Castro and Melchior Canus Two Spanish Doctors For as much therefore as we are not bound to believe any thing save that which is True it is most evident that we neither may nor ought to believe the Opinions of the Fathers till such time as they appear to us to have been certainly True Now we cannot be certainly assured of this by Their Single Authority seeing that they were but Men who were not always inspired by the Holy Spirit from above and therefore it is necessary that we make use of some other Guides in this our Inquiry namely either of the Holy Scriptures or of Reason or of Tradition or of the Doctrine of the Present Church or of some other such means as they themselves have made use of So that it hence follows that their bare Assertions are no sufficient Ground for us to build any of our Opinions upon they only serve to encline us before hand to the Belief of the same the great opinion which we have of them causing us to conclude that They would never have embraced such an Opinion except it had been True Which manner of Argumentation how ever is at the best but Probable so long as the Persons we have here to do withal are only Men and no more and in this particular Case where the Question is touching Points of Faith it is by no means in the world to be allowed of since that Faith is to be grounded not upon Probabilities but upon necessary Truths The Fathers are like to other great Masters in this Point and their Opinions are more or less Valid in proportion to the Reason and Authority whereon they are grounded only they have this Advantage that their very Name begets in us a readiness and inclination to receive whatsoever comes from them while we think it very improbable that so Excellent men as they were should ever believe any thing that was False Thus in Humane Sciences the saying of an Aristotle is of a far different Value from that of any other Philosopher of less Account because that all men are before-hand possessed with an Opinion that this Great Philosopher would not maintain any thing that was not consonant to Reason But this is Prejudice only for if upon better examination it should be found to be otherwise his Bare Authority would then no longer prevail with us what himself had sometime gallantly said would then here take place namely That it is a sacred thing always to preferre the Truth before Friendship Let the Fathers therefore if you please be the Aristotles in Christian Philosophy and let us have a Reverent esteem of Them and their Writings as they deserve and not be too rash in concluding that Persons of so eminent both Learning and Sanctity should maintain any Erroneous or vain Opinions especially in a matter of so great Importance Yet notwithstanding are we bound withal to remember that they were but Men and that their Memory Understanding or Judgment might sometimes fail them and therefore consequently that we are to examine their Writings by those Principles from whence they draw their Conclusions and not to sit down upon their Bare Assertions till such time as we have discovered them to be True If I were to speak of any other Persons than of the Fathers I should not add any thing more to what hath been already said it having been already in my judgment clearly enough proved that they are not of themselves of Authority enough to oblige us necessarily to follow their Opinions But seeing the Question here is touching these great Names which are so highly honoured in the Church to the end that no man may accuse us of endeavouring to rob them of any of the Respect which is due unto them I hold it necessary to examine this business a little more exactly and to make it appear by considering the thing it self that they are of no more Authority neither in Themselves nor in respect of Us than hath been already by Us attributed unto them CHAP. II. Reason 2. That the Fathers themselves testifie against themselves that they are not to be believed Absolutely and upon their Own bare Word in what they deliver in matters of Religion THere is none so fit to inform us what the Authority of the Writings of the Ancients is as the Ancients themselves who in all Reason must needs know this better than we Let us therefore now hear what they testifie in this Particular and if we do indeed hold them in so high Esteem as we make profession of let us allow of their Judgment in this particular attributing neither more nor less unto the Ancients than they Themselves require at our hands St. Augustine who was the Principal Light of the Latine Church being entred into a Contestation with St. Hierome touching the Interpretation before-mentioned of the second Chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians and finding himself hardly pressed by the Authority of six or seven Greek Writers which were urged against him by the other to rid his hands of them he was fain to make open profession in what account he held that sort of Writers I confess saith he to thy Charity that I only owe to those Books of Scripture which are now called Canonical that Reverence and Honour as to believe stedfastly that none of their Authors ever committed any Error in writing the same And if by chance I there meet with any thing which seemeth to contradict the Truth I presently think that certainly either my Copy is Imperfect and not so Correct as it should be or else that the Interpreter did not so well understand the Words of the Original or lastly that I my self have not so rightly understood Him But as for all other Writers how Eminent soever they are either for Sanctity or Learning I read them so as not presently to conclude whatsoever I there find to be True because They have said it but rather because they convince me either out of the said Canonical Books of Scripture or else by some Probable Reason that what they say is True Neither do I think Brother that thou thy self art of any other Opinion that is to say I do not believe that thou expectest that we should read thy Books as we do those of the Prophets or Apostles of the Truth of whose Writings as being exempt from all Errour we may not in any wise doubt And having afterwards opposed some other the like Authorities against those alledged by St. Hierome he addeth That he had done so notwithstanding that to say the truth he accounted the Canonical Scriptures only to be the Books to which as he said before he owed that ingenuous Duty as to be fully perswaded that the Authors of them never erred or deceived the Reader in any thing This Holy man accounted this Advice to be of so great Importance as that he thought fit to repeat it again in another place and I must intreat my Reader
the Word of God as that all that went before them had both seen and acknowledged the same The Consideration whereof was both Pleasing and Useful unto them For what can more delight a Faithful Heart than to find that the chiefest and most Eminent Persons in the Church had long since held the same Opinions touching our Saviour Jesus Christ and His Grace that We now hold at this day But yet it does not hence presently follow that though these Holy men should have met with these Articles of our Faith in the Writings of their Predecessours only without finding any Foundation of them in the Canonical Scriptures they would notwithstanding firmly have believed and embraced the same contenting themselves with the Bare Authority of their Predecessours S. Augustine professeth plainly that in such a Case they might better have rejected them and not be blamed for so doing neither than have received them unless they would incur the imputation of being over Credulous For it is a point of too much Credulity to believe any thing without Reason and He further affirmeth that where men speak without either Scripture or Reason their bare Authority is not sufficient to oblige us to believe what they propose unto us So that it hence appeareth that Humane Testimonies are alledged not to prove the Truth of the Faith but only to shew the Clearness of it after it is once well grounded Now the Question at this day betwixt us and the Church of Rome is not concerning the Clearness of the Truth of the Articles they believe and press upon the World but it yet lies upon them to prove even the very Ground and Foundation of them Shew me therefore will a Protestant here say either out of some Text of Scripture or else by some Evident Reason that there is any such place as Purgatory and that the Eucharist is not Bread and that the Pope is the Monarch and Head of the Church Universal and then I shall be very glad to try if for our greater comfort we may be able to find in the Authors of the Third or Fourth Century these Truths embraced by the Fathers of those times But to begin with these is to invert the Natural Order of things We ought first to be assured that the Thing is before we make inquiry whether it hath been believed or not For to what purpose is it to find that the Ancients believed it unless we find withal in their Writings some Reason of this their Belief And again on the other side what harm is it to us to be ignorant whether Antiquity believed it or not so long as we know that the Thing is And whereas there are some who to establish the Supream Authority of the Fathers alledge the Counsel which Sisinnius a Novatian and Agellius his Bishop gave of old to Nectarius Archbishop of Constantinople and by him to Theodosius the Emperour which was that they should demand of the Arrians whether or not they would stand to what the Fathers who died before the breaking forth of their Heresie had delivered touching the Point debated betwixt them this is hardly worth our consideration For this was a Trick only devised by a subtil head and which is worse by a Schismatick and consequently to be suspected as a Captious Proposal purposely made to entrap the Adverse party rather than any free and ingenuous way of Proceeding For if this manner of Proceeding had been right and good how came it to pass that among so many Catholick Bishops as there were none of them all advised it How came it to pass that they were so ignorant of the Weapons wherewith the Enemies of the Church were to be encountred How came it about that it should be proposed only by a young fellow who was a Schismatick too And if it were approved of as right and good Counsel why did Gregory Nazianzene S. Basil and so many other of the Fathers who wrote in that Age against the Arrians deal with them wholly in a manner out of the Scriptures And certainly those Holy men besides their Christian Candor which obliged them to this way of Proceeding took a very wise course in so doing For if this Controversie had been to be decided by the Authority of Humane Writers I know not how any man should have been able to make good that which this Gallant so confidently affirmeth in the place aforecited namely That none of the Ancients ever said that the Son of God had any beginning of his Generation considering those many strange Passages that we yet at this day meet with touching this Particular in the Books of the First Fathers which is the reason also why the Arrians alâ—ledged their Testimonies as we see they do in the Books of Athanasius Hilary and others of the Ancients who wrote against them But what need we insist so long upon a Story which is rejected by Cardinal Baronius as being an idle Tale devised by Zozomene who was a Novatian in favour of those of his own Sect. The Counsel of Vincentius Lirinensis which he gives us in a certain little Discourse of his which is very highly prised by Gennadius is accounted by many men much more worthy of our Consideration For having first told us that he speaks not of any Authors Save only of such who having holily wisely and constantly lived preached and persevered in the Catholick Faith and Communion obtained the favour at length either to dye faithfully in Christ or else had the happiness of being crowned with Martyrdom for Christs sake he further addeth That we are to receive as undoubtedly true certain and definitive whatsoever all the aforesaid Authors or at least the greatest part of them have clearly frequently and constantly affirmed with an Vnanimous Consent receiving retaining and delivering it over to others as it were joyntly and making up all of them but one Common and Vnanimous Council of Doctors But this Passage of his is so far from advancing the Supreme Authority which some would attribute to the Fathers in Matters of Faith that on the contrary I meet with something in it that makes me more doubt of their Authority than I did before For I find by this mans discourse that whatsoever his reason was whether good or bad he clearly appears to have had a very great desire of bringing all Differences in Religion before the Judgment seat of the Fathers and to the same end he labours to prove with the same eagerness and passion that their Judgment is inâ—allible in these Cases But in the mean time I find him so perplexed and troubled in bringing out that which he would have as that it appears sufficiently that he saw well enough that what he desired was not so agreeable to Truth For he hath so qualified his Proposition and bound it in with so many Limitations as that it is very probable that if all these Conditions which he here requires were any where to be found we might
according to the Laws of a legitimate Disputation to alledge for the proof of any Point in debate any other Principles than what they do allow of it is evident that they attribute to the Fathers nothing less than such an Authority For in the Confessing of Faith they declare in the very beginning of it That they hold the Scriptures to be the Rule of their Faith and as for all other Ecclesiastical Writings although they account them to be useful yet nevertheless do they not conceive that a man may safely build any Article of Faith upon them And indeed seeing that they believe as the tell you immediately after that the Scripture containeth all things necessary both for the service of God and the Salvation of mens Souls they have no need of any other Judge and should in vain have recourse to the Writings of the Ancients the Authority whereof how great soever it be is still much less both in it self and also in respect of us than that of the Bible In the next place they seriously profess that their intent is to reform the Christian Doctrine according to this Rule and to retain firmly what Articles of Faith soever are therein delivered and to reject constantly all those that are not there found laid down how high and eminent soever the Authority be that shall resciâ—d the one or establish the other in the Belief of Men. It is not Lawful say they for Men nor yet for the Angels themselves either to add to or to diminish from or to alter it neither may Antiquity nor Customs nor Multitude nor Judgments nor Humane Wisdom nor Definitive Sentences nor Edicts nor Decrees nor Councils nor Visions nor Miracles be brought in opposition to it but on the contrary rather all other things ought to be examined regulated and reformed by it These be their own Words If therefore they will not depart from this their Belief which is as it were the Foundation and Key of their whole Reformation they cannot receive the Fathers who lived in the Second Third and Fourth and so in the following Centuries as Judges nor yet Absolutely and Simply as Witnesses in the Points of Faith For they all hold That that Pure Simple and Holy Doctrine which was taught and preached by the Apostles at the beginning of Christianity and delivered over unto us by themselves in the New Testament hath been by little and little altered and corrupted Time which changeth all things continually mixing among it some Corruption or other sometimes a Jewish or a Heathenish Opinion and sometimes again some Nice Observation otherwhiles some Superstitious Ceremony or other whilst one building upon the Foundation with Stubble another with Hay a third with Wood the Body seems at length by little and little to have become quite another thing than it Anciently was we having in stead of a Palace of Gold and of Silver a House built up of Plaister Stone Wood and Mud and the like pitiful Stuff In like manner say they as we see that Brooks of Water the farther distant they are from their Springs the more Filth they contract and the more doth their Water lose of its first Purity And as a Man the more he groweth in years the more doth that Native Simplicity which appeared in him in his Infancy decay his Body and his Mind are changed and he is so much altered by little and little through Study Art and Cunning that at length he seemeth to be clean another Man In like manner say they hath it â—ared with Christianity And here they presently urge that notable Passage out of S. Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians where he speaks of a Great Falling away which then in his time began already to work secretly and insensibly but was not to break forth till a long time after as you see it is in all Great Things whether in Nature or in the Affairs and Occurrences that happen to Mankind which are all conceived and hatched slowly and by degrees and are sometimes a whole Age before they are brought forth Now according to this Hypothesis which as I conceive is equally common to us of France and all other Protestants whatsoever the Doctrine of the Church must Necessarily have suffered some Alteration in the Second Age of Christianity by admitting the Mixture of some New Matter into its Belief and Policy and so likewise in the Third Age some other Corruption must necessarily have got in and so in the Fourth Fifth and the rest that follow the Christian Religion continually losing something of Its Original Purity and Simplicity and on the other side still contracting all along some new Impurities till at length it came to the highest Degree of Corruption in which condition they say they found it and have now at last by the Guidance of the Scriptures restored it to the self-same State wherein it was at the Beginning and have as it were fixed it again upon its true and proper Hinge from whence partly by the Ignorance and partly by the Fraud of Men during the space of so many Ages together it had by little and little been removed This therefore being their Opinion they cannot admit of as the Rule of all their Doctrine the Writings of any of the Fathers who lived from the Apostles time down to ours without betraying and contradicting themselves For according to what they maintain touching the Progress of Corruption in Religion there hath been some Alteration in the Christian Doctrine both in the Second Third and all the following Ages And then again according to what they conceive and believe of their own Reformation their Doctrine is the very same that was in the time of the Apostles as being taken immediately out of their Books If therefore they should examine it by what the Fathers of the Second Century believed there must necessarily be something found in the Doctrine of the Fathers which is not in theirs and the Difference will be much greater if the Comparison be made betwixt it and the Doctrine of the Third Fourth and the following Ages in all which according to their Hypothesis the Corruption hath continually encreased For if their Doctrines were in every respect conformable to each other and had in them neither more nor less the one than the other there must necessarily then follow one of these two things namely That either this Corruption which they presuppose to be in the Belief and Politie of the Church is not that Secret which worked in S. Paul's time or else That their Reformation is not the Pure and Simple Doctrine of the Apostles the Members of which Division are contradictory to those two Positions which as we have said they all of them unanimously maintain So that to avoid this Contradiction it concerns them constantly to persevere in that which they profess is their Belief in their Confession of Faith to wit That there are no Ecclesiastical Writings whatsoever that are of so sufficient Authority as
kind of small satisfaction forasmuch as if in such cases they should have been utterly filent it would questionless have much amazed their Auditors and in some sort also have scandalized and given them offence To satisfie therefore their expectation and yet to keep these Mysteries still concealed from them they waved the business handsomly laying before them that which they accounted not the best and truest but the fittest for their purpose and design Thus do we sometimes please little Children with an Apple or some little Toy to take them off the desire they have to something of greater value Those therefore who take all that the Fathers deliver in the like places for good and solid Expositions and such as they themselves really believed do very much deceive themselves and believing they have a solid Body in their Arms embrace only an empty Shadow Now we should hardly believe those Holy Men to have been guilty of any such jugling dealing as this had we not the word of this so great a Cardinal for our Warrant upon whose Authority we have for this once adventured to propose it to the Readers consideration and shall withal produce some few Examples taken out of the same Author S. Augustine being to expound the sixth Chapter of the Gospel of S. John where as he conceives our Saviour Christ is very copious in his Discourse concerning the Eucharist he presently falls to overshadow and disguise the Mystery with such a number of Allegories Riddles and Ambiguities as that if you dare believe the Cardinal throughout the whole XXVI Tract there is not one Period but hath in it some Elusion Diversion or Diminution of the true and solid Definition of this Article Thus doth he interpret the Bread which came down from Heaven to be the Gift of the Holy Ghost Our Saviour saith he purposing to send down the H. Ghost saith That It is the Bread which descended from Heaven You may if you please believe upon the faith of this Father that this is the true sense and meaning of the Place But yet the Cardinal makes it appear out of Calvin that it cannot be so He likewise contradicteth after the same manner that which the same Father saith a little after to wit That the purpose of our Saviour was to let us understand that this Meat and Drink whereof he speaks in S. John is the Communion and Fellowship that is betwixt his Body and his Members who are the Holy Church in his faithful Servants Predestinated Called Justified and Glorified Had not the Cardinal given us this information who would ever have imagined that this Author who was so Conscientious as that he made it a great quarrel against S. Hierome only for having laid Dissimulation to St. Pauls charge should here himself say that our Saviour Christ would have us to understand His Words thus unless he himself really believed this to be the true sense and meaning of them The Cardinal applies also this very consideration to the greatest part of those other Passages cited out of this Father by the Protestants as namely to this to believe in Christ is to eat the Bread of Life and to this other He that believeth in him eateth of it and he is invisibly fed by it because that he is also invisibly born again and this other Whosoever eateth of this Bread he shall never die but this is to be understood of him that eateth of it according to the vertue of the Sacrament and not according to the visible Sacrament of him that eateth of it Internally and not Externally of him that eateth of it with his heart and not of him that cheweth it with his teeth In all which places the Cardinal pretendeth that S. Augustine suppresseth the true full and solid Definition of this Manducation or eating of the Flesh and drinking the Blood of Christ and instead thereof presenteth this Allegorical and Accidental Meditation to the Catechumeni only to cast a mist as it were before their Eyes and to elude their curiosity He makes use of the same course also in answering those Passages which are alledged by the Protestants out of Theodoret and Gregory Naziâ—nzen who he saith called the Eucharist the Antitype of the Body and Blood of Christ in the same manner as Abrahâ—m being among Infidels called Sarah his Sister concealing something of what was true but yet affirming nothing that was false He likewise explaineth after the same manner this Passage out of Clemens Alexandrinus his Paedagogus The 〈◊〉 and the Blood of Christ is Faith and the Promise In a word he is so much pleased with this Observation as that he fetcheth it in at every turn and indeed we may very well say that this is his main Treasury out of which he produceth the greatest part of those subtile and so admired Solutions that he giveth to the Passages objected against them out of the Fathers Those that have a mind to examine these places of his may happily find something to return upon him in some of those Applications which he hath there made It is enough for our present purpose that he grants us that the Fathers in their Sermons and Discourses made to the people have oftentimes made use of this piece of Art it following clearly from hence that we cannot then possibly have any assurance that they themselves accounted as solid and full such Expositions and Opinions as they have delivered in these Writings of theirs For as the Cardinal endeavoureth by this means to weaken the force of those Passages of S. Augustine Gregory Nazianzen Theodoret and Clemens Alexandrinus may not the Protestants when you alledge against them any Passages out of the Homilies of St. Chrysostom or Eucherius which seem to make strongly against their opinions be allowed to have the same Liberty and to answer that these Fathers speaking before the people made use of this Dispensation speaking that which they thought to be not the Best and Truest but the most proper for the edification of others and that they had an apprehension that a bare and down wright expression of the Truth might possibly have taken off the Heat of the peoples Devotion there being apparently say they more cause to doubt that the people might diâ—-esteem and â—â—ight the Sacrament than to fear lest they should adore it as indeed the Fathers are much more careful in concealing the matter of the Sacrament the outward appearance whereof is apt to make it diâ—esteemed than they are in concealing the Form which is of so Venerable a nature saying often and in express terms that it is the Body of Christ but ordinarily forbearing to say that it is or that it was a Piece of Bread We come now to the third sort of the Writings of the Ancients wherein the Fathers dispute against the Adversaries of their faith namely the Pagans Jews and Hereticks We have formerly touched how much obscurity the earnestness and heat of spirit have caused
Fathers which contradicted His Opinion touching the Exposition of a certain passage in St. Luke being objected against Him He never taking the least notice at all of their Testimonies answers That we ought to Interpret and expound the Fathers by St. Luke rather than St. Luke by Them because that They cannot herein say any thing but what they have received from St. Luke Which in my Judgment was very Judiciously spoken of him and besides Exactly agrees with what St. Augustine said before and which may very well be applied to the greatest part of our Differences in all which the Fathers could not know any thing save what they learnt out of the Scriptures so that Their Testimonies in these Cases ought according to the Opinion of this Learned Jesuit to be expounded and interpreted by the Scriptures and not the Scriptures by Them And this is the language of all the rest of them Maâ—donate who was a most bitter enemy of the Protestants as ever there was any having delivered the Judgment of some of the Fathers who were of Opinion that the sons of Zebedee answered not so rightly when being asked by our Saviour whether or no they were able to drink of his Cup and to be Baptized with the Baptism that he was Baptized with they said unto him that they were able adds That for his part he believes that they answered well And in another place expounding the 2 Verse of the 19 Chapter of St. Matthew having first brought in the Interpretations of divers and indeed in a manner of all the Fathers he says at last That he could not be perswaded to understand the place as they did And here you are to note by the way that the meaning of that place is still controverted at this day How then can this man conceive that the Protestants should think themselves bound necessarily to follow the Judgment of this Major part of the Fathers which themselves make so light of In another place where he hath occasion to speak of those words of our Saviour which are at this day in debate amongst us The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it He is yet much more down-right and says The sense of these words is not rightly given by any Author that I can remember except St. Hilary So likewise upon the 11 Chapter of St. Matthew vers 11. where it is said The least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John Baptist The Opinions of the Fathers upon this passage saith he are very different and to speak my mind freely none of them all pleaseth me In like manner upon the sixth Chapter of St. John Ammonius saith he St. Cyril Theophylact and Euthymius answer that all are not drawn because all are not worthy But this comes too near to Pelagianism Salmeron a famous Jesuit says thus Our Adversaries bring Arguments from the Antiquity of the Fathers which I confess hath always been of more esteem than Novelties I answer That every Age hath yielded unto Antiquity c. But yet we must take liberty to say that the later the Doctors are the more quick sighted they are And again Against all this great multitude which they bring against us we answer saith he out of the Word of God Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment Michael Medina disputing at the Council of Trent touching the superiority of a Bishop above a Priest the Authority of St. Hierome and of St. Augustine being produced against him who both held that the difference betwixt them was not of Divine but only of Positive and Ecclesiastical Right answers before the whole Congregation That it is no marvel that they and some others also of the Fathers fell into this Heresie this point being not as then clearly determined of And that no man may doubt of the honesty of the Historian who relateth this do but hear Bellarmineâ— who testifieth That Medina assureth us that St. Hierome was in this point of Aerius his opinion and that not only be but also St. Ambrose St. Augustine Sedulius Primasius Chrysostome Theodoret Oecumenius and Theophylact maintained all of them the same Heresie We need not bring in here any more Examples do but read their Commentaries their Disputations and their other Discourses and you will find them almost in every page either rejecting or correcting the Fathers But I must not pass by the Testimony of Cornelius Mussus Bishop of Bitonto who indeed is more ingenuous and more clear than all the rest O Rome saith he to whom shall we go for Divine Counsels unless to those persons to whose trust the Dispensation of the Divine Mysteries hath been committed We are therefore to hear him who is to us instead of God in things that concern God as God himself Certainly for my own part that I may speak my mind freely in things that belong to the Mysteries of Faith I had rather believe one single Pope than a thousand Augustines Hieromes or Gregories that I may not speak of Richards Scotusses and Williams For I believe and know that the Pope cannot Erre in matters of Faith because that the Authority and Right of determining all such things as are at all Points of Faith resides in the Pope This Passage may seem to some to be both a very bold and a very indiscreet one but yet whosoever shall but examine the thing seriously and as it is in it self and not as it is in its outward appearances only which are contrived for the most part only to amuse the simpler sort of people I am confident he will find that this Author hath both most ingenuously and most truly given the world an account what Esteem the Church of Rome hath of the Fathers For seeing that these men maintain that the Pope is Infallible and they confess withall that the Fathers may have erred who seeth not that they set the Pope very much above the Fathers Neither may it be here replied that they do not all of them hold that the Pope is Infallible For besides that those among them who do contradict this Opinion are both the least and the least considerable part also of the Church of Rome these very men attribute to the present Church in being in every Age this Right of Infallibility which they will not allow the Pope insomuch that a Council now called together is according to their account of much greater Authority than the ancient Fathers So that there is no more difference at all betwixt these men and the fore-mentioned Italian Bishop save only that whereas they will have the Authority of the ancient Fathers to submit to the whole Body of Modern Bishops assembled in a General Council He will have their Authority to be less than that of a single Pope alone All that can be found fault with in that speech of his is
perhaps that his Hyperbolical way of Expression of a thousand Augustines Hieromes and Gregories all which joyned together he in too disdainful a manner casts down beneath the feet of one single Pope But this height of Expression may be somewhat excused in him considering that such Excesses as these are very ordinary with all high and free-spirited Persons But the Practice of the Church of Rome it self will be able to inform us more truly and clearly what esteem they have of Antiquity For if we ought to stand to the Fathers and not to depart from any thing that they have Authorized nor to Ordain any thing that they were ignorant of how comes it to pass that we at this day see so many several Observations and Customs which were observed by the Ancients now quite laid aside And whence is it that we find in Antiquity no mention at all of many things which are now in great request amongst us There are as it were three principal Parts in Religion namely Points of Belief of Ceremony and of Discipline We shall run them over lightly all three and so far as is necessary only for our present purpose that so we may let the world see that in every one of these three parts they have both abolished and established very many things expresly against the Authority of the Ancients As for the first of these we have formerly given the Reader some Tasts only in the preceding Chapters For we have seen that the Opinion of the greatest part of the Ancient Church touching the State of the Soul till the time of the Resurrection which besides is at this day also maintained by the Greek Church was condemned not much above two hundred years since by the Church of Rome at the Council of Florence and a quite contrary Belief there established as an Article of the Christian Faith We have seen besides that the Opinion of the Fathers of the Primitive Church and even down as far as to the end of the sixth Century after our Saviour Christ and afterwards was that the Eucharist was as necessary to Salvation as Baptism and that consequently it was therefore to be administred to little Children And yet for all this the Council of Trent hath condemned this Opinion as an Error in Faith withal Anathematizing by a Canon made expresly for that purpose all those who ever should maintain the same Let him be Accursed say they whoever shall say that the Eucharist is necessary for little Children before they are come to years of discretion Only that the Fathers might not take offence hereat as having so fearful an Affront put upon them these men have endeavoured to perswade both them and others that they never did believe that which themselves have most clearly and in express Terms protested that they did believe as we have before made it appear which is to double the injury upon them rather than to make them any reparations for it seeing that they deal with them now not as Hereticks only but as Fools also whom a man may at pleasure perswade that they do not believe that which they really do believe We have abundantly heard out of St. Hierome's mouth how that the Opinion of the Chilasts was of old maintained by several of the Ancient Fathers which yet is now condemned as an Error in Faith And indeed the number of these kind of differences in Opinions is almost infinite It was accounted no Error in those days to believe that the Soul was derived from the Father down to the Son according to the ordinary course of Generation but this Opinion would now be accounted an Heresie The Ancients held That it would be an opposing of the Authority of the Scriptures if we should bang up the Picture of any Man in the Church and that we ought not to have any Pictures in our Churches that That which we worship and adore be not painted upon a Wall But now the Council of Trent hath Ordained the quite contrary and says That we ought to have and to keep especially in our Churches the Images of Christ of the Virgin the Mother of God and of the other Saints and that we are to yield unto them all due Honour and Veneration All the Ancient Fathers as far as we can learn out of their Writings believed That the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived in Original Sin If now the Fathers of the Council of Trent accounted them to be the Judges of Faith what moved them then to imagine that we ought not to believe that they maintained any such Opinion For having delivered their Definitive Sentence in a Decree there passed to this purpose and declared That this Sin which hath spread it self over the whole Mass of Mankind by Propagation and not by Imitation hath seised on every Person in particular They at length conclude That their Intention is not to comprehend within this number the Blessed and Vnspotted Virgin Mary the Mother of God Which Words of theirs it is impossible so to expound as that they shall not in plain Terms give the Lie to All the Fathers For if they mean by these Words that the Virgin Mary was conceived without Sin they flatly establish an Opinion which is contradictory to that of the Fathers which is the grossest manner of giving them the Lie that can be If they mean here no more than this which Sense yet their Words will hardly be ever made to bear that it is not known as a certain Truth that the Virgin Mary was conceived in Sin they however honestly say in plain Terms That these Good Men affirmed as True that which is yet Doubtful and maintained as Certain that which was but Problematical onely and Questionable The Council of Laodicea which is inserted into the Code of the Church Universal putteth not into the Canon of the Old Testament any more than Twenty two Books onely excluding by this means out of this number the Book of Tobit of Judith the Book of Wisdom Ecclesiasticus and the two Books of the Maccabees Melito Bishop of Sardis Origen Cyril of Hierusalem Gregory Nazianzene S. Hilary and Epiphanius do all of them the same Athanasius Ruffinus and S. Hierome expresly reject these very Books and cast them out of the Canon And yet notwithstanding the aforesaid Council of Trent Anathematizeth all those who will not receive as Holy and Canonical all these Books with every part of the same as they are wont to be read in the Church and as they are found in the Old Latin Edition commonly called the Vulgar Translation Where besides the Affront which they have offered to so many of the Ancient and most Eminent among the Fathers and indeed to the Whole Primitive Church it self which received this Conon of Laodicea in amongst its Vniversal Rules they have also established a Position here which was not till then so much as ever heard
the Clergy but every Company of the Faithful either chose their own Pastors or else had leave to consider and to approve of those that were proposed unto them for that purpose Pontius a Deacon of the Church of Carthage saith that St. Cyprian being yet a Neophyte was elected to the Charge of Pastor and the Degree of Bishop by the Judgment of God and the Favour of the People St. Cyprian also telleth us the same in several places In his LII Epistle speaking of Cornelius he saith That he was made Bishop of Rome by the Judgment of God and of his Christ by the Testimony of the greatest part of the Clergiâ— by the Suffrage of the People who were there present and by the Colledge of Pastors or Ancient Bishops all Good and Bious men And in another place he saith that It is the â—eople in whom the power chiefly is of chusing Worthy Prelates or refusing the Vnworthy Which very thing saith he we see is derived from Divine Authority that a Bishop is to be thosen in the presence of all the People and is declared either Worthy or Vnworthy by the Judgment and Testimony of all Therefore saith he a little after ought men diligently to retain and observe according to Divine Tradition and Apostolical Custom that which is also observed by us and in a manner by all other Provinces namely that for the due and orderly Proceeding in all Ordinations the Neighbouring Bishops of the same Province are to meet together at that place where a Bishop is to be chosen and the Election of the said Bishop is to be performed in the presence of the People of that place who fully know every mans life and by their long conversation together understand what their behaviour hath been And hence it was that Eusebius Bishop of Nicomedia finding fault with many things in the Ordination of Athanasius reckoned this also among the rest c that it had been performed without the Consent of the People To which answer was made again by the d Council of Alexandria that the whole People of Alexandria had all with one voice deâ—ired him for their Bishop giving him the largest Testimonies that could be both for his Piety and his Fitness for the undertaking that Charge In like manner Julius Bishop of Rome among other faults which he found in the Ordination of Gregory who had been made Bishop of Alexandria adds That he had not been desired by the People And it appeareth clear enough both out of St. Hierome and by the Acts of the Councils of Constantinople and of Chalcedon and also by the Pontificale Romanum and several other pieces that this Custom continued a long time in the Church But it is now above seven Hundred and Eighty years since the Church of Rome ordained in the VIII Council which notwithstanding hath been always unanimously and constantly rejected by the Eastern Church to this very day that the Promotions and Consecrations of Bishops should be performed by the Election and Order of the Colledge of Bishops only forbidding upon pain of Excommunication all Lay persons whatsoever even Princes themselves to meddle in the Election or Promotion of any Patriarch Metropolitan or any other Bishop whatsoever declaring withal that it is not fit that Lay persons should have any thing at all to do in these matters it becoming them rather to be quiet and patiently to attend till such time as the Election of the Bishop that is to be chosen be Regularly finished by the Colledge of Clergy-men And thus have they by this one Canon-shot beaten down the Authority of the Fathers and of the Primitive Church who always allowed to the faithful People some share in the Elections of their Pastors neither hath this Custom been able ever since to lift up its head again the People being as every man knows now more than ever defrauded of this their Right and having not the least share in the Elections not of Popes Primates or Archbishops only but not so much as of the meanest Bishop that is And as the People Anciently had their voice in the Election of their Pastors so probably also they had the like in all other Affairs of Importance that hapned in the Church There happening in St. Cyprians time a very great Persecution many who had been forced to yield by the cruelty of the Pagans being afterwards touched with a sense of their fault desired to return to the Church again but yet to avoid the shame and the length and rigour of those Penances which were usually imposed upon all such Offenders the greatest part of them begged of their Confessors to be favourably dealt withal and corrupted their Priests that so they might be received again into the Communion of the Church without undergoing Canonical Penance St. Cyprian who was a strict Observer of Discipline wrote many things against this Abuse by which it evidently appeareth that the People had their Right also in the hearing and judging of these Causes For in his X. Epistle he saith that those Priests that had received any such Offenders rashly and contrary to the Discipline of the Church Should give an account of what they had done to himself to the Confessors and to the whole People And in another place writing to the People of Carthage When the Lord saith he shall have restored peace unto us all and that we shall be all returned to the Church again we shall then examine all these things praesentibus vobis judicantibus You also being present and judging of them And it is in this same Epistle and touching this very Point where he addeth that Passage which we have before produced in the Chapter touching the Corruption of the Writings of the Ancients I desire them saith he that they would patiently hear our Council c. to the end that when many of us Bishops shall have met together we may examine the Letters and desires of the Blessed Martyrs according to the Discipline of the Lord and in the presence of the Confessors and also according as you shall think fit And hence it is that in one of his former Epistles he protested to his Clergy That from his first coming to his Bishoprick he had ever resolved to do nothing of his own head without their Advice and the Approbation of his People He that would yet be more fully satisfied in this particular may read the XIV Epistle of the same Father and the XXVIII touching the business of Philumenus and Fortunatus two Subdeacons as also the XL. touching the business of Felicissimus and the LXVII which he wrote to the Clergie and People of Spain joyntly commending them for having deposed their Bishops who were guilty of hainous crimes But now that no man may think that this was the Practice of the Church of Carthage only I shall here take occasion to inform the Reader that the Clergie of
no such Doctrine was ever preached to Mankind either by our Saviour Christ or by His Apostles For what Probability is there that those Holy Doctors of Former Ages from whose hands Christianity hath been derived down unto us should be Ignorant of any of those things which had been Revealed and Recommended by our Saviour as Important and Necessary to Salvation It is true indeed that the Fathers being deceived either by some False manner of Argumentation or else by some Seeming Authority do sometimes deliver such things as have not been revealed by our Saviour Christ but are evidently either False or Ill grounded as we have formerly shewed in those Examples before produced by us It is true moreover that among those things which have been revealed by our Saviour Christ in the Scripture which yet are not Absolutely Necessary to Salvation the Fathers may have been ignorant of some of them either by reason that Time had not as yet discovered what the sense of them was or else because that for lack of giving good heed unto them or by their being carried away with some Passion They did not then perceive what hath since been found out But that they should all of them have been Ignorant of any Article that is Necessarily Requisite to Salvation is altogether Impossible For after this Account They should all have been deprived of Salvation which I suppose every honest Soul would tremble at the thought of I say then and as I conceive have sufficiently proved in this Treatise that an Argument which concludeth the Truth of any Proposition from the Fathers having maintained the same is very Weak and Ill-grounded as supposing that which is Clearly False namely That the Fathers maintained nothing which had not been Revealed by our Saviour Christ For this would be such a kind of Argumentation as if a man should prove by the General Agreement herein of the Fathers that all the Departed Souls are shut up together in a certain Place or Receptacle till the Day of Judgment or that the Encharist is Necessarily to be administred to Little Infants and the like where every one sees how Insufficient and Invalid this way of Argumentation is And to say the truth such is the Proceeding of the Church of Rome when they go about to prove by the Authority of the Fathers those Articles which they propose to the World and which are rejected by the Protestants I say moreover that to conclude upon the Nullity or Falseness of any Article that is not of the number of those that are Necessary to Salvation from the general Silence of the Fathers touching the same is a very Absurd way of Arguing as supposing a thing which is also Manifestly False Namely that the Fathers must Necessarily have seen and Clearly known All and every of those things which Jesus Christ hath revealed in His Word Such a kind of Argument would it be thought among the Franciscans if any one should conclude against them from the Silence of the Fathers that our Saviour Christ hath not at all revealed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without Sin But yet I confess again on the other side that in those Points that are accounted as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation an Argument that should be drawn from the General Silence of the Fathers to prove the Nullity or Falseness of it would be very Pertinent and indeed Unanswerable As for example His manner of Argumentation would be very Rational and Solid that should conclude that those Means of Salvation which are proposed by a Mahomet suppose or a David George or the like Sectaries are Null and contrary to the Will of our Saviour Christ how much soever these Men may seem to Honour Him seeing that none of ehe Ancient Christians speak so much as one syllable of it and are utterly ignorant of all those Secrets that these Wretches have preached to their Disciples and delivered as Infallible and Necessary Means of Salvation After this manner did Irenaeus dispute against the Valentinians and other of the Gnosticks who vented their own sensâ—less Dreams and Absurd Issues of their Own Brain saying That the Creator of the World was but an Angelâ— and that there were above Him certain Divine Powers which They called Aeones that is to say Ages some of them making more of these and others fewer and some reckoning to the number of CCCLXV and an infinite number of other the like Prodigies never shewing any Ground for the same either in Reason or out of the Scripture Irenaeus therefore that he might make it appear to the World that this so Strange Doctrine was produced out of their Own Brain only goes about and visiteth the Arohives of all the Churches that had been either Planted or Watered by the Holy Apostles turns over all their Records Evidences and Ancient Monuments and these Aeones Achamot and Barbele of the Gnosticks no where appearing nor so much as any the least Part or Trace of them He concludeth that the Apostles had never delivered over any such thing to their Disciples neither by Writing nor by Word of Mouth as these Impostors pretended they had For certainly if they had done so the memory of it could not have been so utterly lost This is also the Method that Tertullian followed in his Disputations against these very Hereticks and others the like in the 22 Chapter of his Book De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos and in other places The Practice of these Great Persons who made use of it themselves will here serve to prove unto us that this Course is Right and Good And thus you see that the Authority of the Fathers is of very great Use in the Church and serveth as an Out-work to the Scriptures for the repelling the Presumption of those who would forge a New Faith But forasmuch as those who broach New Doctrines of their own Head do Ordinarily slight the Holy Scriptures as those very Hereticks did whom Iraeneus confuted who impudently accused Them of not being Right and that they are of no Authority and speak in very Ambiguous Terms and that they are not able to inform a man of the Truth unless they are acquainted with Tradition the Truth having been delivered as These men pretended not in Writing but by Word of Mouth For this Reason I say and for other the like are the Writings of the â—athers of very great Use in these Disputes and I conceive This to be one of the Principal ends for which the Divine Providence hath in despite of So many Confusions and Changes preserved so many of them safe down to our times If therefore the Protestants should propose of their Own Head and should press as Absolutely Necessary to Salvation any Positive Article which doth not at all appear in Antiquiâ—y without all Question this Course might with very good Reason be made use of against Them But it is most Evident that there is no such thing at all in their Belief for
they maintain only such things as are eithe Expresly delivered in the Scriptures or else are Evidently deduced from thence and such as have also been expounded the greatest part of them and interpreted by the Ancients not in their own private Writings only but even in their Creeds and Synodical Determinations also They pretend not either to any Particular Revelation oâ— Secret Tradition or any other New Principle of Doctrine Their Faith is grounded only upon the Old and which is the Most Authentick Instrument of Christianity the New Testament Only in their Expositions either of the Doctrines therein Contained or other Passages They produce some few things that are not at all found in the Fathers But these things being not Necessary to Salvation the Argument which is brought from the Silence of the Fathers herein is not sufficient to prove the Falseness of them Time Experience Assistance of others and the very Errours also of the Fathers having as They say now laid that Open to Them which was Heretofore more Difficult and hard to be discovered and taken notice of in Divine Revelation Who knoweth not that a Dwarf mounted upon a Giants shoulders looketh higher and seeth further than the Giant himself It would be ridiculous in any man that should conclude that That which the Dwarf pretends to discover is not at all in Nature because then the Giant must also have seen it Neither would He be much wiser that should accuse the Dwarf of Presumption because forsooth He hath told Us that whereof the Giant said not a word seeing that it is the Giant to whom the Dwarf is beholding for the greatest part of His Knowledge And this is Our Case say the Protestants We are mounted upon the Shoulders of that Great and High Giant Antiquity That advantage which we have above it by its means enables us to see many things in Divine Revelation which it did not see But yet however this cannot be any occasion of Presumption to us because we see more than it did for as much as it is this very Antiquity to which we owe a great part of this our Knowledge It is Certainly therefore very Clear that as for the Protestants and what concerns the Positive Points of Their Faith they are wholly without the Compass of this Dispute And as for those of the Church of Rome They cannot for the Reasons before given make any Advantage of the Testimony of the Ancients for the proving of any of those Points of Doctrine which They maintain save only of those wherein their Adversaries agree with them and therefore if they would have us to come over to Their Belief They must Necessarily have recourse to some other kind of Proofs But yet I do not see but that we may very well make Inquiry into Antiquity touching many Articles which are now maintained by those of the Church of Rome and if we find that the Ancients have not said any thing at all of the same we may then positively conclude That they are not to be accounted as any part of the Christian Religion I confess that there are some of them against which this Argument is of no force at all as namely those which they do not account Necessary to Salvation and which both the Ancients heretofore might have been and we also at this day may be ignorant of But certainly this Argument in my Judgment would be utterly unanswerable against such Points as they press as Necessary and whereon indeed they would have our Salvation wholly to depend As for Example The Supreme Authority of the Pope and of the Church which owneth him as Its Head The Adoration of the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass the Necessity of Auricular Confession and the like For if so be they are of so great Importance as they would make us believe it would be a Point of high Impiety to say That the Fathers knew not any thing at all of them in like manner as it would be a most absurd thing to maintain That though they did know them they would not yet speak any one word of them in all those Books which we have of theirs at this day And if they had said any thing at all of them in their Writings we have no reason in the World to suspect that possibly those Passages where mention was made of them may have been rased out or corrupted and altered by false hands seeing that this Piece of Knavery would have been done to the disadvantage of those who had these Books in their Custody We have rather very good reason to suspect that whatsoever Alterations there are they have been made in favour of the Church of Rome as we have proved before in the First Book If therefore after so long a time and after so many Indexes as they of the Church of Rome have put forth and so great a desire as they have had to find these Doctrines of theirs in the Writings of the Fathers and the little Conscience that they have sometimes made of foisting into the Writings of the Fathers what they could not find there We can still notwithstanding make it appear that they are not to be found there at all After all this I say who can possibly doubt but that the Fathers were ignorant of them Who will ever be perswaded to believe that they held them as Necessary to Salvation And if they were not known to be such then how can any body imagine that they should at length come to be such now My Opinion therefore is That although the Authority of the Fathers be not sufficient to prove the Truth of those Articles which are now maintained by the Church of Rome against the Protestants although the Ancients should perhaps have believed the same it may notwithstanding serve to prove the Falseness of them in case that we should find by the Fathers that the Ancients were either wholly ignorant of them or at least acknowledged them not for such as they would now have us believe them to be which is a Business that so nearly concerns the Protestants as that to be able to bring about their Design I conceive they ought to employ a good part of their time in reading over the Books of the Ancients Onely it is requisite that either Party when they undertake so tedious and so important a Business as this is should come very well provided of all Necessary Parts as namely of the Knowledge of the Language and of History and should also be very well read in the Scriptures and that they use herein their utmost Diligence and Attention and withal read over exactly whatsoever we have left us of the Fathers not omitting any thing that Possibly they can get because a little short Passage many times gives a Man very much Light in the finding out their Meaning and not think as some who much deceive themselves do that they perfectly know what the Sense and Belief of the Ancients was because