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A64463
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The texts examined which papists cite out of the Bible to prove the supremacy of St. Peter and of the Pope over the whole church.
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Scott, John, 1639-1695.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing T826; ESTC R6438
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34,807
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58
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this sort of feeding must be allowed to others but he alone was to rule and govern in chief to feed by Authority and Power over all whereby he was to prescribe what was to be taught and believed But this is to return where we were before to the signification of the Word Feed which cannot mean one thing with respect to Peter and another with respect to the rest but signifies the same Power be it what it will common to them all If this need any further Explication those Words of our Lord Go and teach all Nations Matth. xxviii 19. Go ye into all the World and preach the Gospel unto every Creature Mark xvi 15. will satisfy us that Peter had no peculiar Authority conferred on him above the other Apostles For he gave this Charge to them all and it was ushered in with a far more magnificent Preface to it than when he spake here particularly to Peter for he first acquaints them with his own Supreme Authority saying All Power is given unto me in Heaven and in Earth and then adds Go ye therefore and teach all Nations c. which is a Commission as large as could be given to Men including in it all the Power that was necessary for the establishing and governing those Churches which they should gather unto Christ Who can think that they who had this Authority given them were themselves to be taught and governed by Peter alone Nothing could put such a Conceit into Mens Minds but an ambitious desire to advance themselves to the highest Dominion by raising Peter above all others Who it is evident did not take themselves to be all inferiour to him nor to be less able to feed him than he was to feed them For St. Paul who was herein inferiour that he was called late to be an Apostle as one born out of due time did take upon him to feed Peter and that with his Staff too if I may so speak that is with his Reproof and this at Antioch St. Peter's own Seat Where it had been very proper for him one would think to have stood upon his peculiar Prerogative if he had known of any belonging to him Which if he could have challenged we should still be to seek by what right the Bishop of Rome claims the same Authority that St. Peter had O says Boniface the VIIIth * Extravagant L. 1. Tit. 8. de Major Obedientia Christ spake to Peter and to his Successors when he said FEED MY SHEEP But how doth he prove that Why we must take his bare word for it both that he spake these words to Peter's Successors and to them alone and that the Bishops of Rome are his sole Successors All this he delivers as an infallible Dictator and it is not good manners to question that the Universal Flock of Christ is so committed to them that whether Greeks or others shall say they are not committed to Peter and his Successors they must necessarily confess they are none of the SHEEP of Christ But it is worth any bodies while to read on to the end of that Extravagant where he asserts this whereby they will be infallibly satisfied he was no infallible Interpreter but a gross Perverter of the Holy Scriptures For here it is that he proves in the Church there is both the Spiritual and the Temporal Power from those Words Behold here are two Swords Luk. xxii 38. and that the Temporal Power is subject to the Spiritual because the Powers that are are ordained of God Rom. xiii 1. for they would not be in order unless Sword were under Sword and Spiritual things are superiour to Temporal For the Prophecy of Jeremy is verified of the Church and the Ecclesiastical Power ch i. 10. Behold I have set thee this day over the Nations and over the Kingdoms to root up and pull down c. Therefore the Temporal Power if it go out of the way must be judged by the Spiritual but the Supreme Spiritual Power by God alone not by Man as the Apostle bears witness 1 Cor. ii 15. He that is Spiritual judgeth all things but he himself is judged of no Man. After all which goodly Interpretation of Holy Scriptures more like Pasquill than the Pope he concludes most pontifically We declare affirm define and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to Salvation for every humane Creature to be subject to the Pope of Rome This is his Conclusion from FEED MY SHEEP and from other Places of Scripture expounded after the very same fashion as he abuses this Which tho it be very presumptuous yet is not too arrogant for him who could entertain such a monstrous Conceit as this which we read in one of his Decrees * Sexti Decret L. 1. Tit. vi cap. xvii Fundamenta Where he says Christ made Peter the Chief that from him as from a certain Head he might diffuse as it were his Gifts into the whole Body for that having taken him IN CONSORTIVM INDIVIDVAE TRINITATIS into the Partnership of the undivided Trinity He would have him called that which the Lord himself was saying THOV ART PETER and upon THIS ROCK I will build my Church Now if Peter be thus exalted into the Consortship of the Blessed Trinity and the Pope have a just claim unto all that belongs to Peter then is the Pope no less than OUR LORD GOD as some of the Canonists have called him unto whom Boniface might well conclude all must be subject upon pain of Damnation I conclude this whole Discourse with these three Observations which are better grounded than their proud Decrees First It is worth considering that this lofty Structure which they have erected in the Church of Rome of the Supremacy of their Bishop is built barely upon three Metaphorical Speeches of our Saviour unto St. Peter without one word or syllable concerning the Bishop of Rome or any other Successor One would have expected that a thing of this mighty moment should have had a stronger Foundation and been delivered in plainer words than upon this Rock I will give thee the Keys and Feed my Sheep and that we should have been told also in down-right terms who should inherit the supreme Power supposed to be conferred by these Metaphorical Speeches when he was dead and gone especially if all Christians in the World must necessarily upon pain of Damnation be subject to Peter's Successor And yet so it is this is all that a Wit of such height as Bellarmine's who is wont to scrape up all that any way seems to make for his purpose durst venture to alledg out of the Holy Scriptures for the proof of so weighty a Point The Rhemists indeed in their Annotations upon the New Testament make bold with two places more which they apply to this business but with so little Reason not to say so ridiculously that he had the discretion to let them alone One is in St. Matthew xiv 29. where upon the word walked