Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	authority_n	church_n	tradition_n	14,231	5	9.4820	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49336	A letter to Edw. Stillingfleet, D.D. &c. in answer to the epistle dedicatory before his sermon, preached at a publick ordination at St. Peter's Cornhil, March 15, 1684/5 together with some reflections upon certain letters, which Dr. Burnet wrote on the same occasion / by Simon Lowth ...	Lowth, Simon, 1630?-1720.	1687 (1687)	Wing L3328; ESTC R2901	83,769	93

Keys delivered unto them and thereby were invested in their Persons with the Ministerial Authority yet upon the same terms it must be farther proved That it was Christ's Intention that the same power should continue in their Successors or it makes no more to the purpose for a settled Ministery than it does for a fixed Episcopacy and this same Argument which overthrows a Superiority of Church-men over one another for want of an Express of Christs intention to continue it always overthrows also the Ministry it self both having the same bottom and alike promises This the Independant and Socinian saw and consider'd full well and upon your own grounds reject them both together with the two Sacraments because there are no express Texts declaring their Perpetuity But this is agreeable enough with the Rector of Sutton who as he makes all Gospel-Laws for Church-Government an Escheat to Westminster-Hall so is he to be supposed to receive none as perpetually obliging except those that are made and conveyed in the Hall-Phrase and by its Precedents with an express Declaration Entailing them upon the Heirs and Successors for ever But because Apostolical practice still presses you hard whose force apart from the Act and Donation of our Saviour seems to infer a divine Right the matter of Fact being apparent and beyond contradiction That the Apostles were invested with a Superiority beyond Bishops and Presbyters and did accordingly execute it Hereupon with a deep design but very Superficial Policy that is easily seen through and baffled you place their juridical consistorial Acts and Practices amongst those other Acts and Practices of theirs that were purely occasional and with regard to the present times and circumstances such as abstaining from Blood and things strangled eating or not eating the order of Widows the Love-Kiss Celibacy St. Paul's working with his own Hands Preaching the Gospel freely Circumcising Timothy c. all which are confessedly mutable and did alter in a very little time both in their Practice and Obligation But your Error is not only in ranging these quite different Practices under the same head and order whose distant natures are so plain and obvious but in that you do not consider that the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism will for the same reason come under that head of Indifferencies and Practices mutable and therein besides the ill consequences in Religion you plainly contradict your self who tell us at the same time and in the same Section and in doing of it dart your self through with your own Weapon That tho' there be no particular express Revelation for the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism yet Practice Apostolical or of Persons guided by an Infallible Spirit is sufficient to enact and declare them perpetually obliging For surely Apostolical practice guided by an infallible Spirit is equally manifest son a Superiority in the Ministry as for those two It is far more notorious and frequent but your Plot that was laid against the Immutability of Episcopacy engaged you to take no notice of it vid. Part I. Sect. 3. Part. II. § 20. Farther yet That you may be every ways secure in your design and wholly baffle and defeat all Plea for a divine and immutable Right from Apostolical Practice in the point of Episcopacy you go on in a sure way treading Antiquity under your Foot and impleading the most holy Primitive Bishops and Confessors of Defectiveness Ambiguity Partiality and Repugnancy that hereby you may root out their Order and destroy it from the Face of the Earth and you say in so many words That we cannot have that certainty of Apostolical Practice as to constitute a Divine Right It is not my business to argue points but to collect your particular Opinions or rather to write the History of your Theology otherwise I might here reply by demanding How and by what hands it is that we have any certainty of the Apostolical Writings or know their minds and intentions there The Church hath all along received the Canon and Sense of the Scriptures from the Faith and certainty of Antiquity and the repute and integrity of these holy Bishops Martyrs and Confessors Our Church of England certainly does so and they are her Rule in Reforming as to both and when the Authority of some Books of the New Testament were called in question the Tradition of Faith alone declared them Canonical and they remain such upon that Testimony in the account of the whole Christian World to this day And why then is the same evidence defective and less authoritative concerning their practice and sense in the point of Government But thus you expose the Scriptures their Authority their Sense to every Atheist and Enthusiust to uncertainties and conjectures or at the best to the intemperance of each violent heady and sceptical undertaker And thus it comes to pass that so much work is made for a Nicephorus Calisthus a Simeon Metaphrastes the very Jacobus de Voragine of the Greek Church those Tinkers that think to mend a hole and make three instead of it you taking away hereby the great evidence and muniments of our Christianity both as to the matter of Fact and the intent of it that which is next to the Foundation is cast down and what can the Righteous do Hence so many Whimsies and Forgeries of Mens Brains and monstrous Opinions fill up our Bodies of Divinity and your many forms of Government as by Divine Right are no less portentous than any of them as Geographers do Maps with some fabulous Creatures of their own Inventions Our Church of England I say in her Reformation supposes certainty and sufficiency in the Records of the Primitive Church and that matter of Fact is faithfully transmitted down unto us with the true sense of the Scriptures and Apostolical Practice both in matter of Doctrine and Government and her Reformation is receiv'd by the Civil Power and made Law in the Kingdom upon these terms alone viz. As bottom'd on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and what the Catholick Fathers and ancient Bishops have thence collected particularly in the Four first General Councils or any other Council X. Elizabethae Cap. I. Sect. xxxvi And yet upon a Scandalous Interpretation of Eusebius Hist Eccles Lib. 3. Cap. 4. perverting his Sense quite contrary to his plain words and design which is to set forth the Succession of Bishops immediately from the Apostles over the known Parts of Christendom you blast the credit of all Antiquity and that with as much show of rancor and contempt as the scornfullest manner of expressing your self can declare What becomes then with our Rector of Sutton of our unquestionable Line of Succession of Bishops of several Churches and the large Diagram made of Apostolical Churches with every ones name set down in his order as if the Writer had been Clarenceaux to the Apostles themselves Is it come to this at last that we have nothing certain but what we have in the Scriptures And must then

Tradition be our rule to interpret Scripture by An excellent way to find out the truth doubtless to bend the Rule to the crooked Stick to make the Judge stand to the Opinion of his Lacquey what Sense he shall pass upon the Cause in question to make Scripture to stand Cap in Hand to Tradition to know whether it may have leave to speak or no. Are all the great out-crys of Apostolical Tradition of personal Succession of unquestionable Records resolved at last into Scripture it self by him from whom these long Pedegrees are fetcht Then let Succession know its place and learn to veil Bonnet to the Scriptures and withal Let Men take heed of over-reaching themselves when they would bring down so large a Catalogue of single Bishops from the first and purest times of the Church For if Eusebius professeth it so hard to find them well might Scaliger then complain that the Interval from the last Chapter of the Acts to the middle of Trajan in which time Quadratus and Ignatius began to flourish was tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Varro speaks a meer Chaos of time filled up with rude conceptions of Papias Hermes and others who like Hannibal when they could not find a way through would make one either by force or fraud Rare embellishments of stile and choice Oratory all along When others plead for a Succession of Persons in Apostolical Power out of Irenaeus and Tertullian you shuffle them of and say That those Fathers are to be interpreted of Succession in that Apostolical Doctrine which was so eminent and notorious at Rome Smyrna Corinth Philippi and Ephesus Now you deny the truth of Succession as to Doctrines also but you are in an high strain of Oratory which is a kind of natural Enthusiasm or worse and your indisposition plainly appears in that you give such grave advice to these traditional Doctors that they place not Succession before the Scriptures You can only mean that they deduce it not from Felix or Pontius Pilate Annas and Caiaphas the High-Priests or the Jewish Sanhedrim And have not Scaliger and you finely combined together in giving a Character of the times immediately after the Apostles as filled only with fraud and force And for this reason alone Lest an unquestionable Succession of Bishops from the Apostles should appear and their Divine Right become thereby undeniable vid. Iren. p. 2. c. 6. § 15 16 17. Besides it hence plainly appears what your purpose was in writing this Treatise in that you have sided all along with the foreign Divines and used their Arguments against the Divine Right of Episcopacy It is the common policy when Men design to devest any Person or Order of that superior power which they cannot well bear or rather desire to have enstated on themselves first to set up for a level and the Project works mightily Thus we know the thing aimed at in the beginning of the great Rebellion here in England was That the King Lords and Commons were three equal States And when by this stratagem they had wrested the King's Prerogative out of his hands they then soon made themselves uppermost assumed and appropriated that very power they had so violently contended against as what ought not to be fixed except in the three Estates in conjunction So here your sham is That all forms of Government are equally practicable no one being of Divine Right in that nature as to exclude another but any one may be established as Persons Times and Places accord thereunto But then your Eisotericks or that which you effectually recommend to your particular Friends and Confidents is The perpetual fixation of the Presbyter as by Divine Right unalterable and having hereby lowered the Bishops top-sail in your own expression and removed from him all that which hath been heretofore appropriated to his Order asserting him to be an accidental humane creation only in this Stirrup the Presbyter sets his foot and ascends as the Assembly-men did at Westminster You invest him with the full power of Order and Jurisdiction and accordingly thus determine Part II. c. 4. § 12. That every Presbyter from Christ and perpetually fixed Cap. 2. hath the whole Ministry derived unto him in actu primo habitualiter viz. The Power of Preaching the Word Visiting the Sick Administring the Sacraments of Visiting Churches Taking care that particular Pastors do their duty of Ordination and Church Censures and making Rules for Decency in the Church The severest Asserter of Episcopal Power cannot invest his Bishop in more And the same in effect you say over again That every Presbyter whom you call a fixed Officer in the Church hath a radical intrinsecal Power of Order in himself And further That every one being himself advanced into the Authority of a Church Governor hath an internal Power of conferring the same upon Persons fit for it and accordingly every one did exercise this Power in the Churches first State and Period or In the first Primitive Church before the Jurisdiction of Presbyters was restrain'd by mutual consent by way of accumulation upon one Person of a power more than he had not by a deprivation of themselves of that inherent Power which they enjoy'd It would be very strange that any Officers of a Religious Society should be upon that account Out-lawed of those natural Liberties which are the results and products of the free actings pag. 252. To which you add That whole Churches and Nations were without Bishops for several Years together some of which had only Presbyters at their first Planting and in those Churches where Episcopal Government was setled Ordination by Presbyters was look'd upon as valid notwithstanding which could not be unless their Ordainers had an intrinsecal Power of Ordination or had they not been a fixed Order under no prohibition by Scripture Part II. c. 6. § 13. pag. 273 275. cap. 7. § 6 7. In all which I say whatever you have pretended against the divine perpetual Right of any one individual Government that the Bishop might fall with more gentleness and plausibility You set up a fixed lasting Government in the Church by Presbyters as unalterable as the Ministry it self in whom you place the whole Power of the Ministry never to be alienated or lost by any authority or under any accident they receiving this Power with their Ordination in actu primo habitualiter radicaliter intrinsically and their execution of it is effectual at any time and in any place even to Ordination it self and the Church hath approved and accepted of it as when Paphnutius tho' but a Presbyter Ordain'd Abbot Daniel and Colluthus Ischyras c. pag. 379. And hereby you give to many of the principal Patrons of the Presbyterian Parity as Calvin Beza Chamier Gersom Bucer Du Moulin even Salmasius Blondel and Daillée what they desire and contend for they having all along allowed of our Hierarchy upon your terms And all the advantage the Church of England receives by the Irenicum

who stood upon the supposition That Christ had appointed a Presbyterian Government to be always continued in his Church And it is easily observable that you have omitted nothing that was pleaded by them whereby Prelacy might be rendered detestable as an unlawful Vsurpation but whether you have done the same thereby to render Presbytery as such I appeal to that very Chapter You are so far from it that the same design is managed throughout the whole Book where your Plea is against the Divine Right of any one individual Form of Government but the instance is mostly against Episcopacy Presbytery is seldom mentioned with any mark of disrespect or if it be it is accidentally I do not remember any one set discourse particularly levelled against it as there is sometimes against the Independents but all along against the Church of England both in this and several other of her most considerable Tenents and Articles Nay you expresly and in so many words give the precedency to Presbytery founding it upon one of your necessary and unalterable Divine Rights Part I. c. 1. § 7 8. pag. 23 26. and say That the Presbyterians seem more generally to own the use of General Rules and the light of Nature in order to the Form of Church-Government as in the Subordination of Courts Classical Assemblies and the more moderate sort as to Lay-Elders And to the Independents in the next place who plead the general Rules of Scripture and evidence of natural Reason Now all this you must be supposed to remove from the Episcoparians because therein you place the opposition if you do any thing And besides you say further The Episcopal Men will hardly find any evidence in Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles for Churches consisting of many Congregations for Worship under the charge of one Person in the Primitive Church for the Ordination of a Bishop without the preceeding Election of the Clergy and at least consent and approbation of the People and neither in Scripture nor Antiquity the least Footstep of a delegation of Church-Power and leave them no other Foundation but the Principles of humane Prudence and those not very well observed Pag. 416 417. So then upon the winding up of your Book the Church of England is represented without evidence of natural Reason and the Rules of the Light of Nature with little evidence from Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles in some instances of her Worship and Discipline but with none in others neither is Prudence her constant Guide And was not this a hopeful way and delicate means to bring over Dissenters to a compliance with the Church of England then likely to be established But none of it is to be wonder'd at if we consider the account you have given of the Government of our Church in the name of the Foreign Divines a little before pag. 409. and the inconveniencies it is liable unto as a step to Pride and Ambition and an occasion whereby Men might do the Church injury by the excess of their Power if they were not Men of excellent Temper and Moderation insomuch that our Bishops are begg'd rather to lay down their Power than to transmit that Power to those after them who it may be were not like to succeed them in their Meekness and Moderation and at last they are left to the Judgment of those who have the Power not only to redress but prevent abuses incroaching by an irregular Power And yet you have not left her barely to her Judges or the Civil Magistrate for such you can be interpreted only to mean to stand and fall at their discretion your self appear as Council against her prepossessing them with new fears and jealousies to which purpose you produce a ridiculous Prediction of Padre Paulo viz. That the Church of England would then find the inconveniencies of Episcopacy when an high Spirited Bishop should come once to rule the Church A Prophecy that in all likelihood was forged in the Brain of some Puritan and my reason for it is Because I find it placed in the front of a Latin Treatise writ by one of great intemperance and violence against the Church of England the Title whereof is Irenaei Philadelphi Epistola ad Renatum Virideum in qua aperitur mysterium iniquitatis novissimè in Anglia redivivum excutitur liber Josephi Hall quo asseritur Episcopatum esse Juris Divini Eleutheropoli 1641. The design of it is to inveigh against the praetorian Authority of Bishops with their Pride and Usurpation over the Clergy and he states the case just as you have done in your Irenicum viz. against their Solitary appropriated Power by Divine Right allowing a Ministry by the Law of Christ and that general Rules are given in Scripture for the great ends of Peace and Order But the particular Form depends upon the choice of the Presbyters and as they do judge it best agreeing with that Kingdom or Common-Wealth in which it is setled So then it seems the Presbyterians first instructed and brought over you not you them as you told my Lord of London And this also confirms what I said before viz. That you come up to the principles of them all excepting some of the rigider Scots who believe that no Church is duly administred where there are Bishops from whom my Worshipful Author declares his dissent tho' he is never the nearer to the Church of England for it that is purely your mistake and he notwithstanding follows on his design against our Church with all manner of indecency and dirty Language He begins with Arch-Bishop Land and takes occasion to vilifie him by reason of his Book against Fisher as worth no Man's reading and that it is unsaleable (a) Quis enim operam perdere voluerit in evolvendo hoc libro quem audio fidum esse custodem officinae bibliopola●um thence he goes on to Richard Montacute Bishop of Norwich upon whom he empties his Spleen calling him a Chief Coal-blower (b) 〈◊〉 ciniflones Archiepiscopalis culinae primas tenet in the Archbishop's Kitchin reviling him as wise in his (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 own Eyes swelled with Pride and Malice with a little learning but more of self-conceit Bishop Andrews is his next Man whom he accuses of Plagiarism and for stealing his determination against Vsury out of Rivette upbraiding him for his ill stile (d) De ferreo stilo per scabra decurrente adding that Du Moulin and Rivette are as much before him in Learning as he thinks a Bishop to be above a Presbyter and placeth him at length amongst the Men mediocris Doctrinae of mean Learning The last I shall produce tho' there be many more against whom he raves at the same rate is Bishop Hall and he impleads him for want of Prudence in that he wrote his Book of Episcopacy carried on to it with an unseasonable itch of Scribbling casting Oyl thereby on that pyle in which the