Selected quad for the lemma: word_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	catholic_a	church_n	universal_a	4,187	5	9.3971	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61101	A Protestants account of his orthodox holding in matters of religion at this present in difference in the church, and for his own and others better confirmation or rectification in the points treated on : humbly submitted to the censure of the Church of England.	Spelman, Henry, Sir, 1564?-1641.; Spelman, John, Sir, 1594-1643.	1642 (1642)	Wing S4940; ESTC R12772	24,078	35

Body from thence as the Apostle speaks by joynts and bands having nourishment and knit together may encrease with the encrease of God These same things doth our Saviour teach when giving a Rule for governing ones self in private offences betwixt his brother and him he bids him Tell it to the Church Our Saviour meant not that upon every such occasion the Church Catholique should or could be convoked but onely that the offended should complain to the Governours of the Church he lived in the doing whereof is properly to complain to the whole Church yea to the whole Church Catholique as appears by our Saviours adding that if the offender refused to hear the Church he should be as an Heathen man as much as to say That if by refusing to hear his particular Church he refused to hear the whole Chuch Catholique he should then be as an Heathen man cut off from the Communion of the whole Church for it were no just sentence to cut off one from the whole Church for disobeying the particular unlesse that disobedience to the particular were disobeying of the whole Church Every particular Church then hath so farre the authority of the Church Universall that as to her own Members her voyce is the voyce of the Catholique Church and tyes them all in conscience to submit their judgements to hers and to yeeld observance to all her Ordinances that are not against the expresse Word of God nor judgement of the Catholique Church And even in her Ordinances that minister question whether they be Orthodox and agreeable to the Word of God or no her authority is so farre binding as that even those Ordinances● are not to be rejected nor condemned upon the judgement of any of her private Members onely but either by her own review and censure by some more generall Nationall Assembly or if the consequence require it by a full and true Generall Assembly of the Church whose sentence when once it shall be obtained shall be received as the most sacred and most authentique judgement that may be had in that matter and neerest approaching to the judgement of the holy Ghost but shall not be received as infallible as if pronounced by a Judge infallible for what assistance soever God hath promised to his Church it is onely such as agrees with the condition of a Church Militant therefore he hath neither promised it to the single Ministers in every of their Preachings neither yet so to the Church it self as that in every of her Consultations and Decrees she should infallibly produce the sentence of the holy Ghost for then were the Scripture needlesse seeing the Church should be able to pronounce infallibly with authority equall to the very Text and the Church as to errour in knowledge and understanding should not be Militant but Triumphant but every judgement of every Church shall have such a potiority of credit and authority in respect of the judgement of any part or Member thereof as that it must not be rejected nor over-ruled by any other judgement than either her own revisall and censure Assembly of her proper Judges a more generall Nationall Assembly or a full generall Assembly of the Church To conclude then when for avoyding confusion in the Church God hath subjected the spirits of the particular Preachers to the concurrent judgement of all the Preachers for men under pretence of preaching Gods Word to preach their own private judgements in detraction from the authority of their Church and without submitting their opinions to the judgement of their Church this is so farre from honouring God by magnifying of his Word as that contrarily it destroyes the authority of the Scripture by confused and wrong arrogated judgement in interpreting of it it by sects and schismes subverts the peace of the Church and contrary to the Admonition that God hath given in that behalf makes God the author of confusion The assurance of our Orthodox profession depending upon the consideration of these things cannot but occasion a little further examination of them Religion a religando ex vi termini is that which whatsoever it be ought to binde the Professor but of all other Godlinesse which onely is the true Religion must not have that binding power of hers denyed and therefore will-worship as repugnant to Religion is to be rejected Ye shall not saith Moses to the people when they were to enter into the Land and be a setled Church Ye shall not saith he do as we do this day every one that which is good in his own eyes It is impossible for the Professor which followeth his own judgement or conscience onely to avoid disobedience and will-worship for private judgement and conscience are neither sure nor constant observers of Gods Law nor can a man alwayes tell whether his iudgement or his affection leads his conscience but as obedience is that which our Saviour himself learning sheweth that we all must learn so the power of Godlinesse is to constrain obedience And if there be a question what we shall obey the Scripture tells us the Priests lips should preserve knowledge and we should seek the Law at his mouth And our Saviour tells his disciples He that heareth you heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me and bids that he that will not hear the Church be as an Heathen man And St Paul tells us The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth and against private singularities and indecencies in the service of God he obiects that their Church had no such custome neither the Churches of God We are also commanded to submit to all manner of Ordinance of man for the Lords sake And that every soul be subject to the higher power that he that resisteth the power resisteth the Ordinance of God and receiveth to himself damnation The Scripture is abundant to this purpose and among many other places Gen. 27. 6. is remarkable When Jacob or Israel was afraid in the apparell of his elder brother to seek his fathers supreme blessing lest by seeking it in a undue manner he should instead of a blessing get a curse his mother requires his obedience to her voye Israel obeyed her and by it obtained the blessing If this Allegory so much concern us as that we be the Israel the younger brother that want and seek the blessing our Saviour our elder brother in whose clothing we seek it and God our father that gives it who is our directing mother by oheying whose voyce we obtain the blessing but she that is the wife of our father the Church of God By these then and many other Scriptures it appears That in all matters of Religion wheresoever there is a doubt and consesequently use of judgement the iudgement of the Church is to be preferred So Gods Word which must be observed directs so the exigence of things requires the particular man cannot otherwise avoyd will-worship and singularity nor the

and spirits attend the publike and joynt presenting of their known supplications to God for those mercies and graces which the Church by those Forms declares all men to stand in need of and every ones particular spirit attesteth to be necessary for him But if all Congregations which God forbid should be deprived of the use of them every man shall go to Church bound in the spirit and know not what supplications he shall make to God till the mouth of the Minister shall declare it and then the single Minister whatsoever his gifts or faculties be shall determine of the devotion of the whole Congregation and conclude them all that they shall make no publike Invocation of God neither for matter nor form otherwise than as his spirit and perhaps sudden conceit shall minister unto him 6. When all the Service of the Church shall stand onely upon the strength and gifts of the Preachers and they differing in gifts one from another it will inevitably follow That those of the best gifts will more draw disciples after them than ever and men will become followers of men when they shall have no other means of publike communion with God either to hear him or to speak unto him than onely by the gifts of the Preacher and so the Church shall against Gods Word be necessarily drawn into Sectarism and Division 7. Lastly If we change our set Forms of D●vine Worship into the various and arbitrary service that is to be performed by the Minister onely among many evills not now to be foreseen there is to be feared that when men shall have known no other publike exercise of Religion than by the Preachers arbitrary administration and that he be generally beh●ld as the onely Minister of the spirit of publike service and prayer the consciences of men thenceforth subdued to an awfull dependance on him shall finde the Ministers like the Jesuites through the Soveraignty they hold in matters of Religion to exercise an externall dominion over their fortunes also and set on foot a more dangerous tyranny in Religion than hitherto the Church hath ever known And if their opposition to set Forms of publike Service and to what is used in the Church of Rome shall proceed so far as to reject the publike reading of the Scripture eight severall Lessons or portions of which are now by Gods mercifull providence dayly or at least every Sunday and holy-day publikely read in the Church then shall our Church of England by an ill-guided meaning to oppose the Church of Rome come to imitate her and towards her children commit the same cruelty that we justly condemn the Church of Rome for using towards hers who though she suffer her Layicks to hear the Word preached yet suffers them not to hear in their own Tongue the powerfull Word of God read unto them and we as well as the Romanists shall toward those that cannot or are carelesse to reade even wholly take away the means which our pious Mother the Church hath ordained for their conversion And whereas such publike reading of Gods lively and powerfull Word is no mean degree of Preaching we shall in an important part suppresse the Word of God and through disuse of frequent hearing breed a generall unacquaintednesse with the Precepts and Stories of the Scripture which will in time hinder both the understanding and applying of that which shall be preached We need not further seek to give particular answer to every quarrell that is now made against severall parts and passages of our Liturgy But when kneeling at the receit of the Sacrament is so agreeable to the religious performance of that Duty and yet is quarrelled with we cannot in silence passe it over For when want of due preparation is dangerous yet is not performed without humiliation contrition abhorring ones self forgiving others turning to them in all charitable affections thirsting for grace and fervent invocation of the Divine Majesty for them how can we perform these rightly without the lowliest prostration of soul and body that one can solicite God withall Will we say It should be done before but not at our receiving It is true it ought to be begun before but he that can so approve of his preparation before as to cease and say I have done enough he is rather to fear his presumption than to rest in such preparation he perhaps makes a popish opus operatum of his preparation and cries peace before there is peace nor can he say kneeling is an unfit posture to receive that grace in which is fittest to be begged on our knees Will we say kneeling is Idolatry to the Bread and Wine We must then shew that it is commanded to be done to the Bread and Wine or intended so or at least by Protestants abused so if none of those be but it be commanded only as the proper expression of the reverence and humiliation belonging to the duty then is the exception not onely without cause but slanderous and malicious Will we say That in the Institution of it our Saviour made not the disciples kneel True but let us also confesse that the disciples had the Bride-groom with them who though he were their Lord yet called them friends and admitted them to a liberty sutable We will not I am sure say the Sacrament is now to be celebrated in all things as it was then and no otherwise and if in any thing there be liberty of receding from what was done at first whose judgement shall we trust what we must hold and what we may recede from if not the Judgement and Practice of the Universall Church from the first to this present And if indeed we would observe the first Institution Why spurn we at receiving it together at the Table for so the the disciples did And Saint Paul calls it the partaking of the Table of the Lord and David The preparing of a Table for us Truely the receiving every one or every family apart by themselves in their seats ●uits not with observing of Communion nor coming together to eat nor eating together into one Body but savours of singularity and inconformablenesse to the observance of a true Eucharist It is not to be expected we should here examine all the dissentitions in Religion that are among us But seeing that in generall they are the quarrells of particular men for exercise of Religion in wayes either besides or contrary to the established Ordinances and usage of our Church in which yet they can neither charge the Church with violating the Word of God nor shew by the judgement of the Church Catholike that their own exercise of Religion is that which by the Word of God is only to be taught and practised It will not be unnecessary to represent to further search and consideration how much some passages of Gods Word too little examined by us are pertinent to the decision of these matters For Whereas true Christianity is a perfect Catholicisme and