Crofton hath read that when Augustine was pinched with a passage out of Cyprian he made answer Sunt certilibri dominici quorum authoritati utrique centimus utrique servimus ibi quaeramus Ecclesiant ibi discutiamus causam nostram Sir whatever you say in an angry mood I wil hope you will joyn with me in an appeal to the Scriptures and then I say ibi quaeramus Episcopum find your Episcopacy there for otherwise if I find its extirpation in the Covenant I 'le stand by it it must be extirpated if King and Kingdome or peace and glory must be preserved from Gods angry extirpation for bona mutabilia are within the verge of mans vow and reach of his hand but you being loosed from the truth tumble you know not whither and therefore you suggest 9. Episcopacy is a matter of Faith essential to the being of the Church an eminent part of Gods Worship which may not be wanting withdrawn from or withstood changed or covenanted against without Schisme and superstition Pag. 195 214 215. Yet you dare not trust it to the tryal of the Scriptures I promise you Sir I dare not admit any thing as an Article of my Creed nor offer to God any thing as an act of his Worship which is not plain and obvious in the Scriptures without the witness and Authority of Fathers Councel or Historian I must adventure the schisme and superstition I hope Dr. Gauden doth not use Schisme and superstition as the old Prelates did the term Puritan and Englands late Tyrants did the term Malignant as words of no signification but onely served to nickname and reproach the opposers of their prophane principles and proceeding and to deter men from the discharge of required duty but to secure your Prelacy you go one step further and suggest yea speak out that 10. Bishops are coordinate and equal with Kings in that commission the word whereby God hath left liberty to his Church or the chief Governours thereof Kings or Bishops to order all things as they shall judge meet Page 205. Episcopacy is unalterable by any lawful humane power Dr. Gauden peremtorily