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	jurisdiction_n	5,357	5	9.3309	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42238	The truth of Christian religion in six books / written in Latine by Hugo Grotius ; and now translated into English, with the addition of a seventh book, by Symon Patrick ...; De veritate religionis Christianae. English	Grotius, Hugo, 1583-1645.; Patrick, Simon, 1626-1707.	1680 (1680)	Wing G2128; ESTC R7722	132,577	348

hand I now take into my hands to present unto thy Majesty under the form of Bread and Wine Him thou canst not reject nor me his Priest who offer Him unto Thee c. Or some such like words more befitting their present notions than desiring an Angel may carry what the Priest offers and present it unto GOD. But we find quite contrary which is the last thing I shall observe that in conclusion the Priest acknowledges that by Christ Jesus God always creates and sanctifies and quickens and blesses making a cross upon the Host and the Chalice at every one of those three last words all these good things Which can be meant of nothing but the Bread and Wine consecrated to the commemoration and representation of Christ's body and bloud sacrificed for us For Christ's own very natural body and bloud cannot in any tolerable sense be said to be continually created and quickned or made alive unless you will suppose him to have been dead before nay not to have been at all For creation implies the thing not to have been and vivification not to have been then alive when it was quickned Yet this fancy of Christs real presence in the Sacrament by Transubstantiation against which there are such numerous Testimonies in their own Communion Service is now become the main Article of their Religion For we all know to our great grief and astonishment that when the publick Authority of this Realm was on their side subscription was not urged to any Article of their Religion upon such violent and bloudy terms as unto this of the Real Presence The Mystery of which iniquity as a great Man of our own said in the Age before us cannot be better resolved than into the powerful and deceitful working of Satan who delights thus to do despite to our Lord and to his Religion by seducing his professed Subjects into a belief of such things as make them and Him ridiculous unto unbelievers and ingage them in the worst kind of Rebellion he could imagine by worshipping Bread and Wine instead of their Saviour and all this upon the least occasions and shallowest reasons SECT XIII Other Instances of it BUT besides these plain confessions of that Church against it self there are many other things which I shall but just name wherein we have the testimony of several of their own learned Men ready to be produced for our and against their belief proving clearly that the present is not the old Religion of that Church but that they have brought into it many Innovations by adding to the Canonical Books of Scripture by making their vulgar Latine Translation of the Bible about which they themselves cannot agree authentical by forbidding the People to read the holy Scriptures in their own Language and by denying them the publick Prayers in a Language they understand by giving the Pope not only a new Title of Universal Bishop but an authority and jurisdiction which was never heard of for many Ages by increasing the number of Sacraments and altering their nature by taking away the Cup from the People and turning the Sacrament of Christs body and bloud into a proper expiatory sacrifice by celebrating the Eucharist without any body to communicate by setting up Images in Churches and ordaining Religious Worship to be given to them by invocating Saints and Angels as was said before and by the Doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences and many other together with a vast number of strange ceremonies in the making holy water consecrating bells c. For which no antiquity can be pretended The woful effect of which is this if we may speak the plain Truth that by pressing upon Mens belief a great deal too much and placing great vertue in trifles they have tempted Men to believe nothing at all As is apparent from hence that where and when as an excellent Writer of our own speaks this Religion hath most absolutely commanded there and then Atheism or Infidelity hath most abounded And how should it do otherwise when as he observes so many lying Legends have been obtruded upon Mens belief and so many false Miracles forged to justifie them as are very likely to make suspicious Men question the truth of all And so many weak and frivolous ceremonies devised and such abundance of ridiculous observances in Religion introduced as are no less apt to beget a secret contempt and scorn of it in witty Men and consequently Atheism and Impiety if they have this perswasion setled in their mind which is indeavoured to be rooted in them from their childhood that if they be not of that Religion they were as good be of none at all And when a great part also of the Doctrines now mentioned so apparently make for the temporal ends of those who teach them that sagacious Men can scarce forbear thinking they were on purpose devised to serve those designs That particular doctrine also of Transubstantiation being so portentous that joyned with the forenamed perswasion of No Papists no Christians it hath in all probability brought more than Averroes to this resolution since Christians eat that which they adore let my Soul be among the Philosophers And lastly the pretence which is so common that there is no ground to believe the Scriptures but their Churches infallibility and yet no ground to believe their Churches infallibility but some Texts of Scripture being too plain a way to lead those who discern the labyrinth wherein they are to believe neither Church nor Scripture SECT XIV Whereby they have spoil'd Christianity as the Pagans did the Natural Religion THESE things which have been already urged by the Writers of our Church for the conviction of those who are capable of it I repeat here again because they seem to me very powerful for the preservation of those who are not already tainted or too far gone in that delusion Which is so great that to summ up all belonging to this Head we may safely say Popery is just such a depravation of the true Christian Religion as Paganism was of the Natural Religion There cannot be a righter conception of it than this which appears too plainly in the absurd doctrines and opinions which they have mingled with the Christian Faith in their multiplied superstitions in their fabulous relations of the Saints wherein they have surpassed the very Poets themselves and to pass by the rest in their prostrating themselves before Images and giving religious worship to Men departed Which last instance furnished the Pagans of Cochin with this answer to the Jesuits as Christoph Borrus one of that Order relates when they pressed upon them the belief of one God and no more We do believe it said they but those whom you see us worship in their Images were Men of great Sanctity whom pious People therefore worship according to their merit just as you give to the Apostles and Martyrs and Confessors divers degrees of honour and religious service as you know them to have excelled in vertue

none of the ancient Doctors who have expounded the Creed and there are many of them have given any such sense of that Article of the Catholick Church Nay it was not in the most ancient forms of Faith nor doth the Church truly Catholick teach any thing as necessary to be believed to Salvation but what is contained in the Creed For we do in their own sense believe the Catholick Church but not the Roman Catholick Church which their Creed will have to be the Mother and Mistress of all Churches because to omit many other absurdities which are in it there was a Catholick Church before there was a Roman and to say that they believe the Catholick Church meaning thereby the Roman is nothing more than to say they believe themselves SECT VII Their absurd Explication of the Unity of the Catholick Church NOTHING therefore can be further from the Truth than that Explication of the Vnity of the Catholick Church which is delivered in the Roman Catechism published by the Authority of the same Pope Pius IV. in pursuance of the Council of Trent Wherein the Catechumen is taught to believe and profess that the Catholick Church is one not only because of one Faith and other reasons mentioned by the Apostle Ephes iv and because it is subject to one invisible Governor which is Christ But because it is subject also to one visible Governor who holds the Roman Chair the legitimate Successor of St. Peter Concerning whom it is the unanimous opinion of all the Fathers that this visible Head is necessary to constitute and conserve the unity of the Church And to this Head or Pastor Christ hath given the authority of ruling and governing the whole Church as the Vicar and Minister of his Power Thus that Catechism teaches in the First Part the IX Article n. 11 12 13. Which besides that it is confuted by the plain demonstration now mentioned that Christ had a Catholick Church which had unity in it self when there was no Roman Church is directly contrary to the constant Doctrine not only of the Scripture but of all the Fathers whose consent they falsly boast of and of many Popes of Rome and of Councils also both General and particular even of the Councils of Lateran and Trent which by approving the Five First General Councils who condemn this Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome do in effect condemn it themselves SECT VIII Which forbids us to joyn in Communion with them upon such Terms TO that Church then we ought to adhere which hath kept the Rule of Faith once delivered to the Saints simple and unmixed with humane inventions Which if we admit as necessary to Salvation we betray the truth of Christ and are false and unjust to innumerable Christian Brethren who by Baptism are admitted into a state of Salvation but hereby unmercifully cut off from the Body of Christ though they have that Faith which makes them true Members of it This is the Great Crime of the Roman Church and may suffice instead of all other demonstrations to prove that they have corrupted themselves and departed from the simplicity that is in Christ For this very Article alone which is a part of their Faith that there is no Salvation but by union with the Roman Catholick Church and that by subjection to it thrusts out of Heaven not only the ancient Christian pious Emperors who refused such subjection But many of their ancient Popes who acknowledged their subjection was due to the Christian Emperors together with the ancient Patriarks and Fathers assembled in many Councils and the most famous Christian Churches the most glorious Martyrs and Saints of Christ that the best times of Christianity have known and to say nothing of after Ages the present Christians of Greece Russia Armenia Syria Ethiopia who by this Article of subjection to the Catholick Roman Church are all excluded from Christian communion and must perish everlastingly For Bellonius says that in his travels he met with Nine sorts of Christians at Jerusalem Eight of which Nine know nothing of this Universal Bishop or do not regard him and of the Ninth there is scarce half that acknowledges his Authority And yet there are Men among them of no mean note and number who have the confidence to tell us that by the Catholick Church which we are bound to believe is to be understood the Bishop of Rome whose Declarations when he will determine any thing to be of Faith we all ought to receive And though we are assured as much as are that there was such a Person as St. Peter that Christ never gave him much less his Successors any Authority at all over his whole Church Yet now to deny the Pope's Supremacy is such a Heresie that let a Man be never so Orthodox in all other points of the Catholick Faith this alone is sufficient to make him be excommunicated and cut off from the Body of Christ Witness our King Henry VIII who was excommunicated and his Kingdom given away for no other fault by a Bull of Paul the Third who affirms in the beginning of that Bull that herein he acted by Divine authority which according as God saith in the Prophet Jeremiah had set him over Nations and Kingdoms to root up and destroy as well as to build and plant having the supreme power over all Kings and People throughout the whole Earth Which certainly is such new Language never known in the Church for many Ages that they who are not convinced thereby of the corruption of Christian Religion in the Roman Church have their Eyes blinded with the Worldly Splendor of it SECT IX But on the other side not to slight Episcopal Authority YET on the other hand it must be acknowledged that this enormous power which they have usurped is a very strong proof of the high Authority of Christian Bishops in the Church and of the great reverence that was paid to them by Christian People Who otherways would never have thus submitted to their will and pleasure had not the obedience which they had been wont always to yield to their authority disposed them to be brought by little and little under an absolute subjection Nor would there have been reason for those Cautions which St. Peter gives to the Governors of God's Church not at Rome but elsewhere 1 Pet. 5. 2 3. not to Lord it over them if they had not been invested with a power which all Christians reverenced so much that it might more easily be abused than contemned and sooner perswade People to follow them with a blind obedience than to slight their judgment and refuse to conform to their Injunctions And therefore whosoever they are that now despise all Ecclesiastical Authority we may be sure they have swerved from the true Principles of Christianity and they also are altogether inexcusable who shake off the Episcopal Government and refuse to be subject to it under a pretence that there ought to be an equality among Christ's

cannot wonder at the corruption of which we complain Let him but read First the censures which their own Authors have passed upon several Popes as meer Epicures and Men void of all Religion c. And then the bitter complaints which St. Bernard himself makes and that while he wrote to a Pope of the Vices which were then annexed even to the very Papacy and further the description which such Men as Marsilius of Padua make of the Church of Rome the whole Body of which he saith was so infected by the plenitude of power which is allowed to the Pope that it might be more truly called a shop of Traffique nay a Den of Thieves than a Church of Christ and to come nearer to our own times the forwardness of their People even since the Reformation to worship Men as Saints before they were canonized by the Pope and he will not think there hath been always such care and caution used about that and such like matters as they would have us believe We have a memorable instance of this thing last mentioned to meddle with no other in the Founder of the Jesuits Order Ignatius Loiola by whose merits People recommended themselves to God if we may believe the Pope himself before he was declared to be a Saint So Urban VIII informs us in his very Bull or Decretal Letters for his Canonization where several miraculous Works are said to have been done for those who fled to his help and religiously worshipped his Image and commended themselves to him as the words are with all their heart He was made indeed a Beato by the preceding Pope But the like stories are told of Xavier one of Ignatius his Companions unto whose intercession the People applied themselves and hoped in his merits as the Bull for his Sainting tells us even before he was made a Beato So exceeding prone they have been of late to run into Superstition as they were more long ago in the days of St. Martin who broke down an Altar which had been set up by former Bishops themselves in honour of a Martyr as the People called him who proved to be no better than a Highway-man as St. Martin discovered that had been executed for his Robberies and there buried SECT XVII Popery and Mahometism had the same Original WE may safely therefore affirm that the account which Grotius gives in the beginning of the VI. Book of the rise of Mahometism may serve as well for the Original of Popery Which took its rise from the great decay of true piety and the vain jangling that fell out among Christian People by imploying their time in curious Questions which made the vulgar at last not know what to believe and to lay the fault upon the Scriptures nay to avoid them as hurtful and dangerous And then it was easie to lead them any whither when they had for saken the Light which showed them their way and began also to place Religion not in purity of mind but in Rites and Ceremonies and to content themselves with such things as served rather to exercise the Body than to amend the Soul In short that false Prophet Mahomet and an Universal Bishop sprang up both together very near the same time as Treason and Idolatry setled themselves also together at the same time in the Age following For the Pope under the pretence of retaining Images which the Constantinopolitane Emperour destroyed revolted from him denyed him the tribute that was wont till then to be paid him even out of Rome it self as well as other places and denying him all obedience plainly thrust him out of Italy This account Zonaras and others give of Gregory the II.'s proceeding against Leo Isaurus and thus the Bishop of Rome by his Papal Authority became the first Author of defection from a lawful Prince upon the account of Religion SECT XVIII And supports its self by the same means IF we look further into what was said before about Mahometism we shall find that Popery stands and upholds it self by the very same shameful means which keep up the Religion of that false Prophet By force that is and violence compelling Men where they have any power to consent to what they say or rather to feign a consent to what they do not believe Which discovers the weakness of that Religion and of the reasons of those that profess it For he that extorts assent as was said in the Book foregoing by sense of pain or fear of punishment plainly confesses by that very proceeding that he distrusts his Arguments At the best they require belief of Men without all liberty of inquiring into Religion For the vulgar just as in Turky are prohibited to read the Books which are accounted holy which is a manifest sign of its iniquity as he there speaks of the Turkish Religion for justly may that merchandize be suspected which is obtruded upon this condition that it must not be lookt into not examined This is the way of the grossest deceivers who will not submit themselves to a trial and refuse to give any account but will have us submit to their Authority and take what such Men as they say upon trust Which is the Method of the Roman Church who are wont to put doubting of any part of their doctrine among mortal sins And so for fear what the issue may be will not suffer their People to try their Religion with indifference that is with true liberty of judgment and with a resolution to doubt of it if the grounds of it appear upon examination to be uncertain and to leave it if they prove apparently false It is true indeed as it there follows there is not in every Man the like capacity of knowledge and quicksightedness to discern between truth and falshood Many also are carried away into error by pride others by inordinate passions or affections and some by custome and imitation or by the weakness of their understandings and forwardness to judge without due consideration or advice with their proper Guides But those very Books which the Roman Church pretends may mislead Men and therefore will not let them use teach them in the first and principal place to purge themselves from all naughty affections and then to be sober-minded and not too forward to determine things on their own heads but to reverence their judgments who are over them in the Lord and not to pretend to Religion nor imagine they can judge a-right till they be humble and meek and without any other design than this alone of saving their Souls Now the Divine Goodness forbids us to think that such Men shall not be able to find the way to eternal Salvation who seek for it in God's own Word and in this manner without any by-respect to honour or worldly advantage and with intire submission of themselves and all they have to Him imploring his assistance that they may attain it Which are in effect the very words of Justin Martyr and Origen And