Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	bishop_n	rome_n	supremacy_n	6,786	5	10.6121	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52613	A letter of resolution concerning the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation	Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1507B; ESTC R217844	25,852	20

of the Father or that he or the Holy Ghost are GOD. It saith no higher thing of them than it saith of the Holy Catholick Church I believe in the Holy Ghost I believe in the Holy Catholick Church for so all know this Creed is read in the Original Greek and by all the Fathers Is it now Sir conceivable that these Doctrines should be as Trinitarians pretend a Tradition constantly preserved when their own Criticks reject the Works of those first Fathers as certainly spurious or forged that speak any what directly or explicitly of the Trinity and other depending Points and Questions and when besides their common and only Creed is undeniably Socinian I deny not Sir that the Fathers of the first 300 Years whose Writings have been suffered to come down to Posterity began to corrupt the true Doctrine concerning the Person of our Saviour making him to be much greater than he was From about the Year 150 some of them were got into the Opinions that were afterwards called Arianism or the Arian Trinity But this I affirm and all the Criticks among the Trinitarians do own it that those Fathers spoke not of the Trinity and of the Points and Questions thereon depending as the Church now doth they so held a kind of Trinity as not to destroy the Unity of GOD or that only the Father is truly and properly GOD. But this was a Digression I proceed to our fifth Reason against these Doctrines They have been partly the direct and necessary Causes partly the unhappy Occasions of divers scandalous and hurtful Errors and Heresies particularly of those which compose the gross Body of Popery 'T is well observed by some that one Absurdity or Error being introduced 't is always the Ground and Occasion of many more This Aphorism was never more sadly verified than in the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation For no sooner were these Doctrines by the Countenance of sanguinary and arbitrary Edicts of the Bizantine Emperours become the more general and current Belief of the Churches but there immediarely broke in after them that Swarm of absurd and heretical Doctrines which have no less than subverted the true and primitive Christianity 1. The first-born of the Trinity was the Supremacy of the Pope A few Bishops not a fifth Part of the Bishops of the Catholick Church having presumed in the Council of Nice Anno 325 to determine for the whole Catholick Church so great a Point as this that there is more than one Divine and Eternal Person they sent the new Creed and Acts of that Council to the Churches and Bishops who had not been present at it to be by them subscribed Hereupon the Bishops of Asia assembling themselves in about 30 provincial Councils rejected the Word Consubstantial or of the same Substance with the Father in which the whole Mystery of Trinitarianism and the Stress of the Nicene Creed does lie they would by no means admit of this Word So faith Marcus Ephesin the most Learned of the Greeks Concil Florent Sess 5. The Bishops of Germany and of Belgium now the Low-Countries and of Gaul now France and of the three Provinces of Great Britain would not receive the Creed of Nice giving this Reason that the Word Consubstantial is unscriptural So saith St. Hilary that great Adversary of the Arians and other Unitarians towards the beginning of his Book de Synod The Bishops of Africa seem not so much as to have taken into their Archives or Registries the Acts Canons or Creed of Nice For in the Year 418 in a Contest between them and the Bishop of Rome they sent to Constantinople and Alexandria for Copies of the Acts of the Nicene Council Concil Carthag 6. Anno 418. The Nicene Council being thus refused and despised by all the considerable Nations professing Christianity the Nicene Faction of Bishops began to consult of a way how to settle their beloved Doctrine by political Arts and at length they resolved upon this Expedient Anno 347 having got on their side the Emperor Constans and finding that the Bishops and Church of Rome were thorowly in their Interests they assembled in Council at Sardica and there made those famous Canons on which all learned Men know the Authority and Supremacy of the Bishops of Rome is wholly grounded and which those Bishops have ever since exercised They designed by these Canons to secure the Bishops and other Ecclesiasticks of the Nicene Party now called Trinitarians in their Bishopricks and other Church-Dignities and to eject from time to time all Vnitarians But these Politicians were quite out in hoping for such an Effect they were so far from governing the Catholick Church by those Canons that they served to no other purpose but the inslaving the Makers of them and their Successors to the Popes of Rome But for a fuller Account Sir of this Sardican Council or rather Conventicle I refer you to the Acts of Athanasius lately published in which the History of these Betrayers of the Catholick Church is fully related 2. In the Year 431 it was concluded and determined by the Trinitarian Faction assembled in Council at Ephesus that GOD the Son was truly and properly incarnate in the Womb of the Virgin Mary and was born of her so that Mary was not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mother of Christ but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mother of God This blasphemons and contradictory Conclusion being once made immediately they fell to worshipping and praying to her If GOD the Son is to be worshipp'd and invovated shall we turn our Backs on the Mother of God Shall not she be able to help us at least by way of Intercession to whom the Angel said Thou art highly honoured of GOD and who was as it were Wife to GOD the Father and in very Deed Mother to GOD the Son Father Simon in the 3d Chapter of the Critical History of the Religions of the East saith It is chiefly since the Birth of Nestorianism that is since the Council of Ephesus that so much respect hath been shown to the Virgin Mary He means she was not so much worshipp'd and invocated till that Council had determined against Nestorius that she is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mother of GOD. But Father Simon will never be able to show that Holy Mary was at all worshipp'd or prayed unto till the Ephesin Council had decreed that she is to be deem'd the Mother of GOD. I do challenge him or any for him to produce any Testimony of the Ancients for the Worship and Invocation of Mary that is so ancient as the Ephesin Council This Father should therefore have dealt as ingenuously and freely in this Case as is his manner in most others or should have said nothing at all of this matter but have chose some other Instance to confirm what he had to say He should have owned what he knows to be the Truth that as the Doctrine of the Incarnation produced this impious and sensless Conclusion that