Selected quad for the lemma: prince_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
prince_n	law_n	power_n	sovereign_a	3,887	5	9.6410	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44415	A sermon preach'd before the king at White-hall on the fifth of November, 1681 by George Hooper ...	Hooper, George, 1640-1727.	1682 (1682)	Wing H2706; ESTC R228742	12,526	28

crave leave to prosecute that way the occasion of the Day leads by representing First the Rights of God and of Caesar Secondly the Usurpations of the Pope upon both and Thirdly the Redress and Reform The Rights of God and the King and the Robbery the See of Rome has committed upon both have been made so evident by others that they will need here but a very brief Recapitulation First If we enquire what is God's we are to consider him as Lord in chief and sole Proprietor whose is the World and all that dwell therein Part indeed of his Dominion he hath been pleased to bestow on the Sons of Men but so as to be held of him by such Laws with such Services and under such Reservations as it shall have pleased the Almighty Donor 1. He has therefore reserv'd to himself the power of declaring Laws and those not to be overrul'd nor superseded but by himself to bind every where and for ever to pass through all Countries and continue to all Ages And those you may read he has delivered them in Writing 2. He has accordingly prescribed the Worship that shall be paid him and the Services he expects Those that are peculiar to him have his Image his Mark set upon them and are Incommunicable For he is a jealous God and will not give his Honour to another 3. And for this peculiar Service he has chosen to be waited upon by a distinct peculiar People that the Homage and Worship of the World may be presented to him in publick by proper hallowed Hands And these Men they too have their Character you may know them whose they are and to whom they belong 4. In the last place we may mention as proper to God not what he has primarily reserved but what afterwards his pious Servants out of Zeal and Gratitude have offered to him Such are all Donations sacred to his Name and appropriated to his Service These Possessions and Revenues whose they are you will find too by their Inscription look into the Charters of their Foundations and you will see they belong to God In the next place consider we what is Caesar's and if we look upon him we shall know his Quality and his Value Whose Image bears he And whom does he represent Is he not the Vicegerent of God 1. Wherever therefore his Sovereign the Almighty has not prevented him by any precedent Commands there he has right and liberty to put forth his in those cases to expect an active cheerful Obedience and that we should in no case and for no reason resist 2. Be this Civil Government Heretick or Infidel we are not discharged of our Allegiance We are obliged by the same Divine Authority to preserve our Religion under it and to continue to it our Subjection Nor are any Modern Governours of the Church greater than their Fathers the Apostles who obey'd patiently the worst of Heathen Emperors submitting either to their Edicts or Persecutions 3. The Duty of the Christian Emperor being to restrain Vice and Irreligion to promote Holiness and the Worship of God to him it belongs to order and direct the Church the way he shall think most proper for those ends to be its Temporal Overseer These are the unquestionable Rights of the Civil Power affirm'd in our Articles and asserted at large by others and to be given up to it by those that will render to Caesar what is Caesar's II. Neither are the Rights of God and the King more evident than that the Pope has invaded both His Usurpations are now grown as conspicuous as his Greatness and to recount them all would be to give a particular of his whole Authority Every one knows his Principality over the other Churches of the World what an unjust Claim it is and how meanly founded How his Authority at first was no greater than that of his Neighbour Bishops the Style the same and his Holyness in common His Precedence not in the Right of Saint Peter but of a Capital City and Addresses first made to him not because he was next to God but to the Imperial Court How from the civility of a Precedence they claim'd a Superiority because they had been consulted with they would afterwards command from arbitrating of difference referred to them by their Brethren concern'd they usurp'd a Judicature and then when none durst contradict them they could not err and grew Infallible It is too as well known how taking advantage of the weakness of an old Empire and making still conditions with the new authorizing the usurpations of others in countenance to their own abusing to their private purposes the zealous Devotion of new converted Barbarians and imposing on their unlearn'd Simplicity by the Authority of forg'd Donations and counterfeit Decretals and having before by various Arts and thorough the connivence or assistance of Princes gained an absolute power over the Bishops of the West They then by the aid of the enslaved Clergy and their Garrisons of Monks attempted openly on the Princes themselves confined their Jurisdiction and forbid them to meddle with the Persons or Revenues of Ecclesiasticks Authoritatively interpos'd in all Differences between Prince and Prince or Prince and People with their Spiritual Thunder in their hands commanded the World to lay down or take up Arms at their Pleasure exercising every where by their Legates the Sovereign Power of Peace and War giving the Law and disposing of Crowns and Lands as they thought fit He that disobey'd was first thrown out of the Church and then out of his Country his Subjects absolv'd from their Allegiance and those justified that had a mind to rebel or to invade They did the Holy Church and Saint Peter Service that seiz'd upon his Estate or his Person He stood delivered up to Satan to be Buffeted on Earth and Tormented in Hell These are the Steps to the Papal Throne and when they were mounted so have they Lorded it trampling imperiously on the Necks of Kings and Bishops in an equal violation of all Authority Sacred and Civil They are the first that directed pretended Holy Orders of men and Sons of Perfection in Separate Congregations to despise their true Spiritual Governours and first instructed Traiterous Subjects to rebel against their King the sanctified way And these Injustices of their Growth and violences of their grown Power lie so open in the successive Annals of the Christian Times That to secure their Cause they have reason to forbid the reading of all Histories as well as of the Holy Bible There we may as easily discern the beginning and gradual advance of the aspiring Papacy as of any other usurping Empire and that this new Rome has by means as humane as those the Old practised and with as little of divine Right extended the narrowness of its original Territory into a Catholick Dominion And there we shall find as soon as it rises to its plenitude of Power nothing but Robbery and Cruelty the World in a perpetual

Disturbance by Interdicts and Excommunications all the Wars and Confusions of whole Ages commanded and managed by this unchristian Authority Emperors at their Feet kickt away deposed by them to be murdered by their Subjects and their Sons The Crowns of England and France given away on any distast as if those Princes had been only Vicars of the Church and at best what they forced one of ours to own but Homagers to the Holy See This Usage on all occasions Crown'd Heads of their own Communion have felt from their Holy Father But if the Crime the Pope charg'd border'd on Heresie Then the Thunderbolts flew and the World was to Tremble to invade that Prince was like a Journey against Infidels to stab him meritorious and the Assassin to be Canoniz'd and so in the last Age on the Presumption of such a Sentence dyed Henry the Third of France The villainous Murderer in open Consistory recognized by the Pope for a Religious Hero and the Relief of Paris by such an ungodly Fact compared with the Redemption of Mankind Under the same Danger by a more express Decree lay Henry the Fourth his Successor till he suffered himself to be Instructed how he might be safe from the Master of the Assassins the Old Man of the Mountains and laid down his Conscience at the Pope's Feet to hold his Life and his Crown And not to mention their impotent Fury against our Henry the Eighth their Former Defender by the same Authority and with as little effect did four of that See successively thunder against our late Glorious Queen and solemnly declare her deprived of her Kingdoms As they had deprived her of those and her Life if God would have suffered private Treachery open Rebellion or a Forrain Powerful Invasion to succeed And in consequence of such a Declaration made by the last of them and with as much Justice was the Traiterous Attempt made we this day remember and King James of Blessed Memory and the three Estates of the Realm together condemned to one Fire So do they give to Caesar his Due And what then can Heretical Subjects expect they are to fall by thousands self-condemn'd and without the Honourable Ceremony of a Bull to be slaughter'd like Sheep abandoned by the angry Shepherd as in the Butchery of Paris or by the Wolves of Ireland For Mercy is not the due of a Heretick nor has he right to common Faith his Life belongs not to him But how is it that the great Spiritual Father deals with his obedient Children Does he not render them their due He like an Old Roman Father treats them with an unaccountable Power allows them no Propriety and denies them the use of all that their good God had given them He takes out of their Hands the Holy Scriptures the greatest Gift of the Holy Ghost their only Comfort and Instruction And instead of it puts a Legend for the Word of Life and Truth unedifying fabulous Traditions for Bread a Stone for Fish a Serpent If that See had pretended but a little earlier Power over the Blessed Spirit they might have commanded it not to write however now they forbid the People to read He keeps from them the Legacy of their dying Saviour one half of the spiritual Nourishment bequeathed them He denys them the use of their Understandings and Judgements in almost all the Articles of their Faith of their Sences too in that of Transubstantiation He takes from them the knowledg of the Prayers offered in their Name and lets them not understand their own Desires So are the People to appear before God dumb and Senseless like one of their Idols All is to be referred to the Priest The Pardon of their Sins is to depend on his Discretion and the Efficacy of that part of the blessed Sacrament that is left on the Sincerity of his Intention So is man robbed of his Spiritual Consolation and the good God of his gracious Purposes But they are more bold yet with the Almighty That Princes may not complain of respect of Persons they absolve in some Cases from the Obedience of God himself and avowedly allow what he as positively forbids authorise incestuous Conjunctions and license Perjury pass Pardons for all Sins committed against the Divine Majesty They make the Authority of the Writings of God to depend upon their own and add to them as they see cause creating new Articles of Faith and Instituting almost a new Religion They give away his Worship make their devoutest Addresses and pay their most humble acknowledgments to the Virgin Mary to Angels to Favourite Saints And that there may not be wanting Rivals with our God They create Saints give Crowns above as well as below and dispose of Heaven as their own They give Divine Honour to Bread which they call a God and to an Image which to the Eye they might better Transubstantiate And to cover their Idolatry they commit Sacrilege steal away one of the ten Commandements and by their Index Expurgatorius blot the two Tables themselves So far has the Papal See been from observing the Rule of the Text from giving to Caesar what is Caesar's or to God what is God's III. The Church of which we have the Blessing to be Members and whose Preservation we more particularly acknowledge this Day with Thanks to God Almighty its Defendor appears in its reformation to have proposed to it self this Rule of our Saviour's to have had in it no other Design than by a just and equal distribution to give to God what is God's and to Man what is Man's It has surveyed the several Claims in the name of God and of the King has considered whose peculiar Stamp and Character those things that were challenged bore and has restored them by the direction of those Marks to their rightful Proprietors In this disposal of Rights and general Restitution it has not minded any Interest of its own nor laid its Hands on what belongs not to it It has not had any private Design to gain by what it was to distribute It has stood upright and held the Ballance steady dealing to each their own ingenuously and with an impartial Hand To God as is most due it renders first his own to his Person a Worship intirely Divine an Honour not before lessened on any rival part of his Creation to his Laws an Obedience which no other Command shall controle nor Dispensation release To Princes next and those that are in Authority it has restored the full exercise of their lawful Power their Countries and their People again their own no place privileg'd nor Person exempted no forain Potentate sharing the Authority nor dividing the Revenue their Subjects bound in an Allegiance not to be withdrawn on any Pretence of Schism or Heresie in the Power of no Consistory to discharge And here we see no Politick reserve that our Church has not provided for it self any other Refuge but in the Providence of God and the Piety of the