were reformed in the last Age were Erroneous or Idolatrous than any supposed Irregularities that might be in the way of managing it can never blemish that Work. It is certain that all Rules are only for quiet times in the days of Peace and Order the transgressing of established Rules is without doubt a very censurable thing but this must not be applied to all times For tho in a setled time we know how much respect we owe to Judges and Ministers of State yet if these very Persons will go to set on a Rebellion and authorize it all that respect ought presently to be thrown off CHAP. II. Some general Considerations upon what is alledged of the uncanonical Proceedings in the Progress of our Reformation IT hath a very ill Grace to see a man of the Roman Communion talk so highly of the Obligation to obey the Canons of the Church so as almost to Vnchurch us upon some supposed Irregularities in our Reformation For what is the whole Constitution of the Papacy but one continued Contradiction to all the Ancient Cannons And what is the whole modern Canon Law but the Exaltation of the Papal Authority above all the Canons of the Church Is there any thing clearer in the Primitive times than the establishing the Authority of Metropolitans that was confirmed by the Council of Nice the equalling the Bishops of Constantinople to the Bishops of Rome which was done by the 2d and 4th General Council the establishing the Independency of those Churches that were in Possession of it and so freeing them from all Subordination to other Sees which was done by the 3d General Council And yet tho here we see the four first General Councils all concurring to establish this form of Government the Papal-power is no other than a breaking in upon all these Canons What is more uncanonical than the establishing Legatine Courts the receiving of Appeals the obliging of Bishops to sue for their Bulls in the Court of Rome the dispensing with all the Canons of the Church the exempting all the Regulars from Obedience to their Bishops which is not only contrary to the express Canon of the Council of Chalcedon but is plainly contrary to that Authority that Bishops derive from Christ to govern the Flocks committed to their care In short the whole System of the Church and Court of Rome is so direct a revolt from all the Primitive Canons that it is a degree of Confidence which I do not envy in our Author for him to talk of uncanonical Proceedings Canons are Rules established either by Provincial Synods or more General Councils which import no more but that they ought to be commonly observed for it is plain that there is no Church in the World that hath looked on the Canons of the former times as things so sacred and unalterable that they could never be dispensed with The Schism of the two Popes at Rome and Avignon and all that was done in consequence of it was uncanonical with a Witness and yet how was all that buried by the Council of Constanâ—â— And tho one of the two Obediences was certainly in a state of Schism yet all that was passed over and without any Submission of either side all was healed up The whole Constiution of Metropolitans with their Provincial Synods which was the ancientest and clearest of all the Primitive Rules arises only out of the several Divisions of the Provinces of the Roman Empire when then the Civil Constitution of all Europe is so much altered from what it was then all that Fabrick subsists now rather upon a respect to ancient Rules than from the Authority of those Canons which can no more remain the ground upon which they were built being now removed And one may as well pretend that we are bound to obey the old Roman Law or the Feudal Law because those Laws were once received amongst us as to tell us that we are bound to obey all the ancient Canons especially those that had a visible Relation to the Constitution of the Roman Empire Therefore the Subordination of Churches of Synods and Metropolitans and Patriarchs that was only the knitting into one Body and under several degrees of Subordination a Church that was all under one Civil Society and Empire hath sunk with the Roman Empire So that the tearing that Empire in pieces hath quite put an end to all that Ecclesiastical Subordination And if there is any thing of that yet kept up amongst us it is rather for the preserving of Order than that we are under any Obligation of Conscience to submit to such Constitutions And therefore as oft as a great Conjuncture of Affairs carries along with it considerations that are of more weight than the adhering to ancient Forms then all these may be well superseded For all Rules are temporary things and made according to several Emergences and Occasions which altering frequently it were a very unreasonable thing to expect that every Church should at all times conform it self to them And tho we condemn that Dissolution of all the Canons which the Church and Court of Rome hath brought into the World yet on the other hand we cannot acknowledg any such binding Authority in them that they can never be dispensed with The methods of those men with whom we deal are wonderful Now they reproach our Church with a Violation of ancient Canons and yet when we lay to their charge some of the Canons that their Councils have made in these later Ages such as those of the Lateran for the Extirpation of Hereticks and for the Pope's power of deposing Heretical Princes they tell us that great difference is to be made between the Decisions of the Church in the Points of Faith and the Decrees that are made in matter of Discipline since tho they assert an Infallibility in the one yet the other are transient things in which we ought not to admit of so absolute an Authority This is false with relation to Decrees that declare a Christians Duty or a Rule of Morality For Decrees in such matter do import an Article of Faith or Doctrine upon which they are founded And therefore a Church may indeed even in the Opinion of those who believe her Infallible err in a particular Judgment against such or such a Heretical Prince for that being founded on a matter of Fact she may be Infallible still even tho she were surprised in matters of Fact. But she cannot be Infallible if in declaring the Duty of Subjects towards Heretical Princes or of the Popes Authority in those cases she hath set Rules contrary to the Word of God. In such matters as these are I do acknowledg the Decrees of the Church are for ever Obligatory upon all those who believe her Infallible Therefore since our Author urges so much the Authority of the Canons I would gladly know what he thinks of these which are not I confess Ancient yet they were enacted by the Supream Authority of that Body
stretching their Jurisdiction a little too much on the other hand those who have submitted so tamely to the one have no reason to reproach us for bearing the other Servitude even supposing that we granted that to be the Case And if in the time of our Reformation some of our Bishops or other Writers have carried the Royal Supremacy too far either in Acts of Convocation or in their Writings as those things are personal Matters in which we are not at all concerned who do not pretend to assert an Infallibility in our Church so their excess in this was a thing so natural that we have all possible reason to excuse it or at least to censure it very gently For as all Parties and Persons are carried by a Bias very common to Mankind to magnify that Authority which favours and supports them so the extreams of the Papal Tyranny and the Ecclesiastical Power that had formerly prevailed might have carried them a little too far into the opposite Extream of raising the Civil Power too high But after all we find that when Theodosius came to the Empire he saw the Eastern half of it over-run with Arrianism and as the Arrians were in Possession and were the more numerous so they had Synods of Bishops that had met oft and in vast numbers and had judged in their favours Their Synods were both more numerous than that of Nice and were a more just Representative of the Catholick Church since there were very few of the Western Bishops in that which was held at Nice And as for the Frauds and Violences that were put in practice to carry Matters in those Synods it is very like the Arrians both denied them and were not wanting to recriminate on the Orthodox So when there was a pretence of General Councils on both hands here was a very perplexed Case But Theodosius found a short way to get out of it and therefore instead of calling a new General Council or of examining the History of the several pretended Councils which ought to have been done according to our Authors System he pass'd a Law which is the first Law in Iustinians Code by which he required all Persons to profess that Faith which was profess'd by Damasus Bishop of Rome and Peter Bishop of Alexandria and yet this Law which was a higher Invasion on the Ecclesiastical Authority than any that was committed in our Reformation was never so much as censured on the contrary Theodosius was highly magnified for it There is no reason to imagine that he paid any particular Respect to the See of Rome in this for his joining Peter of Alexandria with Damasus shews that he made the Faith of these Bishops the measures of that Doctrine which he resolved to protect not because of the Authority of their Sees but because he believed their Faith was Orthodox The Case was almost the same in England in which it was pretended that the Independent Authority of our Metropolitans ought to be asserted which was established by the Council of Nice and that many Corruptions in the Worship as for instance the Worship of Images that was condemned by two very numerous General Councils one in the East at Constantinople and another in the West at Francfort ought to be reformed If upon all this the Supreme Civil Authority of this Nation had enacted such a Law as Theodosius had done commanding all to follow the Doctrine profess'd by the two Arch-Bishops of this Church it had been no other but a copying after that Pattern which Theodosius had set us with the Approbation of all Antiquity and yet it cannot be pretended that our Kings and Parliament acted in so summary a way For they went much more slowly and maturely to Work. Upon the whole matter the Civil Authority hath a Power to command every thing that is just and lawful and in that Case the Laws that flow from it ought to be obeyed And if the matter of the Laws is sinful we must not indeed obey in that case but we must submit and bear what we do not like and suffer where we cannot obey So that lawful or unlawful seem to be the only measures that ought to govern our Obedience And as in the matters of natural Religion and Morality no Body can deny that the Civil Authority hath a full Scope tho that is still limitted by this that there ought to be no Injustice Immorality or Turpitude in the Actions that are commanded but where this is not we are bound to obey all the Laws that relate to those matters and where it is we are bound to submit and to bear our burden without giving our selves the trouble to enquire how far the Civil Authority ought to be carried in such matters We set the same measures to our Obedience in matters of revealed Religion If the King passes Laws contrary to Scripture we cannot indeed obey them because of that higher Authority to which we are subject and in Obedience to which we pay all Submission to those who God hath set over us but if they are lawful and conform to the Scripture we ought to obey them without examining whether the King hath proceeded in the passing such Laws by the Rules that become quiet and regular Times And if a Hezekiah or a Iosias should rise up and finding the greater part of his Subjects the Priests as well as the People engaged in Idolatry if he should reform them and suppress that corrupt way of Worship we ought instead of examining critically the method or steps by which he had brought about that change rather to rejoyce in the goodness of God for blessing us with such a Prince So that let men men write and dispute as long as they will on these matters the whole Cause must be brought to this short Issue Either the things that our Princes and Legislators enacted at the Reformation were in themselves just and good and necessary or not if they were then they having an Authority over us in all lawful things as they did well to enact these Laws so we do well to obey them But if they were neither just nor good nor necessary then we acknowledg that as it was a Sin in them to enact them so it were a Sin in us to obey them And all other reasonings upon this Subject are but Illusions by which weak minds may perhaps be wrought upon but they will appear to be such evident Fallacies to men of Sense that without entring into a strict enquiry of what may be alledged for them they will easily shake them off In short if the Reformation appears to be a good thing in it self then all arguing against the manner of it is but meer trifling and looks like men who lie in wait to deceive and to mislead People by false Colours of Truth CHAP. IV. Reflection on the eight Theses laid down by our Author UPon the Grounds that have hitherto been opened it will not be hard to make a very clear
a present Interest is the motive but it is a degree of impiety of which one would hope there are few men capable to lye so long and so solemnly both to God and man. But I come now to look a little more narrowly into the matter of this Treatise I will not at all engage my self to examine a great many Passages that are cited in it out of some of our Authors and in particular out of Dr. Heylin and Mr. Thorndike When we object to those of the Church of Rome some things out of Erasmus or Cassander or for Historical Matters when we cite P. Paul or Thuanus we know with how much neglect they put by these Authorities as if they were not concerned in them tho these Persons lived and dyed in the Visible Communion of their Church And I do not see why we may not take the same liberty with such Writers that tho they have been in Communion with our Church yet have it seems continued in it with some difficulty And it will not appear very strange if at the end of our civil Wars those Persons who saw the ill effects of some ill Principles very apparently were carried by the impressions which those Confusions made upon them to oppose those disorders by an over-bending of their notions to the other Extream For this is an excess to which the humane nature is so liable that it were a wonder if all Writers especially men of warm Tempers that had been sower'd by ill usage had been preserved from it so that I will wholly wave all that he cites from these or any others of our Authors and will come to the matters themselves CHAP. I. Of the Importance of those Matters Objected to the Reformation supposing them all true THE Disputes that we had with the Church of Rome were at first managed with more sincerity by our Adversaries than they have been of late They justified their Church in those Points for which we accused her and objected the strongest things they could to ours but when they felt their Cause too weak to be maintained by fair methods then they betook themselves to others that were indeed less sincere but yet were more apt to make impressions on weak minds In France and among us Three new Methods have appeared of late Years The First was to take off men from entring into the merits of the Cause and to prepossess them with such prejudices against the Reformation as might lead them to condemn it without examining To a discerning mind this method furnishes the strongest of all prejudices against those who use it this shews such a distrust of the Cause it self and it discovers it self so plainly to be a trick that it gives every man a just ground of indignation against those who fly to it Besides that it affords a good Plea to all men to continue in the Religion in which they were born and bred without hearkning to any new discoveries for if the Grounds upon which the Reformation was made were good it signifies little to an Enquirer into Truth whether this Work was set on foot and managed with all the exactness and regularity that might have been desired or not Truth is always Truth from what hand soever it comes and the right way to find it out is to free our minds from all prejudices that so we may examine matters with unprepossessed understandings A Second Method is to perswade the World that we have not yet understood one another that Popery hath only appeared odious because it was Misrepresented to the world in false colours but that it will be found to be quite another thing if it is truly represented The Bishop of Meaux had the honour to begin this piece of Legerdemain our men of the Mission here have too slender a stock of their own and therefore they give us the French Mode in Controversie as well as our Gallants do it in Cloaths so they have thought to do wondrous feats with this method of Representing but the want of sincerity of that Prelate in this as well as in other things hath been so evidently made out that if some men had not a secret that makes them proof against all discoveries he would be a little out of Countenance and our Representers here are so exposed that nothing is wanting for their conviction but a sense of that shame with which they have been covered it is indeed a strange piece of confidence in men to come and offer to convince the World That after Disputes of 150 years continuance neither side hath understood the state of the Controversie and tho the same Decrees of Councils and the same Forms of Worship are still received yet all these things must of a sudden so change their nature that in defiance of all that which upon other occasions they say in behalf of Tradition a new discovery should be made giving us new senses of all those things but whatsoever success that Book may have had where a plundering Army managed the Argument yet it is become now as ridiculous here as it is pretended to have been successful beyond Sea. A Third Method is the setting up the Credit of Oral Tradition not upon the Authority of some passages of Scripture but upon this general Topic that one Age must needs have delivered the same Faith to the succeeding Age that it had received from that which went before it and by consequence that we must have in the present Age the same Doctrine which the Apostles delivered at first 17 Ages ago It was found That the Authority of the Church could not well be founded on passages of Scripture for then we must be allowed first to believe the Scripture and its Authority and Genuineness and then to inquire into the meaning of those Passages and to examine to which of all the different Churches that are in the world they do belong Now it was apparent That if it were once allowed that we may carry our enquiries so far as to be able to settle our selves in these points then this Infallible Authority is not so necessary to us as they would make us believe since we are supposed to have found good Proofs for believing the Scriptures and for discovering the true meaning of the hardest passages in them without its help Now this would spoil all and throw out those Arguments that perswade us of the necessity of an infallible Judg both for our finding out and for our expounding the Scriptures they are now sensible of all this and see that it is a very false Method of arguing to prove the Scriptures by the Church when the Church must be first proved by the Scriptures and therefore they do betake themselves to the Infallibility of Oral Tradition founding it upon this General Topic That all the men of one Age must needs have instructed the following Age in the same Faith that they had received from the former Age and upon this a great many imaginary Impossibilities are
which they account Infallible It is true some have thought they could get out of this difficulty by denying these to be the Acts of that Council But if our Author be the same Person with him that writ concerning the Adoration of the Eucharist he is of another mind and doth acknowledg that those Canons are the true Acts of that great Assembly and not only the Designs of the Pope It is true he saith the sense of the Canon concerning the secular Powers is by Protestants mistaken But he hath not yet given himself the trouble of laying before us the true sense of that Canon and one would think that he who writ the Treatise that is now under Examination had very favourable thoughts of the Doctrine of Subjects shaking off an heretical Prince for he reckons up the many risings that were in K. Edwards days chiefly for matter of Religion as a proof that the Body of the Clergy went not into that change Which rising saith he of the Laity in such numbers for their former way of Religion would not have been had not their Clergy justified it unto them Rising is a soft word for Rebellion and one would think that it would have afforded no small matter of reproach against us if we brought in a company of Rebels to make up a Muster of our Religion But to own that the Clergy justified it to them without adding the least Word expressing our Author's dislike of this shews plainly enough that how good a Subject soever our Author may be to a Prince of his own Religion yet he thinks a Catholick Clergy may be able to justifie to the Laity a Rising against a Heretical Prince upon the account of Religion And it seems our Author had a great mind to make a huge appearance of his Catholick Rebels in K. Edwards days For besides that he speaks of Risings in many more Counties then are mentioned by the Books of that time he also represents all those Risings to have been upon the account of Religion tho the History makes it clear that the Risings over England were chiefly occasioned by Parks and Enclosures and that it was a rage of the Peasants against the Gentry in most places chiefly in the Northfolk-Rebellion where Religion was not at all pretended nor doth it appear that any pretended Religion except those of Devonshire so that our Author would make his Party and the Clergy more Rebellious than indeed they were In this whole Period he seems to have been forsaken of common Sense CHAP. III. Some general Considerations on the Regal Supremacy that was raised so high at the Reformation OUR Author hath brought together many Acts of Parliament with their pompous Preambles that seem to carry the Kings Power in Ecclesiastical Matters to a very Indefinite degree and upon all this he triumphs often as if this was so improper that it alone is enough to blast the whole Reformation Our Author is much more concerned to justifie all Papal Bulls than we can be to justifie all the Words of our Laws especially the Rhetorick that is in their Preambles If he believes the Pope infallible the general Parts of Bulls that set forth the Doctrine of the Church are such solemn Declarations that he must be determined by them But at lowest he believes the Popes to be the Centers of the Catholick Unity and all Bishops are bound by Oath to obey all their Decrees and Ordinances Now when our Author will undertake to justifie all the Preambles of Bulls that are in the Bullarium then we may undertake to justifie all the flourishes that may be in any Act of Parliament When any Authority is asserted in general and indefinite Terms these are always to be understood with those Restrictions and Limitations that the nature of things require to be supposed even when they are not expressed St. Paul expresses the Obedience of Wives to their Husbands in terms so extreamly extended that as the Church is subject unto Christ so ought the Wives be to their own Husbands in every thing He expresses also the Duty of Children in as comprehensive terms Children obey your Parents in all things Now if one would draw Inferences from the extent of these words he might taking the liberty that our Author takes upon some of the Expressions that are in our Acts of Parliament represent the Authority that St. Paul vests both in Husbands and Parents as a very boundless and a very extravagant thing This is enough to shew that in all those large Phrases of Obedience there are some necessary Reserves and Exceptions to be understood and if this Qualification is necessary even in writings that were inspired it is no wonder if some of the Rhetorick of our Acts of Parliament wants a little of this Correction It is a very unreasonable thing to urge some general Expressions or some stretches of the Royal Supremacy and not to consider that more strict Explanation that was made of it both in K. Henry the 8th's time and under Q. Elizabeth That were so clear that if we had to do with Men that had not resolved before-hand not to be satisfied one would think there could be no room for any further cavilling In K. Henry's time the extent of the Kings Supremacy was defined in the necessary Erudition of a Christian man that was set forth as the Standard of the Doctrine of that time and it was upon this that all people were obliged to take their measures and not upon some Expressions either in Acts of Parliament or Acts of the Convocation nor upon some stretches of the Kings Jurisdiction In this then it is plainly said That with relation to the Clergy the King is to oversee them and to cause that they execute their Pastoral Office truly and faithfully and especially in those Points which by Christ and his Apostles was committed to them And to this it is added That Bishops and Priests are bound to obey all the Kings Laws not being contrary to the Laws of God. So that here is expressed that necessary Reserve upon their Obedience it being provided that they were only bound to obey when the Laws were not contrary to the Laws of God. The other Reserve is also made of all that Authority which was committed by Christ and his Apostles to the Bishops and Priests and we are not ashamed to own it freely that we see no other Reserves upon our obedience to the King besides these So that these being here specified there was an unexceptionable Declaration made of the Extent of the Kings Supremacy yet because the term Head of the Church had something in it that seemed harsh there was yet a more express Declaration made of this matter under Q. Elizabeth of which indeed our Author hath taken notice tho I do not find he takes notice of the former which he ought to have done if he had intended to have represented this matter sincerely to the world which I confess seems not