Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	bishop_n	church_n	rome_n	17,242	5	7.2290	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42580	A vindication of the principles of the author of the answer to the compiler of the nubes testium from the charge of popery in answer to a late pretended letter from a dissenter to the divines of the Church of England : as deceivers, and yet true, 2 Cor. 6. 8.	Gee, Edward, 1657-1730.	1688 (1688)	Wing G464; ESTC R3563	22,276	42

Bishops challenge as their Right To let him see how loosely he manages this debate betwixt us I can with putting in two or three necessary words subscribe to all our Compiler says for the Pope and yet be as far from owning the Popes Supremacy as the Church of England is or ever was The Fathers teach says our Compiler (a) Nubes Testium p. 22. that Christ Built his Church upon Peter So say I too if by Fathers here be meant two or three of them and not the Fathers unanimously as he hath it before or generally That the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of Saint Peter is what I can also grant and that that See is the Centre of the Catholick Communion if I may but put in here what is absolutely necessary while possessed by an Orthodox Bishop and that whosoever separates himself from it I add professing the true Faith and possessed by a Catholick Bishop is guilty of Schism I CAN I SAY SUBSCRIBE THOUGH I DO NOT TO ALL This without any Obligation in the least of believing the Popes Supremacy All that our Compiler puts down here reaching no farther than a Primacy of Order does not at all suppose in the Popes any Jurisdiction or Authority over the Catholick Church Having dispatched my Vindication against the Charge of the three first Articles of Popery I come now to examine the fourth which doth charge me with doubting whether there be really any Controversy about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England Well then are these my expressions in the place quoted Or is this the sense of them there I must profess to the world that had I not already discovered the cheats of the malicious Representer in the former Articles I could not have believed that any person of common sense or learning would have been guilty of such tricks I had the same occasion in my chapter about the Tradition that I had in the former chapter about Supremacy of shewing how loose a Writer our Compiler is and exposing him for putting that down as an account of the Controversy which I could subscribe to if taken in that sense which the words would fairly bear and yet be never the nearer to Popery than I now am or ever intend to be Upon this coming to examine what he had put down at the Head of his Collections about Tradition I have these expressions To state therefore the Controversy about Tradition if there really be any betwixt us he should not have put down that for the account of the debate herein betwixt us which is agreed to by both sides nor should have omitted that wherein WE REALLY DISAGREE and that is about the Scriptures being a certain and Perfect Rule of Faith WITHOUT THE HELP of TRADITION which the Council of Trent hath made to be of Equal Authority with the Scripture One would think such clear expressions as these would have prevented my being accused of doubting whether there really be any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England but no clearness it seems can be protection against the Malice of such an Adversary as is fallen upon me and therefore he puts down those expressions as mine doubting whether there be really any Controversie about Tradition betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England when in that very paragraph I say that We meaning the Churches of England and Rome Really Disagree about Tradition's being part of the Rule of Faith. And therefore any other Reader less spiteful than my angry Adversary would easily have seen and observed that the expression in the beginning of the paragraph if there really be any was used and intended for an allusion to that state of the Controversie which had been set down by the Compiler about Tradition and ought not to be wire-drawn to make me doubt that in the beginning of the paragraph the contrary to which I did directly assert within three lines after The fifth Article of the charge against me is that I did say that the Tradition of the Catholick Church is to be received and the sixth is of the same kind that I confessed there That by Tradition we receive the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Suppositious Writings I do freely own that these are my expressions in that place and these I am sure are far from looking like Popery if I that wrote them may be allowed to tell in what sense I did mean and intend them All the service that my Adversary could expect from the citing and insisting upon them was onely to amuse the common Readers with the Word Tradition that they not understanding the Ambiguity of the Word nor in what several senses the Word Tradition was used might be tempted to believe that I was for setting up there that Tradition which they used to hear preached against so much by the Clergy of the Church of England By Tradition here which I said we receive or admit of I did not mean that Tradition which is set up as part of the Rule of Faith in the Church of Rome nor did I any more mean Tradition as it is taken for any Doctrine of the Church of Rome which they say was from the beginning delivered to them All that I meant by Tradition there was no more than the bare means of delivering down to us the Word of God and any Rites or Customs in the Ancient Church When I said therefore that by this Tradition we received the Holy Scriptures and know how to separate the Scriptures from Apocryphal or Supposititious Writings The full and clear meaning of those expressions was that the Canonical Books of the Holy Scriptures or to speak to the meanest capacity that the Bible was delivered down from time to time and from hand to hand in all Ages unto us that we did receive them from our Forefathers in the Church as they had received them from theirs up unto the beginning and that since they delivered down to us onely those Books which the Church of England does believe and admit for the Word of God we do thereby know that no other Books could be part of the Scriptures which were not handed down to us for such This is as much as I need to offer either in Vindication of my self or explication of my words when I spoke of Tradition but because I cannot clear my innocence too much herein I will shew the world that I had very good Vouchers for every word that I said thereabout and will produce the sense of Arch-Bishop Usher who never was thought by any Sort of Protestants to be any ways inclineable to or guilty of Popery This most learned Prelate in his Reply to the Jesuits Challenge hath these words about (b) p. 35. Tradition This must I needs tell you before we begin that you much mistake the matter if you think that Traditions of all sorts promiscuously are struck at

charge either Disputant or Writer with teaching what he does onely grant for Argument sake and with believing what he meerly supposes for the same purpose and yet this is my Case in that Accusation I was in that chapter of my Book out of which these passages are taken shewing what a disingenuous sort of an Adversary I had to deal with there how he when he came to treat of the Popes Supremacy instead of putting down a just and fair account of the Pretensions of the Bishops of Rome did onely mention two or three trifling things which any one with adding onely to them two or three necessary words might grant and yet be as far as any one ever was from believing the Supremacy of the Popes of Rome That I might therefore expose him and shew the great looseness and craft with which he wrote I did in that place undertake to prove it in particular and went through all the Heads of that chapter still telling him at every one of them that I could grant it and yet continue without any obligation in the least of believing the Popes Supremacy What I had said there and granted as is usual in all Writers meerly for to expose my Adversary this Letter-Writer hath by sleight of hand turned into honest confessions and makes me assert in the Letter what I had onely supposed in the Book Whosoever will look into that page of my Book will quickly see how extravagantly abusive and false this charge in the Letter upon me is and how very disingenuous and malicious that person must be that would from thence affix to me as an Assertion about the Bishop of Rome's Succession and Unity that which was onely a School-Concession for Argument sake And tho this answer is sufficient with all persons of sense to convince them what a Jugling Adversary I have yet there is an Expression in that very paragraph which does express as plainly as words can my denyal of and disbelief of any of those things that He lays to my charge in the Letter as fair Concessions of my Opinion about the Bishop of Rome for immediately after those passages set down in the Letter I have these very words I can I say subscribe THOUGH I DO NOT to all this without any Obligation in the least of believing the Popes Supremacy And here I cannot but appeal to the world to judge betwixt me and this Jugling Adversary whether any one could express his meaning more plainly and his dissent more fully than I have done in that place and whether that Adversary must not be devoid of all Honesty Sense or Conscience that would notwithstanding such a direct denyal of mine expressed there charge me with believing and granting that the Bishop of Rome is S. Peter's Successor that he is the Centre of Catholick Communion and that it is Schism to separate from his See. Had my stile been obscure and my expressions been intricate and those words which did declare my direct disbelief of those things at some great distance three or four pages off for example from those quoted by the Representer there might have been some small pretence some little colour for the knavery used here by him but there was no ground for any such Plea for the Expressions and stile are plain enough there and the words though I do not are in the very next line to his last quotation and it is impossible but he should both see them and read them too With what conscience then could any man read those words and yet have the forehead from the very same page to bring me in as believing the direct contrary I am so far from thinking that any Christian would be guilty of such a deliberate and injurious imposture that I believe both Turks and Heathens would abhor and detest the being guilty of such a malicious Forgery As for that good Opinion of the Pope which this Jugler mentions afterwards in the Letter as mine I think I have sufficiently evidenced to the world in that second Chapter of my Answer to the Compiler how little a Friend to or favourer of the Popes Pretensions I am If to shew that there is no ground or Authority from Scripture for his claims to Supremacy if to shew that there is no ground for the Pretended Supremacy from the Laws and Canons of the Universal Church for the first six hundred years after Christ and to back this with Three Challenges to all the Romish Priests in England to name one Canon in the Code of the Universal Church that does either constitute or assert or suppose the Bishop of Rome to be that Head and Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church which their General Council of Florence defined him to be if to shew I say all these things be a discovery of a mans good Opinion of the Pope I do here own that I have as good an Opinion of the Pope as any Person within the four Seas But I am afraid that I never shall have either favour or thanks for my good Opinion of the Pope And however the Representer who I believe read that chapter thorough does tell the world of his meeting with my good Opinion of the Pope in that Book I am very fully persuaded that he does no more believe himself that I have any good Opinion of the Pope than I believe that he is at this Instant in Japan But when a mans hand is in at such sort of writing and when he is resolved to blacken his Adversary but wants Matter and Ground for such Calumnies He must e●en do as my Adversary does invent himself what he would fain have found in his Adversaries Work and charge him with saying that in his Work which he does not nay which he expresly denies I think I have fully vindicated my self from the charge about the Pope himself against me and exposed enough the notorius Calumny of the Representer upon this Point However lest any Reader should not sufficiently apprehend the first part of my Answer to this Calumny and lest any of the Representers Friends should deny the Proof of the deliberate Falsification of my meaning because the passage is not set down and they converse commonly with those who either have not or will not or it may be must not look into my Book it self I will transcribe those two whole paragraphs thence which are the Subject of his Charge and my Answer and they are these in the beginning of my Second Chapter concerning the Popes Supremacy p. 8. Our Compiler being now come to a Point of debate doth not forget his art of palliating which was so serviceable to him in his Misrepresentations and Representations of Popery He cannot but know and therefore ought to have avoided it that this loose talk about Successor of Peter and Centre of Catholick Communion does not reach the Pretensions of the Bishops of Rome nor fully and fairly declare what Power Jurisdiction and Authority in and over the Catholick Church those