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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

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64128	A sermon preached at the consecration of two archbishops and ten bishops, in the Cathedral Church of S. Patrick in Dublin, January 27, 1660 by Jeremie Taylor ...	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1661 (1661)	Wing T391; ESTC R23465	25,378	54

〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so St. Mark as of him that is Servant of all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so St. Iohn such a principality as he hath that washes the feet of the weary traveller or if you please take it in the words of our Blessed Lord himself that He that will be chief among you let him be your Minister meaning that if under Christs Kingdom you desire rule possibly you may have it but all that Rule under him are Servants to them that are rul'd and therefore you get nothing by it but a great labour and a buisy imployment a careful life and a necessity of making severe accounts But all this is nothing but the general measures I cannot be useful or understood unless I be more particular The particulars we shall best enumerate by recounting those great conjugations of worthy offices and actions by which Christian Bishops have blessed and built up Christendom for because we must be followers of them as they were of Christ the recounting what they did worthily in their generations will not onely demonstrate how useful how profitable how necessary Episcopacy is to the Christian Church but it will at the same time teach us our duty by what services we are to benefit the Church in what works we are to be imployed and how to give an account of our Stewardship with joy 1. The Christian Church was founded by Bps not onely because the Apostles who were Bishops were the first Preachers of the Gospel and Planters of Churches but because the Apostolical men whom the Apostles used in planting and disseminating Religion were by all Antiquity affirm'd to have been Diocesan Bishops insomuch that as St. Epiphanius witnesses there were at the first disseminations of the faith of Christ many Churches who had in them no other Clergy but a Bishop and his Deacons and the Presbyters were brought in afterwards as the harvest grew greater But the Bishops names are known they are recorded in the book of Life and their praise is in the Gospel such were Timothy and Titus Clemens and Linus Marcus and Dyonisius Onesimus and Cains Epaphroditas and St. Iames our Lords Brother Evodius and Simeon all which if there be any faith in Christians that gave their lives for a testimony to the faith and any truth in their Stories and unless we who believe Thucydides and Plutarch Livy and Tacitus think that all Church story is a perpetual Romance and that all the brave men the Martyrs and the Doctors of the Primitive Church did conspire as one man to abuse all Christendom for ever I say unless all these impossible suppositions be admitted all these whom I have now reckoned were Bishops fixed in several Churches and had Dioceses for their Charges The consequent of this consideration is this If Bishops were those upon whose Ministery Christ founded and built his Church let us consider what great wisdom is required of them that seem to be Pillars The Stewards of Christs Family must be wise that Christ requires and if the order be necessary to the Church wisdom cannot but be necessary to the Order For it is a shame if they who by their Office are Fathers in Christ shall by their unskilfulness skilfulness be but Babes themselves understanding not the secrets of Religion the mysteries of Godliness the perfections of the Evangelical Law all the advantages and disadvantages in the Spiritual life A Bishop must be exercis'd in Godliness a man of great experience in the secret conduct of Souls not satisfyed with an ordinary skill in makeing homilies to the people and speaking common exhortations in ordinary cases but ready to answer in all secret inquiries and able to convince the gainsayers and to speak wisdom amongst them that are perfect If the first Bishops laid the foundation their Successours must not onely preserve whatsoever is fundamental but build up the Church in a most holy Faith taking care that no Heresie sap the foundation and that no hay or rotten vvood be built upon it and above all things that a most Holy life be superstructed upon a holy and unreproveable Faith So the Apostles laid the foundation and built the vvalls of the Church and their Successors must raise up the roof as high as Heaven For let us talk and dispute eternally vve shall never compose the controversies in Religion and establish truth upon unalterable foundations as long as Men handle the vvord of God deceiptfully that is vvit designes and little artifices and saecular partialities and they will for ever do so as long as they are proud or covetous It is not the difficulty of our questions or the subtilty of our adversaries that makes disputes interminable but We shall never cure the itch of disputing or establish Unity unless we apply our selves to humility and contempt of riches If we will be contending let us contend like the Olive and the Vine who shall produce best and most fruit not like the Aspine and the Elm which shall make most noyse in a wind All other methods are a beginning at a wrong end And as for the people the way to make them conformable to the wise and holy rules of faith and government is by reducing them to live good lives When the Children of Israel gave themselves to gluttony and drunkenness and filthy lusts they quickly fell into abominable idolatries and St. Paul says that men make shipwrack of their faith by putting away a good conscience for the mystery of faith is best preserv'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a pure conscience saith the same Apostle secure but that and we shall quickly end our disputes and have an obedient and conformable people but else never 2. As Bishops were the first Fathers of Churches and gave them being so they preserve them in being For without Sacraments there is no Church or it will be starv'd and die and without Bishops there can be no Priests and consequently no Sacraments and that must needs be a supream order from whence ordination it self proceeds For it is evident and notorious that in Scripture there is no record of ordination but an Apostolical hand was in it one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the chief one of the superiour and Ruling Clergy and it is as certain in the descending ages of the Church the Bishop always had that power it was never denyed to him and it was never imputed to Presbyters and St. Hierom himself when out of his anger against Iohn Bp. of Ierusalem endeavoured to equal the Presbyter with the Bishop though in very many places he spake otherwise yet even then also and in that heat he excepted ordination acknowledging that to be the Bps peculiar And therefore they who go about to extinguish Episcopacy do as Iullan did they destroy the Presbytery and starve the Flock and take away their Shepheards and dispark their pastures and tempt Gods providence to extraordinaries and put the people to hard shifts and turn the

A SERMON Preached at the Consecration of two Archbishops and ten Bishops in the Cathedral Church of S. Patrick in DUBLIN Ianuary 27. 1660. By Ieremie Taylor D. D. Ld. Bishop of Downe and Connor Sal liquefit ut condiat DVBLIN Printed by W. Bladen for Iohn North Bookseller in Castlestreet Anno Dom. 1661. To the Christian Reader MY Obedience to the Commands of the Right Honourable the Lords Iustices and the most Reverend and Learned Primate and to the desires of my Reverend Brethren put it past my inquiry whether I ought to Publish this following Sermon I will not therefore excuse it and say it might have advantages in the Delivery which it would want in the Reading and the eare would be kind to the Piety of it which was apparent in the design when the eye would be severe in its censure of those arguments which as they could not be longer in that measure of time so would have appeared more firm if they could have had liberty to have been pursued to their utmost issue But reason lies in a little room and Obedience in less And although what I have here said may not stop the mouths of Men resolved to keep up a faction yet I have said enough to the sober and pious to them who love Order and hearken to the voice of the Spouse of Christ to the Loving and to the Obedient And for those that are not so I have no argument fit to be used but Prayer and readiness to give them a reason when they shall modestly demand it In the mean time I shall onely desire them to make use of those truths which the more learned of their party have by the evidence of fact been forced to confess Rivet affirms that it descended ex veteris aevi reliquiis that Presbyters should be assistants or conjoyned to the Bishops who is by this confessed to be the principal in the imposition of hands for Ordination VValo Messalinus acknowledges it to be rem antiquissimam a most ancient thing that these two Orders viz of Bishops and Presbyters should be distinct even in the middle or in the beginning of the next age after Christ. Dd. Blondell places it to be 35. years after the death of S. John Now then Episcopacy is confessed to be of about 1600. years continuance and if before this they can shew any Ordination by mere Presbyters by any but an Apostle or an Apostolical man and if there were not visibly a distinction of powers and persons relatively in the Ecclesiastical Government or if they can give a rational account why they who are forced to confess the Honour and distinct Order of Episcopacy for about 16. ages should in the dark interval of 35. years in which they can pretend to no Monument or Record to the contrary yet make unlearned scruples of things they cannot colourably prove if I say they can reasonably account for these things I for my part will be ready to confess that they are not guilty of the greatest the most unreasonable and inexcusable schism in the world But else they have no colour to palliate the unlearned crime For will not all wise men in the world conclude that the Church of God which was then Holy not in title onely and designe but practically and materially and persecuted and not immerged in secular temptations could not all in one instant joyn together to alter that form of Church Government which Christ and his Apostles had so recently established and without a Divine warrant destroy a Divine institution not onely to the confusion of the Hierarchy but to the ruine of their own Souls It were strange that so great a change should be and no good man oppose it In toto orbe decretum est so St. Hierom. All the world consented in the advancement of the Episcopal Order And therefore if we had no more to say for it yet in prudence and piety we cannot say they would innovate in so great a matter But I shall enter no further upon this enquirie onely I remember that it is not very many Months since the Bigots of the Popish party cryed out against us vehemently and inquired VVhere is your Church of England since you have no Vnity for your Ecclesiastick head of Vnity your Bishops are gone And if we should be desirous to verify their argument so as indeed to destroy Episcopacy VVe should too much advantage Popery and do the most imprudent and most impious thing in the world But blessed be God who hath restored that Government for which Our late King of glorious memory gave his blood And that me thinks should very much weigh with all the Kings true hearted Subjects who should make it Religion not to rob that glorious Prince of the greatest honour of such a Martyrdom For my part I think it fit to rest in those words of another Martyr St. Cyprian Si quis cum Episcopo non sit in Ecclesia non esse He that is not with the Bishop is not in the Church that is he that goes away from him and willingly separates departs from Gods Church and whether he can then be with God is a very material consideration and fit to be thought on by all that think heaven a more eligible good then the interests of a faction and the importune desire of rule can countervail However I have in the following papers spoken a few things which I hope may be fit to perswade them that are not infinitely prejudic'd and although two or three good arguments are as good as two or three hundred yet my purpose here was to prove the dignity and necessity of the Office and Order Episcopal onely that it might be as an Oeconomy to convey notice and remembrances of the great duty incumbent upon all them that undertake this great charge The Dignity and the Duty take one another by the hand and are born together onely every Sheep of the Flock must take care to make the Bishops duty as easy as it can by humility and love by Prayer and by Obedience It is at the best very difficult but they who oppose themselves to Government make it harder and uncomfortable But take heed if thy Bishop hath cause to complain to God of thee for thy perversness and uncharitable walking thou wilt be the looser And for Vs VVe can onely say in the words of the Prophet VVe will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people But Our comfort is in God for we can do nothing without him but in him we can do all things And therefore VVe will pray Domine dabis pacem nobis omnia enim opera nostra operatus es in nobis God hath wrought all Our works within Vs and therefore he will give Vs Peace and give Vs his Spirit Finally Brethren pray for Us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorifyed even as it is with you and that we may be