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	rome_n	17,242	5	7.2290	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51309	Paralipomena prophetica containing several supplements and defences of Dr Henry More his expositions of the Prophet Daniel and the apocalypse, whereby the impregnable firmness and solidity of the said expositions is further evidenced to the world. Whereunto is also added phililicrines upon R.B. his notes on the revelation of S. John; Apocalypsis Apocalypseos. Supplement.	More, Henry, 1614-1687.; More, Henry, 1614-1687. Plain and continued exposition of the several prophecies or divine visions of the Prophet Daniel.	1685 (1685)	Wing M2669; ESTC R490816	301,149	543

Spondanus out of Victor In the second day of this month it is said That several of the Orthodox that refused to communicate with the Arians had their tongues cut out from the very root and it is added that by a Miracle they spoke notwithstanding ibid. In the nineteenth day of the fourth month or Anno 501. Anastasius the Emperour for the better keeping under the Orthodox that were for the Council of Chalcedon in the Circus at the publick Show caused to be slaughtered to the number of three thousand of them Seth Calvis In the twenty fifth day of this month or Anno 507. Clodoveus King of France slew Alaricus the Arian King raising War against him upon the account of his Religion Spondan In the last day of the fourth month or in the year 512. Anastasius causing the Quaternity of the Theopaschites to be sung in the Church at Constantinople the people tumultuating against it slew many of them Whereupon they took their revenge and destroy'd the Monastick Flatterers of Anastasius with Fire and Sword and coming up with the Gospel and the Cross of our Lord to Anastasius his Throne sung the Hymn of the Trinity according to the custom of the Orthodox Christians and killed a Monk and a Nun that were most dear to the Emperour and dragging their Carcasses about cryed out These be the Friends of him that is a Foe to the Holy Trinity Spondan out of Marcellinus Comes and Cedrenus In the sixth day of the fifth month or Anno 518. Justinus in the first year of his Reign commanded Severus Bishop of Antioch who had so often anathematized the Council of Chalcedon to be apprehended punished and to have his Tongue cut out of his mouth See Evagrius his Histor. Ecclesiast lib. 3. cap. 4. In the fifteenth day of this month or Anno 527. Justinian published an Edict wherein he anathematized all Heresies whatever and made them subject to the Penal Laws against Hereticks and especially those Heresies that were most controverted in his Time Nestorian Eutychian and Apollinarian Spondanus In the sixth day of the sixth month or Anno 548. Laurianus Bishop of Hispalis had his Head struck off by Totilas the Arian for his zeal for the Truth In the twenty first day of this month or Anno 563. Justinian would compel the Bishops to profess his Opinion of the Incorruptibility of Christ's Body upon pain of Banishment which he threatned to them Spondan out of Evagrius In the twenty second day viz. Anno 564. Justinian raises a great Persecution against the Corrupticolae for so they were called that would not receive the Emperour's Opinion as the Emperour's Party were named Phantasiastae at what time Eutychius Bishop of Constantinople was banished for adhering to the Truth In the twenty sixth day of this sixth month or Anno 568. Alboinus King of the Lombards enters Italy they were mostwhat Arians as Spondanus also observes whence the Orthodox bore their cruel Persecutions 206 years till the year 774. as Alstedius tells us which is the twenty second day of the first month of the third Hexamenon or Semi-time See Spondanus Anno 573. In the eleventh day of the first month of the second Hexamenon or Anno 583. a direful Persecution in Spain is raised against the Orthodox by that Arian King Lewigildus many banished their Goods confiscated many imprisoned and killed In the sixteenth day of the said month or Anno 588. Lewigildus raises a fiercer Persecution wherein the Abbot Vincentius after stripes was cruelly slain by the Arians before the door of his Monastery In the last day of this month or Anno 602. Augustinus Pope Gregory's Legate by the King's Authority calls together in the West parts of England the British Bishops and Doctors to get them to submit to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of Rome they refusing he threatned them with War and Slaughter which was effected accordingly The story of the slaughter of the Monks of Bangor is notorious See Baleus in the Life of Gregory and Dr. Heylin In the twenty fifth day of the third month or Anno 657. Maximus an Abbot of Constantinople with Anastasius his Disciple were most cruelly scourged after cast into Prison and the next day brought forth had their Tongues cut out for their stickling against the Emperour Constans his Edict called Typus whereby he would have silenced the Monothelite Controversie whether there were one or two Wills and Operations in Christ But this passage is diversly interpretable In the twenty fourth day of the fourth month or Anno 686. Funecius tells us that Justinian the Second instigated thereto by the Pope compelled the people of Ravenna by slaughters by besieging their City by despoiling them of their Goods and by Banishment and the like to be subject to the Bishop of Rome and banished Felix the Bishop of Ravenna to Pontus having first deprived him of his sight as being guilty of their Revolt The matter of Fact other Historians relate as Nauclerus Spondanus and others but Funecius seems to have committed a Parachronism of twenty two years or thereabout It was according to Spondanus in the year 708. or the sixteenth day of the fifth month of the second Hexamenon In the fourth day of the sixth month or Anno 726. or thereabout in the Reign of Leo Isaurus the people in Italy by the perswasion of the Church-men was so zealous in the Cause of Images that in Ravenna where the Imperial Authority most resided they flew into such open Tumults and Rebellion that they murthered Paulus the fourteenth Exarch in Rome it self they took Petrus the Duke and put out his Eyes and in Campania they beheaded the Duke Exhilaratus and his Son Adrian who there took the Emperour's part against the Pope See Hen. Foulis his History lib. 3. cap. 4. In the fifteenth day of the second month of the third Hexamenon or Anno 797. Irene unnaturally ordered her Son Constantine the Emperour his Eyes to be pulled out which was acted with such violence upon him that he died presently upon it All Histories ring of this Cruelty But I will not tire out my Reader This is enough to prove that there was Violence and Cruelty used by the Hieratico-political Power of the Empire against the Orthodox many hundred years before the end of the eleventh Century Nor will the brevity of this present Treatise of mine admit any large Excursions into History But we may be sure that the Orthodox were held down by the hard rigour of Penal Laws against such as should utter any thing against the Errours be they what they will established by Law all along Which could not but be a pressure or oppression and something akin to actual Persecution which was erupturient all the while and at last broke out in most salvage manner under the Papacy The horrid effects whereof have hideously blackened the History of that Church These are things so well known that it is needless to bestow a single line upon

ancient Apostolick Church not any blind Conceits and Phancies of their own And for the saving Operations of the Spirit nothing is more inculcated than that in our Publick Service Nor is the Ministry of man so much the conveyer of it as the sincerity of the Party who desires to partake of it It is the gift of Christ to the sincere who has told us from his own mouth here upon Earth That blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied It is not the hearing of a gracious man once or twice a week or being present sometimes in the Meetings whether silent or vocal of a Company of sullen Melancholists or Histrionical Mock-Prophets but a firm and unshaken Faith in the power of the promised Spirit of Christ for the subduing our Corruptions a fixt and continued Resolution of not offending the God of Heaven in any thing small or great a close Guard upon our Words and Actions as having a sense of the Presence of the Divine Majesty all the day long a perpetual exercise of mortifying the impetuosities of our own Will and of extinguishing all the sweet Relishes of Self-interest and vain-glory and a constant endeavour of wholly resigning our selves to God and his Service who has wholly made us Body and Soul and strictly and conscientiously walking according to His Will revealed in his written Word that is the Method of attaining to a more near Communion with God and the only way of more fully participating of his Spirit And this certainly may as well be done holding still Communion with the Church of England as in any new-fangled way that either the cunning of man or subtilty of Satan can invent And therefore it is rather a wanton kind of Hypocrisie in men or Insincerity to true Religion indeed that makes them break from the established Religion of the Church of England reformed according to the old Symmetral and Apostolical Pattern than any colour of Necessity driving them thereto And thus much briefly to those high-flown Spiritualists But what I now shall utter is still more weighty forasmuch as it concerns a greater number of men that have an honest inclination to Religion but their Education Parts and Calling do not capacitate them to make so strict inquiry into the Doctrines thereof as others may make but seek some external Authority to support their Faith and thereby lye obnoxious to the solicitations of the Emissaries of Rome who boast so much of the safe Anchorage of their Church To these men therefore I appeal what can be more safe for them than to adhere to the Autority and Profession of the ancient Apostolick and truly Catholick Church such as it was found before the Apostasie and is bore witness to in the Oracles of the Holy Scripture as I have above declared To adhere I say and keep close to this steady Rock and stop their ears against the vain pretences of any idle Fanatical New Lights or bold Enthusiasts Now he that adheres to the Church of England does adhere to this ancient Apostolick Church the Church of England being reformed according to that Pattern as to the frame of Government and Articles of Faith And for the Precepts of an holy Life besides what occurs in our Liturgie Litany and Catechism they are so plain in the Scripture and so fully and effectually declared by those in our own Church in printed Sermons and several other Writings to say nothing of the good Preaching up and down that no well-minded Christian can want any due Instruction This is a consideration the best accommodate that I know to keep us all in one which is to acknowledge the Autority and Undeceivedness in matters of any moment though not Undeceivableness or Infallibility of the ancient Catholick Church before the Apostasie came in Which true and just ground will give us all the Advantages and more than that false Boast of the Roman Church as if she forsooth were infallible and therefore irrefragable whenas that one Tenent of Transubstantiation alone sufficiently demonstrates it to be a groundless Pretence that Doctrine being plainly a Fardel of Impossibilities and Contradictions to say nothing of their infinite Superstitions Impostures and gross Idolatries and barbarous and bloody Persecutions and Murders for not submitting to them So that she is a Church all over besmeared with sordidly-gainful Superstitions Idolatries and Blood And therefore she being deprehended so grosly and enormously erroneous or imposturous and deceitful and supporting all her absonous Opinions upon that single pretence of her Infallibility she has manifestly forfeited her Credit before all the World and most justly lost her Autority that no man that has leisure and freedom to examine the Truth can easily be perswaded to rely or lean upon this broken Reed of Aegypt which is a fictitious and certainly false Pretence to Infallibility by an Apostatized Church shamelesly obtruding upon those they can deceive all the Abominations that are declared against in Daniel and the Apocalypse where the Visions represent the state of those Times into which this grand Apostasie fell How unsafe therefore is it for any one to repose himself on the Autority of such a Church God open the eyes of all that mean sincerely in Religion that they never fall into such a dangerous Ditch as this But the Church of England keeping to the ancient Symmetral Church to whom the Divine Oracles bear witness is in truth infallible in the main Points above-mentioned and in all things else material to Salvation and therefore all sorts of people learned and unlearned may safely embosom themselves in her so long as she continues which I wish may be for ever In the mean time we see what a mighty advantage it would be if that as our own Church in particular so all the Reformed Churches would jointly exhibit the same unexceptionable Pattern of Antiquity to be followed that bears a just Autority with it which the generality of men may safely rely on and that Independency and the guidance of private Spirits seducing men from the National Churches framed to that ancient Platform were quite out of fashion in all Reformed Christendom and that all men with alacrity of mind and sincerely loyal affections would shew themselves morigerous to their Supreme Governours For this is the only effectual and warrantable way that I can conceive for the enlarging the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus and the overthrowing the Kingdom of Antichrist The other Scene of things as I noted above hardens the hearts of the Princes and Prelates of Christendom who cannot but think it a sorry exchange to accept of Presbytery which would prove but a Democratical Papacy for the Order of Episcopacy or a dismal Spectacle to see the Body of Christ mouldred into an infinity of Sects and Schisms as a dead Carcass dissolved into a multitude of crawling worms and the decent grandeur and splendour of the Church to dwindle into dispersed Companies of obscure Conventicles and

Religion and make Laws and Orders concerning it so far as consists with the just Liberties of truly conscientious men nor are repugnant to the written Law of God whether in Scripture or in Humane Souls This is so consistent with Christianity that I do not doubt but the Holy City in the Millennium will be built by a Council truly Holy and truly Oecumenical Arg. 2. This Imperial Council confessedly added to the Creed Answ What the Council of Nice concluded concerning the Divinity of Christ and Triunity of the Godhead was no addition to the Creed or Canonical Scripture but only an Explication made for the quieting of the Church and burying that Floud of Contention wherewith the Dragon would have overwhelmed the Church And therefore no Pride Fraud nor Covetousness being underneath but a sincere study of preserving the Church in Peace and of exhibiting such a Form of Faith as was least obnoxious to the Cavils of the Heathen as if the Christians worshipped more Gods than one or any thing that was not God we have no reason to question but Christ assisted and directed that Council in their determinations according to his promise Arg. 3. That this Council has been of greatest Authority and most dangerous to be opposed Answ I do not see how this derogates any thing from the worthiness of the Council so that it should be made the Epocha of the time of the mournful Witnesses till their Rising Certainly it is as dangerous to oppose the Apostles Creed and yet I think no man will deem it a fit Epocha for the time of the mournful Witnesses Arg. 4. The Council of Nice set the first Horn on the Ecclesiastick Beast the other not by full Authority till Anno 380. or rather 451. A Beast may be a Beast without one Horn or with none but he cannot have an Horn and be no Beast Answ The Patriarchate of Rome and that other of Constantinople that they be the two Horns of the two-horned Beast Apoc. 13. I easily admit But so soon as they were two Summities or Preeminences Ecclesiastical that they were necessarily ipso facto two Horns in that worse sense that I deny For neither embodying into a Polity or having Superiorities and Preeminences make Beasts and Horns but only Idolatry and Cruelty But the degeneracy of the Church into Idolatry was a pretty while after the Nicene Council It commenced with the Beast that was is not and yet is And he commenced with the breaking of the Empire into several Kingdoms which was after the Nicene Council and the first Constantinopolitan also Arg. 5. The Dragon stood before the Woman that was ready to be delivered to devour the Child as soon as it was born Chap. 12.4 The Child was born in the Conversion of Constantine Therefore the Re-paganizing of the Church must be presently after and so was the flight of the Woman into the Wilderness Answ The Dragon stood ready to devour the Child so soon as it was born but no Text says he did devour it so soon as it was born but quite contrary that it was caught up to the Throne of God and possessed the Imperial Crown and the Woman also escaped by her flight into the Wilderness An Attempt does not at all infer an effect I understand no force at all in this Argument Arg. 6. This gives a good account of the universal Woe Chap. 12.12 which seems to come in strangely after those words of Triumph preceding For the Devils Pagan Worship must quickly have come to an end by the Conversion of Constantine if he could not in that short time have turned off Constantine from the Faith or Re-paganized the Christians And the greatness of his wrath shows he was likely to make quick dispatch Answ I answer 1 That that Wo is not universal Earth and Sea not comprehending all the parts of a Political World There are Heavens besides that are bid to rejoice at this defeat by the Conversion of Constantine The vulgar people are Earth and Sea and amongst them the Devil was resolved to bestir himself 2 The short time he had to turn himself in is in reference to the keeping up his old Draconick Religion He must either do it before the Woman go into the Wilderness or else never And therefore that floud of Contention was to turn off the Populacy from Christianity and make them adhere to the old Pagan Religion But for Re-paganizing the Empire become Christian his time was not short for that he carrying on and perfecting that project for many hundred years 3 And lastly The greatness of his wrath only shows the greatness of his straits not the quickness of his success in those designs of either upholding the old Paganism or introducing a new one In the former whereof he is quite defeated and in perfecting the latter his progress was but slow when once begun nor begun till about four hundred years after Christ when the Empire begun to be broken into many Kingdoms Arg. 7. In this way we need not go to the uncertain Conjectures of proportion betwixt the inner and outer Court from Villalpandus or arbitrarily fix on such an Epocha as will best suit with our own Opinions For the state and times of the Church before and after Constantine are signally distinguished of themselves with reference to the Altar Chap. 11.1 as the Symbol of Martyrdom Answ I say 1 That the proportion of the inner and outer Court of the Temple namely the Area's of them in Villalpandus are not uncertain And it is the Area's of them by a Metonymia Adjuncti that are conceived to be measured The square Area of the whole Temple in the largest sense is conceived to be cast into nine square Areolae of equal bigness Two of which are the Area's of the inner Court the rest of the outer Whence the inner to the outer is as two to seven And it is Ezekiel's Temple questionless that the Apocalypse alludes to and none else As the description of the Trees and the River Apoc. 22. is from thence And the thing is so phrased according to the Artifice of the Apocalyptick Stile that both the proportion of the Time of the Non-Apostasie and Apostasie and also the Non-Apostate and Apostate Condition of the Church is insinuated For his being bid to measure the inner Court shows the Symmetricalness of that State of the Church but the rejecting the outer Court from being measured intimateth its Incommensurableness or Asymmetry to the Measure But the naming the forty two months it was to be trodden down gives a third Term whereby we may gather the time the Church was not yet trodden down by the Gentiles For as the outer Court is to the inner so is forty two months time to the Time sought for which is twelve months Thus As 7 to 2 so 42 to 12. The time therefore of the Non-Apostate Church is one entire Time or two Semi-times 2 And this plainly hinders us from seeking such an