Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	catholic_n	church_n	communion_n	5,870	5	9.6775	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30359	The infallibility of the Church of Rome examined and confuted in a letter to a Roman priest / by Gilbert Burnet.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1680 (1680)	Wing B5805; ESTC R15581	20,586	38

of them is infallible 27. Is the Pope infallible in all he says or onely when he gives out of his Chair his Decision of Controversies I know you choose the latter but then let me ask you what is necessary to put him in his Chair Must the Cardinals concur then you share the Infallibility among them without any colours either from Scripture or Antiquity Nor do I believe your Popes will allow this in their Decisions what ever they may do in the Political Government of the Ecclesiastical State By what means therefore shall I be assured the Pope speaks from his Chair that so I may acknowledg him infallible and if in any thing I must submit to his sentence then most especially when he according to the Decree of a Council takes care to publish a Bible which must be by all Christians submitted to as the Rule of Faith and set up as the Standard by which all other Translations Copies nay and the Originals of the Hebrew and Greek are to be compared This is a weighty and considerable business as any can be and yet we have seen Sixtus the Fifth publish a Bible with all the assurances could be that it was an authentical and true Edition requiring all Christians to receive it as the Rule of their Faith but upon this he dies and his Successor Clement the Eighth gives the World another Edition of the Bible and imposes it with the same Authority Sixtus did and took all care to suppress the Copies of the former Edition yet some escaped his industry The difference of those two Editions is such that the Catalogue of them makes up a Book and any that has compared them will find that in many places the whole sense is varied in these Editions This is as clear an evidence as may be that the Chair cannot make them infallible who do so flatly contradict one another and that in a matter of so high and so general concern 28. What reason have I to believe the Bishops of Rome infallible or that they have an absolute Jurisdiction over Christendom since I can find no traces of this in the beginning of Christianity though the defining it was then of great necessity I find the Apostles all acting by an equal Commission as indeed it must be where all were inspired with infallible Illumination And why must I think that St. Peter left none of this Infallibility at Antioch or Alexandria but brought it all entire with him to Rome And why was he so sullen as not to name his Successor when our Saviour shewed him that he was to put off his Tabernacle shortly Certainly it is hard to imagine that when he was writing his second Epistle as his last Will and Testament that though he had concealed till then who must succeed him he should not then have named him I deny not but the Faith of the Roman Church was spoken of throughout the whole World and that a Series of blessed and glorious Martyrs governed that See yet even then what ever reverence the eminence of the Imperial City and their own more eminent qualities procured them the absolute submitting all things to their Decision was not thought of It is true the Fathers gloried much in the first Founders of that See and in the worthy succession derived down from them but thought of nothing less then subjecting Christendom to their Authority Nor did the other Patriarchs pay any homage or subjection to them but still pleaded an equality of Jurisdiction yielding them nothing but a bare precedence It is a thing I will not here attempt to shew by what steps that See did degenerate from its first purity nor how it mounted to that height of Authority in which it glories at present but any who is acquainted with the Histories and Writings of the first six Ages must needs confess that the Scene of the Church is quite altered from what it was then in this obedience which the World does now pay the Bishops of Rome 29. What reverence can I pay a Succession of men who have plainly trampled on all Laws Divine and Humane Who have pretended to an absolute Temporal Power who have deposed as well as excommunicated Emperours Kings and other Princes who have animated their Subjects to rebel against them who have set on their neighbouring Princes to invade their Dominions which they had rent by Civil Wars and Rebellions and did for a Succession of many Ages fill Christendom with war and cover it with blood Nor are these excesses to be onely charged on some particular Popes as their personal faults but they founding them on a pretence to an absolute Temporal Authority to which they laid claim either they erred in that Decision or not if they erred then they are not infallible if they erred not then though the Reformation has made them a little more cautious yet still they are vested with the same power and all these Decretals of Pope Gregory the Seventh are still in force so that the Princes of Cristendome are at the Popes mercy for their Crowns and Dominions and are more obliged to the Reformation than they apprehend or acknowledg for the peaceable possession of their rights But it is apparent the Popes still retain the same high thoughts and onely wait an opportunity of executing them as appear'd from the attempts of Pope Paul the Fifth on the State of Venice 30. In the interval of the Sede vacante who is Head of the Church Is it a dead body without a head or is it a Monster of many heads Does the Authority li edivided among the Cardinals or have they none at all You know the Conclave have been sometimes very tedious in their Elections the last continued divers months and others have been shut up much longer pray then satisfie me who has the Supreme Power of the Church all that while If you vest the Cardinals with it then you set up a Presbytery to govern the Church For the Cardinals as such are the Presbyters of Rome and thus before we are aware Geneve is translated to Rome and the Scottish Presbytery culminates in the Vatican and governs the whole World 31. If after these difficulties about the Authority of Pope and Council you tell me the Infallibility of the Church rests in the whole body and is to be taken from the universally received Opinions then what had become of me if I had lived when the whole World was become Arrian and Athanasius alone withstood the stream Certainly I must have run with the Current and may be should not have known what to have answered those who should have asked me Where was your Faith before Alexander and Athanasius 32. But upon the whole matter how shall I know what is either decreed by Councils or Popes or received by the body of Christians It is not to be expected I can go over the World to examine the belief of all Christians Nor can I examine all the Canons and Decrees of Councils much less all the Popes Decretals Into what therefore must I resolve my Faith You tell me a living speaking Judge is necessary but such a one is not to be had in every part of the World therefore I must languish under great and constant uncertainties otherwise I must resolve my faith into the Testimony of my Priest and Confessor And thus all these pompous high sounding expressions of the Infallible Catholick Church do at length dwindle into this that every one of your Communion must in all things believe what their Priest tells them without inquiry And in what a perplexity must they be when one Priest assures them one Opinion is the Doctrine of the Church another tells them the plain contrary is the Doctrine of the Church And this has fallen out in not a few cases betwixt the Molinists and Iansenists So that upon the whole I cannot see how private persons can be satisfied what is the belief of the Church And now Sir after I have led you through a great many Thickets and Inclosures I am afraid I leave you in a labyrinth out of which I protest I cannot help you but by advising you to break through or leap over these banks and hedges within which you have intangled your self And therefore you must forgive me if I cannot follow you unless I see you furnished with some thread to lead you out of that intricate Maze of difficulties that must follow on your Opinions in these particulars And I choose rather than ingage in so dangerous a passage to take the sacred Writings which you and I both acknowledge to be divine and peruse them with all serious care hoping that God will so direct me that if I be not wanting to my self I shall not err in any matter of salvation You will find I have treated these Opinions I have considered with all possible fairness and modesty of Stile and indeed the sad prospect I have of Christendom which is abused by such colours into so many and great mistakes raises in me thoughts full of pity and commiseration and not of insulting and scorn If you send me any return to this I shall expect the like fair dealing from you and if you give me satisfying answers to these difficulties you shall find that you deal with one over whom reason hath more Power than either Education Humour or Interest And so I bid you farewell FINIS Errata Page 1. line 3. read Infallibility pag. 2. l. 6. birth right pag. 3. l. 9. for one r. an pag. 6. l. 3. for derided r. decried pag. 9. l. 6. for then r. their pag. 12. l. 13. for means r. meanness l. 17. r. Westward l. 19. r. Priests p. 24. l. 8. for sacred r. secret l. 25. r. come