Selected quad for the lemma: power_n
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A47280
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The sober conformists answer to a rigid conformists reasons why in this juncture no alteration should be made in the government of the Church of Scotland.
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Ker, William.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing K346; ESTC R8036
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26,163
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32
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whose particular Disadvantage by their losing their place is the publick Advantage of the Nation And finally you inferr That the Regular Clergy will be turned out which will reduce the Church to such amazing hardships that the Gospel shall not he preached in three parts of the Kingdom there not being an hundred qualified Presbyterians in Scotland Sir It should be your desire and mine both that all the Insufficient Scandalous and Erroneous among the Clergy were turned out and their places were Vacant till able Men were provided rather then filled with such men who do far more obstruct then promove the Edification of the Church without the hope of being better supplied And alace I 'm affraid that two parts of three of our Clergy may be too justly reduced to one or other of these three Classes So that by my best Information the Presbyterian partie if ye join their Ministers Preachers and young Men Ready for the Ministry together With such also as have diverted themselves to other Imployments because of the Discouragements of the Times and are willing and ready to serve the Church if there were incouragement for the Ministry they have moe qualified men amongst them then there are Sufficient Sober and Orthodox Men amongst our Clergy so that they could within less then a year furnish the one half of the Congregations in Scotland And when from about an hundred and some more they have in a year and an halfs space accreasced and amounted to so many without the help of Universities We may easily calculate how short a time will increase them to the compleat Number But I am hopeful that they will admit any Learned Sober and Orthodox person amongst us upon very easie terms our acknowledgeing Presbyterian Government to be lawful our guilt of Separation from them and of taking the Test And I know none of us that will choose rather to be turned out by refusing then kept in their places upon accepting such favourable Terms Your 4. Reason is That if Presbytery be not thus established in its integrity but all that Alteration turn to a Non-Episcopacy and the present Presbyters continue in their Offices Then our deplorable Schisms and Divisions shall continue without a Remedy or else the Magistrate will take upon him the Government of the Church and we shall have downright Erastianism Sir The foolishness of this Argument is so obvious that I think I may spare my pains in shewing it unto you One would think it the voice of a Presbyterian proving the necessity of an entire Alteration rather than of an Episcopal pleading no Alteration at all Presbyterians will grant all you say and turn the mouth of this Cannon directly against your self by Arguing thus If Episcopacy be contained then our deplotable Schisms and Divisions shall be Remediless also we shall still have downright Erastianism and how can ye evade the force of this Argument of your own I see not For it is evident by experience that we may dispair of ever gaining the Presbyterians to a compliance with us seeing that so many years violent Persecution hath rather alienated them from us beyond all hope of either Reconciliation or Accommodation And it is as undeniable that there is not so gross Erastianism in the World as is established by Law and complicated and tuisted with the Episcopal Government in Scotland Yea they will further baffle you by reasoning with you thus If Presbytery were established in its Integrity our deplorable Division would easily be healed and we should be altogether quite of Erastianism and ye cannot shelter your self from this more then the former Argument For it is more then probable that few of us would refuse to comply with Presbytery when once established by Law and it is too much to be suspected that the present bitterness of many of our Clergy again st Presbyterians proceeds from their Consciousness to themselves of their insufficiency profanity or Heterodoxy and perhaps also Cruelty which makes them despair of Admission into the Brotherhood of the Presbyterians And it is certain that there are no Principles contrary to Erastianism more then the Presbyterian For they allow not any Ecclesiastick Power of Jurisdiction to be lodged in any single Person though Ecclesiastick much less Civil and yet they do neither exeem Church Men from their Subjection to the Magistrates power as his Subjects nor the Church from the Magistrates care as her Nursing Father Their Principles in this point are very Rational for though they deny Ministers to be as directly subjected to the Magistrate in their Ecclesiastick apacity as Ministers as in their Civil Capacity of Subjects Yet they ascribe as much power to him in reference to the Church as any Wise and Pious Magistrate will require they grant the Magistrate hath a restitutive power for reparing a broken Church though not a Constitutive of constituting the frame of its Government and building such a Fabrick of a Church as he pleases A power Convocative for calling Church Assemblies to meet for the Government of the Church though not a power Coercive of hindering them to meet at all A power Defensive of defending the true Religion and the Doctrine Worship Government and Discipline of the Church though not a power Determinative to determine concerning these things at his pleas ure a power Concursive to concur by his Civil Sanction with the Determinations of the Church and confirm their Obligation on his Subjects though not a power Coactive to force the Church to follow his Dictates in things Ecclesiastick And in a word they grant him all Power even in Ecclesiasticks that is Cumulative to the Churches Advantage though they deny him to have any Privative power to the Churches prejudice Whereas Episcopacy in Scotland has no other Basis but gross Erastianism so that you see how much you may be foild with your own Weapons And ye may expect a challenge to express the ingenuity of your fears of continued Divisions and Schisms and of downright Erastianism by quiting the Episcopal way wherein ye Act the Schismatick in receiding from the standing Laws of the Church in compliance with New Civil Laws and approve Erastianism in adhering to the Test Your fifth Reason is That the Establishment of Presbytery will have almost pernicious Influence on the Protestants Religion in this Island if ever Popery set up its head c. Sir I confess it is more proper for you to shew the Inconveniencie that will follow if Presbytry be established then if not Yet I suspect you be as unhappy in this as in the former Argument The greate st Advantage that I find in your Reasons is that you touch upon some things concerning which it is unseasonable and dangerous for Presbyterians fully to express themselves But alas you do here but touch on that which is the very Sore and Weakest Side of Episcopacy for you cannot be ignorant of the General Complaints of and prejudices at our Government As not only a shelter and covert
Evade the Force of them without either derogating from the Episcopal power which we mantain against Presbyterians or Homologating the Papal power which Papists maintain against Protestants We grant the Papal power to be very much Adapted for Wordly Pomp Power and Policy but upon that very score deny it to be a Government becoming the Church becauâ—e Christ expresly dischargeth his Apostles and in them all their Successors to exercise Dominion as the Lords of the Gentiles do over them This Answer to Papists is an Argument so plate against our selves that ingenuously I am not fully satisfied with our subtile Evasions of it And though that of Dr. Burnets in his Latter Dialogues be the best I have yet seen that nothing is prohibited in these words but the Exercise of Civil Power by any Church Officer over the Church and so nothing of the Papal power is condemned by it but the Usurpation of a Temporal Dominion over Princes Yet s eeing this leaves his Ecclesiastick Supremacy under which the subtile Jesuits Comprize all the Power he Exercises untouched and uncondemned by the clearest Scripture Argument we have against it which all Reformâ—d Divines make use of even the Episcopal themselves in their writings against the Papal Tyranny in Ecclesiasticks as well as Civils I nothing doubt but the present Zeal of that great Man against Popery would disclaim this evasion frankly as the effect of his former eagerness against Presbytery hurrying him to a Critici sm so favourable to Popery And when I have considered the extent of the Paralel place 1. Pet. 5.3 and the particular Application in Reference to Spirituals which the Apostle Paul makes 2. Cor. 1. last I cannot look upon that otherwise then an oversight in the Doctor notwithstanding of my singular Es teem of Him and his Writings But the truth is if we consider seriously the aptitude of Episcopacy for preserving the Dignity and promoting the Interest of the Clergy its similitude to the Civil Government and Conformity to the Carnal conceits men have of the Church of God are even as it fares with Popery both its greatest advantage and disadvantage its greatest advantage recommending it to Carnal men who measure all things by their Carnal Imaginations and Inclinations and its greatest disadvantage discommending it to Conscientious men who meas ure all the concerns of the Church by the unerring Rule of the Word of GOD and judge of them by their influence on and usefulness for the Edification of their Souls And alace the odious effects of Episcopacy in Scotland especially since it was last introduced are so recent and obvious that if any witty Presbyterian shall be at the pains to rake up this Dunghil I am afraid such an intolerable stink shall be raised as no Aptitude which our Government hath to what is good or can pretend to have will be either Regarded or Believed by any who are Judicious far less Sober and Conscientious For Sense and Experience are more convincing than all the Reasons in the World. But to be more particular ye say its found by Experince to be the best adapted for preservation of Order Presbyterians will answer That what ever be its apparent Aptitude for this yet it is in effect it self an alteration of the primitive Order observed in the Church which did gradually resolve at last into a total innovation of the Churches Order by a papal supremacy which it hath exchanged for a Caesario-papatus in Scotland lest the Church should not be still monstruous with two heads one under another And it is indeed a hard Question Why Order in the Church which we say cannot be without prius posterius inferius superius doth not equally require a Pope or King under CHRIST over Bishops as a Bishop under CHRIST over Presbytry Or why a parity amongst Bishops should not be thought as inconsis tent with Order as a parity among all Pastors But neither doth the Presbyterian Government want its Order of superius inferius for amongst them single persons are subject to Church Judicatories and a lesser Church Judicatory still to a greater c. In which Order seeing there is not only that ah inferiore ad superius but a minore ad majus it is most agreeable to the Church as it is the Body of CHRIST immediately depending upon CHRIST its Head. And I confess ingenuously when they have argued that feeding of Souls by dispensing the Word and Sacraments is the sublimest piece of a Church Mans imployment that all power of Church Officers is only Ministerial under CHRIST the Head and Lord of his Church that though he be the political as well as Mystical Head of the Church who as its King and Lawgiver might be expected would not leave it without Directions how it should be governed yet there is no institution of a Diocesan Episcopacy that was ever pretented to be so clear as the Directions given concerning the Office of a Deacon the lowest Office in the Church But the checks given by him to the first appearances of an inclination to pre-eminency among his Apostles are clearly recorded in Scripture and finally that the lodging of all Ecclesiastick power of Ordination or Jurisdiction in the single person of a Bishop doth not sute with the immediate Dependance of the Church the Body of CHRIST upon CHRIST the Head of it When they have Argued thus I say and urged each of these Arguments at length I have been extreamly puzled to vindicat the Episcopal Order and the superiority of one Pastor above another All I could say was That Bishops are as necessary to oversee Pastors as Pastors to oversee People and they easily stopped my mouth not only by retorting the equal necessity of a pope to oversee Bishops But by shewing also that all Pastors were subject to the censure of Church Judicatories which could not easily be guilty of connivance and partiality towards the ignorant and scandalous as Bishops and which by their solemnity impartiality have as great and venerable an Authority as a Bishop by virtue of his large Benefice Lordly Titles and pompous Train can have Yea I have been almost perswaded to be a presbyterian when they have reasoned that seing we confess the highest Ecclesiastick power on Earth to be in an Oecumenick Council and yet allow not of any further power in him that preceeds than like that of a presbyterian Moderator in a presbytry-Presbytry-synod or National Assembly and not like that of a Bishop in a Diocesan Synod for fear of a pope Why do we not also acknowledge Ministers to be subject to inferiour Judicatories of the like frame and an inferiour and lesser Judicatory to a superiour and greater still forward till we arrive at an Oecumenick Council as the highest Judicatorie of all immediately and solly subject to CHRIST as the Body to the Head without any Diocesan Bishop over the se inferiour more than a pope over his supreme Judicatorie as being the most equal and