Selected quad for the lemma: hand_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
hand_n	bishop_n	church_n	presbyter_n	4,517	5	10.4419	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36253	Separation of churches from episcopal government, as practised by the present non-conformists, proved schismatical from such principles as are least controverted and do withal most popularly explain the sinfulness and mischief of schism ... by Henry Dodwell ...	Dodwell, Henry, 1641-1711.	1679 (1679)	Wing D1818; ESTC R13106	571,393	694

had behaved themselves seditiously in their single capacities would not do so also when they were united and when their common interest still obliged them to do so when they might thereby so much better their disadvantages in their respective Presbyteries It is the humour of such Persons to unite against a common Adversary at least for a time how seditious soever they might be otherwise And certainly they might expect better condescensions from Persons as criminal as themselves who had themselves also many unreasonable things to be born with than from their more innocent equals who had Justice on their side much more than from their Superiors And what could any Ecclesiastical censures signifie if they who had been ejected singly might be thus allowed to confederate themselves into a Communion and a Presbytery independent on those from which they had been ejected Who would value Excommunication or Deprivation when they might so easily restore themselves into a condition as good as that from which they had been ejected and might at the same time so easily revenge themselves on those by whom they had been ejected by setting up another Government within their Jurisdiction whose acts must also be accounted as valid as their own These things shew that such a precedent of Presbyteries erected out of Persons over-voted in their particular Presbyteries would be injurious to the common interest of Government in general though the form were every where Presbyterian as well as to those particular Governours by whom they had been ejected and to those in whose Jurisdiction they were assembled And its being against the common interest of Government is as has been observed a great presumption that it is against Justice also § X BUT besides this presumption the same reasons of exception lye against the Justice of such a Presbytery as against the acts of single Presbyters I mention not the Canons that forbid all Churches to receive the Excommunicates of each other that put Communicants with them into the same condition with the Excommunicates themselves that deprive them all of the Communion of all those Churches who maintein a correspondence with each other in the observation of those Canons I mention not that common interest which at first induced the Governours of particular Churches to agree upon those Canons and obliges all even those that never received nor heard of those Canons yet to be determined by them in their practice on the same account as all even the most barbarous Nations are obliged by the Law of Nations though never explicitely received by them because these are as necessary for the common interest and correspondence of Ecclesiastical as the other are for those of Civil Societies Which consideration must extend the ratification of the censures of particular Churches to the Catholick Church as the Law of Nations is common to all Nations so that the Excommunicates of every particular Church must be so to the Catholick Church also And then sure it will be hard to understand how they who are de Jure out of the communion of all Churches can yet be in the Catholick Church or how they who have no right to be members of any Church can by their meeting together become a Church and become capable of Ecclesiastical Authority Which reason will in the consequence of it reach Schismaticks as well as Hereticks how little soever it be observed by our Brethren who are very little used to take in the rational rights of Government in general in their disputes concerning the Government of the Church § XI BUT besides the same reasons invalidate the acts of these Presbyteries which were urged against the acts of single Presbyters among them Whatever may be thought of such a Multitude of over-voted Presbyters in a Heathen Country where the right were primi occupantis yet where a Government is already possessed their encroaching on that must be as invalid as if they should take upon them to dispose of the goods of such Persons as were in actual possession whatever might be thought of what conveyances they might also make of goods that were under no propriety And the reason of these two cases is so exactly the same as the conveyances of power must in such a case be as invalid as the conveyance of property Besides according to the nature of Government which admits of no competition within its own Jurisdiction strangers how numerous soever immediately become Subjects by living in the Jurisdiction of another whatever they be in their own and that with this disadvantage also beyond the natural Subjects of the place that they can have no interest in so much of the Government as the Natives of the place may pretend to where the Government is Democratical And the acts of such Subjects how numerous soever must be invalid in matters of Government Now in this I believe our Adversaries will find themselves deeply concerned They who pretend to the most regular Ordination of them since the defection who were not immediately ordeined by Bishops can only say that the Presbyters by whom they were ordeined had received Episcopal Ordination and that they were ordeined by a full Presbytery of such Presbyters not of the greater part of the settled Presbytery of the place where they were ordeined or of any other but only of a Multitude of particular Presbyters from several parts who were over-voted in their several respective Presbyteries I believe they cannot give an instance in any place where the greater part of a settled Presbytery revolted from the Bishops to them I am sure they cannot justifie their ordinary successions by such Ordinations § XII AND 4. As the order of Presbytery which would be allowed in the Catholick Church must first appear to have been validly received in some particular Church and that particular Church must on the Principles now mentioned be some Episcopal Church as Presbyterian so no Orders can be presumed to have been validly received in such a Church without the prevailing suffrages of the Presbyteries Let none be surprized at my speaking of an Episcopal Church as Presbyterian I do it only that I may in dealing with our Adversaries accommodate my self to their Notions It is therefore certain that in the Ordination of Presbyters after the Episcopal way the Bishop does not lay on his own hands alone but has the assistance of several other Presbyters who are present to lay on their hands together with him On this account it is that several of our Adversaries who are sensible of their obligation in interest to do it do justifie the validity of those Orders they have received by Episcopal Ordination They consider the whole act only as the act of an Episcopal Presbytery and consider the Bishop himself in that act only as an ordinary Presbyter who cannot lose the power he has as a common Presbyter by being made a President of the whole Presbytery Yet in that act they consider him only as an ordinary Presbyter because they think it would

independence on him Nay the Emperour Valentinian though he was chosen by the Army yet when he was chosen he would not endure to be obliged by them even to the nomination of a Colleague though he after did it freely So though the Presbyteries had a power in the vacancy of Sees to do all things necessary for the Succession of a new Bishop yet by the Rules of all successive Governments they can only be supposed to have it in trust and that trust must be presumed limited according to the design of the power by which it was committed to them It does not therefore follow that they can forbear the Election of a Successor and much less that they can justifie their Assembling and Acting without him when he is once named Their power may then for all this expire and they return to the condition of ordinary Subjects whose acts I believe our Adversaries themselves cannot think valid if they presume to give Authority And the reason is plain because they cannot be supposed still to have the power after they have given it out of their own hands And therefore afterwards they can neither validly exercise it nor validly dispose of it otherwise against the fundamental Laws for settling Succession in the Society for which they are supposed to be intrusted § XIV THIS Argument will hold though this right of Presidency were purely humane Yet even so Persons who have given the power out of their own hands cannot recall it again at pleasure but must be obliged to stand to their own act And as this will oblige such as were at first free if any were such in matters alienable by them and those by whom the Laws for Succession were first made so much more will it oblige posterity who must find themselves already confined by the acts of their Predecessors These can pretend only such a right as they have received and therefore if they exceed that they usurp a right which was never theirs and therefore all they do must be invalid Indeed if the supreme right of managing their own Assemblies had been by divine right unalienable from the Primitive Presbyters they who once had it might therefore challenge it again notwithstanding any Contracts whatsoever for parting with it because the Contracts themselves were invalid and therefore could not deprive them of a right which they had before they made those Contracts but must leave them in the same condition wherein they found them But what is that to Posterity Suppose the modern Presbyters of the Ages I am speaking of had never given their ●ishops the power of presiding over their Assemblies Suppose we that they were not obliged to stand to the Contracts of their Predecessors in this matter All that would thence follow is only this that they are now in the same condition as if those Contracts had never been made But though they have not alienated a right that does not prove they have it unless they had it antecedently to the alienation But that is a thing posterity cannot pretend to They never had this right given them and therefore cannot pretend to have it though they never alienated it And they are at least thus far obliged by the acts of their predecessors as they were thereby hindred from having this power given them whether they be or be not obliged by those acts of theirs which may pretend to have alienated it from them And till our Brethrens Predecessors who were then ordeined can prove that they once had this right given them I shall not be concerned whether they have alienated it or not nor consequently whether they be bound to stand to the alienation of their Predecessors § XV BUT if the power of Episcopacy be Divine and all that men can do in the Case be only to determine the Person not to confine his power then certainly it will follow that though men may this way make him which is all our Brethren can pretend to prove yet they may not therefore after he is made either deprive him or make another or exercise the Government themselves without him as freely as before For as soon as that power is given him by God they immediately become his Subjects and have then no more power to prescribe limits to his Authority than they have to do so to the Authority of God himself Nor am I here obliged to take the advantage I might take from the peculiar way by which I have proved Ecclesiastical power to be derived from God It is sufficient for my purpose that it be no otherwise from God than that is of every supreme Civil Magistrate It is not usual for Kings to be invested in their Office by other Kings but by their Subjects Yet when they are invested that does not in the least prejudice the absoluteness of their Monarchy where the fundamental constitutions of the respective places allow it them much less does it give any power over them to the Persons by whom they are invested But they are then and afterwards as much his Subjects as any others are who have no part in the Solemnity And therefore though it had been true that the Presbyters at first had not only elected but placed the Bishop over themselves as St. Hierome expresses it nay supposing those same Presbyters who had chosen him should have also used all the ceremonies of Consecration to him that they had invested him in his Office by Prayer and Imposition of hands Eutych Annal. Alex. Ed. Oxon. p. 31. as Eutychius pretends nay supposing that no Bishops had any more to do in his Consecration than Kings have to do in the Inaugurations of our ordinary Kings all this I say being supposed which is more than they can prove by any competent testimony it will not thence follow that those same Presbyters who chose and Consecrated him must have any more power over him or to act any thing without him or to withdraw their obedience from him after he is so chosen and Consecrated than those same Persons have over the Princes who are Inaugurated by them and all their presumptuous practices of such a power may notwithstanding all this be not only as punishable but as invalid as the like presumptions would be in the Inaugurations of Princes Nor is it only true that this may be so though that alone be sufficient to weaken our Adversaries confidence in this way of arguing but indeed it must be so whenever the Person so invested is supposed to be invested in the supreme power and whenever the Society over which he is placed is also independent on all other Societies Such a Person can never be placed in his power if he may not be placed in it by them who after he is placed in it must themselves be his Subjects as much as others unless he be placed in it by his Predecessor which no Society can safely depend on for a constant Rule of Succession In his own Society he can therefore have none of