Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	bishop_n	church_n	great_a	8,286	5	3.5391	3	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 He has therefore reserv'd to himself the power of declaring Laws and those not to be overrul'd nor superseded but by himself to bind every where and for ever to pass through all Countries and continue to all Ages And those you may read he has delivered them in Writing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

A SERMON Preach'd before the KING AT WHITE-HALL ON THE Fifth of November 1681. By GEORGE HOOPER D. D. Printed by his Majesties Command LONDON Printed for Mark Pardoe at the Sign of the Black-Raven over against Bedford House in the Strand 1682. S. MATTHEW 22.21 Render therefore unto Caesar the Things that are Caesar's and unto God the Things that are God's THe Pharisees and the Sadduces though divided in their Opinions and their Interests yet both looking upon our Saviour as their common enemy he equally opposing the Impiety of the one and the Hypocrisie of the other conspire together to entangle him in his talk and make here in this Chapter their successive attempts upon him THe first that of the Pharisees and which gave an occasion to the reply of the Text was manag'd with address and design they had so laid their Ambush that which way soever he took he might fall into the Snare and perish the answer he gave they expected would certainly offend either the Zeal of the Jew or the Power of the Roman For the Jews although they had now for a long while been under subjection to the uncircumcised although their Great City had been ruin'd by the Babylonian and their whole Nation transplanted hardly a Stone left upon a Stone nor a Jew in Judea though after their return from their Captivity they were still Vassals to the Persian Empire then part of the Conquest of Alexander the Great after under the Syrian Kings then reduc'd to the Roman Obedience by Pompey for their Chiefs whether Princes or Priests were still tributary and dependant yet they still retain'd their high Spirit a peculiar sence of their Native Liberty and Sacred Prerogatives But when afterwards the Romans took the Government into their own hands remov'd their Tetrarch and brought them into the condition of a Province to be commanded now by one sent from Rome who should have the Power of Life and Death and Tax them at his will this seem'd insupportable to the greatest part of them and was esteem'd as unlawful as it was burdensome that they were a holy People their Persons and Estates sacred to God and to give Obedience to any Forreigner was to withdraw it from the Lord of Hosts Nor shall we think it was any hard matter to perswade a People so well satisfied of their National Priviledges and of so stubborn a temper that it was an ungodly thing to suffer Impositions to pay Taxes was Irreligion He then that resisted this Heathen Authority was the truest Israelite the truest to the Liberty of his Nation and the honour of his God and as Moses had deliver'd them from the Egyptian Bondage so they expected a Messiah who should redeem them from the Roman and if our Saviour pretended to be that great Person he was they thought oblig'd to take this Yoke from off their Necks and declare against the Roman Government On the other side the Romans knowing what People they had to deal with that they were a rebellious City hurtful unto Kings and unto Provinces which would pay neither Toll Tribute nor Custom for so they stand of old describ'd to Artaxerxes had a very watchful Eye over them and were jealous of every Motion They had their Spyes the Herodians here in the Text and restrained their unquiet tumultuous Spirits with severe exemplary Executions So that to accuse one of a Crime against the State as an Enemy to Caesar was the greatest Revenge the most malicious Enemy could take it was to expose him to certain Ruine to an ignominious cruel Death For so we find the Chief Priests when they had taken Counsel together to put Jesus to Death for Crimes as they thought against their Law yet presenting him to Pilate with this Accusation We found this Man perverting the People forbidding to give Tribute to Caesar saying that he himself is Christ a King We have them therefore here preparing that Article whereby hereafter they intend to murder him They indeavour now by the Question they maliciously propose to take such hold of his Words that they may deliver him over to the Power and Authority of the Governour The Disciples therefore of the Pharisees who possibly were against the payment of Tribute and the Herodians who were for it being both here met together the one to tempt and the other to inform begin their Discourse to him with this flattering treacherous Insinuation Master We know that thou art true and teachest the Word of God in Truth neither carest thou for any Man for thou regardest not the Person of Men thou art not afraid of the Government and wilt not for fear disguise the Truth as our Scribes and our Doctors do Tell us therefore what thinkest thou Is it lawful to give Tribute to Caesar or not But Jesus as the Text proceeds perceived their Wickedness and said why tempt ye me Hypocrites Shew me the Tribute Money and they brought unto him a Penny and he saith unto them whose is this Image and Superscription And they say unto him Caesar 's then saith he unto them returning them a precise distinct Answer and no other than what they themselves had produced Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar 's and unto God the things that are God's The Soveraignty of Caesar over you appears by his Prerogative of coyning your Money You know your Governour for you see his Face and in the Inscription you read his Authority Why therefore should you deny him the Testimony of your Subjection and refuse to pay him Tribute His Stamp I see is current with you is the regulation of your Contract the Standard of your civil Commerce And as in Payments you can't refuse to accept it so here you are obliged to give it If Caesar be your King this Payment he asks is as due as any you demand and that he is your Prince the Money you would withhold of it self testifies against you God does not here interpose any particular Claim nor will he lend his Name to countenance your Disobedience against your King and his Vicegerent If indeed he sets up his Image in the Temple you are not to suffer it for God's sake and if he commands you to worship This you are not to obey him but to give It in Tribute is your Duty it is that which God does so far not forbid that he does command Give therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar 's and unto God the things that are God's The Words of our Saviour relate indeed to a particular Question and chiefly there concern the giving of Tribute but they are too the Foundation of a general Rule and determine alike in all matters that can come in dispute betwixt God's Supreme Authority and that which is delegated to the Sons of Men. They importing that some things there are peculiarly belonging to God and some things belonging to the King and whose they are we may know by the Inscription And this Determination we shall