Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	catholic_n	church_n	member_n	1,642	5	8.9783	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39994	The differences of the time, in three dialogues the first, anent episcopacy, the second, anent the obligation of the covenants against episcopacy, the third, anent separation : intended for the quieting the minds of people, and settling them in more peace and unity.	Forrester, David, fl. 1679.	1679 (1679)	Wing F1589; ESTC R10780	86,473	238

Laws silence a Minister that he may not preach the Word of God I. You now give me occasion to tell you brieflie how your Preachers behave themselves in this Schism who are indeed the great propagators of it 1. They exerce their Ministrie contrarie to the Command of Authoritie concerning which you ask whether the King and the Law can silence a Minister that he may not preach the Word of God To which I say you read of Solomons thrusting out Abiathar from the Priest-hood 1 King 2.27 That it was a deposing of him simply from all Priestly power I shall not debate yet sure it was a restraining of his Priestly power as to the actual exercing and officiating which he was bound to submit to This a King may do he may inhibite a Minister to Preach in his Dominions and the Minister so discharged ought to be silent and not counteract even suppose he think the King and the Law wrongs him especially when there are others to preach the Gospel though he or sundry be silent May be you have heard what Beza saith to this case Epist. 12. In answer to some in England if in case the Queen Elizabeth and the Bishops would either have Ministers Preach on their Terms or not at all they might Preach notwithstanding of the Prohibition of Authority To which he answereth Tertium enim illud nempe ut contra Regiae-Majestatis Episcoporum voluntatem Ministerio suo fungantur magis etiam exhorrescimus i. e. As to the third to wit that Ministers exercise their Ministry contrary to the will of the Queen and the Bishops is a thing we yet more abhore Next These who preach among you make themselves Ministers of the whole Church without any fixt or settled charge D. I have heard say that every Minister is a Minister of the Catholick Church I. That it is true and that you may see in what sense and on what grounds we say so against Independents read Mr. Rutherfoord in his due right of Presbytrie pag. 204. though wrong figured and he tells you that though a Pastor be Pastor of the Catholick Church yet he is not a Catholick Pastor of the Catholick Church as were the Apostles And that by a Calling or Ordination he is made a Pastor but by Election is to be restricted to be ordinarily the Pastor of his Flock So Mr. Durham on Rev. pag. 106 107. saith a Minister though he be a Minister of the Catholick Church yet is not a Catholick Minister of the Catholick Church and that there is great odds betwixt these two The Apostles saith he were Catholick Ministers of the Catholick Church and such the Pope claims to be that is to have an immediate access for exercising his Office equally and indifferently to all places Ministers saith he actu primo have a commission and power to be Ministers of the whole Church and Watch-men of the whole Citie indefinitly Yet actu secundo They are specially delegated for such and such Congregations and Posts But Ministers among you have made themselves actu secundo Ministers of all the Congregations of the Countrey where they can come And from this followeth a third step they incroach and intrude upon the Charges of other men of which I spoke before and now only shall question you by what Authoritie they do so What call have they to preach and administer the Sacraments to people of another Ministers Charge not being called or desired by the Ministers of those people so to do Their call is either Ordinary or extraordinary Ordinary they have none never being called to be Ministers of those Congregations nor so much as imployed by the Minister of the place to exercise any Ministerial act among his people And for an Extraordinary call I think they will not pretend to it It may be seen by Acts of Councils in ancient times how the Church hath guarded against this kind of incroaching by one upon anothers Charge Otherwise what confusions and absurdities would inevitably follow When these Ministers who went to Aberdeen to perswade the taking of the National Covenant preached there without leave of the Ministers of the place the Doctors and Ministers asked them how it was that without their consent and against their will they publickly preached to the people of their Congregations Which they tell them was a thing repugnant to Scripture and to Canons of ancient Councils I might further let you see by what practices ministers among you advance this Schism They are careful to or dain men of their own way that hereby the Schism might be perpetuated and kept on foot They are much in inveighing against Bishops and Curats as they call the Ministers Hereby to alienate the minds of people from their own Pastors Of late they have great mixt communions at which persons ignorant of the common principles and vitious persons may be and I little doubt are admitted it being hardly possible by their way to keep them back I might also speak of their great disswasives to people not to hear their own Pastors and of their strange and dreadful uncharitableness to such as differ from them which sin they have with too much unhappie success diffused among their ordinarie hearers Mr. Baxter saith to this purpose in the preface to his Cure of Church divisions To Preach without love and to hear without love and to pray without love to any that differ from your Sect O what a loathsome Sacrifice is it to the God of Love If we must leave our Gift at the Altar till we are reconciled to an offended brother what a gift is theirs who are unreconciled to almost all the Churches of Christ or to multitudes of their Brethren because they are not of their way Yea that make their Communion the very badge and means of their uncharitableness and divisions D. I cannot deny but there may be some truth in these things I have heard from you And now I must take my leave and shall have my thoughts of what hath past betwixt us now and then when I am alone I. Do so I pray you and seek Illumination from God and that he would remove prejudices which too oft stand in the way of our embracing Truth Only let me give you a few advices further before we part And 1. Be not too confident of your own opinions as if you were undoubtedly in the right but consider seriously what I have said to inform you at our three Conferences 2. Think not that the matters in debate among us are the very substantials of Religion or that people may not be of different perswasions in these things and yet both sides maintain Love and Church fellowship for this were to run unto manifest sin and evil viz. Schism which is a renting of Christs body the Church and neglecting publick Ordinances upon fears of what is only disputable and supposed to be evil There have been far greater differences among Christians in former times and yet Church-communion not

Apostolical warrant at least and if so then the Covenant against Episcopacy suppone it were there abjured is null from the beginning But passing this to what you say of the Assembly of Glasgow's expounding the Popes Hierarchy to be meant of all Episcopacy I answer that was more than they could do For 1. How could the Assembly put a sense upon that Oath that was taken 58. years before and few or none of the first takers of it were than alive or if alive few or none were Members of that Assembly How then could the Assembly come to know certainly that their exposition of the word Hierarchy was according to the mind of the first imposers 2. All that the Assembly 1638. produces in their Act Sess 16. to prove Episcopacy to be abjured in the National Covenant amounts only to this That the Church about the time of the first taking of that Covenant and after was labouring against Bishops but proves not that Episcopacy was abjured in it or in any words of it 3. By what warrant could the Assembly impose upon others that sense of the Covenant in which they took it themselves they might declare their own sense of it which might not be the sense of the first imposers when all is done but how could they oblige others to their sense who had taken it before The first imposers gave the Assembly no power to do so D. Yet those who took that Covenant after the Assembly 1638. had put their sense on it have thereby abjured Episcopacy for the Assembly explaineth it so I. I suppose it was not the Assemblies intention that any should take that Covenant in the sense they put on it unless it were agreeable to the sense of the first imposers and takers to whom the Assembly thought themselves subservient i● what they did Now that the first imposers and takers never meant it against all Episcopacy is shewed and therefore the Assemblies ground failing that which they built thereupon must fail also For it were absurd to say that the Assembly putting a meaning on that Oath no way agreeable with the meaning of the first imposers that yet this posterior meaning should oblige also though much differing from the former this is to make of an Oath what we please D. In that Covenant we are sworn that we shall joyn our selves to this Church of Scotland in Doctrine Faith Religion and Discipline and that we shall continue in the Doctrine and Discipline thereof Where by Discipline is meant Presbyterian Government So then we are sworn to maintain it by the National Covenant I. By Discipline cannot be meant Presbyterian Government because at the time of the first imposing of that Covenant there was no such Government in Scotland nor for a considerable time after Whatever essays Ministers in those times made to introduce it yet the King who imposed that Covenant owned Episcopacy Therefore 2. If by Discipline some one particular mode of Government be meant it 's more then probable that it must be Episcopacy because it was the Government then practised in this Church And the very year after the King and Council ratified the Treaty that had been concluded at Leith in favours of Episcopacy Anno 1571. But by Dicipline is not meant any one particular form of Government but the substantials of it or the essential and utterly necessary policy of the Church as it is expressed in the first Book of Discipline Cap. 9. And this is indeed unalterable though as some think there may be a change of particular Forms of Government D. Yet in the second Article of the League Bishops are expresly abjured and I hope you will confess that Protestant Bishops are there meant I. Although Protestant Bishops be there meant yet I question if every kind o●… Protestant Bishops Timorcus Epist dedicat Sect. 25. and pag. 14. 16. Doubteth not to say that all kind of Prelacy is no●… there abjured but that notwithstanding the said Article they the English Presbyterians could freely submit to the Primitive Episcopacy that is the precedency of one over the rest without whom ordinarily nothing is to be done in Jurisdiction or Ordination and asserts that it was only the English kind of Prelacy that was meant in the second Article of the League as also appears from the explanation of that Article inclosed in the body of it by a Parenthesis Which kind we have not in Scotland nor had before although many of you think there is no difference Mr. Vines and Mr. Baxter two great men of the Presbyterian way in England say that that second Article was not intended against all kind of Episcopacy but only against that complex frame that consists of all the Officers mentioned in the Article And Mr. Gataker that the most part of the Assembly of Divines was reconcileable to a Moderat Episcopacy And further Timoreus That the English Parliament with the Commissioners from Scotland never intended the extirpation of all kind of Episcopacy but only of that in England pag. 16. 23. See also Mr. Croston Pag. 70 78. So that the most judicious of the English Presbyterians who knew the mind of the Imposers and the circumstances of that business you see would not cry out upon us as guilty of breach of that Article as ye do D. What was the Parliament of England or the Assembly of Divines their sense of that Article I know not nor think I my self much concerned to enquire but the Kirk and State of Scotland who imposed that Oath on us meant it against all sort of Bishops I. I pray you consider we are now speaking of the League which was not a meer National Covenant of this Kingdom alone but a common League of all the three Kingdoms and therefore behoved to be sensed by the Representatives of all the three So it is not the sense that any one of the Kingdoms puts on it you or I are to stand to but that meaning and sense which all the three imposed on it And what was the Parliament of England's sense was as Timorcus tells us with the joynt concurrence of Commissioners from Scotland D. In the first Article the preservation of the Government of the Kirk of Scotland is sworn to be maintained which was Presbytrie and therefore in the second we swear against all kind of Prelacy because Prelacy and Presbytrie are inconsistent I. If you think in the first Article Presbytrie is sworn to be maintain'd and ye● that there is a liberty left in the second Article for some kind of Prelacy which I told you the English Divines confess and if withal you think there is an inconsistency betwixt Presbytrie and any kind of Episcopacy then it will follow that we have sworn things contradicto●y viz. In the first Article that we shall admit of no kind of Prelacy and in the second that we may admit of some kind of Prelacy 2. It 's much doubted by learned men whither in the first Article there be any