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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36083	A discourse concerning excommunication, as executed by officials, and concerning the common law writts, de excommunicato capiendo and de cautione admittenda, for the punishment of persons excommunicated and their deliverance from the punishment vvherin is examined whether the execution of the former as executed by many, be not a profanation of a great ordinance of God, whether by the second the subjects is many cases be not unwarrantably oppressed : as also by the difficult granting of the other, which is a common law writt, and the right of every subject to be obtained without difficulty : discoursed in a letter to an honourable friend / by one who is a friend to English liberty.	One who is a friend to English liberty.	1680 (1680)	Wing D1579; ESTC R6708	18,986	26

A DISCOURSE Concerning EXCOMMUNICATION As Executed by Officials And concerning the Common Law Writts De Excommunicato capiendo and De Cautione admittenda For the punishment of persons Excommunicated and their Deliverance from the punishment VVherein is Examined Whether the Execution of the former as Executed by many be not a profanation of a great Ordinance of God Whether by the second the Subjects in many Cases be not unwarrantably oppressed As also by the difficult granting of the other which is a Common Law Writt and the right of every Subject to be obtained without difficulty Discoursed in a Letter to an Honourable Friend by one who is a Friend to the English Liberty Wrote before the Parliament which Sat from March 1678 to the end of May 1679 and now published Acts. 19. 15. Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you Job 6. 25. How forcible are right words But what doth your arguing reprove Hujus Scilicet Papae potestatem huic cum divino munere sublatam esse manifestum est ne quid superesset quo non plane fractam illius vim esse constaret leges omn●s decreta atque instituta quae ab Authore Episcopo Romano profecta sunt prorsus abroganda censuimus Epist Hen. 8. praesixa libro cui Titulus Reformatio Legum Eccles impr Londini Anno 1641. London Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheap-side 1680. To his highly honoured Friend J. B. Esq Honoured Sir THE charitable design of this Paper is amongst the many oppressed which His Most Sacred Majesty in conjunction with His two Houses of Parliament hath made to go free to shew you one species of Prisoners whom no Parliament hath had leisure as yet to take notice of who beseech your Honours that you would also allow them to be Prisoners of hope being such as no Act of Habeas Corpus will relieve The Adversaries of the Non-conformists could not be satisfied that their Ministers were outed of their livings and many of them of their whole Subsistence for themselves Wives and Children and by another Act forbidden to reside in any place where they might expect a relief from the Charity of good People but many of them have been pursued to Excommunication upon the Statutes for not coming to their Parish Church though certainly they being Ministers of the Gospel were themselves obliged to Preach on Lords Days and being excommunicated they have had the old Common Law writ de excommunicato capiendo taken out and some of them upon it have been detained 3 4 7 Years nor at the end of that Term have their merciless Enemies been willing to let them out or let them take the advantage of the Law to come out and amongst the ordinary people not a few have been thus used to the ruine of many Families the exhausting great Sums of Money most injuriously from many persons and the prejudicing the Trade and Commerce of the Nation and all this by the abuse and prophanation of a great Ordinance of God that I mean of Excommunication using what was ordained of God for the purging of his Church from persons not fit for its holy communion meerly to serve their Lusts of malice and revenge and to keep worthy Patriots from being chosen Members to represent their Countreys in your Honourable Assemblies among many instances of which nature you had one the last Parliament at Berwick in the case of Mr Rushworth and you have one yet more notorious this Parliament in Leicestershire as if their Excommunications disseised men of their Freehold or which indeed looks more likely the Subjects subjection to their Courts brought them into the Notion of Bond-men A practice which if not timely by your Honours taken notice of and restrained will give the Monoply of suffrages into the hands of Registers Officials and Proctors This Sir certainly will give our Honourable Senators just cause to inquire 1. Whether Excommunication as now practised by Officials in Ecclesiastical Courts be not an horrid profanation of a great Ordinance of God and fit to be reflected on by our Governours 2. Whether the imprisonment of persons Excommunicated by vertue of the writ de excommunicato capiendo be not as practised a great oppression of the Subject and worthy of a Parliamentary consideration and relief 3. Whether the writt de cautione admittenda being the only relief provided by Law for persons so imprisoned hath its just and free course The Honour and Glory of God being the first and principal concern as well of great Councels as of particular persons the first of these questions deserveth and challengeth the preference in disquisitions of this nature Whatever be the Judgment of some Forreign Divines and whatever hath been said by Erastus or others to the contrary It is manifest That our Church looketh upon Excommunication as an Ordinance and institution of Christ for the keeping of the Church pure and unspotted as the Spouse of Christ should be and this appeareth as from other evidence so from the very form of Sentences at this day usual in the Ecclesiastical Courts which they usually begin In Dei nomine in the Name of God and they tell us they proceed to such sentences Christi nomine prius invocato having first called upon the Name of Christ ac ipsum solum Deum praeponentes setting God alone before them Our Articles 1552 tell us That excommunicate persons are to be avoided as being rightly cut off from the unity of the Church and ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as Heathens and Publicans Which Article is also verbatim in those 1562 and manifestly allude to that Text of our Saviour Matth. 18. 17. generally judged to be the Institution of this Ordinance under the Gospel Nor can any thing be clearer then the declared Judgment of Arch-Bishop Cranmer Bishop Goodrick Dr. Cox Dr. Peter Martyr Dr. May Dr. Taylor Mr. Lucas and Mr. Goodrick who were the 8 Persons part of 32 afterward intended who according to Three Acts of Parliament made in the case were appointed by the Letters Patents of Edward the 6th Dat. Nov. 11. in the Fifth Year of His Reign and authorised to revise the Canon Law and out of it to draw up a body of Canon Law which should alone be used in England who did meet and draw up such a body though King Edward lived not to confirm what they had done by His Royal Sanction as may be seen by a Book called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum printed 1670 and reprinted 1641. These great Divines tell us in their Chapter about Excommunication That it is a Power and Authority derived from God to his Church c. and Chap. 2. That the Church receiveth these keys from Christ To multiply words in this cause were vain for none that ever owned Excommunication owned it in any other notion then as an Institution of Christ's And there is no pretence for any to seclude men

from the enjoyment of the means of Salvation but Christ who is the Lord of the Church Which being granted the true notion of excommunication is this It is a power granted by Christ to his Church to remove lewd Persons or such as are Heretical and are pertinacious in their lewd opinions and practices from the Communion of the Church in the holy Sacraments and the fellowship of Christians till they reform Which exactly agreeth with the notion of it given us in these words by Arch-Bishop Cranmer and other of our first Reformers in their Book called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum De Excommun cap. 1. Excommunicatio potestas est authoritas ad Ecclesiam a Deo profecta quae facinorosas personas vel de religione nostra corrupte sentientes ad suam improbitatem adhaerescentes a perceptione Sacramentorum Reform Leg. Eccles Ed. 1641. p. 159. etiam Chhristianorum fratrum usu tantisper summovet donec sensus sanos recollegerint salutarium cogitationum apta signa dederint poenas etiam ecclesiasticas subierint quibus ferocia carnis comprimitur ut spiritus salvus fiat Excommunication being thus universally agreed to be a Divine Institution it must as to the use of it be regulated by the Divine Rule None can Excommunicate but those who are by Christ thereunto appointed None ought to be Excommunicated but by warrant from the word of God and Excommunication must proceed with that gravity and leisure which the same word hath directed And every one seeth that where any thing of this nature is done otherwise It is an horrible profanation of the Ordinance of God and a woful abuse of a power which none but God could give unto any That this power is given to the Church from Christ is agreed on all hands Whether it resteth in the whole Church or in the Governours of the Church is the onely question here That this power according to the institution of Christ belongs to the whole particular Church to whom the offender relateth is to me as clear as the light According to the Primitive direction Matth. 18. If he would not hear the Church he was to be us an heathen and a publican The Apostle speaks to the whole Church at Corinth 1 Cor. 5. 4. That in the name of the Lord Jesus when they were gathered together and his spirit with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ they should deliver such a one to Satan and Excommunication being not only a seclusion of the party from the enjoyment of Ordinances but from the intimate Communion of the Members of the Church It is very absurd for Officers in a Church to think of secluding any from the communion of those who will yet have fellowship and communion with them and consonant to this was the Judgment of the Ancient Church t●at none ought to be excommunicated dissentiente plebe without the consent of the people from whose communion he was to be secluded And without doubt as to the Major Excommunication it is the most rational thing imaginable and our first Reformers in the aforementioned Book called Reformatio legum Eccles pag. 161. cap. 6. on this subject saith Totius Ecclesiae consonsus quanquam optabilis esset That the consent of the whole Church is desireable but because it can very hardly be procured they ordain as there followeth That no one person should exercise this power c. but that the Archbishop or Bishop or some other lawful Judge with a Justice of the Peace and the proper Minister of the place where the party accused dwelleth or some other appointed by him and two or three other Religious Ministers should meet in whose presence after a due and full handling and weighing the cause the party should be Excommunicated Some will have Excommunic●tion the Act of the whole Church onely denounced by the Minister Others will have it the Act of the Presbytery or Governours of the Church Others who fix the Government in Bishops will have it the Act of the Bishop but our Primitive Reformers would not have him doe it but with a Justice of the Peace the Minister of the place and two or three other grave Ministers who all together should hear examine and ponder the cause and agree the person deserving such a punishment which they might then Decree and the Minister of the place might Publish It being an institution of Christs it ought also to be denounced against none but such onely as he hath in his word appointed it for which is not onely determinable from the letter of Scripture but from reason concluding from the End of the Institution In the letter of Scripture there is no pretence for Excommunication of any but for such crimes as shut a man without Repentance out of the kingdom of God those are either damnable Heresies according to St. Pauls direction to Titus Chap. 3. v. 10. An Heretick after the first and second admonition reject and the example of St. Paul 1 Tim. 1. 20. who delivered up to Satan Hymeneus and Philetus having made shipwrack of Faith Or lewd and vile practices for which we have a president in the incestuous person mentioned 1 Cor. 5. and conform to this hath been the constant judgment of the Church and our aforementioned Reformers in the book and place aforementioned determine that they must be personae facinorosae de Religione nostra corrupte sentientes ad suam improbitatem adhaerescentes Leud persons corrupt in their sentiments of Religion pertinaciously adhering to them and yet more plainly in their third Chapter which I shall Translate Excommunication ought not say they to be used in minute offences but upon atrocious horrible crimes when the Church is grievously scandalized either because Religion is overthrown or good manners perverted by them of this sort are those of which St. Paul saith that those who do such things shall not enter into the Kingdom of God or shall not inherit the Kingdom of God or because of those things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience These horrible wickednesses ought to be punished by Excommunication so as they who are guilty of them shall be thus punished unless they in time reform and when they are admonished withdraw themselves from these courses and be willing to satisfie the Church for the dammage it hath sustained from their offences for Excommunication is not to be used but when men have hardned themselves in their wickednesses which happeneth two wayes either when being call'd to answer for such offences they will not appear or if they do appear they will not obey the admonitions of Judges This was the opinion of holy Cranmer and Taylor two of our blessed Martyrs and those other good and learned men that lived in King Edwards dayes in the very beginning of the Reformation and were known to be none that could be justly called Presbyterians by any who understand what Presbyterians are Besides this is evident from the end of