Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	article_n	church_n	creed_n	2,425	5	10.1630	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45082	Of government and obedience as they stand directed and determined by Scripture and reason four books / by John Hall of Richmond.	Hall, John, of Richmond.	1654 (1654)	Wing H360; ESTC R8178	623,219	532

their measure use it by the vertue of his authority who said whose sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose sins ye retain they are retained Whereupon we may collect that as the power of the keyes is originally in Christ the Churches universal head and was by him given to the heads of Churches onely so it can be in the whole Church or in its subordinate members no otherwise then as received from their head according to that of Saint Paul When ye are met together and my Spirit c. And therefore to make it farther evident that the heads of Churches are to be understood in the direction of tell it to the Church we are to denote that the power of the keyes in the next verse was directed to the Apostles in the word ye when it was said Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven for unto them was most of this chapter directed the which was the reason of Saint Peters interogating him presently hereupon How oft shall my brother offend c. This power comonly called the power of the keyes and by the Romanists appropriate to the chief of that Sea only is that divine obsignation of Christian authority and precept whereby those laws and edicts of him that sitteth in the seat of judgment as the head of each Church that were but civilly or morally criminal in their own nature and obnoxious to temporal wrath onely for their breach come now to be sinful and damnable as being violations against God and the heavenly thrown it self by whom they are impowred and whose authority they do represent according to that sentence to be given at the last day inasmuch as ye have or have not done it c. Upon which grounds we may know what to conceive of that article of our Creed I believe the holy Catholike Church which some would wrest and make use of to draw mens obedience which way they pleased by proposing unto us what they pleased for Catholike doctrine But we are to conceive that this primitive form of profession of Christian faith therefore called the Apostles Creed was offered to and taken by such as were to be admitted into the Christian Church to shew and state their beliefe before their admittance and not to direct their obedience afterwards For although to believe in God in Christ in the holy Ghost do together with the acknowledgement of their deity draw on obedience by just consequence yet was this form of profession of faith therefore called the Creed made but to denote their beliefe of their true existence by which means being received into the Church their obedience was thence to be learnt For strange it had been for the Church to have proposed to men the matter of obedience to any of whom as yet they had no beliefe in And therefore when I profess to believe the holy Catholike Church the word holy will make it unconceiveable how it should directly import my profession of obedience and that not onely because the Catholike Church or Christs universal body cannot as before noted be ever comprehended under one notion and conception so as to be definitive to me concerning their determinations but also because I can never rightly say of the present or past militant Church to whom I seek for direction that they are all holy nor can men that live in a particular Church be ordinarily able to know what is and what is not Catholike doctrine besides that which is proposeth Whereupon understanding our belief in or of the holy Catholike Church to import our beliefe that Christ hath a true sanctified body which being so made by means of the holy Ghost in the article foregoing comes through their union in Christ and his Spirit to be of one communion from the rest of the world and so to be the Communion of Saints as in the article following So that then although the Creed as a Creed cannot of it self oblige to obedience yet since the beliefe of the articles thereof do by consequent bring men to Christs Church and out of desire to attain that Communion of Saints doth also farther prompt me to acts of obedience to that Church to whom I made this profession it will therefore follow that that obedience which I cannot give to the Catholick Church as such must be to this end given to that part of it under which I live since that I cannot otherwise obey the Catholike then by obeying the particular All which will be cleared by one instance of Saint Pauls who as the present head of that Church gives liberty to the Corinthians in eating of things offered to Idols notwithstanding that the then Catholike representative Church at Jerusalem and he himself amongst them had decreed otherwise Clearly evincing that the power of binding and loosing was to reside in each Churches own head and that they were to perform their obedience to the same party by whom they had learned their Creed who had been their spiritual father and begotten them in Christ. And that this power of the keyes was not given to the Apostles onely as a collective body of Church heads and so to the Catholike Church onely but was also conferred upon the particular heads of the Churches appears in that it was upon occasion particularly given to Saint Peter so that whatsoever head or chief governour should like him acknowledge Christ to be the true spiritual foundation and rock he should from Christ have power also to be herein a rock to others and to bind and loose And both places must contradistinguish the persons binding from those that shall be so bound and the persons telling and complaining to the Church from those that are to hear and have power of redress And as they were in one place spoken to Saint Peter alone to declare against consistorial parity so were they elsewhere given joyntly to all the Apostles the then visible heads of Churches to abate Popish usurpation For they were not to be commanding one another out of their Churches as they might those within them which was forbidden them in the persons of Zebedees Children But in those equalities they were in love to serve one another and in this their parity obeying the precept of submit your selves one to another he that should do it most and thereupon become a Minister and Servant to his fellows will even thereby make himselfe chief among them By which means being converted and become as little Children they shall then be greatest in the kingdome of heaven or have great and kingly power in the Church from the power of Christ that hath taken them into the arms of his acknowledgement From whence it will again follow that Who so shall receive one such little Child in my name receiveth me that is in hearing and obeying him he shal hear and obey me but Who so