Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	church_n	doctrine_n	rome_n	2,369	5	7.0297	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30414	The royal martyr, and the dutiful subject in two sermons / by G. Burnet.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715. Royal martyr lamented.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715. Subjection for conscience-sake asserted.	1675 (1675)	Wing B5869; ESTC R22925	37,186	94

his Dominions on some other more zealous Votary of that See And any that will read the Decretals Bulls and Breves of many of the aspiring Popes will find that these were not only ambitious and disclaimed practises the guilt of which being personal died with themselves but they founded them on the Rights of the See of Rome and in the stile of an Universal Pastor imposed the belief of that on the World Now I would presume to ask any of that Communion if they believe these Popes were Infallible in those Decisions and Instructions they imposed on the World or not If any say they were Infallible in them they are without more ceremony of words Traitors who subject our Sovereign's Rights which he derives from God only to a foreign Superior Power If they were not Infallible in these Decisions then what is become of the Pope's Infallibility For the present Pope can have no more than his Predecessors had and if they erred he may likewise erre But I must advance this a little farther to shew that those of that Communion though they reject the Popes Infallibility yet if they submit to the Infallibility of their General Councils are still in the same hazards of being Rebels For the Council of Lateran which in the Roman Church is held General and Oecumenical that first decreed Transubstantiation did also by the Third of its Canons decree That all temporal Princes should exterminate I shall not critically examine that word which must amount to banishment at least all Hereticks adding That if any Temporal Lord being admonished by the Church did neglect to purge his Lands he should be first excommunicated and if he continued in his contempt and contumacy a years notice was to be given of it to the Pope who thenceforth should declare his Vassals absolved from the Fidelity they owed him and expose his Lands to be Invaded by Catholicks who might possess it without any contradiction having exterminated the Hereticks out of it and preserve it in the Purity of the Faith This is so plain that I suppose without any hesitation it may be called a down-right Conspiracy against all Sovereign Princes and this being decreed by a General Council must either be Infallibly true or the Foundation on which they have raised all their Superstructure of the Infallibility of their General Councils is overturned But the same Equality of Justice and Freedom that obliged me to lay open this ties me to tax also those who pretend a great heat against Rome and value themselves on their abhorring all the Doctrines and Practises of that Church and yet have carried along with them one of their most pestiferous Opinions pretending Reformation when they would bring all under Confusion and vouching the Cause and Work of God when they were destroying that Authority he had set up and opposing those impowred by him And the more Piety and Devotion such daring pretenders put on it still brings the greater stain and imputation on Religion as if it gave a Patrociny to those Practises it so plainly condemns This is Iudas-like to kiss our Master when we betray him and to own a Zeal for Religion when we engage in courses that disgrace and destroy it But blessed be God our Church hates and condemns this Doctrine from what hand soever it come and hath established the Rights and Authority of Princes on sure and unalterable Foundations enjoyning an entire Obedience to all the lawful Commands of Authority and an absolute Submission to that Supreme Power God hath put in our Sovereign's hands This Doctrine we justly glory in and if any that had their Baptism and Education in our Church have turned Renegades from this they proved no less enemies to the Church her self than to the Civil Authority So that their Apostasie leaves no blame on our Church which glories in nothing more than in a well-tempered Reformation from the later Corruptions which the dark Ages brought in to the pure and Primitive Doctrines which our Saviour and his Apostles taught and the first Christians retained and practised for many Ages To Resume all then Let us adorn our holy Profession with a Life suitable to it and let us shew to the World that we take not up nor maintain our Religion upon Interest but found it on sure and unmoveable Foundations which being the same always will ever oblige us to the same Duties and Practises Let us study to empty our selves of all big self-conceiting Thoughts of all hot and inflamed Passions and Appetites of all unruly and unbounded Desires of all Levity and unstayedness of mind that with humble Hearts calm Minds contented Spirits and steady Thoughts every one may follow the Duties of his Station and contain himself within it as becomes a Christian paying inwardly in our very thoughts that reverence we owe the Higher Powers and offering up to God the constant Tribute of our Prayers for them considering they are God's Vicegerents and by his own warrant are called Gods And if the Conduct of Affairs do not suit our wishes or desires yet for all that we are to trust to and depend on God's Providence not daring once to think of attempting against the Lord's anointed nor to engage in courses that may bring on so much mischief and confusion but let us ever set before our eyes our blessed Saviour Who endured the Cross and despised the shame who when he was reviled reviled not again and when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously And let us also consider that Cloud of Witnesses that followed him That so we may run with patience the race that is set before us and not look to or imitate the later practises of some distempered and degenerated Christians And then we shall be an honour to our Profession and give a credit to that Church wherein we were Born Baptised and Instructed when we shew that we are subject not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake And to end as I begun Let us with astonishment and wonder contemplate the shining glories of our most holy Faith which tends to raise Mankind to the highest pitch of true Greatness that his limited Nature can ascend to and as far excels all the attempts of Philosophy or any other Religion whatsoever as the bright Splendor of the Day doth the fainter Shinings of the Night For nothing can be more the Interest of all men than the receiving this Faith which both secures a man in all his Rights and obliges all others to pay him what ever is due from the Relations they stand in Does a Father desire dutiful Children or Children an affectionate Father Make them good Christians and they are sure of what they desire Do Husband and Wife expect the Fidelity and Sacred performance of the Ties of Wedlock This must certainly follow on their being good Christians Do Masters desire honest and careful Servants and Servants a just and gentle Master Make them good Christians and they will prove such Do all men desire to live by honest well-natured and affectionate Neighbours Their being good Christians will certainly make them such Do Subjects desire a good King Let them pray that he be a good Christian and then he shall certainly govern well And do Kings desire good and obedient Subjects Let them take care that they be good Christians and then they will be Subject Not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake Now to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords be all Honour Praise and Glory for ever and ever Amen THE END Matth. 7. 12. S. Jam. 4. 2. The Case of the Duke of Guise in Henry the Thirds time S. Matth 11. 29. Phil. 2. 3. 1 S. Pet. 5. 5. Col. 3. 8. Col. 3 13. S. Jam. 3. 17. S Matth. 5. 25 34. Prov. 24. 26. Eccles. 7. 10. 1 Thess. 4. 11. 1 S. Pet. 4. 15. Col. 3. 9. Eccles. 11. 20. 1. Tim. 2. 1 2 Ver. 1 2 3. Psal. 82. 6. 1 Sam. 24. 4 5 6. 1. S. Pet 2. 13. Rom. 8. 28 2 Sam. 6 7 S. Jam. 1. 20. Heb. 2. 10. S. Matth. 22. 21. S. Matth. 26. 5. S. John 18. 36. 1 S. Pet. 2. 13. ver to the end and 3. 14 15 16 17. verses Lib. 10. Ep. 97. Cap. 37. Ad Scap. c. 2.

the World to see such numbers of all Ages Sexes and Qualities with that alacrity and chearfulness of Submission offer up their Lives for the Faith and neither the Cruelty of their unrelenting Persecutors nor the continued Tract of their Miseries which did not end but with their days prevailed on them either to renounce the Faith or do that which is next degree to it throw off the Cross and betake themselves to seditious Practices for their preservation but continued stedfast both in their Faith and Patience by which they inherited the Promises Nor was Christianity endamaged by all that fury on the contrary the Bloud of the Martyrs was the Seed of the Church whose Field being thus fatned did spring up thirty sixty and a hundred sold so that for every new harvest of a persecution there was a plentiful crop of Christians And there is no reason to think these blessed Martyrs endured all their sufferings constrained by necessity because they could do do no other for as we find in the inspired History that at two Sermons there were Eight thousand Converts so Profane as well as Ecclesiastical Writers assure us the numbers of the Christians became very soon so vast that nothing but the Conscience of the Duty they owed the Supreme Powers obliged them to be subject Pliny who lived a hundred years after our Saviour wrote to Trajan That in Pontus and Bithynia there were great numbers of Christians of all Ranks both in Cities and Villages so that the Temples of their Gods were by the prevailing Growth of Christianity left desolate A little after him Marcus Aurelius had a Legion of Christians in his Army of whom he gives this Character in his Edict That they carried God in their Consciences and when there were so many in the Army we may on a fair computation reckon their numbers to have been very great Not long after that does Tertullian plead for those in his days in his admired Apologetick and tells the Romans That if they would stand to their own defence they wanted not the strength of Numbers and Armies that neither the Moors nor Parthians nor any other of the Nations that fought with the Romans could match them who filled the whole World all their places Towns Islands Castles Villages Councils Camps Tribes Senate and Market-places only they abandoned their Temples to them adding That to what War were they not both fit and ready even though they were less numerous who were butchered so willingly if their Discipline did not allow them rather to be killed than to kill And elsewhere he vindicates the Christians That none of them were ever found guilty of conspiracies against the Emperors whom they acknowledged to be set up by God and therefore judged themselves bound to love reverence and honour them But as the Christian Religion continued to spread by a vast and prodigious increase so did the spite of the Infernal Furies grow fierce against it by the same proportion and in the last Persecution which continued about twenty years we find the Martyrs of one Province Egypt reckoned to be betwixt eight and nine hundred thousand and yet no tumults were raised against all this Tyranny and Injustice And though after that the Emperors turned Christian and established the Faith by Law yet neither did the subtil attempts of Iulian the Apostate nor the open Persecutions of some Arrian Emperors who did with great violence prosecute the Orthodox occasion any seditious Combinations against Authority These are the great Precedents this holy Doctrine of the Cross hath in the first and purest Ages and though Religion suffered great Decays in the succession of many Ages yet for the first ten Centuries no Father or Doctor of the Church nor any Assembly of Church-men did ever teach maintain or justifie any Rebellions or seditious Doctrines or Practises 4. And thus I have made good what I undertook to evince That Conscience doth with the greatest evidence of Reason and Authority bind us to an absolute Subjection to the Higher Powers and have observed what was the Path our blessed Saviour himself followed the Traces whereof are to be known by those bloudy steps he hath left behind him for our Example and Instruction We have also seen a glorious Cloud of Witnesses following him in the same way he both opened up and consecrated to them But after all this it may be perhaps objected That all Christians at least all pretenders to it have not followed the same Rule and that some Divisions of Christendom which in all other things run very wide from one another yet meet in this Doctrine of resisting the Supreme Authority and not only so but they vouch Religion for their Warrant and their Quarrel both and pretend a Zeal for God his Church and his Cause in all they do This is the last part of my Discourse to which I obliged my self in the beginning and I will handle it with the round plainness that such a Point how tender soever some may think it requires It is true about the end of the Eleventh Century this pestiferous Doctrine took its Rise and was first broached and vented by Pope Gregory the Seventh commonly called Hildebrand the first Pope of that name though a far better man had basely and shamefully courted the cruel and perfidious Phocas and treated him in a stile of mean and sordid Flattery that misbecame any man much more so great a Bishop But the Pope I now speak of went more briskly to work and begun that insolent and bold pretension of the Temporal power of the Popes over all Kings and Princes that they being Christ's Vicars on Earth must have all Power in Heaven and Earth deputed to them and that as S. Peter's Successors they had the two Swords the Spiritual and the Temporal put in their hands Upon this he aspired and exalted himself above those whom the Scripture calleth Gods Nor did this rest in a bare speculation but any that will read his Epistles and knows the History of his Life will see what dismal confusions he brought on Germany and Italy and laid the Foundations of those bloudy Wars which followed and continued for some Ages Then did the Factions of the Guelphs and Gibellins divide Nations Towns and Families and fill all places with bloud and confusion How other Popes did afterwards set the same pretensions on foot both in France England and in many other places is well enough known to all that are acquainted with History and for two or three Ages the Tyranny of this was so heavy that any Insolent Church-man was able to disturb Government by carrying Complaints to Rome of some pretended Incroachments on the Ecclesiastical Immunity upon which Monitory Breves and Bulls were dispatched from Rome and every Prince was either to obey these how much soever they might prejudice his Government or to look for the Thunders of Excommunication Deposition absolving his Subjects from their Oaths of Fidelity and the transferring