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A70471 A treatise of the episcopacy, liturgies, and ecclesiastical ceremonies of the primitive times and of the mutations which happened to them in the succeeding ages gathered out of the works of the ancient fathers and doctors of the church / by John Lloyd, B.D., presbyter of the church of North-Mimmes in Hertfordshire. Lloyd, John, Presbyter of the Church of North-Mimmes. 1660 (1660) Wing L2655A; ESTC R21763 79,334 101

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l. 4. c. ult Hierom affirmeth that many things which are by tradition observed in the Churches have usurped to themselves the authority of a Divine law as in baptism to immerge the head thrice and then to tast the concord of milk and honey Adversus Luciferianos to signifie infancy and on the Lords day and in all the Pentecost not to pray kneeling nor to fast Constantine the great exhorteth all to embrace the decree of the Nicene Council concerning the set time of the celebration of the Feast of Easter as a gift of God and a Commandement sent down from heaven Euseb de vita Constantini l. 3. c. 18. Edit Basil 1570. for whatsoever is decreed in the holy Councils of Bishops that ought to be ascribed to the divine will Hierom in another place saith let every one judge the precepts of the ancients to be Apostolical laws Hierom. Ep. 28. It is not to be doubted saith Leo Bishop of Rome but that every Christian observance is of divine erudition and that whatsoever is received by the Church into a custome of devotion Serm. 2. de jejun Pentecost proceeded from the Apostolick tradition and the Doctrine of the holy Spirit The Fathers use very frequently to affirm some institutions or rites to be divine or Apostolical because they seemed a greeable to and their lawfulness demonstrable by the old Testament the Gospels or Apostolick Epistles So the Lent Fast is by them said to be of Apostolical and Divine tradition because it seems an imitation of the Fast of Elias and of Christ and Monachism is affirmed to be Apostolick because it hath an appearance of being an imitation of John the Baptist Amalar. Alcuin Pontifical Damas c. yet many ancient writers make Pope Telesphorus who flourished Forty years after the decease of St. John the Apostle to be the author of the Quadragesimal Fast although indeed it had a much later beginning and affirm Paul and Anthony to be the Fathers of Monachism So that many institutes were counted Apostolick because some example or reason of the Scripture did seem to warrant them Whence Hierom and others intimate Hierom. in vita Pauli that Episcopacy was instituted in imitation of Aaron and his Sons or of the Apostles and 70 Disciples affirming Bishops to be successors of aaron and the Apostles and Presbyters the successors of the Sons of Aaron and of the 70 Disciples Fourthly it is a certain truth acknowledged by all the learned that the Apostles were authors as well of local and temporary or universal and temporary ordinances rites or ceremonies as of universal and perpetual for they were inspired by the Holy Ghost infallibly to discern both what the present condition although variable of some or all the Churches required and what upon reasons arising from unvariable grounds and circumstances was needful to be observed in all the Churches of Christ Polycarpus a hearer of the Apostles and by St. John made Bishop of Smyrna celebrated the Pasche in the fourteenth moon and so did the rest of Asia and some of the East observing it the same time with the Jews moved thereto by the countenance and example of St. John the Apostle but Anicetus Bishop of Rome who flourished in the life time of Polycarpus and generally the Churches of the West kept the Feast at another time and on the Lords day induced thereto as they affirmed by the tradition and example of St. Peter the Apostle We cannot with reason and charity think that either Polycarpus with the Asians and East or Anicetus with the Western Churches Apud Euseb Iren. could be ignorant of the time when Peter in the West or John in Asia observed that Feast Polycarpus being an eye witness of what the Apostle St. John did and Anicetus being a hearer of the hearers of Clemens who was contemporary with the Apostle St. Peter or that they would considerately speak and perseveringly maintain an untruth imputing a fact to either Apostle which he had not done especially seeing the untruth on either side might have been confuted by a thousand witnesses wherefore we must judge this to be an evident example of a variable apostolick institution I might instance in part of the Apostles decree in the 15 chapter of the Acts of the Apostles of things strangled and blood but least I move scruples in weak consciences which they cannot easily be rid of I will only commend to the consideration of the judicious the judgment of some ancient writers quoted in the margent August contra Faustum l. 32. c. 13. Et tractcti contra graecos in biblioth patr to 4. pag. 1308. et 1318.1319.1320 There be many rites which the Fathers held to be Apostolical which in the times of the same Fathers were in many places altered or neglected as the three immersions in baptisme the repairing of neighbour Bishops to the people where a Bishop was wanting there to ordain one in the presence of the people not to fast in the dayes of Pentecost and some other which prove that according to the judgment of those Fathers the Apostles guided by divine inspiration made some decrees alterable and which were upon just reasons accordingly changed or disused and therefore if it were proved that the Apostles by divine motion were the primary Auctors of Episcopacy and not the Church yet if it cannot appeare to be a constitution built upon perpetuall reason and in its nature independing upon variable circumstances it may possibly be changed by the Church Here it may be demanded by what members of it self did the universal Church abrogate the Presbyterian and institute Episcopal Government and what power was taken from the Presbyters by that abrogation For answer to these demands we must distingnish between the power given to ministers to doe some things as to preach baptize ordain Pastors excomunicate absolve c. and secondly the free exercise of those acts and thirdly the regulation of the exercise of them as to the persons about whom time when the place where the manner decency c. To the regulation belong 1. The making of laws concerning the due exercise of the power agreeable to the divine laws and secondly the superintendents of the execution and thirdly the executors of them As for the power it doth not appear that any of that was taken from the Presbyters or their Colledge by the institution of Episcopacy if they were deprived of any part of it can 13. that must be the ordaining of Presbyters but the Council of Ancyra seems to demonstrate that the power of ordaining Pastors did and doth remain in them which they did exercise by the leave Et Synod Antioch c. 16. vide Vasque in 3. p. Disp 143. c. 4. and in the place of the Bishop which Could not at his pleasure give them but supposed the power continuing in them The words of the Council be these according to the Greek Original and not their vulgar