having had most of the Copies in their own hands together with an unsatisfiable desire of prevailing in their right or in their wrong they have made an absolute destruction of this Topick and when the Fathers speak * Videat Lector Andream Cristovium in Bello Iesuitico Ioh. Reinolds in hbr. de idol Rom. Latine or breathe in a Roman Diocese although the providence of God does infinitely over-rule them and that it is next to a miracle that in the Monuments of Antiquity there is no more found that can pretend for their advantage then there is which indeed is infinitely inconsiderable Yet our Questions and uncertainties are infinitely multiplȳed in stead of a probable and reasonable determination For since the Latines alwayes complain'd of the Greeks for privately corrupting the Ancient Records both of Councels and †Vid. Ep. Nicolai ad Michael Imperat. Fathers and now the Latines make open profession not of corrupting but of correcting their writings that 's the word and at the most it was but a humane authority and that of persons not alwayes learned and very often deceiv'd the whole matter is so unreasonable that it is not worth a further disquisition But if any one desires to enquire further he may be satisfied in Erasmus in Henry and Robert Stephens in their Prefaces before the Editions of Fathers and their Observations upon them in Bellarmine de script Eccles. in Dr. Reynolds de libris Apocryphis in Scaliger and Robert Coke of Leedes in Yorkeshire in his Book De censura Patrum SECT IX Of the incompetency of the Church in its diffusive capacity to be judge of Controversies and the impertinency of that pretence of the Spirit ANd now after all these considerations of the severall Topicks Numb 1. Tradition Councels Popes and ancient Doctors of the Church I suppose it will not be necessary to consider the authority of the Church apart For the Church either speaks by Tradition or by a representative body in a Councel by Popes or by the Fathers for the Church is not a Chimaera not a shadow but a company of men beleeving in Jesus Christ which men either speak by themselves immediately or by their Rulers or by their proxies and representatives now I have considered it in all senses but in its diffusive capacity in which capacity she cannot be supposed to be a Judge of Controversies both because in that capacity she cannot teach us as also because if by a Judge we mean all the Church diffused in all its parts and members so there can be no controversie for if all men be of that opinion then there is no question contested if they be not all of a mind how can the whole diffusive Catholike Church be pretended in defiance of any one article where the diffusive Church being divided part goes this way and part another But if it be said the greatest part must carry it Besides that it is impossible for us to know which way the greatest part goes in many questions it is not alwaies true that the greater part is the best sometimes the contrary is most certain and it is often very probable but it is alwayes possible And when paucity of followers was objected to Liberius he gave this in answer There was a time when but three Children of the Captivity Theod. l. 2. c. 16. hist. resisted the Kings Decree And Athanasius wrote on purpose against those that did judge of truth by multitudes and indeed Tom. 2. it concerned him so to doe when he alone stood in the gap against the numerous armies of the Arrians But if there could in this case be any distinct consideration of Numb 2. the Church yet to know which is the true Church is so hard to be found out that the greatest questions of Christendome are judged before you can get to your Judge and then there is no need of him For those questions which are concerning the Judge of questions must be determined before you can submit to his judgement and if you can your selves determine those great questions which consist much in universalities then also you may determine the particulars as being of less difficulty And he that considers how many notes there are given to know the true Church no less then 15. by Bellarmine and concerning every one of them almost whether it be a certaine note or no there are very many questions and uncertainties and when it is resolved which are the notes there is more dispute about the application of these notes then of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will quickly be satisfied that he had better sit still then to goe round about a difficult and troublesome passage and at last get no further but returne to the place from whence he first set out And there is one note amongst the rest Holiness of Doctrine that is so as to have nothing false either in Doctrina fidei or morum for so Bellarmine explicates it which supposes all your Controversies judged before they can be tryed by the authority of the Church and when we have found out all true Doctrine for that is necessary to judge of the Church by that as Saint Austin's councell is Ecclesiam in verbis Christi investigemus then we are bound to follow because we judge it true not because the Church hath said it and this is to judge of the Church by her Doctrine not of the Doctrine by the Church And indeed it is the best and only way But then how to judge of that Doctrine will be afterwards inquired into In the meane time the Church that is the Governours of the Churches are to judge for themselves for all those who cannot judge for themselves For others they must know that their Governours judge for them too so as to keepe them in peace and obedience though not for the determination of their private perswasions For the Oeconomy of the Church requires that her authority be received by all her children Now this authority is divine in its originall for it derives immediately from Christ but it is humane in its ministration We are to be lead like men not like beasts A rule is prescribed for the guides themselves to follow as we are to follow the guides and although in matters indeterminable or ambiguous the presumption lyes on behalfe of the Governours for we do nothing for authority if we suffer it not to weigh that part down of an indifferency and a question which she chooses yet if there be error manifestus as it often happens or if the Church-Governours themselves be rent into innumerable sects as it is this day in Christendome then we are to be as wise as we can in choosing our guides and then to follow so long as that reason remains for which we first chose them And even in that Government which was an immediate sanction of God I mean the Ecclesiasticall government of the Synagogue where God had consign'd the High-Priests authority
and to obey him and to encourage us in both and this is compleated in the Apostles Creed And since contraries are of the same extent heresy is to be judg'd by its proportion and analogy to faith and that is heresy only which is against Faith Now because Faith is not only a precept of Doctrines but of manners and holy life whatsoever is either opposite to an Article of Creed or teaches ill life that 's heresy but all those propositions which are extrinsecall to these two considerations be they true or be they false make not heresy nor the man an Heretick and therefore however hee may be an erring person yet he is to be used accordingly pittied and instructed not condemned or Excommunicated And this is the result of the first ground the consideration of the nature of Faith and heresy SECT III. Of the difficulty and uncertainty of Arguments from Scripture in Questions not simply necessary not literally determined GOd who disposes of all things sweetly and according to the nature and capacity of things and persons had made those Numb 1. only necessary which he had taken care should be sufficiently propounded to all persons of whom he required the explicite beliefe And therefore all the Articles of Faith are cleerely and plainly set down in Scripture and the Gospel is not hid nisi pereuntibus saith S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Damascen and that Orthod fidei lib. 4. c. 18. so manifestly that no man can be ignorant of the foundation of Faith without his own apparent fault And this is acknowledged by all wise and good men and is evident besides the reasonablenesse of the thing in the testimonies of Saints a Super Psal. 88. de util cred c. 6. Austin b Super Isa. c. 19 in Psal. 86. Hierome c Homil. 3. in Thess. Ep. 2. Chrysostome d Serm de confess Fulgentius e Miseel 2. l. 1. tit 46. Hugo de Sancto Victore f In Gen. ap Struch p. 87. Theodoret g C. 6. c. 21. Lactantius h Ad Antioch l. 2. p. 918. Theophilus Antiochenus i Par. 1. q. 1. art 9 Numb 2. Aquinas and the latter Schoole men And God hath done more for many things which are only profitable are also set down so plainly that as S. Austin sayes nemo inde haurire non possit si modò ad hauriendum devotè ac piè accedat ubi supra de util cred c. 6. but of such things there is no Question commenc'd in Christendome and if there were it cannot but be a crime and humane interest that are the Authors of such disputes and therefore these cannot be simple errours but alwayes heresies because the principle of them is a personall sinne But besides these things which are so plainly set down some for doctrine as S. Paul sayes that is for Articles and foundation of Faith some for instruction some for reproofe some for comfort that is in matters practicall and speculative of severall tempers and constitutions there are innumerable places containing in them great mysteries but yet either so enwrapped with a cloud or so darkned with umbrages or heigthened with expressions or so covered with allegories and garments of Rhetorick so profound in the matter or so altered or made intricate in the manner in the clothing and in the dressing that God may seeme to have left them as tryalls of our industry and Arguments of our imperfections and incentives to the longings after heaven and the clearest revelations of eternity and as occasions and opportunities of our mutuall charity and toleration to each other and humility in our selves rather then the repositories of Faith and furniture of Creeds and Articles of beliefe For wherever the word of God is kept whether in Scripture Numb 3. alone or also in Tradition he that considers that the meaning of the one and the truth or certainty of the other are things of great Question will see a necessity in these things which are the subject matter of most of the Questions of Christendome that men should hope to be excused by an implicite faith in God Almighty For when there are in the Explications of Scripture so many Commentaries so many senses and Interpretations so many Volumnes in all Ages and all like mens faces exactly none like another either this difference and inconvenience is absolutely no fault at all or if it be it is excusable by a minde prepar'd to consent in that truth which God intended And this I call an implicite Faith in God which is certainly of as great excellency as an implicite Faith in any man or company of men Because they who doe require an implicite Faith in the Church for Articles lesse necessary and excuse the want of explicite Faith by the implicite doe require an implicite Faith in the Church because they believe that God hath required of them to have a minde prepared to believe whatever the Church sayes which because it is a proposition of no absolute certainty whosoever does in readinesse of minde believe all that God spake does also believe that sufficiently if it be fitting to be believ'd that is if it be true and if God hath said so for he hath the same obedience of understanding in this as in the other But because it is not so certain God hath tyed him in all things to believe that which is called the Church and that it is certain we must believe God in all things and yet neither know all that either God hath revealed or the Church taught it is better to take the certain then the uncertain to believe God rather then men especially since if God hath bound us to believe men our absolute submission to God does involve that and there is no inconvenience in the world this way but that we implicitely believe one Article more viz. the Churches Authority or infallibility which may well be pardoned because it secures our beliefe of all the rest and we are sure if we believe all that God said explicitely or implicitely we also believe the Church implicitely in case we are bound to it but we are not certain that if we believe any company of men whom we call the Church that we therefore obey God and believe what he hath said But however if this will not help us there is no help for us but good fortune or absolute predestination for by choyce and industry no man can secure himselfe that in all the mysteries of Religion taught in Scripture he shall certainly understand and explicitely believe that sense that God intended For to this purpose there are many considerations 1. There are so many thousands of Copies that were writ by persons of severall interests and perswasions such different Numb 4. understandings and tempers such distinct abilities and weaknesses that it is no wonder there is so great variety of readings both in the Old Testament and in the New In the Old
temporall felicities and this thing proceeding from so great an Authority as the testimony of Papias drew after it all or most of the Christians in the first three hundred years For besides that the Millenary opinion is expresly taught by Papias Justin Martyr Irenaus Origen Lactantius Severus Victorinus Apollinaris Nepos and divers others famous in their time Justin Martyr in his Dialogue against Tryphon sayes it was the beliefe of all Christians exactly Orthodox 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and yet there was no such Tradition but a mistake in Papias but I find it nowhere spoke against till Dionysins of Alexandria confuted Nepo's Book and converted Coracion the Egyptian from the opinion Now if a Tradition whose beginning of being called so began with a Scholar of the Apostles for so was Papias and then continued for some Ages upon the meer Authority of so famous a man did yet deceive the Church much more fallible is the pretence when two or three hundred years after it but commences and then by some learned man is first called a Tradition Apostolicall And so it hapned in the case of the Arrian heresy which the Nicene Fathers did confute by objecting a contrary Tradition Apostolicall as Theodoret reports Lib. 1. hist. c. 8. and yet if they had not had better Arguments from Scripture then from Tradition they would have faild much in so good a cause for this very pretence the Arrians themselves made and desired to be tryed by the Fathers of the first three hundred years which was a confutation sufficient to them who pretended Vide Petaâ— in Epiph. her 69. a clear Tradition because it was unimaginable that the Tradition should leap so as not to come from the first to the last by the middle But that this tryall was sometime declined by that excellent man S. Athanasius although at other times confidently and truly pretended it was an Argument the Tradition was not so * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Matt. diâ—l ad Tryph. Iud. clear but both sides might with some fairnesse pretend to it And therefore one of the prime Founders of their heresy the Heretick †Euse. l. 5. c. ult Artemon having observed the advantage might be taken by any Sect that would pretend Tradition because the medium was plausible and consisting of so many particulars that it was hard to be redargued pretended a Tradition from the Apostles that Christ was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that the Tradition did descend by a constant succession in the Church of Rome to Pope Victors time inclusively and till Zepherinus had interrupted the series and corrupted the Doctrine which pretence if it had not had some appearance of truth so as possibly to abuse the Church had not been worthy of confutation which yet was with care undertaken by an old Writer out of whom Eusebius transcribes a large passage to reprove the vanity of the pretender But I observe from hence that it was usuall to pretend to Tradition and that it was easier pretended then confuted and I doubt not but oftner done then discovered A great Question arose in Africa concerning the Baptism of Hereticks whether it were valid or no. S. Cyprian and his party appealed to Scripture Stephen Bishop of Rome and his party would be judged by custome and Tradition Ecclesiasticall See how much the nearer the Question was to a determination either that probation was not accounted by S. Cyprian and the Bishops both of Asia and Africk to be a good Argument and sufficient to determine them or there was no certain Tradition against them for unlesse one of these two doe it nothing could excuse them from opposing a known truth unlesse peradventure S. Cyprian Firmilian the Bishops of Galatia Cappadocia and almost two parts of the World were ignorant of such a Tradition for they knew of none such and some of them expresly denyed it And the sixth generall Synod approves of the Canon made in the Councell of Carthage under Cyprian upon this very ground because in praedictorum praesulum locis solum secundum Can. 2. traditam eis consuetudinem servatus est they had a particular Tradition for Rebaptization and therefore there could be no Tradition Universall against it or if there were they knew not of it but much for the contrary and then it would be remembred that a conceal'd Tradition was like a silent Thunder or a Law not promulgated it neither was known nor was obligatory And I shall observe this too that this very Tradition was so obscure and was so obscurely delivered silently proclaimed that S. Austin who disputed against the Donatists upon this very Question was not able to prove it but L. 5. de baptism contr Donat. c. 23. by a consequence which he thought probale and credible as appears in his discourse against the Donatists The Apostles saith S. Austin prescrib'd nothing in this particular But this custome which is contrary to Cyprian ought to be believed to have come from their Tradition as many other things which the Catholike Church observes That 's all the ground and all the reason nay the Church did waver concerning that Question and before the decision of a Councell Cyprian and others might dissent without breach of charity It was plain then there was no clear Tradition Lib. 1. de baptism c. 18. in the Question possibly there might be a custome in some Churches postnate to the times of the Apostles but nothing that was obligatory no Tradition Apostolicall But this was a suppletory device ready at hand when ever they needed it and De peccat original l. 2. c. 40. contra Pelagi Caelest S. Austin confuted the Pelagians in the Question of Originall sinne by the custome of exorcisme and insufflation which S. Austin said came from the Apostles by Tradition which yet was then and is now so impossible to be prov'd that he that shall affirm it shall gaine only the reputation of a bold man and a confident 2. I consider if the report of Traditions in the Primitive Numb 4. times so neare the Ages Apostolicall was so uncertain that they were fain to aym at them by conjectures and grope as in the dark the uncertainty is much encreased since because there are many famous Writers whose works are lost which yet if they had continued they might have been good records to us as Clemens Romanus Egesippus Nepos Coracion Dionysius Areopagite of Alexandria of Corinth Firmilian and many more And since we see pretences have been made without reason in those Ages where they might better have been confuted then now they can it is greater prudence to suspect any later pretences since so many Sects have been so many warres so many corruptions in Authors so many Authors lost so much ignorance hath intervened and so many interests have been served that now the rule is to be altered and whereas it was of old time credible that that was Apostolicall whose beginning they
this often hapned I think S. Austin is the chiefe Argument and Authority we have for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary the Baptism of Infants is called a Tradition by Origen alone at first and from Salmeron disput 51. in Rom. him by others The procession of the holy Ghost from the Sonne which is an Article the Greek Church disavowes derives from the Tradition Apostolicall as it is pretended and yet before S. Austin we heare nothing of it very cleerly or certainly for as much as that whole mystery concerning the blessed Spirit was so little explicated in Scripture and so little derived to them by Tradition that till the Councell of Nice you shall hardly find any form of worship or personall addresse of devotion to the holy Spirit as Erasmus observes and I think the contrary will very hardly be verified And for this particular in which I instance whatsoever is in Scripture concerning it is against that which the Church of Rome calls Tradition which makes the Greeks so confident as they are of the point and is an Argument of the vanity of some things which for no greater reason are called Traditions but because one man hath said so and that they can be proved by no better Argument to be true Now in this case wherein Tradition descends upon us with unequall certainty it would be very unequall to require of us an absolute beliefe of every thing not written for feare we be accounted to slight Tradition Apostolicall And since no thing can require our supreme assent but that which is truly Catholike and Apostolike and to such a Tradition is requir'd as Irenaeus sayes the consent of all those Churches which the Apostles planted and where they did preside this topick will be of so little use in judging heresies that besides what is deposited in Scripture it cannot be proved in any thing but in the Canon of Scripture it selfe and as it is now received even in that there is some variety And therefore there is wholy a mistake in this businesse for when the Fathers appeal to Tradition and with much earnestnesse Numb 8. and some clamour they call upon Hereticks to conform to or to be tryed by Tradition it is such a Tradition as delivers the fundamentall points of Christianity which were also recorded in Scripture But because the Canon was not yet perfectly consign'd they call'd to that testimony they had which was the testimony of the Churches Apostolicall whose Bishops and Priests being the Antistites religionis did believe and preach Christian Religion and conserve all its great mysteries according as they had been taught Irenaeus calls this a Tradition Apostolicall Christum accepisse calicem dixisse sanguinem suum esse docuisse novam oblationem novi Testamenti quam Ecclesia per Apostolos accipiens offert per totum mundum And the Fathers in these Ages confute Hereticks by Ecclesiasticall Tradition that is they confront against their impious and blaspemous doctrines that Religion which the Apostles having taught to the Churches where they did preside their Successors did still preach and for a long while together suffered not the enemy to sow tares amongst their wheat And yet these doctrines which they called Traditions were nothing but such fundamentall truths which were in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Irenaeus in Eusebius observes in the instance of Polycarpus and it is manifest by considering Lib. 5. cap. 20. what heresies they fought against the heresies of Ebion Cerinthus Nicolaitans Valentinians Carpocratians persons that Vid. Irenae l. 3 4. cont haeres denyed the Sonne of God the Unity of the God-head that preached impurity that practised Sorcery and Witch-craft And now that they did rather urge Tradition against them then Scripture was because the publike Doctrine of all the Apostolicall Churches was at first more known and famous then many parts of the Scripture and because some Hereticks denyed S. Lukes Gospel some received none but S. Matthews some rejected all S. Pauls Epistles and it was a long time before the whole Canon was consign'd by universall Testimony some Churches having one part some another Rome her selfe had not all so that in this case the Argument from Tradition was the most famous the most certain and the most prudent And now according to this rule they had more Traditions then we have and Traditions did by degrees lessen as they came to be written and their necessity was lesse as the knowledge of them was ascetained to us by a better Keeper of Divine Truths All that great mysteriousnesse of Christs Priest-hood the unity of his Sacrifice Christs Advocation and Intercession for us in Heaven and many other excellent Doctrines might very well be accounted Traditions before S. Pauls Epistle to the Hebrews was publish'd to all the World but now they are written truths and if they had not possibly we might either have lost them quite or doubted of them as we doe of many other Traditions by reason of the insufficiency of the propounder And therefore it was that S. Peter took order that the Gospel 2 Pet. 1. 13. should be Writ for he had promised that he would doe something which after his decease should have these things in remembrance He knew it was not safe trusting the report of men where the fountain might quickly run dry or be corrupted so insensibly that no cure could be found for it nor any just notice taken of it till it were incurable And indeed there is scarce any thing but what is written in Scripture that can with any confidence of Argument pretend to derive from the Apostles except ritualls and manners of ministration but no doctrines or speculative mysteries are so transmitted to us by so cleer a current that we may see a visible channell and trace it to the Primitive fountaines It is said to be a Tradition Apostolicall that no Priest should baptize without chrism and the command of the Bishop Suppose it were yet we cannot be oblig'd to believe it with much confidence because we have but little proofe for it scarce any thing but the single testimony of S. Hierom. And yet if it were this is but a rituall of which in passing by I shall give that account That Dialog adv Lucifer suppose this and many more ritualls did derive clearly from Tradition Apostolicall which yet but very few doe yet it is hard that any Church should be charged with crime for not observing such ritualls because we see some of them which certainly did derive from the Apostles are expir'd and gone out in a desuetude such as are abstinence from blood and from things strangled the coenobitick life of secular persons the colledge of widowes to worship standing upon the Lords day to give milk and honey to the newly baptized and many more of the like nature now there having been no mark to distinguish the necessity of one from the indifferency of the other they are all
at this day vex Christendome And both speak true The first Ages speak greatest truth but least pertinently The next Ages the Ages of the foure generall Councels spake something not much more pertinently to the present Questions but were not so likely to speak true by reason of their dispositions contrary to the capacity and circumstance of the first Ages and if they speak wisely as Doctors yet not certainly as witnesses of such propositions which the first Ages noted not and yet unlesse they had noted could not possibly be Traditions And therefore either of them will be lesse uselesse as to our present affaires For indeed the Questions which now are the publike trouble were not considered or thought upon for many hundred years and therefore prime Tradition there is none as to our purpose and it will be an insufficient medium to be used or pretended in the determination and to dispute concerning the truth or necessity of Traditions in the Questions of out times is as if Historians disputing about a Question in the English Story should fall on wrangling whether Livie or Plutarch were the best Writers And the earnest disputes about Traditions are to no better purpose For no Church at this day admits the one halfe of those things which certainly by the Fathers were called Traditions Apostolicall and no Testimony of ancient Writers does consign the one halfe of the present Questions to be or not to be Traditions So that they who admit only the Doctrine and Testimony of the first Ages cannot be determined in most of their doubts which now trouble us because their Writings are of matters wholy differing from the present disputes and they which would bring in after Ages to the Authority of a competent judge or witnesse say the same thing for they plainly confesse that the first Ages spake little or nothing to the present Question or at least nothing to their sense of them for therefore they call in aid from the following Ages and make them suppletory and auxiliary to their designs and therefore there are no Traditions to our purposes And they who would willingly have it otherwise yet have taken no course it should be otherwise for they when they had opportunity in the Councels of the last Ages to determine what they had a mind to yet they never nam'd the number nor expressed the particular Traditions which they would faine have the world believe to be Apostolicall But they have kept the bridle in their own hands and made a reserve of their own power that if need be they may make new pretensions or not be put to it to justifie the old by the engagement of a conciliary declaration Lastly We are acquitted by the Testimony of the Primitive Fathers from any other necessity of believing then of Numb 11. such Articles as are recorded in Scripture And this is done by them whose Authority is pretended the greatest Argument for Tradition as appears largely in Irenaeus who disputes professedly for the sufficiency of Scripture against certain Hereticks who L. 3. c. 2. contr haeres affirm some necessary truths not to be written It was an excellent saying of S. Basil and will never be wipt out with all the eloquence of Perron in his Serm. de fide Manifestus est fidei lapsus liquidum superbiae vitium vel respuere aliquid eorum quae Scriptura habet vel inducere quicquam quod scriptum non est And it is but a poore device to say that every particular Tradition is consigned in Scripture by those places which give Authority to Tradition and so the introducing of Tradition is not a super-inducing any thing over or besides Scripture because Tradition is like a Messenger and the Scripture is like his Letters of Credence and therefore Authorizes whatsoever Tradition speaketh For supposing Scripture does consign the Authority of Tradition which it might doe before all the whole Instrument of Scripture it self was consign'd and then afterwards there might be no need of Tradition yet supposing it it will follow that all those Traditions which are truly prime and Apostolicall are to be entertain'd according to the intention of the Deliverers which indeed is so reasonable of it selfe that we need not Scripture to perswade us to it it selfe is authentick as Scripture is if it derives from the same fountain and a word is never the more the Word of God for being written nor the lesse for not being written but it will not follow that whatsoever is pretended to be Tradition is so neither is the credit of the particular instances consign'd in Scripture dolosus versatur in generalibus but that this craft is too palpable And if a generall and indefinite consignation of Tradition be sufficient to warrant every particular that pretends to be Tradition then S. Basil had spoken to no purpose by saying it is Pride Apostasy from the Faith to bring in what is not written For if either any man brings in what is written or what he sayes is delivered then the first being expresse Scripture and the second being consign'd in Scripture no man can be charged with superinducing what is not written he hath his Answer ready And then these are zealous words absolutely to no purpose but if such generall consignation does not warrant every thing that pretends to Tradition but only such as are truly proved to be Apostolicall then Scripture is uselesse as to this particular for such Tradition gives testimony to Scripture and therefore is of it selfe first and more credible for it is credible of it selfe and therefore unlesse S. Basil thought that all the will of God in matters of Faith and Doctrine were written I see not what end nor what sense he could have in these words For no man in the world except Enthusiasts and mad-men ever obtruded a Doctrine upon-the Church but he pretended Scripture for it or Tradition and therefore no man could be pressed by these words no man confuted no man instructed no not Enthusiasts or Montanists For suppose either of them should say that since in Scripture the holy Ghost is promised to abide with the Church for ever to teach whatever they pretend the Spirit in any Age hath taught them is not to super-induce any thing beyond what is written because the truth of the Spirit his veracity and his perpetuall teaching being promised and attested in Scripture Scripture hath just so consign'd all such Revelations as Perron saith it hath all such Traditions But I will trouble my selfe no more with Arguments from any humane Authorities but he that is surprized with the beliefe of such Authorities and will but consider the very many Testimonies of Antiquity to this purpose as of a Orat. ad Nicen PP apud Theodor. l. 1. c. 7. Constantine b In Matth. l. 4. c. 23. in Aggaeum S. Hierom c De bono viduil c. 1. S. Austin d Orat. contr gent. S. Athaenasius e In
not of weight and Authority to restraine their Liberty so wholy but that they may dissent when they see a reason strong enough so to perswade them as to be willing upon the confidence of that reason and their own sincerity to answer to God for such their modesty and peaceable but as they believe their necessary disagreeing SECT VII Of the fallibility of the Pope and the uncertainty of his Expounding Scripture and resolving Questions BUt since the Question between the Councell and the Pope Numb 1. grew high there have not wanted abettors so confident on the Popes behalfe as to believe Generall Councels to be nothing but Pompes and Solennities of the Catholike Church and that all the Authority of determining Controversies is formally and effectually in the Pope And therefore to appeale from the Pope to a future Councell is a heresy yea and Treason too said Pope Pius II and therefore it concerns us now Epist. ad Norimberg to be wise and wary But before I proceed I must needs remember that Pope Pius II while he was the wise and learned Patrum avorum nostrorum tempore pauci audebant dicere Papam esse supra Concilium l. 1. de gestis Concil Basil. Aeneas Sylvius was very confident for the preheminence of a Councell and gave a merry reason why more Clerks were for the Popes then the Councell though the truth was on the other side even because the Pope gives Bishopricks and Abbeys but Councels give none and yet as soone as he was made Pope as if he had been inspired his eyes were open to see the great priviledges of S. Peters Chaire which before he could not see being amused with the truth or else with the reputation of a Generall Councell But however there are many that hope to make it good that the Pope is the Universall and the infallible Doctor that he breathes Decrees as Oracles that to dissent from any of his Cathedrall determinations is absolute heresy the Rule of Faith being nothing else but consormity to the Chaire of Peter So that here we have met a restraint of Prophecy indeed but yet to make amends I hope we shall have an infallible Guide and when a man is in Heaven he will never complaine that his choyce is taken from him and that he is confin'd to love and to admire since his love and his admiration is fixt upon that which makes him happy even upon God himselfe And in the Church of Rome there is in a lower degree but in a true proportion as little cause to be troubled that we are confin'd to believe just so and no choice left us for our understandings to discover or our wills to chuse because though we be limited yet we are pointed out where we ought to rest we are confin'd to our Center and there where our understandings will be satisfied and therefore will be quiet and where after all our strivings studies and endeavours we desire to come that is to truth for there we are secur'd to find it because we have a Guide that is infallible If this prove true we are well enough But if it be false or uncertain it were better we had still kept our liberty then be cozened out of it with gay pretences This then we must consider And here we shall be oppressed with a cloud of Witnesses For what more plaine then the Commission given to Peter Numb 2. Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church And to thee will I give the Keyes And again for thee have I prayed that thy faith faile not but thou when thou art converted confirm thy brethren And again If thou lovest me feed my sheep Now nothing of this being spoken to any of the other Apostles by one of these places S. Peter must needs be appointed Foundation or Head of the Church and by consequence he is to rule and govern all By some other of these places he is made the supreme Pastor and he is to teach and determine all and inabled with an infallible power so to doe And in a right understanding of these Authorities the Fathers speak great things of the Chaire of Peter for we are as much bound to believe that all this was spoken to Peters Successors as to his Person that must by all meanes be supposed and so did the old Doctors who had as much certainty of it as we have and no more but yet let 's hear what they have said a Irenae contra haeres l. 3. c. 3. To this Church by reason of its more powerfull principality it is necessary all Churches round about should Convene ..... In this Tradition Apostolicall alwayes was observed and therefore to communicate with this Bishop with this * Ambr. de obitu Salyri l. 1. Ep. 4. ad Imp. Cypr. Ep. 52. Church was to be in Communion with the Church Catholike .... b Cypr. Ep. 55. ad Cornel. To this Church errour or perfidiousnesse cannot have accesse .... c S. Austin in Psal. contra partem Donat. Against this Sea the gates of Hell cannot prevaile .... d Hieron Ep. 57. ad Damasum For we know this Church to be built upon a Rock .... And whoever eats the Lamb not within this House is prophane he that is not in the Ark of Noah perishes in the inundation of waters He that gathers not with this Bishop he scatters and he that belongeth not to Christ must needs belong to Antichrist And that 's his finall sentence But if you would have all this prov'd by an infallible Argument e L. 2. contra Parmenian Optatus of Milevis in Africa supplies it to us from the very name of Peter For therefore Christ gave him the cognomination of Cephas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shew that S. Peter was the visible Head of the Catholike Church Dignum patellà operculum This long harangue must needs be full of tragedy to all them that take liberty to themselves to follow Scripture and their best Guides if it happens in that liberty that they depart from the perswasions or the Communion of Rome But indeed if with the peace of the Bishops of Rome I may say it this Scene is the most unhandsomely laid and the worst carried of any of those pretences that have lately abused Christendome 1. Against the Allegations of Scripture I shall lay no greater Numb 3. prejudice then this that if a person dis-interested should see them and consider what the products of them might possibly be the last thing that he would think of would be how that any of these places should serve the ends or pretences of the Church of Rome For to instance in one of the particulars that man had need have a strong fancy who imagines that because Christ pray'd for S. Peter that being he had design'd him to be one of those upon whose preaching and Doctrine he did meane to constitute a Church that his faith
cannot doe this when they list but when they are mov'd to it by the Spirit then we are never the nearer for so may the Bishop of Angolesme write infallible Commentaries when the holy Ghost moves him to it for I suppose his motions are not ineffectuall but hee will sufficiently assist us in performing of what he actually moves us to But among so many hundred Decrees which the Popes of Rome have made or confirmed and attested which is all one I would faine know in how many of them did the holy Ghost assist them If they know it let them declare it that it may be certain which of their Decretals are de fide for as yet none of his own Church knowes If they doe not know then neither can we know it from them and then we are as uncertaine as ever and besides the holy Ghost may possibly move him and he by his ignorance of it may neglect so profitable a motion and then his promise of infallible assistance will be to very little purpose because it is with very much fallibility applicable to practise And therefore it is absolutely uselesse to any man or any Church because suppose it settled in Thesi that the Pope is infallible yet whether he will doe his duty and perform those conditions of being assisted which are required of him or whether he be a secret Simoniack for if he be he is ipso facto no Pope or whether he be a Bishop or Priest or a Christian being all uncertain every one of these depending upon the intention and power of the Baptizer or Ordainer which also are fallible because they depend upon the honesty and power of other men we cannot be infallibly certain of any Pope that he is infallible and therefore when our Questions are dermin'd we are never the nearer but may hugge our selves in an imaginary truth the certainty of finding truth out depending upon so many fallible and contingent circumstances And therefore the thing if it were true being so to no purpose it is to be presum'd that God never gave a power so impertinently and from whence no benefit can accrue to the Christian Church for whose use and benefit if at all it must needs have been appointed But I am too long in this impertinency If I were bound Numb 18. to call any man Master upon earth and to believe him upon his own affirmative and authority I would of all men least follow him that pretends he is infallible and cannot prove it For that he cannot prove it makes me as uncertaine as ever and that he pretends to infallibility makes him carelesse of using such meanes which will morally secure those wise persons who knowing their own aptnesse to be deceiv'd use what endeavours they can to secure themselves from errour and so become the better and more probable guides Well! Thus farre we are come Although we are secured in fundamentall points from involuntary errour by the plaine Numb 19. expresse and dogmaticall places of Scripture yet in other things we are not but may be invincibly mistaken because of the obscurity and difficulty in the controverted parts of Scripture by reason of the incertainty of the meanes of its Interpretation since Tradition is of an uncertain reputation and sometimes evidently false Councels are contradictory to each other and therefore certainly are equally deceiv'd many of them and therefore all may and then the Popes of Rome are very likely to mislead us but cannot ascertain us of truth in matter of Question and in this world we believe in part and prophecy in part and this imperfection shall never be done away till we be translated to a more glorious state either we must throw our chances and get truth by accident or predestination or else we must lie safe in a mutuall toleration and private liberty of perswasion unlesse some other Anchor can bee thought upon where wee may fasten our floating Vessels and ride safely SECT VIII Of the disability of Fathers or Writers Ecclesiasticall to determine our Questions with certainty and Truth THere are some that think they can determine all Questions Numb 1. in the world by two or three sayings of the Fathers or by the consent of so many as they will please to call a concurrent Testimony But this consideration will soon be at an end for if the Fathers when they are witnesses of Tradition doe not alwayes speak truth as it hapned in the case of Papias and his numerous Followers for almost three Ages together then is their Testimony more improbable when they dispute or write Commentaries 2. The Fathers of the first Ages spake unitedly concerning Numb 2. divers Questions of secret Theology and yet were afterwards contradicted by one personage of great repution whose credit had so much influence upon the world as to make the contrary opinion become popular why then may not we have the same liberty when so plain an uncertainty is in their perswasions and so great contrariety in their Doctrines But this is evident in the case of absolute predestination which till S. Austine's time no man preached but all taught the contrary and yet the reputation of this one excellent man altered the scene But if he might dissent from so Generall a Doctrine why may not we doe so too it being pretended that he is so excellent a precedent to be followed if we have the same reason he had no more Authority nor dispensation to dissent then any Bishop hath now And therefore S. Austin hath dealt ingeniously and as he took this liberty to himself so he denies it not to others but indeed forces them to preserve their own liberty And Sess. ult therefore when S. Hierom had a great mind to follow the Fathers in a point that he fancyed and the best security he had was Patiaris me cum talibus errare S. Austin would not endure it but answered his reason and neglected the Authority And therefore it had been most unreasonable that we should doe that now though in his behalfe which he towards greater personages for so they were then at that time judg'd to be unreasonable It is a plaine recession from Antiquity which was determin'd by the Councell of Florence piorum animas purgatas c. mox in Caelum recipi intueri clarè ipsum Deum trinum unum sicuti est As who please to try may see it dogmatically resolved to the contrary by a Q. 60. ad Christian. Justin Martyr b Lib. 5. Irenaeus by c Hom. 7. in Levit. Origen d Hom. 39 in 1 Cor. S. Chrysostome e In c. 11. ad Heb. Theodoret f In c. 6. ad Apoc. Arethas Caesariensis g In 16. c. Luc. Euthymius who may answer for the Greek Church and it is plaine that it was the opinion of the Greek Church by that great difficulty the Romans had of bringing the Greeks to subscribe to the Florentine Councell where the
that ever the Pharisees said or did And was it not a plain stifling of the just and reasonable demands made by the Emperour by the Kings of France and Spaine and by the ablest Divines among them which was used in the Councell of Trent when they demanded the restitution of Priests to their liberty of marriage the use of the Chalice the Service in the vulgar Tongue and these things not onely in pursuance of Truth but for other great and good ends even to take away an infinite scandall and a great schisme And yet when they themselves did profess it and all the world knew these reasonable demands were denyed meerly upon a politick consideration yet that these things should be fram'd into articles and decrees of faith and they for ever after bound not onely not to desire the same things but to think the contrary to be divine truths never was Reason made more a slave or more useless Must not all the world say either they must be great hypocrites or doe great violence to their understanding when they not onely cease from their claim but must also beleeve it to be unjust If the use of their reason had not been restrained by the tyrannie imperiousness of their guide what the Emperour and the Kings and their Theologues would have done they can best judge who consider the reasonableness of the demand and the unreasonableness of the denyall But we see many wise men who with their Optandum esset ut Ecclesia licentiam daret c. proclaime to all the world that in some things they consent and doe not consent and doe not heartily beleeve what they are bound publickly to profess and they themselves would cleerly see a difference if a contrary decree should be fram'd by the Church they would with an infinite greater confidence rest themselves in other propositions then what they must beleeve as the case now stands and they would find that the authority of a Church is a prejudice as often as a free and modest use of reason is a temptation 3. God will have no man pressed with anothers inconveniences in matters spirituall and intellectuall no mans salvation to depend Numb 3. upon another and every tooth that eats sowre grapes shall be set on edge for it selfe and for none else and this is remarkable in that saying of God by the Prophet If the Prophet ceases to Ezek. 33. tell my people of their sins and leads them into error the people shall die in their sins and the blood of them I will require at the hands of that Prophet Meaning that God hath so set the Prophets to guide us that we also are to follow them by a voluntary assent by an act of choice and election For although accidentally and occasionally the sheep may perish by the shepherds fault yet that which hath the chiefest influence upon their finall condition is their owne act and election and therefore God hath so appointed guides to us that if we perish it may be accounted upon both our scores upon our own and the guides too which sayes plainly that although we are intrusted to our guides yet we are intrusted to our selves too Our guides must direct us and yet if they faile God hath not so left us to them but he hath given us enough to our selves to discover their failings and our own duties in all things necessary And for other things we must doe as well as we can But it is best to follow our guides if we know nothing better but if we doe it is better to follow the pillar of fire than a pillar of cloud though both possibly may lead to Canaan But then also it is possible that it may be otherwise But I am sure if I doe my own best then if it be best to follow a Guide and if it be also necessary I shall be sure by Gods grace and my own endeavour to get to it But if I without the particular ingagement of my own understanding follow a guide possibly I may be guilty of extream negligence or I may extinguish Gods Spirit or doe violence to my own reason And whether intrusting my self wholly with another be not a laying up my talent in a napkin I am not so well assured I am certain the other is not And since another mans answering for me will not hinder but that I also shall answer for my self as it concerns him to see he does not wilfully misguide me so it concerns me to see that he shall not if I can help it if I cannot it will not be required at my hands whether it be his fault or his invincible error I shall be charg'd with neither 4. This is no other then what is enjoyned as a duty For since Numb 4. God will be justified with a free obedience and there is an obedience of understanding as well as of will and affection it is of great concernment as to be willing to beleeve what ever God sayes so also to enquire diligently whether the will of God be so as is pretended Even our acts of understanding are acts of choice Mat. 15. 10. Joh. 5. 40. 1 Joh. 4. 1. Ephes. 5. 17. Luk. 24. 25. Rom. 3. 11. 1. 28. Apoc. 2. 2. Act. 17. 11. and therefore it is commanded as a duty to search the Scriptures to try the spirits whether they be of God or no of our selves to be able to judge what is right to try all things and to retaine that which is best For he that resolves not to consider resolves not to be carefull whether he have truth or no and therefore hath an affection indifferent to truth or falshood which is all one as if he did choose amiss and since when things are truly propounded and made reasonable and intelligible we cannot but assent and then it is no thanks to us we have no way to give our wills to God in matters of beliefe but by our industry in searching it and examining the grounds upon which the propounders build their dictates And the not doing it is oftentimes a cause that God gives a man over 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into a reprobate and undiscerning mind and understanding 5. And this very thing though men will not understand it is Numb 5. the perpetuall practice of all men in the world that can give a reasonable account of their faith The very Catholike Church it selfe is rationabilis ubique diffusa saith Optatus reasonable as Lib. 3. well as diffused every where For take the Proselites of the Church of Rome even in their greatest submission of understanding they seem to themselves to follow their reason most of all For if you tell them Scripture and Tradition are their rules to follow they will beleeve you when they know a reason for it and if they take you upon your word they have a reason for that too either they beleeve you a learned man or a good man or that you can have
no ends upon them or something that is of an equall height to fit their understandings If you tell them they must beleeve the Church you must tell them why they are bound to it and if you quote Scripture to prove it you must give them leave to judge whether the words alledged speak your sense or no and therefore to dissent if they say no such thing And although all men are not wise and proceed discreetly yet all make their choice some way or other He that chooses to please his fancie takes his choice as much as he that chooses prudently And no man speaks more unreasonably then he that denyes to men the use of their Reason in choice of their Religion For that I may by the way remove the common prejudice Reason and Authority are not things incompetent or repugnant especially when the Authority is infallible and supreme for there is no greater reason in the world then to beleeve such an authority But then we must consider whether every authority that pretends to be such is so indeed And therefore Deus dixit ergo hoc verum est is the greatest demonstration in the world for things of this nature But it is not so in humane dictates and yet reason and humane authority are not enemies For it is a good argument for us to follow such an opinion because it is made sacred by the authority of Councells and Ecclesiasticall Tradition and sometimes it is the best reason we have in a question and then it is to be strictly followed but there may also be at other times a reason greater than it that speaks against it and then the authority must not carry it But then the difference is not between reason and authority but between this reason and that which is greater for authority is a very good reason and is to prevaile unless a stronger comes and disarms it but then it must give place So that in this question by Reason I doe not meane a distinct Topick but a transcendent that runs through all Topicks for Reason like Logick is instrument of all things else and when Revelation and Philosophie and publick Experience and all other grounds of probability or demonstration have supplyed us with matter then Reason does but make use of them that is in plain terms there being so many wayes of arguing so many sects such differing interests such variety of authority so many pretences and so many false beliefes it concernes every wise man to consider which is the best argument which proposition relies upon the truest grounds if this were not his only way why doe men dispute and urge arguments why do they cite Councels Fathers why do they alledge Scripture and Tradition and all this on all sides and to contrary purposes If we must judge then we must use our reason if we must not judge why doe they produce evidence Let them leave disputing and decree propositions magisterially but then we may choose whether we will believe them or no or if they say we must believe them they must prove it and tell us why And all these disputes concerning Tradition Councells Fathers c. are not arguments against or besides reason but contestations and pretences to the best arguments and the most certain satisfaction of our reason But then all these comming into question submit themselves to reason that is to be judged by humane understanding upon the best grounds and information it can receive So that Scripture Tradition Councells and Fathers are the evidence in a question but Reason is the Judge That is we being the persons that are to be perswaded we must see that we be perswaded reasonably and it is unreasonable to assent to a lesser evidence when a greater and cleerer is propounded but of that every man for himselfe is to take cognisance if he be able to judge if he be not he is not bound under the tye of necessity to know any thing of it that that is necessary shall be certainly conveyed to him God that best can will certainly take care for that for if he does not it becomes to be not necessary or if it should still remain necessary and he damned for not knowing it and yet to know it be not in his power then who can help it there can be no further care in this business In other things there being no absolute and prime necessity we are left to our liberty to judge that way that makes best demonstration of our piety and of our love to God and truth not that way that is alwayes the best argument of an excellent understanding for this may be a blessing but the other onely is a duty And now that we are pitch'd upon that way which is most naturall Numb 6. and reasonable in determination of our selves rather then of questions which are often indeterminable since right reason proceeding upon the best grounds it can viz. of divine revelation and humane authority and probability is our guide Stando in humanis and supposing the assistance of Gods Spirit which he never denies them that faile not of their duty in all such things in which he requires truth and certainty it remaines that we consider how it comes to pass that men are so much deceived in the use of their reason and choice of their Religion and that in this account we distinguish those accidents which make error innocent from those which make it become a heresie SECT XI Of some causes of Errour in the exercise of Reason which are inculpate in themselves 1. THen I consider that there are a great many inculpable causes of Errour which are arguments of humane imperfections Numb 1. not convictions of a sinne And 1. the variety of humane understandings is so great that what is plaine and apparent to one is difficult and obscure to another one will observe a consequent from a common principle and another from thence will conclude the quite contrary When S. Peter saw the vision of the sheet let downe with all sorts of beasts in it and a voice saying Surge Petre macta manduca if he had not by a particular assistance beene directed to the meaning of the holy Ghost possibly he might have had other apprehensions of the meaning of that vision for to my selfe it seemes naturally to speake nothing but the abolition of the Mosaicall rites and the restitution of us to that part of Christian liberty which consists in the promiscuous eating of meates and yet besides this there want not some understandings in the world to whom these words seeme to give Saint Peter a power to kill hereticall Princes Me thinkes it is a strange understanding that makes such extractions but Bozius and Baronius did so But men may understand what they please especially when they are to expound Oracles It was an argument of some wit but of singularity of understanding that hapned in the great contestation betweene the Missalls of Saint Ambrose and
bibliotheca capit It is impossible for any industry to consider so many particulars in the infinite numbers of questions as are necessary to be consider'd before we can with certainty determine any And after all the considerations which we can have in a whole age we are not sure not to be deceived The obscurity of some questions the nicety of some articles the intricacy of some revelations the variety of humane understandings the windings of Logicke the tricks of adversaries the subtilty of Sophisters the ingagement of educations personall affections the portentous number of writers the infinity of authorities the vastnesse of some arguments as consisting in enumeration of many particulars the uncertainty of others the severall degrees of probability the difficulties of Scripture the invalidity of probation of tradition the opposition of all exteriour arguments to each other and their open contestation the publicke violence done to authors and records the private arts and supplantings the falsifyings the indefatigable industry of some men to abuse all understandings and all perswasions into their owne opinions these and thousands more even all the difficulty of things and all the weaknesses of man all the arts of the Devill have made it impossible for any man in so great variety of matter not to be deceived No man pretends to it but the Pope and no man is more deceived then he is in that very particular 3. From hence proceeds a danger which is consequent to this proceeding for if we who are so apt to be deceived so insecure Numb 4. in our resolution of questions disputable should persecute a dis-agreeing person we are not sure we doe not fight against God for if his proposition be true and persecuted then because all truth derives from God this proceeding is against God and therefore this is not to be done upon Gamaliel's ground lest peradventure we be found to fight against God of which because we can have no security at least in this case we have all the guilt of a doubtfull or an uncertaine Conscience For if there be no security in the thing as I have largely proved the Conscience in such cases is as uncertaine as the question is and if it be not doubtfull where it is uncertaine it is because the man is not wise but as confident as ignorant the first without reason and the second without excuse And it is very disproportionable for a man to persecute another certainly for a proposition that if he were wise he would know is not certaine at least the other person may innocently be uncertaine of it If he be kill'd he is certainly kill'd but if he be call'd hereticke it is not so certaine that he is an hereticke It were good therefore that proceedings were according to evidence and the rivers not swell over the banks nor a certaine definitive sentence of death pass'd upon such perswasions which cannot certainly be defin'd And this argument is of so much the more force because we see that the greatest persecutions that ever have been were against truth even against Christianity it selfe and it was a prediction of our blessed Saviour that persecution should be the lot of true beleevers and if we compute the experience of suffering Christendome and the prediction that truth should suffer with those few instances of suffering hereticks it is odds but persecution is on the wrong side and that it is errour and heresie that is cruell and tyrannicall especially since the truth of Jesus Christ and of his Religion are so meeke so charitable and so mercifull and we may in this case exactly use the words of S. Paul But as then he that was borne after the flesh persecuted him that was borne after the spirit even so it is now and so it ever will be till Christs second coming Numb 5. 4. Whoever persecutes a disagreeing person armes all the Quo comperto illi in nostram pemiciem licentiore audacia grassabuntur S Aug. epist. ad Dona. Procons Contr. ep Fund ita nunc debeo sustinére tantâ patientiâ vobiscum agere quantâ mecum egerunt proximi mei cum in vestro dogmate rabiosus ac cacus errâ—rem world against himselfe and all pious people of his owne perswasion when the scales of authority return to his adversary and attest his contradictory and then what can he urge for mercy for himselfe or his party that sheweth none to others If he sayes that he is to be spared because he beleeves true but the other was justly persecuted because he was in errour he is ridiculous For he is as confidently beleeved to be a heretick as he beleeves his adversary such and whether he be or no being the thing in question of this he is not to be his owne judge but he that hath authority on his side will be sure to judge against him So that what either side can indifferently make use of it is good that neither would because neither side can with reason sufficient doe it in prejudice of the other If a man will say that every man must take his adventure and if it happens authority to be with him he will persecute his adversaries and if it turnes against him he will bear it as well as he can and hope for a reward of Martyrdome and innocent suffering besides that this is so equall to be said of all sides and besides that this is a way to make an eternall disunion of hearts and charities and that it will make Christendome nothing but a shambles and a perpetuall butchery and as fast as mens wits grow wanton or confident or proud or abused so often there will be new executions and massacres Besides all this it is most unreasonable and unjust as being contrariant to those Lawes of Justice and Charity whereby we are bound with greater zeale to spare and preserve an innocent then to condemne a guilty person and there 's lesse malice and iniquity in sparing the guilty then in condemning the good Because it is in the power of men to remit a guilty person to divine judicature and for divers causes not to use severity but in no case is it lawfull neither hath God at all given to man a power to condemne such persons as cannot be proved other than pious and innocent And therefore it is better if it should so happen that we should spare the innocent person and one that is actually deceiv'd then that upon the turn of the wheele the true believers should be destroyed And this very reason he that had authority sufficient and absolute to make Lawes was pleased to urge as a reasonable inducement Numb 6. for the establishing of that Law which he made for the indemnity of erring persons It was in the parable of the tares mingled with the good seed in Agro dominico the good seed Christ himselfe being the interpreter are the Children of the Kingdome the tares are the children of the wicked one upon this comes
in veritate So that this succession of Bishops from the Apostles ordination must of it selfe be a very certain thing when the Church made it a maine probation of their faith for the books of Scripture were not all gathered together and generally received as yet Now then since this was a main pillar of their Christianity viz. a constant reception of it from hand to hand as being delivered by the Bishops in every chaire till wee come to the very Apostles that did ordain them this I say being their proof although it could not be more certain then the thing to be proved which in that case was a Divine revelation yet to them it was more evident as being matter of fact and known almost by evidence of sense and as verily believed by all as it was by any one that himselfe was baptized both relying upon the report of others * Radix Christianae societatis Epist. 42. per sedes Apostolorum successiones Episcoporum certâ per orbem propagatione diffunditur saith S. Austin The very root and foundation of Christian communion is spread all over the world by the successions of Apostles and Bishops And is it not now a madnesse to say there was no such thing no succession of Bishops in the Churches Apostolicall no ordination of Bishops by the Apostles and so as S. Paul's phrase is overthrow the faith of some even of the Primitive Christians that used this argument as a great weapon of offence against the invasion of haereticks and factious people It is enough for us that we can truly say with S. Irenaeus Habemus annumerare eos qui ab Apostolis Ubi supra postolis instituti sunt Episcopi in Ecclesiis usque ad nos We can reckon those who from the Apostles untill now were made Bishops in the Churches and of this we are sure enough if there be any faith in Christians THe summe is this Although we had not prooved § 19. So that Episcopacy is at least an Apostolicall ordinance of the same authority with many other points generally believed the immediate Divine institution of Episcopall power over Presbyters and the whole flock yet Episcopacy is not lesse then an Apostolicall ordinance and delivered to us by the same authority that the observation of the Lord's day is For for that in the new Testament we have no precept and nothing but the example of the Primitive Disciples meeting in their Synaxes upon that day and so also they did on the saturday in the Iewish Synagogues but yet however that at Geneva they were once in meditation to have chang'd it into a Thursday meeting to have showne their Christian liberty we should think strangely of those men that called the Sunday-Festivall lesse then an Apostolicall ordinance and necessary now to be kept holy with such observances as the Church hath appointed * Baptisme of infants is most certainly a holy and charitable ordinance and of ordinary necessity to all that ever cryed and yet the Church hath founded this rite upon the tradition of the Apostles and wise men doe easily observe that the Anabaptists can by the same probability of Scripture inforce a necessity of communicating infants upon us as we doe of baptizing infants upon them if we speak of immediate Divine institution or of practise Apostolicall recorded in Scripture and therefore a great Master of Geneva in a book he writ against the Anabaptists was forced to fly to Apostolicail traditive ordination and therefore the institution of Bishops must be served first as having fairer plea and clearer evidence in Scripture then the baptizing of infants and yet they that deny this are by the just anathema of the Catholick Church confidently condemn'd for Hereticks * Of the same consideration are diverse other things in Christianity as the Presbyters consecrating the Eucharist for if the Apostles in the first institution did represent the whole Church Clergy and Laity when Christ said Hoc facite Doe this then why may not every Christian man there represented doe that which the Apostles in the name of all were commanded to doe If the Apostles did not represent the whole Church why then doe all communicate Or what place or intimation of Christ's saying is there in all the foure Gospells limiting Hoc facite id est benedicite to the Clergy and extending Hoc facite id est accipite manducate to the Laity This also rests upon the practise Apostolicall and traditive interpretation of H. Church and yet cannot be denied that so it ought to be by any man that would not have his Christendome suspected * To these I adde the communion of Women the distinction of bookes Apocryphall from Canonicall that such books were written by such Evangelists and Apostles the whole tradition of Scripture it selfe the Apostles Creed the feast of Easter which amongst all them that cry up the Sunday-Festivall for a Divine institution must needs prevaile as Caput institutionis it being that for which the Sunday is commemorated These and divers others of greater consequence which I dare not specify for feare of being misunderstood rely but upon equall faith with this of Episcopacy though I should wave all the arguments for immediate Divine ordinance and therefore it is but reasonable it should be ranked amongst the Credenda of Christianity which the Church hath entertained upon the confidence of that which we call the faith of a Christian whose Master is truth it selfe VVHat their power and eminence was and § 20. And was an office of power and great authority the appropriates of their office so ordain'd by the Apostles appears also by the testimonies before alleadged the expressions whereof runne in these high termes Episcopatus administrandae Ecclesiae in Lino Linus his Bishoprick was the administration of the whole Church Ecclesiae praefuisse was said of him and Clemens they were both Prefects of the Church or Prelates that 's the Church-word Ordinandis apud Cretam Ecclesiis praeficitur so Titus he is set over all the affaires of the new-founded Churches in Crete In celsiori gradu collocatus plac'd in a higher order or degree so the Bishop of Alexandria chosen ex Presbyteris from amongst the Presbyters Supra omnia Episcopalis apicis sedes so Philo of that Bishoprick The seat of Episcopall height above all things in Christianity These are its honours Its offices these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. To set in order whatsoever he sees wanting or amisse to silence vaine prating Preachers that will not submit to their superiors to ordaine elders to rebuke delinquents to reject Hereticks viz. from the communion of the faithfull for else why was the Angell of the Church of Pergamus reprov'd for tolerating the Nicolaitan hereticks but that it was in his power to eject them And the same is the case of the Angell of Thyatir a in permitting the woman to teach and seduce the people but to the Bishop was committed the cognisance of causes
they were to borrow words from the titles of secular honour or offices and to transplant them to an artificiall and imposed sense USE which is the Master of language must rule us in this affaire and USE is not contracted but in some processe and descent of time * For at first Christendome it selfe wanted a Name and the Disciples of the Glorious Nazarene were Christ'ned first in Antioch for they had their baptisme some yeares before they had their Name It had been no wonder then if per omnia it had so happened in the compellation of all the offices and orders of the Church BVt immediately after the Apostles and still more § 24. Appropriating the word Episcopus or Bishop to the Supreame Church-officer in descending ages Episcopus signified only the Superintendent of the Church the Bishop in the present vulgar conception Some few examples I shal give insteed of Myriads In the Canons of the Apostles the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bishop is us'd 36 times in appropriation to him that is the Ordinary Ruler president of the Church above the Clergie and the Laity being 24 times expressely distinguish'd from Presbyter and in the other 14 having particular care for government jurisdiction censures and Ordinations committed to him as I shall shew hereafter and all this is within the verge of the first 50 which are received as Authentick by the Councell of a Can. 15. 16. Nice of b c. 9. alibi Antioch 25 Canons whereof are taken out of the Canons of the Apostles the Councell of Gangra calling them Canones Ecclesiasticos and Apostolicas traditiones by the Epistle of the first Councell of Constantinople to Damasus which Theodoret hath inserted into his story by the c post advent Episc. Cypri Councell of Ephesus by d advers Praxeam Tertullian by e lib. 3. c. 59. de vitâ Const. Constantine the Great and are sometimes by way of eminency called THE CANONS sometimes THE ECCLESIASTICALL CANONS sometimes the ancient and received Canons of our Fathers sometimes the Apostolicall Canons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Fathers of the Councell in Ca. 4. cap. 18. de Ortbod fide Trullo and Damascen puts them in order next to the Canon of Holy Scripture so in effect does I sidore in his preface to the worke of the Councells for he sets these Canons in front because Sancti Patres eorum sententias authoritate Synodali roborarunt inter Canonicas posuerunt Constitutiones The H. Fathers have established these Canons by the authority of Councells and have put them amongst the Canonicall Constitutions And great reason for in Pope Stephens time they were translated into Latine by one Dionysius at the intreaty of Laurentius because then Anno Dom 257. the old Latine copies were rude and barbarous Now then this second translation of them being made in Pope Stephens time who was contemporary with S. Irenaeus and S. Cyprian the old copie elder then this and yet after the Originall to be sure shewes them to be of prime antiquity and they are mention'd by S. Stephen in an Epistle of his to Bishop Hilarius where he is severe in censure of them who doe prevaricate these Canons * But for farther satisfaction I referre the Reader to the Epistle of Gregory Holloander to the Moderators of the Citie of Norimberg I deny not but they are called Apocryphall by Gratian and some others viz. in the sense of the Church just as the wisdome of Solomon or Ecclesiasticus but yet by most beleived to be written by S. Clement from the dictate of the Apostles and without all Question are so farre Canonicall as to be of undoubted Ecclesiasticall authority and of the first Antiquity Ignatius his testimony is next in time and in authority Epist. ad Trall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Bishop bears the image and representment of the Father of all And a little after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. What is the Bishop but he that hath all authority and rule What is the Presbytery but a sacred Colledge Counsellors and helpers or assessors to the Bishop what are Deacons c So that here is the reall and exact distinction of dignity the appropriation of Name and intimation of office The Bishop is above all the Presbyters his helpers the Deacons his Ministers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imitators of the Angells who are Ministring Spirits But this is of so known so evident a truth that it were but impertinent to insist longer upon it Himselfe in three of his Epistles uses it nine times in distinct enumeration viz. to the Trallians to the Philadelphians to the Philippians * And now I shall insert these considerations 1. Although it was so that Episcopus and Presbyter were distinct in the beginning after the Apostles death yet sometimes the names are used promiscuously which is an evidence that confusion of names is no intimation much lesse an argument for the parity of offices since themselves who sometimes though indeed very seldome confound the names yet distinguish the offices frequently and dogmatically 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epist. ad Heron Where by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he means the Presbyters of the Church of Antioch so indeed some say and though there be no necessity of admitting this meaning because by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he may mean the suffragan Bishops of Syria yet the other may be fairely admitted for himselfe their Bishop was absent from his Church and had delegated to the Presbytery Episcopall jurisdiction to rule the Church till hee being dead another Bishop should be chosen so that they were Episcopi Vicarii and by representment of the person of the Bishop and execution of the Bishops power by delegation were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and this was done least the Church should not be only without a Father but without a Guardian too yet what a Bishop was and of what authority no man more confident and frequent then Ignatius * Another example of this is in Eusebius speaking of the youth whom S. Iohn had converted and commended to a Bishop Clemens whose story this was proceeding in the relation saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. But the Presbyter unlesse by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here S. Clement means not the Order but age of the Man as it is like enough he did for a little after he calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The old man Tum verò PRESBYTER in domum suam suscipit adolescentem Redde depositum O EPISCOPE saith S. Iohn to him Tunc graviter suspirans SENIOR c. So S. Clement * But this as it is very unusuall so it is just as in Scripture viz. in descent and comprehension for this Bishop also was a Presbyter as well as Bishop or else in the delegation of Episcopall power for so it is in the allegation of Ignatius 2. That this name Episcopus or Bishop was chosen to be
let it rest upon * Apologiae pro Ignatio Vedelius a man who is no waies to be suspected as a party for Episcopacy or rather upon the credit of a Lib. 3. hist. c. 30. Eusebius b De Script Eccles. S. Hierome and c Apud Eusebquem Latine reddidit Ruffinus who reckon the first seven out of which I have taken these excerpta for naturall and genuine And now I will make this use of it Those men that call for reduction of Episcopacy to the Primitive state should doe well to stand close to their principles and count that the best Episcopacy which is first and then consider but what S. Ignatius hath told us for direction in this affaire and see what is gotten in the bargaine For my part since they that call for such a reduction hope to gaine by it and then would most certainly have abidden by it I think it not reasonable to abate any thing of Ignatius his height but expect such subordination and conformity to the Bishop as he then knew to be a law of Christianity But let this be remembred all along in the specification of the parts of their Iurisdiction But as yet I am in the generall demonstration of obedience The Councell of Laodicea having specified some Can. 56. particular instances of subordination and dependance to the Bishop summes them up thus * Idem videre est apud Damasum Epist. de Chorepiscopis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So likewise the Presbyters let them doe nothing without the precept and counsell of the Bishop so is the translation of Isidore ad verbum This Councell is ancient enough for it was before the first Nicene So also was that of Arles commanding the same thing exactly * Vt Presbyteri sine conscientiâ Episcoporum Can. 19. nihil faciant Sed nec Presbyteris civitatis sine Episcopi praecepto amplius aliquid imperare vel sine authoritate literarum ejus in Vnaquaque parochiâ aliquid agere saies the thirteenth Canon of the Ancyran Councell according to the Latine of Isidore The same thing is in the first Councell of Toledo the very Can. 20. same words for which I cited the first Councell of Arles viz. That Presbyters doe nothing without the knowledge or permission of the Bishop * Esto SUBIECTUS Epist. ad Nepotian PONTIFICI Tuo quasi animae parentemsuscipe It is the counsell of S. Hierome Be subject to thy Bishop and receive him as the Father of thy soule I shall not need to derive hither any more particular instances of the duty and obedience owing from the Laity to the Bishop For this account will certainly be admitted by all considering men God hath intrusted the soules of the Laity to the care of the Ecclesiasticall orders they therefore are to submit to the government of the Clergy in matters Spirituall with which they are intrusted For either there is no Government at all or the Laity must governe the Church or else the Clergy must To say there is no Government is to leave the Church in worse condition then a tyranny To say that the Laity should governe the Church when all Ecclesiasticall Ministeries are committed to the Clergy is to say Scripture means not what it saies for it is to say that the Clergy must be Praepositi and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and praelati and yet the prelation and presidency and rule is in them who are not ever by Gods spirit called Presidents or Prelates and that it is not in them who are called so * In the mean time if the Laity in matters Spirituall are inferior to the Clergy and must in things pertaining to the Soule be rul'd by them with whom their Soules are intrusted then also much rather they must obey those of the Clergy to whom all the other Clergy themselves are bound to be obedient Now since by the frequent precept of so many Councells and Fathers the Deacons and Presbyters must submit in all things to the Bishop much more must the Laity and since the Bishop must rule in chiefe and the Presbyters at the most can but rule in conjunction and assistance but ever in subordination to the Bishop the Laity must obey de integro For that is to keep them in that state in which God hath placed them But for the maine S. Clement in his Epistle to S. Iames translated by Ruffinus saith it was the doctrine of Peter according to the institution of Christ that Presbyters should be obedient to their Bishop in all things and in his third Epistle that Presbyters and Deacons and others of the Clergy must take heed that they doe nothing without the license of the Bishop * And to make this businesse up compleat all these authorities of great antiquity were not the prime constitutions in those severall Churches respectively but meere derivations from tradition Apostolicall for not only the thing but the words so often mentioned are in the 40 th Canon of the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same is repeated in the twenty fourth Canon of the Councell of Antioch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Presbyters and Deacons must doe nothing without leave of the Bishop for to him the Lords people is committed and he must give an account for their soules * And if a Presbyter shall contemne his owne Bishop making conventions apart and erecting another altar he is to be deposed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the 32. Canon as a lover of Principality intimating that he arrogates Episcopall dignity and so is ambitious of a Principality The issue then is this * The Presbyters and Clergy and Laity must obey therefore the Bishop must governe and give them lawes It was particularly instanc'd in the case of S. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theodoret He adorned and instructed Pontus with these Lawes so he reckoning up the extent Lib. 5. cap. 28. of his jurisdiction * But now descend we to a specification of the power and jurisdiction * of Bishops § 36. Appointing them to be Iudges of the Clergy and spirituall causes of the Laity THe Bishops were Ecclesiasticall Iudges over the Presbyters the inferiour Clergy and the Laity What they were in Scripture who were constituted in presidency over causes spirituall I have already twice explicated and from hence it descended by a close succession that they who watched for soules they had the rule over them and because no regiment can be without coërcion therefore there was inherent in them a power of cognition of causes and coërcion of persons * The Canons of the Apostles appointing censures to be inflicted on delinquent person's makes the Bishop's hand to doe it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 33. If any Presbyter or Deacon be excommunicated BY THE BISHOP he must not be received by any else but by him that did so censure him vnlesse the BISHOP THAT CENSUR'D HIM be dead The same is repeated in the Nicene Councell only
be obliged to believe much more yet this was the one and onely foundation of Faith upon which all persons were to build their hopes of heaven this was therefore necessary to be taught to all because of necessity to be believ'd by all So that although other persons might commit a delinquency in genere morum if they did not know or did not believe much more because they were oblig'd to further disquisitions in order to other ends yet none of these who held the Creed intire could perish for want of necessary faith though possibly he might for supine negligence or affected ignorance or some other fault which had influence upon his opinions and his understanding he having a new supervening obligation ex accidente to know and believe more Neither are we oblig'd to make these Articles more particular and minute then the Creed For since the Apostles and indeed Numb 11. our blessed Lord himselfe promised heaven to them who believd him to be the Christ that was to come into the world and that he who believes in him should be partaker of the resurrection and life eternall he will be as good as his word yet because this Article was very generall and a complexion rather then a single proposition the Apostles and others our Fathers in Christ did make it more explicite and though they have said no more then what lay entire and ready form'd in the bosome of the great Article yet they made their extracts to great purpose and absolute sufficiency and therefore there needs no more deductions or remoter consequences from the first great Article than the Creed of the Apostles For although whatsoever is certainly deduced from any of these Articles made already so explicite is as certainly true and as much to be believed as the Article it selfe because ex veris possunt nil nisi vera sequi yet because it is not certain that our deductions from them are certain and what one calls evident is so obscure to another that he believes it false it is the best and only safe course to rest in that explication the Apostles have made because if any of these Apostolicall deductions were not demonstrable evidently to follow from that great Article to which salvation is promised yet the authority of them who compil'd the Symboll the plaine description of the Articles from the words of Scriptures the evidence of reason demonstrating these to be the whole foundation are sufficient upon great grounds of reason to ascertaine us but if we goe farther besides the easinesse of being deceived we relying upon our own discourses which though they may be true and then binde us to follow them but yet no more then when they only seem truest yet they cannot make the thing certaine to another much lesse necessary in it selfe And since God would not binde us upon paine of sinne and punishment to make deductions our selves much lesse would he binde us to follow another man's Logick as an Article of our Faith I say much lesse another mans for our own integrity for we will certainly be true to our selves and doe our own businesse heartily is as fit and proper to be imployed as another mans ability He cannot secure me that his ability is absolute and the greatest but I can be more certaine that my own purposes and fidelity to my selfe is such And since it is necessary to rest somewhere lest we should run to an infinity it is best to rest there where the Apostles and the Churches Apostolicall rested when not only they who are able to judge but others who are not are equally ascertained of the certainty and of the sufficiency of that explication This I say not that I believe it unlawfull or unsafe for the Numb 12. Church or any of the Antistites religionis or any wise man to extend his own Creed to any thing may certainely follow from any one of the Articles but I say that no such deduction is fit to be prest on others as an Article of Faith and that every deduction which is so made unlesse it be such a thing as is at first evident to all is but sufficient to make a humane Faith nor can it amount to a divine much lesse can be obligatory to binde a person of a differing perswasion to subscribe under paine of loosing his Faith or being a Heretick For it is a demonstration that nothing can be necessary to be believed under paine of damnation but such propositions of which it is certaine that God hath spoken and taught them to us and of which it is certaine that this is their sense and purpose For if the sense be uncertain we can no more be obliged to believe it in a certain sense then we are to believe it at all if it were not certaine that God delivered it But if it be onely certaine that God spake it and not certaine to what sense our Faith of it is to be as indeterminate as its sense and it can be no other in the nature of the thing nor is it consonant to Gods justice to believe of him that he can or will require more And this is of the nature of those propositions which Aristotle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which without any further probation all wise men will give assent at its first publication And therfore deductions inevident from the evident and plain letter of Faith are as great recessions from the obligation as they are from the simplicity and certainty of the Article And this I also affirm although the Church of any one denomination or represented in a Councell shall make the deduction or declaration For unlesse Christ had promised his Spirit to protect every particular Church from all errors lesse materiall unlesse he had promised an absolute universall infallibility etiam in minutioribus unlesse super-structures be of the same necessity with the foundation and that Gods Spirit doth not only preserve his Church in the being of a Church but in a certainty of not saying any thing that is lesse certain and that whether they will or no too we may be bound to peace and obedience to silence and to charity but have not a new Article of Faith made and a new proposition though consequent as 't is said from an Article of Faith becomes not therefore a part of the Faith nor of absolute necessity Quid unquam aliud Ecclesia Conciliorum decretis Contra haeres cap 32. eâ—isa est nisi ut quod antea simpliciter credebatur hoc idem postea diligentiùs crederetur said Vincentius Lirinensis whatsoever was of necessary beliefe before is so still and hath a new degree added by reason of a new light or a clear explication but no prositions can be adopted into the foundation The Church hath power to intend our Faith but not to extend it to make our beliefe more evident but not more large and comprehensive For Christ and his Apostles concealed nothing that was necessary to the
who those men are must also be certaine before it will be adjudg'd a sinne not to submit But if I mistake not Christs saying call no man master upon earth is so great a prejudice against this pretence as I doubt it will goe neere wholy to make it invalid So that as the worshipping of Angels is a humility indeed but it is voluntary and a will-worship to an ill sence not to be excused by the excellency of humility nor the vertue of Religion so is the relying upon the judgement of man an humility too but such as comes not under that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that obedience of Faith which is the duty of every Christian but intrenches upon that duty which we owe to Christ as an acknowledgement that he is our great Master and the Prince of the Catholike Church But whether it be or be not if that be the Question whether the disagreeing person be to be determined by the dictates of men I am sure the dictates of men must not determine him in that Question but it must be settled by some higher principle So that if of that Question the disagreeing person does opine or believe or erre bonâ fide he is not therefore to be judg'd a Heretick because he submits not his understanding because till it bee sufficiently made certaine to him that hee is bound to submit he may innocently and piously disagree and this not submitting is therefore not a crime and so cannot make a heresy because without a crime he may lawfully doubt whether he be bound to submit or no for that 's the Question And if in such Questions which have influence upon a whole systeme of Theology a man may doubt lawfully if he doubts heartily because the authority of men being the thing in Question cannot bee the judge of this Question and therefore being rejected or which is all one being questioned that is not believed cannot render the doubting person guilty of pride and by consequence not of heresy much more may particular questions be doubted of and the authority of men examined and yet the doubting person be humble enough and therefore no Heretick for all this pretence And it would be considered that humility is a duty in great ones as well as in Idiots And as inferiours must not disagree without reason so neither must superiours prescribe to others without sufficient authority evidence and necessity too And if rebellion be pride so is tyranny and it being in materiâ intellectuali both may be guilty of pride of understanding sometimes the one in imposing sometimes the other in a causelesse disagreeing but in the inferiours it is then only the want of humility when the guides impose or prescribe what God hath also taught and then it is the disobeying Gods dictares not mans that makes the sinne But then this consideration will also intervene that as no dictate of God obliges men to believe it unlesse I know it to be such So neither will any of the dictates of my superiours engage my faith unlesse I also know or have no reason to dis believe but that they are warranted to teach them to me therefore because God hath taught the same to them which if I once know or have no reason to think the contrary if I disagree my sinne is not in resisting humane authority but divine And therefore the whole businesse of submitting our understanding to humane authority comes to nothing for either it resolves into the direct duty of submitting to God or if it be spoken of abstractedly it is no duty at all But this pretence of a necessity of humbling the understanding is none of the meanest arts whereby some persons have Numb 13. invaded and usurpt a power over mens faith and consciences and therefore we shall examine the pretence afterwards and try if God hath invested any Man or company of Men with such a power In the meane time he that submits his understanding to all that he knowes God hath said and is ready to submit to all that he hath said if he but know it denying his own affections and ends and interests and humane perswasions laying them all down at the foot of his great Master Jesus Christ that man hath brought his understanding into subjection and every proud thought unto the obedience of Christ and this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the obedience of Faith which is the duty of a Christian. But to proceed Besides these heresies noted in Scripture the age of the Apostles and that which followed was infested Numb 14. with other heresies but such as had the same formality and malignity with the precedent all of them either such as taught practicall impieties or denyed an Article of the Creed Egesippus in Eusebius reckons seven only prime heresies that sought to defloure the purity of the Church That of Simon that of Thebutes of Cleobius of Dositheus of Gortheus of Masbotheus I suppose Cerinthus to have been the seventh man though he expresse him not But of these except the last we know no particulars but that Egesippus sayes they were false Christs and that their doctrine was directly against God and his blessed Sonne Menander also was the first of a Sect but he bewitched the people with his Sorceries Cerinthus his doctrine pretended Enthusiasm or a new Revelation and ended in lust and impious theorems in matter of uncleannesse The * Vid. Hilar. lib. 1. de Trin. Ebionites denyed Christ to be the Sonne of God and affirmed him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 begot by naturall generation by occasion of which and the importunity of the Asian Bishops S. John writ his Gospel and taught the observation of Moses Law Basilides taught it lawfull to renounce the faith and take false oaths in time of Persecution Carpocrates was a very bedlam halfe-witch and quite mad-man and practizd lust which he cald the secret operations to overcome the Potentates of the world Some more there were but of the same nature and pest not of a nicety in dispute not a question of secret Philosophy not of atomes and undiscernable propositions but open defiances of all Faith of all sobriety and of all sanctity excepting only the doctrine of the Millenaries which in the best Ages was esteemed no heresy but true Catholike Doctrine though since it hath justice done to it and hath suffered a just condemnation Hitherto and in these instances the Church did esteeme Numb 15. and judge of herefies in proportion to the rules and characters of Faith For Faith being a Doctrine of piety as well as truth that which was either destructive of fundamentall verity or of Christian sanctity was against Faith and if it made a Sect was heresy if not it ended in personall impiety and went no farther But those who as S. Paul sayes not only did such things but had pleasure in them that doe them and therefore taught others to do what they impiously did dogmatize they were Hereticks both in
all their Decrees into the Creed as some have done since to what a volume had the Creed by this time swell'd and all the house had run into foundation nothing left for super-structures But that they did not it appeares that since they thought all their Decrees true yet they did not think them all necessary at least not in that degree and that they published such Decrees they did it declarando not imperando as Doctors in their Chaires not masters of other mens faith and consciences And yet there is some more modesty or warinesse or necessity what shall I call it then this comes too for why are not all controversies determin'd but even when Generall Assemblies of Prelates have been some controversies that have been very vexatious have been pretermitted and others of lesse consequence have been determind Why did never any Generall Councell condemn in expresse sentence the Pelagian heresy that great pest that subtle infection of Cristendome and yet divers Generall Councells did assemble while the heresy was in the world Both these cases in severall degrees leave men in their liberty of believing and prophesying The latter proclaimes that all controversies cannot be determind to sufficient purposes and the first declares that those that are are not all of them matters of Faith and themselves are not so secure but they may bee deceived and therefore possibly it were better it were let alone for if the latter leaves them divided in their opinions yet their Communions and therefore probably their charities are not divided but the former divides their Communions and hinders their interest and yet for ought is certain the accused person is the better Catholike And yet after all this it is not safety enough to say let the Councell or Prelates determine Articles warily seldome with great caution and with much sweetnesse and modesty For though this be better then to doe it rashly frequently and furiously yet if we once transgresse the bounds set us by the Apostles in their Creed and not onely preach other truths but determine them pro tribunali as well as pro cathedra although there be no errour in the subject matter as in Nice there was none yet if the next Ages say they will determine another Article with as much care and caution and pretend as great a necessity there is no hindring them but by giving reasons against it and so like enough they might have done against the decreeing the Article at Nice yet that is not sufficient for since the Authority of the Nicene Councell hath grown to the heigth of a mountainous prejudice against him that should say it was ill done the same reason and the same necessity may be pretended by any Age and in any Councell and they think themselves warranted by the great precedent at Nice to proceed as peremptorily as they did but then if any other Assembly of learned men may possibly be deceiv'd were it not better they should spare the labour then that they should with so great pomp and solennities engage mens perswasions and determine an Article which after Ages must rescind for therefore most certainly in their own Age the point with safety of faith and salvation might have been disputed and disbelieved And that many mens faiths have been tyed up by Acts and Decrees of Councels for those Articles in which the next Age did see a liberty had better beene preserved because an errour was determined wee shall afterward receive a more certaine account And therefore the Councell of Nice did well and Constantinople did well so did Ephesus and Chalcedon but it is Numb 32. because the Articles were truly determin'd for that is part of my beliefe but who is sure it should be so before hand and whether the points there determin'd were necessary or no to be believ'd or to be determin'd if peace had been concern'd in it through the faction and division of the parties I suppose the judgement of Constantine the Emperour and the famous Hosius of Corduba is sufficient to instruct us whose authority I rather urge then reasons because it is a prejudice and not a reason I am to contend against So that such determinations and publishing of Confessions with Authority of Prince and Bishop are sometimes of very Numb 33. good use for the peace of the Church and they are good also to determine the judgement of indifferent persons whose reasons of either side are not too great to weigh down the probability of that Authority But for persons of confident and imperious understandings they on whose side the determination is are armed with a prejudice against the other and with a weapon to affront them but with no more to convince them and they against whom the decision is doe the more readily betake themselves to the defensive and are engaged upon contestation and publike enmities for such Articles which either might safely have been unknown or with much charity disputed Therefore the Nicene Councell although it have the advantage of an acquir'd and prescribing Authority yet it must not become a precedent to others least the inconveniences of multiplying more Articles upon as great pretence of reason as then make the act of the Nicene Fathers in straightning Prophesying and enlarging the Creed become accidentally an inconvenience The first restraint although if it had been complaind of might possibly have been better consider'd of yet the inconvenience is not visible till it comes by way of precedent to usher in more It is like an Arbitrary power which although by the same reason it take six pence from the subject it may take a hundred pound and then a thousand and then all yet so long as it is within the first bounds the inconvenience is not so great but when it comes to be a precedent or argument for more then the first may justly be complaind of as having in it that reason in the principle which brought the inconvenience in the sequell and we have seen very ill consequents from innocent beginnings And the inconveniences which might possibly arise from Numb 34. this precedent those wise Personages also did fore-see and therefore although they took liberty in Nice to adde some Articles or at least more explicitely to declare the first Creed yet they then would have all the world to rest upon that and goe no farther as believing that to be sufficient S. Athanasius declares their opinion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epist ad Epict. That Faith which those Fathers there confessed was sufficient for the refutation of all impiety and the establishment of all Faith in Christ and true Religion And therefore there was a famous Epistle written by Zeno the Emperour called the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Euagr. l. 3. c. 14. or the Epistle of reconciliation in which all disagreeing interests are entreated to agree in the Nicene Symbol and a promise made upon that condition to communicate with all other Sects adding withall that the Church should
subjects to kill him Pasce agnos said Christ the third time And pasce is doce and pasce is Impera and pasce is occide Now if others should take the same unreasonablenesse I will not say but the same liberty in expounding Scripture or if it be not licence taken but that the Scripture it selfe is so full and redundant in senses quite contrary what man soever or what company of men soever shall use this principle will certainly finde such rare productions from severall places that either the unreasonablenesse of the thing will discover the errour of the proceeding or else there will be a necessity of permitting a great liberty of judgement where is so infinite variety without limit or mark of necessary determination If the first then because an errour is so obvious and ready to our selves it will be great imprudence or tyranny to be hasty in judging others but if the latter it is it that I contend for for it is most unreasonable when either the thing it selfe ministers variety or that we take licence to our selves in variety of interpretations or proclaime to all the world our great weaknesse by our actually being deceived that we should either prescribe to others magisterially when we are in errour or limit their understandings when the thing it selfe affords liberty and variety SECT IV. Of the difficulty of Expounding Scripture THese considerations are taken from the nature of Scripture it selfe but then if we consider that we have no certain Numb 1. wayes of determining places of difficulty and Question infallibly and certainly but that we must hope to be sav'd in the beliefe of things plaine necessary and fundamentall and our pious endeavour to finde out Gods meaning in such places which he hath left under a cloud for other great ends reserved to his own knowledge we shall see a very great necessity in allowing a liberty in Prophesying without prescribing authoritatively to other mens consciences and becomming Lords and Masters of their Faith Now the meanes of expounding Scripture are either externall or internall For the externall as Church Authority Tradition Fathers Councels and Decrees of Bishops they are of a distinct consideration and follow after in their order But here we will first consider the invalidity and uncertainty of all those meanes of expounding Scripture which are more proper and internall to the nature of the thing The great Masters of Commentaries some whereof have undertaken to know all mysteries have propounded many wayes to expound Scripture which indeed are excellent helps but not infallible assistances both because themselves are but morall instruments which force not truth ex abscondito as also because they are not infallibly used and applyed 1. Sometime the sense is drawn forth by the context and connexion of parts It is well when it can be so But when there is two or three antecedents and subjects spoken of what man or what rule shall ascertain me that I make my reference true by drawing the relation to such an antecedent to which I have a minde to apply it another hath not For in a contexture where one part does not alwayes depend upon another Where things of differing natures intervene and interrupt the first intentions there it is not alwayes very probable to expound Scripture take its meaning by its proportion to the neighbouring words But who desires satisfaction in this may read the observation verified in S. Gregory's moralls upon Job lib. 5. c. 29. and the instances he there brings are excellent proofe that this way of Interpretation does not warrant any man to impose his Expositions upon the beliefe and understanding of other men too confidently and magisterially 2. Another great pretence of medium is the conference of places which Illyricus calls ingens remedium faelicissimam expositionem Numb 2. sanctae scripturae and indeed so it is if well and temperately used but then we are beholding to them that doe so for there is no rule that can constrain them to it for comparing of places is of so indefinite capacity that if there be ambiguity of words variety of sense alteration of circumstances or difference of stile amongst Divine Writers then there is nothing that may be more abused by wilfull people or may more easily deceive the unwary or that may amuse the most intelligent Observer The Anabaptists take advantage enough in this proceeding and indeed so may any one that list and when we pretend against them the necessity of baptizing all by authority of nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aquâ spiritu they have a parallel for it and tell us that Christ will baptize us with the holy Ghost and with fire and that one place expounds the other and because by fire is not meant an Element or any thing that is naturall but an Allegory and figurative expression of the same thing so also by water may be meant the figure signifying the effect or manner of operation of the holy Spirit Fire in one place and water in the other doe but represent to us that Christs baptism is nothing else but the cleansing and purifying us by the holy Ghost But that which I here note as of greatest concernment and which in all reason ought to be an utter overthrow to this topique is an universall abuse of it among those that use it most and when two places seem to have the same expression or if a word have a double signification because in this place it may have such a sense therefore it must because in one of the places the sense is to their purpose they conclude that therefore it must be so in the other too An instance I give in the great Question between the Socinians and the Catholikes If any place be urg'd in which our blessed Saviour is called God they shew you two or three where the word God is taken in a depressed sense for a quasi Deus as when God said to Moses Constitui te Deum Pharaonis and hence they argue because I can shew the word is used for a Deus factus therefore no Argument is sufficient to prove Christ to be Deus verus from the appellative of Deus And might not another argue to the exact contrary and as well urge that Moses is Deus verus because in some places the word Deus is used pro Deo aeterno Both wayes the Argument concludes impiously and unreasonably It is a fallacy à posse ad esse affirmativè because breaking of bread is sometimes used for an Eucharisticall manducation in Scripture therefore I shall not from any testimony of Scripture affirming the first Christians to have broken bread together conclude that they liv'd hospitably and in common society Because it may possibly be eluded therefore it does not signifie any thing And this is the great way of answering all the Arguments that can be brought against any thing that any man hath a mind to defend and any man that reads any controversies
sayes nothing against those Articles though he misse the particular sense of the place there is no danger or sinne in his Exposition but how that analogy of Faith should have any other influence in expounding such places in which those Articles of Faith are neither expressed nor involv'd I understand not But then if you extend the analogy of Faith further then that which is proper to the rule of Symbol of Faith then every man expounds Scripture according to the analogy of Faith but what His own Faith which Faith if it be questioned I am no more bound to expound according to the analogy of another mans Faith then he to expound according to the analogy of mine And this is it that is complain'd on of all sides that overvalue their own opinions Scripture seems so clearly to speak what they believe that they wonder all the world does not see it as clear as they doe but they satisfie themselves with saying that it is because they come with prejudice whereas if they had the true beliefe that is theirs they would easily see what they see And this is very true For if they did believe as others believe they would expound Scriptures to their sense but if this be expounding according to the analogy of Faith it signifies no more then this Be you of my mind and then my Arguments will seem concluding and my Authorities and Allegations pressing and pertinent And this will serve on all sides and therefore will doe but little service to the determination of Questions or prescribing to other mens consciences on any side Lastly Consulting the Originals is thought a great matter Numb 5. to Interpretation of Scriptures But this is to small purpose For indeed it will expound the Hebrew and the Greek and rectifie Translations But I know no man that sayes that the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek are easie and certaine to be understood and that they are hard in Latine and English The difficulty is in the thing however it be expressed the least is in the language If the Originall Languages were our mother tongue Scripture is not much the easier to us and a naturall Greek or a Jew can with no more reason nor authority obtrude his Interpretations upon other mens consciences then a man of another Nation Adde to this that the inspection of the Originall is no more certain way of Interpretation of Scripture now then it was to the Fathers and Primitive Ages of the Church and yet he that observes what infinite variety of Translations of the Bible were in the first Ages of the Church as S. Hierom observes and never a one like another will think that we shall differ as much in our Interpretations as they did and that the medium is as uncertain to us as it was to them and so it is witnesse the great number of late Translations and the infinite number of Commentaries which are too pregnant an Argument that wee neither agree in the understanding of the words nor of the sense The truth is all these wayes of Interpreting of Scripture which of themselves are good helps are made either by design Numb 6. or by our infirmites wayes of intricating and involving Scriptures in greater difficulty because men doe not learn their doctrines from Scripture but come to the understanding of Scripture with preconceptions and idea's of doctrines of their own and then no wonder that Scriptures look like Pictures wherein every man in the roome believes they look on him only and that wheresoever he stands or how often soever he changes his station So that now what was intended for a remedy becomes the promoter of our disease and our meat becomes the matter of sicknesses And the mischiefe is the wit of man cannot find a remedy for it for there is no rule no limit no certain principle by which all men may be guided to a certain and so infallible an Interpretation that he can with any equity prescribe to others to believe his Interpretations in places of controversy or ambiguity A man would think that the memorable Prophesy of Jacob that the Scepter should not depart from Judah till Shiloh come should have been so clear a determination of the time of the Messias that a Jew should never have doubted it to have been verified in Jesus of Nazareth and yet for this so clear vaticination they have no lesse then twenty six Answers S. Paul and S. James seem to speak a little diversly concerning Justification by Faith and Works and yet to my understanding it is very easy to reconcile them but all men are not of my mind for Osiander in his confutation of the book which Melanchton wrote against him observes that there are twenty severall opinions concerning Iustification all drawn from the Scriptures by the men only of the Augustan Confession There are sixteen severall opinions concerning originall sinne and as many definitions of the Sacraments as there are Sects of men that disagree about them And now what help is there for us in the midst of these uncertainties If we follow any one Translation or any one Numb 7. mans Commentary what rule shall we have to chuse the right by or is there any one man that hath translated perfectly or expounded infallibly No Translation challenges such a prerogative as to be authentick but the Vulgar Latine and yet see with what good successe For when it was declared authentick by the Councell of Trent Sixtus put forth a Copy much mended of what it was and tyed all men to follow that but that did not satisfie for Pope Clement reviews and corrects it in many places and still the Decree remaines in a changed subject And secondly that Translation will be very unapt to satisfie in which one of their own men Isidore Clarius a Monk of Brescia found and mended eight thousand faults besides innumerable others which he sayes he pretermitted And then thirdly to shew how little themselves were satisfied with it divers learned men amongst them did new translate the Bible and thought they did God and the Church good service in it So that if you take this for your precedent you are sure to be mistaken infinitely If you take any other the Authors themselves doe not promise you any security If you resolve to follow any one as farre only as you see cause then you only doe wrong or right by chance for you have certainty just proportionable to your own skill to your own infallibility If you resolve to follow any one whether soever he leads we shall oftentimes come thither where we shall see our selves become ridiculous as it happened in the case of Spiridion Bishop of Cyprus who so resolv'd to follow his old book that when an eloquent Bishop who was desired to Preach read his Text Tu autem tolle cubile tuum ambula Spiridion was very angry with him because in his book it was tolle lectum tuum and thought it arrogance in the preacher
knew not now quite contrary we cannot safely believe them to be Apostolicall unlesse we doe know their beginning to have been from the Apostles For this consisting of probabilities and particulars which put together make up a morall demonstration the Argument which I now urge hath been growing these fifteen hundred years and if anciently there was so much as to evacuate the Authority of Tradition much more is there now absolutely to destroy it when all the particulars which time and infinite variety of humane accidents have been amassing together are now concentred and are united by way of constipation Because every Age and every great change and every heresy and every interest hath increased the difficulty of finding out true Traditions 3. There are very many Traditions which are lost and yet they are concerning matters of as great consequence as most of Numb 5. those Questions for the determination whereof Traditions are pretended It is more then probable that as in Baptism and the Eucharist the very formes of ministration are transmitted to us so also in confirmation and ordination and that there were speciall directions for visitation of the sick and explicite interpretations of those difficult places of S. Paul which S. Peter affirmed to be so difficult that the ignorant doe wrest them to their own damnation and yet no Church hath conserved these or those many more which S. Basil affirms to be so many that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the day would faile him in the very simple enumeration of all Cap. 29. despir Sancto Traditions Ecclesiasticall And if the Church hath fail'd in keeping the great variety of Traditions it will hardly be thought a fault in a private person to neglect Tradition which either the whole Church hath very much neglected inculpably or else the whose Church is very much too blame And who can ascertain us that she hath not entertained some which are no Traditions as well as lost thousands that are That she did entertain some false Traditions I have already prov'd but it is also as probable that some of those which these Ages did propound for Traditions are not so as it is certain that some which the first Ages cald Traditions were nothing lesse 4. There are some opinions which when they began to be publikely received began to be accounted prime Traditions Numb 6. and so became such not by a native title but by adoption and nothing is more usuall then for the Fathers to colour their popular opinion with so great an appellative S. Austin cald the communicating of Infants an Apostolicall Tradition and yet we doe not practise it because we disbelieve the Allegation And that every custome which at first introduction was but a private fancy or singular practise grew afterwards into a publike rite and went for a Tradition after a while continuance appears by Tertullian who seems to justifie it Non enim existimas tu Contra Marcon licitum esse cuicunque fideli constituere quod Deo placere illi visum De coron milit c. 3. 4. fuerit ad disciplinam salutem And againe A quocunque traditore censetur nec authorem respicias sed authoritatem And S. Hierome most plainly Praecepra majorum Apostolicas Tradiones Apud Euseb. l. 5. c. 20. quisque existimat And when Irenaeus had observed that great variety in the keeping of Lent which yet to be a fourty dayes Fast is pretended to descend from Tradition Apostolicall some fasting but one day before Easter some two some fourty and this even long before Irenaeus time he gives this reason Varietas illa jejunii coepit apud Majores nostros qui non accuratè consuetudinem eorum qui vel simplicitate quâdam vel privatâ authoritate in posterum aliquid statuissent observarant ex translatione Christophorsoni And there are yet some points of good concernment which if any man should Question in a high manner they would prove indeterminable by Scripture or sufficient reason and yet I doubt not their confident Defenders would say they are opinions of the Church and quickly pretend a Tradition from the very Apostles and believe themselves so secure that they could not be discovered because the Question never having been disputed gives them occasion to say that which had no beginning known was certainly from the Apostles For why should not Divines doe in the Question of reconfirmation as in that of rebaptization Are not the grounds equall from an indelible character in one as in the other and if it happen such a Question as this after contestation should be determin'd not by any positive decree but by the cession of one part and the authority and reputation of the other does not the next Age stand faire to be abused with a pretence of Tradition in the matter of reconfirmation which never yet came to a serious Question For so it was in the Question of rebaptization for which there was then no more evident Tradition then there is now in the Question of reconfirmation as I proved formerly but yet it was carried upon that Title 5. There is great variety in the probation of Tradition so that whatever is proved to be Tradition is not equally and Numb 7. alike credible for nothing but universall Tradition is of it selfe credible other Traditions in their just proportion as they partake of the degrees of universality Now that a Tradition be universall or which is all one that it be a credible Testimony S. Irenaeus requires that Tradition should derive from all the Lib. 3. c. 4. Churches Apostolicall And therefore according to this rule there was no sufficient medium to determine the Question about Easter because the Eastern and Western Churches had severall Traditions respectively and both pretended from the Apostles Clemens Alexandrinus sayes it was a secret Tradition Li. 1. Stromat from the Apostles that Christ preached but one year But L. 2. c. 39. Irenaeus sayes it did derive from Hereticks and sayes that he Omnes Seniores testantur qui in Asiâ apud Iohannem Discipulum Domini convenerunt id ipsum tradidisse eis Iohannem c. qui alios Apostolos viderunt haec eadem ab ipsis audierunt testantur de ejusmodi relatione by Tradition first from S. John and then from his Disciples received another Tradition that Christ was almost fifty years old when he dyed and so by consequence preached almost twenty years both of them were deceived and so had all that had believed the report of either pretending Tradition Apostolicall Thus the custome in the Latine Church of fasting on Saturday was against that Tradition which the Greeks had from the Apostles and therefore by this division and want of consent which was the true Tradition was so absolutely indeterminable that both must needs lose much of their reputation But how then when not only particular Churches but single persons are all the proofe we have for a Tradition And
alike necessary or alike indifferent if the former why does no Church observe them if the later why does the Church of Rome charge upon others the shame of novelty for leaving of some Rites and Ceremonies which by her own practice we are taught to have no obligation in them but to be adiaphorous S. Paul gave order that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife The Church of Rome will not allow so much other Churches allow more The Apostles commanded Christians to Fast on Wednesday and Friday as appeares in their Canons The Church of Rome Fasts Friday and Saturday and not on Wednesday The Apostles had their Agapae or love Feasts we should believe them scandalous They used a kisse of charity in ordinary addresses the Church of Rome keeps it only in their Masse other Churches quite omit it The Apostles permitted Priests and Deacons to live in conjugall Society as appears in the 5. Can. of the Apostles which to them is an Argument who believe them such and yet the Church of Rome by no meanes will endure it nay more Michael Medina gives Testimony that of 84 Canons Apostolicall which Clemens collected De sacr hom continent li 5. c. 105. scarce six or eight are observed by the Latine Church and Peresius gives this account of it In illis contineri multa quae temporum corruptione non plenè observantur aliis pro temporis De Tradit part 3. c. de Author Can. Apost materiae qualitate aut obliteratis aut totius Ecclesiae magisterio abrogatis Now it were good that they which take a liberty to themselves should also allow the same to others So that for one thing or other all Traditions excepting those very few that are absolutely universall will lose all their obligation and become no competent medium to confine mens practises or limit their faiths or determine their perswasions Either for the difficulty of their being prov'd the incompetency of the testimony that transmits them or the indifferency of the thing transmitted all Traditions both rituall and doctrinall are disabled from determining our consciences either to a necessary believing or obeying 6. To which I adde by way of confirmation that there are some things called Traditions and are offered to be proved to Numb 9. us by a Testimony which is either false or not extant Clemens of Alexandria pretended it a Tradition that the Apostles preached to them that dyed in infidelity even after their death and then raised them to life but he proved it only by the Testimony of the Book of Hermes he affirmed it to be a Tradition Apostolicall that the Greeks were saved by their Philosophy but he had no other Authority for it but the Apocryphall Books of Peter and Paul Tertullian and S. Basil pretend it an Apostolicall Tradition to sign in the aire with the sign of the Crosse but this was only consign'd to them in the Gospel of Nicodemus But to instance once for all in the Epistle of Marcellus to the Bishop of Antioch where he affirmes that it is the Canon of the Apostles praeter sententiam Romani Pontificis non posse Conciliae celebrari And yet there is no such Canon extant nor ever was for ought appears in any Record we have and yet the Collection of the Canons is so intire that though it hath something more then what was Apostolicall yet it hath nothing lesse And now that I am casually fallen upon an instance from the Canons of the Apostles I consider that there cannot in the world a greater instance be given how easy it is to be abused in the believing of Traditions For 1. to the first 50. which many did admit for Apostolicall 35 more were added which most men now count spurious all men call dubious and some of them universally condemned by peremptory sentence even by them who are greatest admirers of that Collection as 65. 67. and 8 ⅘ Canons For the first 50 it is evident that there are some things so mixt with them and no mark of difference left that the credit of all is much impared insomuch that Isidor of Sevill sayes they were Apoeryphall made by Hereticks and published under the Apud Gratian. dist 16. c. Canones title Apostolicall but neither the Fathers nor the Church of Rome did give assent to them And yet they have prevail'd so farre amongst some that Damascen is of opinion they should Lib. ◠c. 18 de Orthod fide be received equally with the Canonicall writings of the Apostles One thing only I observe and we shall find it true in most writings whose Authority is urged in Questions of Theology that the Authority of the Tradition is not it which moves the assent but the nature of the thing and because such a Canon is delivered they doe not therefore believe the sanction or proposition so delivered but disbelieve the Tradition if they doe not like the matter and so doe not judge of the matter by the Tradition but of the Tradition by the matter And thus the Church of Rome rejects the 84 or 85 Canon of the Apostles not because it is delivered with lesse Authority then the last 35 are but because it reckons the Canon of Scripture otherwise then it is at Rome Thus also the fifth Canon amongst the first 50 because it approves the marriage of Priests and Deacons does not perswade them to approve of it too but it selfe becomes suspected for approving it So that either they accuse themselves of palpable contempt of the Apostolicall Authority or else that the reputation of such Traditions is kept up to serve their own ends and therefore when they encounter them they are more to be upheld which what else is it but to teach all the world to contemn such pretences and undervalue Traditions and to supply to others a reason why they should doe that which to them that give the occasion is most unreasonable 7. The Testimony of the Ancient Church being the only Numb 10. meanes of proving Tradition and sometimes their dictates and doctrine being the Tradition pretended of necessity to be imitated it is considerable that men in their estimate of it take their rise from severall Ages and differing Testimonies and are not agreed about the competency of their Testimony and the reasons that on each side make them differ are such as make the Authority it selfe the lesse authentick and more repudiable Some will allow only of the three first Ages as being most pure most persecuted and therefore most holy least interested serving fewer designs having fewest factions and therefore more likely to speak the truth for Gods sake and its own as best complying with their great end of acquiring Heaven in recompence of losing their lives Others * Vid. Card. Petron. lettre an Sieur Casaubon say that those Ages being persecuted minded the present Doctrines proportionable to their purposes and constitution of the Ages and make little or nothing of those Questions which
Psal. 132. S. Hilary f L. 2. contra heres tom 1. haer 61. S. Epiphanius and divers others all speaking words to the same sense with that saying of S. g 1. Cor. 4. Paul Nemo sentiat super quod scriptum est will see that there is reason that since no man is materially a Heretick but he that erres in a point of Faith and all Faith is sufficienly recorded in Scripture the judgement of Faith and Heresy is to be derived from thence and no man is to be condemned for dissenting in an Article for whose probation Tradition only is pretended only according to the degree of its evidence let every one determine himselfe but of this evidence we must not judge for others for unlesse it be in things of Faith and absolute certainties evidence is a word of relation and so supposes two terms the object and the faculty and it is an imperfect speech to say a thing is evident in it selfe unlesse we speak of first principles or clearest revelations for that may be evident to one that is not so to another by reason of the pregnancy of some apprehensions and the immaturity of others This Discourse hath its intention in Traditions Doctrinall and Rituall that is such Traditions which propose Articles new in materiâ but now if Scripture be the repository of all Divine Truths sufficient for us Tradition must be considered as its instrument to convey its great mysteriousnesse to our understandings it is said there are traditive Interpretations as well as traditive propositions but these have not much distinct consideration in them both because their uncertainty is as great as the other upon the former considerations as also because in very deed there are no such things as traditive Interpretations universall For as for particulars they signifie no more but that they are not sufficient determinations of Questions Theologicall therefore because they are particular contingent and of infinite variety and they are no more Argument then the particular authority of these men whose Commentaries they are and therefore must be considered with them The summe is this Since the Fathers who are the best Numb 12. Witnesses of Traditions yet were infinitely deceived in their account since sometimes they guest at them and conjectured by way of Rule and Discourse and not of their knowledge not by evidence of the thing since many are called Traditions which were not so many are uncertaine whether they were or no yet confidently pretended and this uncertainty which at first was great enough is increased by infinite causes and accidents in the succession of 1600 yeares since the Church hath been either so carelesse or so abused that shee could not or would not preserve Traditions with carefulnesse and truth since it was ordinary for the old Writers to set out their own fancies and the Rites of their Church which had been Ancient under the specious Title of Apostolicall Traditions since some Traditions rely but upon single Testimony at first and yet descending upon others come to be attested by many whose Testimony though conjunct yet in value is but single because it relies upon the first single Relator and so can have no greater authority or certainty then they derive from the single person since the first Ages who were most competent to consign Tradition yet did consign such Traditions as be of a nature wholy discrepant from the present Questions and speak nothing at all or very imperfectly to our purposes and the following Ages are no fit Witnesses of that which was not transmitted to them because they could not know it at all but by such transmission and prior consignation since what at first was a Tradition came afterwards to be written and so ceased its being a Tradition yet the credit of Traditions commenc'd upon the certainty and reputation of those truths first delivered by word afterward consign'd by writing since what was certainly Tradition Apostolicall as many Rituals were are rejected by the Church in severall Ages and are gone out into a desuetude and lastly since beside the no necessity of Traditions there being abundantly enough in Scripture there are many things called Traditions by the Fathers which they themselves either proved by no Authors or by Apocryphall and spurious and Hereticall the matter of Tradition will in very much be so uncertain so false so suspitious so contradictory so improbable so unproved that if a Question be contested and be offered to be proved only by Tradition it will be very hard to impose such a proposition to the beliefe of all men with any imperiousnesse or resolved determination but it will be necessary men should preserve the liberty of believing and prophesying and not part with it upon a worse merchandise and exchange then Esau made for his birth-right SECT VI. Of the uncertainty and insufficiency of Councels Ecclesiasticall to the same purpose BUt since we are all this while in uncertainty it is necessary that we should addresse our selves somewhere where we Numb 1. may rest the soale of our foot And nature Scripture and experience teach the world in matters of Question to submit to some finall sentence For it is not reason that controversies should continue till the erring person shall be willing to condemn himselfe and the Spirit of God hath directed us by that great precedent at Jerusalem to addresse our selves to the Church that in a plenary Councell and Assembly shee may synodically determine Controversies So that if a Generall Councell have determin'd a Question or expounded Scripture we may no more disbelieve the Decree then the Spirit of God himselfe who speaks in them And indeed if all Assemblies of Bishops were like that first and all Bishops were of the same spirit of which the Apostles were I should obey their Decree with the same Religion as I doe them whole preface was Visum est Spiritui Sancto nobis And I doubt not but our blessed Saviour intended that the Assemblies of the Church should be Judges of Controversies and guides of our perswasions in matters of difficulty But he also intended they should proceed according to his will which he had revealed and those precedents which he had made authentick by the immediate assistance of his holy Spirit He hath done his part but we doe not doe ours And if any private person in the simplicity and purity of his soule desires to find out a truth of which he is in search and inquisition if he prayes for wisedome we have a promise he shall be heard and answered liberally and therefore much more when the representatives of the Catholike Church doe meet because every person there hath in individuo a title to the promise and another title as he is a governour and a guide of soules and all of them together have another title in their united capacity especially if in that union they pray and proceed with simplicity and purity so that there is no disputing against the pretence
and promises and authority of Generall Councels For if any one man can hope to be guided by Gods Spirit in the search the pious and impartiall and unprejudicate search of truth then much more may a Generall Councell If no private man can hope for it then truth is not necessary to be found nor we are not oblig'd to search for it or else we are sav'd by chance But if private men can by vertue of a promise upon certain conditions be assured of finding out sufficient truth much more shall a Generall Councell So that I consider thus There are many promises pretended to belong to Generall Assemblies in the Church But I know not any ground nor any pretence that they shall be absolutely assisted without any condition on their own parts and whether they will or no Faith is a vertue as well as charity and therefore consists in liberty and choyce and hath nothing in it of necessity There is no Question but that they are obliged to proceed according to some rule for they expect no assistance by way of Enthusiasme if they should I know no warrant for that neither did any Generall Councell ever offer a Decree which they did not think sufficiently prov'd by Scripture Reason or Tradition as appears in the Acts of the Councels now then if they be tyed to conditions it is their duty to observe them but whether it be certaine that they will observe them that they will doe all their duty that they will not sin even in this particular in the neglect of their duty that 's the consideration So that if any man questions the Title and Authority of Generall Councels and whether or no great promises appertain to them I suppose him to be much mistaken but he also that thinks all of them have proceeded according to rule and reason and that none of them were deceived because possibly they might have been truly directed is a stranger to the History of the Church and to the perpetuall instances and experiments of the faults and failings of humanity It is a famous saying of S. Gregory that he had the foure first Councels in esteem and veneration next to the foure Evangelists I suppose it was because he did believe them to have proceeded according to Rule and to have judged righteous judgement but why had not he the same opinion of other Councels too which were celebrated before his death for he lived after the fifth Generall not because they had not the same Authority for that which is warrant for one is warrant for all but because he was not so confident that they did their duty nor proceeded so without interest as the first foure had done and the following Councels did never get that reputation which all the Catholike Church acknowledged due to the first foure And in the next Order were the three following generalls for the Greeks and Latines did never joyntly acknowledge but seven generalls to have been authentick in any sense because they were in no sense agreed that any more then seven had proceeded regularly and done their duty So that now the Question is not whether Generall Councels have a promise that the holy Ghost will assist them For every private man hath that promise that if he does his duty he shall be assisted sufficiently in order to that end to which he needs assistance and therefore much more shall Generall Councels in order to that end for which they convene and to which they need assistance that is in order to the conservation of the Faith for the doctrinall rules of good life and all that concerns the essentiall duty of a Christian but not in deciding Questions to satisfie contentious or curious or presumptuous spirits But now can the Bishops so conven'd be factious can they be abused with prejudice or transported with interests can they resist the holy Ghost can they extinguish the Spirit can they stop their eares and serve themselves upon the holy Spirit and the pretence of his assistances and cease to serve him upon themselves by captivating their understandings to his dictates and their wills to his precepts Is it necessary they should perform any condition is there any one duty for them to perform in these Assemblies a duty which they have power to doe or not doe If so then they may faile of it and not doe their duty And if the assistance of the holy Spirit be conditionall then we have no more assurance that they are assisted then that they doe their duty and doe not sinne Now let us suppose what this duty is Certainly if the Gospel Numb 2. be hid it is hid to them that are lost and all that come to the knowledge of the truth must come to it by such meanes which are spirituall and holy dispositions in order to a holy and spirituall end They must be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace that is they must have peaceable and docible dispositions nothing with them that is violent and resolute to encounter those gentle and sweet assistances and the Rule they are to follow is the Rule which the holy Spirit hath consign'd to the Catholike Church that is the holy Scripture either * Vid. Optat. Milev l. 5. adv Parm. Baldvin in eundem S. August in Psa. 21. Expos. 2. intirely or at least for the greater part of the Rule So that now if the Bishops bee factious and prepossest with perswasions depending upon interest it is certain they may judge amisse and if they recede from the Rule it is certain they doe judge amisse And this I say upon their grounds who most advance the authority of Generall Councels For if a Generall Councell may erre if a Pope confirm it not then most certainly if in any thing it recede from Scripture it does also erre because that they are to expect the Popes confirmation they offer to prove from Scripture now if the Popes confirmation be required by authority of Scripture and that therefore the defaillance of it does evacuate the Authority of the Councell then also are the Councels Decrees invalid if they recede from any other part of Scripture So that Scripture is the Rule they are to follow and a man would have thought it had been needlesse to have proved it but that we are fallen into Ages in which no truth is certaine no reason concluding nor is there any thing that can convince some men For Stapleton with extreme boldnesse against the piety of Christendome against the publike sense of the ancient Relect. centrov 4. q. 1. a. 3 Church and the practise of all pious Assemblies of Bishops affirmes the Decrees of a Councell to be binding etiamsi non confirmetur ne probabili testimonio Scripturarum nay though it be quite extra Scripturam but all wise and good men have ever said that sense which S. Hilary expressed in these words Quae extra Evangelium sunt non defendam This was it which the good Emperour
Constantine propounded to the Fathers I. 2. ad Constant met at Nice libri Evangelici oracula Apostolorum veterum Prophetarum clarè nos instruunt quid sentiendum in Divinis Apud Theodor. l 1. c. 7. and this is confessed by a sober man of the Roman Church it selfe the Cardinall of Cusa Oportet qnod omnia talia quae legere debent contineantur in Authoritatibus sacrarum Scripturarum Concord Cathol l. 2. c 10. Now then all the advantage I shall take from hence is this That if the Apostles commended them who examined their Sermons by their conformity to the Law and the Prophets and the men of Berea were accounted noble for searching the Scriptures whether those things which they taught were so or no I suppose it will not be denyed but the Councels Decrees may also be tryed whether they be conform to Scripture yea or no and although no man can take cognisance and judge the Decrees of a Councell pro Authoritate publicâ yet pro informatione privatâ they may the Authority of a Councell is not greater then the Authority of the Apostles nor their dictates more sacred or authentick Now then put case a Councell should recede from Scripture whether or no were we bound to believe its Decrees I only aske the Question For it were hard to be bound to believe what to our understanding seems contrary to that which we know to be the Word of God But if we may lawfully recede from the Councels Decrees in case they be contrariant to Scripture it is all that I require in this Question For if they be tyed to a Rule then they are to be examined and understood according to the Rule and then we are to give our selves that liberty of judgement which is requisite to distinguish us from beasts and to put us into a capacity of reasonable people following reasonable guides But how ever if it be certaine that the Councells are to follow Scripture then if it be notorious that they doe recede from Scripture we are sure we must obey God rather then men and then we are well enough For unlesse we are bound to shut our eyes and not to look upon the Sunne if we may give our selves liberty to believe what seemes most plaine and unlesse the Authority of a Councell be so great a prejudice as to make us to doe violence to our understanding so as not to disbelieve the Decree because it seemes contrary to Scripture but to believe it agrees with Scripture though we know not how therefore because the Councell hath decreed it unlesse I say we be bound in duty to be so obediently blind and sottish we are sure that there are some Councels which are pretended Generall that have retired from the publike notorious words and sence of Scripture For what wit of man can reconcile the Decree of the thirteenth Session of the Councell of Constance with Scripture in which Session the halfe Communion was decreed in defiance of Scripture and with a non obstante to Christs institution For in the Preface of the Decree Christs institution and the practise of the Primitive Church is expressed and then with a non obstante Communion in one kind is establisht Now then suppose the non obstante in the form of words relates to the Primitive practise yet since Christs institution was taken notice of in the first words of the Decree and the Decree made quite contrary to it let the non obstante relate whither it will the Decree not to call it a defiance is a plaine recession from the institution of Christ and therefore the non obstante will referre to that without any sensible error and indeed for all the excuses to the contrary the Decree was not so discreetly fram'd but that in the very form of words the defiance and the non obstante is too plainly relative to the first words For what sense can there be in the first licet else licet Christus in utraque specie and licet Ecclesia Primitiva c. tamen hoc non obstante c. the first licet being a relative terme as well as the second licet must be bounded with some correspondent But it matters not much let them whom it concernes enjoy the benefit of all excuses they can imagine it is certaine Christs institution and the Councels sanction are as contrary as light and darknesse Is it possible for any man to contrive a way to make the Decree of the Councell of Trent commanding the publike Offices of the Church to be in Latine friends with the fourteenth chapter of the Corinthians It is not amisse to observe how the Hyperaspists of that Councell sweat to answer the Allegations of S. Paul and the wisest of them doe it so extremly poore that it proclaimes to all the world that the strongest man that is cannot eat Iron or swallow a Rock Now then would it not be an unspeakable Tyranny to all wise persons who as much hate to have their soules enslaved as their bodies imprisoned to command them to believe that these Decrees are agreeable to the word of God Upon whose understanding soever these are imposed they may at the next Session reconcile them to a crime and make any sinne sacred or perswade him to believe propositions contradictory to a Mathematicall demonstration All the Arguments in the world that can be brought to prove the infallibility of Councels can not make it so certain that they are infallible as these two instances doe prove infallibly that these were deceived and if ever we may safely make use of our reason and consider whether Councels have erred or no we cannot by any reason be more assured that they have or have not then we have in these particulars so that either our reason is of no manner of use in the discussion of this Question and the thing it selfe is not at all to be disputed or if it be we are certain that these actually were deceived and we must never hope for a clearer evidence in any dispute And if these be others might have been if they did as these did that is depart from their Rule And it was wisely said of Cusanus Notandum est experimento rerum universale Concilium posse deficere The experience L. 2. c. 14. Concord Cathol of it is notorious that Councels have erred And all the Arguments against experience are but plain sophistry And therefore I make no scruple to slight the Decrees of such Councels wherein the proceedings were as prejudicate Numb 3. and unreasonable as in the Councell wherein Abailardus was condemned where the presidents having pronounced Damnamus they at the lower end being awaked at the noise heard the latter part of it and concurred as farre as Mnamus went and that was as good as Damnamus for if they had been awake at the pronouncing the whole word they would have given sentence accordingly But by this meanes S. Bernard numbred the
have suspended or cassated the Decree in case the Pope had then disavowed it For besides the condemnation of Pope Honorius for heresy the 13 th and 55 th Canons of that Councell are expressely against the custome of the Church of Rome But this particular is involved in that new Question whether the Pope be above a Councell Now since the Contestation of this Question there was never any free or lawfull Councell * Vid. postea de Concil Sinvessane §. 6. N. 9. that determined for the Pope it is not likely any should and is it likely that any Pope will confirm a Councell that does not For the Councell of Basil is therefore condemn'd by the last Lateran which was an Assembly in the Popes own Palace and the Councell of Constance is of no value in this Question and slighted in a just proportion as that Article is disbelieved But I will not much trouble the Question with a long consideration of this particular the pretence is senselesse and illiterate against reason and experience and already determin'd by S. Austin sufficiently as to this particular Epist. 162. ad Glorium Ecce putemus illos Episcopos qui Romae judicaverunt non bonos judices fuisse Restabat adhuc plenarium Ecclesiae universae Concilium ubi etiam cum ipsis judicibus causa possit agitari ut si male judicasse convicti essent eorum sententiae solverentur For since Popes may be parties may be Simoniacks Schismaticks Hereticks it is against reason that in their own causes they should be judges or that in any causes they should be superior to their judges And as it is against reason so is it against all experience too for the Councell Sinvessanum as it said was conven'd to take Cognisance of Pope Marcellinus and divers Councels were held at Rome to give judgement in the causes of Damasus Sixtus the III Symmachus and Leo III and IV as is to be seen in Platina and the Tomes of the Councels And it is no answer to this and the like allegations to say in matters of fact and humane constitution the Pope may be judg'd by a Councell but in matters of Faith all the world must stand to the Popes determination and authoritative decision For if the Pope can by any colour pretend to any thing it is to a suprem Judicature in matters Ecclesiasticall positive and of fact and if he failes in this pretence he will hardly hold up his head for any thing else for the ancient Bishops deriv'd their Faith from the fountaine and held that in the highest tenure even from Christ their Head but by reason of the Imperiall * Vide Concil Chalced act 15. City it became the principall Seat and he surpriz'd the highest Judicature partly by the concession of others partly by his own accidentall advantages and yet even in these things although he was major singulis yet he was minor universis And this is no more then what was decreed of the eighth Generall Act. ult can 21. Synod which if it be sense is pertinent to this Question for Generall Councels are appointed to take Cognizance of Questions and differences about the Bishop of Rome non tamen audacter in eum ferre sententiam By audactèr as is supposed is meant praecipitanter hastily and unreasonably but if to give sentence against him bee wholy forbidden it is non-sense for to what purpose is an Authority of taking Cognizance if they have no power of giving sentence unlesse it were to deserre it to a superiour Judge which in this case cannot be supposed for either the Pope himselfe is to judge his own cause after their examination of him or the Generall Councell is to judge him So that although the Councell is by that Decree enjoyn'd to proceed modestly and warily yet they may proceed to sentence or else the Decree is ridiculous and impertinent But to cleare all I will instance in matters of Question and opinion For not only some Councels have made their Decrees Numb 5. without or against the Pope but some Councels have had the Popes confirmation and yet have not been the more legitimate or obligatory but are known to be hereticall For the Canons of the sixth Synod although some of them were made against the Popes and the custome of the Church of Rome a Pope a while after did confirm the Councell and yet the Canons are impious and hereticall and so esteem'd by the Church of Rome her selfe I instance in the second Canon which approves of that Synod of Carthage under Cyprian for rebaptization of Hereticks and the 72 Canon that dissolves marriage between persons of differing perswasion in matters of Christian Religion and yet these Canons were approved by Pope Adrian I. who in his Epistle to Tharasius which is in the second action of the seventh Synod calls them Canones divinè legalitèr praedicatos And these Canons were used by Pope Nicholas I. in his Epistle ad Michaclem and by Innocent III. c. à multis extra de aetat ordinandorum So that now that wee may apply this there are seven Generall Councels which by the Church of Rome are condemn'd of errour The * Vid. Socra l. z. c. 5. Sozom. l. 3. c. 5. Councell of Antioch A. D. 345. in which S. Athanasius was condemn'd The Councell of Millaine A. D. 354. of above 300 Bishops The Councell of Ariminum consisting of 600 Bishops The second Councell of Ephesus A. D. 449. in which the Eutychian heresy was confirmed Gregor in Regist li. 3. caus 7. ait Concilium Numidiae errasse Concilium Aquisgrani erravit De ra ptore raptâdist 20. can de libellis in glossâ and the Patriarch Flavianus kild by the faction of Dioscorus The Councell of Constantinople under Leo Isaurus A. D. 730 And another at Constantinople 35 years after And lastly the Councel at Pisa 134 years since Now that these Generall Councels are condemn'd is a sufficient Argument that Councels may erre and it is no answer to say they were not confirm'd by the Pope for the Popes confirmation I have shewn not to be necessary or if it were yet even that also is an Argument that Generall Councels may become invalid either by their own fault or by some extrinsecall supervening accident either of which evacuates their Authority and whether all that is required to the legitimation of a Councell was actually observ'd in any Councell is so hard to determine that no man can be infallibly sure that such a Councell is authentick and sufficient probation 2. And that is the second thing I shall observe There are so many Questions concerning the efficient the forme the Numb 6. matter of Generall Councells and their manner of proceeding and their finall sanction that after a Question is determin'd by a Conciliary Assembly there are perhaps twenty more Questions to be disputed before we can with confidence either believe the Councell upon its meere Authority or obtrude
it upon others And upon this ground how easy it is to elude the pressure of an Argument drawn from the Authority of a Generall Councell is very remarkable in the Question about the Popes or the Councels Superiority which Question although it be defin'd for the Councell against the Pope by five Generall Councels the Councell of Florence of Constance of Basil of Pisa and one of the Lateran's yet the Jesuites to this day account this Question pro non definitâ and have rare pretences for their escape as first It is true a Councell is above a Pope in case there be no Pope or he uncertain which is Bellarmine's answer never considering whether he spake sense or no nor yet remembring that the Councell of Basil deposed Eugenius who was a true Pope and so acknowledg'd Secondly sometimes the Pope did not confirm these Councels that 's their Answer And although it was an exception that the Fathers never thought of when they were pressed with the Authority of the Councell of Ariminum or Syrmium or any other Arrian Convention yet the Councell of Basil was conven'd by Pope Martin V. then in its sixteenth Session declar'd by Eugenius the IV. to be lawfully continued and confirmed expresly in some of its Decrees by Pope Nicholas and so stood till it was at last rejected by Leo X. very many years after but that came too late and with too visible an interest and this Councell did decree fide Catholicâ tenendum Concilium esse supra Papam But if one Pope confirms it and another rejects it as it happened in this case and in many more does it not destroy the competency of the Authority and we see it by this instance that it so serves the turns of men that it is good in some cases that is when it makes for them and invalid when it makes against them Thirdly but it is a little more ridiculous in the case of the Councell of Constance whose Decrees were confirm'd by Martin V. But that this may be no Argument against them Bellarmine tells you he only confirm'd those things quae facta fuerant Conciliaritèr re diligenter examinatâ of which there being no mark nor any certain Rule to judge it it is a device that may evacuate any thing we have a mind to it was not done Conciliaritèr that is not according to our mind for Conciliaritèr is a fine new nothing that may signifie what you please Fourthly but other devices yet more pretty they have As Whether the Councell of Lateran was a Generall Councell or no they know not no nor will not know which is a wise and plaine reservation of their own advantages to make it Generall or not Generall as shall serve their turns Fifthly as for the Councell of Florence they are not sure whether it hath defin'd the Question satis apertè apertè they will grant if you will allow them not satis apertè Sixthly and lastly the Councell of Pisa is neque approbatum neque reprobatum which is the greatest folly of all and most prodigious vanity so that by Bellar. de conc l. 1. c. 8. something or other either they were not conven'd lawfully or they did not proceed Conciliariter or 't is not certain that the Councell was Generall or no or whether the Councell were approbatum or reprobatum or else it is partim confirmatum partim reprobatum or else it is neque approbatum neque reprobatum By one of these wayes or a device like to these all Councels and all Decrees shall be made to signifie nothing and to have no Authority 3. There is no Generall Councell that hath determined Numb 7. that a Generall Councell is infallible No Scripture hath recorded it no Tradition universall hath transmitted to us any such proposition So that we must receive the Authority at a lower rate and upon a lesse probability then the things consigned by that Authority And it is strange that the Decrees of Councels should be esteem'd authentick and infallible and yet it is not infallibly certain that the Councels themselves are infallible because the beliefe of the Councels infallibility is not prov'd to us by any medium but such as may deceive us 4. But the best instance that Councels are some and may all be deceived is the contradiction of one Councell to another Numb 8. for in that case both cannot be true and which of them is true must belong to another judgement which is lesse then the solennity of a Generall Councell and the determination of this matter can be of no greater certainty after it is concluded then when it was propounded as a Question being it is to be determin'd by the same Authority or by a lesse then it selfe But for this allegation we cannot want instances The Councell of Trent allowes picturing of God the Father The Councell of Nice altogether disallowes it The same Nicene Sess. 25. Councell which was the seventh Generall allows of picturing Christ in the form of a Lamb But the sixth Synod by no Act. 2. meanes will endure it as Caranza affirms The Councell of Neocaesarea confirm'd by Leo IV dist 20. de libellis and approv'd Can. 82. by the first Nicene Councell as it is said in the seventh Session of the Councell of Florence forbids second Marriages and imposes Penances on them that are married the second time forbidding Priests to be present at such Marriage Feasts Besides that this is expresly against the Doctrine of S. Paul it is also against the Doctine of the Councell of Laodicea which took off such Cap. 1. Penances and pronounced second Marriages to be free and lawfull Nothing is more discrepant then the third Councell of Carthage and the Councell of Laodicea about assignation of the Canon of Scripture and yet the sixth Generall Synod approves both And I would faine know if all Generall Councels are of the same mind with the Fathers of the Councell of Carthage who reckon into the Canon five Books of Solomon I am sure S. Austin reckoned but three and I think all Christendome L. 17. de cul Dei c. 20. beside are of the same opinion And if we look into the title of the Law de Conciliis called Concordantia discordantiarum we shall find instances enough to confirm that the Decrees of some Councels are contradictory to others and that no wit can reconcile them And whether they did or no that they might disagree and former Councels be corrected by later was the beliefe of the Doctors in those Ages in which the best and most famous Councels were conven'd as appears in that famous saying of S. Austin speaking concerning the rebaptizing of Hereticks and how much the Africans were deceived in that Question he answers the Allegation of the Bishops Letters and those Nationall Councels which confirmed S. Cyprians opinion by saying that they were no finall determination For Episcoporum literae emendari possunt à Conciliis nationalibus L. 2.
de bapt Donat. c. 3. Concilia nationalia à plenariis ipsaque plenaria priora à posterioribus emendari Not only the occasion of the Question being a matter not of fact but of Faith as being instanc'd in the Question of rebaptization but also the very fabrick and oeconomy of the words put by all the answers of those men who think themselves pressed with the Authority of S. Austin For as Nationall Councels may correct the Bishops Letters and Generall Councels may correct Nationall so the later Generall may correct the former that is have contrary and better Decrees of manners and better determinations in matters of faith And from hence hath risen a Question whether is to be received the former or the later Councels in case they contradict each other The former are nearer the fountaines Apostolicall the later are of greater consideration The first have more Authority the later more reason The first are more venerable the later more inquisitive and seeing And now what rule shall we have to determine out beliefes whether to Authority or Reason the Reason and the Authority both of them not being the highest in their kinde both of them being repudiable and at most but probable And here it is that this great uncertainty is such as not to determine any body but fit to serve every body and it is sport to see that Bellarmine will by all meanes have the Councell of Carthage preferr'd before the Councell of Laodicea because it is later and L. 2. de Conc. c. 8. § respondeo in primis yet he preferres the second Nicene * Ibid. § de Concilio autem Councell before the Councell of Frankfurt because it is elder S. Austin would have the former Generals to be mended by the later but Isidore in Gratian sayes when Councels doe differ scandum esse antiquioribus the elder must carry it And indeed these probables are Dist. 20. Can. Domino Sancto buskins to serve every foot and they are like magnum parvum they have nothing of their own all that they have is in comparison of others so these topicks have nothing of resolute and dogmaticall truth but in relation to such ends as an interessed person hath a mind to serve upon them 5. There are many Councels corrupted and many pretended and alledged when there were no such things both which Numb 9. make the topick of the Authority of Councels to be little and inconsiderable There is a Councell brought to light in the edition of Councels by Binius viz. Sinvessanum pretended to be kept in the year 303 but it was so private till then that we find no mention of it in any ancient Record Neither Eusebius nor Ruffinus S Hierom nor Socrates Sozomen nor Theodoret nor Eutropius nor Bede knew any thing of it and the eldest allegation of it is by Pope Nicholas I in the ninth Century And he that shall consider that 300 Bishops in the midst of horrid Persecutions for so then they were are pretended to have conven'd will need no greater Argument to suspect the imposture besides he that was the framer of the engine did not lay his ends together handsomely for it is said that the deposition of Marcellinus by the Synod was told to Diocletian when he was in the Persian Warre when as it is known before that time he had return'd to Rome and triumph'd for his Persian Conquest as Eusebius in his Chronicle reports And this is so plain that Binius and Baronius pretend the Text to be corrupted to go to * Pro cum esset in bello Persarum legi volunt cum reversus esset è bello Persarum Euseb. Chronicon vide Binium in notis ad Concil Sinvessanum Tom. 1. Concil Baron Annal Tom. 3. A. D. 303. num 107. mend it by such an emendation as is a plain contradiction to the sense and that so un-clerk-like viz. by putting in two words and leaving out one which whether it may be allowed them by any licence lesse then Poeticall let Criticks judge S. Gregory saith that the Constantinopolitans had corrupted the Synod of I. 5. Ep. 14. ad Narsem Chalcedon and that he suspected the same concerning the Ephesine Councell And in the fifth Synod there was a notorious prevarication for there were false Epistles of Pope Vigilius and Menna the Patriarch of Constantinople inserted and so they passed for authentick till they were discovered in the sixth Generall Synod Actions the 12. and 14 And not only false Decrees and Actions may creep into the Codes of Councels but sometimes the authority of a learned man may abuse the Church with pretended Decrees of which there is no Copy or shadow in the Code it selfe And thus Thomas Aquinas sayes that the Epistle to the Hebrewes was reckoned in the Canon Comment in Hebr. by the Nicene Councell no shadow of which appears in those Copies we now have of it and this pretence and the reputation of the man prevail'd so farre with Melchior Canus the learned Bishop of Canaries that he believ'd it upon this ground Vir sanctus rem adeo gravem non astrueret nisi compertum habuisset and there are many things which have prevail'd upon lesse reason and a more slight Authority And that very Councell of Nice hath not only been pretended by Aquinas but very much abused by others and its Authority and great reputation hath made it more lyable to the fraud and pretences of idle people For whereas the Nicene Fathers made but twenty Canons for so many and no more were received by a Con. Carthag VI. cap. 9. Cecilian of Carthage that was at Nice in the Councell by S. b Con. African Austin and 200 African Bishops with him by S. c Ibid. c. 102. c. 133. Cyrill of Alexandria by d Lib. 1. Eccl. Hist. c. 6. Atticus of Constantinople by Ruffinus e In princ Con. de Synod Princ. Isidore and Theodoret as f Baronius tom 3. A. D. 325. n. 156. Tom. 3. ad A. D. 325. n. 62 63. Baronius witnesses yet there are fourscore lately found out in an Arabian M. S. and published in Latine by Turrian and Alfonsus of Pisa Jesuites surely and like to be masters of the mint And not only the Canons but the very Acts of the Nicene Councell are false and spurious and are so confessed by Baronius though how he and g Panopl l. 2. c. 6. Lindanus will be reconcil'd upon the point I neither know well nor much care Now if one Councell be corrupted we see by the instance of S. Gregory that another may be suspected and so all because he found the Councell of Chalcedon corrupted he suspected also the Ephesine and another might have suspected more for the Nicene was tampered fouly with and so three of the foure Generals were fullied and made suspicious and therefore we could not be secure of any If false Acts be inserted in one Councell who can
fidem etiam dictum unius privati esset dicto Pape aut totius Concilii praeferendum si ille moveretur melioribus Argumentis I end this Discourse with representing the words of Gregory Nazianzen in his Epistle to Procopius Ego si vera scribere Numb 11. oportet ita animo affectus sum ut omnia Episcoporum Concilia Athanas. lib. de Synod Frusta igitur circumcursitantes praetexunt ob fidem se Synodos postulare cum sit Divina Scriptura omnibus potentior fugiam quoniam nullius Concilii finem laetum faustumque vidi nec quod depulsionem malorum potius quam accessionem incrementum habuerit But I will not be so severe and dogmaticall against them For I believe many Councels to have been cald with sufficient Authority to have been managed with singular piety and prudence and to have been finished with admirable successe and truth And where we find such Councels he that will not with all veneration believe their Decrees and receive their sanctions understands not that great duty he owes to them who have the care of our soules whose faith we are bound to follow saith S. Paul that is so long as they follow Christ and certainly many Councels have done so But Heb. 13. 7. this was then when the publike interest of Christendome was better conserv'd in determining a true Article then in finding a discreet temper or a wise expedient to satisfie disagreeing persons As the Fathers at Trent did and the Lutherans and Calvinists did at Sendomir in Polonia and the Sublapsarians and Supralapsarians did at Dort It was in Ages when the summe of Religion did not consist in maintaining the Grandezza of the Papacy where there was no order of men with a fourth Vow upon them to advance S. Peters Chaire when there was no man nor any company of men that esteem'd themselves infallible and therefore they searched for truth as if they meant to find it and would believe it if they could see it prov'd not resolv'd to prove it because they had upon chance or interest believ'd it then they had rather have spoken a truth then upheld their reputation but only in order to truth This was done sometimes and when it was done God's Spirit never fail'd them but gave them such assistances as were sufficient to that good end for which they were Assembled and did implore his aid And therefore it is that the foure generall Councels so called by way of eminency have gained so great a reputation above all others not because they had a better promise or more speciall assistances but because they proceeded better according to the Rule with lesse faction without ambition and temporall ends And yet those very Assemblies of Bishops had no Authority by their Decrees to make a Divine Faith or to constitute Numb 12. new objects of necessary Credence they made nothing true that was not so before and therefore they are to be apprehended in the nature of excellent Guides and whose Decrees are most certainly to determine all those who have no Argument to the contrary of greater force and efficacy then the Authority or reasons of the Councell And there is a duty owing to every Parish Priest and to every Dioecesan Bishop these are appointed over us and to answer for our soules and are therefore morally to guide us as reasonable Creatures are to be guided that is by reason and discourse For in things of judgement and understanding they are but in forme next above Beasts that are to be ruled by the imperiousnesse and absolutenesse of Authority unlesse the Authority be Divine that is infallible Now then in a juster height but still in its true proportion Assemblies of Bishops are to guide us with a higher Authority because in reason it is supposed they will doe it better with more Argument and certainty and with Decrees which have the advantage by being the results of many discourses of very wise and good men But that the Authority of generall Councels was never esteem'd absolute infallible and unlimited appears in this that before they were obliging it was necessary that each particular Church respectively should accept them Concurrente universali totius Ecclesiae consensu c. Vid. S. August 1. l. c. 18. de bapt contr Donat. in declaratione veritatum quae credendae sunt c. That 's the way of making the Deerees of Councels become authentik and be turn'd into a Law as Gerson observes and till they did their Decrees were but a dead letter and therefore it is that these later Popes have so labour'd that the Councell of Trent should be received in France and Carolus Molineus a great Lawyer and of the Roman Communion disputed * So did the third Estate of France in the Convention of the three Estates under Lewis the 13th earnestly contend against it against the reception and this is a known condition in the Canon Law but it proves plainly that the Decrees of Councels have their Authority from the voluntary submission of the particular Churches not from the prime sanction and constitution of the Councell And there is great reason it should for as the representative body of the Church derives all power from the diffusive body which is represented so it resolves into it and though it may have all the legall power yet it hath not all the naturall for more able men may be unsent then sent and they who are sent may be wrought upon by stratagem which cannot happen to the whole diffusive Church it is therefore most fit that since the legall power that is the externall was passed over to the body representative yet the efficacy of it and the internall should so still remaine in the diffusive as to have power to consider whether their representatives did their duty yea or no and so to proceed accordingly For unlesse it be in matters of justice in which the interest of a third person is concern'd no man will or can be supposed to passe away all power from himselfe of doing himselfe right in matters personall proper and of so high concernment It is most unnaturall and unreasonable But besides that they are excellent instruments of peace the best humane Judicatories in the world rare Sermons for the determining a point in Controversy and the greatest probability from humane Authority besides these advantages I say I know nothing greater that generall Councels can pretend to with reason and Argument sufficient to satisfie any wise man And as there was never any Councell so generall but it might have been more generall for in respect of the whole Church even Nice it selfe was but a small Assembly so there is no Decree so well constituted but it may be prov'd by an Argument higher then the Authority of the Councell And therefore generall Councels and Nationall and Provinciall and Dioecesan in their severall degrees are excellent Guides for the Prophets and directions and instructions for their Prophesyings but
where clearly the High Priest was supreme in many senses yet in no sense infallible will it inferre more to us then it did amongst the Apostles amongst whom if for orders sake S. Peter was the first yet he had no compulsory power over the Apostles there was no such thing spoke of nor any such thing put in practise And that the other Apostles were by a personall priviledge as infallible as himselfe is no reason to hinder the exercise of jurisdiction or any compulsory power over them for though in Faith they were infallible yet in manners and matter of fact as likely to erre as S. Peter himselfe was and certainly there might have something hapned in the whole Colledge that might have been a Record of his Authority by transmitting an example of the exercise of some Judiciall power over some one of them If he had but withstood any of them to their faces as S. Paul did him it had been more then yet is said in his behalfe Will the Ministeriall Headship inferre any more then when the Church in a Community or a publike capacity should doe any Act of Ministery Ecelesiasticall he shall be first in Order Suppose this to be a dignity to preside in Councels which yet was not alwayes granted him Suppose it to be a power of taking cognisance of the Major Causes of Bishops when Councels cannot be called Suppose it a double voyce or the last decisive or the negative in the causes exteriour Suppose it to be what you will of dignity or externall regiment which when all Churches were united in Communion and neither the interest of States nor the engagement of opinions had made disunion might better have been acted then now it can yet this will fall infinitely short of a power to determine Controversies infallibly and to prescribe to all mens faith and consciences A Ministeriall Headship or the prime Minister cannot in any capacity become the foundation of the Church to any such purpose And therefore men are causlessely amused with such premises and are afraid of such Conclusions which will never follow from the admission of any sense of these words that can with any probability be pretended 8. I consider that these Arguments from Scripture are too weak to support such an Authority which pretends to give Numb 10. Oracles and to answer infallibly in Questions of Faith because there is greater reason to believe the Popes of Rome have erred and greater certainty of demonstration then these places can be that they are infallible as will appear by the instances and perpetuall experiment of their being deceived of which there is no Question but of the sense of these places there is And indeed if I had as clear Scripture for their infallibility as I have against their halfe Communion against their Service in an unknown tongue worshipping of Images and divers other Articles I would make no scruple of believing but limit and conform my understanding to all their Dictates and believe it reasonable all Prophecying should be restrain'd But till then I have leave to discourse and to use my reason And to my reason it seemes not likely that neither Christ nor any of his Apostles S. Peter himselfe not S. Paul writing to the Church of Rome should speak the least word or tittle of the infallibility of their Bishops for it was certainly as convenient to tell us of a remedy as to foretell that certainly there must needs be heresies and need of a remedy And it had been a certain determination of the Question if when so rare an opportunity was ministred in the Question about Circumcision that they should have sent to Peter who for his infallibility in ordinary and his power of Headship would not only with reason enough as being infallibly assisted but also for his Authority have best determin'd the Question if at least the first Christians had known so profitable and so excellent a secret and although we have but little Record that the first Councell at Jerusalem did much observe the solennities of Law and the forms of Conciliary proceedings and the Ceremonials yet so much of it as is recorded is against them S. James and not S. Peter gave the finall sentence and although S. Peter determin'd the Question pro libertate yet S. James made the Decree and the Assumentum too and gave sentence they should abstaine from some things there mentioned which by way of temper he judg'd most expedient And so it passed And S. Peter shewed no sign of a Superiour Authority nothing of S. Chrysost. hom 3. in act Apost Superiour jurisdiction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that if this Question be to be determin'd by Scripture it Numb 11. must either be ended by plaine places or by obscure plaine places there are none and these that are with greatest fancy pretended are expounded by Antiquity to contrary purposes But if obscure places be all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by what meanes shall we infallibly find the sense of them The Popes interpretation though in all other cases it might be pretended in this cannot for it is the thing in Question and therefore cannot determine for it selfe either therefore we have also another infallible guide besides the Pope and so we have two Foundations and two Heads for this as well as the other upon the same reason or else which is indeed the truth there is no infallible way to be infallibly assured that the Pope is infallible Now it being against the common condition of men above the pretences of all other Governours Ecclesiasticall against the Analogy of Scripture and the deportment of the other Apostles against the Oeconomy of the Church and S. Peters own entertainment the presumption lies against him and these places are to be left to their prime intentions and not put upon the rack to force them to confesse what they never thought But now for Antiquity if that be deposed in this Question there are so many circumstances to be considered to reconcile Numb 12. their words and their actions that the processe is more troublesome then the Argument can be concluding or the matter considerable But I shall a little consider it so farre at least as to shew either Antiquity said no such thing as is pretended or if they did it is but little considerable because they did not believe themselves their practise was the greatest evidence in the world against the pretence of their words But I am much cased of a long disquisition in this particular for I love not to prove a Question by Arguments whose Authority is in it selfe as fallible and by circumstances made as uncertain as the Question by the saying of Aeneas Sylvius that before the Nicene Councell every men liv'd to himselfe and small respect was had to the Church of Rome which practise could not well consist with the Doctrine of their Bishops infallibility and by consequence supreme judgement and last resolution in matters of
Faith but especially by the insinuation and consequent De Rom. Pont. l 4. c. 2. § secunda sententia acknowledgement of Bellarmine that for 1000 years together the Fathers knew not of the Doctrine of the Popes infallibility for Nilus Gerson Alemain the Divines of Paris Alphonsus de Castro and Pope Adrian VI persons who liv'd 1400 after Christ affirm that infallibility is not seated in the Popes person that he may erre and sometimes actually hath which is a clear demonstration that the Church knew no such Doctrine as this there had been no Decree nor Tradition nor generall opinion of the Fathers or of any age before them and therefore this opinion which Bellarmine would faine blast if he could yet in his Conclusion he sayes it is not propriè haeretica A device and an expression of his own without sense or precedent But if the Fathers had spoken of it and believed it why may not a disagreeing person as well reject their Authority when it is in behalf of Rome as they of Rome without scruple cast them off when they speak against it For as Bellarmine being pressed with the Authority of Nilus Bishop of Thessalonica and other Fathers he sayes that the Pope acknowledges no Fathers but they are all his children and therefore they cannot depose against him and if that be true why shall we take their Testimonies for him for if Sonnes depose in their Fathers behalfe it is twenty to one but the adverse party will be cast and therefore at the best it is but suspectum Testimonium But indeed this discourse signifies nothing but a perpetuall uncertainty in such topicks and that where a violent prejudice or a concerning interest is engag'd men by not regarding what any man sayes proclaim to all the world that nothing is certain but Divine Authority But I will not take advantage of what Bellarmine sayes nor what Stapleton or any one of them all say for that will bee Numb 13. but to presse upon personall perswasions or to urge a generall Question with a particular defaillance and the Question is never the nearer to an end for if Bellarmine sayes any thing that is not to another mans purpose or perswasion that man will be tryed by his own Argument not by anothers And so would every man doe that loves his liberty as all wise men doe and therefore retain it by open violence or private evasions But to return An Authority from Irenaeus in this Question and on behalf of the Popes infallibility or the Authority of the Sea of Rome Numb 14. or of the necessity of communicating with them is very fallible for besides that there are almost a dozen answers to the words of the Allegation as is to be seen in those that trouble themselves in this Question with the Allegation and answering such Authorities yet if they should make for the affirmative of this Question it is protestatio contra factum For Irenaeus had no such great opinion of Pope Victors infallibity that he believed things in the same degree of necessity that the Pope did for therefore he chides him for Excommunicating the Asian Bishops 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all at a blow in the Question concerning Easter day and in a Question of Faith he expresly disagreed from the doctrine of Rome for Irenaeus was of the Millenary opinion and believed it to be a Tradition Apostolicall now if the Church of Rome was of that opinion then why is she not now where is the succession of her doctrine But if she was not of that opinion then and Irenaeus was where was his beliefe of that Churches infallibility The same I urge concerning S. Cyprian who was the head of a Sect in opposition to the Church of Rome in the Question of rebaptization and he and the abettors Firmilian and the other Bishops of Cappadocia and the voisinage spoke harsh words of Stephen and such as become them not to speak to an infallible Doctor and the supreme Head of the Church I will urge none of them to the disadvantage of that Sea but only note the Satyrs of Firmilian against him because it is of good use to shew that it is possible for them in their ill carriage to blast the reputation and efficacy of a great Authority For he sayes that that Church did pretend the Authority of the Apostles cum in multis sacramentis divinae rei à Epist. Firmiliani contr Steph. ad Cyprian Vid. etiam Ep. Cypriani ad Pompeium principio discrepet ab Ecclesia Hierosolymitanâ defamet Petrum Paulum tanquam authores And a little after justè dedignor sayes he apertam manifestam stultitiam Stephani per quam veritas Christianae petrae aboletur which words say plainly that for all the goodly pretence of Apostolicall Authority the Church of Rome did then in many things of Religion disagree from Divine Institution and from the Church of Jerusalem which they had as great esteeme of for Religion sake as of Rome for its principality and that still in pretending to S. Peter and S. Paul they dishonoured those blessed Apostles and destroyed the honour of their pretence by their untoward prevarication which words I confesse passe my skill to reconcile them to an opinion of infallibility and although they were spoken by an angry person yet they declare that in Africa they were not then perswaded as now they were at Rome Nam Cyprian Epist ad Quintum 〈◊〉 nec Petrus quem primum Dominus clegit vendicavit sibi aliquid insolentèr aut arrogantèr assumpsit ut diceret se primatum tenere That was their belief then and how the contrary hath grown up to that heigth where now it is all the world is witnesse And now I shall not need to note concerning S. Hierome that he gave a complement to Damasus that he would not have given to Liberius Qui tecum non colligit spargit For it might be true enough of Damasus who was a good Bishop and a right believer but if Liberius's name had been put instead of Damasus the case had been altered with the name for S. Hierom did believe and write it so that Liberius had subscrib'd to Arrianism And if either he or any of the rest had believ'd the De Script Eccles. in Fortunatiano Pope could not be a Heretick nor his Faith faile but be so good and of so competent Authority as to be a Rule to Christendome Why did they not appeale to the Pope in the Arrian Controversy why was the Bishop of Rome made a Party and a concurrent as other good Bishops were and not a Judge and an Arbitrator in the Question Why did the Fathers prescribe so many Rules and cautions and provisoes for the discovery of heresy Why were the Emperours at so much charge and the Church at so much trouble as to call and convene in Councels respectively to dispute so frequently to write so sedulously to observe all advantages
condemned second marriages nor that S. John Damascen said Christ only prayed in appearance not really and in truth I will let them all rest in peace and their memories in honour for if I should enquire into the particular probations of this Article I must doe to them as I should be forced to doe now if any man should say that the Writings of the School-men were excellent Argument and Authority to determine mens perswasions I must consider their writings and observe their defaillances their contradictions the weaknesse of their Arguments the mis-allegations of Scripture their inconsequent deductions their false opinions and all the weaknesses of humanity and the failings of their persons which no good man is willing to doe unlesse he be compel'd to it by a pretence that they are infallible or that they are followed by men even into errors or impiety And therefore since there is enough in the former instances to cure any such misperswasion and prejudice I will not instance in the innumerable particularities that might perswade us to keep our Liberty intire or to use it discreetly For it is not to be denyed but that great advantages are to be made by their writings probabile est quod omnibus quod pluribus quod sapientibus videtur If one wise man sayes a thing it is an Argument to me to believe it in its degree of probation that is proportionable to such an assent as the Authority of a wise man can produce and when there is nothing against it that is greater and so in proportion higher and higher as more wise men such as the old Doctors were doe affirm it But that which I complain of is that we look upon wise men that lived long agoe with so much veneration and mistake that we reverence them not for having been wise men but that they lived long since But when the Question is concerning Authorty there must bee something to build it on a Divine Commandment humane Sanction excellency of spirit and greatnesse of understanding on which things all humane Authority is regularly built But now if we had lived in their times for so we must look upon them now as they did who without prejudice beheld them I suppose we should then have beheld them as we in England look on those Prelates who are of great reputation for learning and sanctity here only is the difference when persons are living their authority is depressed by their personall defaillances and the contrary interests of their contemporaries which disband when they are dead and leave their credit intire upon the reputation of those excellent books and monuments of learning and piety which are left behind But beyond this why the Bishop of Hippo shall have greater Authority then the Bishop of the Canaries caeteris paribus I understand not For did they that liv'd to instance in S. Austine's time believe all that he wrote If they did they were much too blame or else himselfe was too blame for retracting much of it a little before his death And if while he lived his affirmative was no more Authority then derives from the credit of one very wise man against whom also very wise men were opposed I know not why his Authority should prevaile further now For there is nothing added to the strength of his reason since that time but only that he hath been in great esteem with posterity And if that be all why the opinion of the following Ages shall be of more force then the opinion of the first Ages against whom S. Austin in many things clearly did oppose himselfe I see no reason or whether the first Ages were against him or no yet that he is approved by the following Ages is no better Argument for it makes his Authority not to be innate but derived from the opinion of others and so to be precaria and to depend upon others who if they should change their opinions and such examples there have been many then there were nothing left to urge our consent to him which when it was at the best was only this because he had the good Fortune to be believed by them that came after he must be so still and because it was no Argument for the old Doctors before him this will not be very good in his behalfe The same I say of any company of them I say not so of all of them it is to no purpose to say it for there is no Question this day in contestation in the explication of which all the old Writers did consent In the assignation of the Canon of Scripture they never did consent for six hundred yeares together and then by that time the Bishops had agreed indiffently well and but indifferently upon that they fell out in twenty more and except it be in the Apostels Creed and Articles of such nature there is nothing which may with any colour be called a consent much lesse Tradition Universall 4. But I will rather chuse to shew the uncertainty of this Numb 4. Topick by such an Argument which was not in the Fathers power to help such as makes no invasion upon their great reputation which I desire should be preserved as sacred as it ought For other things let who please read Mr Daillè du vray usage des Peres But I shall only consider that the Writings of the Fathers have been so corrupted by the intermixture of Hereticks so many false books put forth in their names so many of their Writings lost which would more clearly have explicated their sense and at last an open profession made and a trade of making the Fathers speak not what themselves thought but what other men pleased that it is a great instance of God's providence and care of his Church that we have so much good preserved in the Writings which we receive from the Fathers and that all truth is not as clear gone as is the certainty of their great Authority and reputation The publishing books with the inscription of great names began in S. Paul's time for some had troubled the Church of Numb 5. Thessalonica with a false Epistle in S. Paul's name against the inconvenience of which he arms them in 2 Thess. 2. 1. And this increased daily in the Church The Arrians wrot an Epistle to Constantine under the name of Athanasius and the Eutychians Apolog. Athanas ad Constant wrot against Cyrill of Alexandria under the name of Theodoret and of the Age in which the seventh Synod was kept Erasmus reports Libris falso celebrium virorum titulo commendatis Vid. Baron A. D. 553. scatere omnia It was then a publike businesse and a trick not more base then publick But it was more ancient then so and it is memorable in the books attributed to S. Basil containing thirty Chapters de Spiritu Sancto whereof fifteen were plainly added by another hand under the covert of S. Basil as appears in the difference of the stile in the impertinent
digressions against the custome of that excellent man by some passages contradictory to others of S. Basil by citing Meletius as dead before him who yet lived three * Vid. Baron in Annal. years after him and by the very frame and manner of the discourse and yet it was so handsomly carried and so well serv'd the purposes of men that it was quoted under the title of S. Basil by many but without naming the number of chapters and by S. John Damascen in these words Basilius in opere triginta capitum de Spiritu S. ad Amphilochium and to the same purpose and in the number Lâ— de imagin orat 1. of 27 29. chapters he is is cited by * Nomocan tit 1. cap. 3. Photius by Euthymius by Burchard by Zonaras Balsamon and Nicephorus but for this see more in Erasmu's his Preface upon this book of S. Basil. There is an Epistle goes still under the name of S. Hierom ad Demetriadem viâ—ginem and is of great use in the Question of Predestination with its appendices and yet a very †V. Beda de gratiâ Christi adv Iulianum learned man 800 yeares agone did believe it to be written by a Pelagian and undertakes to confute divers parts of it as being high and confident Pelagianisme and written by Julianus Episc. Eclanensis but Gregorius Ariminensis from S. Austin affirmes it to have been written by Pelagius himselfe I might instance in too many Greg. Arim. in 2. sent dist 26. q. 1. a. 3. There is not any one of the Fathers who is esteemed Author of any considerable number of books that hath escaped untouched But the abuse in this kinde hath been so evident that now if any interessed person of any side be pressed with an Authority very pregnant against him he thinks to escape by accusing the Edition or the Author or the hands it passed through or at last he therefore suspects it because it makes against him both sides being resolv'd that they are in the right the Authorities that they admit they will believe not to be against them and they which are too plainly against them shall be no Authorities And indeed the whole world hath been so much abused that every man thinks he hath reason to suspect whatsoever is against him that is what he please which prooceeding only produces this truth that there neither is nor can be any certainty nor very much probability in such Allegations But there is a worse mischiefe then this besides those very many which are not yet discovered which like the pestilence Numb 6. destroyes in the dark and growes into inconvenience more insensibly and more irremediably and that is corruption of particular places by inserting words and altering them to contrary senses A thing which the Fathers of the sixth Generall Synod complain'd of concerning the constitutions of S. Clement quibus jam olim ab iis qui à sidè aliena sent iunt adulterina quaedam etiam pietate aliena introducta sunt quae divinorum nobis Decretorum Can. 2. elegantem venustam speciem obscurarunt And so also have his Recognitions so have his Epistles been used if at least they were his at all particularly the fifth Decretall Epistle that goes under the name of S. Clement in which community of Wives is taught upon the Authority of S. Luke saying the first Christians had all things common if all things then Wives also sayes the Epistle a forgery like to have been done by some Nicolaitan or other impure person There is an Epistle of Cyrill extant to Successus Bishop of Diocaesarea in which he relates that hee was ask'd by Budus Bishop of Emessa whether he did approve of the Epistle of Athanasius to Epictetus Bishop of Corinth and that his answer was Si haec apud vos scripta non sint adultera Nam plura ex his ab hostibus Ecclesiae Euseb. l. 4. c. 23. deprehenduntur esse depravata And this was done even while the Authors themselves were alive for so Dionysius of Corinth complan'd that his writings were corrupted by Hereticks and Pope Leo that his Epistle to Flavianus was perverted by the Greeks And in the Synod of Constantinople before quoted the Act. 8. vid. etiam Synod 7. act 4. sixth Synod Macarius and his Disciples were convicted quod Sanctorum testimonia aut truncârint aut depravârint Thus the third Chapter of S. Cyprians book de unitate Ecclesiae in the Edition of Pamelius suffered great alteration These words Primatus Petro datur wholly inserted and these super Cathedram Petri fundata est Ecclesia and whereas it was before super unum aedificat Ecclesiam Christus that not being enough they have made it super illum unum Now these Additions are against the faith of all old Copies before Minutius and Pamelius and against Gratian even after himselfe had been chastiz'd by the Roman Correctors the Commissaries of Gregory XIII as is to be seen where these words are alledged Decret c. 24. Q. 1. can loquitur Dominus ad Petrum So that we may say of Cyprians works as Pamelius himself said concerning his writings and the writings of other of the Fathers unde colligimus saith he Cypriani scripta ut aliorum Veterum à librariis variè fuisse Annot. Cyprian super Concil Carthage n. 1. interpolata But Gratian himselfe could doe as fine a feat when he listed or else some body did it for him and it was in this very Question their beloved Article of the Popes Supremacy for de paenit dist 1. c. potest fieri he quotes these words out of S. Ambrose Non habent Petri haereditatem qui non habent Petri sedem sidem not sedem it is in S. Ambrose but this errour was made authentick by being inserted into the Code of the Law of the Catholick Church and considering how little notice the Clergy had of Antiquity but what was transmitted to them by Gratian it will be no great wonder that all this part of the world swallowed such a bole and the opinion that was wrapped in it But I need not instance in Gratian any further but referre any one that desires to be satisfied concerning this Collection of his to Augustinus Archbishop of Tarracon in emendatione Gratiani where he shall find fopperies and corruptions good store noted by that learned man But that the Indices Expurgatorii Vid. Ind. Expurg Belg. in Bertram Flandr Hispan Portugal Neopolitan Romanum lunium in praefat ad Ind. Expurg Belg. Hasen muslerum pag. 275. Withrington Apolog. num 449. commanded by Authority and practised with publike license professe to alter and correct the sayings of the Fathers and to reconcile them to the Catholike sense by putting in and leaving out is so great an Imposture so unchristian a proceeding that it hath made the faith of all books and all Authors justly to be suspected For considering their infinite diligence and great opportunity as
impregnable or that he receives a benefit when he is plundered disgraced imprisoned condemned and afflicted neither his sleeps need to be disturbed nor his quietnesse discomposed But if a man cannot change his opinion when helists nor ever does heartily or resolutely but when he cannot do otherwise then to use force may make him an hypocrite but never to be a right beleever and so instead of erecting a trophee to God and true Religion we build a Monument for the Devill Infinite examples are recorded in Church story to this very purpose But Socrates instances in one for all for when Eleusius Bishop of Cyzicum was threatned by the Emperour Ualens with banishment and confiscation if he did not subscribe to the decree of Ariminum at last he yeilded to the Arrian opinion and presently fell into great torment of Conscience openly at Cyzicum recanted the errour asked God and the Church forgivenesse and complain'd of the Emperours injustice and that was all the good the Arrian party got by offering violence to his Conscience And so many families in Spain which are as they call them new Christians and of a suspected faith into which they were forc'd by the tyrannie of the Inquisition and yet are secret Moores is evidence enough of the * Ejusmodi fuit Hipponensium conversio cujus quidem species decepit August ita ut opinaretur haereticos licet non morte trucidandos vi tamen coercendos Experientiaenim demonstravit eos tam facile ad Arianismum transiisse atque ad Cathelicismum cum Arriani Principes rerum in ed civitate petirentur inconvenience of preaching a doctrine in ore gladii cruentandi For it either punishes a man for keeping a good conscience or forces him into a bad it either punishes sincerity or perswades hypocrisie it persecutes a truth or drives into error and it teaches a man to dissemble and to be safe but never to be honest 8. It is one of the glories of Christian Religion that it was so pious excellent miraculous and petswasive that it came in upon its owne piety and wisdome with no other force but a torrent Numb 12. of arguments and demonstration of the Spirit a mighty rushing wind to beat downe all strong holds and every high thought and imagination but towards the persons of men it was alwayes full of meeknesse and charity complyance and toleration condescension and bearing with one another restoring persons overtaken with an error in the spirit of meeknesse considering lest we also be tempted The consideration is as prudent and the proposition as just as the precept is charitable and the precedent was pious and holy Now things are best conserved with that which gives it the first being and which is agreeable to its temper and constitution That precept which it chiefly preaches in order to all the blessednesse in the world that is of meekness mercy and charity should also preserve it selfe and promote its owne interest For indeed nothing will doe it so well nothing doth so excellently insinuate it selfe into the understandings and affections of men as when the actions and perswasions of a sect and every part and principle and promotion are univocall And it would be a mighty disparagement to so glorious an institution that in its principle it should be mercifull and humane and in the promotion and propagation of it so inhumane And it would be improbable and unreasonable that the sword should be used in the perswasion of one proposition and yet in the perswasion of the whole Religion nothing like it To doe so may serve the end of a temporall Prince but never promote the honour of Christs Kingdome it may secure a designe of Spaine but will very much disserve Christendome to offer to support it by that which good men believe to be a distinctive cognisance of the Mahumetan Religion from the excellencie and piety of Christianity whose sense and spirit is described in those excellent words of S. Paul 2 Tim. 2. 24. The servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men in meeknesse instructing those that oppose themselves if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging the truth They that oppose themselves must not be strucken by any of Gods servants and if yet any man will smite these who are his opposites in opinion he will get nothing by that he must quit the title of being a servant of God for his paines And I think a distinction of persons Secular and Ecclesiasticall will doe no advantage for an escape because even the Secular power if it be Christian and a servant of God must not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I meane in those cases where meeknesse of instruction is the remedy or if the case be irremediable abscission by Censures is the penalty 9. And if yet in the nature of the thing it were neither unjust Numb 13. nor unreasonable yet there is nothing under God Almighty that hath power over the soule of man so as to command a perswasion or to judge a disagreeing Humane positive Lawes direct all externall acts in order to severall ends and the Judges take cognisance accordingly but no man can command the will or punish him that obeys the Law against his will for because its end is served in externall obedience it neither looks after more neither can it be served by more nor take notice of any more And yet possibly the understanding is lesse subject to humane power then the will for that humane power hath a command over externall acts which naturally and regularly flow from the will ut plurimùm suppose a direct act of will but alwayes either a direct or indirect volition primary or accidentall but the understanding is a naturall faculty subject to no command but where the command is it selfe a reason fit to satisfie and perswade it And therefore God commanding us to beleeve such revelations perswades and satisfies the understanding by his commanding and revealing for there is no greater probation in the world that a proposition is true then because God hath commanded us to believe it But because no mans command is a satisfaction to the understanding or a verification of the proposition therefore the understanding is not subject to humane authority They may perswade but not enjoyne where God hath not and where God hath if it appeares so to him he is an Infidell if he does not beleeve it And if all men have no other efficacie or authority on the understanding but by perswasion proposall and intreaty then a man is bound to assent but according to the operation of the argument and the energie of perswasion neither indeed can he though he would never so faine and he that out of feare and too much complyance and desire to be safe shall desire to bring his understanding with some luxation to the beliefe of humane dictates and authorities may as often misse of the truth as hit it but is sure alwaies to
of its managing or its effect be a sinne in it selfe or becomes a sinne to the person then as he is to doe towards other sinnes so to that opinion or man so opining But to beleeve so or not so when there is no more but meere beleeving is not in his power to enjoyne therefore not to punish And it is not onely lawfull to tollerate disagreeing perswasions but the authority of God onely is competent to take notice of it and infallible to determine it and fit to judge and therefore no humane authority is sufficient to doe all those things which can justifie the inflicting temporall punishments upon such as doe not conforme in their perswasions to a rule or authority which is not only fallible but supposed by the disagreeing person to be actually deceived But I consider that in the toleration of a different opinion Numb 4. Religion is not properly and immediately concerned so as in any degree to be endangered For it may be safe in diversity of perswasions and it also a part of Christian * Humani iuris naturalis peteslatis unicuique quod putaverit colere Sed nec religionis est cogere religionem quae suscipi sponte debet non vi Tertul. ad Scapulam Religion that the liberty of mens Consciences should be preserved in all things where God hath not set a limit and made a restraint that the soule of man should be free and acknowledge no master but Jesus Christ that matters spirituall should not be restrain'd by purishments corporall that the same meekenesse and charity should be preserved in the promotion of Christianity that gave it foundation and increment firmness in its first publication that conclusions should not be more dogmaticall then the vertuall resolution and efficacy of the premises And that the persons should not more certainly be condemned then their opinions confuted and lastly that the infirmities of men and difficulties of things should be both put in ballance to make abatement in the definitive sentence against mens persons But then because tolleration of opinions is not properly a question of Religion it may be a question of policy And although a man may be a good Christian though he beleeve an errour not fundamentall and not directly or evidently impious yet his opinion may accidentally disturbe the publick peace through the over-activenesse of the person and the confidence of their beliefe and the opinion of its appendant necessity and therefore tolleration of differing perswasions in these cases is to be considered upon politicall grounds and is just so to be admitted or denyed as the opinions or tolleration of them may consist with the publicke and necessary ends of Government Onely this As Christian Princes must looke to the interest of their Government so especially must they consider the interests of Christianity not call every redargution or modest discovery of an established errour by the name of disturbance of the peace For it is very likely that the peevishness and impatience of contradiction in the Governours may break the peace Let them remem-but the gentlenesse of Christianity the Liberty of Consciences which ought to be preserved and let them doe justice to the persons whoever they are that are peevish provided no mans person be over-born with prejudice For if it be necessary for all men to subscribe to the present established Religion by the same reason at another time a man may be bound to subscribe to the contradictory and so to all Religions in the world And they only who by their too much confidence intitle God to all their fancies and make them to be questions of Religion and evidences for Heaven or consignations to Hell they onely think this doctrine unreasonable and they are the men that first disturb the Churches peace and then thinke there is no appeasing the tumult but by getting the victory But they that consider things wisely understand that since salvation and damnation depend not upon impertinencies and yet that publick peace and tranquillity may the Prince is in this case to seeke how to secure Government and the issues and intentions of that while there is in these cases directly no insecurity to Religion unlesse by the accidentall uncharitablenesse of them that dispute Which uncharitablenesse is also much prevented when the publike peace is secured and no person is on either side ingaged upon * Dextera praecipuè capit indulgentia mentes Aâ—peritas oditi saevaque bella parit revenge or troubled with disgrace or vexed with punishments by any decretory sentence against him It was the saying of a wise states-man I meane Thuanus Haeretici qui pace data factionibus scinduntur persecutione uniuntur contra Remp. If you persecute heretickes or discrepants they unite themselves as to a common defence If you permit them they divide themselves upon private interest and the rather if this interest was an ingredient of the opinion The Summe is this it concernes the duty of a Prince because it concernes the Honour of God that all vices and every part of Numb 5. ill life be discountenanced and restrain'd And therefore in relation to that opinions are to be dealt with For the understanding being to direct the will and opinions to guide our practices they are considerable onely as they teach impiety and vice as they either dishonour God or disobey him Now all such doctrines are to be condemned but for the persons preaching such Doctrines if they neither justifie nor approve the pretended Consequences which are certainly impious they are to be separated from that consideration But if they know such consequences and allow them or if they doe not stay till the doctrines produce impiety but take sinne before hand and mannage them impiously in any sense or if either themselves or their doctrine doe really and without colour or fained pretext disturb the publique peace * Extat prudens monitum Mecaenatis apud Dionem Cassium ad Augustum in haec verba Eos vero qui in Divinis aliquid innovant adio habe coerce non Deorum solùm causâ sed quia nova numina hi tales introducentes mulios impellunt ad mutationem rerum Unde conjurationes seditiones Conciliabula existunt res profectò minime conducibiles principatui Et legib us quoque expressum est quod in religionem committitur in omnium fertur injuriam and just interests they are not to be suffered In all other cases it is not onely lawfull to permit them but it is also necessary that Princes and all in authority should not persecute discrepant opinions And in such cases wherein persons not otherwise incompetent are bound to reprove an error as they are in many in all these if the Prince makes restraint he hinders men from doing their duty and from obeying the Lawes of JESUS CHRIST SECT XVII Of complyance with disagreeing persons or weake constiences in generall VPon these grounds it remaines that we reduce this doctrine
have thoughts ambitious incroaching of usurpation and advantages of purpose to devest their Brethren of an authority intrusted them by Christ and then too when all the advantage of their honour did only set them upon a hill to feele a stronger blast of persecution and was not as since it hath been attested with secular assistance and faire arguments of honour but was only in a meere spirituall estimate and ten thousand reall disadvantages This will not be suppos'd either of wise or holy men But however Valeat quantum valere potest The question is now of matter of fact and if the Church of Martyrs and the Church of Saints and Doctors and Confessors now regnant in heaven be faire precedents for practices of Christianity we build upon a rock though we had digg'd no deeper then this foundation of Catholick practise Upon the hopes of these advantages I proceed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. Apost 32 If any Presbyter disrespecting his own Bishop shall make conventions apart or erect an altar viz. without the Bishops license let him be deposed clearely intimating that potestas faciendi concionem the power of making of Church-meetings and assemblies for preaching or other offices is derived from the Bishop and therefore the Canon adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is a lover of Rule he is a Tyrant that is an usurper of that power government which belongs to the Bishop The same thing is also decreed in the Councell of Antioch and in the Councell of Chalcedon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ca. 5. Act. 4. All the most Reverend Bishops cryed out this is a righteous law this is the Canon of the holy Fathers This viz. The Canon Apostolicall now cited * Tertullian is something De baptism more particular and instances in Baptisme Dandi baptismum jus habet summus Sacerdos qui est Episcopus Dehinc Presbyteri Diaconi non tamen sine Episcopi authoritate propter honorem Ecclesiae quo salvo salva pax est alioquin etiam Laicis jus est The place is of great consideration and carries in it its own objection and its answer The Bishop hath the right of giving baptisme Then after him Presbyters and Deacons but not without the authority of the Bishop So farre the testimony is clear and this is for the honour of the Church * But does not this intimate it was only by positive constitution and neither by Divine nor Apostolicall ordinance No indeed It does not For it might be so ordained by Christ or his Apostles propter honorem Ecclesiae and no harme done For it is honourable for the Church that her Ministrations should be most ordinate and so they are when they descend from the superior to the subordinate But the next words doe of themselves make answer Otherwise lay-men have right to baptize That is without the consent of the Bishop Lay-men can doe it as much as Presbyters and Deacons For indeed baptisme conferred by Lay-men is valid and not to bee repeated but yet they ought not to administer it so neither ought Presbyters without the Bishops license so saies Tertullian let him answer it Only the difference is this Lay-men cannot jure ordinario receive a leave or commission to make it lawfull in them to baptize any Presbyters and Deacons may for their order is a capacity or possibility ** But besides the Sacrament of Baptisme Tertullian affirmes De coronâ milit c. 3. vide S. Chrysost. hom 11. in 1. Tim. S. Hieron dial adv Lucifer the same of the venerable Eucharist Eucharistiae Sacramentum non de aliorum manu quà m Praesidentium sumimus The former place will expound this if there be any scruple in Praesidentium for clearly the Christians receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist from none but Bishops I suppose he means without Episcopall license whatsoever his meaning is these are his words The Councell of Gangra forbidding conventicles Can. 6. expresses it with this intimation of Episcopall authority If any man shall make assemblies privately out of the Church so despising the Church or shall doe any Church-offices 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without the presence of a Priest by THE DECREE OF A BISHOP let him be anathema The Priest is not to be assistant at any meeting for private offices without the Bishops license If they will celebrate Synaxes privately it must be by a Priest and he must be there by leave of the Bishop then the assembly is lawfull * And this thing was so knowne that the Fathers of the second Councell of Carthage call it ignorance or hypocrisy in Priests to doe their offices without a Ca. 9. license from the Bishop Numidius Episcopus Massilytanus dixit In quibusdam locis sunt Presbyteri qui aut ignorantes simplicitèr aut dissimulantes audactèr praesente inconsulto Episcopo complurimis in domicilijs agunt agenda quod disciplinae incongruum cognoscit esse Sanctitas vestra In some places there are Priests that in private houses doe offices houseling of people is the office meant communicating them at home without the consent or leave of the Bishop being either simply ignorant or boldly dissembling Implying that they could not else but know their duties to be to procure Episcopall license for their ministrations Ab Vniversis Episcopis dictum est Quisquis Presbyter inconsulto Episcopo agenda in quolibet loco voluërit celebrare ipse honroi suo contrarius existit All the Bishops said if any Priest without leave of his Bishop shall celebrate the mysteries be the place what it will be he is an Enemy to the Bishops dignity After this in time but before in authority is the great Councell of Chalcedon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 8. part 2. Act. 14. Let the Clergy according to the tradition of the Fathers remaine under the power of the Bishops of the City So that they are for their offices in dependance of the authority of the Bishop The Canon instances particularly to Priests officiating in Monasteries and Hospitalls but extends it selfe to an indefinite expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They must not dissent or differ from their Bishop 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c All they that transgresse this Constitution in ANY WAY not submitting to their Bishop let them be punish'd canonically So that now these generall expressions of obedience and subordination to the Bishop being to be Understood according to the exigence of the matter to wit the Ministeries of the Clergy in their severall offices the Canon extends it's prohibition to all ministrations without the Bishops authority But it was more clearely and evidently law and practice in the Roman Church we have good witnesse for it S. Leo the Bishop of that Church is my author Sed neque coram Episcopo licet Presbyter is in baptisterium introire nec praesente Antistite infantem Epist. 86. tingere aut fignare nec poenitentem sine praeceptione Episcopi sui reconciliare nec
of the 70 that the election was made if we may beleive S. Epiphanus so that they were Presbyters before this choice and lastly it was onely a Nomination of seven Men the determination of the buisinesse and the authority of rejection was still in the Apostles and indeed the whole power Whom WE MAY APPOINT over this businesse after all this there can be no hurt done by the objection especially since clearely and indubiously the clection of Bishops and Presbyters was in the Apostles owne persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Ignatius of Evodias Evodias was first APPOINTED to be your Governour or Bishop by the APOSTLES and themselves did committ Epist. ad Antioch it to others that were Bishops as in the instances before reckoned Thus the case stood in Scripture 2. In the practice of the Church it went according to the same law and practice Apostolicall The People did not might not choose the Ministers of holy Church So the Councell of Laodicea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can. 13. The people must not choose those that are to be promoted to the Priesthood The prohibition extends to their Non-election of all the Superiour Clergy Bishops and Presbyters But who then must elect them The Councell of Nice determines that for in 16 and 17 Canons the Councell forbids any promotion of Clerks to be made but by the Bishop of that Church where they are first ordayned which clearely reserves to the Bishop the power of retayning or promoting all his Clergy * 3. All Ordinations were made by Bishops alone as I have already prooved Now let this be confronted with the practice of Primitive Christendome that no Presbyter might be ordain'd sine titulo without a particular charge which was alwaies custome and at last grew to be a law in the Councell of Chalcedon and we shall perceive that the ordainer was the onely chooser for then to ordaine a Presbyter was also to give him a charge and the Patronage of a Church was not a lay inheritance but part of the Bishops cure for he had 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the care of the Churches in all the Diocesse as I have already showne And therefore when S. Ierome according to the custome of Christendome had specified some particular ordinations or election of Presbyters by Bishops Epist. 61. 62. as how himselfe was made Priest by Paulinus and Paulinus by Epiphanius of Cyprus Gaudeat Episcopus judicio suo cùm tales Christo elegerit Sacerdotes Hieron ad Nepotian let the Bishop rejoyce in his owne act having chosen such worthy Priests for the service of Christ. Thus S. Ambrose gives intimation that the dispensing all the offices in the Clergy was solely in the Bishop Haec spectet Sacerdos quod cuique congruat lib. 1. offic cap. 44. id officij deputet Let the Bishop observe these rules and appoint every one his office as is best answerable to his condition and capacity And Theodoret reports of Leontius the Bishop of Antioch how being an Arian adversarios recti dogmatis suscipiens licèt turpem Tripart hist. lib. 5. cap. 32. habentes vitam ad Presbyteratûs tamen ordinem Diacontûs evexit Eos autem qui Vniversis virtutibus ornabantur Apostolica dogmata defendebant absque honore deseruit He advanc'd his owne faction but would not promote any man that was Catholike and pious So he did The power therefore of Clericall promotion was in his owne hands This thing is evident and notorious And there is scarce any example in Antiquity of either Presbyters or people choosing any Priest but only in the case of S. Austin whom the Peoples hast snatch'd and carried him to their Bishop Valerius intreating him to ordayne him Priest This indeed is true that the testimony of the people for the life of them that were to be ordayn'd was by S. Cyprian ordinarily required In ordinandis Clericis Fratres Charissimi solemus vos ante consulere mores ac merita singulorum lib. 1. Epist. 5. communi consilio ponderare It was his custome to advise with his people concerning the publike fame of Clerks to be ordayn'd It was usuall I say with him but not perpetuall for it was otherwise in the case of Celerinus and divers others as I shewed elsewhere 4. In election of Bishops though not of Priests the Clergy and the people had a greater actuall interest and did often intervene with their silent consenting suffrages or publike acclamations But first This was not necessary It was otherwise among the Apostles and in the case of Timothy of Titus of S. Iames of S. Marke and all the Successors whom they did constitute in the severall chayres 2 ly This was not by law or right but in fact only It was against the Canon of the Laodicean Councell and the 31 th Canon of the Apostles which under paine of deposition commands that a Bishop be not promoted to his Church by the intervening of any lay power Against this discourse S. Cyprian is strongly pretended Quando ipsa plebs maximè habeat potestatem Epist. 68. vel eligendi dignos Sacerdotes vel indignos recusandi Quod ipsum videmus de divinâ authoritate descendere c. Thus he is usually cited The people have power to choose or to refuse their Bishops and this comes to them from Divine authority No such matter The following words expound him better Quod ipsum videmus de divinâ authoritate descendere ut Sacerdos PLEBE PRaeSENTE sub omnium oculis deligatur dignus atque idoneus publico judicio ac testimonio comprobetur that the Bishop is chosen publikely in the presence of the people and he only be thought fit who is approved by publike judgement and testimony or as S. Paul's phrase is he must have a good report of all men that is indeed a divine institution and that to this purpose and for the publike attestation of the act of election and ordination the peoples presence was required appeares clearely by S. Cyprian's discourse in this Epistle For what is the divine authority that he mentions It is only the example of Moses whom God commanded to take the Sonne of Eleazer and cloath him with his Fathers robes coram omni Synagogâ before all the congregation The people chose not God chose Eleazar and Moses consecrated him and the people stood and look'd on that 's all that this argument can supply * Iust thus Bishops are and ever were ordayn'd non nisi sub populi assistentis conscientiâ in the sight of the people standing by but to what end Vt plebe praesente detegantur malorum crimina vel bonorum merita praedicentur All this while the election is not in the people nothing but the publike testimony and examination for so it followes sit ordinatio justa legitima quae omnium suffragio judicio fuerit examinata ** But S. Cyprian hath two more proof's whence we may
from a higher fountaine For it is one of the maine excellencies in Christianity that it advances the State and well being of Monarchies and Bodies Politique Now then the Fathers of Religion the Reverend Bishops whose peculiar office it is to promote the interests of Christianity are by the nature and essentiall requisites of their office bound to promote the Honour and Dignity of Kings whom Christianity would have so much honour'd as to establish the just subordination of people to their Prince upon better principles then ever no lesse then their precise duty to God and the hopes of a blissefull immortality Here then is utile honestum and necessarium to tye Bishops in duty to Kings and a threefold Cord is not easily broken In pursuance of these obligations Episcopacy payes three returnes of tribute to Monarchy 1. The first is the Duty of their people For they being by God himselfe set over soules judges of the most secret recesses of our Consciences and the venerable Priests under them have more power to keep men in their duteous subordination to the Prince then there is in any secular power by how much more forcible the impressions of the Conscience are then all the externall violence in the world And this power they have fairely put into act for there was never any Protestant Bishop yet in Rebellion unlesse he turn'd recreant to his Order and it is the honour of the Church of England that all her Children and obedient people are full of indignation against Rebells be they of any interest or party whatsoever For here for it wethanke God and good Princes Episcopacy hath been preserv'd in faire priviledges and honour and God hath blest and honour'd Episcopacy with the conjunction of a loyall people As if because in the law of Nature the Kingdome and Priesthood were joyned in one person it were naturall and consonant to the first justice that Kings should defend the rights of the Church and the Church advance the honour of Kings And when I consider that the first Bishop that was exauctorated was a Prince too Prince and Bishop of Geneva me thinks it was an ill Omen that the cause of the Prince and the Bishop should be in Conjunction ever after 2. A second returne that Episcopacy makes to Royalty is that which is the Duty of all Christians the paying tributes and impositions And though all the Kings Leige people doe it yet the issues of their duty and liberality are mightily disproportionate if we consider their unequall Number and Revenues And if Clergy-subsidies be estimated according to the smallnesse of their revenue and paucity of persons it will not be half so short of the number and weight of Crownes from Lay Dispensation as it does farre exceed in the proportion of the Donative 3. But the assistance that the Kings of England had in their Counsells and affaires of greatest difficulty from the great ability of Bishops and other the Ministers of the Church I desire to represent in the words of K. Alvred to Walfsigeus the Bishop in an Epistle where he deplores the misery of his owne age by comparing it with the former times when the Bishops were learn'd and exercis'd in publike Counsels Faelicia tum tempora fuerunt inter omnes Angliae populos Reges Deo scriptae ejus voluntati obsecundârunt in suâ pace bellicis expeditionibus atque regimine domestico domi se semper tutati fuerint atque etiamforis nobilitatem suam dilataverint The reason was as he insinuates before Sapientes extiterunt in Anglicâ gente de spirituali gradu c. The Bishops were able by their great learning and wisdome to give assistance to the Kings affaires And they have prosper'd in it for the most glorious issues of Divine Benison upon this Kingdome were conveyed to us by Bishops hands I meane the Union of the houses of York Lancaster by the Counsells of a Iohn Speeds Hist. l. 9. c. 19. n. 23. p. 716. Bishop Morton and of England Scotland by the treaty of b Ibid. c. 20. n. 64. p. 747. Bishop Fox to which if we adde two other in Materia religionis I meane the conversion of the Kingdom from Paganisme by S t Augustine Archbishop of Canterbury and the reformation begun and promoted by Bishops I think we cannot call to mind foure blessings equall to these in any age or Kingdome in all which God was pleased by the mediation of Bishops as he useth to doe to blesse the people And this may not only be expected in reason but in good Divinity for amongst the gifts of the spirit which God hath given to his Church are reckon'd Doctors Teachers and * 1. Cor. ca 12. v. 28. helps in government To which may be added this advantage that the services of Church-men are rewardable upon the Churches stock no need to disimprove the Royall Banks to pay thanks to Bishops But Sir I grow troublesome Let this discourse have what ends it can the use J make of it is but to pretend reason for my Boldnesse and to entitle You to my Book for I am confident you will owne any thing that is but a friends friend to a cause of Loyalty I have nothing else to plead for your acceptance but the confidence of your Goodnesse and that I am a person capeable of your pardon and of a faire interpretation of my addresse to you by being SIR Your most affectionate Servant J. TAYLOR Syllabus Paragraphorum § 1. Christ did institute a government in his Church p. 7 2. This government was first committed to the Apostles by Christ p. 12 3. With a power of joyning others and appointing Successours in the Apostolate p. 13 4. This succession into the ordinary office of Apostolate is made by Bishops p. 15. For the Apostle and the Bishop are all one in name and person 5. And office p. 20. 6. Which Christ himselfe hath made distinct from Presbyters p. 22 7. Giving to Apostles a power to doe some offices perpetually necessary which to others he gave not p. 23 As of Ordination 8. And Confirmation p. 28 9. And superiority of Iurisdiction p. 35 10. So that Bishops are successors in the office of Apostleship according to the generall tenent of antiquitie p. 49 11 And particularly of S. Peter p. 54 12 And the institution of Episcopacy as well as of the Apostolate expressed to be Divine by primitive authority p. 62 13 In pursuance of the Divine institution the Apostles did ordain Bishops in severall Churches p. 68 As S t Iames at Ierusalem S. Simeon to he his successor 14 S. Timothy at Ephesus p 75 15 S. Titus at Creet p. 85 16 S. Mark at Alexandria p. 93 17 S. Linus and S. Clement at Rome p. 96 18 S. Polycarp at Smyrna and divers others p. 97 19 So that Episcopacy is at least an Apostolicall Ordinance of the same authority with many other points generally believed p. 100 20 And was an
office of power and great authority p. 102 21 Not lessened by the assistance and Councell of Presbyters p. 104 22 And all this hath been the faith and practice of Christendome p. 125 23 Who first distinguished names used before in common p. 128 24 Appropriating the word Episcopus or Bishop to the supream Church Officer p. 139 25 Calling the Bishop and him onely the Pastor of the Church p. 145 26 And Doctor p. 149 27 And Pontifex And Sacerdos p. 150 28 And these were a distinct order from the rest p. 156 29 To which the Presbyterate was but a degree p. 160 30 There being a peculiar manner of Ordination to a Bishoprick p. 161 31 To which Presbyters never did assist by imposing hands p. 164 32 Bishops had a power distinct and superiour to that of Presbyters p. 175 33 Power of Confirmation p. 198 34 Power of Iurisdiction p. 209 Which they expressed in attributes of authority and great power 35 Vniversall obedience given to Bishops by Clergy and Laity p. 214 36 Bishops were appointed Iudges of the Clergy and spirituall causes of the Laity p. 220 37 Presbyters forbidden to officiate without Episcopall license p. 251 38 Church-goods reserved to Episcopal dispensatiō 264 39 Presbyters forbidden to leave their own Dioces or to travell without leave of the Bishop p. 266 40 The Bishop had power to prefer which of his Clerks he pleased p. 267 41 Bishops onely did vote in Councels and neither Presbyters nor People p. 282 42 The Bishop had a propriety in the persons of his Clerks p. 292 43 The Bishops Iurisdiction was over many Congregations or Parishes p. 295 44 Their Iurisdiction was ayded by Presbyters but not impayred p. 311 45 The government of the Church by Bishops was believed necessary p. 323 46 They are Schismaticks that separate from their Bishop p. 327 47 And Hereticks p. 329 48 Bishops were alwaies in the Church men of great honour p. 335 49 And trusted with affaires of Secular interest p. 351 50 And therefore were inforced to delegate their power and put others in substitution p. 371 51 But they were ever Clergy-men for there never was any lay-Elders in any Church-office heard of in the Church p. 375 ERRATA PAg. 21. line 8. insert except S. John Pag. 141. l. 15. Presbyters read Bishops Pag. 243. line 14. after Episcopacy insert c. l. 15. after Bishops insert Clerk Pag. 354. l. 11. read were Farmers OF THE Sacred Order and Offices of EPISCOPACY BY DIVINE INSTITUTION APOSTOLICALL TRADITION Catholick practise c. IN all those accursed machinations which the device and artifice of Hell hath invented for the supplanting of the Church Inimicus homo that old superseminator of heresies and crude mischiefes hath indeavoured to be curiously compendious and with Tarquin's device put are summ a papaverum And therefore in the three ages of Martyrs it was a rul'd case in that Burgundian forge Qui prior erat dignitate prior trahebatur ad Martyrium The Priests but to be sure the Bishops must pay for all Tolleimpios Polycarpus requiratur Away with these pedling persecutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lay the axe at the root of the tree Insomuch that in Rome from S. Peter and S. Paul to S. Sylvester thirty three Bishops of Rome in immediate succession suffered an Honourable and glorious Martyrdome unlesse * Maximini jussu Martyrio coronatur Saith Platina but that is wholly uncertaine Meltiades be perhaps excepted whom Eusebius and Optatus report to have lived till the time of the third Consulship of Constantine and Licinius Conteret caput ejus was the glorious promise Christ should break the Divell's head and though the Divell 's active part of the Duell was farre lesse yet he would venture at that too even to strike at the heads of the Church capita vicaria for the head of all was past his striking now And this I say he offered to doe by Martyrdome but that insteed of breaking crown'd them His next onset was by Iulian and occidere Presbyterium that was his Province To shut up publick Schooles to force Christians to ignorance to impoverish and disgrace the Clergy to make them vile and dishonourable these were his arts and he did the Divell more service in this finenesse of undermining then all the open battery of the ten great Rammes of persecution But this would not take For that which is without cannot defile a man So it is in the Church too Cedunt in bonum all violences ab extrà But therefore besides these he attempted by heresies to rent the Churches bowels all in pieces but the good Bishops gathered up the scattered pieces reunited them at Nice at Constantinople at Ephesus at Chalcedon at Carthage at Rome and in every famous place of Christendome and by God's goodnesse and the Bishops industry Catholick religion was conserved in Vnity and integrity Well! however it is Antichrist must come at last and the great Apostacy foretold must be and this not without means proportionable to the production of so great declensions of Christianity When ye heare of warres and rumors of warres be not afraid said our B. Saviour the end is not yet It is not warre that will doe this great work of destruction for then it might have been done long ' ere now What then will doe it We shall know when we see it In the meane time when we shall find a new device of which indeed the platforme was laid in Aërius and the Acephali brought to a good possibility of compleating a thing that whosoever shall heare his ears shall tingle an abhomination of desolation standing where it ought not in sacris in holy persons and places and offices it is too probable that this is the praeparatory for the Antichrist and grand Apostacy For if Antichrist shall exalt himselfe above all that is called God and in Scripture none but Kings and Priests are such Dii vocati Dii facti I think we have great reason to be suspitious that he that devests both of their power and they are if the King be Christian in very neer conjunction does the work of Antichrist for him especially if the men whom it most concernes will but call to mind that the discipline or Government which Christ hath instituted is that Kingdome by which he governes all Christendome so themselves have taught us so that in case it be proved that Episcopacy is that government then they to use their own expressions throw Christ out of his Kingdome and then either they leave the Church without a head or else put Antichrist in substitution We all wish that our feares in this and all things else may be vaine that what we feare may not come upon us but yet that the abolition of Episcopacy is the fore-runner and praeparatory to the great Apostacy I have these reasons to shew at least the probability First Because here is a concurse of 1. times for now after that