Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	faith_n	scripture_n	truth_n	3,205	5	5.9621	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77490	The unlavvfulnesse and danger of limited episcopacie· VVhereunto is subioyned a short reply to the modest advertiser and calme examinator of that treatise. As also the question of episcopacie discussed from Scripture and fathers. / By Robert Bailly pastor of Killwunning in Scotland.	Baillie, Robert, 1599-1662.	1641 (1641)	Wing B470; Thomason E174_4; ESTC R11030	25,095	50

possible a number of cleere and strong probations for to convince the mind of all attentive Readers Againe you tell us that the Principle may be granted Why do you mutter betwixt your teeth speak out cleerly and plainly for if you grant it your cause is lost if you deny it your next will be to answer the numerous arguments wherewith it is compassed not any one whereof you are bold to try In the third place that you may leave a posterne for escaping the Authors cleere and plaine principle That no office is lawful in Gods house which Christ has not appointed you transforme in an other mold to wit That none may administer the Word or Sacraments impose hands or use the keyes but such as Christ has appointed When thus you have taken leave to corrupt not the words only but the matter of your adversaries very principle Episcopall Courts acknowledged to be unlawfull Notwithstanding you see the Conclusion that flows from your owne proposition to wit that your high Commissioners your Chancellours and all the Rabble of your Officiall Courtiours doe meddle with Church censures contrary to Christs appointment This you do not deny but beare us in hand that these corruptions may be amended without noise or scandall It were good that your friends in the Convocation would preveen the honourable House of Commons that at last they would offer of free accord to passe from these long defended oppressing Courts before with greater noise and shame they be compelled to render to the Presbyterie these Rites whereof too long it has been dispossed by your Bishops fraud and force When you have broken in unseasonably upon the Hypothese of Episcopacie how marvellously doe you shift and extenuate the question The authors principle did speak expresly and soly of a distinct office in the Church of God you dare not say whether Episcopacie be any such thing or not All the distinction betwixt a Bishop and a Presbyter that you speak of is a higher and lower degree as it were of the same office Your Brethren will give you small thanks for this extenuation for you know they maintaine Episcopacie to be a true and distinct office from the Priesthood unto the which beside a Superioritie of degree the distinct faculty or power of Ordination and Jurisdiction essentially doth belong wherewith simple priests qua tales have nought at all to doe Beside the Authors principle and the probations thereof conclude all that you here doe require for they inferre the unlawfulnesse of any majoritie of one Church Officer over another without Christs appointment from so cleere texts of Scripture and so sound grounds of uncontroverted Divinity as you find not your selfe disposed to answer any one of them While as you require proof in that place for all the other parts of our Discipline you are unreasonable When you have given satisfactorie answers to all that is brought in the head of Episcopacy it will be then time and no sooner to proceed unto other Articles which so long as Episcopacy stands were needlesse to be spoken of In your contrary argumentations you undertake to prove a very strange conclusion Your great words extolling Episcopacie are full of vanitie That the order of Bishops is no lesse Apostolicall then the very Creed and to be received with no lesse faith then the very Scriptures yea with much more as it seems you import for you equal the Scriptures and Bishops in this that both are alike universall and unquestioned traditions but in this you seeme to give Bishops a surer ground then you grant to Scriptures for the ground whereupon you here and many of your fellowes elswhere embrace the Scriptures is sole Tradition but the grounds whereupon you receive the order of Bishops is not sole tradition but sundry passages of Scripture also as you alleage This your mighty Conclusion you prove not by any argument but onely by a number of big words borrowed from the Papists in this same and many more subjects You tell us that many Scriptures are alleaged for Episcopacy and that these Scriptures are exponed in your sense by all the Fathers yea by all Writers for fifteene hundred yeeres I hope that your selfe will finde it reason that wee be permitted to take your great words for nought but vaine ecchoes in the Aire while you be pleased to produce at least some one Scripture some one Father some one Writer which here you have not done Also while you would have us taking it on your naked word that all times all places all persons are for Bishops and that for such Bishops as you here expreslie describe to whom alone it belongs to rule as it is proper for the inferiour Presbyters to be ruled suffer us to say that you are greatly mistaken till wee have heard some one of your proofs Your patience will here I hope be the greater when you read in the subsequent writt for this our contradiction more Scriptures and Fathers then you in haste are like satisfactorily to answere The question of Episcopacie discust In that same short writ you will see all the Scriptures and the most pregnant passages of antiquity which the best learned on your side are accustomed to produce answered by the ancients themselves so cleerely that while you give some evidence to the contrarie Indifferent men will pronounce that wee have but too good reason to avow Episcopacie as your selfe in the same place describes it to be a plant which God never set in his garden to bee a meere stranger to the ancient Church for some hundred yeeres and ever while the Pope had usurped mainly by the help of his Episcopall jurisdiction many Antichristian priviledges Your consequences besides the palpable errour of your Antecedent are weake vitious and inconsequent though your Episcopacie be an Antichristian errour yet it will not follow that all people who are subject to it must be condemned as Antichristian and false worshipers of God for you know that one fault and one quality is not sufficient to put on the subject an absolute denomination What you adde of the fountaine and originall of Presbyteries it shews if not your ignorance yet your great forgetfulnesse not onely what Cyprian and other of the ancients have written of the Presbyteries in their times but also what your selfe within a few pages does write of Presbyteries which you could admit though with an Episcopall Moderator This is the matter of your first six pages To the Authors first argument the answer is Popish and nought upon the Authours Principle when you come to his Arguments your Answeres are shorter but nothing better The first Argument That these places of Scripture which of purpose and most punctually set downe the offices of Gods house especiallie the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles to Timothy and Titus speak not at all of your Bishops You first deny the Argument albeit in your deniall you are so rationall as neither to give any reason

this proposition All the lawfull offices of the Church are appointed by God in his holy word This serves both for a Major to the first argument and a Principle for all the ensuing discourse The Authour proves his Principle by a number of cleere Scriptures by many evident reasons deduced from Scripture and diverse grounds of the most intelligent adversaries what oppose you to all this That the reader may not observe how you speake to the point you cast up at the entry a quantity of dust to marre his sight you lay downe a Principle nothing pertinent to the purpose You propone a number of questions which come not neere the Proposition of your party when at last you come to your answer you will neither grant nor deny nor distinguish your adversaries Proposition nor dare you oppose any thing to the manifold arguments whereupon it is builded onely you fall in before the time and out of the due place upon the Hypothese of Episcopacie and by way of contrary argumentation with some old Popish flourishes of words you insinuate to the simple rather then prove to any intelligent minde that your Episcopacie as an Apostolike institution is to be embraced with a divine faith no lesse then the Creed or the most holy Scripture Your Principle is That all would be carefull to keep the publike peace as also Your impertinent principle concerns none but your selfe That no man for gain of things temporall would lose eternall Your Falcon flight is here so high your springs so far away your conduit pipes so crooked that he must have a skilled eye who can perceive the ways how you bring home your waters for any use to the purpose in hand Doe you thinke that these who petition the Parliament for rooting out of Episcopacie e P. 2. That men be not in their consultations so misled either by some appearances of godlinesse and faire colours of extraordinary zeale as thereby to hazard the disturbance of the common quiet which yet as the whole I le are now eye-witnesses is the proper crime of your dearest friends for who else to keepe upon their heads their tottering Mitres did draw the King and all his Dominions to the very brink of the late desperate danger The other halfe of your Principle were very expedient to bee enlarged and gravely applyed to these whom it concernes You cannot bee ignorant who these men are who these Yeeres past upon no other grounds that can be conjectured but only their own temporall advantages and worldly feares have betrayed the eternall truths of God Who these are who so long have sate still in a lethargick quietnesse and yet cannot bee gotten awaked to break off their dumbe silence when Arminianisme and all the heads of the Canterburian Popery from so many Pulpits and Presses have been over-spreading the whole Land The questions which so severely you urge to be answered Your first questions answered needed not to have been at all proponed Anent your first suppone we grant that salvation may be obtained under Episcopacie what then will this inferre that Bishops necessarily must be retained and that their rooting out is needlesse All your friends confesse that under the Pope and Cardinals salvation may be by all and is by the most obtained Will you therefore conclude that the ejection of the Pope and Cardinals out of England was a needlesse work Your friends do so indeed f Vide Ladens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 3. And so your Episcopall principles force them but I hope the Parliament to whom you submit your Treatise will be loth in haste by your perswasion to bring back the Pope and Cardinals Authoritie How many good works your Bishops have forced men to omit and how many evill to commit search the Registers of the House of Commons and you shall want no store Shall the Reformers be in great darknesse and the Martyrs miserable if in their days there was in the Church any thing which they were not able to amend or which came not in their minde to complain of Did any Martyr of the Reformed Church ever die in the quarrell of Episcopacie or Ceremonies Did their persecutors require them to seale any of these things with their bloud Was it any disgrace to these Martyrs that Queen Elizabeth rectified many things in King Edwards Liturgie and went beyond that Reformation which in their dayes was attained Your second questions are not unlike the first Also your second for their pertinencie All the Reformed World is fully agreed to have Episcopacie overthrown onely some few of the English Church for their own interest do oppose There is as great an harmony among all in setting up of Presbyteries and Synods as in casting out the old rubbish of Bishops and their Courts If some few of the English be scrupulous about the limits bounds and extent of the power of Synods It is no marvell Episcopall tyranny has bred and fostered more Schismes in England then have been heard of in all the Reformed Churches beside If this fountain of Schisme were once well stopped We make no question but as in Scotland Holland France Swize Geneva and many places in Germany there is no discord so like wayes in England one or two well governed generall Assemblies would amicably put an end to all the questions that are or need to be moved about the Discipline or any thing else whatsoever What you enquire further of the divine right of Presbyterie of the places of Scripture brought to prove it of the sense and consequences of the Scriptures In all reason you are obliged to heare with us great Patience avow that the Scripttures we bring do infer necessarily and cleerly our Concusion till you brought some materiall answer to the contrary The last of your Questions Your last Question answered is but a flash of your Rhetorick faculty of exaggeration your self must make answer to it for you do say that God discharges under pain of damnation all that is unlawfull and that every thing is unlawfull which is against the Word of God That Presbyters by the Word of God have the power of laying on the hands and of using the keyes you will shortly grant that therefore an Episcopacie should be permitted to spoile these Presbyters of the priviledges which God in his word has granted unto them or to usurpe unto themselves and devolve on their Officials the Rites of the inferiour Clergie you dare not deny to be a wrong which deserves amending At last you come to the purpose The Authors principle left unbrauled the Authours Principle but you finde it so hote that you dare not stand long upon it You tell us first that the Authours discourse upon this Principle is written with much art and eloquence for insinuation with the unwary Reader Who pleaseth to read the writ it selfe shall see that all the art of the Authour is in a very plain discourse to couch so briefly as is