Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	bishop_n	church_n	succession_n	2,569	5	10.4652	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A20744	Tvvo sermons the one commending the ministerie in generall: the other defending the office of bishops in particular: both preached, and since enlarged by George Dovvname Doctor of Diuinitie.	Downame, George, d. 1634.	1608 (1608)	STC 7125; ESTC S121022	394,392	234

Bellarmine this confession that it followeth not necessarily where succession is there is a Church Nor Continuance For the malignant Church hath lasted hitherto and will yet longer and many of the Churches planted by the Apostles are now failed which yet were true Churches Nor Visibility For the Church of Greece which you count Hereticall hath ever since the first founding of it beene and is still Visible And such Persecutions and Scandalls may arise in the Church as may much eclipse the glory thereof reducing the Saints to a small number scattering the Ministers suspending the exercise of Ecclesiasticall discipline and interrupting the publike service so as the true Professors seeking shelter from the storme shall hardly bee discerned So was it vnder the old Testament in the daies of Elias so vnder the new when the whole world groned vnder Arianisme and so shall it bee in the time of Antichrist as out of your writers in the former treatise I haue already declared Nor lastly Vnitie For as the Church of God is one so the Divels Babylon is also one And who knowes not what jars and dissentions sometimes were among the Corinthians and Galatians and betweene the East and West Churches about the celebration of Easter which neverthelesse were true Churches And thus you see how vncertaine and deceivable your notes be If this yet be not enough to perswade you I hope being backed with authority of your great Cardinall Bellarmine it may suffice who maketh them in themselues to bee but probable N. N. If it could be proved that these notes belong to the Protestant Church it would much alter your opinion I. D. It seemes you take for granted that these notes are to be found in the Romā Church But you presume too farre Was never a more broken Succession in any Church then that Who at the first succeeded whom is vncertaine namely in what order Linus Clemens Cletus Anacletus should stand About thirty Schisms haue beene therein some of them continuing scores of yeares together in which haue beene two Popes three Popes at once neither could it easily bee discerned which was lawfull Pope Fifty of them in a row were Monsters rather then Men Apotacticall and Apostaticall rather then Apostolicall How many haue intruded themselues into that See by Simonie How many haue beene intruded at the pleasure of harlots Yea a Whore hath sitten in the Pontificall chaire So saith Sigebert Marianus Scotus Bergomensis Iohannes Stella Nauclerus Iohannes Lucidus Baptista Ignatius Balaeus Sabellicus Ranulphus Petrarch Boccace Mathew Palmer Trithemius and Martinus Polonus all which it will bee hard for your new vpstarts of yesternight to outface or controle As for the rest of your Notes if the present Church of Rome be much degenerated from its Primitiue purity and nothing resemble that which Saint Paul first planted there as I am ready to proue whensoever you shall call vpon me for it then are they not to be found therein For neither hath it continued the same nor is the profession by which it is Visibly the same nor is it One with it selfe For of other differences and dissentions among you you shall heare more anon in the due place But can wee finde them in the Protestant Church Let vs trie That the Succession of Bishops in the Church of England vntil Arch-Bishop Cranmers time was lawfull I know you will not deny That he and all the Bishops in the time of K. Edward and Q. Elizabeth and so downeward were Canonically called and consecrated what stronger proofe can you desire then the publike Registers of every See Out of which so much as concernes this businesse is now published to the view of the whole world designing both the time when the place where together with the names of those Bishops that imposed hands And this is so cleare that your owne Cudsemius comming into England of purpose to obserue the state of our Church thus writeth concerning the state of the Calvinian sect in England it so standeth that it may either endure long or be suddenly changed and in a trice in regard of the Catholike order there in a perpetuall line of their Bishops and the lawfull succession of Pastors receiued from the Church for the honour whereof wee vse to call the English Calvinists by a milder tearme not Hereticks but Schismaticks Touching your other three Notes I presume it will not be denyed that a Church professing to beleeue in the Lord Iesus and by him in the holy and blessed Trinity and confessing all the Doctrines contained in the Scriptures together with the three Creeds of the Apostles the Nicene and of Athanasius hath hitherto continued Visible and in Vnity from the Apostles times And such is the Church of the Protestants for all this we both professe and confesse and whatsoever wee affirmatiuely hold the same in a manner doe you affirme with vs. For as for the Negatiues they are but novelties nor can you proue them out of any Antiquity Succession therefore Continuance visibility vnity belong vnto our Church I must entreat you to remember your promise and according therevnto to alter your mind And so much for your preamble N. N. Your treatise was not intended to me Howbeit you thank mee for my reply acknowledging your inability to answer and hoping I expect it not from you I. D. Whether your Treatise were intended to me or no is not much materiall Sure I am it was delivered mee as from you and therevpon did I returne you that reply which had it taken due effect I should haue had more cause to thanke God then now you haue to thanke mee Answer from your selfe I confesse I expected none● for I knew your insufficiency But I hoped you would haue taken counsell of some more sufficient then your selfe and vpon conference with them haue sent me your common Answer Which because you haue not done being conscious to your owne inability it is a manifest argument of wilfull obstinacy and that you will not bee perswaded though be perswaded N. N. Notwithstanding you haue no reason to beleeue mee seeing other Divines not Papists only but Protestants also seeme to vnderstand the Fathers as you doe I. D. It is a foule vntruth that Protestants vnderstand the Fathers as you doe as shall by and by to your shame appeare In the meane season know that what I haue said I haue not barely affirmed but soundly proved and neglecting demonstratiue reasons meerely to bee swayed with humane authority is no other then to put off common sense and to forget that wee are reasonable creatures N. N. I except only against two or three passages the rest therefore are truly related and the letter of them is for the reall Presence Which how it can bee and yet no Transubstantion you vnderstand not The word Transubstantiation was indeed devised in the counsell of Lateran but the thing was alwaies beleeved of the ancient Fathers as appeareth by their words Conversion

As the heavenly bread which is the Flesh of Christ after its manner is called the Body of Christ being in truth the Sacrament● of Christs Body Marke that which is called Body is not so in truth but only in signe and after a manner Pope Leo Christ being lifted vp into heaven set an end to his Bodily Presence being to abide at the right hand of his Father vntill the times appointed by God for the multiplying of the Sonnes of the Church be accomplished If till then he haue set an end to his Bodily presence then till that time he is no more here Fulgentius the holy Catholike Church throughout the whole world ceaseth not to offer vnto Christ the sacrifice of Bread and Wine in Faith and Charity If a Sacrifice of bread and wine then is it bread and wine after consecration Pope Gelasius certainly the Sacraments of the body and bloud of Christ which wee receiue is a divine thing wherefore by them are wee made partakers of the divine nature and yet the substance or nature of Bread and Wine cease not to bee And verily the image and similitude of the body and bloud of Christ are celebrated in these mysteries And They passe by the worke of the holy Ghost into a divine substance continuing notwithstanding in the propriety of their nature Lo the Substance and Nature of bread remaine and the Sacrament is but an image and Similitude of Christs body What can be more plaine Theodoret Himselfe hath honoured the Visible Symbols with the name of his body and bloud not changing their nature but adding grace vnto nature And againe disputing against an Eutychian Heretike who to overthrow the Humanity of Christ had thus argued that as the signes in the Eucharist are after Consecration changed so the body of our Lord after the assumption thereof was changed into the Divine substance hee bringeth in Orthodaxus thus answering Thou art taken in thine owne nets for the mysticall signes after consecration depart not from their proper nature For they remaine in their former substance and figure and forme and are visible and tangible as formerly they were but are vnderstood to bee thee things they are made and beleeued and are honoured as being the things they are beleeued These passages of Gelasius and Theodoret are the very racke gibbet of you Papists wherevnto the best of you know not what to answere but only that by substance Accident is meant An incredible obstinacy and madnesse and needing rather a Physitian to cure it then a disputer to confute it For with as good reason may you say that by white blacke is meant and by Heaven Hell and any thing by whatsoever Lastly Gregory the Great proueth the truth of Christs body against Eutychius by those words of our Saviour Handle mee and see Can you proue the truth of Christs body in the Sacrament by the same argument Verily if that which is neither felt nor seene be not Flesh Bone neither is the Flesh of Christ in the Sacrament for it is neither felt nor s●ene And if bread bee transubstantiated only by vertue of those words This is my body then in the Apostles time there was no Transubstantiation at all For as Gregory saith The manner of the Apostles was only by the Lords prayer to consecrate the host of the Oblation And thus haue you a full grand Iury of the ancient Fathers all of them liuing within sixe hundred yeares after Christ and with joynt consent crossing your new vpstart fiction of the Reall Presence To these I might easily adde a long list of those who succeeded in after times as Bede Rabanus Maurus Walafridus Strabo Bertram Waleram Bishop of Medburg Druthmarus and others not one of them in their times taxed for errour in this point But I will only relate what the Doctrine of the Church of England was about seauen hundred yeares after Christ as appeareth by those Homilies that then were publikely read vnto the people The holy Font water that is called the well-spring of life is like in shape to other waters and is subiect to corruption but the holy Ghosts might cometh to the water through the Priests blessing and it can after wash the body and soule from all sin through Ghostly might Behold now wee see two things in this one creature After true nature that water is corruptible water and after ghostly mystery hath hollowing might So also if wee behold that holy housel after bodily vnderstanding then see wee that it is a creature corruptible and mutable if we acknowledge therein ghostly might then vnderstand wee that life is therein and that it giueth immortality to them that eate it with beleefe Much is betwixt the invisible might of the holy housel the visible shape of his proper nature It is naturally corruptible Bread and corruptible Wine is by might of Gods word truly Christs Body and his bloud not so notwithstanding bodily but Ghostly Much is betwixt the body Christ suffered in and the body that is hallowed to housel The body truly that Christ suffered in was borne of the flesh of Mary with bloud and with bone with skinne and with sinews with humane limmes with a reasonable soule liuing and his Ghostly body which we call the housel is gathered of many cornes without bloud and bone without limme without Soule And therefore nothing is to bee vnderstood therein bodily but all is Ghostly to be vnderstood Thus the Homily and thus much thereof haue I thought good here at large to set downe to the end you may know that our Ancestors in this Iland notwithstanding your loud craks to the contrary haue not alwaies at leastwise in this point beene Papists Besides these testimonies of antiquity wee haue their customes also against you St Hierom reporteth that in the Primitiue times after the holy Communion was ended they were wont to feast together in the Church and to spend the residue of the Eucharist that remained Hesychius saith that it was the custome not to reserue till the morrow as your manner now adaies is but to burne what fragments soeuer remained of the consecrated Elements Evagrius and Nicephorus both doe testifie that the ancient custome of the Church of Constantinople was to send for little children from the schoole such as otherwise were barred from the Communion to giue the remainders of the Sacrament to them Had the Church in those daies verily beleeued that it had been the true and Real body of Christ doe you thinke they would so haue profaned it by feasting vpon it and bestowing it on children Or that they would with such impietie and sacrilege haue burned and consumed it in the fire It is altogether incredible As incredible therefore that they held it to be the Lords Body But of Antiquity enough Fiftly and lastly it implieth in it innumerable contradictions which according to the rule of Logick cannot