Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	king_n	majesty_n	parliament_n	3,897	5	6.3360	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
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

propounding of the true doctrine in decision of controversies or of constitutions of expedient or necessary to aedification are acts of religion most proper to the Bishops and presbyters the first an act of the praedication of the gospel the other an act of ecclesiastical Government The embracing of the truth and ordinances seen to be profitable together with the confirming of them by his decree and sanction or addition where he seeth it needful of a reward or mulct is the part of a Christian Prince discerning upon due search the truth and the usefulnesse of the ordinances propounded unto him whose embracing is his act of subjection to Christ and confirmation and sanction an act of his Vicary authority To make laws bestowing civil gifts or priviledges on the Church and ordaining civil punishments for offences committed against Christian religion and Ecclesiastical Canons and constituting Courts for the cognizance of such causes and the execution of those Laws is the peculiar and proper work of a Christian King which he may well doe without the authority of Bishops and presbyters but which he may best doe with their grave advice and counsel In the unanimous Votes of the Kings Majesty the honourable Houses of Parliament and the venerable convocation all Powers and interests are fully satisfied whether in decision of controversies in religion Chrysost in 2. Cor. hom 18 c. Sect. 11. or making Ecclesiastical Canons or any the like Ecclesiastical matters because they are the conjunct Votes of all the concerned Before the civil Magistrate became Christian the Clergy and people according to their severall rights concurred personally in the elections of Bishops and Presbyters and this remained in use under many Christian Emperors and Kings untill for the avoyding of contention and schismes and many abuses which became familiar to popular elections in a corrupted state of the Church and for the encouragement of Princes Nobles and others to erect and endow Churches it seemed good to Kings in their Parliaments and with the convocation or Synod of the Bishops and Clergy to ordain that Kings should present to the Colledge of Presbyters meet persons to be chosen and made Bishops and meet Presbyters to the Bishop for such Churches as they had built and endowed and that all other persons should in like manner present to the Bishop a fit person for the Church which they had endowed Patrons did indeed in some places put in whom they pleased without the Bishops consent Vide Epist Alexandr 3. ad Episcopos Angliae and for some time of publick confusion this was very usually done in England but this custome was no law as some would have it because it was an unreasonable custome and destructive to the Church and therefore always contradicted in all Councils where occasion was given to mention it All humane laws have their mixture of some bad with many good And certain it is that our Ecclesiastical laws have many imperfections and their ambiguous halting between the papal Canon-law whence their interpretation hath been wont to be fetched and the laws of the Realm is not the least which hath been one of the principal occasions of some actings which made the Clergy much abhorred by many and brought infinite calamities upon the Civil and Ecclesiastical state The ancient pure Episcopal government is much changed and the beginning of its change was not of late dayes Sect. 12. for in the fourth Century the Bishops and Presbyters began to advance Arch-presbyters and Arch-deacons to some part of the exercise of the Ecclesiastical government Optat. advers Parmenian l. 1. The first Archdeacon we read of was Caecilianus who reproved Lucilla a rich and proud woman which being thereat vexed became afterward a zealous promotrix of the Schism of the Donatists The first Arch-presbyter Greg. Nazianz. in land Basil crat that I can remember to be mentioned by the ancients was Basile who being made Bishop offered that honour to his old friend Gregory after the Bishop of Nazianzum But these were at that time but in some Churches and acted onely in place of the Bishops and Presbyters and at their pleasure whereas their power in time increased and after some hundreds of years the Canons gave them an ordinary jurisdiction erected their Courts added new names of Ecclesiastical judges as Deans Chancellors Commissaries c. and filled them with numerous attendants which were mostly to live by the sins of the people If these had been Officers onely of the civil magistrate to execute the power which is proper to him over all persons and in all causes Ecclesiastical the Church could not in reason have been charged with their miscariages but because they exercised with the former acts of the power proper to Bishops and Presbyters and in which the civil magistrate had onely a superintendency over them all their misdoings were ascribed to the Bishops and the Clergy their Courts heard the causes of excommunication adjudg'd a person to excommunication and caused a Presbyter no judge in the cause to excommunicate the party whereas Christ by his Apostles made them judges in his place as well to hear the causes of the spiritual censures as to execute the same by the sentence of excommunication The spiritual censures are spiritual remedies and the Pastors of the Church are under Christ the Physicians how then can it be congruous to imploy one that is no Physician to search and take knowledge of the diseases of the Soul and leave or●y the application of the remedies to the Physicians in the hearing of the causes of spiritual censures pastoral acts are to be exercised as of teaching of redargution of sin and conviction which prepare the offendor for the due and profitable receiving of the spiritual Physick which acts are all wanting where a person that is no Pastor condemneth a sinner to be excommunicated by a Pastor There is another mischief that accompanies the mixture in one and the same person of the exercise of acts purely ministerial and acts proper to the civil magistrate in spiritual causes as it is in Arch-deacons and the like that is commutation of paenance as to take so much money a Cow a Horse and the like as it hath been used be it in pretence of giving it to the poor where suspension or excommunication was by the Apostolical ordinances to have been exercised If the power proper to the ministers the power proper to the magistrate were in distinct persons this too frequent abuse would be well avoyded For the sole spiritual power is not to medle with body or purse Cudgelling whipping imprisoning fining scandalous sinners were not at all in use before the times of Christian Emperours And as to the redemption of the wholesome severities which the paenitents were enjoyned willingly to exercise upon themselves it was not used until about the end of the fift Century I might mention other mischiefs as the intollerable abuse of excommunication for very small offences

translation it is not lawful say the Fathers of that Synod for the Choropiscopi Countrey or Village Bishops not for the Presbyters of the City to ordain Presbyters or Deacons unless that be committed to them by the Bishop being absent in another Diocess by his letters And therefore the Churches decree constituting Episcopacy abridged the Presbyters whether dividedly or conjunctly considered but onely in the exercise of their power Surely it must be beleeved that no ordination would be made by the Apostles excelling the ordination which our Saviour celebrated breathing upon his Apostles c. and giving them a comission to teach c. with promise to be with them unto the worlds end whereby the Presbyters were virtually ordained and comissionated astruly as the Bishops and therefore received thereby as much power as they in respect of the kind and nature which hinders not but that the exercise of some part of it might be taken from many of the persons ordained But some perhaps may say that Christ in that ordination ordained in the Apostles some as elder Brethren and others as the younger yet hence it will follow that the kind and nature of the ordination is the same in all as the nature of the Father is in all his Sons and that onely a principallity in the having and exercise of it belongs to the Bishops which is granted Others may say farther that Christ in ordaining the Apostles did virtually ordain some as the Sons of the Sons of the Apostles and others as their grand-children if this can be well proved it will indeed evince that the power of ordination as well as the exercise of it is proper to the Bishops but until it be made clear that this was the primary meaning and intention of Christ in that Act of ordination and not an effect onely of a consequent occasional providence of the Apostles and Churches it is probable that the power of ordination remaineth still in the presbyters restrained in the use by the canon of the Churches and Apostles The members of the Church which made the decree of Episcopacy and limited the use of the Eclesiastical power in the presbyters were the greater number of the presbyters themselves which remained in the unity of the mystical body with the greater part of the people and the Authors of it by way of approbation and confirmation were the holy Apostles The Apostles and Presbyters in the effecting of it exercised the ordinary Vicary Authority Basil constit mona c. 22. which they had as being by their ordination made the Vicegerents of the blessed Mediator Christ Jesus considered only as Mediator according to his own saying he that heareth you heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me the saying of the Apostle we are Emb●ssadors for Christ and we pray you in Christs stead be ye reconciled to God 2. Cor. 5.20 That authority when it is duely exercised ought to be obeyed And because presbyters may erre in the using of it a spirit of discerning noxious doctrines and constitutions is given to Christians to examine and trie Bas l. reg 72. c. 1. with command to reject the evil and receive the good which good if the major part refuse being by their Pastors propounded to them Aug. de temp serm 143. they may do it upon their peril as they will answer it to God unity and peace interceding and forbidding that no Ecclesiastical constraint or censure proceed against the civil higher power or the major part of the people It is therefore requisite that constitutions to be made laws in the Church be by the leave of the supreme magistrate if he be a Christian propounded to the people that their consent being given the ministerial authority may make them laws Ecclesiastically obliging if no higher authority hinder Before these Law-makers constituted Episcopacy every singular Presbyter was to act according to the directions and rules of the Presbyterian Colledge which was the Church Law-giver and superintendent of the execution having the supreme dignity under the Mediator and preheminence in all things properly Ecclesiastical What is spoken concerning the Colledge of Presbyters must be applied proportionably to the several bodies of them in the Diocesan provincial imperial or universal Church The decree constituting Episcopacy took from the Colledge its high dignity and preheminence and conferred it upon one and so divided the exercise of the Legislative power among the Bishop and the Colledge that the one might not duely use it without the other For although the dignity and precedency of the Bishop may give more weight to his vote yet is the Vicary authority which cannot be separated from Presbyters as long as they be Presbyters as truly exercised in their votes whether in deciding controversies of faith or making of Canons c. as it is in the Bishops vote Which is manifest as by many testimonies of antiquity so by the practise of our English Synods which are conformable in the substance to the best and most ancient constitution of Councils The superintendency which the Colledge had over the execution of all Ecclesiastical duties and ordinances was chiefly in the Bishop yet so as without his Presbyters he could not regularly hear and determine Ecclesiastical causes as before was shewed out of the fourth Council of Carthage and might be further demonstrated out of St. Cyprian and other ancient writers Every suprem civil power on earth as Gods Vicegerent Sect. 10. is bound to advance and preserve the true Religion so far as the light of nature can manifest it or divine revelation doth make it known unto him so that a King which hath embraced Christian Religion which alone is the true Religion is obliged to maintain it and to cause that the Christian duties be by all in their several stations and charges duely performed and therefore a Christian King is a law-giver above the Ecclesiastical Law-makers but so that he ought not to hinder the due exercise of their legislative power and make laws purely or properly Ecclesiastical without their concurrence in Counsel and consent but by his Laws and power partly to cause them to meet for the due exercise of their duty partly to maintain and strengthen their right proceedings in performance of their office and lastly if their Edicts be cosistant with the peace of the common-wealth and meet for the edification of the Church to perfect and make them full and complete laws by putting the hand and seal of his highest Vicary authority as Gods Vicegerent to the resolves of the subordinate Vicary authority of the Vicegerents of our blessed Mediator as Mediator God and man the Lord Jesus Christ God is a God of order and hath ordained that this unity and harmony between these two authorities should be firmly kept otherwise by a supine neglect of duty or by an exorbitant usurpation on either side the unity and peace both of Kingdome and Church are equally in danger of being broken The