Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A34067
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Friendly and seasonable advice to the Roman Catholicks of England by a charitable hand.
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Comber, Thomas, 1645-1699.
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1677
(1677)
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Wing C5468; ESTC R1768
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62,503
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180
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Emperor Anastasius The Vicar of God by the Divine command presiding over the Earth An Authority like this also was exercised by the Western Emperors of the French Line being stayled The Rulers of the True Religion a Title given to Charles the Great and to Ludovicus by two several Councils which they had called and the present French Kings do claim the Supremacy over the French Churches as may be seen in â—â—ohellus and P. Pithâ—us cited before Sect. 5. One of the French Writers telling us it is the Opinion of his Nation that Le Royiassisté de son Conseil d'estate est â—â—â—es Diâ—â— Chief Terrieâ— de l'Eglise de son Royanme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pape And it may be proved concerning other Christian Princes that they allow not the Pope to impose his Decrees on their Kingdoms nor to exercise any Jurisdiction among them but by their special License and consent and prohibite his exercising any power over their Subjects when they please And why may not the King of England being a free and absolute Monarch be allowed as great a Priviledge in his own Dominions Do you not tell us that Pope Eleutherius called King Lucius by the Title of Vicar of Christ and doth not King Edgar call himself Christs Vicar and none taxed this Title then Did not the Saxon Kings preside in all National Councils and make Laws for Religion by the advice of their own Bishops by their own Authority Did they not erect new Sees for Bishops and change them as they saw fit Did they not invest all Bishops by delivering the Ring and Pastoral Staff And the same power was still exercised by K. William the Conqueror for all things both Divine and Humane depended on his Order saith an Old Historian And when the Pope began to encroach upon the King's Supremacy here in England he was generally opposed as we noted before And in the aforesaid Parliament of Richard the Second the Nation declared That they would not endure that the Crown of England should be submitted to the Pope and the Laws and Statutes of this Realm by him defeated and avoided at his pleasure for Bracton our most famous Lawyer affirms that The Kings of England have no Supream on earth but God And accordingly the Kings and Parliaments of this Nation made Laws in reference to Religion as they saw expedient and among the rest they enacted many Laws in a direct opposition to the Pope's Spiritual as well as Temporal Jurisdiction declaring thereby that they esteemed him no Head of this Church but an ambitious and dangerous Encroacher upon the Rights of the Crown as you will find by perusal of those several Statutes cited in the Margin By which Laws long since enacted it is declared to be Treason to receive or harbour any Agents or Emissaries from Rome against the King's Proclamations and without his special License Upon all which Considerations the Judges have declared that the Act of Parliament for Restoring the Supremacy over the Church unto the Crown was not the introducing a New Law but a declaration of the Old For it was many hundred years before that King Henry the Second did declare That be would account it high Treason in any man that should affirm the Pope's Authority was above his And before that Anselm was told That it was impossible for him to keep the Faith which he owed to the King and to pay Obedience to the Pope contrary to his Royal Pleasure Which methinks may fitly admonish you who do own the Pope's Supremacy over England and yet glory much in your Loyalty to the King to enquire how these two can stand together Our Saviour saith No mancan serve two Masters Matth. vi 24. however not two Supream Lords neither can there be two highest Powers in one Kingdom nor can any Subjects obey both since they will sometimes command contrary things 'T is true if the Roman Bishop would profess to our King as his Predecessor Leo the Fourth did to Lotharius of France Concerning your Capitulars or Imperial Precepts we through the assistance of Christ promise as much as we are able to keep and conserve the same for ever If he would acknowledge himself subject to our King in his Dominions as his Predecessors were to the Emperours of Old if he behaved himself toward his Majesty as S. Gregory did to Mauritius who calls that Emperour his Lord and himself his Servant declaring that He was subject to the Emperours Commands and accordingly had done his duty in publishing a Law which the Emperour ordered him to promulge though for his own part he thought it not agreeable to the Laws of God If the present Popes claimed no more than a Primacy of order and precedency among other Bishops then the case might easily be determined But you know of later times the pretences of Rome are much higher for she challenges a Supremacy over all Christian Princes a power to depose them an Authority to abrogate or dispense with their Laws and absolve their Subjects from their Allegiance a Priviledge to be appealed unto as to the last and highest Tribunal on Earth so that Clement the Fifth is recorded in the Acts of the Council of Vienna to have said That all the Right of Kings depended on him alone and Boniface the Eighth owned himself not only Lord of France but of all the World for So great was the Impudence of this Boniface saith the French Chronologer that he presumed to affirm the Kingdom of France was a Fee of the Papal Majesty And as to this Kingdom Pope Innocent the Fourth saith That the King of England was his Vassal and his Slave and they esteem England also a Fee of the Papacy and so is Ireland too it seems Whereupon the Pope hath dared to nominate a King of Ireland and hath given away the Kingdom of England to those who attempted to conquer it he hath condemned our Laws and absolved the Subjects of England from their Allegiance upon which many of your Party have entred into Conspiracies and Rebellion So that now it appears the Pope claims an Absolute Supremacy over our King and his Realms and how he can be a good Subject of the King of England who professes Obedience to this Forreign Princely Prelate is very hard to be understood if you believe this claim and own the Pope to be above the King you must then obey him even when his Orders contradict those of your lawful Sovereign and so you are the Pope's Subjects not the King 's nor can his Majesty have any security of your Allegiance any longer than he pleases the Roman Bishop so that he Reigns over you at the Pope's mercy I know many of you English Catholicks have so Loyal an affection for the King that your Church-men are forced to invent many plausible pretences to perswade you that the Supremacy claimed by the Pope
with Oblations of Houses and Lands Plate Vestments Jewels Images and Ready mony And it is very remarkable that the fear of losing this Income was one main Impediment to restrain the Pope from yielding to a Reformation To these may be added the Doctrines of Images and Invocation of Saints with the reports of Miracles done at certain places and the Device of Canonization by the Pope an Honour that none of the Saints for the first five or six Centuries ever had but certain it is that people being perswaded of Miracles wrought on Earth and Intercession made in Heaven by these Saints do undertake Pilgrimages to these places and make Oblations there or else send their Offerings if they cannot go And this in so excessive degrees that there have been and are some Shrines which cuâ—vy the Treasuries of the greatest Princes of Europe we may instance in Tho. Beckets at Canterbury and the still famous Lady of Loretto The Relicks also of all other Saints yea such as are said to belong to Jesus himself have been formerly carried about to collect Mony yea sold for great sums and are accounted Marketable ware and very gainful Commodities in the Roman Church The Year of Jubilee and distribution of Indulgences are used as devices to get mony as your own Writers complain The Pope's pretences to a power of Dispensing with Vows and Oaths Leagues and Contracts Marriages in prohibited degrees c. fill his Coffers with Silver and his Court with Suitors The taking mony for Penances and granting Absolution upon it for Notorious sins is so known an Infamy that we have the very book in our hands copyed out of the Original in the Apostolick Chamber setting down the rates and sums to be paid for Absolution from the most horrid wickednesses And to convince us that Mony is the only thing sought by the Church in these Absolutions the said book tells us that These acts of Grace cannot be granted to the Poor who have nothing and therefore cannot be comforted And though the Priests and Fryers have these and many more ways to draw Mony from the people yet the Pope uses them but as Spunges to suck in wealth from others that he may squeez it into his own Coffers afterwards For it is scarce within the reach of Arithmetick what sums the Roman Church receives from the Inferior Clergy and Bishops for Institutions Confirmations Investitures Palls First-fruits Tenths c. The very Tenths and First-fruits formerly enjoyed by the Pope amounting in this Nation as we now compute them to above 20000 l. per An. And in the time of the Roman Jurisdiction here the Clergy paid him a fifth part of their Livings sometimes for two or three years beside and for the English Bishops their subjection to Rome cost them dear Walter le Grey Archbish of York paying Ten thousand pound sterling for his Pall And it was complained in the 23 d of Henry 8 th that the Papacy had received out of England in about forty years past for Investitures of Bishops only Threescore thousand pounds And the Doctrine of sorcing all Priests to renounce Marriage is maintained by the Policy of the Roman Court that they may not only profit by them living but be their Heirs when they die there being no other good Reason to be given for this rigid Imposition for sure they will not say it is simply unlawful for Priests to marry since two Popes S. Gregory the Great and Pius the Second affirm They may be allowed to marry and their great Canonist saith There is as great reason to allow Priests marriage now as ever there was to restrain it What then do they forbid it that Priests may be more pure that cannot be the Reason because S. Paul saith Marriage defiles not Heb. xiii 4. And Fornication which certainly doth defile is tolerated if not allowed and called a Venial sin However reputed by their Casuists a lesser sin in the Priest than Marriage And how pure this Doctrine makes your Clergy let Experience and your own Writers teach you There are many saith S. Bernard who cannot be hid for their multitude nor do they seek to be concealed through their Impudence who being kept from Nuptial Remedies run into all filthiness There are few free saith Another in these days from the crime of Fornication The Pope thinking it almost a Miracle some Ages since to hear a Candidate for a Bishoprick attested to be a pure Virgin The true Reason therefore of this Doctrine which occasions so much wickedness we may learn from the Canon Law which allows not Regular Bishops to dispose of their Estates by Will nor others of the Clergy to be too free of their Alms in their sickness how earnestly soever they exhort the Laity thereunto And thus the Church becomes their Heir And these Spoyls of the Clergy as they very significantly term them which fall to the Church at their deaths amount to a good round sum as a judicious Author observes I cannot express one half of those Arts which the Roman Church hath to drein both Clergy and Laity But certain it is they do draw a Mass of Treasure Annually from the Countries under their yoke insomuch that it was complained of to the Council of Spain that Pope Pius 5th had got fourteen Millions out of that Kingdom in a short space And in the time of Henry 3 d of England it was computed that the Popes Revenue out of this Nation exceeded the Kings And another time complaint was made by the English that there went Threescore thousand Marks yearly out of this Land to Rome I shall not mention the Frauds and Cruelties used in Collecting this Mony only noting that Johan Sarisburiensis a great Bigot of the Popes and a hot stickler in Beckets Cause assures us That the Legates of the Apostolical Seat did Tyrannize over the Provinces as if the Devil saith he were gone out from the presence of the Lord to scourge the Church yet to oppose these Officers of the Pope is reckoned at Rome the most mortal sin No wonder then can it be that Pope Sixtus 5 th in five years time got together Five Millions of Crowns as Ciracella informs us Four Millions of which his Successor Gregory 14 th wasted in Pomp and Riot in less than Ten months time Europ Spec. p. 263. And indeed they spend these Sacred Treasures as badly as they get them the very Popes themselves of late designing only to swallow all the little neighbouring Principalities and to make themselves Temporal Princes to raise their Nephews and Neeces if not Sons and Daughters and advance their Families to the highest Dignities and Fortunes So that there is little of Holiness left in them but in an empty Title it being a little above a hundred years since one said No man at this day looks for Holiness in the Popes they are accounted excellent