Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	bishop_n	presbyter_n	3,386	5	10.4987	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77478	A review of the seditious pamphlet lately pnblished [sic] in Holland by Dr. Bramhell, pretended Bishop of London-Derry; entitled, His faire warning against the Scots discipline. In which, his malicious and most lying reports, to the great scandall of that government, are fully and clearly refuted. As also, the Solemne League and Covenant of the three nations justified and maintained. / By Robert Baylie, minister at Glasgow, and one of the commissioners from the Church of Scotland, attending the King at the Hague.	Baillie, Robert, 1599-1662.	1649 (1649)	Wing B467; Thomason E563_1; ESTC R10643	69,798	84

two Presbyters who chance to be neer a Bishop the only pastor of the whole diocess and yet not bound to feed any flock either by Word or Sacrament or Government but having a free liberty to devolve all that service upon others and himself to wait at Court so many years as he shall think fit This is our English Bishop not only in practice but in Law and so was he defended by the great disputants for Prelacy in England The portion of Episcopa●y whi● yet is stu to cannot be kept upon any principle either of honor or conscience But now let the Warner speak out if any such Bishop can more be defehded or was ever known in Scripture or seen in any Christian Church for 800 years and above after the death of Christ I take it indeed to be Conscience that forces now at last the best of our Court-Divines to devest their Bishop of all civil employment in Parliament Court or Kingdom in denying his solitariness in ordination in removing his official and Commissary courts in taking away all his arches Arch-Bishop● Arch-Deacons Dean and Chapter c. in erecting Presbyteries for all ordinations and spiritual jurisdiction It is good that conscience moves our adversaries at last to come thus far towards us But why will they not yet come neerer to acknowledg that by these their too lately recanted errors they did too long trouble the world and that the little which yet they desire to keep of a Bishop is nothing less then that English Bishop but a new creature of their own devising never known in England which his Majesty in no honor is obliged to maintain for any respect either to the Laws or Customs of England and least of all for Conscience The smallest portion of the most moderate Episcopacy is contrary to Scripture While the Warner with such confidence avows that no text of Scripture can be alledged against Episcopacy which may not with more reason be applyed against the Presbytery behold I offer him here some few casting them in a couple of arguments which according to his great promises I wish he would answer at his leasure First I do reason from Ephes 4.11 all the officers that Christ hath appointed in his Church for the Ministry of the Word are either Apostles Evangelists Prophets pastors or Doctors but Bishops are none of these five Ergo they are none of the officers appointed by Christ for the Ministry of the Word The major is not wont to be questioned the minor thus I prove Bishops are not Apostles Evangelists nor prophets for it s confessed all these were extraordinary and temporary Officers but Bishops say you are ordinary and perpetual our adversaries pitch upon the fourth alledging the Episcopal office to be pastoral but I prove the Bishop no Pastor thus no Pastor is superior to other Pastors in any spiritual power but according to our adversary a Bishop is superior to all the Pastors of his Diocess in the power of ordination and jurisdiction Ergo The doubt here is onely of the major which I prove Argumento à paribus no Apostle is superior to an Apostle nor an Evangelist to an Evangelist nor Prophet to a Prophet nor a Doctor to a Doctor in any spiritual power according to Scripture Ergo no pastor to a pastor Again I reason from 1 Tim. 4.14 Mat. 18.15 1 Cor. 5.4 12 13. What takes the power of ordination and jurisdiction from Bishops destroys Bishops as the removal of the soul kills the man and the denyal of the form takes away the subject so the power of ordination and jurisdiction the essential form whereby the Bishop is constitute and distinguished from the Presbyter and every other Church officer being removed from him he must perish but the quoted places take away clearly these powers from the Bishop for the first puts the power of ordination in the Presbytery and a Bishop is not a Presbytery the second puts the power of jurisdiction in the Church and the third in a company of men which meet together but the Bishop is not the Church nor a company of men met together for these be many and he is but one person When the Doctors learning hath satified us in these two he shall receive more Scriptural arguments against Episcopacy The Prelats unable to answer their opposites But why do we expect answers from these men when after so long time for all their boasts of learning and their visible leasure none of their party has had the courage to offer one word of answer to the Scriptures and Fathers which in great plenty Mr Parker and Mr Didoclave of old and of late that miracle of learning most noble Somais and that Magazin of antiquity Mr Blondel have printed against them What in the end of the Chapter the Warner adds of our trouble at King James his fifty and five questions ●●96 and of our yeelding the bucklers without any opposition till the late unhappy troubles we answer that in this as every where else the Warner proclaims his great and certain knowledg of our Ecclesiastick story the troubles of the Scots Divines at that time were very small for the matter of these questions all which they did answer so roundly that there was no more speech of them thereafter by the propounders but the manner and time of these questions did indeed perplex good men to see Erastian and Prelatical counsellors so far to prevail with our King as to make him by captious questions carp at these parts of Church-discipline which by Statutes of Parliament and Acts of Assemblies were fully established Our Church at that time was far from yeelding to Episcopacy Prelacy was ever grievous to Scotland great trouble indeed by some wicked States-men was then brought upon the persons of the most able and faithful Ministers but our Land was so far from receiving of Bishops at that time that the question was not so much as proposed to them for many years thereafter it was in Ann. 1606. that the English Prelates did move the King by great violence to cast many of the best and most learned Preachers of Scotland out of their charges and in An. 1610. that a kind of Episcopacy was set up in the corrupt Assembly of Glasgow under which the Church of Scotlād did heavily groan till the year 1637. when their burthens was so much increased by the English Prelatical Tax-masters that all was shaken off together and divine Justice did so closely follow at the heels that oppressing Prelacy of England as to the great joy of the long oppressed Scots that evil root and all its branches was cast out of Britain where we trust no shadow of it shall ever again be seen CHAP. IX The Commonwealth is no monster when God is made Soveraign and the commands of men are subordinated to the clear will of God HAving cleared the vanity of these calumnious challenges wherewith the Warner did animate the King and all

learned'st of the Prelates find any fault with us yet our Warner must spend a whole Chapter upon it It is true as we observed before the elder Prelates of England in Edwards Elizabeths days as the Erastians now did maintain The Warner and his prelatical Erastian brethren are obliged by their own principles to advise the King to lay aside Episcopacy and set up the Presbytery in all his dominions that no particular Government of the Church was jure divino and if this be the Warners mind it were ingenuity in him to speak i● out loud and to endeavor to perswade his friends about the King of the truth of this tenet he was never imployed about a better and more seasonable service for if the Discipline of the Church be but humano jure then Episcopacy is kept up upon no conscience conscience being bottomed only upon a divine Right so Episcopacy wanting that bottom may well be laid aside at this time by the King for any thing that concerns conscience since no Command of God nor Warrant from Scripture ties him to keep it up This truly seems to be the main ground whereupon the whole discourse of this Chapter is builded Is it tolerable that such truths should be concealed by our Warners against their conscience when the speaking of them out might be so advantagious to the King and all his Kingdoms however we with all the reformed Churches do beleeve in our heart the divine Right of Synods and Presbyteries and for no possible inconvenient can be forced to deny or pass from this part of truth yet the Warner here joyns with the elder Prelates who till Dr Banckrofts advancement to the sea of Canterbury did unanimously deny Episcopacy to be of divine Right and by consequent affirmed it to be moveable and so lawful to be laid aside by Princes when so ever they found it expedient for their affairs to be quite off it why doth not the Warner and his Brethren speak plainly their thoughts in his Majesties ears Why do they longer dissemble their conscience only for the satisfaction of their ambition greed and revenge Sundry of the Prelatical Divines come yet further to joyn fully with Erastus in denying not only Episcopacy and all other particular forms of Church-Government to be of Divine Institution but in avowing that no Government in the Church at all is to be imagined but such as is a part of the civil power of the Magistrate The Warner in the Chapter and in divers other parts of his Book seems to agree with this judgment and upon this ground if he had ingenuity he would offer his helping hand to unty the bonds of the Kings conscience if here it were straitened by demonstrating from this his principle that very safely without any offence to God and nothing doubting for conscience sake his Majesty might lay aside Episcopacy and set up the Presbytery so fully as is required in all his Dominions though not upon a divine Right which the Presbyterians beleeve yet upon Erastus royal Right which the Warner here and elsewhere avouches What the Warner puts here again upon the Presbytery the usurpation of the temporal Sword in what indirect relation soever The prelatical party were lately bent for Popery its probation in the former Chapter was found so weak and naughty that the repetition of it is for no use only we mark that the Warner will have the Presbytery to be an absolute papacy for no other purpose but to vent his desire of revenge against the Presbyterians who gave in a challenge against the Prelates especially the late Canterburians among whom Doctor Bramble was one of some note to which none of them have returned to this hour an Answer that their principles unavoidably did bring back the Pope For a Patriarch over all the Western Churches and among all the Patriarchs of the whole Catholick Church a primacy in the Roman flows clearly out of the fountain of Episcopacy according to the avowed Doctrine of the English Prelates who yet are more liberal to the Pope in granting him beside his spiritual super-inspection of the whole Catholick Church all his temporal Jurisdictions also in the patrimony of St. Peter and all his other fair principalities within and without Italy There is no Ceremony in Rome that these men stick upon for of all the superstitious and idolatrous Ceremonies of Rome their Images and Altars and Adorations before them are incomparably the worst yet the Warners friends without any Recantation we have heard of avow them all even an Adoration of and to the Altar it self As for the Doctrines of Rome what points are worse then these which that party have avowed in express terms a corporal presence of Christs Body upon the Altar the Tridentine Justification Free-will final Apostacy of the Saints when no other thing can be answered to this our sore challenge it is good to put us off with a Squib that the Presbytery is as absolute Papacy as ever was in Rome The Presbyterian Position which the Warner here offers not to dispute but to laugh at That Christ as King of his Church according to his royal Office and Scepter hath appointed the Office-bearers and Laws of his House is accorded to by the most and sharpest of our Adversaries whether English or Romish as their own tenet howbeit such foolish consequences that all acts of Synods must be Christs Laws c. neither they nor we do acknowledg His declamations against the novelty of the Presbytery in the ordinary stile of the Jesuits against Protestants The Prelats profess now a willingness to abolish at least three parts of the former Episcopacy and of the pagan Philosophers against the Christians of old who will regard our plea for the Presbytery is that it is Scriptural if so it is ancient enough if not let it be abolished But it were good that here also the Warner and his friends would be ingenuous to speak out their minds of Episcopacy Why have they all so long deceived the King in assuring him that English Episcopacy was well warranted both by Scripture and antiquity Be it so which yet is very false that something of a Bishop distinct from a Presbyter had any footing in Scripture yet can they be so impudent as to affirm that an English Bishop in his very flesh and blood in his substantial limbs was ever known in the world till the Pope was become Antichrist A Bishop by virtue of his office a Lord in Parliament voycing in all Acts of State and exercising the place of a high Treasurer of a Chancelor or whatever civil charge the favor of a Prince did put upon him a Bishop with sole power of ordination and jurisdiction without any Presbytery a Bishop exercising no jurisdiction himself in any part of his diocess but devolving the excise of that power wholy upon his Officials and Commissaries a Bishop ordaining Presbyters himself alone or with the fashional assistance of any