Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	church_n	faith_n	truth_n	4,940	5	6.2410	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B06539	Nicholas Machiavel's letter to Zanobius Buondelmontius in vindication of himself and his writings..	Neville, Henry, 1620-1694.; Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.; Wharton, Thomas Wharton, Marquess of, 1648?-1715.	1700 (1700)	Wing W1578; ESTC R186416	17,636	13

The manner was this sometimes the Apostles themselves in their Perigrinations and sometimes any other eminent Member of the Church did propose to the Society upon vacancy or other necessity of a Pastor Elder or Deacon some good Holy man to be Elected which person if he had parts or gifts such as the Church could edifie by was chosen by the lifting up of hands that is by suffrage and oftentimes hands were laid upon him and Prayer made for him These men so set apart did not pretend to any consecration or sacredness more than they had before much less to become a distinct thing from the rest of mankind as if they had been metemorphos'd but did attend to perform the several functions of their calling as prophecying that is Preaching the Gospel visiting the sick c. and never intermitted the ordinary business of their Trade or Profession unless their Church or Congregation was very numerous in which case they were maintained by alms or contribution which was laid aside by every member and collected the first day of the week by the Deacons this was said to be given the Church and was imployed by suffrage of the whole Collective Body to the poor and to other incidencies so far was it from Sacriledge in those days to employ Church goods to Layuses From these words Church Clergy Ordination Pastor which last hath been translated of late years Bishop you see what conclusions these men have deduced and how immense a structure they have raised upon so little a foundation and how easily it will fall to the ground when GOD shall inspire Christian Princes and States to redeem his truths and his poor enslaved Members out of their clutches to bring back again into the World the true Original Christian Faith with the Apostolical Churches Pastors and Ordination so consistent with Moral virtue and integrity so helpful and conducing to the best and most prudent Policy so fitted for Obedience to Magistracy and Government all which the World hath for many years been deprived of by the execrable and innate ill quality which is inseparable from Priest-craft and the conjuration or spell of their new invented Ordination by which they cry with the Poet Jam furor humanum nostro de pectore sensum Expulit totum spirant praecordia Phoebum which makes them so Sacred and Holy that they have nothing of integrity or indeed of Humanity left in them I hope I shall not be thought impious any longer upon this point I mean for vindicating Christian Religion from the assaults of these men who having the confidence to believe or at least profess themselves the only instruments which GOD hath chosen or can choose to teach and reform the World though they have neither Moral virtues or Natural parts equal to other men for the most part have by this pretence prevail'd so far upon the common sort of people and upon some too of a better quality that they are perswaded their Salvation or Eternal Damnation depends upon believing or not believing of what they say I would not be understood to disswade any from honoring the true Apostolical Teachers when they shall be re-established amongst us or from allowing them even of right and not of alms or curtesie such Emoluments as may enable them cheerfully to perform the duties of their charge to provide for their Children and even to use Hospitality as they are commanded by Saint Paul But this I will prophesie before I conclude that if Princes shall perform this business by halves and leave any root of this Clergy or Priest-craft as it now is in the ground or if that famous Reformer fled some years since out of Picardy to Geneva who is of so great renown for learning and parts and who promises us so perfect a reformation shall not in his model wholly extirpate this sort of men then I say I must foretel that as well the Magistrate as this Workman will find themselves deceived in their expectation and that the least fibra of this plant will over-run again the whole Vineyard of the Lord and turn to a diffusive Papacy in every Diocess perhaps in every Parish So that God in his mercy inspire them to cut out the core of the Ulcer and the bag of this imposture that it may never rankle or fester any more nor break out hereafter to diffusive new corruption and putrifaction through the body of Christ which is his Holy Church nor to vitiate and infect the good order and true policy of Government I come now to the last branch of my charge which is That I teach Princes villany and how to enslave and oppress their Subjects In which accusation I am dealt with as poor Agnollo Canini was who as they report being a very learned Practiser of the Laws and left the only man of this profession one Autumn in our City the rest of the Advocates being fled into the countrey for fear of a contagious Disease which then reigned was commanded by our Judges to assist with his counsel both parties and to draw Pleas as well for the Defendant as the Plantiff else the Courts of Justice must have been shut up In the same manner my accusers handle me and make me first exhort and teach Subjects to throw off their Princes and then to instruct Monarchs how to enslave and oppress them but I did not expect such ingratitude from mine own Citizens or to be served as Moses was when he was upbraided for killing the Egyptian by one of his own people for whose sake he had done it whereas he believed they would have understood by that action that he was the person whom God intended to make use of in delivering them from the horrid slavery they were then under If any man will read over my Book of the Prince with impartiality and ordinary charity he will easily perceive that it is not my intention therein to recommend that Government or those men there discribed to the world much less to teach them to trample upon good men and all that is Sacred and Venerable upon earth Laws Religion Honesty and what not if I have been a little too punctual in designing these Monsters and drawn them to the life in all their lineaments and colours I hope mankind will know them the better to avoid them my Treatise being both a Satyr against them and a true Character of them I speak nothing of great and honourable Princes as the Kings of England France and others who have the States and Orders of their Kingdoms with excellent Laws and Constitution to found and maintain their Government and who reign over the hearts as well as the persons of their subjects I treat only of those vermin bred out of the corruption of our own small Common-wealths and Cities or engender'd by the ill blasts that come from Rome Olivaretto da Fermo Borgia the Baglioni the Bentivoglii and a hundred others who having had neither right nor honorable means to bring

will lye in the way of those who observe this to enquire what St. Paul means when he says That in the latter days some shall depart from the faith forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving but all these things and many other abuses brought in by these Perverters of Christianity will I hope e're long be enquired into by some of the Disciples of that bold Fryer who the very same year in which I profecied that the scourge of the Church was not far off began to thunder against their Indulgencies and since hath questioned many tenets long received and imposed upon the world I shal conclude this discourse after I have said a word of the most Hellish of all the innovations brought in by the Popes which is the Clergy these are a sort of men under pretence of ministring to the people in holy things set a part and separated from the rest of mankind from whom they have a very distinct and a very opposite interest by a humane Ceremony called by a divine name viz. Ordination these wherever they are found with the whole body of the Monks and Fryers who are called the regular Clargy make a Band which may be called the Janizaries of the Papacy these have been the causers of all the Soloecisms and immortalities in Government and of all the impieties and abominations in Religion and by consequence of all the disorder villany and corruption we suffer under in this detestable Age these men by the Bishop of Rome's help have crept into all the Governments in Christendom where there is any mixture of Monarchy and made themselves a third estate that is have by their temporalities which are almost a third part of all the Lands in Europe given them by the blind zeal or rather folly of the Northern people who over-ran this part of the world stept into the throne and what they cannot perform by these secular helps and by the dependancy their vassals have upon them they fail not to claim and to usurp by the power they pretend to have from God and his Vicegerent at Rome They exempt themselves their Lands and Goods from all secular jurisdiction that is from all Courts of Justice and Magistracy and will be Judges in their own Causes as in matters of tithe c. and not content with this will appoint Courts of their own to decide Soveraignly in testamentary matters and many other causes and take upon them to be sole Punishers of many great Crimes as Witchcraft Sorcery Adultery and all uncleanness to say nothing of the fore-mentioned judicatory of the Inquisition in these last cases they turn the offenders over to be punish'd when they have given Sentence by the secular arm so they call the Magistrate who is blindly to execute their decrees under pain of Hell-fire as if Christian Princes and Governours were appointed only by God to be their Bravo's or Hangmen They give Protection and Sanctuary to all execrable offenders even to Murderers themselves whom God commanded to be indispensably punish'd with death if they come within their Churches Cloysters or any other place which they will please to call holy ground and if the ordinary justice nay the Soveraign power do proceed against such offenders they thunder out their Excommunication that is cut off from the body of Christ not the Prince only but the whole Nation and People shutting the Church doors and commanding divine offices to cease and sometimes even authorizing the people to rise up in Arms and constrain their Governours to a submission as happened to this poor City in the time of our Ancestors when for but forbidding the servant of a poor Carmelite Fryer who had vowed poverty and should have kept none to go arm'd and punishing his disobedience with imprisonment our whole Senate with their Gonfalonier were constrained to go to Avignon for absolution and in case of refusal had been massacred by the people It would almost astonish a wise man to imagine how these folks should acquire an Empire so distructive to Christian religion and so pernicious to the interests of men but it will not seem so miraculous to them who shall seriously consider that the Clergy hath been more than these thousand years upon the catch and a form'd united corporation against the purity of Religion and the interest of mankind and have not only wrested the Holy Scripture to their own advantage which they have kept from the Laity in unknown languages and by prohibiting the reading thereof but made use likewise first of the blind devotion and ignorance of the Goths Vandls Huns c. and since of the ambition and avarice of Christian Princes stirring them up one against another and sending them upon foolish errands to the Holy Land to lose their Lives and to leave their Dominions in the mean time exposed to themselves and their Complices They have besides kept Learning and Knowledge among themselves stiffling the light of the Gospel crying down Moral vertues as splendid sins defacing humane policy destroying the purity of the Christian faith and profession and all that was vertuous prudent regular and orderly upon earth so that whoever would do good and good men service get himself immortal honour in this life and eternal glory in the next would restore the good police I had almost said with my Author Livy the sanctuary too of the Heathens with all their valour and other glorious endowments I say whoever would do this must make himself powerfull enough to extirpate this cursed and apostate race out of the world and that you may see this is lawfull as well as necessary I shall say but one word of their calling and original and then leave this subject The word Clergy is a term wholly unknown to the Scriptures otherwise than in this sence a peculiar People or Gods lot used often for the whole Jewish Nation who are likewise called a Kingdom of Priests in some places In the New Testament the word Cleros is taken for the true Believers who are also called the Elect and often the Church which is the Assembly of the faithful met together as is easily seen by reading the beginning of St. Paul's Epistles where writting to the Church of Churches he usually explains himself To all the Saints in Christ sometimes To all who have obtained like faith with us sometimes To all who in all places call upon the Name of the Lord Jesus c. by which it appears that neither the word Church nor Clergy was in those dayes ever appropriated to the Pastors or Elders of the flock but did signifie indifferently all the people assembled together which is likewise the literal construction of the word Ecclesia which is an assembly or meeting in these Congregations of Churches was performed their Ordination which properly signifies no more than a decree of such Assembly but is particularly used for an Election of any into the Ministry