Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	apostle_n	church_n	particular_a	2,274	5	6.8998	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48816	Considerations touching the true way to suppress popery in this kingdom by making a distinction between men of loyal and disloyal principles in that communion : on occasion whereof is inserted an historical account of the Reformation here in England.	Lloyd, William, 1627-1717.	1677 (1677)	Wing L2676; ESTC R2677	104,213	180

alone or with others in such Controversies Indeed by the Canons of Sardica those few Western Bishops that continued there after the Easterlings had left them were pleased meerly of their Charity to give him a new Power to order the reviewing of any Provincial Judgment upon complaint of any Bishop that was aggrieved in it And Pope Leo not being satisfied with this got the Emperor Valentinian III. to ordain that the Bishop of Rome should give Law throughout his part of the Empire which then contained little more than Italy and part of France and part of Spain and the Illyrian Diocess Yet all that the Bishop of Rome had by these Concessions and Grants did not amount to an Authority over the Universal Church I add nor over the British Church in particular And so far was this from arguing that he had by Divine Right any Jurisdiction out of his own Diocess that his seeking or accepting what was given him by these Concessions or Grants is a convincing argument to the contrary But for the Churches Judgment nothing can be more plain than that all those Bishops who gave their Votes to those Canons which I cited before out of the first Four General Councils and that of Africk together with the Epistle annext had no question or thought of any Authority that he had by Divine Right out of his own proper Diocess or by Humane Right out of the Roman Patriarchy or any power of Jurisdiction that he had elsewhere from the Roman Emperors or from the Primitive Fathers Whatsoever power he has gotten since the decay of the Roman Empire and of the Christian Religion from whence I have already dated the beginning of Popery as it is plain he has gotten in many Countries which were not anciently within his Jurisdiction upon any account it must be either by force or fraud abusing either the weakness or ignorance of the people or else by the concession or connivence of Princes and States Blessed be God there are some Christian Nations in the world which have stood so far out of his reach that he has not been able to hook them in by any of these ways And as he has no colourable pretence to a power over those Countries where it is certain he never had any as Ethiopia Russia c. which they that are pleased to call therefore Schismatical must give me leave to admire as well their folly as their uncharitableness and yet they that do not call them so make the Pope no Head of the Universal Church so in those Countries where he has gotten power it is not necessary that he should always hold it till we see who is Antichrist whether He or one of the Tribe of Dan who they say shall come to take it from him They over whom he gain'd a power by force or fraud are kept under it still the same way which creates no right by any Law whatsoever And therefore when God makes them strong enough and wise enough they will deliver themselves from him They that gave him a power over them when they saw cause may have as good or better cause to recal it And they have just cause to do this when they see him desert that Title by their Gift and claim his power by immediate Divine Right or when he employs his power not to edification but destruction and specially when doing all this he will force their obedience by such means as come not from the Wisdom which is from above but from that which the Apostle calls earthly sensual devillish Whosoever among our Roman Catholicks will be pleased to consider these things with that Attention and Impartiality that is due to all things of Religion I cannot but think he will see that the Christian Religion doth no way oblige him to own the Popes Authority in this Kingdom He will see that Iure Divino the Pope could have no Authority over this particular Church which he had not over the Church universal And it doth not appear by any Records of the Primitive times that the Pope ever had any such Authority over the Universal Church or that by the Diffusive Church he was believed or acknowledged to have it But on the contrary it appears by instances which I have given of those times that he was denied to have such an Authority and that as well by the Bishops assembled in their Councils as by the best and wisest men of those times in their Writings Nay he was contradicted and resisted as oft as he endeavoured to impose any thing against the mind of particular Churches He will see that whatsoever Humane Right the Pope had acquired over the people of this Kingdom was no more of one kind than we are all originally of one Nation and that the power which he was suffered to exercise over us was very much greater at one time than another In the worst and darkest times it was highest for it grew up on the bad Titles or other weakness of Princes and yet then he could not hold it peaceably nor long enough to make a Prescription But at all other times it was much less than he claim'd which sheweth plainly it was no more but what the State pleased to give him and they owned that the Pope had no right over them by any concessions of their own more than what he had over the rest of the Western Churches Particularly in those times next before the Reformation that right which was generally acknowledged to be in him was not a supreme right but subordinate to a General Council This appears to have been the sense of the Western Church For it was declared in plain terms by four Councils which were acknowledged for General in that Age and were abetted as such by the generality of the Western Church They not only declared this Doctrine in their Canons but they reduced it to practice For those Councils deposed divers Popes and made new ones in their stead Which Acts of theirs the Papalins of this Age are obliged to defend as ill as they like the Canons for without them they cannot make up the succescession of their present Popes But admitting those Acts to have been just and good how can they reject those Canons from which they had their virtue and efficacy If they say the Pope did not approve them it is partly true Out of doubt those Popes did not like them that lost by them Nor perhaps those that came in by those Canons might not like them so well at another time But how then could they take upon them to be Popes Their accepting a Title from those Councils and the Peoples owning them in it was enough to shew that those Canons were then in force and they were never repealed by any Council since nor hath there been any Council to do it that can be reasonably thought so fit as those four were to declare the sense of the Western diffusive Church Therefore

would no less deeply brand those who are most given to asperse others even the wildest of Phanaticks and Enthusiasts themselves as being Popishly principled If it be as sure it is very absurd to charge Popery on those eminent Eastern and Western Churches which ever since the Separation of the one and the Reformation of the other have purged forth and kept themselves free from all that which is properly Popish and have therefore been anathematized by the Pope himself and excluded from the Communion of all those Christians which hold him for their Ecclesiastical Head It must also be no less absurd to charge with Popery those Tenets of Belief and Rites of Worship however false and unnecessary in themselves wherein the Roman Catholick Churches differ from the English Protestant and other Churches of the Reformation but agree with those anciently famous Patriarchical Churches and almost with all other in the remote parts of the World Having thus how briefly soever said what may be sufficient to exclude the many both incongruous and injurious Notions of Popery which also would be insignificant if they were admitted I shall in the next place endeavour to set forth the only true proper and significant notion of it And yet if I be not much deceived 't will be no hard matter to fix upon and shew wherein this only right Notion of Popery does consist The very derivation of the word and obvious reason of the thing necessarily imported thereby may assure us it cannot in a few significant words be describ'd to be either less or more or any way other than An undue adhaesion to the Bishop of Rome in Principles or Practices falsly pretended to be Christian. I say To the Bishop of Rome because he it is that hath for many Ages past appropriated to himself the name of Pope which was formerly common to all Bishops as every one knows that has been conversant in the Writings of the Fathers I say also An undue adhaesion in Principles c. for it 's supposed to be an ill thing that is to be supprest Now it is not ill to confess the Apostles Creed or to do any good thing that he does but to follow him or to joyn with him in any thing that is evil that is chiefly to assert an undue Power or Authority in the Pope such as that which he assumes to himself over the whole Christian Church and consequently to embrace and to practice those Errours and Corruptions whatsoever they are that by virtue of that usurpt Power and Authority he imposes on all those that are or shall be in Communion with him and excommunicates all that will not come to those terms not so much for their Aversness to those Doctrines and Practices as because they will not submit to his Power and Authority Though I must withal observe here as consequential to my former Observation of so many false Notions of Popery that laying aside its Capital Errour viz. That which directly asserts the pretended universal Power of the Pope it is no necessary evil of any inferiour subservient Errours or Practices at least of any of those which are not peculiar to the Roman Church how false or vain soever they be in themselves but the unnecessary embracing them out of pure submission to the usurpt Authority of the Roman Bishop now stiled Pope and the only Pope of the World is it that in any right sense of the word renders them truly Popish And this I must acknowledge to be so whether we regard the Derivation of the word or Reasons of the thing it self I mean those Reasons which evince the only proper significant Notion of Popery to be that which I have given before in the fewest words I could well fix upon to define or describe it What those Reasons are we have as to one part of them seen already by seeing that if Popery be taken otherwise all Christian Churches in the World must be confessedly Popish and as to the other part also we shall now see For now I am to shew that even by the judgment of such as ought best to understand their own Doctrine the very chief thing in Popery is the owning and asserting the Papal Authority Without question there is nothing which they have more driven at from the beginning or which they now more eagerly contend for in the Roman Church and especially the governing part of it as it were easie to shew in many instances but a few will suffice because the matter is so well known to all men of Reading and Experience To begin with the Original of Popery There is nothing more certain and plain in Church-History then that the primitive Christians being generally Subjects of the Roman Empire had a very great respect for the Bishops of Rome because that was the Imperial City And yet it is as plain that those Bishops had no Authority or Jurisdiction out of their own Province that is beyond the suburbicary Region of Italy till after the Division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western It was not long after that division and chiefly upon the weakness of the Western Empire that that Power which we now call the Papacy grew up As the Empire decay'd so by degrees it encreased and gathered strength the design being at first not to set up a new Religion but a new Monarchy in the place of the old then expiring The Caesars having made Rome their seat of Empire for so many Ages and being at last driven out by the barbarous Nations it seemed as if the Genius of the place had inspired the Roman Bishops to perk up and to erect a new Empire in the stead Which was no hard thing for them to do being assisted with all manner of advantagious circumstances Having learn'd from their Predecessors to derive their descent from St. Peter how truly it matters not this gave them colour enough to take upon them to be all that he was Their See their Traditions their Dictates were all stiled Apostolical The Popes Title was then His Apostleship for His Holiness was too Vulgar in those days Whatsoever Preheminence or Power those Caesars by their Laws or their Subjects the Christian Bishops in their Councils had given them as being Bishops of the Imperial City when they had gain'd the City wholly to their Devotion and made their party among the barbarous Nations they scorn'd to hold it any longer by gift All that had been so given them and whatsoever they grasp'd more they held it Iure Divino as being Heirs and Successors to St. Peter By this means having shook off their Obligation to Canons and Laws they took upon them to be as Infallible as St. Peter was whose very name they did not stick to usurp when they pleased as if Christ had spoken to them whatsoever he said personally to Cephas And whosoever objected as some always did that those Pretensions were new and that there is no ground for them in