Selected quad for the lemma: power_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	able_a	body_n	soul_n	3,151	5	5.4111	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66440	The pattern of ecclesiastical ordination, or, Apostolick separation being a discourse upon Acts the 13. 4,5 ... / by Edward Wakeman ...	Wakeman, Edward.	1664 (1664)	Wing W275; ESTC R5294	23,139	44

John 11. v. 49 50. and 18 14. They would easily confess that it is too possible there may be more employed in the Building of Gods Ark the Church than shall be preserved in it To them who imagine an Infallibility of the Spirit accompanying all true Ordination and dare call them Lay-men which arrive not at the same perfection of knowledge which they dream themselves Masters of when indeed to differ from them in any one fond opinion is enough to fetch us under this Censure the woful experience of their too fruitful Errors is a sufficient answer And Lastly that Holy Orders consist in being qualified in some measure with abilities fit for the Execution of them hath not any Authority so far as I can find from holy Writ For although God do require this Ability in every one in some more in some less yet he hath not pass'd any promise to tye it to the Churches Ordination for the Comforter is no otherwise promised than other Graces of special Favour upon condition of our receiving them And we have too sad experience that we do often Grieve and Quench this Holy Spirit of God in our Understanding as well as in our Conscience Whatsoever therefore it is it must needs be an Accession to the Priesthood and we are to acknowledge God the Author of a double Blessing when he provides Bezaliels and Aboliabs for the work of this his Spiritual Tabernacle Whereas he hath then promised this Power of Orders to all that enter upon his more Immediate service when he directed the Apostles to lay us down that pattern of Ordination It being a Gift of perpetual Necessity in the Church which if at any time it were denyed would open a gap to confusion in the Dispensation or Administration of holy things which can in no wise proceed from the God of Order and Decorum It remains that the Gift of the Holy Ghost in Ordination is nothing else but that Authority and Right the Ordained have in the Administration of Divine Mysteries That Gift whereby the Priest not to speak here of the Bishops Power hath a kind of property in Dispensing Gods holy written word and Sacraments in Offering up the publick prayers of the Congregation for them and in Pronouncing Gods sentence of pardon or condemnation upon them And this is properly our Inward Calling Those other gifts of Grace and Knowledge such as Arts and Languages and Virtues which may precede our Ordination as they are Motives to any man so qualified to offer himself to the Church of Gods service are an Invitation and in that sense an Inward Calling As they do enable any man for the performance of his Duty they are not a warrantable Calling but a Blessing and do not confer any Right upon him to the Priesthood but only strengthen his hands in the Discharge of it Were this rightly considered the world would not be so full of mistakes concerning the Call to the Function But do we not now rather wonder that the Holy Ghost reserves not this so great a Gift in his own hands than that he owns the Donation of it It is a Power over the Consciences over the Souls of men That by which our Saviour differences God himself from the most Potent upon earth at the 10. of St. Mat. Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul And can Man confer this Power of his own authority No 'T is the Lord of the Harvest that must send these Labourers into his Vineyard and he never sends them into it by a False Key through a Back Dore over the Wall or in at a Window But hath given Order and Power to his Church to let them in by a solemn Consecration of them to his Service And so I am fallen upon The second particular or second part of their Commission Their External Commission for what they undertake given them by the laying on of hands They on whom the Prophets had layed their hands They were sent forth by the holy Ghost In the days of old there were three sorts of Persons that were Anointed The King The Priest and the Prophet who though they were designed and Appointed by God had yet some External Ceremonious actions performed towards them by Man And thus in the New Testament though the Holy Ghost be the Unction yet there is no way for it to be applied but by the Laying on of hands Which Imposition of hands is here put for all the ceremonies of Ordination as Preaching afterwards for the Apostles Office by a kind of Synechdoche a part being being put for the whole and is much us'd in Holy Scripture The more essential ceremony is the form of words used with it Receive the holy Ghost c. So that that late observation of the use of Imposition of hands upon Lay-men for Election into their Office had better have been spared than published to be layed open as it is to the giddy mis-interpretation of troublesome unsetled times and quarrelsome irreconcileable Spirits For What if the same were there used which was long enough ago confess'd Is therefore a Presbyter and an Elder of the same Sanhedrim all one both equally consecrated and set apart from the People These will be the collections of some readers Whereas if the Author had but mentioned the Forms of our Ordination as he hath done those of the Jews it had been an easie matter for every one to see some difference between Sit tibi facultas Judicandi and Accipe Spiritum Sanctum And those two Ceremonies some of the Church of Rome cited by Franciscus de Sancta Clara upon our 36. Article acknowledge sufficient for Ordination reckoning Unction to be but a mistake of the Greek Fathers expressions by understanding Material where they meant Spiritual All excepting some Sycophants of the Court of Rome that affirm the Pope can make a Priest by a Priest nay though never so far distant by saying only Esto sacerdos count them necessary chiefly in respect of the Apostles practise which in things not depending upon circumstances variable stands for a Law to their Successors but then withall perhaps in as much as it is scarce possible for the Church to express in fewer signs her Commission without which we can have no assurance of the Holy Ghosts Having in the beginning of this discourse shewed that Barnabas and Saul and others were manumi'zd by the Church even in those very times wherein the Holy Ghost was shed forth in an ample measure and that Men have always had to do in giving Commissions to all such as are to execute any office in the Church I might from hence press the necessity of a calling from the Church which Calvine himself urges from this place in the 4. book the 3. ch the 14 Section of his Institutes in these words Sic Paulum quoque Singulari praerogativâ Dominus per seipsum designavit ut Disciplinâ Ecclesiasticae Vocation is interim uteretur But since this