Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	cast_v	devil_n	divide_v	3,310	5	9.5405	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26931	Full and easie satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference between D. a doubter, P. a papist, and R. a reformed Catholick Christian : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1674 (1674)	Wing B1272; ESTC R15922	117,933	211

condemning backbiting reproaching and making odious if not persecuteing one another and shunning many of them the Communion of one another as they do the Papists This makes them think that they must seek some surer soberer way than any of us have yet found and the Papists set in and tell them All these are branches broken off from the true Vine and withered This it is to depart from the Catholick Church when they are once gone thence there is no stop or consistence till they crumble all to dust and atomes You must become Roman Catholicks or go mad You see to what confusion all others tend If you once leave our Church you will never know where to settle Which Sect will you be of If an Independant why not an Anabaptist If an Anabaptist why not an Antinomian How will you ever know which one of all these is in the right All this is easily answered by a man of understanding But to the ignorant Vulgar it seemeth unanswerable And alas how many have given them this scandal Wo be to some by whom offence cometh 6. But the Contentions of our Clergie advantage them more than the divisions of the people when we are of many interests and many parties and proceed to make each other contemptible and odious especially when we come to hinder each other from the work of our Ministry A house and Kingdom divided cannot stand Christ tells us that the Devil himself is not so foolish as to divide his Kingdom All our consent and best endeavour is too little to save mens souls from sin and error And when one part is cast by and each part by contention hindereth the other the Papists have the far easier work When one part are not to come within five miles of Cities or Corporations where Papists are and those that may come near them are too few and many too indisposed or negligent in resisting them so that we are all overdone by their Priests in constant diligence especially with the Greater rank of men with whom one part of our Ministers have almost as little inclination as opportunity to converse no wonder if the Roman work go on 7. And alas how great advantage have they made of our late calamitous Civil Wars and manifold scandalous Rebellions Though indeed it was the terrour of their murdering about two hundred thousand in Ireland of which see Bishop Jones Sir John Temple and the Earl of Orery against Welsh which frightened those that I was acquainted with out of their peace and almost out of their wits here in England yet dead men are not heard on Earth and their service for the King in England serveth not only for a Cloke for that but for an advantage against many that stand in their way In all Civil Wars if the Clergy be drawn in to own several Causes especially if they own an ill Cause who ever prevaileth Religion suffereth by it while one part of them are laid by or hindered by the other 8. And though God hath greatly obliged this Nation to thankfulness by preserving our Superiours so much from Popery as he hath done yet some of their names are injuriously abused to entice men to the Popish way as if it had so much countenance and patronage that Interest might invite them to it 9. And the World is lyable to changes and weary of holding long in one way The name of Antiquity especially in Religion is venerable with all but yet it is Novelty that pleaseth in the Matter And when Popery is to us a New way honoured with the name of The old Religion it is a taking bait 10. But the grand cause of all is the common peoples Ignorance as being ungrounded in their own Religion and their badness who measure all by carnal Interests and all our great and manifold sins by which we have forfeited Gods presence and his grace and provoked him to leave us to the shame and ruine of our own lusts and delusions to undoe our selves Great sins bring great plagues And most men are of their Religion who have the greatest interest in their estimation and affections or that have greatest advantage on them by constant nearness familiarity kindred kindness or power to do them good or hurt in the World And therefore to your question Why so many of late turn Papists I shall but now concludingly answer you as I begun with you concerning the Cause of your own doubts They that have long lived under the light of the holy Gospel and among the mercies which have blest this Land and yet have been sincerely no true Christians but loved their fleshly lusts and pleasures and their wealth and worldly honour more than God or holiness or Heaven it is no wonder that they easily change their party and can be in siding of any Religion who are in sincerity of none and if God forsake their understandings and give them up to senseless and unreasonable opinions who would not live according to the knowledge which they had nor obey the truth which was clearly opened to them And such hypocrites and perfidious rebels against Christ all Protestants do confess themselves to have been who turn Papists and know what they do Because they profess to go from a state of damnation into a Church out of which there is no salvation if the Popes judgement be as powerful in Heaven as it is at Rome D. But is there no hope of ending these lamentable differences and removing the scandal of Infidels hereby or at least of living together like Neighbours without seeking each others blood or ruine R. 1. Yes when God shall by his Providence take down the worldly Greatness and Advantages of the Papacy and level the King of Rome with the true Pastors of his Church and turn the usurping Monarch of all the World into a true Bishop that so worldly Power honour and wealth may not be stronger arguments with their party than Heaven and Hell and Gods commands Till then their Great twisted Interest is like to rule them and keep them in the errours into which it hath involved them Especially while their pretended Infallibility against all sense and reason is their strength which maketh them uncurable in any errour which they once embrace 2. But yet I did in the second Part of my Key for Catholicks long ago shew the terms on which we may live like neighbours if not like Christians if their principles would allow their minds to be but peaceable and give dissenters leave to live And I still profess that might we but secure our selves and our posterity I am none of those that would have the least injury much less cruelty exercised upon any man for being a Papist If they will live peaceably with me or but give me leave I will live peaceably with them And I doubt not but as there are some among them truly fearing God though corrupt with the errours of their education so there are more that are of kind and civil

of damnation to believe that there is no Bread and no Wine when all the soundest senses of any men in the world do perceive Bread and Wine by seeing it tasting it feeling it smelling it and by the notorious effects and all this built upon no Revelation of God no Reason at all nor any true consent of the Primitive Church but clean contrary to them all that I solemnly profess that I find it an utter Impossibility to believe it And it often puts me to a doubt Whether it be possible for any mortal man unfeignedly and fully to believe it and Whether there be really any such Papist in the world or Whether most do not for carnal respects take on them to believe it when they do not or rather the Vulgar understand their words as not really excluding the true being of Bread and Wine and the rest only somewhat overawing their own reason with a reverence of their Church so far as not to contradict or so far as notionally to own it when they do not from the heart believe the thing So many contradictions absurdities and impieties are to be by them believed with it that I am sure no man that understandeth them can possibly believe them all And all this must be done by Miracles stupendious miracles daily or common miracles which every Priest can do at his pleasure and never fail sober or drunken greater than raising a man from the dead so that every beastly sordid ignorant Priest shall do more miracles by far than ever Jesus Christ did in all his life on earth as far as we know by the holy Records if he live as long He that can believe all this may next believe that there is neither Earth under his feet nor the Firmament over his head nor Water nor Air nor any other Creature and that he hath no being himself II. Reason The Faith or Religion of the Papists as described by themselves is so far from Infallibility as that it is utterly uncertain unintelligible and meer contradiction and confusion and a changeable thing so that no man knoweth whether he have it or not and whether he have it all But whoever hath it he hath certainly a hodge-podge of truth and falshood III. Reason Their Papacy which essentiateth their Church is a horrid Usurpation of Christs own Prerogative and of an Office to do that which is incompaparably above the Natural Power or Capacity of any mortal man even to be the Apostle and Governour of the whole world of Christians at least To take Charge of all the souls on earth to teach and call those that are uncalled and to Rule those that are baptized even at the Antipodes and in all those unknown or inaccessible parts of the world which he hath no knowledge of A far more arrogant undertaking than to be the Civil Monarch of all the earth and utterly impossible for him to perform and which never was performed by him IV. Reason The said Papacy is an arrogant Usurpation of the Power of all the Christian Princes and Pastors upon earth or of a Power over them never given by Christ It setteth up a Kingdom in a Kingdom and taketh from Pastors the power which Christ gave them over their particular flocks V. Reason The said Papacy is a meer humane Institution They confess themselves that it is not of Divine faith that the Bishop of Rome is St. Peters Successor by Divine Right It is no article of their own faith But History fully assureth us that it was but in the Roman Empire that the Roman Bishop was made Supream as the Archbishop of Canterbury is in England And that he standeth on the same humane foundation as the other four Patriarchs of the Empire did And that their General Councils were called by the Emperours and were called General only with respect to that Empire And there never was such a thing as a General Council of all the Christian world nor ever can be And that there never was such is most notorious yet by the Names subscribed to all the Councils But they abuse the world and claim that power over all the Christians on earth which one Prince gave his subject-Prelates in his Empire As if the General Assembly of Scotland or France should pretend to be a General Council of the world and the Archbishop of Canterbury should call himself Archbishop of all the Church on earth and claim the government of it VI. Reason The said Papacy hold their claim of Supream Government as by Gods appointment though they confess as before said that it is not de fide that the Pope succeedeth Peter by Divine right and this notoriously Contrary to the Judgement and Tradition of the far greatest part of the Churches in the world General Councils such as they had and the sense of the greatest part of Christians have determined against the Papal claime And Tradition condemneth them to this day while they plead Tradition VII Reason It is Treason against Christ for the Papists who are but a Sect and not the third part of the Christians in the world to call themselves the whole Church and unchurch all the rest and seek to rob Christ of the far greatest part of his Kingdom by denying them to be such As if they would deny two third parts of this Kingdom to be the Kings They are Sectaries and Schismaticks by this arrogant dividing from all the rest and appropriating the name and priviledges of the Church to themselves alone VIII Reason By making an unlawful and Impossible Condition and Center of Church Vnion they are the greatest Schismaticks in all the world The greatest Dividers of the Church upon pretence of Vnity As he would be a divider of this Kingdom who would set up a Vice-King without the Kings authority and say that none that subject not themselves to him shall be taken for subjects of the King IX Reason They studiously brand themselves with Satans mark of malice or uncharitableness and cruelty to mens souls while they sentence to damnation two third parts of the Christian world because they will not be the subjects of their Pope And they think their way to Heaven is safest because they are bolder than us in damning other Christians Whereas Love is the mark by which Christs Disciples must be known to all X. Reason They are inhumanely cruel to mens bodies And this is their very Religion For the Council at the Laterane under Innocent the third decreed that those that believe not or deny Transubstantiation are Hereticks and all Temporal Lords shall exterminate them from their Dominions That is no man shall be suffered to live under any Christian Lord that will not renounce all his senses and profess that he believeth that they are all deceived by God himself which is not only to renounce their Humanity but their Animality or sense it self So that no men indeed are to be suffered to live but only such as deny themselves to be men What Heathens