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
A44308	The non-conformists champion, his challenge accepted, or, An answer to Mr. Baxter's Petition for peace written long since, but now first published upon his repeated provocations and importune clamors, that it was never answered : whereunto is prefixed an epistle to Mr. Baxter with some remarks upon his Holy Common-wealth, upon his Sermon to the House of Commons, upon his Non-conformists plea for peace and upon his Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet. / by Ri. Hooke.	R. H. (Richard Hooke); Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Petition for peace.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Holy commonwealth.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Sermon of repentance.	1682 (1682)	Wing H2608; ESTC R28683	62,409	170

the Church of England to be the best and well knows the Reverence the most or at least the most Learned in the Reformed Churches have for it he heartily wishes and desires until it be reviewed and some Alterations and Additional Forms made the Ministers who dislike some Clauses and Expressions would not therefore totally lay aside the use of the Book of Common-prayer but reade those parts against which there can be no exception which would be the best instance of declyning those marks of distinction which his Majesty so much labours and desires to remove Have you herein submitted to his Majestie 's Declaration Have you read any thing of the Common Prayers and thereby instanced your desire in compliance with his Majestie 's to remove and decline those marks of distinction What you can lay hold of to your purpose in his Declaration you greedily catch at the rest you pass by However you pretend to submit to his Majestie 's Declaration he therein complains your Party of which you are the Leaders have not dealt candidly with him that there are amongst them unquiet and restless Spirits who continue their Bitterness against the Church and indeavour to raise Jealousies against his Majesty and have unseasonably printed published and dispersed a Declaration to his Majestie 's Reproach and since the printing this Declaration you say you submit to several seditious Pamphlets and Quaeries have been published and scattered abroad to infuse Dislike and Jealousies into the Hearts of the People Behold your Submission to his Majestie 's Declaration You next tell us of your own Proposals of the Primitive Episcopacy and your own Liturgy What your Primitive Episcopacy is your Jus Divinum Ministrii Anglicani speaks That there is no Bishop in the sense of our Church no Episcopus Pastorum but all Presbyters are equally and in a parity Episcopi Gregis and what your own Liturgy is you have let us see such a one as you would have for your selves in opposition to that of the Church and yet though you would have it you will not be bound to use it neither which is as much as to say If you may not have your own fancied frame of Government and publick Worship and that with Liberty too to throw them off when your fancie changeth you receive mighty wrong and as you said before all the Protestant Churches so you say now all the World will think it strange Bishop Vsher you mentioned before you now bring him in again after Bishop Hall and give them the Titles of Reverend Learned and Moderate 'T is well Bishop Hall now he is at rest hath from you so kind a Character Time was when your combined Forces were bent singly against him you fought neither with small nor great but onely with Bishop Hall and when Smectymnuus was not able to dispute him down your Rabshakeh railed him down and however you now complement him you have shewn your present Esteem of him and of the Primitive Episcopacy in reprinting your Smectymnuus now since his Majestie 's Restoration and if as you say he and Bishop Vsher have published to the World that much less than that would have served to a fraternal Peace you publish to the World you have been obstinate and averse to Peace and Unity who when you had the Law in your hands would not hearken to those by you confessed Moderate Terms of Unity and Peace and your own Pens will bear witness against you that you are now justly repulsed who would not yield when fair means of Accommodation were offered as to Re-ordination which you often mention and here it comes in again 1. We deny your Presbyterian and Independent so called Ordination to be really and indeed any Ordination at all and till you prove it such you charge the Bishops falsely wih requiring Re-ordination 2. Many who have been under your hands have of themselves without being required judging your pretended Ordination a Nullity desired Ordination from the Bishops 3. The Canon supposed of the Apostles toucheth not this Case nor our Bishops who neither do re-ordain nor allow it Re-ordaining rightly so called being the Ordaining again of a Deacon or Priest by a Bishop who was by him known to have been by a Bishop before ordained 4. Bishop Bancrost speaks of those who were ordained by Presbyters where were no Bishops to ordain them as in many of the Reformed Churches abroad But we had Bishops till you pull'd them down Nay blessed be God we had Bishops after you had pull'd them down and till his Majesty set them up again and those who would in all the late times might have had and very many had Ordination from their hands 't is therefore a most gross Untruth and 't is strange such Godly men as you should dare to utter and publish it That your young Preachers by the old Presbyters sent were born in an Age and Countrey which required Ordination by Parochial Pastors without Diocesans if there had been no Bishops you might then have said the Age and Countrey required lest the Church should fail Ordination from Parochial Pastors but I say and you to your Sorrow know there were Bishops all that time divers English and also Scotish and Irish Bishops who though many of them were latent yet were and might be addressed to and did all along confer holy Orders there are at least five English Bishops living to my knowledge and you may know more having the Honour to be joyned with them in Commission which all good men are sorry is not on your part managed temperately and humbly prudently and piously to the Peace of the Church by your selves chiefly but for all our sins long and lamentably divided R. 11. Is a repeated Complaint of their Afflictions and an Accusation of the Bishops as their Afflictors which is already answered The Twelfth and Fourteenth are the same and shall be considered together The 13 th is hammered on the same Anvil with the 11 th That they are the Godly party and afflicted the Episcopal are cruel and persecute them for the Cause of Christ How will Christ take it of you to cast out from the Ministery or Communion of the Church or to grieve and punish all that dare not conform to you in these Matters Ans How will Christ take it from you to cast out all Bishops and Episcopal men who durst not conform to you in your Matters The Bishops Proceedings are by gentle methods 1. They Admonish 2. Suspend 3. Silence before they deprive any and none are deprived but for foul and incorrigible Crimes but you eject at first and totally for no Crime for no Breach of the Laws and Orders but even for that the Episcopal persons stand for the Laws and Orders established You trod down the Stars of Christ's planting as the Stones in the street All those places of Scripture misapplied by you may against you be rightly applied And whereas elsewhere they say to this purpose Sad Experience tels

the other they are not the fullest vessels that make the greatest sound 't is not the best cause that is most clamorous the Bishops cause was not their own more than the King 's the Parliaments and the Churches having been by Law established and continued except in the Popish and Presbyterian Persecutions ever since the Reformation Therefore the Bishops judged it needless to give themselves and the World the trouble of any tedious Defence But the Presbyterians pleading against the Laws and established Order thought it necessary to bestir themselves and to make long Apologies for so high an Attempt Therefore they have left no Stone unturned have sent Paper after Paper and posted them through all parts of the Nation to keep up their Interest in the Party and their Party's prejudice against the Churches Liturgy I suppose it is hereby plain to all indifferent Judges that the Blame is not on the Bishops but the Presbyterians that the Treaty had not its desired success And to manifest it farther since they justifie themselves and wash their hands and cry We are innocent They must be told 1. That they have not duly prepared for an Accommodation before the Treaty 2. They have not demeaned themselves candidly and ingeniously in the Treaty 1. They have not duly prepared for an Accommodation before the Treaty There is no hope of a fair Agreement between two dissenting Parties so long as on the one part there remain causes of Jealousie which will not be removed Now since the Prebyterians do lie under the Scandal of holding divers Tenets in reference to his Majesty Episcopacy and the Liturgy to which if they still adhere they render themselves uncapable of a Treaty it highly concerns them to purge themselves by a full and free Declaration of their Judgments in those particulars which have an immediate influence upon the Treaty 1. Since the Presbyterians both from the Pulpit and the Press have taught That it is lawfull to resist Kings and have stirred up the People to arm against their lawfull Sovereign upon pretence of Reformation in Religion herein joyning with the Jesuits That Heretical Kings may be resisted and deposed as many of their Books and Sermons declare For the undeceiving of the People and clearing themselves of the guilt of that antichristian and impious Tenet they were bound in duty and conscience to have publickly disavowed that Doctrine and to have published to the World that they hold the Doctrine of our Church That Kings are Sacred above all coercive Power That they are Supreme the Highest Powers onely punishable by God and not upon any pretence of Liberty Property Law or Religion be it never so specious nay be it never so real to be resisted or opposed 2. For that they maintain and publickly teach the Civil Magistrate not to be Superior to the Ecclesiastical Governors They were obliged to make a publick acknowledgment of the King's Supremacy in all causes and over all persons Ecclesiastical in short to have offered to take the Oath of Supremacy The Denial of which is a second Opinion wherein some of them symbolize with the Papists 3. For that they have in their Writings so publickly opposed the Episcopal Government covenanted against it taken it away and in the place thereof set up another Government they should expresly have owned the Episcopal Government now restored and have promised to be obedient unto it 4. For that they had cast out and laid aside all set forms of publick Prayer Ordination and other Administrations their Directory being a very cypher neither used by themselves nor imposed upon any other every Minister being left to his own dictates in publick holy Offices they should previously have declared their Judgments that a set form of publick Prayer is in every Church necessary to which all in that Church should be obliged 5. For that their Party have taken away the Form of Prayer by Law appointed and forbidden all Ministers under great penalty to use it they should have declared that the substance of it was agreeable to God's Word onely they judged it needed some Alteration and that if his Majesty with the Bishops should consent to the Amendment of such things as by their joint Judgments should be thought needfull they would submit unto it and be obliged ever to use it in their Ministrations These things were necessary should have been precedaneous to the Treaty and would much have conduced to an happy Accommodation Such an ingenuous Confession and Retractation beseemed them and would have melted his Majesty and the Bishops and all good Christians would have wept with them and rejoyced for them and embraced them with the same Affection that Joseph did his repenting Brethren and indeed it was a wonderfull condescention in his Majesty to appoint the Bishops and a high Obedience in the Bishops to his Majesty to treat at all with them without and before such a Confession Surely till they do retract those not onely erroneous but some of them prodigious and most dangerous and unchristian Opinions they in vain go about to persuade the World that ●●ey cannot submit to our Liturgy upon the Principles of Conscience 'T is not Conscience that swallows Camels and streins at Gnats 't is not Conscience that sees Motes and winks at Beams 't is not Conscience that neglects the weighty things of the Law and tithes Mint and Cummin Certainly they must have abundance of Charity that can believe be their words never so smooth that these men have no Motive but Conscience to oppose our Church Ceremonies do out of Conscience scruple at a Surplice a Gesture a Set form a Word obsolete or improper whose Conscience could swallow Sedition Rebellion could make War against their Sovereign King could overturn all Order both civil and sacred and fill the Church and State with Bloud and Confusion One thing more which evidences their Insincerity as to an amicable Treaty as if they resolved it should take no effect and feared lest Duty Piety Conscience and Reason should work upon their Brethren to submit to the Form of Worship now likely to be restored they sent to all of their Judgments in the Nation to send up wha● Objections they could make against the Common-prayer and advised them to hold off and not to conform by any means for their standing out was the onely way to obtain their own terms and liberty their numbers being so considerable that in case of their deprivation there were not Conformable Ministers enough to supply their places and so the King and the Church must be forced to indulge and continue them Surely this was not consciencious and discovered their Design to continue a Division and keep up a Party Though herein their Politicks failed them the Bishops sented the Design and provided for the Churches against the Vacancy 2. They have not demeaned themselves candidly and fairly in the Treaty which themselves in their two Papers the Petition for Peace and the Grand