Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	bishop_n	church_n	rome_n	9,289	5	7.3911	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30394	The mystery of iniquity unvailed in a discourse wherein is held forth the opposition of the doctrine, worship, and practices of the Roman Church to the nature, designs and characters of the Christian faith / by Gilbert Burnet ...	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1673 (1673)	Wing B5838; ESTC R35459	60,599	169

our Consciences which he hath vindicated into liberty by delivering us from the bondage of corruption If then any pretend a power of obtruding new articles on our Belief or obligations on our Consciences these must be confessed to be injurious to the Dignity wherewith Christ is vested What shall then be said of him who pretends an authority of dspensing with and dissolving the obligation of Oaths of dissolving the Wedlock-bond of allowing Marriage in the forbidden degrees And as for their additions to the Laws of Christ they are innumerable And here what I mentioned last calls me to mind of a pretty device to multiply the forbidden degrees of Marriage yea and add the degrees of spiritual Kindred that is of kindred with our God-fathers or God-mothers in Baptism which is done upon no other design but to draw in more to the Treasure of the Church by frequent Dispenses If I should here reckon up all the additions which by the Authority of that Church are made to the Laws of Christ I should resume all that I have hitherto alledged they being visible additions to the Doctrine and Rules of the Gospel and imposed with such unmerciful cruelty that an Anathema is the mildest of the spiritual Censures they thunder against such as comply not with their tyranny and a faggot would be its civil Sanction were the secular Powers at their devotion I do not deny but there is an Authority both in the Civil and Ecclesiastick Powers of enjoyning things indifferent but no Authority beside Christs can reach the Conscience Besides if these indifferent things swell so in their number be vain pompous and useless and be imposed without all regard to the tender scruples of weak Consciences they become tyrannical and such as do so impose them discover their affecting a tyrannical and lordly dominion over Consciences and that they prefer their own Devices to the simpler Methods of Christ and the plainer and easier Rules of his Gospel But one instance of their abrogating the Laws of Christ is more signal in their violating the Sacrament of the Lords Supper wherein though he instituted it under both kinds and did so distribute it with the express command that all should drink of it yet they presumed notwithstanding of that and though the Primitive Church distributed it in both kinds which is confessed in their Canon to snatch the Cup from the Laity and eng●…oss it to the Clergy Now it is to be considered that the value of th●… Sacramental Actions flowing only from their Institution the first Appointment should be most religiously observed in them Besides the universal extent of Christs word drink ye all of it which was not used in the distribution of the Bread hath a particular mystery in it to guard against the foreseen corruption of that part of it and the reason given in the distribution of the Cup shews it must reach to all that need the Blood of Christ for the remission of sins which not being restrained to the Priests shews that the Cup without a direct opposition to the Mind and Command of Christ ought not to be taken from the People and any that will read the goodly reasons given for this Sacriledge wil see what a low account they have of the Commands of Christ when upon such trifling pretences they will violate them And with how much cruelty they backed this invasion of Christs Authority the History will declare they beginning it with a perfidious burning of two witnesses who opposed it at Constance And occasioning so much War and Blood-shed against those who adhered to the rule of the Gospel in this matter and refused to stoop to their Tyranny But I advance to another invasion of Christs regal authority commited by him who pretends to be the Universal Bishop of the Church and to have authority over all Church-men whom he makes swear obedience to him and looks on them but as his Delegates It was unluckily done of Gregory the great to be so severe on this head as to condemn the title of Universal Bishop as Antichristian But little dream'd he in how few years his Successour would aspire to that height of ambition Now by this pretence all these Officers whom Christ hath appointed to Rule and Feed his Church are turned out of their authority and made subject to him And with how much pride he treads on his fellow-Fellow-Bishops the Histories of many ages do declare It is true at first as being Bishop of the Imperial City the Bishops of Rome were highly esteemed but Pride and Ambition began soon to leaven them yet they were for the first four ages looked upon by the other Bishops but as their fellow-Fellow-Bishops and by the Decrees o●… two General Councils the Bishops of Constantinople were in all things except the precedency make equal to them And by the Decree of the Council of Nice other Metropolitans are levelled with them And here I must tell of a shameful forgery of three Bishops of Rome who one after another would have obtruded on the African Churches a Decree allowing of appeals from them to the Roman See as if it had been made at Nice which they of Africk rejected and upon tryal found it to be none of the appointments at Nice but a Decree of the Council of Sardice But by degrees the Bishops of that City got up to the height they are now at and not content with their usurping over their Brethren and Fellow-Church-men their next attempt was upon Princes who deriving their authrity from Iesus Christ the King of Kings by whom Kings do reign it was an invasion of his power to attempt against his Vice-Gerents on Earth But the Popes made no bones of this for being now held Christs Vicars on earth with other blasphemous titles as Vice-God yea and Lord God they thought their power was limited as long as Kings and Emperours were not even in temporals subject to them And therefore from the days of Pope Gregory the 7th they pretended to a power of deposing Princes disposing of their Dominions to others and dispensing with the Oaths of fidelity their Subjects had sworn to them and it was easie for them to make Crowns change their Masters as they pleased For there were always other ambitious Princes ready for their own ends to invade the Dominions of these deposed Kings upon the Popes warrant and the generality of the People were so possessed with the Popes power of releasing souls from Purgatory and from the punishments due to sin that they were easily prevailed upon to follow his thunders●… And by that time the Popes had swarm●… of Emissaries of the begging Orders who under shews of austere Piety gained much reverence and esteem in the World and so got all subjected to the Papal Tyranny Now should I instance this in particulars I should transgress the limits of a short Discourse by a long History but the lives of Gregory the 7th Alexander the third Boniface the 8th●…nd Iulius the second to

the Chalice from the People who in reason should be imagined so tenacious of so great a priviledge that no consideration should have obliged them to part with it and yet we know nor do they deny how it was wrung from them about 250 years ago What may seem less credible then for the People to consent to have their worship in an unknown Tongue and yet we know that all once worshipped in their Mother Tongue but that after by the overthrow of the Roman Empire the Latine Tongue decayed the barbarous worship was obtruded on the World And what piece of worship is both more visible and more contrary to the clearest evidence of Scriptures especially to the commandments in which the people were always instructed then the worshipping of Images And though we know well enough that for the first seven Centuries the Christian World abhorred them yet within a hundredth years after that we find a great part of it bewitched with them And what can be thought more uneasie for the World to have received then the Popes absolute authority over all the Churches and States of the World One should think that though Religion and Reason had lien out of the way yet Interest and Ambition had withstood this yet we see clearly by what steps they crept up from being Bishops of the Imperial City in an equality of power with their neighbouring Bishops into that culminating hight to which they have now mounted In a word we refuse not to appeal to the first four Ages of the Church in these matters that we quarrel the Roman Church for We deny not but humane infirmity begun soon to appear in the Church and a care to gain on the Heathens made them quickly fall upon some rites and use some terms which after-ages corrupted But the ruin of Religion was when the Roman Empire being overturned by the incursion of the Northern Nations in the beginning of the fifth Century both piety and Religion being laid to sleep instead of the Primitive simplicity of the faith and worship of the Christians they turned all their zeal to the adorning of the outwards of Religion hence the corruptions of the Church took their rise But I had almost forgot to name some Revelations which that Church pretends to even for some of her most doubtful opinions which are the visions and extraordinary Inspirations of some of their Saints from which they vouch a divine confirmation to their Doctrines I confess there is a great deal of extraordinary Visions Rapts and Extasies to be met with among the lives of their Saints and I fear a great deal more then truth for really whoso will but read these writings he must confess they are so far from being probable or well contrived that they speak out their forgery Alas whereas St. Paul being put to Glory of Visions and Revelations was to run back fourteen years for one Their Saints are found in them every day Are they not very credible Stories they tell of Christs appearing to some of their She-Saints and kissing them giving them Rings being married to them and celebrating nuptial rites making them drink out of his side and leaving on them the prints of his wounds with many other such like apparitions of the Virgin and other Saints which were either forgeries dreams or the effects of melancholy or histerical distempers and yet these extravagant fables are given out to the people as sacred pieces of Divine Revelations But the inspiration of the holy Writers on which we found our Faith was proved by their miracles which they wrought publickly in the sight of many and in the presence of their adversaries many of whom were convinced by them and it is certain that whosoever offers any thing to anothers belief pretending he comes to him in the Name of God must have some evident proof of his Divine Mission since none are bound to believe him barely on his own Testimony Otherwise there should be no end of Impostures if every pretender to Divine Inspiration were to be believed without proof Now the way it must be proved is by some evidence of Gods extraordinary assisting such a person which appeared alwayes either in Prophesies or Miracles but chiefly in miracles under the New Testament and therefore both Christ and his Apostles appeal to the mighty works they wrought as the great confirmation of their Doctrine If then there be new Doctrines brought into the Church they must have the like confirmation otherwise they are not to be believed But here those of that Church think they triumph For miracles they have in abundance not a Relique they have but hath wrought mighty wonders nor a Countrey-Saint but the Curat of the place can gravely tell a great many deeds of his puissance nor want the Images their marvellous atchievments but wondrously wondrous are the feats the Hosty hath performed Here I am upon a sad Subject of that trade of lies and fictions wherewith the Merchants of that Babylon have so long traffiqued of which the sincerer among themselves are ashamed How ridiculous are many of their miraculous narrations Was it a worthy piece of the Angelical Ministration for Angels to go trotting over Sea and Land with a load of Timber and Stones of the Virgins house till at length they set it down at Loretto that great devotions might be shown to it It is a goodly story for to tell of a Saint that walked so far after his head was cut off with it in his arms resting in some places to draw breath yet he will pass for an Infidel that should doubt of this at St. Denis-Church Who can look on the lives of the late Saints of that Church without nausea Gregories Dialogues begun this trade which indeed hath thriven well since The miracles of the Christian faith were grave and solemn actions but what ridiculous scenical stories not to say blasphemous ones meet us about the miracles of their Saints He that would know this may read the Lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic St. Bridgit and the two St. Catherines and he will be satisfied to a surfeit The Miracles also of Christ and his Apostles were acted publickly in the view of all but most of these narrations of their Wonders were transacted in corners none being witnesses but persons concerned to own the cheat And the Doctrine of Equivocating was a good cordial for the ease of their Consciences though they swore what they knew false according to the natural sense of the words which they uttered Thus we have many fables of Christs appearing in the Hosty sometimes as a child and sometimes as crucified when but a very few of the whole company present were honoured with that amazing sight Further the Miracles of the Christian Faith were written in the times in which they were acted that so enquiries might have been made into their falshood and the powers that then governed being enemies to the Faith it was safe for its opposers to have proved