Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	call_v	church_n	rome_n	3,348	5	6.7274	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70888	A discourse of ecclesiastical politie wherein the authority of the civil magistrate over the consciences of subjects in matters of external religion is asserted : the mischiefs and incoveniences of toleration are represented, and all pretenses pleaded in behalf of liberty of conscience are fully answered.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1671 (1671)	Wing P460; ESTC R2071	140,332	376

ineffectual instruments of Uniformity because they have either been weakned through want of execution or in a manner cancell'd by the oppositions of Civil Constitutions For when Laws are bound under severe penalties and when the Persons who are to take cognisance of the Crime have not Power enough to punish it or are perpetually check'd and controul'd by a stronger Power no wonder if the Laws be affronted and despised and if instead of bringing mens minds to compliance and subjection they exasperate them into open contumacy Restraint provokes their stubbornness and yet redresses not the mischief And therefore it were better to grant an uncontroul'd Liberty by declaring for it than after having declared against it to grant it by silence and impunity The Prohibition disobliges Dissenters and that is one evil and the impunity allows them Toleration and that is a greater and where Governours permit what their Laws forbid there the Common-wealth must at once lose all the advantages of restraint and suffers all the inconveniences of Liberty So that as they would expect Peace and Settlement they must be sure at first to bind on their Ecclesiastical Laws with the streightest knot and afterward to keep them in force and countenance by the severest Execution in that wild and Fanatick Consciences are too headstrong to be curb'd with an ordinary severity therefore their restraints must be proportion'd to their unruliness and they must be managed with so much a greater care and strictness than all other principles of publick disturbance by how much they are more dangerous unruly § 8. For if Conscience be ever able to break down the restraints of Government and all men have Licence to follow their own perswasions the mischief is infinite and the folly endless and they seldom cease to wander from folly to folly till they have run themselves into all the whimsies and enormities that can debauch Religion or annoy the publick Peace The giddy Multitude are of a restless and stragling humour and yet withalso ignorant and injudicious that there is nothing so strange and uncouth which they will not take up with Zeal and Confidence Insomuch that there never yet was any Common-wealth that gave a real liberty to mens Imaginations that was not suddenly over-run with numberless divisions and subdivisions of Sects as was notorious in the late Confusions when Liberty of Conscience was laid as the Foundation of Settlement How was Sect built upon Sect and Church upon Church till they were advanced to such a height of Folly that the Usurpers themselves could find no other way to work their subversion and put an end to their extravagancies but by overturning their own Foundations and checking their growth by Laws and Penalties The humour of Fanaticising is a boundless folly it knows no restraints and if it be not kept down by the severity of Governours it grows and encreases without end or limit and never ceases to swell it self till it has broke down all the banks and restraints of Government Thus when the Disciplinarians had in pursuit of their own peevish and unreasonable Principles divided from the Church of England others upon a farther improvement of the same principles subdivided from them every new opinion was enough to found a new Church and Sect was spawn'd out of Sect till there were almost as many Churches as Families For when they were once parted from the order sobriety of the Church they lived in nothing could set bounds to their wild and violent Imaginations § 9. Schismaticks always run themselves into the same excess in the Church as Rebels and Seditious Persons do in the State who out of a hatred to Tyranny are restless till they have dissolved the Common-wealth into Anarchy Confusion and because some Kingly Governments have proved Tyrannical will allow no free States but under Republicks As was notorious in all the Apologies for the late Usurpers who took it for granted in general That all Government under a single Person was slavish and oppressive without respect to its particular Constitutions and that the very name of a Common-wealth was a sufficient preservation of the Peoples Liberties notwithstanding that those who managed it were never so Imperious and Arbitrary in the exercise of their Power And in the same manner our Church Dissenters out of abhorrency to the Papal Tyranny and Usurpation upon mens understandings never think the liberty of their Consciences sufficiently secured till they have shaken off all subjection to Humane Authority and because the Church of Rome by her unreasonable Impositions has invaded the Fundamental Liberties of mankind they presently conclude all restraints upon licentious Practices and Perswasions about Religion under the hated name of Popery And some Theological Empericks have so possess'd the peoples heads with this fond conceit that they will see no middle way between spiritual Tyranny and spiritual Anarchy and so brand all restraint of Government in Affairs of Religion as if it were Antichristian and never think themselves far enough from Rome till they are wandred as far as Munster Whereas the Church of England in her first Reformation was not so wild as to abolish all Ecclesiastical Authority but only removed it from those who had unjustly usurp'd it to its proper seat and restrain'd it within its due bounds and limits And because the Church of Rome had clogg'd Christianity with too many garish and burdensome Ceremonies they did not immediately strip her naked of all modest and decent Ornaments out of an over-hot opposition to their too flanting Pomp and Vanity but only cloathed her in such a Dress as became the Gravity and Sobriety of Religion And this is the Wisdom and Moderation of our Church to preserve us sober between two such unreasonable Extremes § 10. But not to run too hastily into particular disputes 't is enough at present to have proved in general the absolute necessity that Affairs of Religion should be subject to Government and then if they be exempt from the Jurisdiction of the Civil Power I shall demand Whether they are subject to any other Power or to none at all If the former then the Supreme Power is not Supreme but is subject to a Superiour in all matters of Religion or rather what is equally absurd there would be two Supreme Powers in every Common-wealth for it the Princes Jurisdiction be limited to Civil Affairs and the concerns of Religion be subject to another Government then may Subjects be obliged to what is impossible contradictory Commands and at the same time the Civil Magistrate requires him to defend his Country against an Invasion the Ecclesiastical Governour may command him to abandon its defence for the carrying on an Holy War in the Holy Land in order to the recovery of our Saviour's Sepulchre from the Possession of the Turks and Saracens But seeing no man can be subject to contradictory obligations 't is by consequence utterly impossible he should be subject to two Supreme Powers

rod or in love and in the spirit of meekness i. e. Consider with your selves that seeing I have determined to visit the Church of Corinth whether when I come you had rather I should chastise you with the Apostolical Rod by exercising my Power of inflicting punishments and by consigning the refractory to those sharp and grievous Diseases that are wont immediately to follow Apostolical Censures or whether I should come with a more gentle and merciful design without being forced by your stubborness upon a necessity of using this severity among you As you behave your selves so may you expect to find me at my coming And thus again 2 Cor. 10. 6. He threatens them with his being in a readiness if he should come among them to revenge all their disobedience And upon this account he immediately professes himself not ashamed to boast of his Power and Authority in the Church And in the 13. Chapter of the same Epistle he again shakes the same Rod over them threatning that if their refractoriness force him to strike them with some Judgment that it should be a sharp and severe one If I come again I will not spare since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me These extraordinary inflictions were signs and evidences of his Apostleship And he would make them know that he was Commissioned by Christ to teach and govern their Church by making them to feel the sad effects of his Miraculous Power if nothing else would satisfie them about the right of his Authority And to the same purpose is the same Apostles command to the same Church concerning the incestuous Corinthian 1 Cor. 5. 5. that they should deliver him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh i. e. that they should denounce the sentence of Excommunication against him which would amount to no smaller a Punishment than his being resign'd up to the power and possession of some evil spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost. in 1. ad Cor. Hom. 15. to be tormented with Ulcers or some other bodily Diseases and Inflictions which was then the usual consequent of Excommunication The end of all which is as immediately follows The destruction of the flesh that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Iesus i. e. that being humbled and brought to a due sense of his Sin by the sadness of his Condition and the heavy strokes of this cruel Executioner of the Divine Justice this might be a means of working him to Repentance and Reformation And to the same end did the same Apostle deliver Hymeneus and Alexander unto Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme that being vexed and tormented by some evil spirit this might take down their proud and haughty stomachs and make them cease to traduce and disparage his Apostolical Authority when they had smarted so severely for contradicting it And thus was the Divine Providence pleased in the first Ages of the Church when it wanted the assistance of the Civil Magistrate to supply that defect by his own Almighty Power so necessary is a coercive Jurisdiction to the due Government and Discipline of the Church that God himself was fain to bestow it on the Apostles in a miraculous manner And thus was the Primitive Discipline maintain'd by Miracles of severity as long as it wanted the Sword of the Civil Power But when Christianity had once prevail'd and triumphed over all the oppositions of Pagan Superstition and had gain'd the Empire of the world into its own possession and was become the Imperial Religion then began its Government to re-settle where nature had placed it and the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction was annexed to the Civil Power For as soon as the Emperours thought themselves concern'd to look to its Government and Protection and were willing to abet the Spiritual Power of the Clergy with their Secular Authority then began the Divine Providence to withdraw the miraculous Power of the Church in the same manner as he did by degrees all the other extraordinary Gifts of the Apostolical Age as their necessity ceased as being now as well supplied by the natural ordinary Power of the Prince So that though the Exercise of the Ministerial Function still continued in the Persons that were thereunto Originally Commissioned by our Saviour the Exercise of its Authority and Jurisdiction was restored to the Imperial Diadem and the Bishops became then as they are now Ministers of State as well as Religion and challenged not any Secular Power but what they derived from the Prince who supposing them best able to understand and manage the Interests of Religion granted them Commissions for the Government of the Church under himself and vested them with as much Coercive Power as was necessary for the Execution of their Office and Jurisdiction In the same manner as Judges are deputed by the Supreme Authority of every Common-wealth to govern the Affairs of Justice and to inflict the Penalties of the Law upon Delinquents So that Bishops neither have nor ever had any Temporal Authority but only as they are the Kings Ecclesiastical Judges appointed by him to govern Affairs of Religion as Civil or Secular Judges are to govern Affairs of Justice § 17. And now that the Government of all the Affairs of the Church devolved upon the Royal Authority assoon as it became Christian is undeniably evident from all the Laws and Records of the Empire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 From the time that the Emperors became Christian the Disposal and Government of Church Affairs depended entirely on their Authority Constantine was no sooner settled in his Imperial Throne but he took the settlement of all Ecclesiastical matters into his own Cognizance He called Synods and Councils in order to the Peace and Government of the Church he ratified their Canons into Laws he prohibited the Conventicles of the Donatists and demolish'd their Meeting-Houses he made Edicts concerning Festivals the Rites of Sepulture the Immunities of Churches the Authority of Bishops the Priviledges of the Clergy and divers other things appertaining to the outward Polity of the Church In the exercise of which Jurisdiction he was carefully followed by all his Successours which cannot but be known to every man that is not as utterly ignorant of the Civil Law as he in the Comedy who supposed Corpus Iuris Civilis to be a Dutchman The Code the Authenticks the French Capitulars are full of Ecclesiastical Laws and Constitutions The first Book of the Code treats of nothing but Religion and the Rites and Ceremonies of Publick Worship the Priviledges of Ecclesiastical Men and Things the distinct Offices and Functions of the several degrees in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and the Power and Jurisdiction of Bishops both in Civil and Religious Affairs and infinite other things that immediately concern the Interests of Religion And then as for the Authenticks Ecclesiastical Laws are every where scattered up and down through the whole Volume which being divided into nine Collations has not