Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	church_n	scripture_n	word_n	12,302	5	4.8636	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27030	A search for the English schismatick by the case and characters I. of the diocesan canoneers, II. of the present meer nonconformists : not as an accusation of the former, but a necessary defence of the later, so far as they are wrongfully accused and persecuted by them / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1681 (1681)	Wing B1399; ESTC R6862	28,132	47

their Church and Cause is meritorious of Salvation II. By the Passive Conformist I mean both such as go on the grounds of Mr. Sprint and think a Reformation very desirable but Conformity lawful to escape silencing and ruine and such as like Conformity for it self and wish all others did Conform but like not uncharitable censures or silencings or violence against conscionable Dissenters nor the compulsions which have caused our Church-convulsions Though the Nonconformists must needs judge these to partake in Schism so far as they own the Schismatical dividing terms of Communion which are the greatest hinderance of our Concord and will be still inconsistent with it yet as they reproach not Dissenters as Schismaticks so neither are they accounted Schismaticks by the Dissenters because they are sound and peaceable brethren and desire to live as such with others and Schism is not their disposition nor predominant We would live in greater Love and Concord with such as these than the differing Conformists have with one another III. The names of Sectaries and Separatists are of no fixed signification but vary according to the mind of the speaker But I now use them for those 1. Who appropriate the Church to some narrow Sect or Party which denieth all others to be true Churches or to have true Ministers and Sacraments 2. And next to those that though they own others as true Churches or Ministers yet hold their Communion unlawful when it is not so and renounce Communion with them on these grounds Such besides Papists are too many Prelatists that deny the Ministry Sacraments and Communion of the Reformed Churches which are not such as they yea of all Churches that have not an Episcopacy by uninterrupted Succession of Episcopal Ordination from the Apostles and that excommunicate all that do but say that there are any true Churches in England but their own And such are some Anabaptists some called Brownists or Separatists heretofore c. And the Seekers are much worse that deny all Churches and the Quakers and Ranters who revile the soundest and all true Hereticks who separate by denying some Essential of Christianity All these are Schismaticks in the judgment of all sound and sober Christians IV. By Active Canonical Conformists I mean those that are for the present frame of Ecclesiastical Government with the Liturgy and Canons and the Laws which enforce them who call usually for the Execution of those Laws V. By the meer present Nonconformists I mean such as are guilty of no other punishable errors or sins but such as the Act of Uniformity doth eject and silence us for and who declared openly their judgments about Doctrine Worship and Discipline in 1660 after a Common meeting at Sion-Colledge and another at the Savoy which is published in Print That is the Reconcilers or Peacemakers who then laboured and beg'd for Peace and Unity in vain who tye themselves to the judgment of none called Nonconformists heretofore Presbyterians Independents c. but to the Word of God and the example of the true Primitive Churches and are not for Concord only with a Sect or a dividing-party High or Low but for that Catholick Church and Communion of Saints which are in our Creed Schism being a culpable rending of Christians from each other hath a great number of degrees as it is by Apostasie from the Universal Church totally or by denying a fundamental by Heresie or as it is but by denying Integrals or but Accidents as it is but from a particular Church a Church of Gods forming or of mans As it is from a Church as if it were no Church or a corrupt Church falsly said or only a less desirable as it is from a Parish-Church a Diocesan a National c. As it is total or partial or but in some accidents from that particular Church holding Communion in all the rest As it is mental or but causeless local As it is from a Church or only from some persons in a Church-Pastor or others As it is by driving men by sinful Impositions from a Church or too easie departing with many the like differences elsewhere opened So that as all men have some degree of ignorance pride hypocrisie c. and yet are not to be denominated ignorant proud hypocrites where it is not predominant so all are defective in Love and Union and few Churches on earth are no way guilty of Schism and yet are not to be called Schismaticks where it is not predominant Almost all Churches on earth accuse each other of Schism the Papists so accuse the Greeks Protestants and all others the Greeks so accuse the Papists and Protestants as the Patriarch Jeremiah shews us and both the Abassines Jacobins Nestorians c. The Lutherans so call the Calvinists and they many Lutherans the Episcopal Presbyterians and Independents so accuse each other Sober and peaceable men must confess that most are guilty of some degree Laying by the rest our Question now is of Two Parties here the Canoneer Diocesan Conformists and the Present meer Conformists which are the ENGLISH SCHISMATICKS CHAP. II. The Case of the Diocesan-Canoneers or Zealots for Imposition of Conformity 1. THey agree not of the Essentiating Head of their own National Church whether it be Lay or Clergy King or Bishops and so are indeed of divers Churches no nor whether it have any constitutive Head or none 2. Some hold Bishops necessary to the Being of a Church and some only to the well-being of it and so agree not neither what a particular Church is 3. The former unchurch the parish-Parish-Churches and make them only parts of a proper Church the Diocesan being the lowest in a politick sense 4. They make the Parish-Priests but half Priests or Pastors denying them the Power of the Keys over their flock save in a little part 5. These deny the Reformed Churches which have no Bishops to be true proper Churches and their Ministration and Sacraments to be valid But others of them hold the contrary and so differ in their Communion with the Protestant Churches 6. Some of them say that none are true Ministers of Christ that have not Episcopal Ordination by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles And that their flocks have no title to Salvation because they have it not by Gods Covenant sealed by such a Ministry of the Sacraments 7. They hold twice Ordination sinful and yet Re-ordain those who were ordained by meer Presbyters or Rectors of Parish City Churches 8. Some Leaders grant that there were no Subject-Presbyters in Scripture times nor Bishops that had more than one stated Assembly and Altar which others are against 9. They agree not of the sense of the words Presbyter and Bishops in the Scripture 10. Some of them reproach the Reformation of other Churches as the Papists do as the effect of fury and rebellion and seek to render it odious as a crime 11. Yea and the Reformation of England by K. H. 8. as the product of his filthy lust and

as blasphemy against God and destructive to the piety and peace of man 88. Some of them preach for universal Redemption as a necessary point of faith which others cry down as Arminianism 89. Some of them make Justifying faith to contain Obedience and others cry it down as Popery and Socinianism 90. Some of them say that God hath given to all men sufficient grace to salvation yea say some and efficient which others call Arminianism 91. Some of them say that it is Gods Grace that maketh the faithful to differ from others and others say it is their own Wills And about the parts of Grace and Free-will they preach and write against each other 92. Some of them preach that all the justified persevere And others preach it down as a dangerous errour I have tryed to reconcile all these but they go on 93. Some of them are only for Bidding prayer in the Pulpit as if all other were forbidden by the Canon as Heylin others use prayer there 94. Some there pray in their own words and some only in the words of the Liturgy some use the same words and others vary them 95. Their Cathedral Worship much differeth from the Parochial and some Churches use Organs and others have none 96. One writeth for the Religious use of Lent as Bishop Guning others as Bishop Taylor and Dr. More c. are against their principles and use yea and against many other things of Church-Government and significant Ceremonies which the other party hold See Taylor cited 2d Plea for Peace 97. Some of them are for the Divine right of the Lords Day and the Morality of the fourth Commandment which Heylin and many others vehemently deny 98. One is for Altars and Rails and others against them and others for indifferency 99. In preaching they use very different Methods And some Churches of them begin to use new Versions of the singing Psalms 100. Some following Grotius de Jure Belli and Dr. Taylors Ductor Dubitantium are for useful lying which injureth not others and therefore no doubt for doubtful Conformity But others are against it 101. But they no-where more differ than in their Conformity it self one taking the words in one sense and another in another so that their Conformity is not the same thing though the Letters and sound of voice be the same One by his Assent and Consent to all things in the three books meaneth plainly and another meaneth but that he may and will use so much as concerneth him One by Not resisting by Arms any Commissioned by the King meaneth as he speaketh Another limiteth it to Lawfully Commissioned One by on any pretence whatsoever meaneth as he saith Another excepteth as Bilson aforesaid and such cases as King Johns who gave up his Kingdom to the Pope and would have done to the Morocco-Mahometan and many other such instances as Killing the Parliaments City c. One that subscribeth never to endeavour any Alteration of Church-Government meaneth as he speaketh Another excepteth Lay-Chancellours use of the Keys Deans and Chapters Archdeacons c. if the King would change them One by any endeavour meaneth as he saith Another meaneth only unlawful endeavour one by nothing contrary to Gods word in Can. 36. meaneth plainly Another meaneth nothing which maketh Communion unlawful One taketh all the imposed subscriptions to be but a promise of submission and peace which others abhor and are for the Truth of all that they subscribe assent to In a word some are for the common Rule of taking all the words in the usual sense except the Imposers declare a different sense And others are for necessary supposing that the Imposers meant well whatever they said and therefore our Charity and honouring them bindeth us to put no sense on their words which is contrary to Gods Law the Law of the Land or Common Right and supposing them true and good whatever they are who can doubt but they may be sworn or subscribed 102. Dr. Hammond and his party thought that it doth not appear that there were any subject Presbyters in Scripture-times and so that every single Congregation had a Bishop present in worshipping God But Dr. Stillingfleet saith p. 269. While the Apostles lived it is probable there were no fixed Bishops or but few And so the world had but 12 or 13 indefinite Bishops who are not proved to have any peculiar determinate Diocesses 103. Mr. Dodwell and I think most of them take the Church of England to be a Political society and many think we overthrow Church and Order if we deny Churches to be formed by a Constitutive Government But Dr. Stillingfleet not only holdeth that the Church of England is but the Pastors and people consenting by Parliaments to live under the same Laws about Religion without any Constitutive Church-Head one or many but also peremptorily concludeth that to maintain such a Constitutive Supreme Church-power will necessarily infer Popery and so maketh all the Conformists necessarily to lead in Popery who are for such Political Churches and Constitutive Governours 104. Mr. Cheny saith That to make Churches by Covenants confederacies or consent besides baptism is to be guilty of blasphemy impiety irreligiousness infidelity and one should rather die than yield to it But Dr. Stillingfleet saith the Church of England is one Church made by such consent But such Schisms among themselves are too many to be here numbered And no wonder when they differ so much as they do with their own Sentiments in one and the same book saying and unsaying as the argument in hand requireth E. g. Dr. Stillingfleet thinketh that the seven Churches of Asia being Metropolitan prove Diocesan or Metropolitan-Bishops then in being And yet that while the Apostles lived it 's probable there were no fixed Bishops or but few And so either seven Apostles were the Angels of the seven Churches of Asia reproved so much for their sin and backsliding or the Angels signified not the Bishops While we are all Schismaticks for disobeying say some and holding Nonconforming Assemblies say others from the Church of England yet this Church is no proper Political Church and hath no Constitutive chief Government saith Dr. St. and therefore hath no authority to make Canons to command us He no less than threatneth us with damnation not in the retracted Irenicum but in his late book against Popish Idolatry if we chuse not the purest Church and the Papist granteth it and saith as he And yet it is the substance of his unreasonable books to prove us Schismaticks if we depart from their Church or so much as preach to other Assemblies on the account of purer worship and greater edification c. And he had the wit to pass by this citation in the Epistle of a book against him As for Mr. Cheny and divers other such another book openeth their Contradictions They often tell us of the Nullity of the Ministry or Power which is not received from Episcopal Superiors Especially Bishop Gunning and