Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	day_n	people_n	word_n	11,847	5	3.9748	3	false

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

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