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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
power_n	authority_n	law_n	legislative_a	2,620	5	12.4064	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34212	A missive to His Majesty of Great Britain, King James written divers yeers since by Doctor Carier ; conteining [sic] the motives of his conversion to Catholike religion ; vvith a notable fore-sight of the present distempers both in the church and state of His Majesties dominions, and his advice for the prevention thereof.	Carier, Benjamin, 1566-1614.; Strange, N., 17th cent.; James I, King of England, 1566-1625.	1649 (1649)	Wing C572; ESTC R8830	50,068	94

objected as a great absurdity against the Arrians that they had annuas menstruas fides that they changed their faith once a yeare yea once a moneth an evident argument of their falshood If you will take the testimony of twice two or three and compare the weekly Sermons together you may perhaps finde some of your English reforming Doctrines brought to old age and funeralls in lesse then a moneth An evident demonstration that Reformation of Faith is not a city built on a mountaine Matth. 5. 14. nor a wise mans house seated on a rock Matth. 7. 24. but a wall raised and dawbed without tempering Ezech. 13. 11. or a fooles cottage erected upon sands Quae pendulum solutae Pondus ferre recusant In Heresies unstable ground No setled footing can be found And how reall that of S. Athanasius against the Arrian Heretiks Epist de Nicaena Synodo agrees unto all the Reformers of the later dayes I submit even to their censures Nunquam unam c. They never stand to one and the same opinion but run from one to another now praising now dispraising the same now condemning what they approved a little before a true character of hereticks and mark of falshood Things then being fallen to this unconcealable confusion in England without likelyhood of stop as long as the principles of the prime Reformers stand still in vogue can any man wonder at the conversion to Catholike Religion either of the men hereafter specified or any others for my own part I cannot but wonder that any man acknowledging the soule immortall and that either Hell or Heaven must be her eternall Domicil after this life and with all acknowledging that a false Religion cannot be the way towards beatitude should expect a second call for his deserting that of whose falshood in it selfe damnablenesse to mans soule and inconsistency with an ordered Church or State be hath so many and so pregnant Demonstrations as it were to the eye The old Proverb of the Hebrews is Veritatem stabiles mendacium debiles habere pedes that truth hath strong stedfast sure footing but a lie onely weake unstedfast tottering foundations Whence the first is of a permanent perpetuall durance the other easily supplanted and overthrowne Were any of the Reformations that are so yearly monethly if not oftner forged true it would stand the same in it selfe firm and constant scorning chop and change but seeing there is none that doth not lose ground upon the first approach of a new spirit none that suffers not in her reputation by the credit of every gifted Preacher of the new Modell you know how frequently new spirits and new gifts are pretended certainly by the Hebreans Adage all Reformations are to be esteemed as weak grounded lies Nihil quod non manet in se ipso verum est omne quipp● quod alteratur falsitas est non manens in scipso Nothing can be true saith that rare Prodigie of Nature Trismegistus that doth not abide the same constant in it selfe every thing subject to alteration is false That your Reformations in England are subject to alterations I need not tell you unlesse you be blind that therefore they must of necessity be false you may take as a sure truth from the pen of Trismegistus If according to the Wiseman in his Proverbs the later ends of some waies which seem to a man just and upright so outwardly masked with morality of life and good neighbourhood as hardly discernable especially by the unwary vulgar from waies really sure and good do yet lead to death how sure of eternall death and damnation must he be who runs the waies of the present Reformation which are so far from seeming just by any obducted disguise that every man even the greatest sticklers stick not to confesse it now and then among their friends sees them plainely full of injustice impiety oppressions rebellions against all sorts of humane superiours and blasphemies against God himselfe certainly it is more then high time for all men to abhorr the Sodom and Gomorrhe of Reformation in Faith with the inundation of vice and corrupted manners it hath brought with it into the world That you may yet farther penetrate the malignity of the confusion you are fallen into another argument that Reformation in Faith is of the serpent Hydras nature take this Corollary or addition to what is said already That it must be endlesse in Church and State and altogether remedilesse as long as the old laid principles of Reformation derived from Luther and Calvin stand uncontrolled there being now no way left to withstand the reforming decrees of the present Parliament from which is issued the main of your late alterations or condemne what most men now judge to be amisse without condemnation of what you have been approving abetting ever since your first revolt from the Pope and Roman Church For a clearer explication of my mind give me leave I pray with your patience to propose you some questions Sic volo sic jubeo sit pro ratione voluntas I so will have it so command My will must for a reason stand When others failed this was one of Luthers Lawes to set forward his fanaticall Reformation against the Pope and Catholike Church Why may not the Parliament the Representative Body of a Kingdome use it with more authority then Luther one single private man If you allow the Parliament the use of such a legislative Power you must not condemne the seque●l● that do naturally flow out of it you must 〈◊〉 to all their Orders and Ordinances how irrationall 〈◊〉 they seem to private persons If you condemn it in the Parliament look well to it through their sides you condemne it à fortiori in Luther and so you crack the pate and credit of your grand Reformer who so insultingly used it and whom you have been so long upholding for a Saint But to insist no longer on that extravagant principle The specious pretence of Reformation will so justifie the present Parliaments actions seem they never so new or paradoxicall that you shall hardly question them without subversion of the whole Fabrick of your late Reformation For example tell me why may not this present Parliament cashiere the Ordination of Ministers invented onely in Edward the sixths daies as well as those of his time cashiered the manner of Ordination they then found in being and vigour without any knowne beginning of it since the Apostles Why may not this Parliament degrade the now pretended Bishops made onely according to that new Modell and onely authorized by Parliament why not devest them of their Peerage cast them out of their government and levell them to the rank of ordinary men as well as other Parliaments cast out the old Bishops consecrated after the manner of the whole Christian World and who were never pretended to have their spirituall authority from Parliament nor to be invested in their dignitie by usurpation of any other mans right cast them