Selected quad for the lemma: body_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
body_n	church_n	head_n	visible_a	10,670	5	9.6541	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61950	A sermon preach'd before the King, May 9, 1675 by John Sudbury ...	Sudbury, John, 1604-1684.	1675 (1675)	Wing S6137; ESTC R17686	12,043	34

in inflicting censures within their limits and upon them in absolving men from those censures which were inflicted by them in granting Indulgences and Dispensations in matters of Vowes Order Matrimony and in effect leaving them the Mitre and the Staff and a part of the care assumed to themselves the fulness of the Power And having thus made use of the temporal Sword to get the spiritual they made use of the spiritual Sword to get the temporal For it was upon the account of this spiritual Sword that they took upon them to depose Emperours and Kings to dispose of their Dominions to excite other Kings to invade them with force of Arms to discharge their Subjects from their natural obedience to absolve them from their Oaths of Fidelity and Allegiance to stir them up to make Conspiracies to commit Treasons and Rebellions And thus came the Church to be rent and torn with Schisms Christian Kingdoms to be imbroyled in Wars and Blood and the World filled with scandals The Papacy which is the greatest Schism that ever was in the Church hath been the cause of thirty Schisms in that Church of Rome one of which lasted fifty years and diverse of the rest had lasted longer than they did had not the Emperours used that Authority which they had then to put an end to them In which times the Church of Rome was so far from being that visible Church with which all Christians were bound to hold Communion upon pain of Damnation that it was not visible where that Church of Rome was with which they were bound to hold Communion for having many times two heads and sometimes three and each head had a Body which was joyned to it and if the one were the true the other must of necessity be schismatical the world could not know with which of them it should hold Communion because it could not know which was the true and which was the schismatical And if a Canonical Election were necessary to make a true head it was many times without a head while some invaded the See with violence and hands imbrued in Blood some with Fraud and Subtilty and some as the Centurion in the twenty second Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles obtained the freedom of a Roman with a great summ of Money By which means the See was filled sometimes with such as were so ignorant and unlearned that their own Writers confess they had not so much as the first Rudiments of Learning Sometimes with such as were so wicked that they call them filthy Monsters of Men and sometimes with Novices within the years of their Minority who were fitter to be put to School than to be placed in the Apostolical Chair and were more glad that they were past the fear of the Rod than that they had obtained the Crofier Staff and the triple Crown It would require a long time to speak of the many bloody Wars which have been made and caused in the Empire and Christian Kingdoms by this usurped power of the two Swords The errours and abuses in Doctrine and Worship against which there was a remedy before that remedy which St. Cyprian mentions Subvenient Caeterae if one Church fall into any Errour let all other Churches bring it out But this exorbitant power of the Bishops of Rome hath not only disabled all other Churches from bringing that or any other Church out of those Errours and abuses into which it might fall but enabled them to bring other Churches into the same Errours and Abuses The time would fail me if I should speak of the many Scandals which they have given by their Pride and Ambition in exalting the Mitre above the Crown and making them stoop to kiss their Feet at whose Feet their pious Predecessors were wont to bow and prostrate themselves By their Avarice in making sale of those things which were Sacred and raising vast summs of Money in Christian Kingdoms and particularly in this upon specious pretences as if the Keys of Heaven had been made and put into their hands to open and unlock the Treasures of the Earth By their Cruelty in contriving and countenancing Massacres Murders of Kings and Princes Persecutions with Fire and Sword driving Men as Sheep to the slaughter instead of leading them to the Pasture as if they had been set over them not to feed but to fley them and so making themselves no less hateful to the Christian World than their Predecessors were venerable But to leave them and return to my Text which speaks not of them but of the Saints at Rome Where it is not unworthy our Observation how speedy and successful a progress the Christian Faith and Doctrine had throughout the World not only in the Eastern Countries Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria the most famous Cities of Asia and Greece but in these Western parts of the World even at Rome that Proud and Stately City that was full of people great among the Nations and Princess among the Provinces which had subdued mighty Kingdoms with the force of her Arms and made her self dreadful to the world with the fame of her Victories and was then come to the height of all her Pride and Glory and grown so insolent as to exalt her self above all that is called God or Worshipped For what else meant that challenge which Caius one of the Caesars sent to Jupiter Thou shalt down with me or I will down with thee and that Command which he gave under a great pain and peril to set up his own Statue in the Temple of Jerusalem to be Worshipped by the name of Jupiter and that Decree of the Senate that no God should be Worshipped at Rome but by their leave And yet we see it was not long before the sound of the Gospel which began at first to be heard at Jerusalem was heard as far as Rome and not only heard but received not only by Strangers at Rome Jews and Proselytes but by Romans for it was to them that St. Paul directed his Epistle and it was of them that he saith Rom. 1.13 I would not have you ignorant Brethren that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you That I might have some fruit among you also even as among other Gentiles And when he came to them he had much fruit among them as among other Gentiles even that fruit which he promised himself Rom. 15.29 I am sure that when I come unto you I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ For as when he came to Ephesus and Preached the Gospel to them All they that dwelt in Asia heard the Word of the Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks Acts 19.10 And when he came to the Cities of Greece he made Saints in Macedonia and all Achaia as we read 1 Thes 1.7 and 2 Cor. 1.1 So when he came to Rome Where he dwelt two whole years in his own hired House Preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching those things which concerned the

of affliction which they endured not only without repining but with rejoycing as it follows at the 34. vers Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods knowing in your selves that ye have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance And though the Heathen among whom many of them liv'd were willing to accuse them of great crimes and enormities to render them the more hateful they knew them to be so innocent and free from them that they never offered to make any proof of them but did in effect confess that they had nothing to object to them but that they were Christians as Tertullian expresseth it Bonus vir Caius Seius malus tantum quòd Christianus Caius Seius is a good man he hath no fault but that he is a Christian Such were the primitive Saints and such were they at Rome for it is of them that St. Paul saith Rom. 15.14 I am perswaded of you my brethren that ye are full of all goodness And St. Paul did not say that to flatter them for in the same Epistle he speaks of their Faith and Obedience as things well known to the world Your Faith is spoken of throughout the world Rom. 1.8 Your obedience is come abroad unto all men Rom. 16.19 And for their sincerity we need no other testimony than that of Tacitus who speaking of the Persecutions which they suffered for the testimony of it under Nero saith that infinite numbers of them were convicted of which some were cloathed in the Skins of Beasts and torn with Dogs some were Crucified some were burnt in the fire and when the day failed they were burnt in the night to give light and that they were pitied because they suffered not for any publick good but to satisfie one mans cruelty And as the Children of Israel in Egypt the more they were afflicted the more they multiplyed and grew so did the Saints at Rome so that Rome became more renowned for Christian piety and vertue than ever it had been for the greatness of her power and the largeness of her dominion The Church of Rome was then and many years after a Catholick Church not because it had Dominion over all other Christian Churches for that it had not but because it held the Catholick Faith and all other Churches that held the same Faith were as Catholick as it And though the Communion of the Church of Rome was very much desired and sought by all other Christian Churches by reason of the eminence of the City and the splendour of the Court and the free access which the Bishops of Rome had to the Emperours when they became Christian and the great power which they had with him especially in the affairs of the Church it was desired and sought much the rather because it held not only the right but the entire Faith and was not only a true but a sound Church But as a sound man may grow sick so may a sound Church also and so did the Church of Rome It grew so sick that we may say of it in the words of the Prophet The whole head is sick and the whole heart is heavy For the sickness began with a swelling in the head and soon after in the body of that Church which is a disease to which the Romans were naturally subject For that pride and ambition which was the first sin of the Angels that kept not their first estate and the first sin to which the Devil tempted innocence in Paradise was as St. Jerome speaks the natural vice of the Romans which notwithstanding the many warnings against it given them by St. Paul in his Epistle to them Rom. 12.3 c. I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of Faith For as we have many members in one body and all the members have not the same office so we being many are one body in Christ and every one members one of another And again at the tenth verse Be kindly affectioned one to another in brotherly love in honour preferring one another And yet again vers 16. Be of the same mind one towards another Mind not high things but condescend to men of low estate Be not wise in your own conceits I say notwithstanding all those warnings this pride and ambition prevailed so much upon the Church of Rome that not content to be an honourable member of the Catholick Church it would not allow any other Church to be Catholick but such as were members of it And the Bishops of Rome not content to be Bishops of Rome as they were stil'd in the most ancient General Councils and by the most ancient and learned Fathers and in their own subscriptions nor with the honour of being the Bishops of the first See which honour they had not because it was the Chair of Peter but because it was the Imperial City for when the Empire was remov'd to Constantinople the Bishops of that See had the same honour and priviledge with that of Rome because that was New Rome which reason is expressed in the Canon They had likewise the honour to be the first Patriarchs upon the same account first in order of Precedence not in superiority of jurisdiction for the other Patriarchs were not under the jurisdiction of the Roman but had the same Authority Honour and Power within their own limits which they of Rome had in theirs and by the same right which was not divine but Ecclesiastical right But the Bishops of Rome not content with all this honour began to exalt their Throne above the Stars of Heaven as St. Gregory expresseth it to assume a power and authority over all other Bishops and Churches and to exercise a jurisdiction in and over them by the name of Universal Bishops which he called a prophane name and a name of Blasphemy a presage of the near approach of Antichrist But though he was so humble and so modest as not only to refuse it when it was given to him by Eulogius the Patriarch of Alexandria but to rebuke him for it calling it a proud title which none of his Predecessors had used and which was a degrading of himself and all other Bishops his next Successor but one who held the See but some few Months knowing how much it was against the ancient Canons of the Church and against the sense of the most learned Fathers and so injurious to all other Bishops that he could not think that they would be so tame as to yield it quietly to him he procured the Emperour to confer that Title upon him making use of the temporal Sword as many of his Successors did to wrest the spiritual out of the hands of all other Bishops and exercising a jurisdiction over them in receiving Appeals from them in reservation of Cases in Collation to Benefices which belonged to them