how to Read What will become of those who have no understanding nor any readiness of mind How can all those People examine all those Points the Discussion of the least of which notwithstanding is evidently necessary to make them rationally determine It is easy to see that all that heap of Objections and Difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has proposed against the way of the Scripture tends only to lead men to the Authority of the Church of Rome to the end they should subject themselves to that as a Soveraign and Infallible Rule But as the Doctrine of the Soveraign Authority of that Church is not one of those first Principles which the light of Nature dictates to all men since of Thirty parts of our known World there are at least nine and twenty who do not acknowledge it and as they cannot also say that it is one of the first and common notions of Christianity since of all those who profess themselves to be Christians there are Three parts which reject it The Author may freely give us leave if he pleases that we should first demand of him upon what Foundation he would build that Doctrine to make us receive it as a point of Divine Faith I say of Divine Faith for if we should hold it only as a matter of human Faith he himself would see well that we could not believe the things which the Church of Rome should teach in vertue of its Authority otherwise then with a humane Faith since the things which depend upon a principle cannot make an impression in us different from that which the principle has made To the end therefore that I should believe with a Divine Faith that which the Church of Rome shall teach me by its Authority it is necessary that I should also believe its Authority with a Divine Faith Thus far methinks we should not have any Controversy Let us see therefore upon what Foundations of Divine Faith he would pretend to establish this Proposition The Authority of the Church of Rome is Soveraign and Infallible He can only do it by these Three ways The first is by a new Revelation that God should have made to us of this Truth the Second in shewing that it is one of the Articles that is contained in the Revelation of the Apostles and the Third in shewing us the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility impressed upon the Church of Rome even after the same manner as every thing proves it self by the marks that distinguish it and thus it is that we pretend that the Scripture forces the acknowledgment of its own Divinity The first of these ways is nullified since they agree with us that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles there has been no new Revelation and that there must not be any expected The second would be proper and necessarily supposes a recourse either to Tradition or the Scripture for there are but these two Channels in which we can seek for the Revelation of the Apostles But that of the Scripture is forbidden us by the Author of the Prejudices by reason of the unconquerable difficulties which he discovers there It is says he a way full of obstacles and difficulties and even those who profess to spend all their days in the Study of Divinity ought to judge that Examination to be above all their abilities He must therefore content himself with the way of Tradition But before he can make use of that he must be first assured and that with a certainty of Divine Faith that that which that Tradition contains is come down from the Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles or at least that this particular point of the Authority of the Roman Church in the state wherein it is at present must have proceeded from thence that the Apostles must have Transmitted it viva voce down to their Successours and that their Successours must have received it and Transmitted it down to those who descended from them in the same sence and every whit the same as the Apostles had given it to them If he cannot be assured of that Transmission all that he would build upon it will be uncertain and if he cannot be assured of it with a Divine Faith that which he would build upon it will not be more so But how can he be assur'd of that He has no more that living Voice of the Apostles to represent it to us he must rely upon Testimonyes would it therefore be the Roman Church that must assure us But her Divine and Infallible Authority is as yet in Question and while it shall be questioned it remains suspended it cannot be believed any further then with a humane Faith Shall it be the Scripture that must give Testimony to that Tradition But there are so many Difficulties in that way says the Author of the Prejudices That it is Evident that it is not that which God has chosen to Instruct us in his Truths Must we learn it from that Tradition it self But to decide that point whether that Tradition came from the Apostles or no Tradition it self can be yet no other than a humane Testimony I mean that the Successors of the Apostles declare to us that they have received such and such Doctrines from the Apostles viva voce and that they have receiv'd them in the same sence in which the Apostles gave them to them we cannot at the most have more then a humane Faith for them for they are men as well as others Hitherto therefore there cannot be had a Divine Faith concerning the point of the Sovereign and Infallible Authority of the Roman Church and nothing by Consequence that can assure the Conscience and set the mind of man at rest Let us therefore pass over to the third means which is that of examining the Characters of Divinity and Infallibility that may be seen in the Roman Church It is in my Judgment in the sight of this that they give us certain external Marks and we have already seen that the Author of the Prejudices establishes upon this that Authority about which we dispute The most eminent Authority says he that can be in the world is easily discover'd to be in the Catholick Church because though there are Sects that dispute with it the Truth of its Tenets yet there are none that can with any Colour contend with it for that eminence of Authority which arises from its External Marks But without entring here far into the Controversy touching those Marks I say that he is very far from being able to establish such a certainty upon them as we ought to have of a Principle of Religion And this will appear from these three Reasons The First is That the greatest part of those marks are common to false Societies and even to Schismatical Churches which not only are not Infallible but which are actually in Errour as I have shewn in the first part of this Treatise The Greek Church for example in
Judges of things no otherwise then by what they tell them and by some light appearances without informing themselves any further Nevertheless it is certain that there never was a more unjust Accusation then that nor whose injustice could be more easily seen if they would but open their Eyes a little For as to that which respects that pretended Novelty of Religion which they say that we have introduced I would fain have them mark out some positive Articles of our Faith that were not always believed in the Christian Church and which they themselves to this day do not believe in the Church of Rome without any ways scrupling them I confess that they may have among them some Questions of the School about which our positive Doctrine is different from that of the Church of Rome as the Question of the Nature of Concupiscence that of the dolors of the Soul of Jesus Christ and that of the Definition of the Faith But besides that those Questions are very few in Number and that they are scarce known by the People we have the Holy Scriptures so clearly on our side upon all those points that they cannot lay any Novelty to our Charge and for the rest all our great Differences consist in respect of us in Negative Articles that is to say in those points which the Church of Rome believes and which we do not believe as the Sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation Oral Manducation Adoration of the Host Purgatory Invocation of Saints and Angels Religious Worship of Images that of Relicks the Divine Service in an unknown Tongue the Necessity of the Caelibacy of the Clergy the merit of good works the Authority of Traditions the Monarchy of the Pope the Infallibility of the Church of Rome her Soveraign power over mens Consciences and other such like Doctrines It is True that we have rejected those Doctrines but since it is also true that we have rejected them only because they are Novelties that men have added to God's Revelation beyond which there can be nothing in Religion that should not be new what ground have any of them to accuse us as Innovators They would have far more ground to say that we are too rigid Followers of Antiquity and that we urge our Scruples and our Aversions for these Novelties further then we ought or at least that we deceive our selves and take that for new which indeed is not so If they said no more but that we should labour to justify our selves but to charge us under that pretence with a Spirit of Novelty is the most unreasonable and groundless thing in the World That which makes the Fallacy is That the people whose sight is extream short and who Judge of the Novelty and Antiquity of things only by that which appears open to them imagine that all that which they received from their Fathers and which they found setled when they came into the World is Antient throughout so that a false Antiquity which shall be only of two or three Ages past passes in their Judgments for as good and true a one as if it had been always so Notwithstanding which it is certain that in matters of Religion nothing can be truly Antient but that which was from the beginning and nothing can be Divine but that which is from Jesus Christ and his Apostles for it is a thing very evident and acknowledged on both sides that from the Time of Jesus Christ and his Apostles There has been no immediate Revelation whence it follows That all that which is sprung up since is humane and by consequence New This is the True Idea that we ought to form of Old and New and not that popular Idea which cannot but be false and deceitful and yet notwithstanding it is upon this latter that they ground themselves when they accuse us to have been Innovators and to have made a new Religion as if Jesus Christ had been an Innovator then when he would correct the abuses that the Jews committed in their Divorces by telling them In the beginning it was not so It is after the same manner that they charge us with having made a new Church for they play upon the Equivocalness of the word New The People who imagine that all that which appears to them in another form then that which they have been wont to see is new believe that our Society is new because they see that we do not Assemble our selves any more with them as we did before that we have other places then the usual that we do not any more say Mass in our Assemblies that we hold another Order and that we have other Ministers But there needs here only a Distinction For a thing is called New either with respect to its being and its Essence in respect of its External State and its changeable Accidents When an Infant comes into the World they say a new man is born when a new House or Town is built where there none before they say it is a new Town or a new House and the same may be said when one thing is essentially changed into another thing as when God changed Moses's Rod into a Serpent or when Jesus Christ changed the water of Cana into Wine it might be said that it was a new thing because in effect it was not essentially the same thing that it was before But when it is only changed in its State or External Form as when a Man changes his countenance his Stature or his Inclination manner of acting or Cloaths or when he repairs a House or a Town if then any should say this were a new thing without doubt he would speak improperly It is not less manifest that it is no more then a sigurative Expression which ought not to be taken litterally nor in a rigorous sence So when Saint Paul calls a converted man a new Man a new Creature and the Church a new Heaven a new Earth a new World every one sees that these are ways of speaking that ought not to be taken literally but figuratively for a Believer is essentially the same man and the same Creature of God that he was before his Conversion and Heaven Earth and the World are not changed in their Essence by the manifestation of the Gospel Besides a thing that is changed in its external Form may be called new either with respect to the State wherein it was immediately before its change or with respect to the Just and lawful State wherein it should be according to its first Establishment so when one repairs a ruined House if it keeps its first proportion We may say that it is made new in respect of what it was before its Reparation but if its first and natural Fashion should be changed it would be new even in respect of what it should have been according to the Model by which it was made at first These Distinctions clear this whole Dispute and it is not difficult to apply them to the subject we
Mystery of Iniquity which had began to work or to form it self could not be conceiv'd of but under the Idea of a secret Plot whose lowest Foundations were laid in the very days of the Apostles and which must at length after a long Train of Ages have come to its utmost pitch and be manifested And as to that other Passage it supposes in the first place a Captivity of the People of God Go out says it of Babylon Secondly a Captivity of that People who did not yet fail to be the People of God Go out of her says it my People And in the third place a Captivity in which while they abode they were in danger of partaking of the sins of their Oppressours Least it adds in partaking of its sins Yee partake also of its plagues All that formed an Idea of a Church that groan'd under the weight of a great Corruption which easily gave way to that thought that it might possibly be the Latin Church as soon as any other and that it might as well fall out in the times of our Fathers as in any other season CHAP. V. More Particular Reflections upon that Priviledge of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Church and of its Authority ANy one may now see methinks from what I have laid down what Judgment ought to be made of that pretended Infallibility that the Latin Church ascribed to it self and by what means they would shut our eyes and reduce us to a slavish Obedience We shall yet nevertheless make here some reflexions upon it and see whether it has any solid Foundation and any Justice in that claim 1. But before we proceed farther it will be necessary to know what they understand by that Infallible Church and examine all the Sences that may be given to this Proposition that the Church cannot err For our Adversaries themselves very differently understand it In the first place then if they would plainly say That that which has been believ'd and universally practis'd by all those who have compos'd the Body of the visible Church throughout the extent of all Ages is Infallibly true I say that it is a very useless Principle since to speak according to men it is impossible to know that which has been so believ'd and universally practis'd So that one need say no more against it but to send back those men to an Infallibility of that nature Who could make a search so just so clear and so general as he ought to assure himself of the unanimous consent of all the particular Members unless he could raise all that were dead and understand them one after another I acknowledge that we have the Books of the Antients but all have not wrote and who can warrant us that those who have not wrote had the same Sentiments with those that have Who can warrant that the many Books that are lost were not in very many points contrary to those that are extant Who can teach us nicely to distingush what those Authors have wrote in Copying out of or in imitating one another from their true and natural Sentiments and that which they have wrote on their own heads from that which they have wrote as Witnesses of the general Belief of their Ages Who can assure us that they were not sometimes deceived in taking for the general Belief or Practise of the Church those things which were not so For the same Case happens in these very days that as to those things that seem so exceeding clear there are yet a sort of men who would perswade us that we do not very well and perfectly know what the General belief of the Church of Rome is and that we may very easily deceive our selves and deceive others how much more then heretofore when those things were by nothing near so clearly decided and so manifest as they are now at this day Who can exactly enough tell us what those Articles were wherein all the Antients were universally agreed and those wherein they did not agree since it has very often fell out that one and the same Author has wrote things very contrary upon one and the same Subject Who can assure us that what three or four Antient Authors had wrote after an agreeable manner was not one of those particular deviations from the Truth which one may often discover in them which does not at all hinder but that the contrary Opinion may be more received and more general In fine there is nothing so vain and so fallacious as that pretended Infallibility of the Church if they restrain it to those Doctrines which shall be found established by the unanimous consent of all Persons and of all Ages Moreover Such a kind of Infallibility would not only have been no hindrance to our Fathers from entring on an examination of the matters of Religion but it would also have obliged them to it For they must always have known whether that which was taught and practis'd in the Church in their days concerning Faith and Worship had been confirm'd by the consent of all the foregoing Ages which they could never have known but by such an examination So that those who in these days dispute with us about the right of the Reformation will never find any reason on their side The Church of Rome must needs be very Infallible with them but it can be so but in one respect I would say in those matters wherein She agrees with the Church throughout all Ages and with all those Persons who Compose it which could not in the least have taken away her possibility of erring in those matters wherein she should withdraw her self from the Antient Church and by consequence she must submit her self her decisions her Doctrines and her Customs to a Rule and an Authority that was superiour according to which they ought to be examined 2. If they understand by it That the Church in every Age cannot err that is to say for Example That that which was believed and generally practis'd and beyond all controversy in the Church in the days of our Fathers could not be otherwise then true and good I say that they make this a Principle which cannot be to any purpose and from which they cannot draw any advantage For how could they assure themselves that all those who made up the Body of the Visible Church a little before the Reformation did well approve of the Doctrines that they then taught and the Worship that was then practis'd and how could they distinctly and precisely affirm that any such thing had been generally received For it cannot be imagin'd under a pretence that some certain Opinions had been ordinarily taught in the Schools or that certain Devotions had been commonly used that they should be brought into the publick Service and spread over their Books under that same pretence It cannot I say be imagin'd that there had not been many in the World who disapprov'd them and look'd on them as errours and abuses altho' they
3. But we must go yet higher and follow the Scripture yet farther It teaches us that God has put his Sacred Writings immediately into the hands of all the Faithful as well as into those of the Pastors with an obligation to read them exactly and to build their Faith and their Hope upon them whence it follows that they have right to refer the Doctrines of their Pastors and to examine them by that Rule and that they are not bound To see with the Eyes of the Prelates nor to devest themselves of their own guidance to rest themselves upon that of their Prelates The Proof of this Truth may appear from a thousand places of Scripture When God would give his Law to the Israelites he said to Moses Gather me the people together that I may make them hear my words that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth and that they may teach their children Moses just before his death assembled all of Israel together and said to them O Israel hearken unto the Statutes and unto the Judgments which I teach you for to do them that ye may live Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it Keep the Statues and Judgments of God and do them for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the Nations which shall hear these Statutes And another time having assembled the same people he speaks to them these words Hear O Israel the statutes and judgments which I pronounce this day that hearing them ye may learn them and keep and do them The words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart Thou shalt teach them diligenty unto thy children and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up Thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes Thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and upon thy gates It was in following that Primitive Institution that the Faithful among the Jews Read the Scripture so carefully Blessed is the man says David whose delight is in the Law of the Lord and meditates in that Law day and night and elsewhere he would have the young men order their ways according to the word of God Saint Paul by the same Spirit commends Timothy in that from a child he had known the holy Scriptures See then the Old Law the Antient Scriptures given immediately into the hands of all the Faithful with a command to Read them and meditate upon them and consequently to build immediately upon them their Faith their Piety and their Comfort But because we should not imagine that that Order has been changed under the New Testament we need but to run through the first Verses of the greater part of the Epistles of Saint Paul and those of Saint Peter of Saint James of Saint Jude and they will see that they are addrest to the Faithful of the Churches as well as to the Pastors To all that be in Rome called to be Saints To the Saints and Faithful in Jesus Christ which are at Ephesus To all the Saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi where he distinguishes them from the Pastors for he adds with the Bishops and Deacons All that lets us see clearly that there was nothing changed in that regard They will say it may be that it does not follow from thence that the more simple among the Faithful should take to themselves that liberty of searching out by themselves the true meaning of the Scriptures and that they ought not to refer themselves to their Pastors who are the Interpreters of them But if that were so why should he have addrest them immediately to them why should he have put them in their hands with commands to Read them to Learn them and to Mediate of them in their Houses in their Journeys in their rising Up and lying Down why should he have said that it was all their Wisdom and all their Understanding if he had not supposed that they could of themselves comprehend the meaning of them at least of so much as might be sufficient for their particular Comfort and for their Salvation Moreover that is clearly refuted by the Use that Jesus Christ and his Apostles would have us make of the Scripture that we might know him to be the true Messiah notwithstanding the contradictions of the ordinary Pastors of that Church who gave to that Scripture a quite contrary meaning Search the Scriptures said our Lord to them for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testifie of me To what purpose should he have said that if he would not have them by themselves search out the true sence of the Scripture and that they should correct the false Interpretations which their ordinary Pastors gave of it It is from this Principle that Saint Peter and Saint Paul proved Jesus Christ to be the Messiah not of the Scriptures and Converted the people as it may appear by their Sermons And it is also upon this Foundation that the Inhabitants of Berea are praised for having made use of that Right and for having by themselves had recourse to the Scripture to know whether that which Saint Paul and Silas told them was true These were saith St. Luke more noble than those Jews in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so After that how can any one affirm that the Faithful ought blindly to believe their Pastors and to strip themselves of their own conduct to rest themselves upon that of the Prelates Is not this to condemn that which the Scripture praises If you look on those of Berea as being yet Jews had they not their ordinary Pastors who had before condemned Jesus Christ and all his Doctrine Wherefore then had they recourse to the Scriptures Could they better comprehend the sence of them than all the Church to which they had submitted themselves a Church I say which was upheld by all the Authority of Moses by the Sacred Names of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob by the glory of a thousand Miracles by the sending of the Prophets by the Holiness of a Temple where God had placed his Name for ever and by the Majesty of a Succession that had been preserved for near twenty Ages And if you look upon them as new made Christians were not Paul and Silas their True Pastors whom their Zeal their Constancy their Travels their Preaching their Knowledg and their Miracles had made famous every where Why did not they trust them why did they yet farther compare their words with the Scripture CHAP. VIII A Further Examination of that Authority of the Prelats and that absolute Obedience
difficulty to get thither and yet that belonging of right to the examination of all men the darkness of the understanding the easiness wherewith men may deceive themselves the want of necessary helps the ignorance and simplicity of the greatest part of men would not hinder it Those are then no other than frivolous Reasons which cannot take away from men that right that God and Nature have given them They ought therefore to enjoy it at least in some respect to wit for the deciding of the question whether they ought to lose it or no. 13. But it is certain they can never so enjoy it in that regard nor decide that Question without entring upon an examination of all their Doctrines which lets us see yet more and more the absurdity of our Adversaries Principle For there is not any Principle more absurd than that which destroys it self which cannot be established but by making use of a contrary Principle and which precisely can have no place but there where it cannot be of any use But all that may be said of that Principle of those Gentlemen since it is most true that to establish it one must necessarily proceed to examine their Doctrines and that they can never know whether they ought to refer themselves to the Latin Church or examine that Doctrine by themselves till they have made that examination that is to say till there shall be no farther occasion to refer themselves to that Authority of the Latin Church which makes pleasant sport enough This is that which is evidently manifest if one consider it that before one can acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church it must be supposed that one is assured that among all the Religious Societies that are in the World the Christian is the only one in which one ought to place himself and that can never be known but by one way only which is that of examining its Doctrine and its Worship In effect there is not any one of those external marks that can make that difference The Jews had their Miracles Antiquity Succession an uninterrupted Duration the Holiness of their Patriarchs the Light of their Prophecies the Majesty of their Ceremonies we do not dispute these marks with them and as to Temporal Prosperity they had it heretofore and we are not assured that we have always had that whereof we make such boasting which nevertheless is not very great The Mahometans glory that they have the same things with the consent of the People and the admirable success of their Arms and as for Antiquity which they fail in they say that as Jesus Christ did but succeed Moses so Mahomet also has succeeded Jesus Christ As for the Heathens they had as I have said their Miracles their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies their Succession their uninterrupted Duration their Temporal Prosperities and if we strive with them about Antiquity and Multitude the advantage will not lye on our side There is then nothing more deceitful than those external appearances separated from their Doctrines they are as proper to make a Jew remain a Jew a Heathen a Heathen and a Mahometan to remain a Mahometan as to make a Christian to remain a Christian whence it follows that to form well that difference and to be assured that the Christian Communion is the only good one one ought to examine its Worship and its Doctrines Moreover before they could acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church they must suppose that a man is sure that among all the Christian Sects the Latin only is the true Church and that cannot be known but by the examination of its Doctrines Those external marks can be no ways proper for it The Greeks the Abyssines the Nestorians ascribe to themselves Antiquity Succession Miracles an uninterrupted Duration as well as the Latins They have their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies and their Multitude which is not less considerable and as to worldly Prosperity the Abyssines may boast of it and the Muscovites also who make a part of the Greek Church and who knows whether that of the Latin Church shall never change It is then manifest that they can conclude nothing from those marks separated from their Doctrine they are so ambiguous and uncertain that they cannot fix any setled Judgment upon them concerning the truth of the Latin Church But supposing that they could by those external marks or by any other ways which they would take be assured that the Latin Church was the true Church I say it must necessarily be understood in this Sence to wit that in that visible Communion God brings up and preserves his truly Faithful ones For it is in those only that that name of the visible Church is verified and not in the prophane the wicked and the worldly who are mingled with them and who are none of that Body that is the Spouse of Jesus Christ They must then be assured before they can know whether they ought to refer themselves absolutely to that Body of Pastors that governs the Latin Church that the prophane and the worldly do not prevail in that Body and that they never have prevailed for if they do prevail or if they ever have prevailed they may introduce errours into the publick Ministry and false Worship or suffer them to come in through their negligence or otherwise or scatter abroad the ill Doctrines of the Schools amongst the People favour ill customs and in a word corrupt that Communion as it appears that that did come to pass in the Jewish Church and sometimes in the Christian But how can any be fully assured that it may not be so at present otherwise then by the examining of her Doctrine They ought then to give up that point of external marks our Fathers have gained their cause without going any farther by the Prejudices of Corruption which I have set down in the second and third Chapters But if you take them only as meer conjectures and if you will reckon them to be nothing it is certain that to be assured that there is nothing corrupted in a Communion where God brings up and preserves his true Faithful people that the publick Ministry is pure in all its Doctrines and in its Worship one must of necessity take that way of examination and that examination must be very exact So that before we can enter only upon that Question whether we ought to give to the Latin Church a Soveraign Authority over our Faith and Consciences the discussing of which they know not how to avoid all must be examined from whence it follows that that Principle which I have opposed is absur'd because it destroys it self and none can ever practise it till it cannot be any more of any use and more absur'd yet in that when it would hinder us from examining it constrains us to make an examination as exact as can be thought of CHAP. IX An Examen of those Reasons they alleadge to Establish that Soveraign Authority
matter which shall be Treated of in its place In effect there are two sorts of Calls which we ought not to confound That of the Reformation and that of the perpetual Exercise of the Gospel-Ministry And the Author of the Prejudices himself seems to have Judiciously enough distinguished them when he lays down two sorts of Separation the one Negative which consists only in a rejecting of those things that are ill and the other Positive which goes so far as to set up a Body apart with the Exercise of the Ministry We shall therefore speak elsewhere of the Right that our Fathers had to set up a publick Ministry and it shall suffice for the present to have solidly Established their Call to Reform To shut up this Chapter it remains only that we speak a Word to a Question which they here raise about this Call in the same sence in which we here consider it For they demand of us whether it was Ordinary or Extraordinary To which I Answer That it was both the one and the other in different respects It was Ordinary as to its Right since all men have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to reject Errors and Superstitions and to employ themselves in making their Brethren to reject them according to the Common Laws of Piety and Charity The Pastors also have an Ordinary and perpetual Right to do the same Thing and to make use of that Publick Authority which their Function gives them for the guidance of their Flocks It was Ordinary as to the Obligation which lay as well upon the People as the Pastors to do that which they did because it was a Law of Christianity and not a new Law or Commandment that bound them to it their Duty was founded upon the principles of that very Gospel and of the same Christian Religion which Jesus Christ had Founded and whereof they made a Profession But I affirm that it was likewise Extraordinary in two things First of all in respect of that extream and indispensable Necessity which lay upon them to do what they did For although we have always a Right to reject those Errors and that false Worship which may creep into the Church and although we should be always bound to make use of it also if it were so yet it is not always Necessary to come to the practise or the Exercise of that Right and of that Obligation at least to so Publick and Splendid a one as that of our Fathers was because the Church is not always in a State of Confusion and Disorder as she was in their Time Things Ordinarily glide away in a more regulated course the Publick Ministry is more pure and the Gospel more disingaged from the oppression of Traditions or Humane Superstitions Secondly That Call was Extraordinary in respect of those qualities wherewith God invested our first Reformers and those who joyned with them in so great a work for it is not an Ordinary thing to see such eminent gifts and that in so great a Number as those which appeared in the Age of the Reformation accompanied with such an Heroical Spirit as our Fathers had and such a great Love for the purity of the Gospel as the People had who received their Instructions All which constrains us to acknowlede a particular and special Providence of God throughout the whole Conduct of that great Divine Work who raised up Labourers fitted for the Harvest which he had prepared CHAP. V. An Answer to the Objections that are made against the Persons of the Reformers WE have hitherto methinks sufficiently justified the Action of our Fathers in the business of the Reformation It appears that they had but too many Reasons to suspect a great Corruption not only in the Government of the Church but in the Worship and Doctrines of it also and too just motives to engage them to make a more particular Examination It may not less appear by what we have said concerning the Infallibility of the Church of Rome and that absolute Authority which she ascribes to her self over mens Consciences that her pretensions have no Foundation and that all the Faithful have a Right to Judge of the matters of Religion by themselves and to discern what is good from what is ill We have seen nevertheless that our Fathers were not moved so publickly to make use of their Right but by an extream and utmost Necessity and if they will do them Justice they ought freely to acknowledge what the Author of the Prejudices has not dared to deny that they had a sufficient Call to go as far as a Negative Separation and openly to refuse to believe and to Act what their Consciences should not allow them to approve But as that Motion of Conscience was not Universal or common to all those of their Time and as it had encountred the interests of a great Body that was in possession of the Government of the Latin Church they have laboured to render it odious by all sorts of ways and even those who were not able directly to condemn it have not failed to search out divers pretences to cry it down and having nothing to say against their Actions they have taken up something against their persons This is that that the most of our Adversaries endeavour with great Care this is that that their Writers of Controversies and Missionaries who are spread abroad on all sides among us and who make use of all sorts of ways to gain Proselytes do even now all their days and this is that that the Author of the Prejudices in particular has done His Argument may be well nigh reduced to this That there is no likelyhood that God committed the care of Reforming his Church to persons whose Life and Conduct was Disorderly and Scandalous And the Conclusion that he pretends to draw from it is that we ought to reject without any further Examination that Reformation and to put our selves into the Communion of the Church of Rome 1. It will be no difficult matter to shew him that Blessed be God we have as to what concerns us on every side matter of Edification from the manners of those who were first of all made use of in so Holy and so Necessary a Work and this we shall presently make out But before I come to that I am obliged to tell him that his way of Reasoning is the most captious and the most contrary to the interests of the true Religion that can be imagined and that it is contrary even to the Interests of that Church of Rome which it would defend I say in the first place that it is captious For since our Fathers Reformed themselves only out of the motion of their Consciences which dictated to them that they ought to do it for the Glory of God and their own Salvation how can he pretend that we who have followed them out of the same Reason can revoke an Action which we believe to be just and lawful out of meerly
who laboured in the Reformation of their Churches religiously Observed They constrained no person and they rejected nothing that was not Alien to the Christian Religion But says the Author of the Prejudices Those two hundred Burghers of a Swisse Town were as Learned and ready in matters of Divinity as we may easily Judge Swisse Burghers to be I answer that this is the Objection of the Pharisees This People said the Enemies of Jesus Christ know not the Law But Jesus Christ did not answer them amiss when he said to them Father I thank thee Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast bid these things from the Wise and Prudent and revealed them unto Babes Let the Author of the Prejudices if he will be of the number of those wise and prudent ones we shall not envy him his readiness and his Learning and we shall rest satisfied with this that it has pleased God to place us in the same Rank with those mean Swisse Burghers to whom as much Babes as they were God vouschafed to make his Gospel known The true knowledge of Christians does not consist in having a head full of Scholastick Speculations and a Memory loaded with a great many Histories and multitudes of passages of divers Authors or a great many Critical Notions nor in having well-studied Lombard Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Scotus Bonaventure Capreolus Aegidius Romanus Occham Gabriel Biel the Canon Law the Decretals and all those other great Names wherewith they stunned the People in times past Our True knowledge is the Holy Scripture Read with Humility Charity Faith and Piety See here all that those poor Burghers of Zurich knew they were neither Prelats nor Cardinals nor Doctors of Lovain nor of the Sorbonne but they were good men they feared God they studied his Word and for the rest of the State of their understandings and the degree of their light may appear by the Reformation which they made for the Tree may be known by its Fruits 4. Objection The matter which was to have been handled in that pretended Synod cannot be more considerable For they Treated therein about abolishing all at once the Authority of all the Councils that were held in the Church since the Apostles days under a pretence of reducing all to the Scripture Answer Since the True Authority of the Fathers and Councils consists in their Conformity with the Divine writings the way solidly to establish them is to reduce all to the Scripture as they did in that Synod If the Author of the Prejudices pretends to give the Fathers and Councils and Authority quite different from that of the Word of God whereof they ought to be the Ministers and Interpreters we may answer him that he affronts them under a pretence of Honouring them For as it is the greatest real injury that can be done to a Subject to give him the Authority of his Prince So it is the most real injury which they can do to the Fathers to invest them with the Authority of God 5. Objection They medled with the Faith of all the other Christian Churches which the Switzers could not but condemn in embracing a new Faith Answer The Swisses did not embrace a new Faith but they renounced those Errors that it may be might have prevailed for some Ages but which were new in regard of the Christian Religion They did not condemn other Churches in that which they had of good but they condemned that evil which they had in them A sick person who has cured himself condemns the diseases of others but he condemns not that Life which remains in them On the contrary he exhorts them to be healed for fear least remaining in that sick condition they should die 6. Object They treated about all those dangerous Consequences which that Change of Religion would have produced and which were easy to have been foreseen Answ They Treated also about the Glory of God and their own Salvation and all those dangerous Consequences which could not but come from the blindness and passion of those who would hold the People of God under their servitude ought not to have prevailed over two such great interests as that of the Glory of God and Mens Salvation All these Objections are well near the same that the Pagans made against the Primitive Christians and it seems that the Author of the Prejudices has studied them out of Celsus Prophyrie and Julian to make use of them against us 7. Object Moreover they declared that they would have men make use of the Authority of the Scripture only and by that rash and unheard of Prejudice they condemned the procedure of all the foregoing Councils wherein they were wont to produce the opinion of the Fathers to decide the controverted Questions Answ The Scripture is the only Rule of the Faith of Christians and there is no other but that alone whose Authority we ought to admit as Soveraign and decisive of Controversies It is not True that all the foregoing Councils admitted of the Opinions of the Fathers and their Traditions under that Quality The Author of the Prejudice lays it down without Proof and Reason 8. Object The Church being in possession of its Doctrine they ought to have forced Zuinglius to produce his Accusations against that Doctrine and to have made the proofs which he alleadged against it to have been examined But in stead of that they ordered that he should appear in that Disputation in Quality of Defender and that it should be the others part to convince him if Error Answ If the Church of Rome would have the World believe the Doctrine that she Teacheth it is fit she should furnish it with proofs and her pretended possession cannot assure it Those who propound any thing as matter of Faith are naturally bound to prove it and it is absurd to say that Possession discharges that Obligation for the Faith ought to be always founded upon proof and it never stands upon meer possession otherwise the Heathens ought to have kept their Religion which was established on so Antient a Possession 9. Object All that Examination was further grounded upon this ridiculous Principle That if there could not be found any person within the Territory of Zurich that could make the Errors of Zuinglius appear by the Scripture it ought to be concluded that he had none As if the weakness of those who opposed his Doctrine could not be an effect of their Ignorance rather then a default in the cause they defended Answ This Objection is no more to the purpose then the foregoing What could the Senate of Zurich have done more then to have assembled all the Clergy of their States to have called the Bishop of Constance or his Deputies thither to have received all the World and given all liberty of propounding their Arguments and Proofs It belonged to them to propound them if they had any and if they had none they ought to have acknowledged that 'till then
render it incapable to defend the Truth I pass over in silence a multitude of other things which sensibly shew us the falseness of that pretence of Rome such as are the lapses of Marcellinus and Liberius the Contradictory decisions of divers Popes their inconstancy their capricious humours their interested Judgments and I know not how many other Characters incompatible with a true Rule of Faith It is sufficient to know that that pretence has never been publickly received in France and that our Kings and our Parliaments have always most vehemently opposed it As to the Prelats and the other Ecclesiasticks after the sad Descriptions that we have given of their state in the days of our Fathers and many Ages before them there is no likelyhood that they can yet further with the least shadow of Reason propose them as a Just Rule of Faith which way soever they are considered whether in General or in particular whether separated or assembled together Their Ignorance their negligence in spiritual things their sinking into vices their excessive love of the World and in a word all that which we have have seen in them will not permit us to believe that we should be bound to trust absolutely to their word about the Subject of the Reformation They had given but too many marks that they were subject to Error since the greatest part of those things which were to be reformed came from them or from those who went before them And besides that they were themselves express parties in that affair considering the complaints that they made of them and that they were engaged to uphold the superstitions in which they had held the People we are not Ignorant that they had a servile dependance on the Court of Rome to which they were bound by Oath that they would no stir nor speak nor act but according to her Inspirations and her Orders as experience has Justified it to us in the Council of Trent In fine their Prelats were men and such men as had made the Church to fall into that Lamentable Corruption out of which our Fathers sought to get out and how could they take them for an Infallible Rule As for that which respects the people if the Author of the Prejudices is as is reported the Author of the Treatise of the Perpetuity of the Faith he would it may be fain make them pass with us for Infallible and give them to us to be the Rule of our Faith But we have shewn him often enough already that he is deceived in his opinion What was there more liable to deceive them and more to incline them to abuses and superstitions then the people and above all a people ignorant of the Mysteries of the Gospel such as was for a long time that of the Latin Church How could a people that ought themselves to undo the false prepossessions with which they had been imbued serve for the Rule of a Reformation But some will say if there had been nothing in the Body of the Church capable of being a Rule of Faith why did your Fathers demand a Council to hear their Complaints and give them a remedy I answer that our Fathers demanded a Council not such a one as that of Trent made up of the Creatures of the Pope who waited for the Holy Ghosts coming from Rome in a Cloak-Bag as the Roman Catholicks have reproached them but such a free Council as wherein they might yet have hoped that God would have presided and his word have been heard They demanded it not as the Rule of Faith blindly to submit their Consciences to all that which should be there determined for they well knew that they owed that submission only to God but as a humane Ordinary means in the Church that Christian Charity and the love of Order made them desire to try if they could not by that way re-establish the purity of the Gospel in the West by the way of the Scripture I acknowledge that there had lain a great difficulty in the choice of persons but if yet notwithstanding they would have proceeded sincerely in it and in the fear of God without letting the interests of flesh and blood enter in the difficulties were not unconquerable Passion Contention a Spirit of Division was not as yet generally spread over all they were not as yet so obstinate in Error as they have been since All the Learned men that were then in it acknowledged the necessity of a Reformation and desired it They had therefore a ground to demand a free Council and these who know History are not ignorant that to elude that demand which appeared to all the World to be so Just and Reasonable that the Court of Rome thought it needful to make use of the most deep and imperceptible piece of its Policy But howsoever it be there is a great difference between a Council that should submit it self to and Rule it self by the Word of God and between a Rule of Faith Our Fathers might very well demand the first and expect to obtain it although he state of the Church was then extreamly corrupted for there was yet some good desires which without doubt would have wrought some effect if they had not been stifled or turned aside But it does not follow from thence that they must after what manner soever have taken that Church for the Soveraign and Infallible Rule of their Religion They would not have more reason to say that we ought to turn to the side of Tradition which the Council of Trent has raised to the same Honour and Authority with the Scripture We shall quickly see which ought to have been believed It shall suffice to say here that although the greatest part of the Roman Traditions are new as the Protestants have often demonstrated them to be yet that in the Age of our Fathers which was as it were the sink of the foregoing there was scarce any Error nor any Superstition how gross soever that they did not labour to defend under the pretence of Tradition so that Tradition is so far from being able to serve for a Rule that it ought it self to be corrected and regulated according to that Maxim of Jesus Christ In the beginning it was not so As to the Antient Fathers I confess that their Writings may be of great use to Learned men to furnish them with a great measure of knowledge but they can never have Authority sufficient to serve for a Rule of Faith The Fathers were men subject to Errour to Prejudices and Surprises as well as other men and there appear but too many signs of it in their Writings They have submitted themselves to the Authority of the Scripture They have called it the balance and exact Rule of all things a sure Anchor and Foundation of the Faith They have taken in their Controversies Jesus Christ speaking in his Gospel for their Judge They have Exhorted their Hearers and their Readers to believe them only so far
its greatest contests with the Latin was always a Catholick Church she was of as great Antiquity as the Roman she had an uninterrupted duration from many Ages ago she had her large extent and her multitude as well as the Roman she had a Personal Succession of her Bishops down from the Apostles she gloried in a Conformity to the Doctrine of the Fathers she had her members united among themselves and with her Patriarchs she did no less then the Roman affirm her Doctrine to be Holy and her word to be Efficacious and that her Authors were holy men she has yet at this day her Miracles which she boasts of she had her Prophets and Temporal Prosperity in a word she might propound all that which the Church of Rome alleadges The Aethiopian Church on her side may do it as much and yet nevertheless those Marks no ways conclude a Soveraign and Infallible Authority for them they do not therefore conclude it for the Roman Church The Second Reason is that of all those pretended marks some are disputed with the Church of Rome others are fallaciously attributed to it and others conclude nothing less then that which they pretend We dispute with her her Conformity to the Fathers the Unity of her Members between themselves and with their Head the Holiness of her Doctrine and the Efficacy of her Word It is true that she boasts of these advantages but if we should come to examine them we should find they would have nothing of Solidity in them she fallaciously ascribes to her self the name of the Catholick The Antiquity and Holiness of her Authors Miracles Prophecy and the Personal Succession of her Bishops For before they can make any advantage of those marks they ought to shew that she is a Catholick not only in name but in deed that she has chang'd nothing in the Antient Doctrine nor in the Antient worship that she has in nothing degenerated from her first Authors that she is conformable to her first Christians whose Miracles and Prophecys are beyond all question that her Bishops are the Successors of the Mind and Doctrine as well as of the Sees of the Antient Bishops and unless they do so those marks are an Illusion She produces others which conclude nothing less then that which she should conclude as the Multitude of her Children or the largeness of her extent and Temporal Prosperity which are wordly advantages more proper to denote a corruption then an Infallibility The third Reason is That there are contrary Characters in the Church of Rome which note not only that she has been and that she is yet subject to err but that she has actually err'd and we have propos'd some in the beginning of this Treatise which it may be deserve to be better consider'd No man can therefore establish any thing of certainty upon those pretended external marks and in general that principle of the Soveraign and Infallible Authority of the Church of Rome cannot be a matter of divine Faith on which side soever he takes it nor by Consequence can any of those things be so which depend upon that Authority See here then the Obligation which lies upon those in the Roman Communion to the Author of the Prejudices for having thus Abolish'd all manner of Divine Faith for those things which that Church teaches by her Authority in shutting up as he has done the way of the Scripture with his Obstacles and unconquerable Difficulties he has reduc'd all to meer Conjectures or almost all to humane Testimonies Is it therefore after that manner that he would have us believe Transubstantiation the Real presence Purgatory The Sacrifice of the Mass Is it upon the Foundations of that nature that he would have us to Invocate Saints that we should worship Images That we should adore the Host and receive the Indulgences of the Pope and Absolutions of their Confessors But he has done yet worse for it is not only the Laity and private men from whom he has taken away a divine Faith he has torn it away even from the whole Body of his Church from her Prelats her Popes and her Councils since if this Point of their Soveraign and Infallible Authority is founded upon nothing but Conjectures and humane Testimonies They can neither have a Divine Faith for those Conjectures and those humane Testimonies nor for all those other things which depend upon them Have they a Revelation an immediate Illumination that instructs them There is no more either for the Popes or Councils Should they have it from the Scripture The Author of the Prejudices has told them that it is an Infinite a Ridiculous way to Instruct men in the Truth a path which we cannot know how to find an end of whatsoever Diligence we use But it may be he says that only for the Laity and not for the Clergy Let us see his words Even those says he who profess to spend their whole Lives in the Study of Divinity ought to judge that Examination to be above all their Abilities The Church of Rome the Body of her Prelats the Councils cannot at furthest but be made up of those men who profess to spend their whole Lives in the Study of Divinity and that Examination is above all their Abilities He ought not to say that they can altogether do that which it would be impossible for each one to do in particular For when they go about to decide the matters of Faith by their Soveraign Authority as they pretend that Councils should do each particular man ought to be assured by himself of the Truth and not to refer himself to the knowledge of his Brethren With what Conscience therefore can they exercise their Authority With what Conscience can they decide the points of the Faith and propose them to be believed as points of a Divine Faith With what Conscience can they retain men in their Dependance And with what Conscience can men remain therein The Author of the Prejudices may disintangle this Business with his Church as it shall please him we have no peculiar Interest in it but only to let him see more and more the Truth of that which I have said elsewhere that he does not sufficiently consider what he has wrote Let us grant him that there is no necessity of a Divine Faith for the establishing of that Article of the Soveraign and Infallible Authority of the Roman Church let us yield if he will have it so that he may be contented with the having a humane certainty such as he may have it is clear that whether he takes the way of Tradition or that of the Examination of the External marks we shall find the same Difficulties there thes me Obstacles the same Hindrances the same length that the Author of the Prejudices pretends to have discovered in the way of the Scripture And as the External Marks themselves cannot be otherwise justified then by Tradition it shall suffice to shew what I have
said in the way of Tradition for all will be reduced to that 1. In the first place it is certain that we ought not to take all sorts of Traditions to be true indifferently since we have already seen that there are some false and Apocryphal so that we must learn plainly to distinguish it by it self the good and the Authentick from the others and to that effect to know certainly the rules by which we ought to make that distinction always remembring that the Authority of the Church of Rome is not here of any use because it is in question and that it is that Authority which we are treating of in that search See here already a no small Confusion for we must for this turn over a great many Books be well read in Histories Pass a great many Judgments which cannot be very easy to a man who will not help himself with the Authority of the Scripture 2. After we have set aside Apocryphal Tradition and it being restrained to the True we must enter upon the Examination of the question that is controverted to wit Whether the Authority of the Church of Rome as it pretends at this day be taught in that Tradition And to this effect he must see whether the Passages that are brought to prove it are faithfully related and for that he must consult the Originals and compare them with the Translations which require a great knowledge of the Tongues or at least as the Author of the Prejudices says that one should referr himself to a sufficient number of fit persons to have no occasion to doubt of the Fidelity of their Relations And as the number of Antient Books is not small that Consultation could not but be long enough 3. He must not forget also to inquire whether there be not diverse ways of reading the Passages that may weaken that proof For since the Author of the Prejudices would have us observe this Precaution to assure our selves of one only passage of Scripture why would he not have it observed to assure himself of the Passages of that Tradition It will therefore be necessary to consult the Manuscripts of Libraries or at least to read the notes which the Criticks have made upon the Books out of which those Passages shall be taken this would be yet a matter of further Labour 4. But must he not also be bound to examine narrowly the meaning of the Passages not to give them too great a Latitude and avoid being blinded with a meer Appearance For if there are in the Scripture as the Author of the Prejudices assures us that the Passages that appear clearly to Contain certain Truths and which do not in Effect contain them are an occasion of deluding those who are too easily led by that Appearance which at first sight presents it self Why must it not be so in Tradition also They ordinarily alleadge that Passage of Saint Irenaeus in Favour of the particular Church of Rome Ad haue Ecclesiam propter Potentiorem Principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam hoc est cos qui sunt undique Fideles in qua semper ab 〈◊〉 qui sunt undique Conservata est ea quae est ab his Apostolis Tradâ—tio These words seem clear to the Partisans of the Court of Rome for the establishing a necessity of being united with the particular Church of Rome and living in Dependance upon it and yet if we look a little narrowly into them we may see that they signify nothing less then that which they pretend they signify and that Irenaeus would only say thus much That the Faithfull came from all parts to the Church of Rome by reason of the Imperial power which drew all the World thither and that from thence it was that they all together preserved the Doctrine that the Apostles had left without their having any considerable difference between them That this was the meaning of Saint Irenaeus appears from the Connexion of his discourse wherein he proposes to prove that the Pretended Traditions of Hereticks could not come from the Apostles and his reason is that if they could have come from them they would have been yet found in his Time in the Churches which they had instituted and particularly in the Roman which was in a manner an Abridgment and Composition of all others by reason of the concourse of all Nations to Rome So that to shew that the Church of Rome in those times did not own any of the Tenets of those Hereticks was at once to shew that they were Traditions unknown to all the Churches and by Consequence false and not Apostolical This Example therefore shews us that one ought not to let himself be dazzled by the first Appearances of a Passage but that it ought to be narrowly examined and that as every one may see requires time and is not altogether so easy to be done 5. To carry on that Examination well in respect of the Passages of the Scripture the Author of the Prejudices would that we should carefully consider the like Expressions and contrary Passages to see whether we should not be bound by them to give another meaning to those Passages which we gather He says That Common Sense dictates this Rule and that it is full of Equity and Justice I see not therefore how he can exempt his Catechumeni from it in regard of the Passages of Tradition It is requisite that he should carefully remark the ways of speaking in the Fathers in diverse matters in order to the making them mutually give light to one another It is necessary that he should look after the contrary Passages of the Antients and that he compare them one with another to draw out clear Observations from them But this will be yet further no small Business for it is very well known that there are things enough in the Antients directly opposite to the Pretensions of the Church of Rome 6. But not to detain the Readers much longer upon so clear a matter all the Intricate Perplexity which he pretends to find in the way of the Scripture fâ—lls back again upon the way of Tradition when they would by this without the aid of the Scripture be fully satisfied concerning the Authority of the Church of Rome It is necessary to discern a true Tradition from a false one It is necessary to consult the Originals It is necessary to know the Different Ways of reading passages It is necessary to search out the meaning with great Attentiveness It is necessary to examine the like Expressions and contrary Passages It is necessary to see divers Interpretations of both sides It is necessary to know why the Roman Church distinguishes between points which every Faithful man is bound to believe with a distinct Faith and those which it is enough to believe upon the Faith of the Church It is necessary to Examine that which each Sect that does not acknowledge the Roman Church says against her And after
the External State of that Religion it self had in the times of our Fathers Signs of its Corruption sufficient to afford them just Motives to Examine it Page 23. Chap. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an Impossible thing Page 37. Chap. V. More particular Reflections upon that priviledge of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Church and of its Authority Page 45. Chap. VI. An Examination of the Proofs which they produce to Establish the Infallibility of the Church-of Rome Page 54. Chap. VII That the Authority of the Prelates of the Latin Church had not any Right to bind our Fathers to yield a blind Obedience to them or to hinder them from Examining their Doctrines Page 75. Chap. VIII A further Examination of that Authority of the Prelates and that Absolute Obedience which they pretend ought to be given them Page 85. Chap. IX An Examen of those Reasons they Alledge to Establish that Soveraign Authority of the Prelates in the Latin Church Page 109. The Second Part. Of the Justice of the REFORMATION CHap. I. That our Fathers could not expect a Reformation either from the hands of the Popes or from those of the Prelates Page 125. Chap. II. A Confirmation of the same thing from the History of that which passed in the first Quarrels of Luther with the Conrt of Rome concerning Indulgences Page 142. Chap. III. That our Fathers not being able any more to hope for a Reformation on the part of the Pope or his Prelates were indispensably bound to provide for their own Salvation and to Reform themselves Page 156. Chap. IV. That our Fathers had a Lawful and sufficient Call to Reform themselves and to labour to Reform others Page 166. Chap. V. An Answer to the Objections that are made against the Persons of the Reformers Page 177. Chap. VI. A further Justification of the first Reformers against the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices contained in his Tenth and Eleventh Chapters Page 196. Chap. VII An Answer to the Twelfth and Thirteenth Chapters of the Prejudices Page 222. Chap. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scriptures alone for the Rule of their Faith Page 241 Chap. IX An Examination of the Objections which the Author of the Prejudices makes against the Scripture Page 260. The Third Part. Of the Obligation and Necessity that lay-upon our Fathers to separate themselves from the Church of Rome CHap. I. That our Fathers had just sufficient and necessary Causes for their Separation supposing that they had Right at the Bottom in the Controverted Points Page 1. Chap. II. That our Fathers were bound to Separate themselves from the Body of those who possess'd the Ministry in the Church and particularly in the See of Rome supposing that they had a Right at the Foundation Page 15. Chap. III. That the Conduct of the Court of Rome and those of her Party in respect of the Protestants has given them a just cause to separate themselves from them supposing that they had Right at the Foundation Page 53. Chap. IV. An Examination of the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices taken out of the Dispute of Saint Augustine against the Schism of the Donatists Page 79. Chap. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the Subject of our Separation Page 113. The Fourth Part. Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHap. 1. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the Supposition that they were right in the Foundation Page 1. Chap. II. That the Society of the Protestants is not a new Cburch Page 28. Chap. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also Page 48. Chap. IV. An Answer to the Objections of the Author of the Prejudices about the Call of the first Reformers and the Validity of our Baptism P. 84 The End of the CONTENTS of the CHAPTERS Advertisement THere is newly Published a Book Entituled ☞ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Treatise wherein you have 1. The Divine Auhtority of the Holy Scriptures proved by undeniable Demonstrations and the Cavils of Objectors confuted 2. A Continuation of the Metaphors Allegories and Express Similitudes of the Old and New Testament gradually expounded Parallel wise with short Inferences from each 3. Sacred Phylologie viz. the Schemes and Figures in Sriipture reduced under their proper Heads with a brief Explication of the most obscure 4. A Treatise of the Types Parables and Allegories in the Old and New Testament 5. Plain and Evident Demonstrations that by the Great Whore Mystery Babylon is meant the Papal Hierarchy or present Church of Rome The whole VVork being partly Compiled and partly Translated from the VVorks of many Learned and Orthodox VVriters Ancient and Modern compleating what was intended by the Undertakers in order to explain that difficult part of the Word of God It being encouraged and recommended by divers Worthy Ministers of London as useful for all Students in Sacred Writ Sold by John Hancock at the Three Bibles over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil and Benj. Alsop at the Angel and Bible in the Poultrey over-against the Compter Cassander Consult art de Eccles Luke 22. 25 26. 1 Pet. 5. Bernard in Cant. Serm. 77. Item Serm. 33. Nicol Cusan lib. 3. de Concord Cath. c. 29. 1 Tim. 6. 10 3. Col. 5. Nicolaus de Clemangis de corrupto Statit Ecclesiae Bernard de verbis Evangel Dixit Simon c. pag. 1000. Marsil de Pad Defens pacis Part 2. cap. 20. History of the Council of Trent Book 6. In the Instructions and Missives of the most Christian King for the Council of Trent In the same Instructions and Missives Distinct. 96. Canon 7. Aug. Steuchus De fals Donat. Constantini Froissard Tom. 3. Fol. 147. Angel Politian Orat. pro Sen. ad Alexand Sextum Raynald ad Ann. 1492. ss 27. Decretal Greg. lib. 1. tit 7. Can. Quanto in Glossa Itinerar Ital. Part 2. de coron Rom. Pontif. Raynald ad Ann. 1162. Baron ad Ann. 1162. Concil Lateran Sess 7. 9. in Orat. Paulus Jovius in Philippo 3. †Renvoy signifies properly a simple dismission granted to one that being appealed or called before a superiour Judg requires to be dismissed to the prosecuting of his suit already begun before the inferiour his Ordinary Judge Platina in vit Sexto Decret tit 2. cap. 1. Sext. Decret Extravag lib. 1. De major obed cap. 1. Baron ad Ann. 1076. Platin. in vit Bonif. 8. Joan. Gerson de Eccles. potest Consid 10. Decretal Gregor lib. 3. tit 8. cap. 4. Decret part 2. Caus 25. Quest 1. Canon 6. ad Gloss Bernard Epist 42.
them and will shed abroad his blessing upon your cares as far as shall be necessary for his own glory and the good of the people in whose favour you labour and he himself will one day give you a reward for all those toilsome Labours Although you do not need to be excited to do good yet I take the confidence to hope that you will be some way encouraged in the Duties of your place by the reading of this Work which will more and more discover to you the Justice of it You will see therein the Conduct of our Fathers justified in regard of their Reformation and Separation from the Church of Rome and by consequence you will therein see not only the Right that we have but the Obligation and indispensable Necessity also wherein we are to live apart and divided from that Church and united among our selves in a Religious and Christian Society till it shall please God to make the Causes of that Division cease and joyn again that which men I would say what the Court of Rome and her Council of Trent have put asunder That Re-Vnion is a Happiness that wee will alwayes beg of God with the most ardent Prayers and which we will receive as one of his highest Favours if his hand should bestow it But it is also a thing which it is impossible for us to promise our selves while we shall not see the same desire of a good and holy Reformation which was almost general in our West in the daies of our Fathers to be again revived in the Church of Rome which yet they knew how to stifle with incredible skill An Authour of those Times who himself contributed as much as any other to clude the good effects of that desire has not failed to own it and which is more to own it to be just I do not deny saies he that many at the beginning were not urged by a motion of Piety earnestly to cry out against some manifest Abuses and I confess that we must attribute the chief cause of that Division that at present rends the Church to those who being puff'd up with a vain pride under a pretence of Ecclesiastical power contemned and haughtily and disdainfully rejected those who admonish'd them with reason and modesty And imediately after that same Author reasoning about the means to re-establish a holy peace between the two parties I do not believe adds he that we ought ever to hope for a firm peace in the Church if those who have been the cause of that dis-union do not begin by themselves that is to say unlesse those who have the Ecclesiastical Government in their hands relaxe a little of that great rigour and contribute something to the peace of the Church and unlesse in hearkning to the ardent prayers and exhortations of the greatest part of good men they apply themselves to reform those manifest abuses by the Rule of the holy Scriptures and of the Antient Church from which they have wandred After this manner a man engaged in the Communion and Interests of the Church of Rome spake even in the Time of the Councill of Trent He would indeed after that have us also whom he accuses to have gone too far in the other extream yield something on our side and that we should return as he speaks to our selves but it ought not to be thought strange that he being such a one as he was would lenify by that corrective the confession that he made before and it is enough for us that he has owned the force of the evil and taken notice of the true and only remedy God who holds the hearts of all in his hand kindle in them the love of the true Religion and give us all the grace to look to the Blood that has ransomed the Church and that first Spirit who consecrated it to one onely Jesus Christ her Lord and Husband For it is he only who can re-unite us without me sates he ye can do nothing and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad I pray that the same God who has given you the knowledge of his Gospell would make you persevere in it to the end that he would confirm his love and fear in the souls of my Lords your children who already so well answer the honour of their birth and the cares you have taken for their Education and lastly that he would more and more shed abroad his blessings over your person and over all your house This is that which I desire from the bottom of my heart and that you would do me the favour to believe that I am My LORD Your Lordships Most Humble and Most Obedient Servant CLAVDE The ATTESTATION WE whose names are underwritten certify that we have read the Answer of Monsieur Claude our most honoured Colleague to a Book Intituled The Prejudices c. in which we have found nothing contrary to the Sentiments of the Religion which we profess Signed at Paris the nine and twentieth of November 1672. DAILLE ' MESNARD The Reader is desired to take notice That the word Historical in the Running-Title was inserted without the Translators knowledge or Consent An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FIRST PART Wherein it is shewn that our Ancestours were obliged to Examine by themselves the state of Religion and of the Church in their Days CHAP. I. General Considerations upon this Controversy The Division of this Treatise IT is not difficult to understand why those who were possest of the Government of the Western Church in the days of our Fathers and those who have since succeeded them in the Church of Rome have thought themselves so much concerned to oppose the Reformation It would oblige them to strip themselves of that Soveraign and and absolute Authority which they had Usurped and by which they had disposed the Consciences of men to their wills And it would force them to give an Account of that Publick management which they held in their hands and no person is ignorant that that is a thing of all others in the World most intolerable to those persons who have made a Secular Empire of the Government of the Church As those Interests have made them lay hold of all they could to defend themselves so they have raised a new Controversy touching the Right that our Fathers had to reform themselves They demand of us who our Reformers were from whence they came and what Call they had for so Great a Work They accuse them to have been Rebels and Schismaticks who lifted themselves up against the Authority of their Mother the Church and broke the sacred bond of the Christian Communion They have defamed their persons as much as ever they could and have laid to their charge the most wicked manners to the end they might render them odious In fine they have put forward all that they could believe capable of retaining the people in a blind
submission and hindring them from entring upon any Examination of the Matters of Religion But blessed be God that notwithstanding all the endeavours they have hither to made on a subject that has exhausted all the subtilties of the Schools the Justice of our Cause which is the same with that of our Fathers has not receiv'd the least prejudice and we can even assure our selves that there has been nothing said the weakness and impertinency of which may not easily be display'd to the bare light of common sence For either those things which our Fathers rejected and which we reject with them are in deed Errors Superstitions and Inventions of men as we believe them to be or they are not If they are not we will be the first that shall Condemn the Reformation and when they shall let us see that on the contrary they are the Truths and right worship that belong to the Christian Religion we shall be very ready to receive them But if in deed they are Errors and Corruptions as we are perswaded they are with what Reason can any man demand by what right we rejected them since it is all one as to demand what right we have to be good men and to take care of our own Salvation We may see then from thence that all those Evasions are nothing else but vain wranglings and that we ought always to examine those Tenets that are Controverted for the Justice or Injustice of the Reformation intirely depends on their Truth or Falshood If we have right at the Foundation they ought not to raise a contention about the Form for to be willing to believe in God according to the purity of his word and to be ready to serve him sincerely are the things to which we are all obliged and which cannot be condemned in whomsoever they are found as on the contrary side to harden one's self in Errors to practise a false Worship and to expose one's self to the danger of Damnation under pretence of observing some Formalities is such a guidance of one's course as can never be Justified It will here be to no purpose that they say that in this Controversy concerning the Justice of the Reformation they do not suppose that we have any reason in the Foundation of it but that on the contrary they have a mind to let us see that we have no right at all in the Foundation since we have none at all in the Form and that they would only say that those things which we call Errors and a false Worship are not so indeed as we imagine them to be since they are the Institutions of a Church that can't Err and to whose Authority we ought absolutely to submit our selves This is in my judgment the course that not long since an Author has took in a Book Intitled Just Prejudices against the Calvinists For he pretends to conclude that our Religion is faulty in the very Foundation because there are Errors in the manner of our Reformation and that those things which we reject as Errors are the Truths that we ought to believe because we ought to acquiesce in the Authority of the Church of Rome But that can never hinder us from coming to a discussion of the Foundation it self separated from all Forms and from all prejudices for when these Gentlemen have reasoned against us after this manner You are faulty in the very Foundation because you have not had right in the Form we oppose to that this other Reasoning whose consequence is not less Valid as to the subject about which it is concerned We have not done wrong in the manner because we have right in the Foundation And when they tell us That which you call our Errors Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Purgatory c. they are not Errors since we cannot Err we Answer them You can Err because the Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host the Pargatory c. that you teach are Errors And when they reply You ought to believe that which we teach you because you ought to acquiesce and rest in our Authority we rejoyn again We ought not to acquiesce in your Authority because you teach us those things which we ought not to believe In these two ways of Reasoning it is certain that ours is the more equal the more just and more natural For it is by far the more just and natural that the Judgment of those Formalities should depend on the highest Interest that can be in the World which is that of the glory of God and ourown Salvation then on the contrary to make the glory of God and our own Salvation to depend upon some Formalities It is far more reasonable to judge of the Infallibility that the Church of Rome pretends to by the things that she teaches then to judge of the chings that she Teaches by a pretence of her Infallibility But although these two ways were equally Natural and equally Reasonable they can not deny that that which at first drew nearer to the Examen of the Foundation were not more sure and that all good men who ought to neglect nothing conducing to their Salvation were not bound to enter into it in Order to the avoiding of Errors They Propose on one side for a Principle the Authority of the Church of Rome against which there are a thousand things to be said on the other side we Propose the Authority of God himself speaking in those Scriptures which all Christians receive and which the very Enemies of Christianity respect who will dare to deny that in this Opposition it were not more sure to side with that part which rules all by the Authority of God You may deceive your selves say they in taking that for the word of God which is not so And are not you answer we more liable to deceive your selves in taking that for the Church of God which is not so and in taking those for Infallible who are no ways so There is far greater Reason to hope that God will then assist you with the illumination of his Spirit when with humility you search out the sence of the Scriptures which you are so often commanded to do then when you search them through humane prejudices to submit your Consciences to a certain Orde of Men whom God has never told you that they ought to be the Masters of your Faith After all if they will make use of the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of our Reformation as an Argument sufficient to let us see that those things which we call Errors are not really so they can demand nothing more of us then to set down this proof in its order with the rest and maturely to consider it in its turn before we determine our selves But to pretend that that ought to hinder us from considering also the proofs on the contrary side by which we may see that those things that we call Errors are really so this were an injust
pretence and bordering on the greatest rashness For the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of the Reformation whatsoever they be are not Principles so demonstrative and so evident among Christians that after them they ought to hear nothing more We ought then to yield to this proof its place in our discussion but without any prejudice as to those that may be drawn for or against the very Tenets that are contested which ought to be first examined as the more natural and most decisive That being so I hold that that which they have set before us will be to no purpose at all For if from the Examination that we shall make of those matters in themselves it results that those things are not Errors which we have rejected as such but Christian Truths we have no further need either of the Authority of the Church of Rome or of the prejudices against the Reformation The Reformation is sufficiently overthrown And if on the contrary it results that those are Errors all the Authority of the Church of Rome and all the prejudices in the World shall not be able to perswade men of good understandings that they are Truths and by consequence that the Reformation is not just for it is always just to extirpate Errors It seems to me to appear already that that debate which they have raised against us about the Justice of our Reformation and our separation from the Church of Rome is rather a field wherein they would busy themselves in subtilties and declamations to amuse the People then a just Controversy whence one might justly expect any profit Yet as those subtilties and declamations how vain and false soever they are fail not of finding applause in the World and always making some impressions on the minds of men we acknowledge the too great effect that they have produced which is that the greatest part of those of the Church of Rome look upon us as Schismaticks and think that we have disturbed the peace of the Family of God and violated the right of that Religious Society which had united us with them The Idea which they form of our Religion appears not half so odious to them After what manner they have disguised us the most equitable among them discern and fail not sometimes freely to confess the same that we have all Doctrines that are necessary to mens Salvation that our Worship as plain as it is has nothing which does not tend to nourish in their hearts a true Piety and a solid Vertue and that as to the Form of our Government it has nothing so remote either from prudence or from equity or from the Charity that Jesus Christ has recommended to us But it is a far different Idea which they Form within themselves of our Separation for it becomes insupportable to them when they compare it with the Specious name of a Church that ought to command the Veneration of all Holy men So that this is most ordinarily the matter of their reproaches which they the more exaggerate as a thing about which they imagine we have not the least shew wherewith to defend our selves I dare affirm that as to the far greater part that is the chiefest and almost the only matter that makes them appear so much Exasperated against us It is necessary then that we justify our selves and that we clear to their minds that honour which we have not only to live among them in the same civil Society but also to depend on their lawful Authority in respect of those humane affairs wherein we are engaged Our own Innocence commands it of us not to say that the inheritance which we have received from our Fathers is of a value sufficiently great to merit a defence after what manner soever they attack it We ought then to indeavour to let them see that that which they are made to believe concerning us is nothing but a false imputation that we have an infinitly greater respect for the Church then any of those who oppose themselves to hinder its Reformation that their Maxims tend to the Ruin of the Church where ours tend only to preserve it that our Separation from Rome is nothing else but an effect of that Love and Jealousy that we have for the Church and that it will be most unjust if they shall hate us upon an account that ought on the contrary to draw from them all their esteem and Love toward us It is then about this that we intreat that they would calmly hear us and judge us without passion and without interest in the fear of that God whom we all acknowledge for our Soveraign Judge Those who always act against us with a pride that hurries them away and who have resolved to condemn us and to the uttermost of their power to destroy us what ever we say will not possibly take our request to be just and in that Case we shall content our selves as to them with the Testimony of our Consciences which perswades us not only that God will not condemn us for having been Reformed but also that he certainly will if we do not in that follow the sence of our hearts But there are yet enough persons in the Church of Rome of too much equity to follow the Examples of such a sort of People these equitable persons are those of whom we demand that hearing and that same equity and moderation of which they make such profession and which the importance of the subject treated on challenges them to yield us We shall tell them nothing which shall not be founded either on matters of fact known to all or upon the inviolable principles of Religion or upon the light of Common sence To set down this matter in some order I propose to my self to make evident these four Propositions 1. That our Fathers had both right and obligation to examine the State of Religion and the Latin Church such as it was in their days 2. That the Reformation which they made was just and lawful 3. That in Reforming themselves they had right and were bound to separate themselves from the Church of Rome 4. That in Reforming and Separating themselves they had right and obligation to maintain among themselves a Christian Society by publick Assemblies and the exercise of the Ministry I do not pretend that in Treating of these four Propositions I have exhausted all my subject but yet I hope that there will be few Questions that have some Relation to it which I do not sufficiently touch upon and few Objections which I do not answer I will particularly answer to all those that are contained in that Book of Prejudices as the order of the matters that I Treat of shall present them to me none of which will begin to oppose themselves till the seventh Chapter because that Author having passed by in silence a great many things that belong to the Foundation of this Controversy it will be necessary to touch upon
to feed the people with their Superstitions for they were such as enslav'd their Souls where true Piety would have ennobled and freed Men from that yoak which they would have imposed on us Further if any would more particularly see how far the Claims of the Roman See went they need but to read what Augustine Steuchus Library-keeper to the Pope has wrote for he ascribes to the Popes the very same Temporal rights in the same Latitude wherein the Old Roman Empire possest them and he proves from the Register of Gregory the Seventh that Spain Hungary England Denmark Russia Croatia Dalmatia Arragon Portugal Bohemia Swedland Norway Dacia did all heretofore belong to the Popes and that all that Pepin Charlemain Henry and other Emperors gave to the Church brought him not any new rights but only set him in the possession of that which the violence of the Barbarians had wrested from him 15. What could our Fathers say to those unjust Usurpations of the Popes over the whole Body of the Church over which they pretended Soveraignly to reign to have Authority to decide matters of Faith to make new Laws to dispence with the Antient Constitutions to call Councils to transfer them from one place to another to Authorise or to condemn them to Judge all the World without being liable to be judged of any in a word of making all things to depend on their power and binding all Churches to submit themselves to its decisions about matters of Faith and Rules of Discipline not only with a bare external obedience but with a real acquiescence of their Consciences By Reason of which they were accustomed as they practise it even at this present in their Bulls to place in the Front the fulness of their Power and to adjoyn this Clause That no man should dare to be so rash as to infringe or go contrary to their Decrees under penalty of incurring the indignation of God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul I know there were some that sometimes did very strongly oppose these pretensions of the Court of Rome that some Councils did labour to repress them and that the Church of France has appeared often enough jealous of its Liberty But besides that those oppositions never had that success which might justly have been hoped for on the part of the Popes who almost always eluded them besides that I say they did but serve to confirm the prejudices of our Fathers by dayly discovering to them more and more of the Corruption of the See of Rome 16. What could they Judge of those Dispensations that the Popes gave in the business of Marriages within prohibited degrees against the express words of the Law of God and in the Case of Vows which they themselves held to be lawful and in divers other matters even against that which they call the general State of the Church What do we think we ought to say at present said Gerson of the easiness whereby Dispensations are given by the Pope and by the Prelats to lawful Oaths to reasonnable Vows to a vast Plurality of Benefices against all the minds or as he speaks even to a universal gainsaying of Councils in priviledges and exemptions that destroy common Equity Who can reckon up all the ways whereof they serve themselves to loosen the force of Ecclesiastical Discipline and to oppose and destroy that of the Gospel Who can read without some Commotion that which Innocent the Third has wrote That by the fulness of his Power he had a lawful power to dispence with that that was beyond all Equity And that that the Glossary has subjoyned That the Pope can dispence against an Apostle against the Canons of the Apostles and against the Old Testament in the Case of Tithes It is added that he cannot dispence against the general State of the Church and yet elsewhere the Gloss on the Decree of Gratian assures us that the Pope may sometimes dispense against the General State of the Church and for that alledges the Example of Innocent the Third in the Council of Lateran 17. What could our Fathers Judge of those vast abuses that were committed in dispencing with the Ecclesiastical Functions given most frequently to persons altogether unworthy and uncapable and sometimes to Children to the great scandal of Christianity which complained of it highly a long time ago They prefer said St. Bernard little School-boys and young Children to Church Dignities because of the Nobility of their Birth So that you may see those that are just got from under the Ferula go to command Priests who were yet more fit to escape the Rod then to be employ'd in Government for they are far more sensible of the pleasure of being freed from their Masters then of that of becoming Masters themselves Those are their first thoughts but afterwards growing more bold they very soon learn the Art of appropriating the Altars to themselves and of emptying the purses of those that are under them without going to any other School then that of their Ambition and their Covetousness How few may one find now a days of those who are raised to the Episcopal Grandure said Nicholas de Clemangis who have either read or know how to read the Holy Scripture otherwise then by first beginning to read They have never touched any other part of the Holy Bible then the Cover although in their Installment they swear that they know it all 18. What could our Fathers say to that Simony which was every where openly exercised in the Church of Rome in all things The Court of Rome says Aeneas Sylvius gives nothing without money It sells the very Imposition of hands and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and will give pardon of Sins to none but such who will part with their Money The Church that Jesus Christ has chosen for his Spouse without spot and blemish says Nicholas de Clemangis is in these days a Warehouse of Ambition and Business of Theft and Rapine The Sacraments and all Orders even to that of the Priests are exposed to Sale For Money they bestow Favours Dispensations Licences Offices Benefices They sell pardons of sins Masses and the very Administration of our Lords Body If any one have a mind to a Bishoprick he needs but to get himself furnished with Money yet not a little Sum but a great one must purchase such a great Title He needs but to empty his Purse to obtain the Dignity that he seeks but he may soon after fill it again with advantage by more ways then one If any one desire to be made a Prebendary or a Priest of any Church or to have any other charge it matters not whether his merits or his Life or his Manners be known but it is very requisite it should be known how much Money he has For according as he has that he must have his hopes succeed Such were the Complaints that honest men made in those days and
follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
Reason that Saint Paul had caution'd the Faithful to take heed that no one seduc'd them through Philosophy and vain deceitful reasonings after the Traditions of men after the rudiments of the Wisdom of the World and not after Jesus Christ 9. They will say without doubt that all these considerations how strong soever they appear do yet make no more then conjectures and likelihoods which ought to have been immediatly stifled by the only name of the Church which improves so profound a respect for it self in the Souls of all true Beleivers But that very thing serv'd but to increase the just suspitions of our Fathers They understood what respect they ow'd to the Church but they were not also ignorant how easie it was to be deceiv'd by so specious a Name That visible society of men who profess Christianity which we call the Church is not wholly composed of true Believers it takes into its Bosome a great number of false Christians of wicked Worldly and Hypocritical men who are mingled with the good as chaff amongst the Wheat or as the mud of the Stream is with the Water of the Fountain And as on the one side the false Christians are not all so after the same manner for some are full of light and knowledge others of ignorance some are prophane others superstitious one sort are full of contrivances and intrigues in the affairs of Religion others take little care of its interests some are ambitious others covetous others fierce and inflexible others full of impostures and deceits according as we see those different humours ordinarily reign among the men of the world so on the other side the true Beleivers who are in the same visible Society have not all of them the same Degree either of knowledge or sanctification that they have more or less of natural light more or less of supernatural grace more or less of zeal of courage or of vigour according to the measure of the Spirit that is communicated to them it is now almost scarce conceivable that that Medley should not corrupt Religion in a long Train of Ages and that it should not cause to enter in Maxims Doctrines Services and Customs far more conformable to the Spirit of the World then to that of Jesus Christ There needs but a little leven saith Saint Paul to corrupt the whole Mass From thence that two Parties whereof the one is good the other is evil are joyned together experience always instructs us that the ill does far more easily deprave the good then the good better the bad And we cannot say that God is bound to hinder that Corruption and that otherwise his Church would Perish from the Earth For besides that it no way belongs to us to order so boldly what God is bound to do or not to do for the execution of his designs it is certain that he has not hindred it as we have but just before seen in the Church of the Jews nor in the Eastern Christian Churches nor in the the whole Body of the Church in the time of the Arians He has other ways to preserve his Elect and his sincerely Faithful ones who only are to speak properly his Church he can preserve them in the midst of a corrupted Ministry and when that is become impossible he knows how to separate them from the wicked and to draw them away from their Communion But we will speak to that more largely at the end of this Treatise 10. To go on with our Remarks That which I have said supplies us with another which is not less considerable than the rest It is in consequence of that mixture of the good and the wicked in the same visible Church that it might fall out and it has very frequently hapened that the far greatest Number the external Splendour Force and Authority is found among the Party of the wicked and that they are cheifly those who fill up the highest places in the Church For as those highest places yeild them honour and the goods of the World in a very great measure so it is very natural that they should be more hunted after and obtain'd by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful who ordinarily are not so violently carried out to those things After that manner one may very often see the Government of the visible Church to fall into exceedingly wicked hands and then there needs but a capricious Humour but a Passion but an Interest but a Whimsey but some neglect or some other thing of the like nature which it is not hard to conceive to be in such Persons as we suppose to bring into the Church false Doctrines and false Worship to which those of the best minds shall no sooner oppose themselves but they shall be immediatly quell'd which often forces them to keep silence and to give way for a season till it shall please God to deliver them from that oppression 11. Could it not in the least happen that those errours and superstitions that were but little taken notice of at first sprung up in the Schools or among some other sort of men should be by little and little and insensibly spread over the Body of the Church by the means of ignorance and negligence of the Pastours And might not the same thing fall out according to the pleasure and interest that the Pastors might take to see them establish't that in the end being found to be rooted in mens minds and as I may so say incorporated into Religion they might be lookt upon as Traditions or as Customs that for the future ought to be observ'd as Laws No one can deny that a multitude of things had crept after that manner into the Latin Church as the keeping back the Cup which the Concil of Constance had taken up in express terms as a Custome that had been says it rationally introduc'd and which ought to be kept as a Law It was after the same manner that the Celibacy of Priests the Worshipping of Images the Distinction of Meats and many other things which how particular and private soever they were at first came after to be made publick and in the end to be changed into Articles of Religion 12. All these Reflexions might serve to let our Fathers understand that it was no ways impossible for the state of the Latin Church to be corrupted but besides that Reason those examples and that experience which convinc't them of it they yet farther saw the plain proofs of it in the Declarations of the Holy Scripture For after whatsoever manner they expounded that Mystery of Iniquity of which Saint Paul speaks to the Thessalonians which in his days had began to work and that Captivity of God's People whom God commanded to go out of Babylon lest in partaking of its sins it partook also of its plagues no one could avoid acknowledging from those two places but that a great Corruption must needs fall out in the visible Church The
Infallibility in the Parliament so neither can that of the Apostle do it for the Church for Societies do not always follow their natural appointments we see that they often enough depart from them I confess that the Church does not always wander from its end nor in all things yet it cannot also be imagin'd that she never departs For the wicked are mingled with the good in the same Society the Dignities of the Church are sometimes to be found more possessed by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful the very best men themselves are subject to weaknesses and they sometimes commit faults of that importance that may consequently be dilated by continuance and all that cannot but produce Errors and Corruptions which it will be most necessary to reform Behold all those passages of Scripture upon which they seem to me to found that pretension of the Infallibility of the Latin Church To them they joyn some Arguments 1. If say they it be possible for the Church to err why do we call it holy as we do in the Creed I believe the Holy Catholick Church Such an Assembly that is united in the profession of an error is so far unfit to be called Holy That on the contrary it is Impious since it agrees in a Doctrine that is contrary to the Holy Truths revealed by God I answer That if this Argument were good it would follow not only that the Church should be Infallible as to matters of Faith but also that she should be impeccable in respect of manners for she is called Holy as well from that Holiness that regards good works as from that which regards the Faith The Church is Holy but yet after an imperfect manner while she is here upon Earth and she will never be perfectly so but in Heaven Furthermore they ought to remember that the Title of Holy and generally all other Titles of Honour and Glory that are given to the Church belong to it in truth only in respect of the true Believers and not in respect of the Hypocrites and wicked which are mingled with the good in the same visible Society and that it is but only on the same account of the Good that all that visible Body is called the Church For they are none but those whom God has called to his Salvation who only can be the true mystical Body of Jesus Christ When then it shall come to pass that the number of the wicked prevails in that Visible Society they will fill up the Pulpits they will be Masters of Councils and of Decisions of Faith of the Government and Ministry of the Church and will not fail to introduce Errors and a false Worship but when those persons should introduce and authorise them the Church would not cease to be Holy not in respect of those wicked men who waste it and corrupt it as much as it lyes in their power to do but in regard of the Faithful whom God will keep pure by the illuminations of his Holy Spirit and the methods of his Providence The Church of Israel in the midst of its greatest Idolatries did not cease to keep the Titles of a Holy Nation and a Kingdom of Priests which Moses had given her but she kept them not in respect of her Corruptors and those wretched men that would have seduc't her but in respect of those that were Holy For it is certain that God has always done that which he did in the days of Elias where he reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed the Knee unto Baal and it is in those that the Church is preserv'd and always kept Holy 2. But yet further say they If the Church may err and particularly the Church Representative that is to say the Body of Pastors why do the Councils pronounce Anathema's against all those who shall not consent to their Decrees Would it not be very unjust to bind men under so great a penalty to consent to things that are uncertain and which may be false I answer that the force of the Anathema's of those Councils depends altogether on their Justice If those Councils have lawfully decided controversies according to the word of God and if with the Truth they have kept Love and Charity according to the Precept of the Apostle their Anathema is very efficacious and all that they bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven But if they have decided any thing against the Truth or against Charity if they have abused their Places their Anathema's are vain and rash and will fall upon none but their Heads who pronounce them For God has never submitted his Righteousness to the Unrighteousness of any Prelats All the force of those Thunderbolts depends on those very things which have been decided We can do nothing says the Apostle against the Truth We ought not then to imagine that those Anathema's must needs be Infallible we ought not also to believe that they could not be rightly used if they had not that Infallibility Saint Hilary did not pretend to be Infallible and yet nevertheless he pronounc'd an Anathema against Liberius who was a Deceiver Saint Paul did not pretend to make us Infallible and yet notwithstanding he commands us to Anathematise even an Angel from Heaven and himself if he should Preach any other Gospel then that which he has preached unto us Cyril of Alexandria did not aspire after Infallibility and yet he thunders out his Anathema's against all the Errours of Nestorius The second Council of Tours never thought of being Infallible and yet nevertheless it Anathematis'd all those who after the third admonition refus'd to restore the goods of the Church In fine every private Person pronounces an Anathema against all Heresies The Anathema's of the Councils are not the Sentences of the Magistrate the force of which depends on the Authority of him who pronounces them they are only the Denuntiations that men make on Gods side as his Interpreters and his Ministers of the severity of his Judgments against the Unbeleivers the Wicked and the Hereticks And provided that those Denuntiations should be founded on the word of God as far as the light of the Pastors of the Church and their good Consciences could perswade them we ought not to doubt but that they would be just altho' they would not be Infallible For howsoever it be that good and lawful Councils assembled in the Name of Jesus Christ would never pretend that their Anathema's should bind any person any farther then their Decisions and their Canons were just and conformable to the Scripture 3. They add yet if it were possible for the Church to err it were possible for it totally to fall away after that manner that there should not be any longer a Church upon the Earth and yet notwithstanding how many promises have we in the Scripture that denote the Perpetuity of the Church God says in Hosea That he would betroth her unto him for ever
much frequented it would be nevertheless least of all so in the quality of a True Church in that its natural beauty is so darkned and its Visage so disfigured that in judging according to its Appearances one can but very difficultly say that God does yet preserve some Faithful ones in that Communion and under that Ministry But they will say may not a Church fall into that Condition and yet for all that be a true Church I answer that a Visible Society as I have shewn is not called a true Church but only with respect to those true Believers who are in it and not with respect to the others When then it comes to pass that the party of the Men of the World prevails and fills that Society with its Corruptions all that Society taken in the general does not fail as yet to be called a True Church while their is some appearance how small soever it may be that God does yet keep and hold in it those good men who do not defile their Souls with that Corruption of the wicked But how can say they yet further those good men preserve themselves in the midst of such a Society I answer That they may preserve themselves there after that manner that one may preserve himself in a contagious Air where he draws in the Air because it is necessary to his Life but yet he may keep himself as well as he can from that Contagion by the help of Antidotes There are two things in a Corrupted Church the good and the evil if a Man can separate that good from the evil that is to say if he can take the one and keep himself from the other without falling into Hypocrisy and being bound to do as those who equally take the good and the evil which he knows not how to do without dividing between God and his Conscience he may be saved in a corrupted Communion and there may not be another more pure This evidently appears from the Examples of Zachary and Elizabeth of Simeon of Joseph and the Holy Virgin and divers other persons who liv'd in the Jewish Church when our Saviour came into the World and who preserved their Piety though that Church was fallen into the highest Corruption under the Ministry of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus Christ himself who reproved the abuses of those wicked men and exhorted his disciples to take heed of their false Doctrines did not fail to live in that Common Society and to be found in the Temple with them and after that he had been Crucified by them his disciples did not wholly withdraw themselves from their Communion during some time and till they had indispensable reasons for it I will shew in the Progress of this Treatise that it does not from thence follow that we may at this day abide in the Roman Communion and that it much less follows that we may return thither by forsaking the Communion of the Protestants under a pretence that we may separate the good from the bad the pure from what is impure since we can no more do that then not become wicked Impostures Hypocritical and Detestable before God and Men. But as this is a point that belongs to another Place it shall suffice me to have clearly shewn in this Chapter in what manner and with what distinctions it may be said that there is always a true Visible Church and to have made it appear that it no ways follows from thence that she must needs be Infallible as the Church of Rome pretends that she is After all this it is not difficult to find out the just and true sence of some passages of Scripture which they abuse in this matter of Visibility For as to that of the Gospel whereof we have spoken Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and the Publicans It is clear that particular Churches are treated of there and that the personal differences which we may have one with another and the meaning of it is that the Faithful are bound when they receive any wrong from their brethren to carry their complaints to the Church and to refer themselves to its Judgment Or if it is not to be understood in those Times and in those places where there shall be Churches established to the Judgment of their Guides and Pastors who may end those private Quarrels And if they will infer from thence that then there must be always a Visible Church that may be in a Condition to attend to those Reconciliations this is that that has no colour of Reason For that Command of Jesus Christ obliging the Faithful no further then as it lies in their power it would be but a very bad arguing to say that he has so engaged for that that he will so order it that there shall be perpetually a visible Assembly to hear Complaints and give Judgments It is within a little as if one should say that he was engaged that we should always have wherewithal to Lend and wherewithal to give Alms because he has bid us to Lend without hoping for any thing again and to make our selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness Or that our Kings were bound never to leave vacant the Office of a Constable or that of the Mayor of the Palace under a pretence that heretofore they order'd their subjects to acknowledge those Dignities and to have recourse to them in certain Affairs Tell it to the Church then does not in the least suppose that the True Church ought to be always in such a State wherein she should have Authority to pass her Judgments for the determining private Quarrels And besides what I have said Experience contradicts it for it is most true that during the hottest Persecutions of the Heathen Emperours where all was laid in desolation that it had in many places nothing like a Visible Tribunal to which men could easily address themseves There are some other Passages that denote the duty of the Pastors and in particular of the Apostles as those where they are called The Salt of the Earth the light of the World a City set upon a Hill a Candle not lighted to be set under a Bushel and the Gentlemen of the Roman Church do not fail to set them down to give some colour to their Pretensions But this is evidently to abuse the Scriptures to make them establish the perpetual Visibility of the Church after that meaning wherein they understand those passages which exhort the Apostles and after them the Ministers of the Gospel to acquit themselves faithfully of their charge without negligence and weariness from the Consideration of their Calling and the end to which God had appointed them For besides that their Office does not bind them to that of a Martyr which does not suppose a very splendid State of the Church Besides that the same does not oblige them to be Martyrs if they were not specially
called to it Jesus Christ having told them That when they should be persecuted in one place they should fly unto another besides that I say there is so great a difference between the duty of the Pastors of these last Ages which are so far behind that of the Apostles and that which those Pastors have actually done that one caunot know how to draw any consequence from the one to the other One cannot also conclude any thing from some Expressions of the Antient Prophets which seem to promise a great Temporal Prosperity to the Church no one is ignorant that the Stile of the Prophets may be full of figures and darkned with Vails that they ought not to be taken Literally unless men would be deceiv'd and imitate the Error of the Jews who take them in that manner For the Prophets are wont to represent Spiritual blessings under the borrowed Images of Temporal things and so also the Spirit of Christianity obliges us to explain that which they said of the Messiah and of his Church and not to delineate its prosperities and worldly Grandeur which have no relation at all to the nature of the Gospel Not that one cannot say that some of those Prophecies have been accomplish'd according to the Letter of them in the Times of Christian Emperours for then Kings were its nursing-Fathers and Queens its nursing-Mothers But that one ought not to draw a necessary consequence from thence either for all Times or for all Places and as men are always prone to abuse Temporal blessings such a worldly Prosperity of the Church would tend but in the end to corrupt it CHAP. VII That the Authority of the Prelats of the Latin Church had not any right to bind our Fathers to yeild a blind obedience to them or to hinder them from examining their Doctrines HItherto we have not opposed in our course the Book of Prejudices not but that the end which he proposes to himself has a great connexion with the things of which I have treated but because that Authour has not beleived it necessary to make us renounce the Reformation to justify the Latin Church from those strange disorders which moved the minds of our Fathers nor to speak of that priviledge which she pretends that God has given her by making of her Infallible We do not pretend says he to prove directly the Authority and Infallibity of the Catholick Chureh For although it would be most profitable to do it and though those among the Catholicks who have taken that method have used a most just and lawful way Yet as the prepossessions wherewith the Calvinists are full keep most of them from entring upon these Principles howsoever solid and true they are Charity obliges us to try other ways also and that which follows here seems one of the most natural It supposes for a Principle nothing but a Maxim of Common Sence to wit That a man who finds himself joyned to the Catholick Church by himself or by his Ancestors ought not to break off from her to joyn himself to any other Communion if he discover in that new Communion any signs of errour which may make him judge with reason that he ought not to follow it and that he cannot reasonably hope that God has established it to lead men into the truth So it is that he has thought himself bound to employ himself wholly in that way to rid himself of a great deal of trouble and that he may in this progress load us with a multitude of injuries Yet he must excuse me if I am not of his mind The way which he takes is neither just nor natural It is not just because it takes for granted and indisputable those things which not only are but are almost only to the matters of our Difference For it supposes that that Party which would not have a Reformation and from which our Fathers broke of was the Catholick Church but that is that very thing which is questioned and our Dispute can never be decided but by deciding the whole controversy If he will take that advantage of us that we to accommodate our selves to the custom of the World sometimes give those of the Church of Rome the Name of Roman-Catholicks he cannot be ignorant that those sorts of Condescentions which only respect words cannot infer any consequence as to things nor that they can give any ground to make those suppositions in this Dispute which may be regulated by more solid Principles Further that way which he would follow supposes that our Fathers in reforming themselves made a new Communion and that is yet that very thing that is in Question and we maintain that it cannot be reasonably called so as it will appear in the Progress of this Treatise I say also that that course is not natural For before we should come to consider whether there were not signs of errour in our Reformation the nature of things would first let us see whether our Fathers had not just reasons taken from the state of the Latin Church to Reform themselves and whether it was not possible for that Church to corrupt it self But that could not be well known but by examining what that State was in the days of our Fathers with that pretence of Infallibility as we have done But though the Author of those Prejudices has beleived that he might spare himself the trouble of proving to us the Infallibility and Authority of those whom he calls the Catholick-Church yet he fails not to require us to submit our selves to those by rendring them an absolute obedience He would have it that we being all so apt to deceive our selves in our Judgments and that the search of true Religion being so difficult that the surest way is for us to see with their Eyes says he to tread in their steps and wholly to strip our selves of our own guidance to give it unto them So also the chief Priests and the Scribes spake among the Jews This People who know not the Law are cursed But Jesus Christ said of these also Let them alone they be blind leaders of the blind and both shall fall into the Ditch If the Maxim of that Authour be good he must affirm that our Fathers were very unhappy for having had their eyes to see those disorders which reigned among the Church-men in their days and that God had highly favoured them had he made them to have been born stupid and blind for he conceivs it would be so far from causing them to fall and be deceived according to the threatning which Jesus Christ gives to those who leave themselves to be so blindly guided that it would be on the contrary the only means to go on with any certainty Howsoever it be we are not bound to be so blind that before we lose the use of our Eyes we must not examine this Question whether we ought to lose them or not Nature and Grace have given them to us they would have
souls but to make Jesus Christ reign who is the only Monarch of the Church We Preach not our selves saith St. Paul but Jesus Christ the Lord and our selves your servants for Jesus sake and elsewhere he says that he was made a Minister of the Church of God All these passages by themselves are very concluding but taken together make up a Demonstration that will persuade all men who are not prepossest with prejudice For what likelyhood is there that God would have filled his Scriptures with so many things contrary to this Dominion if he had had a design to invest the Pastors of his Church with an Authority so absolute over mens Consciences and of making them Soveraign Lords of their Faith Is not that Authority after the way they pretend to it a real Empire and a much more powerful Empire than the Temporal ones which they set up over the Hearts and Souls of men where the others do but establish theirs over their bodies Bellarmine and Du Perron busie themselves very much in eluding the force of that passage where Jesus Christ forbids his Disciples that Dominion They say that he forbids not Dominion but the manner of that Dominion that is to say that he would not have them affect that Dominion nor that they should Rule Tyrannically or with violence but that nevertheless he would have them Rule Who sees not the absurdity of this answer For when Jesus Christ said The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship but it shall not be so with you it is clear that the distinction that he makes between Kings and Pastors falls upon that Dominion and not upon the manner of that Dominion I confess that he forbids the affectation of that Dominion but I affirm that he forbids also that Dominion it self as it appears from his words for he says not the Kings of the Gentiles affect Dominion but he says they do exercise that Dominion and that it shall not be so with them which shews he would distinctly say that they should not exercise Lordship Else it was necessary that in those words Jesus Christ should have set down some difference between the Government of the Gentile Nations and that of his Church But that difference cannot consist in this that they ought not to affect the manner of Dominion in his Church for that would make him say that they ought or might lawfully affect it in the Civil Government which yet is not true And as to what they say of a Tyrannical and violent Domination they evidently deceive themselves For the contest of his Disciples was no ways about that violent Dominion nor about the gentleness of that Dominion but about the Dominion it self they strove among themselves which of them should be greatest Whence it follows that Jesus Christ who answers to their thoughts speaks of a Dominion whatsoever it be and not simply of a Tyrannical one To which I add that those other Passages to which they know not how to apply those evasions learly determine the sence of that saying of Jesus Christ 2. But the Scripture is not contented only to forbid that Soveraign and Absolute Authority to the Ministers of the Church it farther gives the Faithful a right to examine that which they teach and at the same time obliges them to do it to separate the Good from the Bad. Hence it is that Jesus Christ who would have his Disciples do all that that the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the Chair of Moses commanded them to do yet would have them discern also their false Doctrines and to take heed of them Take heed to your selves says he of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Saducees which in the close he explains of the leaven of their Doctrine In the sight of that Saint John gives this Lesson to the Faithful Not to believe every spirit but to try the spirits whether they be of God and Saint Paul To prove all things and to hold fast that which is good The same Apostle elsewhere prays That they may have an abundant measure of all judgment and knowledge That they might try things that differ that they might be sincere and without offence until the day of Jesus Christ And there where he lets us understand that the Pastors in building upon the Foundation might heap up Wood Hay Stubble as well as Gold Silver and Pretious Stones it is evident from that Advertisement that he engages them to make a just discerning of those things It is not less clear that he supposes in the Faithful an Examination and a judgment in respect of those things which their Pastors should teach them when he has recourse to their Testimony for the Justification of his Doctrine We have not says he handled the word of God deceitfully but have commended our selves to every mans Conscience in the sight of God by the manifestation of the Truth Ye are witnesses and God also says he to the Thessalonians how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved our selves among you that believe But what more can be added to the force of his words which we find in his Epistle to the Galatians If we our selves or an Angel from Heaven preach to you another Gospel than we have preached to you let him be accursed Who can deny that he forbids by those words that blind obedience which they would have us give at this day to the Pastors of the Church and that he does not on the contrary command us to examine their Preaching by the Rule of the Primitive and Original Gospel Who sees not that that exaggeration which he uses serves but to let us see the importance the necessity the force of that obligation which he would lay upon us and how inviolable and indispensable it is He commands us not only to make a sincere discernment he does not only speak of a simple rejecting of that that shall be Forreign and Alien to it and shall not agree with the Gospel He enjoyns an Anathema an Execration He would not only have us pronounce it against men indefinitely or against those whom the Councils and the Popes shall declare Hereticks he declares that it ought to be pronounced against an Apostle against himself the most famous among the Apostles against him who had had Visions and Revelations who had been caught up into the third Heaven and who had laboured with such an abundant expence of his blood and of his Life for Jesus Christ This is not all yet he enjoyns the same against an Angel from Heaven if he undertook to Preach another Gospel than that which he has Preached unto us What can be said more weighty What is there in the Church beyond an Anathema What is there upon Earth among men greater than Saint Paul What is there in Heaven above an Angel And shall the ordinary Pastors the Prelates Patriarchs Popes and Councils be exempted from that Rule when the Apostles and Angels themselves are not
which they pretend ought to be given them IT is an amazing thing to behold a prejudice and a present Interest so far to blind those who set before us this absolute Obedience to the Governours of the Church and who would have the Faithful strip themselves intirely of the care of their Souls to place it in their Pastors hands that they should not have considered that it is the most pernitious Maxim in the World the most contrary to the Glory of God to the Interests of his Justice and his service to the subsistence of his true Church They will themselves I hope be perswaded of it if they will but make with me these following Reflexions 1. The first is That by that Principle they justify the people of the Jews when they adhered to that false worship brought into their Church by the Authority of their Ordinary Pastors or practised with their consent and approbation which fell out very often as we have before noted and as it appears from the History of the Old Testament The people in that Story were not in the least culpable either for sacrificing upon the high places or in the Groves as they had began to do under the Reign of Rehoboam nor for having of Images or as the Scripture speaks carved Idols nor in offering up incense to the Brazen Serpent as they did even down to the reign of Hezekiah since in doing all those things they did but follow their Priests and could say that they referred themselves to them to see for them according to what they were bound They were not to be blamed then when under the reign of Ahaz they offered their oblations on a strange Altar made after the manner of that of the Syrians since it was Vriah the Priest that ordered it and set it up in the place of the Altar of God to the end that the people should there offer up their Devotions They were not in the least to be blamed in those days wherein their Prophets charged their Priests and ordinary Pastors with having sinned against God and prophesied by Baal and saying to a stock Thou art my Father and to a stone Thou art my Mother and by that means to have corrupted the people of God For what could those people do more then follow their Pastors if it were true that we ought to see with their eyes and to tread always in their steps 2. But if by establishing that Principle they justify a People in their Idolatry and Violation of the Law of their God if they acquit them of all fault in that respect it is not less certain that at the same time they condemn God for Injustice in having sent his chastisements upon an innocent people who had done nothing but what they were bound to do in following their guides in that he was not satisfied with punishing only the Authours of those Crimes I mean those Guides who only were culpable For why should he punish those who submitted themselves to their guides whom they could do no otherwise then obey They condemn all the Complaints of the Prophets which they addrest immediately to the People and all the Threatnings and stinging Censures with which their writings are full For to what purpose should they complain censure and threaten with so much Exaggeration and vehemency if the people ought not by themselves to examine the points of Religion and that they ought on the contrary to commit themselves only into their Pastours hands They condemn all those holy men who did not adhere to their Errors and Profanations and they must see themselves reduced to the necessity of condemning them of rashness and presumption for having been willing to make use of their own Eyes and not to refer themselves wholly to the conduct of their Church They condemn all those in that Church who have first spoke of a Reformation and all those who have followed them in it For those who would not see but by the Eyes of the Church would never have a Tongue to speak any thing against its present State nor ears to hear any thing that could be said upon that subject So those good Kings as Hezekiah and Josiah who set up the true worship of God and did pull down Idolatry would have been no other but rash persons who had Executed that which they should not have so much as undertaken What can they answer to that Will they say that all those Reformers wrought miracles to Authorise their Calls But that is not true For neither Hezekiah nor Josiah nor those other Kings who abolished those Superstitions and Errors did any Miracle for that they had recourse to nothing but the Law of God Will they say that they were the Ecclesiasties themselves who laboured in those Reformations I confess it But that alone lets us see that they had done ill in referring themselves meerly to their Authority since they themselves had comdemned what they had before approved of and by their change and their Repentance they acknowledged they had done ill whence it may follow that the people had done ill also in reposing their trust in in them Will they say that the True Worship of God having been of primitive Institution and by consequence the first Church having been pure the people would have done ill if when a change should have happened they had not abode with and stuck to their first Pastors and that by that means of rendring to the Church that submission which they owed to it they would have hindred its Corruption But to assert that is but to affirm well nigh what we would have When the Latin Church began to corrupt it self the people ought to have set themselves in Opposition to it in sticking close inviolably to their first guides and if they had done so they had not needed ever to have spoke of a Reformation Notwithstanding the have not done so and the Jews likewise had not done so they have not failed of walking after that inclination which all men have to do ill The Faithful City became an Harlot its silver was turned into dross and its Wine was mixt with Water as one Prophet reproaches them What ought they to have done in that Misery must they have remained in that State under pretence of no more seeing then by the eyes of the Church of walking only in its Steps and of devesting themselves of their own conduct to rest upon that of the Church No certainly whatsoever the Author of those Prejudices says They ought on the contrary to have re-ascended up to the Primitive Church to the first Institution of their Religion to have ruled themselves by that and to have laboured to save the present Church from that ruin where into its Corrupters would have precipitated her That had been the duty of all good men and a contrary sentiment would have been criminal But all that lets us distinctly see how false and pernitious that Maxime of the Author of the
Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of soveraign-Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
those who demanded of Pilate his Death by crying against him away with him away with him Crucify him and those in fine who rejected the word of his Apostles and who instead of being converted by them persecuted them would be sufficiently justified in their bold unbeleif and that detestable Parricide which they committed on the Person of the Son of God For what were all those things but just consequences of that Principle They would not hearken to the Censures that Jesus Christ made of the Traditions and Doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees their Church admitted those Traditions They would not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah their Church had determined that whosoever did believe it should be cast out of their Synagogues They rejected the Proofs that he gave them from the Scripture it was not for them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture and the Church understood it otherwise They demanded that he might be Crucified the Church had condemned him for a Seducer as an Enemy to Moses and the Law it was not for them to inform themselves any farther They rejected his Miracles the Church did so too and said that he cast out Devils by the power of Beelzebub They would not hearken to his Apostles the Authority of the Church forbad them Hitherto their conduct is within due Rules supposing that the Principle of the Author of prejudices might be just and lawful and those miserable People are very much obliged to him for furnishing them with arms wherewith to defend themselves 4. That Maxim of the Author of those Prejudices draws yet far greater absurdities after it It ministers accusations against Jesus Christ himself against his Apostles and all those who were converted by their Words If the Faithful by those Laws of their submission to the Church ought not to have any other Eyes than hers why did Jesus Christ present himself immediatly to the People when he should first of all have made known his call from Heaven the Glory of his Person and the Dignity of his Office to the Church to have made them own it by proving it to them before he Preach't to the People He was they will say her Lord and the Church her self would have had no Authority but by him that is true But if the People owed the Church an absolute obedience they would have owed it all that time that the Lord would have remained unknown He ought then to have began to make himself known to her and to have opened her Eyes that he might at the same time have opened those of all the People If Jesus Christ had been known to have been indeed what he was there is no doubt to be made but that he would alone have been heard without any dependance on the Church of which he is the Soveraign Lord but as yet he was not and till that knowledge had obtained the People would have been always bound according to the Principle of the Author of Prejudices not to have seen but by the Eyes of the Church to which God had subjected them To speak then home to this Question whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God the promised Messiah or whether he was not the Faithful being bound to believe nothing but what the Church should tell them he could not but have addrest himself to her and not to the Faithful People immediatly Nevertheless it is most true that he addressed himself neither to the Priests nor to the Scribes nor to the Pharisees nor to the Doctors he Preached his Gospel to the simple People out of them he took his Disciples and it was among them that he did almost all his Miracles in fine he himself gives thanks to his Father for that he had hid his Mysteries from the Wise and Prudent and had revealed them unto Babes Whence could such a conduct proceed so contrary to that Soveraign Authority wherewith at this day they would invest the Church that is the Pastors in respect of the Lay-men It is not difficult to understand that it was because Jesus Christ did no ways act from that Principle nor owned it for a good one for if he had owned it he had never suffered the People to have violated it he had made use of another way to make himself known to them and he would have employed the Ministry of the Church for that end 5. One may see the same thing of the Apostles if the People ought entirely to refer themselves to the Church in matters of Faith and Religion Why did the Apostles sollicit the Jews to embrace their Doctrine when they could not so much as hear them without being criminal They will say they had a commandment from their Master to Preach this Gospel I confess it but the Jews lived under a Church that had openly declared it self against their Preaching and they might tell them according to the Maxim of those Gentlemen It is vain that you Preach to us that you work Miracles that you alledge the Scriptures We see by the Eyes of the Church we hear by her Ears we march after her Steps and we devest our selves of our own guidance to rest our selves upon hers This is our Duty and the Law that is imposed on us why do you go about to tempt us to violate it Suppose we that a Jew after having heard one of those Divine and admirable Sermons of Saint Paul should have addrest himself to him and have demanded of him what Authority he pretended to give to that new Christian Church which he took such care to establish whether he did not mean that its Children should render a blind Obedience to it and that they should refer themselves wholly to their Pastors for deciding matters of Faith without intermedling themselves to search out the true sence of the Scripture Suppose yet that that great Apostle should have answered him according to that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices That it was true that the darkness of our understandings and our prejudices might be able to hinder us from seeing in the Scriptures those Truths that are clearly contained in them that a man could not assure himself that he was not of the number of those who deceived themselves That that doubt is terrible but that which yet infinitely heightens that dread which it must needs cause is that men are necessarily bound to chuse their Party and to make so weighty a choice to wit of that Religion that they ought to follow amidst the cumbrances of a thousand cares and a thousand worldly necessities that almost wholly take them up and that will allow them but a very little time to examine the Truths of that Religion That the greatest part of Mankind wanted necessary helps that the half of Christians could not tell how to read that others did not understand any Language but their own that others had so narrow and limited a Capacity that they could but very difficultly conceive the most easie
things In fine that there was no way more dangerous more difficult and less fitted to all sorts of Capacities then that of a particular examination of its Tenets That the cutting off of that way led of it self to that of the Authority of the Church since every man is bound to know the truth of something and he that could not learn by himself must necessarily learn it of another They will then have no reason to doubt whether they shall take the Catholick Church for their Guide and borrow its Eyes to discern the Truths of the Faith and they will believe themselves a thousand times more assured in following that than if they were left to the weak ef-forts of their own Reason Tell me I pray whether that discourse would have been very proper for the Conversion of that Jew and whether he might not justly have answered That he was also uncertain whether he should not deceive himself and take the wrong side from the very same Reasons that he had alledged from whence he might as well conclude that he was bound to yeild himself to the Authority of the Jewish Church which had been the most eminent one that was ever in the World because that although it had Sects among it who disputed the Truth of its Tenets yet it had nothing that could make that high Authority which arose from external signs to be opposed with any colourable pretence To speak in the same Language that the Author of Prejudices uses That he sought then to take her for his Guide and to believe himself a thousand times more assured in following her than if he had been left to the weak ef-forts of his own Reason Furthermore he might think it very strange that the Apostles of Jesus Christ should go about to violate in respect of the Jewish Church a Principle which in the end they had a design to establish for the preservation of their own that they should then plead for that Maxim that every one ought to examine the Tenets of the Faith and search out the true Religion by himself without absolutely trusting to his ordinary Pastors since that they would have them to hear them notwithstanding the condemnation that their Church had pronounced against them But that afterwards they should quickly change that Maxim towards those whom they should have converted and have bound them to have depended blindly on their Guides That Inequality would not have appeared fair Tell me I pray yet once more whether the Jew had not had some Reason of his side and whether that Maxim of the Authour of Prejudices is not far more destructive of the Interests of Christianity than can be easily conceived It opens a Gate to the Jews to defend their Unbelief to justify all their bold attempts and to calumniate Jesus Christ himself and his blessed Apostles 6. What might not those unbelievers have said against those who were Converted They might have treated them as rash presumptuous as Rebels and Schismaticks as disturbers of Order as a sort of men of a private spirit who would make themselves Judges of the Church and despoil it of its lawful Authority to invest themselves in it But that which is most scandalous is that as that Principle which we oppose opens the mouths of the Enemies of the Gospel so it shuts up those of the new Christians and deprives them of the means of justifying themselves For what could they have said to which those others might not immediately have repli'd by the meer application of that Principle Could they have said that they had known out of the Scripture out of Moses and the Prophets that Jesus was the true Messiah But they might have answered them that it belonged to the Church and not to them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture Could they have said that Jesus Christ and his Apostles had an extraordinary Call But they might have told them also That it was not for private men to judge whether those who said they were extraordinarily sent were so indeed that that would be to give way to impostors that the Church ought to make that discernment and that she had loudly declared that they were no other then such Could they have alleadged the Miracles of Jesus and his Apostles But they might have given them the very same for an answer that seeing there were true and false miracles it was not for the common people who ow'd an absolute obedience to their Guides to undertake to discern between them but for the Church which had then explained them when she said that Jesus cast out Devils by the Prince of Devils Could they have complained of the Disorders and Corruptions that then reigned in the Jewish Church But they might have told them That they were ingrateful and unnatural Children who lifted themselves up against their Mother and thought of nothing else but dishonouring her and that whatsoever they might say they ought to borrow her eyes for the discerning the Truths of the Faith and to rest assured in following of her In fine that Principle seems to do nothing else but to give a compleat Victory to Judaism over Christianity 7. But there is more in it yet for the Heathens might so have prevailed against the first Preachers of the Gospel and have stopt its Progress I confess that the Heathens did not call their Religious Society by the name of the Church But what does the Name signify Were they not all united in one Religious Society Had they not all their Guides their Priests those that offered up their Sacrifices and their high Priests Put into their hands then that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices with the grounds upon which it is established the obscurity of mens understandings that doubt of being deceived the cumbrance of worldly affairs the want of necessary helps and all those other pretences which they propose to us to make us blindly follow their conduct and it will work the same effect as it did in the hands of the Jews The Heathens would not have failed to have made use of it for the hindring their hearkning to those Preachers to justify that obstinacy with which they resisted the Gospel to elude those Miracles to condemn the Apostles themselves and those who had been converted by hearing them as a sort of men who had broken that Order which they themselves acknowledg'd so necessary to be kept They might very well have told them You have not the True Religion you are not that Church to which we ought to give an absolute submission we have a Heavenly and an extraordinary Call and we prove it by Miracles The Heathens might have answered them out of the Instructions of the Author of these Prejudices All those things are in question between our Guides and yours we cannot of our selves decide them the darkness of our understandings the little assurance we can have that we are not deceiv'd the just fear that that doubt must infer
if you would give to the simpler sort to those Babes for Example whereof Jesus Christ speaks that his Mysteries have been revealed unto them if you give them I say that right and liberty to judge of that important and fundamental Question to wit Whether the Call of a man be Extraordinary and Divine or whether it be not so whether his Miracles are those of a true Minister of God or of a false Prophet whether it be a true Angel of Light or a disguised Angel of darkness and to judge of all those things after the Church and against the Church I see no Reason why they should refuse them the right and liberty of judging also of its Doctrine and the points of Religion whereof the true knowledge is by nothing near so difficult God had forewarned his People that they should not give themselves over to be deceiv'd by the first appearances of Miracles and he had appointed that they should judge of them by the Doctrine they accompanied Whence it follows that the discerning of Miracles and judging of that Doctrine are two inseparable things and that their right belongs to the same persons If there arise saith God among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart It appears from thence that the way for men to judge well of Miracles is to examine the Doctrine of him that works them So that if they will a gree to give the people a right to discern Miracles they cannot take away from them that of discerning that Doctrine they uphold Jesus Christ supposes the same thing when he says that there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and that they shall work great signs and wonders to seduce if it were possible the very Elect. For how could they otherwise discern those Miracles of the false Prophets but by examining their words So a famous man of the Roman Communion has not scrupled to write that we are bound to reject Miracles and those men who make use of them then when they are joyned with a Doctrine which the Church has condemned his words are considerable and very well deserve to be transcrib'd The Application says he and direction of a miracle to prove the Truth of a Doctrine is an enterprise so rash and so scandalous that it deserves to be punished There is not any Catholic in the World who knows his Creed and understands it that can be capable of such a persuasion What if the appearance of a Miracle is contrary to the definitions of the Church can any one hesitate or doubt whether it would be better to adhere to the Church supported by the truth of a Miracle or to deny the truth of a Miracle founded upon the Authority of the Church Saint Peter has taught us a great while since what we are to do on that occasion He had been an eye Witness of the Transfiguration of our Saviour and of that glory that lay hid under the Vail of a Suffering and Mortal state and yet nevertheless he trusts more in the obscurity of Prophets than to the clear and manifest experience of his Eyes we have a more sure word of Prophesie The Authority of the Church which is in nothing less than that of the Prophets breaks in pieces all those reasons that oppose it and we ought to take to our selves in regard of the Church that which Saint Peter says with respect to the Prophets To which we do well that we take heed gathering together all our attention to know the true sence of the Church and turning aside from all the Miracles and all those Reasons the men propound to us to make us call into question that which we know the Church to have determined We may see clearly by that passage how far one may carry that Principle of the Authority of the Church in the thoughts of those that admit of it that is to say even to make Miracles themselves submit to it He says that we ought to Collect all our attention to know the true Sentiments of the Church and to turn aside from all those Miracles which would make us call into question that which the Church has determined He says that to go about to make use of Miracles for the proving of a Doctrine that is condemned by the Church is a rash and scandalous enterprise and such as deserves to be punished In effect if they suppose that Maxim that we ought to give to the Church an absolute obedience to see with her Eyes and to rest upon her Conduct those Miracles could not make them be heard whom the Church should have condemned and by which they should have been looked on as false Miracles the Consequence is good and just But because that very thing applied to the times of the first rise of Christianity justifies the Unbeleivers condemns the proceedings of Jesus Christ and his Appostles accuses those of rashness who have believed on their preaching destroys the Gospel and overthrows the Christian Church it is a manifest proof that that Maxim it self is false and rash since those Consequences that arise from it are so detestable that they leave neither to Jesus Christ nor to the Apostles any way to make their Gospel to be heard by men with a good Conscience and the care of their Salvation 8. They must give me leave to speak a little earnestly for the interest of our Lord Jesus Christ The more I consider these inevitable Consequences of that Maxim the more I am astonished If those first Christians who had been Jews could not hear the Doctrine of the Son of God nor receive his Miracles without violating of their Duty toward the Church that had condemned them what scruples might not all that cast into all the Christians that are at this day in the World For in fine we are the Successors of that people our Fathers were not Converted but by their Ministry If then we cannot see clearly that they themselves had a right to be Converted if they laid down on the contrary a Principle which of right ought to have hindered their Conversion where then are all we as many as we are The Reasons that the Author of those Prejudices produces to make us devest our selves of our own guidance in favour of the Church that we should see with her Eyes and tread in her steps had as much place with the Jews as they have with us they could not doubt but that their Church was the Church of God none can dispute with them that eminent Authority which had so many external marks To her belonged the Adoption the
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
Sacrilegious and that those on the contrary who submitted themselves to the decisions of the Church were those good men who did nothing but their duty and that we our selves at this day who have received our Christianity from the hands of that small number are but the followers of Rebels and Schismaticks Yet all that they must say if they lay down that Principle of absolute Obedience It appears then that that Principle is false and unjust and invented for the ruin of Religion 10. In effect an absolute obedience and an intire resigning of ones self to the Conduct of another as to those matters that regard the Faith and the Conscience is a duty that we can render lawfully to none but God who is the first Truth the first Principle of all Justice A man cannot submit his understanding and his heart to the word of any one so as to believe blindly that which he says without giving him a kind of Adoration for there can be no homage greater than that of an inward blind submission It is an infinite act according as a creature may be said to act infinitely that is to say without bounds without reserve without measure It is then an act that can belong to none but God immediately that we ought not to transfer to the Church if we would not adore the Church and to which by Consequence a Church can never pretend without usurping the just rights of God 11. God himself has so far forborn his right that he does not very often absolutely make use of it but leaves it to our minds to judge of the Truths that he propounds to us For there are often in those things that he teaches us Characters that equally note their Truth and their Divinity so that at all times we may draw these two conclusions from them This Doctrine is true this Doctrine is of God without their depending one upon the other We may say the same of his Commandments they bear most frequently Characters of their Natural Justice as well as those of their Divinity and they give us leave to receive them not only by an Act of Obedience but by an Act of Judgment also As it is from him that we hold that admirable faculty of distinguishing the true from the false the good from the bad by Characters imprest in those things themselves so he would not take a way the use of it in matters of Religion On the contrary it is ordinarily by the using of that that he draws us that he convinces us first of all of the Truth of some Doctrines that he makes us afterwards acknowledg the necessary connexion that they have with others which he has revealed to us the Truth whereof appears not so clearly abstractly considered at first and by that connexion he makes us receive them He shews us the equity of his Precepts the horror of those Vices that are contrary to them and in that manner he gains our Hearts by making use of our own Reason Not that we may lawfully reject any of those things which he teaches us we have no right for that without doubt because where our Understandings are wanting to discover those Characters of Truth or of Equity in those things which he teaches us there he has ordained that his Authority shall help us It is God that says it it is God that commands it but it is not the same with respect to the Church the Church is not God she is but an Interpreter and Servant of God she ought then to shew us in all that she teaches us as matter of Faith or that she commands the Conscience to submit to those Characters of Truth and Equity in the things themselves or else those of their Divinity when she fails in that she cannot supply that defect by her Authority for in that case her Authority is purely no other than Humane and an Humane Authority is not sufficient either for the Faith or for the Conscience so that every man has right to examine that which she teaches and to reject that that is beyond the word of God 12. In fine Let those Gentlemen tell us if they please whether in this same Question concerning the Soveraign Authority of the Latin Church and the Obligation that lies upon every one to hold himself to its decisions they mean that every one should refer himself to the Latin Church and believe also meerly because that she says so without any other examination or whether they would grant that every one may have right to examine of what nature of what extent and of what force that Authority is and how far that Obedience goes which he ought to render to it There is no likelyhood they will say the former for that Authority cannot establish it self when it shall be establisht a man may refer himself to it for other things but while her own establishment is disputed it is requisite it should come from somewhat else and that there should be for that proofs capable of perswading us To what purpose do they tell us of its external marks which makes us says the Author of the Prejudices discover without any difficulty that height of Authority which is in the Catholick Church if they would not leave the Faithful a right to see those external marks and to examine them not any farther by the Eyes of the Church but by their own That being so they may see that they ought always to give men a right of making a Judgment by their own light and to give them in that Question the most important matter of all to wit that of choosing a Rule and a setled Principle for their Guidance and their Faith an Authority upon which their Minds and Consciences may rest and lye down in perfect Peace They must give them that in that Question which it is no ways easie for them to decide For besides that they ought to see those external marks of the Latin Church which say they gain her so great an Authority they ought also to see whether there are not others which they take away more reasonably from her then those that they give her they ought to see whether those marks are not common to other Religious Societies that may by that means dispute with the Latin Church that Authority they ought to see whether those marks when they shall become peculiar to the Latin Church may be capable of giving her so Soveraign an Authority over mens Faith and Consciences which seems naturally to belong to none but God And because in that Question we treat not of the whole Body of the Church but only of the Prelats and those who take up the Ecclesiastical Function they ought to know whether those external marks can hinder them from believing that those Prelats have abused their charges and brought in or suffered to be brought in divers Corruptions into the Church All that is not so easie as the Authour of the Prejudices tells us it is There is some
principle of Unity would they give us to settle all in the same thoughts in that search which they should make of the true Church The Jews would say We are the true Church of God the Mother Church from which the Christians have separated themselves The Pagans will say We are that Mother Communion for as well the Jews as the Christians came out of the midst of us The Mahometans will say That as Christianity was the perfection of the Law so their Religion is the perfection of the Gospel The Greeks would come foorth and maintain That they are the true Catholick Church and not the Latins the Copticks the Abyssines the Jacobites and Armenians maintain That as well the Latins as the Greeks departed from the Church when their Council of Chalcedon had made void the Council of Ephesus The Arians will say That if one latter Council could abrogate what had been done by a former as it appears from the Example of the Council of Chalcedon then that of Ariminum might very well correct and repair the Errors of that of Nice In fine every one would alledge his Reasons and concern himself to know which of all those Communions was the true and good one and which had the true Faith Tell us what means of Unity would you have beyond that to hinder men from dividing themselves For if it be true that in yielding men a right to examine the matters of Religion they open a Gate to let in Divisions and Heresies by reason of the Confusion of mens minds it is not less true that in leaving them a liberty to examine those Churches and Religious Societies to come to know which is the True you open the same Gate to Errors and Apostacies If you would further take from them that Liberty of searching out the true Church and if you say that they ought to suppose the Latin to be it without other reason besides that that is very absurd you introduce a Maxim that under a pretence of shutting the Door to all Divisions shuts it also to all Conversions For why should not every Society have right to say the same thing So the Jew without any other Reason would presume for the Jewish Communion the Heathen for the Heathen the Greek for the Greek and every one for that wherein he finds himself set That then would not be so much a Principle of Unity in the true Faith as a Principle of Confusion and Obstinacy a Principle that would be not so proper to keep men in the Unity of the true Faith as in that of any Religion whatsoever it might be without coming to know whether it were good or bad In the second place I say That with all that they do not yet make any thing of that which they would lay down if they would avoid those Heresies and those Divisions which may arise from the inequality of humane understandings when men are left to be Masters of their own Sentiments For to obtain that effect they must suppose that that Maxim of referring ones self absolutely to the Pastors of the true Church when they shall be so assured will be received and followed by all men But who can tell them that men will not divide upon that very Principle and that when they endeavour to make them receive it they can make them agree If they apprehend so much those Divisions and Errors in the matters of Religion what assurance can they have that there shall not be any upon that point of the Authority of the Church Is it because mens minds will less differ about that subject then about others or that that same Authority proves it self as the First Principles do Who has told them that those who shall once have received this Maxim will not be un-blinded in the end and that they will not be weary in fine of remaining slaves to men in respect of their Consciences which is the most considerable part of themselves and that which should give them the greatest Jealousie So that that pretended Remedy of Schisms and Divisions is null for you must always run upon that Rock you would avoid to wit of the humane understanding and wipe off its differences its inequalities its humors at the same time that you would have them give away that liberty of judging the points of the Faith Let us suppose since our Adversaries would have us that that Principle of absolute obedience to the Guides of the Church had had place from the birth of Christianity would it have hindred the Heresies of the Valentinians of the Gnostics of the Marcionites of the Montanists and the Manichees Would it have hindred the Arrians the Samosatences the Eutychians the Nestorians and so many others that in the first Ages of Christianity troubled the State of Religion To say that those men were presumptuous and rash is but to say what we would have which is that there can be no humane means that can stop that rashness and presumptuousness of men and that it is a folly to go about to do it They may by the force of Torments and Prisons by their Threats or their Promises hinder the external effects but that is not to contain men in the Unity of the Faith but it is to contain them in that of Hypocrisy and of Treachery A second Inconvenience is That they cannot give to the Church that is to say to the Body of the Pastors that respect which is due to them for where they should be set up to be Judges of Controversies private men would rise up against them and those private men would on the contrary become their Judges But that Inconvenience is not so great as that it should make us hazard our own Salvation How many Judges have in we our Civil Society to whom we yet give that respect that is due to them though still we are not bound to believe that all that they have judged is well judged The respect which men owe to their Pastors is not unlimited it has its bounds and its measures while they act as true Pastors in Teaching the pure Truth and acquitting themselves of their Duty they are worthy to be heard to be followed to be respected But when they come to be Deceivers if that in stead of Teaching the Truth they oppose it if they mix with Gold and Silver Wood Hay and Stubble to make use of the words of the Apostle they deserve in that regard neither the Hearing nor Respect For they are neither Pastors nor the Church but only as they Teach the Truth and follow Righteousness and when they withdraw themselves from it give us their own Fancies or when they follow their Passions then they are but private men who belye their Character and they can owe them nothing for those kinds of things but repulses and contempt or at the most but Indulgence if the Evil be yet tolerable that is to say if their word and their conduct do not destroy the Gospel or hinder a saving
those things for a pretence which did not appear necessary and which were not wisht for and the Third is That a Reformation so necessary and so much desired should extend it self to Faith as well as to Manners even say they 'till the Vniversal Church should be Reformed in Faith and Manners See then what was the success of so weighty a business Julius on his side who according to the general mind of the Popes mortally hated those Propositions of a Reformation display'd all the Authority Force and Artifice that he had to elude that Council and to turn all those projects into Air. And first of all he made void and disanull'd that Convocation that had been called he declared them the Authors of Schisme and Rebellion as Dathan and Abiram and their Council a Conventicle of Schismaticks a Synagogue of Satan and a Church of Malignants he forbad all Prelats to go thither under pain of Anathema and excommunicated all those who should afford them any help or assistance directly or indirectly and in fine he interdicted the Towns and Churches that should receive them But as that way of Authority alone could not produce the effect which he desired since the World did not care always to be frightned with the Papal Thunder so it was necessary for him further to elude that pretence of a Reformation which those of Pisa had taken up He then had recourse to that Ordinary Artifice of the Popes which is that when they cannot longer avoid a Council they labour to make themselves Masters of it to the end that nothing may pass there but what agrees with their Interests and their desires For this Reason he called he called one at Rome it self and to make himself more sure taking up as well as his Adversaries that pretence of the Reformation of the Church the better to colour his Affairs and to strengthen his Party he created some new Cardinals Nevertheless as he would not omit any thing he had recourse to Arms he made a League with Spain against France he assaulted Ferrara that was held by the French he went himself in Person into his Army he filled all Italy with War he drew the Switzers and Venetians to his Interests he gave Battels he Excommunicated the King of France and all his Confederates and after having got off the Emperor Maximilian from them he gave away their Kingdoms to him who should first Conquer them and in fine he set up his Conventicle at Lateran where he and his Successour Leo the Tenth made all things pass that they would have I say he and his Successour Leo the Tenth For Julius dy'd after the fifth Session and Leo not being yet thirty seven years Old was chosen in his place by the Faction of the young Cardinals against the mind of the elder sort by Reason of which Alphonsus Petrucius a young Cardinal having had it given him in charge to declare the new Election to the people he did it in these words We have chosen Leo the Tenth for our Pope Let the young men live Leo then continued that Council in which in favour of some light Reformations which consisted but in words without any effect he more then ever established the Soveraign Authority of his See and confirmed the Abuses of his Court and the disorders of the Latin Church For he there Solemnly made void the Pragmatick Function which was almost the only good thing that remained in the Government of the Latin Church he there made the Council of Basil to be declared a Conventicle and caused it to be determined That the Authority of the Popes is above all Councils which obliged the University of Paris to reject that Decree and to sue forth an appeal made to a Council lawfully called After this I know not whether they can any farther say with any confidence that our Fathers ought to entertain good hopes of the Latin Prelats and that they ought to have expected a good Reformation from their hands All the World desired that there should be a Reformation in the Government of the Church they impatiently demanded it they themselves acknowledged the necessity of it in the Head and the Members the Pope found himself engaged to do it by a Solemn Oath but when it was urged to be put in Execution he chose rather to enflame all Christendome then to deliberate to reform himself and to re-establish Order and he managed his party so well that he found a whole Council disposed blindly to do whatsoever should please him without any regard had either of God or the Church or of themselves Did not all that give a fair hope of a Reformation They will say it may be that Adrian the sixth Successour to Leo after having ingenuously confessed in the Diet of Nuremberg the disorders of the Court of Rome and of all the Prelats as we have seen before promised also to Reform them For he declared That he was resolved as well from his own inclination as from the duty of his place to labour to correct so great an Evil And he would do it in such sort that first of all the Court of Rome whence possibly the evil had grown so extream and so destructive should be reformed and so much the more as he saw that all the World passionately desired it I confess those Historians give a good Testimony enough of the Intentions of that Pope in that respect but we ought also to adjoyn what they add to wit that that Confession and promise of his which he made were very ill taken at Rome and moreover that they generally offended the Prelats that they seemed to be too ignominious for them saying that it rendred them yet more odious to the Seculars and contemptible to the People and that especially they were amazed to see a door opened for the introducing a diminution of their conveniencies or convincing them of an incorrigible obstinacy We ought not also to omit that Adrian dyed soon after the Return of his Nuntio from Germany not without a suspition of being Poisoned as William Lochorst insinuates in a Letter set down by Raynaldus Seu nimio says he Estu laboreque fatigatus seu infesto esu aut potu refectus incidit in Morbum by Reason of which Paulus Jovius relates that immediately after the Death of Adrian some young debauched persons went by night and set up a wreathed Garland on the door of the House of his Physitian with this Inscription Liberatori Patriae S. P. Q. R. We ought not likewise to pass by in silence what the Author of the History of the Council of Trent has told us That Clement the Seventh who succeeded Adrian saw clearly that Pope Adrian having too far abandoned the Ordinary Stile of the wiser Popes had been too facil as in Confessing the Faults of the Court of Rome so in promising a Reformation and that he was too mean spirited in asking the Counsel of Germany how provision might be made
manifest that he did that to extort Money from the People and that those who were employed to do it had bargained for the place of the Court of Rome by Reason of which the thing came to be turned into a publick Scandal chiefly in Germany where the greater part of those Ministers sold them at a cheap rate or gamed away the power of delivering Souls out of Purgatory He adds That which rendred this Affair yet more odious was the Donation that Leo had made of a sum of the Money that should be raised by those Indulgences to his sister Magdalen and the Commission that was given for that to a certain Bishop Archimbald a man unworthy of such an Employment and who behaved himself with an extream Covetousness and Rigour Behold then two things indisputable as it seems to me the one That Luther had right at the Bottom and that the business which gave him occasion to speak and write against it was filthy and scandalous in all respects and the other is That he guided himself after a most prudent and respectful manner and that had nothing in it of any disorder Let us see now after what manner he was Treated The first thing that fell out was that neither the Pope nor the Arch-Bishop of Mayence nor the Bishop of Brandenburg vouchased to take any care to put a stop to those abuses that were committed They know that afterwards the Arch-Bishop of Mayence was himself concerned in a part of those Indulgences and that he got considerable sums by them The second thing was That Luther instantly raised against himself not only that whole swarm of Preachers and Questors but the whole Empire of the Pope that is to say all the Creatures of the Court of Rome spread abroad throughout Europe who stirred up all their Endeavours to ruin him raising against him the Princes and the People by many false imputations Ecc us Doctor of Divinity Silvester Prierias Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome and James Hockstraten Inquisitor wrote against him the last of whom exhorted the Pope to make use of fire and Sword for the Convincing of that Heretick Luther defended himself against this sort of men by Publick Answers wherein he laid open their Absurdities and their false and scandalous Assertions which they had proposed but he did yet always contain himself within the bounds of a great Respect for the Pope and for the Church of Rome holding nevertheless that they were not infallible and that the Authority of a Council lawfully assembled was above that of the Pope in which he said nothing that the Faculty of Paris and Gallican Church does not say likewise It appeared that it was their last interest that urged them to irritate Leo against him and all his Court Who else were not well contented with that which he had undertaken to put a stop to or at least to trouble the course of their exactions Howsoever it was when they set themselves to find out a way to repress those manifest Excesses of the Ministers of Indulgences and those who defended them Luther was cited by the Pope to appear in person at Rome to give an account of his writings and his Conduct in that business before the Judges that Leo had assigned to him who were Jerome Bishop of Ascoli Auditor of the Chamber and Silvester Prierias Master of the sacred Palace Leo wrote at the same time to Cajetan his Legat in Germany a Letter full of Fire and Choler against Luther whom he treated as an Heretick and Seditious person and gave him order to cause him to be seized as an Heretick and conducted safely to Rome commanding all Dukes Marquises Earls Barons and all Universities Communities and Powers under pain of Excommunication with a reserve of the Emperour only to use all their force to seize Luther and to give him up into the hands of his Legat. He wrote also to the same purpose to Frederick the Elector of Saxony Luther seeing so violent a proceeding against him proposed the Reasons that hindred him from obeying that Citation which were taken from the infirmity of his health which would not permit him to expose himself to the wearisome toils of that Journey from his povery to which did not afford him wherewithal to do it from the Tye that he had at the University of Wittenburg from whence it was not in his power to depart without the consent of his Prince but more especially from that evident oppression which he suffered in that he had the same person ordered to he his Judge to wit Sylvester Prierias who was not only of the same Order with the Preachers of Indulgences but the same person who had immediately before wrote a Dialogue against him so that it was visibly to give him up into the hands of his Adversaries and the Parties themselves The University of Wittenberg wrote to Rome in his Favour and the Prince Frederick of Saxony having most earnestly applyed himself to the Legat obtained in the end with a great deal of difficulty that the cause should be tryed in Germany and that for that business Luther should come and appear before the Legat at Auspurg Although Luther could not be further ignorant what Spirit the Court of Rome and all its Ministers were animated with as to himself yet he did not fail notwithstanding to appear before Cajetan but it was after his friends had obtained a safe Conduct for him from the Emperour Maximilian Cajetan was vext with such a prevention that broke all his measures nevertheless he received Luther honestly enough and propounded at first to him on the part of the Pope To Recant and to promise for the future that he would not fall back again into his Errors nor any more disturb the Church Luther answered That his Conscience did not accuse him of any Error that he entreated him to tell him in what he had Erred and that he was ready either to justify himself or yield himself to be instructed Cajetan then objected to him as two great and fundamental Errors That he had wrote That the Merits of Jesus Christ did not belong to the Treasure of Indulgences against the Extravagance of Clement the Sixth and that Faith that is to say a firm belief of ones Justification was necessary to those who came to the Sacrament and those who should appear before the Judgment of God for on the contrary said he it is uncertain whether those who draw near to God shall obtain his grace or not Luther defended his Propositions and the discourse falling upon the Soveraign Authority of the Pope whom Cajetan affirmed to be above a Council above the Scripture and above all that was in the Church Luther formally denyed it to him and maintained on the contrary that the Pope was beneath the Scripture and a Council The next morning Luther presented to him a justification of his Propositions in Writing in which he inserted a great many words full of
Frederick what the Pope desired obliged the Emperour Charles who had been Elected in the Room of Maximilian and the Princes assembled at Wormes to cite Luther to appear before them The Emperour gave him to that effect his Letters of safe Conduct and Luther having compared and constantly maintained his Doctrine without any ways regarding either the threats or the sollicitations of the Partisans of the Court of Rome they were upon the point to imprison him notwithstanding the safe conduct of the Emperour and to treat him as they had heretofore done John Huss and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance But the Elector Palatine vehemently opposing himself to that breach of the publick Faith they were contented with proscribing him by a publick Edict In that Edict they treat him as a Lunatick as one possest by the Devil and as a Devil incarnate they banish him all the Territories of the Empire they forbid him Fire and Water Meat and Drink they order that his Books should be publickly burnt and threaten to all that contradict the most rigorous punishments in the world After all that who can say that our Fathers could yet with any shadow of Reason hope for a Reformation on the part of the Popes and the Prelats We may see in their Conduct not only a repugnance to a Reformation but a setled design and an unshaken resolution to defend their Errours Superstitions and Abuses of what nature soever they were and to hazard all rather then once to consent that the Church should be purged We may see that they made use of all that the most exact and refined policy could make them contrive of all the Authority that the splendour of their Dignities and the places which they held could give them amongst men and of all that force and violence that the Favour of Princes and the credulity of the people could afford them They went so far as loudly to declare themselves Lords of mens Faith They exclaimed they wrote they disputed they accused they condemned they terrified they excommunicated they had recourse to the secular power and could our Fathers without being blind look any further for a Reformation from such persons as those CHAP. III. That our Fathers not being able any more to hope for a Reformation on the part of the Pope or his Prelats were indispensably bound to provide for their own Salvation and to Reform themselves VVE come now to inquire what our Fathers were bound to do in so great a Confusion They were perswaded not only that it was possible for the Latin Church to have within it a great many Corruptions and Abuses but that it really had a very great Company of them that false worship Errors and Superstitions had broke in as an Inundation upon the Christian Religion and that those abuses growing more gross and growing every day more strong put Christianity into a manifest danger of Ruin Moreover there was not any hope of Remedy either on the part of the Pope or on the part of the Prelats For the Court of Rome with all its Associates had loudly declared against a Reformation maintaining that the Church of Rome could not Err that she was the Mistress of Mens Faith and not to believe as she believed was a Heresie worthy of the Flames and as to the Prelats they had all servile obedience to the wills of the Popes besides that Ignorance that Negligence that Love of the things of the World and those other Vices in which they were plunged How be it the business was not about matters of small Importance nor about the Questions of the School most commonly unknown to the People nor about some speculative notions which could not be of any Consequence to the Actions of true Holiness The Controversy was about divers things essential to Religion which not only fell within the knowledge of the People but which likewise consisted in matters of practice and which by Consequence being wicked as our Fathers could make no doubt that they were could not but be very contrary to the right Worship of God and mens Salvation For the debate was about a Religious Worship which they were to give not to God alone but to Creatures also to Angels to Saints to Images and to Relicks about certain and infallible Springs from whence they ought to draw their Salvation in building their confidence upon them for besides the mercy of God through the Merit and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ they joyned to that the merit of our good-works our own Satisfactions the over and above Satisfactions of the Saints and the Authority of the Bishop of Rome in dispencing of Indulgences They Treated of other works which they held that we ought to do through the Obligation of our Consciences and with assurance that they were good and those they made a part of our Sanctification for they added to those that God had commanded us those that the Popes and their Prelats commanded out of their meer Authority They Treated of ill actions from which we ought to abstain out of the motions of our Consciences and which one could not commit without sin for besides those that God had forbidden us they likewise placed in this Rank those which it should please the Church to forbid us They Treated about a certain and infallible Rule of Faith upon which the Minds and Consciences of Christians might stay and rest for they would have that principle consist in the Interpretations in the Traditions and Decisions of the Church of Rome or its Prelats The Controversy was about Jesus Christ himself for they said that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was the very Person of the Son of God and they adored it under that Quality the Question was about divers Customs introduced into the publick Ministry or generally establisht by the Customs of the People that our Fathers thought very contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel and true Piety In fine in all those and other such like things they Treated about the peace and just rights of the Conscience the glory of God the hope of Salvation and the Preservation of the Church of Jesus Christ upon Earth Let them tell us then precisely what our Fathers ought to have done Was there any thing in the World of greater concernment then those things which I have set down Or to speak better was there nothing that could any ways stagger them or hold the minds of all honest men in suspence for so much as one moment Were they bound to renounce their Conscience their God and their Salvation under a pretence that the Flatterers of the Church of Rome speak of her what the Holy Scripture says of the Godhead That if she pulls down there is no person that can build up if she shuts there is none can open if she retains the Waters all is dried up if she lots them out they shall overflow the Earth Do they believe that they ought to have precipitated themselves
into a inevitable Damnation and to have precipitated others by their Example to consent to the Ruin of the Christian Religion and utter extinction of the Church and that lest they should have been wanting in that respect and blind Obedience that the Court of Rome and its Prelats require of all the World This would be in Truth to set that obedience at two high a price and it would cost us very dear but they will find but few persons of good understanding who will not confess that that would be to push on things a little too far They will say it may be that we ought not also to suppose a thing so much in Question that that prodigious corruption of the Latin Church whereof we speak and those pretended Interests of the Christian Religion and Mens Salvation which according to us obliged our Fathers to Reform themselves without having any regard of the Court of Rome or its Prelats were nothing else but Chimaera's that we our selves have formed at our pleasure or specious pretences that our Fathers took for occasions to separate themselves and that we take after them to defend them with To answer to this Objection I will not say that there is no appearance that our Fathers made use of those motives as a pretence to cover their other Interests with They can scarce know how to imagin any interests interwoven in a business that evidently drew after it a Thousand persecutions and a Thousand afflictions and wherein they were necessarily to go through the most violent storms as the sequel will justify In effect let them say as much as much as they will that Luther was hurried away by his resentments it belongs to those who Treated him with so much injustice to dispute that matter with him before the Tribunal of God who will one day render to every man according to his works But as to our Fathers who had no part in those personal Quarrels they can no ways be suspected to have had an interest of Passion or Animosity I will not likewise say that if our Fathers themselves had had other interests then those which they have set before us which is contrary to all appearance that yet it cannot be said in respect of us that we do not follow them in the True Faith since we have had leasure enough to acknowledge what our Reformation has drawn along with it and what it has cost us But I will only say that I make that supposition only to let our Adversaries see that without amusing us any more with those formalities and those perplexing ways which they make use of continually which are proper for nothing but to defend Errors and to destroy the Church by the Tyranny of those who govern they ought to come to the bottom and to Determine with us those Fundamental Articles upon which we ground the right that our Fathers had to Reform themselves I do not then prejudge any thing by my supposition I explain only the sentiment of the Protestants and the perswasion that they entertain If what they say is not true it is certain that they have had Reason to Reform themselves for without any more Reasoning a man ought always to prefer God and his own Salvation before a hundred Popes and before ten Thousand Bishops We ought then to come to an Examination of those Matters This is what the Author of those Prejudices as hot as he is in his Controversy has been forced to acknowledge For to disintangle himself from an Argument to which he says the whole Book of the Apology of Mr. Daille is reducible and which he represents in these words We ought not to remain united to such a Communion as binds us to profess Fundamental Errors against the Faith and to practise an Idolatrous and Sacrilegious Worship But the Church of Rome binds us to profess divers fundamental Errors and to practise Idolatrous and Sacrilegious Worship diverse ways as in the Adoration of the Host c. Therefore we ought not to remain in her Communion c. He distinguishes between two sorts of Separation one of which he calls simple and Negative which says he consists more in the Negation of certain Acts of Communion then in Positive Acts against that Communion from which we separate The other he calls a Positive Separation which includes the Erecting of a separate Society the Establishing of a new Ministry and the positive Condemnation of the former Communion to which it had been Vnited Upon that Distinction he says That it is to no purpose that the Calvinists say That their Consciences will not any more allow them to be united with the Catholicks sheltring themselves under that Ambiguous Term of Vnion That their Consciences cannot any further hinder them from taking part in some Actions which their false Principles make them look upon as criminal but they would no ways engage them to all those excesses to which they are carri'd out That in fine if it were true that without betraying your Consciences they could not give that honour which we pay to the Saints and their Relicks they ought to content themselves not to give it But that it will in no wise follow from thence that they ought to go about to set up a body apart That it is this latter sort of Separation whereof they accuse us and that it is that kind of it that we ought to justify our selves from And a little lower If says he the Calvinists should make what suppositions they pleased upon the State of the Church of Rome if they should as much as they had a mind to do accuse it of Error and Idolatry it would be enough to Answer them in one word That if those pretended Errors should give them any right to refuse to profess them and to practise those actions which should include them yet they no ways gave them any night to set up themselves against the Church of Rome to anathematize her to set up a body a part and to take to themselves the Quality of Pastors although they had neither Authority nor Mission I do not now meddle with that positive Separation which the Author of the Prejudices makes so great a Crime in us We shall shew in the end that our Fathers did nothing in that respect but what they were bound to do in their Consciences and with the neglect of which they could not dispence without Sin But this we shall come to consider in its proper place it may be enough for us at present to know that with the consent of the Author of Prejudices we may suppose it as a thing indisputable That our Fathers obeying the Dictates of their Consciences had right to resuse to profess those Errors in which they believed the Church of Rome to be entangled and no more to take any part in certain actions that involved those Errors I profess it were desirable that the Author of Prejudices had told us a little more clearly his
own thoughts of that Negative Separation But howsoever he has carried himself in his Expressions I may say if I am not mistaken without fear of any opposition that that which he has here granted us is not one of those Concessions which are sometimes given to adversaries only to cut off the Dispute but that indeed he has spoken according to his real thoughts For when in a Controversy of this nature a man distinguishes about this general Thesis That one ought to separate from a Church which binds one to profess Error in noting that it may be said in two sences the one That one ought to separate ones self Negatively in not medling with that which would wound the Conscience and the other That one ought to separate positively that is to say that one ought to set up a Society separate from that and to establish a new Ministry That he quitted the former sence in saying only that it was very ill applied to the Catholick Church restrained himself only to the latter that he would say that it was this latter kind of Separation whereof he accused us and about which we ought to justify our selves that our Consciences could not any further hinder us then from taking part in those actions which our Principles should make us look on as Criminal that if we could not without betraying our Consciences render that Honour to Saints and Relicks which they give them we ought to content our selves with not doing it When a man I say speaks as the Author of Prejudices after this manner in the heat of a dispute which he believes to be as weighty as that there is a great likelyhood that it is not a meer condescending to his adversaries but a true and lively expression of that which he finds in himself to be very Just and Reasonable Howsoever it be without informing our selves further about a thing wherein we are little concern'd we will suppose it since he will have it so as a proposition not to be disputed That our Fathers could lawfully seperate from the Church of Rome by a Negative Separation that is to say in not to taking any part in that which would wound their Consciences But that signifies in our stile that they had right to reform themselves since we call nothing else precisely Reformation but that publick Rejection which they made of divers things which they judged to be ill and contrary to Christianity Whether they did ill to go further and to proceed to a Positive Separation that is a Question apart which does not in the least hinder that their Reformation taken only as a Negative Separation might not have been done with Justice and according to that right that Conscience gives to every man But now methinks this point being so well clear'd clears a multitude of others and we may by that concession of the Author of Prejudices very well decide some Questions In the first place They ought no further to set before us that absolute obedience to the Orders and decisions of the Church of Rome in the matters of Faith and Worship to which they would hitherto have all the Faithful indispensably obliged For if those whose Consciences shall tell them that That Church binds them to believe Errors and to practise a false worship may refuse to profess to believe those Errors and to performe that Worship who sees not that that absolute obedience is overthrown Since it will depend on the dictates of the Conscience of every one and that the Conscience of each one will give it its bounds and suspend it in respect of some certain things and actions 2. The Church of Rome can no more treat those as Disobedient and Rebellions who through the dictates of their Consciences refuse to profess to believe that which she decides and to practise that which she ordains nor persecute them as such and whatsoever she should make them suffer upon that pretence of Rebellion and Disobedience would be but an unjust persecution of which she will be bound to give an account to God and men 3. They cannot also any farther demand of us what Call our Fathers had to reform themselves that is to say to reject their Superstitions and the Errors which were to be found in the Church of Rome in their days for they needed nothing else but the motions of their Consciences to give them a Right to refuse to profess them 4. They ought also to acknowledge that the Authority of the Church how great soever it may be is it yet far less then that of the Conscience since it is not only limited but surmounted and that whensoeveer they should be in oppositian a man would have right to leave the Authority of the Church and to follow his Conscience 5. And since even an erronious Conscienes such as the Author of the Prejudices supposes ours and that of our Fathers to be could suspend Acts commanded by the Church it follows necessarily from thence that to reconcile the Church and the Conscience when they should be set in opposition we must come to the Foundation and discuss the things themselves for there is no other way to free the Conscience from Errors And how much more are we obliged to do it when the Church abuses her Authority in teaching those things which are really false or in commanding those actions which are indeed unjust and criminal All then depends on the discussion of those matters by themselves But they will say your Fathers ought to have been contented to have made use of their rights each one in particular they could have kept themselves from making any profession of believing those pretended Errors and not have taken any part in those actions which they disapproved and yet nevertheless have kept silence Wherefore did they disturb the publick peace by their Tumults Why did they divulge by their out-cries the Judgment which they made of the Tenets and Customs of their Church Did they not in that sin against that respect which they owed to their Prelats and that Charity which they owed to their Brethren To answer to this Objection I say That the keeping silence is not always equally just it has its bounds and its measures according to the weight of the things that are treated of and to the Circumstances of Times and Persons If the business had been only about some meer Questions of the School upon points of Speculation or about some unprofitable Ceremonies or some bad order in the Government or even about some popular Superstitions which should not have proceeded so far as to corrupt the saving Efficacy of the Gospel I confess our Fathers had been more obliged to have kept silence then to have encountred their Prelats and raised those troubles through the diversity of their Opinions The Love of Peace respect for Order Christian Charity bidds us to bear things of that nature well which we do not so well approve of our selves and even there to follow the
God lose nothing either of its Truth or its Authority 3. It is a very strange thing that the Author of the Prejudices has not taken any heed in laying down a very bad Argument against us of furnishing us with a very good one against the Church of Rome in that Estate wherein it was in the days of our Fathers For if we ought to Judge of the Doctrine by the Qualities or the Actions of those who Teach it I pray consider what Judgment could our Fathers make of that Religion that the Court of Rome and its Prelats taught and whether they had not all the grounds in the World to reform themselves If there be no likelyhood that God committed the Care of Reforming his Church to persons who were guilty of Scandalous Actions there is far less that God has given Infallibility and a Soveraign Authority over mens Consciences to such persons as the Popes and Prelats in the days of our Fathers were according to the Description which the unsuspected Authors that we have quoted give us of them and divers others that we might here add to them if we so pleased And that which makes these two Arguments differ is that his concludes upon a Principle which we maintain to be false and ill where ours concludes upon a Principle which he himself admits and acknowledges to be good so that in his own Judgment we have a sufficient Fundation whereon to Establish the Justice of our Reformation Let us see nevertheless of what Nature those Actions are wherewith he reproaches our first Reformers I will not says he stay to examine the Accusations wherewith they have been charged by divers Authors I do not pretend to detain my self in any but those publick things that are so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of all the World I confess he has Reason not to stay upon all that which his Passion has invented against them for who knows not that Calumny has no bounds especially when interest and passion stir it up Our Reformers are not the only persons who have been attacked after that manner The Jews said of John the Baptist that he had a Devil and of Jesus Christ that he was a Blasphemer a Samaritan a glutton and a Wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and sinners If then they have called the Father of the Family Beelzebub what will they not say of his Servants But what then are those things that are so Publick so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of the whole World which the Author of the Prejudices has found fit to be insisted upon That new Gospel says he was Preached only out of the mouths of those Monks who had quitted their habit and their profession ouly to contract Scandalous Marriages or from the mouths of those Priests who had violated that Vow of Virginity which the Calvinists themselves confess to have been imposed on all Priests and on all Monks in the West by divers Councils and on all the Monks and all the Bishops in the East and the first fruit of this Doctrine was the setting open the Cloisters the taking off the Vails of the Nuns the abolishing of all Austerities and overthrowing of all manner of discipline in the Church This is that that forces him to say That the Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but create horrour according to the common Idea's of Piety and Vertue whech the Fathers give us The Author of the Prejudices will not take it ill that in order to our Answering him we must put him in mind what he himself exhorts us to To Transport our selves into another Time then that wherein we are at present and to represent to our selves our Separation in its first rise and during the first years wherein it was made amidst the Switzers and in France Upon his thus placing us in that State which he desires we will declare to him that The general Depravation which reign'd amidst the Monks and the Priests is to our Eyes a Spectacle worthy of horror according to the common Ideas of Piety and Vertue which the holy Scriptures and right Reason give us We will tell him that that which Scandalizes us is to see that for a respect of a purely humane Order they endured for so long a time a disorder that dishonoured the Latin Church that drew upon it God's Judgments and that laid open the Ministry of the Church to an everlasting reproach It is in the detesting of those Infamies and those Impurities that the true zeal of Christians ought to consist and it is to the searching out of a solid remedy for them that one ought to apply the Discipline of the Church and not to keep them up under a pretence of observing rash Vows and a Caelibasy that God never commanded If the Author of the Prejudices is more Scandalized to see Priests and Monks Married then to see them plunged into all the filthyness of Debauchery I cannot hinder my self from telling him that he makes Christianity a Law of Hypocrisy and it may be yet somewhat worse for Hypocrisy does not content it self with meer Names she would have fair appearances without of those things which she really rejects Whereas for him he rejects not only the things but their appearances also suffering patiently the loss of any more seeing either the things or their appearances provided we do not meddle with those empty names of Caelibacy and Virginity But true Moral Christianity inspires other Sentiments she would have us honour that Caelibacy and Virginity as gifts that come from God but she would also have a Contempt and horrour for those specious names when they shall be applyed to those beastlinesses and excesses which both God and Men condemn She would have us in that Case instead of being Scandalized to see a false Caelibacy made void and a vain shadow of Virginity abolished that we should on the contrary be edified to see them got out from those snares of sin and to have recourse to a lawful Marriage that God has allowed unto all and that he has even commanded unto those who have not received the gift of Continency It was in the View of this that our Fathers lookt upon the Marriage of those Priests and Monks as the Abolishing of an unjust Law contrary to the express words of Saint Paul if they cannot contain let them Marry and which moreover had produced such mischeivous effects as it was no longer possible for them to indure But says the Author of Prejudices we do not intend to speak of the Interests of Families of Marriage nor of base and fleshly passions in the lives of those Great Bishops and all those great men of old whom God opposed to the Heresies that rose up against his Church as Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius Saint Basil Saint Gregory Nazianzen Saint Jerome Saint Epiphanius Saint Chrysostome and Saint Augustine They were all of them eminent in Sanctity in a disingagement
of Faith from whom the Holy Scripture it self heretofore and now derives all its force he is a Heretick and many other Propositions of that nature Upon that Luther writes that All those things were maintained only out of a hatred of a General Council and to hinder any one from being heard who should give any succour to the afflicted Church That the Popes Creatures seeing well that they could not hinder a Council began to seek out ways to elude it by saying that the Pope was above a Council and that without his Authority none could either be called or held in a word that a Council had not any Power but that the Pope alone was the Infallible Rule of Truth That it seemed to him then that if the Fury of those men took place there would not further remain any other Remedy but this That the Emperour the Kings and Princes should make use of their Arms against those publick Posts and that those matters should not be decided by Words but by the Sword In the close of which he adjoyns those words which the Author of the Prejudices has related So that his meaning is not to Animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter as the Author of the Prejudices interprets it but only to draw an absur'd consequence from his Adversaries Hypothesis which is That if he would also take away the only Remedy that was left to provide against the desolations of the Church in assembling a Free Council he would set the Emperour the Kings and Princes in Arms against the Popes and the Cardinals and all the Court of Rome and would reduce things to the utmost extremity I my self will not say that there may not be somewhat too violent in those kind of expressions but after all his design is not to animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter but only to let Sylvester see the necessity of a Council that might judge above the Pope from that inconvenience that otherwise there would remain no other course to the Emperour to Kings and Princes to re-establish Order in the Church then to make use of their compelling power And that further appears to be the Sence because he adds immediately after That the Authority of the Bishop of Rome whether it were of Divine Right or whether it were of Human could not be urged but by the Precept Honour thy Father and thy Mother which in granting him to be a Father puts him under the first Table so that if he should do any thing in opposition to them he might be admonished and even accused by the least of the Faithful Which let us see that his meaning was no other than that which I have represented I confess it were to be wished that Luther had observed more of the mean than he did in his manner of writing and that with that great and invincible Courage joyned with that ardent zeal for the Truth and with that unshaken Constancy that he always shewed there might have been discernable more of stayedness and moderation But those faults which most frequently proceed from Temperament do not take away mens esteem of such when besides them they may see a good foundation of Piety in them and Vertues Heroical throughout as they may discern-to have shone in Luther For they cannot cease extolling the zeal of Lucifer Bishop of Cagliari nor admiring the eminent qualities of Saint Jerom although they do acknowledge too much sharpness and passion in their Style And it may be that there was even some particular necessity in the time of the Reformation to use vehemency of expression the more easily to rouse men out of that profound sleep wherein they had lain for so long a time However it be I had rather come to agree that Luther ought to have been more moderate in his expressions and if the Authour of the Prejudices would be coutented with complaining of the sharpness of his Style he should be also contented for every answer to be entreated that hereafter he will not himself any more imitate that which he condemns in another especially in writing against those who having lived in the last Age cannot have given him any personal occasion to be carried away against them with passion after the manner that he has been in many places of his Book If in the Judgment that he passes on them he would not hearken to Charity he ought at least to hearken to Justice and not to have charged them with foul Accusations under the pretences of having mistaken and misunderstood I place in this Rank that which he furthers forms against Luther in these words There never was any one says he but Luther who durst to boast in his Printed Works that he had had a long conference with the Devil that he had been convinced by his reasons that private Masses were an abuse and that that was the motive that had carried him out to abolish them But common Sence adds he has always made all others conclude not only that he was in an excess of extravagance to take the Devil for a Master of Truth and to give himself up to be his Disciple but that all those who had any marks that they were his Ministers and his Instruments and who had not any lawful Authority in the Church to make themselves be heard did not deserve that any should apply themselves to them or that they should so much as examine their Opinions Behold here Luther a Disciple a Minister and Instrument of the Devil if one will believe the Author of the Prejudices To refute that Calumny we need but to represent in a few words what that business was that he there speaks of Luther following the Style of the Monks of those days who were wont by a Figure of Rhetorick to fill their Books with their exploits against the Devil relates that being one time awakened in the midst of a dark night the Devil began to accuse him for having made the people of God Idolatrize and to have been guilty of Idolatry himself for the space of fifteen years wherein he had said private Masses and that the Reason of that Accusation was that he could not have any thing consecrated in those private Masses from whence it followed that he had adored and had made others adore meer Bread and meer Wine and not the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ He adds that that accusation struck him at his heart and that to defend himself he alledged that he was a Priest that he had done nothing but by the Order of his Superiors and that he had always pronounced the words of Consecration very exactly with the best intention in the World from whence he concluded that he could see no reason to have the Crime of Idolatry laid to his Charge That notwithstanding the Tempter did not fail to reply that those excuses would nothing avail him in that the Turks and the Priests of Baal obeyed also the Order of their Superiours with a very good
the point of the Real presence and about some Questions of the Schools which we cannot yet impute to their whole Body and as for the rest they reject with us the Invocation of Saints Religious Worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory worship of Reliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation the sacrifice of the Mass the Monarchy of the Pope the opinion of the Infallibility of the Church and the principle of blind obedience to the decisions of Councils They acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only Rule of Faith they carefully practise the Reading of them they own their sufficiency they believe their Authority independant from that of the Church in regard of men They distinctly explain the Doctrine of Justification and that of the use of the Law and its distinction from the Gospel they do not conceive amiss of the nature of Faith and that of good works and as for popular superstitions we can scarce see any reign among them Would to God the Church of Rome were in that condition and that we could purchase it at the price of our Blood and our Lives But alas We are very far from seeing any likely-hood of success to that wish all those points that I have set down are so many differences which we have with her and in our Judgments there are so many Errors and so many abuses in her and we are so far from any reasonable hope of their Correction that we see on the contrary that they strengthen themselves in them every day and that they discover every day more and more signs of their aversion for or contempt of a Reformation Who therefore can think it strange that upon the business of Religion we place a great difdifference between those of the Roman Church and those who are called Lutherans the one appears to us as a Body spread all over with a great many boils which all together put a stop to the Functions of Life and the others as a Body that has only one or two which do not hinder its Life or its Action In a word we do not believe that those who have imbibed the Tenets of the Roman Church where we differ from them and who practice them are in the way of Salvation as well by reason of the Quality of the greatest part of those Tenets as by reason of their number But as to the Errors which remain yet among the Lutherans we do not pass the same Judgment either as to their Quality or their number I say as to their Quality and the reason that we alledge is is very solid whatsoever endeavors they have used to elude it for although the opinion of the Lutherans about the Real presence be erroneous though we are so far from approving of it that we oppose it as much as possibly we can yet while they shall make a profession as they do to distinguish in the Sacrament the substance of bread from that of the Body of Jesus Christ we cannot say that their Error compels them actually to adore the meer creature of Bread for the same Body of Jesus Christ that is hypostatically united with the word We can very well say that they deceive themselves in imagining that the Body of Jesus Christ is in a place where it is not but we cannot tell them that they take another subject for the Body of Jesus Christ which really and in effect is not so They do not therefore deceive themselves in regard of the Object of their Adoration for they do not take the one for the other I would say they do not take the substance of Bread for the Body of Jesus Christ but they deceive themselves in regard of the place wherein they conceive the Body of Jesus Christ to be for they conceive it to be in the Bread and it is not there But this Error about the place how gross soever it be does not notwithstanding include Idolatry for as I have said they do not take one subject for another the substance of Bread for the Body of Jesus Christ But it is otherwise in the Church of Rome for if she deceives her self she does it not only as to the place wherein she conceives the Body of Jesus Christ but also as to the subject that she takes for the Body of Jesus Christ since it is in effect but the substance of Bread There is actually and really in the Sacrament but one only substance the Church of Rome does not distinguish it from the Object of her Adoration on the contrary she delieves it to be the Body of Jesus Christ and she Adores it under that Quality if she deceives her self it is manifest that in believing she adores the Body of Jesus Christ she adores that which is actually the substance of Bread It is to no purpose therefore that the Author of the Prejudices says That it is false that the Catholicks adore the Sacrament in taking that word for an external Vail That makes nothing to the Question Whether they adore or do not adore the accidents of Bread that is to say its figure colour roundness is a thing by it self whereof we do not now dispute we speak now of the substance which the Priest holds in his hands But it is yet nothing to the purpose what he further adds That although the Bread should remain there as the Lutherans hold yet we could not accuse the Catholicks of adoring it their adoration terminates upon Jesus Christ alone whom they believe to lie hid under those sensible species This is an Ordinary Fallacy of their Missionaries fit only to deceive Children I distinguish We cannot accuse those of the Church of Rome of believing that they adore the Bread or of being willing to adore it or of having an intention to adore the Bread I grant it for they believe that it is no longer Bread they believe that the substance of Bread is changed into that of Jesus Christ so that they can never be accused of believing that they adore or that they are willing to adore or that they have an intention to adore the Bread They defend themselves in that whereof no Body accuses them But if the bread remain in effect no Bread I deny that we cannot accuse them of adoring that which is actually and in the Truth of the thing Bread in believing that it is the Body of Jesus Christ and a man must be of a very bad faith not to see it For if I should imagine for example that a Tree that a Rock that a flower was a God hid under the form of a Tree a Rock a Flower and if I should adore it under that Quality of a God which my imagination gave it it would be past all doubt that I should adore a Tree a Rock a Flower in believing my self to adore God But besides that we are in regard of the Lutherans in very different Terms from those wherein the Church of Rome would
visible and Transfigured into an Angel of light and in the shape of a Preacher in the Chair of Truth and what else would he perswade the Faithful too but that the Faithful ought to take very great heed not to read the Holy Scripture and not to meditate day and night upon the words of life that the Spirit of God has dictated to the Prophets and which God the Father has given to his Son for the Instruction of his Church and to draw it from the Corruption of the world to render it Holy and without Spot to his Father who gave it to him Jesus Christ was the Word uf God and liv'd by that Word and to make his Church live he gave it his word in an Intelligible Tongue out of his own mouth and by his Disciples Search says he and examine carefully the Scriptures for they are they which Testify of me Thus it is that they speak of it sometimes Jesus Christ gave his Scripture to the Faithful with a Commandment to read it to examine it carefully and to hear it It was the Judge of the beleif of the Church and the Difficulties and Questions that arose in the Doctrine of the Faith and Manners The Parishioners made use of them against their Bishops They encountred even their Ordinances by passages out of that Scripture they maintain'd that the use of them belonged to all Christians by a natural right and that to go about to deprive them of them was to do an action of the Devil But now a days they speak no more after that manner for they tell us on the contrary that it is a Ridiculous and Impossible way to Instruct men in the Truth an Infinite way which has no Issue and which is of so excessive a length that whatsoever dilligence we should use we can never arrive to the end and they labour to heap difficulties upon difficulties to drive them back and to make a Labyrinth full of Circles and confus'd ways that so out of a fear of those Confusions the world should take heed of entring into it For my own part I freely acknowledg That I can comprehend nothing in all that For if before one can assure ones self of one only Passage of Scripture whatsoever it be we must needs go through a thousand tedious ways and overcome a thousand Obstacles that arise from the Question about the Canonical Books about the Conformity of the Translations with the Originals about the different manner of reading the Passages and about the difference of Interpretations as the Author of the Prejudices would have it according to his ordinary Exaggeration to what purpose is it to give the publick a Translation which after the manner that it was given and receiv'd in cannot but be subject to the greatest part of those difficulties and yet notwithstanding they put it into all mens hands as well the Ignorant as the Learned as well of the simple as the more Inlightned as well to women as to men The Church of Rome has not declared it Authentick Two Bishops and a Doctor have approved it but two Arch-bishops and a Cardinal have forbidden it and yet one has not failed notwithstanding those Prohibitions to maintain that all the world ought to read them and that that forbidding them is a Violence a Novelty an unexampled Enterprise a bold Attempt upon the Liberty that God has given to the Church ransomed at the price of the Blood of his own Son that it is an usurpation and the Introducing of a Tyrannical Authority that was never excercised in the Church until this day and that every one is bound not only not to obey that Ordinance but even to have an Horror for it and to resist it as much as he can What will then become of those Difficulties and those unconquerable Confufions which hinder them according to the Author of the Prejudices so that they cannot assure themselves of one only Passage of the Scripture through the uncertaitty wherein a man is of the unfaithfulness of the Translations through the Ignorance wherein we are of the different manner of reading those Passages and through the necessity of consulting Interpreters Is it because they would expresly engage the People in an Infinite way and which can come to no Issue and in a ridiculous way and which is Impossible for the Instructing of any in the Truth or is it rather because they did not propound to themselves in that Translation to Instruct men in the Truths of the Faith but only to satisfy their Curiosity and to make them read good French The Author of the Prejudices may acknowledge therefore if he pleases that the heat of Disputation has carried him beyond the bounds of Right and Reason and the respect which he ought to have for the word of God and that in endeavouring to have troubled us he has done it for himself and his Freinds for if that which he has propounded were true they would give us a ground to accuse those who have publish'd the Translation of Mons of Rashness and Imprudence And it will be nothing to the purpose to say that they Publish'd it for those persons who were already Instructed in the Truths which the Church believes that therein they might receive a Confirmation and increase of the Faith by the Conformity which they should find the Doctrines of the Church have with it and that it was necessary for that that they should go through all the difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has worked since the Sole Conformity of it with the Doctrines of the Church would be sufficient to assure them that it was truly the word of God I say that answer will not satisfy For besides that it is an Injury to the word of God to make the Efficacy that it has in our Souls to depend upon the Conformity which it has with the Doctrine of the Church whereas on the contrary the Efficacy of the Doctrine of the Church ought to depend on its Conformity with the word of God besides that the Author of the Preface says expresly That the Souls of the simpler sort may find that in his Translation which is necessary for their Instruction He says not those who shall be already Instructed in that which the Church teaches but he says the Simpler sort he does not say that they would be Confirmed in the Instruction which they had already but that they would find that which should be necessary for their Instruction And elsewhere he says That the word of God that is to say in his Translation for it is about the Subject of that Translation that he speaks is the Light of the Blind and the Life of the Dead Which signifies that it gives by it self the first Impressions of the Spiritual Life So that it was not in the view of the knowledge that the simple might have of the Doctrine of the Roman Church that he publish'd that Translation if we believe the
all that it is necessary that every one should mistrust his own Eyes and the defects of his memory and that he should be always recollecting his first thoughts to keep himself from passing a wrong Judgment In fine we will also demand of the Author of the Prejudices whether he would not give the Scripture this Honour to reckon it for one part of Tradition since it contains the first Sermons of the Apostles from whence we may draw a great deal of light for the deciding of the Question upon which we are which is that of the Authority and Infallibility of the Church of Rome For how can any man rationally determine himself upon a point of that weight without consulting the first and the most Antient piece of Tradition But that being so we see here how we are fallen back into the difficulties and perplexities which the Author of the Prejudices pretends to be unconquerable And as those Gentlemen are liable enough to be beaten with their own Weapons we will only turn against him the conclusions that he pretends to draw against us from his Principles and demand of him Whether he believes this way very proper for those who are Obliged to spend the greatest part of their time in other Employments Whether he believes it proper for Judges Magistrats Tradesmen Labourers Souldiers Women Children for those who do not understand any of the Languages into which the Fathers are Translated for the Blind who cannot Read and for those who have no quickness of understanding If I only propounded to my self to refute this Author I might content my self with what I have said and wait with patience for what he should have to propose to disintangle his Catechumeni from the Difficulties and lengths whereinto he himself has plunged them But because I desire also to satisfy mens Con Consciences I think my self bound to Answer directly to his Objections Let us therefore see those four Maxims which he says our Principle includes and without which he is certain it cannot subsist As to the first we shall tell him that it does not belong to us to lay down the proofs of this Proposition That the Church of Rome for this is that we are about is not infallible in her decisions concerning the Faith she is naturally subject to be deceived if she pretends to have a priviledge that exempts her from a weakness common to all men it belongs to her to shew it and to convince the world of it but till then we shall always have a ground to presume that she is subject to that general Law and that is sufficient without any other proof to hinder us from acknowledging her for the Rule of Faith As to the Second which is That Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith we shall tell him That it is not necessarily incumbent on us to bring a passage of Scripture to exclude Traditions that Common sence is enough for that because it dictates to all men even to the most simple if they would take heed that after sixteen hundred years or thereabouts which are gone since the Apostles days Tradition cannot but be a very confused and uncertain thing and that being so vagous as it is after its having passed through the hands of an infinite number of men naturally unsetled and changeable it is not imaginable that they should not have altered increased lessened it since that happens through a long tract of Time to all other things and by consequence that it could not at present but be out of a condition to serve for a Rule of Faith Thus far the most simple are within the limits of nature and general Experience If they pretend that Tradition ought to be exempted it does not belong to us to shew that it is not it is their part who make that pretension to produce their Reasons and yet for all that it must be presumed on the side of Nature and general Experience It appears therefore already that the Two First Propositions which our Hypothesis includes according to the Author of the Prejudices to wit That the Church of Rome is not Infallible in its decisions concerning the Faith and that Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith do not give us the least difficulty but they give an infinite one to our adversaries For they ought solidly to prove the contrary Propositions not only to the Learnned and knowing persons but to the most simple also to Tradesmen to Labourers to Souldiers to Women and generally to all or otherwise they abuse their credulity retaining them without Reason and without Justice in their Communion in which they cannot remain with a good Conscience unless they are assured of the Truth of these two Articles That the Church of Rome is Infallible in her decisions of Faith and that Traditions make up a part of the Rule of Faith But how can those people have that certainty As for what respects the Third Proposition to wit That the Scripture contains all the points of the Faith generally it has no more need then the others to be proved by passages of Scripture It is sufficient to establish it to see that we cannot be assured of the Faith either by the decisions of the Church or Tradition For that thing it self necessarily leads all Christians to the Scripture alone there being nothing besides the decisions of the Church and Tradition that can Dispute a part with it There remains therefore only the Fourth Proposition which is That the Scriptures generally contain all the points of Faith after a manner fitted to the understandings of all the World But this proposition so framed is not ours neither is it included in our Hypothesis We only say that that which the Scripture contains in a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World concerning the Faith and Manners is sufficient for Salvation provided that moreover they have not Errors that hinder that effect But there is no need of proving this proposition by Texts of Scripture It sufficiently proves it self as well by the very nature of the things that the Scripture clearly Teaches as by the light of common sence and the first notions of the Conscience For those first notions dictate to all Christians that although God be free in the dispensation of his Call he is notwithstanding in good earnest towards all those to whom his Call is addressed and that there being among those the weak as well as the strong the simple as well as the Learned it must necessarily be concluded that he would render his Salvation inaccessible or impossible to the simpler sort provided that they seriously applyed themselves to it according to their Call The Author of the Prejudices himself acknowledges this Principle and he calls it a principle of common sence He draws ill consequences from it but the True Consequence that must be drawn is Those things which the Scripture clearly Teaches and after a manner
capable of forming a true and saving Faith even in the hearts of the most simple The First is That they be sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple The Second That they be fitted to their capacity The Third That they should have a certainty great enough to form a true perswasion in their Souls and the Fourth That they should form a pure faith and free'd from all Damnable Errors But all these conditions may be found in the Object we are speaking of which are clearly propounded in the Scripture They are sufficient for Salvation For who will dare to deny that it is not sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple to know the Father the Son and the Holy-Ghost one only Eternal God wholly perfect the Creator and Preserver of the World the absolute Disposer of all events the Soveraign Lord of all things Author of all Judge of men and Angels and to form an Idea which inspires in an infinite Degree Respect Love Obedience Trust Invocation and acknowledgment of what we owe to him and which makes up the Sole Object of our Religion To know the profound misery of man his natural corruption his ignorance his sin his damnation his impotency to get out of that misery wherein he is and to form an Idea that excites humility horrour at his own state fear of Gods Judgments and those holy inquietudes of Conscience which Jesus Christ calls hunger and thirst after Righteousness To know that Jesus Christ the Son of God is our only Remedy who out of love to us was made man who dyed for our Salvation who is risen again who is ascended up into Heaven who reigns there now over all things who interceeds there before God for us and who from his high Heaven sheds abroad his Holy Spirit into the Souls of his faithful ones and to have those thoughts which make us run to him to place all our hope in him to do nothing that may displease him to do on the contrary all that he commands us to imitate him and to glorify him as he deserves as much as we are able To know the mercy of God which pardons us our Sins through Jesus Christ which gives us Heaven with all necessary graces to carry us thither and to have Sentiments that carry us out to Repentance to Confession to Prayer to Thankfulness for the Favours which he communicates to us to patience in afflictions to Trust to Charity as well towards God as toward our Neighbour to Justice to Goodness to Compassion towards those who are in misery to forgive those injuries that are done to us and to hold a Religious and brotherly Society with those who have the same Sentiments with our own Who can doubt but that these things well known and well practised as we have laid them down are not sufficient to the Salvation of the most simple But says the Author of the Prejudices It is not enough that these things should be sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple it is further necessary for the quiet of their Consciences that they should know that they are sufficient But they cannot know that without scrupulously examining the Question of the Fundamental points and the not Fundamental which requires a long and difficult discussion This Objection is vain For if those Articles which I have before set down in general are alone sufficient for the Salvation of the most simple it is impossible that a good Soul of that order should not understand their sufficiency since those Objects satisfy all the just and natural desires of the Conscience In effect They make the most simple know the God whom they ought only to serve they discover to them their own misery they mark out their Remedy and the means of their delivery they inspire into them Piety Holiness Justice Charity Repentance Consolation in their Afflictions and the hope of a life to come and they furnish them with necessary motives to the love of God and their Neighbour which is the fulfilling of the Law or as Saint Paul speaks the end of the Commandment It is not therefore necessary to the establishing the quiet of the Conscience of a man for him to enter upon the Question of the Fundamental and the not-Fundamental points nor that he should engage himself in the difficulties and distinctions that study and Meditation might furnish the Learned with on that Subject That Peace is sufficiently established by the things themselves which I have mentioned and provided that one believes and practises them well they will never fail to appease the troubles of a Soul and of setling in it a firm hope of its Salvation But says the Author of the Prejudices yet further The Roman Church and the Greek Church deny that all the Tenets necessary to Salvation should be restrained to the things that are clearly contained in the Scripture so that of necessity they must enter upon enter into the Examination of this Point for the Authority of the Church of Rome well deserves that we should not without Examination prefer the rash affirmation of a Minister before it I answer That the Sentiment of a good Conscience which contents it self with the things clearly contained in the Scripture finding it self upheld by these two Reflexions the one That God has not any more made the Souls of the meer simple then those of the most Learned to be deluded with the inventions of the humane understanding under the pretence of Tradition or of the decision of the Church and the other That God has not made his Salvation inaccessible to them well deserves to be prefered without any further Examination before all the interested pretensions of the Roman Prelates and all the Superstitious Reveries of the Greeks And after this manner it will not be necessary to enter into any dispute upon that subject They may dispute of it as much as they please in the Schools the simpler sort need not do it they are sufficiently contented to hold to all that which they find to be clearly expressed in the Scripture We must therefore pass on to the second Condition and see whether those things which I have noted are not clearly to be found in the Scripture and that in a way fitted to the capacity of the most simple But it is certain that they are to be found there and that they are laid down with sufficient Evidence not to surpass the reach of their understandings and that they are few enough for number not to exceed the force of their memories But the Author of the Prejudices demands of us what clearness we mean when we say that all the things that are necessary to Salvation are clearly contained in the Scripture For says he if Mr. Claude means such a clearness as will convince all well disposed and ill-disposed persons and that no prejudice can darken it so that he acknowledges nothing necessary to Salvation but what is expressed in the Scripture in that manner to be
and another I am of Christ is Christ sayes he divided Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul Which implyes this that we are all immediately united to Jesus Christ because it is he only who dyed for us and in his name alone that we are baptized and to pretend that the faithful are joyned to Jesus Christ by his Ministers is to divide him into as many Parties or into as many Sects as there are Ministers But it manifestly follows from thence that the faithful ought to be no further united with their Pastors than as it shall appear to them that their Pastors are to Jesus Christ and that they ought to separate from them when it shall appear to them that they themselves are separated from him and that they would separate the Flocks which they had committed to them This is what the light of common sense dictates without further reasoning for to what good would the Communion of those pretended Pastors tend howsoever invested they should be in Titles and Dignities without that of Jesus Christ That which I have said of their Communion with them I must also say of their dependence on them That which the Faithful have upon Jesus Christ is immediate and absolute and that which they have on their Pastors is mediate and conditional our Souls and our Consciences do not belong to them to dispose of at their will and pleasure In this respect we belong to Jesus Christ alone who has purchased us at the price of his blood and who governs us by his Spirit and his Word The Pastors are only Ministers Interpreters or the Heralds who make us to understand his Voice and all the dependence which we have on them is founded upon that which both they and we have upon Jesus Christ our Soveraign Lord of which it is both the cause and the rule and measure We ought therefore to be subject to them while they shall act as his Ministers and his Interpreters while their Actions and their Government bear the characters of his Authority But as those Ministers are men who may abuse their Offices and act against their head if it happen that the characters of the Divine Authority which subjects us to them do not appear in their word if there appear a contrary character there if instead of leading us to Jesus Christ they turn us from him if they would govern as Lords and not as Ministers if they attribute that absolute obedience to themselves which we own to none besides our Saviour In a word if to depend on them we must violate the dependence which we have on Jesus Christ can they then say that we cannot and that we ought not to separate from them and to renounce an unjust Government If they would decide this Question by the Scripture St. Paul tells us That if he himself or an Angel from Heaven should preach to us another Gospel than that which he has preached he should be accursed He sayes that upon the occasion of some false Teachers that troubled the Churches of Galatia and speaking only of them one would think that he ought to have been contented to have let his Anathema fall upon those particular Teachers that might err and who had not so great an Authority but that one might very well separate himself from them when they should happen to prevaricate But to take away all pretence of distinction and wrangling disputes he makes a most express choice of two of the greatest Authorities that were among creatures of an Angel and an Apostle the only two created Authorities to which God has communicated the favour of Infallibility and he has enjoyn'd us to anathematize them if it should happen that they should preach another Gospel than that of Jesus Christ we know very well that the Angels of Heaven are uncapable of ever committing that sin we know very well that he himself would never have committed it and yet notwithstanding he turns his discourse upon himself and upon the Angels and is not this to give us to understand that there is no created Authority either in the Heaven or upon the Earth upon which we ought absolutely to depend and from which we ought not to separate in case it should turn us from Jesus Christ Let them tell us whether the dependance that the people owe to the body of their ordinary Pastors that is to say of those who possess the Offices of the Church who may have been very ill chosen who may have intruded themselves by very bad wayes who may be carried out therein to all the passions and disorders of humane nature whether I say the dependence which they owe to them be stronger and more inviolable than that which they ought to have for an Apostle and such an Apostle as St. Paul and even for an Angel from Heaven if he should become a Preacher This latter dependence notwithstanding is not absolute it may be lawfully broken upon a certain case who will take the boldness to say after that that it cannot and ought not to be done in a like case But if to the Scripture we would add experience that would teach us that there have been sometimes those seasons in which good men have been forced to separate themselves from the Body of their Pastors for not to speak of the seven thousand which in Elias's time preserved their purity against the Idolatry whereinto the Church of Israel had fallen who according to all that appears lived separated from the Body of their Idolatrous Pastors at least in a negative Separation we need but to turn our eyes to the Example of the Orthodox in the time of the Arians For there are two actions evident in that History one that Arianism had invaded the body of the Ordinary Pastors and the other that those among the Orthodox who were of any zeal and courage separated themselves from that infected body and would not own them for True Pastors while they should remain in Heresie The first of these Actions is justified by almost an infinite number of proofs taken out either from History or the Testimony of the Ancients For before the death of Constantine the Arians who had been condemned in the Council of Nice fell upon the person of St. Athanasius and some time after they banish'd him as far as Treves This was their first Victory but they did not stop there they got over to their side the Spirit of Constance after the death of Constantine who remaining sole Emperour employed all his Authority and the Arians all their artifices to establish Arianism every where The greatest part of the Bishops fell either under their violence or seduction Divers Councils were assembled and many forms of faith laid down there which all tended to set up the Dogm of Arius some more openly and others more covertly Those among the Bishops who made any opposition were cruelly persecuted deposed from their places sent into exile and treated
hinder but that she may externally deny the faith of Jesus Christ but that she may intirely lose her love and the communion of our Saviour and the quality of the True Church and by consequence that we should not be bound to separate from her while she should be in that state and till it should please God to re-establish her See here of what force those proofs are which they produce to ground this special priviledge of the Church of Rome upon It is not hard to see that a man of good understanding who would satisfie his mind and his conscience upon so weighty a point ought not to remain there but that he ought to pass on to the other way of clearing that doubt which I have noted which is to judge of the pretension of the Church of Rome by the examination of her Doctrines and her Worship For it is there principally that the characters of truth and infallibility ought to be found and by consequence he must come to the foundation and no further amuse himself with Prejudices As to the second Way by which I have said we might clear this Question Whether it be necessary to the salvation of Christians to be joyned to the Church of Rome it consists in examining whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches whether there is any particular order that binds us indispensably to her For if that be so the Separation of our Fathers must be condemned but if it be not so we must judge of that Church as of all other particular Churches and say that we cannot and ought not to separate our selves from her but when we have just and lawful causes so to do There is no person who does not judge that we cannot pass over lightly a point of so great importance which ought to serve for a general and perpetual Rule to all Christians and that if the Church of Rome would so set her self beyond a state of equality above other Churches it is necessary that she should produce some very express and indisputable Order of God for it But instead of that she does nothing but reverberate the same passages which I have mentioned She boasts her self to be the See of S. Peter and under that pretence she applyes to her self all that she can find in the Scripture in favour of that Apostle and particularly the Order that Jesus Christ gave him to feed his sheep as if the Office of the Apostleship in which Jesus Christ re-established him by those words could be communicated to his Successors or as if the foundation that Jesus Christ supposed and upon which he re-established him in saying to him feed my sheep to wit that he should love him more than the rest was not a thing purely personal in S. Peter and whereof it was not in his power to transmit any part to his Successors nor by consequence to invest them with his Office which was restored to him only upon a supposition of that love or lastly as if the office of feeding Christ's sheep included an absolute and indispensable necessity for the sheep to receive their death when they should give it them under the name of their food It must be acknowledg'd that there never was a higher pretension than this of the Church of Rome for what more could she pretend to then to make Heaven it self depend on her communion and to leave no possibility of salvation to any but those who should be in her communion and under her dependance But it must also be acknowledged that there never was any thing worse established than that pretension They alledge in its favour nothing that is clear and distinct and even the consequences which they draw for it are made after a very strange manner This is in my judgement the Reason why our Adversaries when they treat of this matter do not insist much upon Scripture but fly off presently to the Fathers and the usage of the Ancient Church For by this means they hope to prolong the dispute to eternity and that notwithstanding the Church of Rome shall be alwayes in possession of that Despotical Authority which she exercises over the Churches that remain in her communion In effect the life of a man would scarce suffice to read well and throughly examine all the Volumes which have been composed on one side and on the other upon this Question of the place that the Church of Rome and its Bishops have held among the Christian Churches during the first six Centuries and of the Authority which they had then But to say the truth there is too much artifice in that procedure for that the Church of Rome should be the Mistress of all others and that no one could be saved but in her communion that does not depend upon the order of men but only on that of God and when they should find among the Antients a thousand times more complaisance for the See of Rome than they had that may very well establish an ancient possession and make clear the fact but it can never establish the right of it To establish a right of that nature a word of God an express declaration of his will is necessary for it is a right not only above nature but even above the ordinary and common favour that God gives to other Churches and which by consequence depends only upon God And so it is but a wandring from the way to go to search for the grounds of it in the Writings of Men. It is no hard matter to conceive that those Bishops which were raised to Dignities in the Metropolis of the World and engaged in the greatest affairs might mannage matters so as to ascribe to themselves those rights which no wayes belonged to them nor to imagine that their flatterers and Courtiers might not have offered more incense to them than they ought nor that those persecuted ones who had recourse to their protection might not have helped the increase of their Authority nor that the Princes and Emperors who had need of them might not have given them those priviledges which they ought not to have had that which renders to a just title all that which they alledge in their favour suspected and to no purpose at all Notwithstanding there are moreover evident matters of fact that let us clearly see that the Ancient Church did not acknowledge that Universal Episcopacy that the Bishops of Rome pretend to nor that absolute and indispensable necessity to be joyned to their See to be saved nor that their Church should be the Mistress of all the rest 1. Every one knows that the Bishops of Rome were anciently chosen by the suffrages of the people and of the Clergy of that Church without any other Churches taking part in those Elections which is a mark manifest enough that they did not mean that those Bishops should be Universal Bishops nor that they should have a more peculiar interest in their creation than
to the Emperour with great submission praying him to mitigate his Decree and not to expose them as he had done to the violence of their Enemies They wrote also to the other Christian Princes as well to inform them of what had pass'd at Ausburg as to justifie themselves against the many false accusations wherewith they were charg'd and to have them demand a General and free Council that should be held in Germany for the Reformation of the Church The Execution of this Decree of Ausburg fill'd for some time Germany with a thousand Persecutions against the Protestants by the Authority of the Imperial Chamber Behold here what the Emperour did to satisfie the desires of the Court of Rome it seems that he could have done nothing more vehemently and yet notwithstanding the Pope was not throughly contented He very much rejoyced to see the Protestants subjected to the most rigorous punishments But that Authority that Charles had taken upon him to appoint those Conferences to labour to bring those differences to an agreement the consent that he had given to the abolition of some Ceremonies and above all the promise of a Council within the prefixed term of a year were things that he could not digest judging them to be too contrary to the Soveraignty of his See And because the Emperour had press'd him about this last Article of a Council and even his Legate wrote to him that it was the general desire of all Germany he returned this Answer That having consulted the Cardinals about it divers of them had not found that a Council was a very fit means for the rooting out of the present Heresies because that those things that had been decided by former Councils or already established by the practice of many Ages ought not to be again called in question That this was a very bad precedent and could not be done without very great scandal and a manifest violation of the Apostolick See That nevertheless if the Emperour judged a Council to be absolutely necessary he might promise the Lutherans one but with this condition that they should presently depart from all their Errors and be obedient to their Holy Mother Church that they should hold her Doctrines and her Rites until it should be otherwise ordain'd by the Council to the Decrees of which they should wholly submit themselves That besides that the calling of a Council would be very scandalous and of exceeding bad example to all posterity That as to the place where it should be held he judg'd it absolutely necessary that it should be in Italy and that he did not see any City more fit for it than Rome it self which was the Seat of the Christian Faith that if notwithstanding Rome did not please him he might chuse one either in Bolognia or Placentia or Mantua The Pope went even so far as to write to the Christian Princes a Circulary Letter by which he advised them in the general of that which had pass'd at Ausburg and that for the intire rooting out of Heresie he was resolved to call a Council Notwithstanding all these Declarations consisted only in words for at the bottom his mind was wholly remote from the holding of a Council in which as Guicciardine sayes he apprehended that they might contest his Papacy with him which he had purchased by canvasings and money and that they would take cognizance of the affairs of the Florentines whom he had subdu'd and subjected to the Family of the Medici by force of Arms or as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent sayes he feared lest they should beat down that excessive Authority which the See of Rome had usurped over all other Bishops and over all Churches However it were he would not have one but he would that they should make use of Fire and Sword And it was for this that he wrote about that same time to Ferdinand the Emperour's Brother exhorting him to go himself in person to Bohemia to root out Heresie there He solicited also the Emperour and the Christian Kings to joyn their Arms with those of the Duke of Savoy against the Switz Cantons who had embraced the Reformation and his Intrigues or those of his creatures were so powerful that they enflamed a bloody War between the Reformed Cantons and the others wherein the Reformed were beaten many times which afforded great matter of joy to the Court of Rome In the year 1532. the Emperour having called the Imperial Diet to Ratisbon for the affairs of Hungary and Germany threatned by the Arms of the Turks the Princes and the other States assembled seeing clearly already that the Pope and his Court sought only to elude the Council by divers pretences solicited the Emperour that he would be pleased to call one himself by his Authority and they represented to him that it was his right in the quality of Roman Emperour that other Emperours had so used it and that he was the Head and Protector of all Christianity especially in case of the negligence and refusal of the Pope The Emperour would not hearken to this Proposition and yet nevertheless being urged by the necessity of his affairs and having a War to maintain with the Turk he granted a Peace to the Protestants who were already seven Princes and four and twenty Imperial Cities This Peace was made at the Mediation of Albert Cardinal and Arch-Bishop of Mayence and Lewis Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Emperour made his Decree publick bearing in it express prohibitions to trouble or disquiet any person for matters of Religion only till the holding of a General Free and Christian Council which he endeavoured to have called within the term of a year or in case that a Council could not be held till a General Assembly of the States of the Empire wherein they might provide for the affairs of Religion This Decree displeas'd the Pope and all his Court extreamly who would neither have a Peace nor a Council nor any Assembly of the States to treat of Religion as it evidently appeared afterwards For after that the Emperour had set the affairs of Hungary and Austria in order and had been freed from the force of Solyman he went into Italy and having urged the Pope many times upon that subject the Pope alwayes eluded the Proposition as well by the conditions which he required that the Protestants should submit themselves to well knowing that they would not agree to them as by the default of the consent of the Kings of France and England without whom he said it was to be feared that the calling of a Council would create a new Schism in the Church Thus the Papacy of Clement pass'd away who dyed the twenty fifth of September 1534. His Successor who was Paul III. followed the same path of Clement in regard of the Protestants The first step that he made was to let his Nuntio Paulus Vergerius delcare that he was resolved to call a Council but at the
that every Society which has not that extension is not the Church so that this reasoning is alwayes sound your Society is shut up in a little part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and that it is by this Principle that S. Augustine has disputed against the Donatists and convinced them of Schism This is the summ of his eighth Chapter In the ninth he labours to apply these general Maxims to our Separation and 1. He sayes That our Communion is not spread over all the world any more than that of the Donatists and that not having that visible extension which is the perpetual mark of the True Church it follows that it is not so and by consequence that we are all Schismaticks 2. He sayes We carry the principle of the Donatists much higher than those Schismaticks stretch'd it for as for them they did not say that there ever was a time in which the Church had wholly fell into Apostasic and that they excepted the Communion of Donatus but as for us we will have it that there has been whole Ages in which all the world had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation 3. He labours to shew that the Societies of the Berengarians of the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in whom he sayes we shut up the Church could not be this Catholick Church of which S. Augustine speaks And lastly He concludes from thence that we are Schismaticks and by consequence out of a state of salvation Before we enter upon the particular Examination of the Propositions whereof this Objection is made up it will be good to note that there is nothing new in all that and that it is nothing but that some mark of visible extension that the greatest part of the Controversial Writers of the Roman Communion have been wont to propound when they would give the marks of the True Church There is this only difference to be found in it that the others labour to ground this upon what they produce out of the passages of the Scripture whereas the Author of the Prejudices grounds his argument upon the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers But when it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers disputing against the Donatists should have prest this visible extension of the Church too much and urged it further than they ought will the Author of the Prejudices believe that he ought to hold all those things that the Fathers have advanc'd in their disputes for infallible and all their reasonings and hypotheses to have been so Does he not know what Theodoret himself who was a Father has noted concerning some of those who were before him That the vehemence of Disputation had made them fall into excesses just as those who would rectifie a crooked Tree turn it too much on the other side from that straightness which it ought to have And is he ignorant of what S. Athanasius said concerning Dionysius of Alexandria whose Authority the Arians objected to him That Dionysius had said so not with design to make a simple exposition of his faith but occasionally having a respect to the times and persons That a Gardiner is not to be found fault with if he cultivate his Trees according to the quality of the soil sowing one planting another pruning this and plucking up that We must sayes S. Jerome distinguish between the different kinds of writing and especially of Polemical and Dogmatical For in the Polemical the dispute is vagous and when they answer to an adversary they propound sometimes one thing and sometimes another they argue as they think fit they say one thing and do another or as the Proverb sayes they offer bread and give one a stone But in the Dogmatical on the contrary they speak openly and ingenuously We may easily apprehend by that that we ought not to hold for Canonical all that the Fathers may have wrote in the heat of their disputes or to take what they have said according to the rigour of the Letter since they themselves acknowledge that having the Pen in their hands they often advance things that on other occasions ought not to be press'd So that though it should be true that S. Augustine and the African Fathers had made that visible extension an inseparable and perpetual mark of the True Church yet we should not fear to say in respect of them what S. Augustine himself has said concerning S. Cyprian whom the Donatists objected to him I do not hold the Writings of Cyprian for Canonical but I examine them by the Canonical Scriptures That which I find in them conformable to the holy Scriptures I receive with praising him and I reject with the respect that I owe to his person what I find in them disagreeing thereto We should make no scruple to apply to them what the same S. Augustine has said on the subject of S. Hilary and some other Fathers whom they alledg'd to him We must throughly distinguish these sorts of writings from the Authority of the Canonical Books For however we should read them yet we cannot draw convincing testimonies from them and it is allow'd us to depart from them when we see that they themselves have departed from the truth It is therefore certain that the Author of the Prejudices has but weakned his proof when instead of labouring to establish it on the Scripture as the rest have done he restrains it to the meer Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers We have thought that we ought to have freely represented this to the Author of the Prejudices to oblige him a little to moderate his pretensions for he imagin'd that the sole Authority of S. Augustine and some Fathers was enough to convince us I will sayes he convince them we have frequently told him already and shall tell him here again That the Scripture is the only rule of our Faith that we do not acknowledge any other authority able to decide the disputed Points in Religion than that of the Word of God and that if we sometimes dispute by the Fathers it is but by way of condescention to those of the Church of Rome to act upon their own principle and not to submit our consciences to the word of men But because that he may also imagine under a pretence of this declaration that we have no other way to answer his argument I shall undertake to answer here and shew him if I can that he has abused the Authority of S. Augustine and that he has neither comprised or had a mind to comprehend either the true sentiments of that Father or ours This is that which I design to shew him in this Chapter and in the following But before we enter upon this matter it will be necessary to clear in a few words the History of the Donatists and to represent what was the beginning of their quarrel and what their Separation was The Author of the
the bad Fish the Vessels of Gold and Silver and those of Wood and Earth and in this confus'd notion the Church is the Field the Floor the Net and the House that the holy Scripture speaks of But as this mixture which I have spoken of may be understood two wayes either in respect of Manners or in regard of Doctrines we must note in the Third place that this notion of the Mixed Church according to S. Augustine is divided into two for he would have us sometimes conceive of it as a Body wherein the righteous are only mingled with the unrighteous that is to say with the wicked whose manners are vitious and corrupted and sometimes also he would have us conceive it as a Body where the Hereticks are mixed with the truly faithful as well as the righteous with the unrighteous In the former case the mixed Church is a pure communion in respect of Doctrine but corrupted in regard of manners and in the second it is a communion not only corrupted in regard of manners but impure also and corrupted in regard of its Tenets These two sorts of mixture are without doubt in the Hypothesis of S. Augustine the first made all the ground of his dispute against the Donatists and as for the second he often explains himself in his Books and particularly in the Psalms against the Donatists where he sayes That after Jesus Christ had purged his floor by the preaching of the Cross the righteous were as the new seed which he spread abroad over all the Earth to the end they should make another harvest at the end of the world But that this harvest grew up amidst the Tares because there are Heresies every where Haec messis crescit inter zizania quia sunt haereses ubique In that same Psalm and elsewhere in divers places he quotes the Example of the Jewish Church in which he saies that the Saints the Prophets and the righteous were mixed not only with the wicked whose manners were debauched and criminal but also with the superstitious and Idolaters that which leaves no difficulty about it for Idolatry is the greatest of all Heresies We must note in the Fourth place that S. Augustine would have us consider the mixed Church in two different States For as for that which respects mens manners he sayes that sometimes the wicked do not prevail over the righteous either in number or Authority but that sometimes also they prevail in such a manner that the good are often oppress'd under their multitude and this is that which he treats particularly of in his Third Book against Parmenianus And so in regard of Heresies he means that sometimes they grow so powerful as to infect almost all the Body and this is what he expresly shews in a Letter to Vincentius a Donatist Bishop and in that which he wrote to Hesychius Thus it is that S. Augustine has conceiv'd of the Church and according to these different notions and these different states he has spoken differently of separations from it As for that which regards the truly righteous and faithful there is no question but that he thought that we ought to have not only an internal communion of charity with them founded upon the Unity that is between all the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ who have all but one and the same faith one and the same piety and the same righteousness but an external communion also which consists in joyning with them in the same Assemblies in partaking of the same Sacraments in approving their faith piety good works and in one word in accounting them their brethren as far as it is possible for them to know them But this is not that which makes the difficulty all the Question is concerning the mixed Church and all the dispute is to know how according to S. Augustine the Corn and the Tares that is to say the truly faithful and the Hereticks ought to remain together in the same communion and in what case they might separate themselves We must therefore note in the Fifth place that in the Doctrine of that Father there is a certain separation that a man can never make under any pretence whatsoever without being a Schismatick and that there is another that he may lawfully make and which it is sometimes necessary that he should He has distinguish'd between two external bonds that should unite us to one another the first is that of the External and General Call to Christianity the second is that of the participation of the same Sacraments and the same Assemblies It is the first bond that S. Augustine would have to be inviolable not only in regard of the faithful between themselves but also in regard of the wicked and Hereticks and not only while we suffer them to be in the publick Assemblies but even then when we excommunicate them and deprive them of the communion of the Sacraments And thus it is that he understands that which Jesus Christ said in his Parable That the Tares ought not to be pluck'd up which the Enemy had sown among the good Wheat in the same field but that he would leave both to grow together until the harvest and it is this kind of Unity whereof he sayes that there is no just necessity of ever breaking praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas it is the Unity of the same Net that enclos'd both good and bad Fish the Unity of the same Floor that contain'd both the good Seed and the Chaff the Unity of the same Field where the Tares grew up with the Wheat the Unity of the same House where there are Vessels of Wood and Earth with those of Gold and Silver and in a word this Unity that we call the external and general call to Christianity It is therefore first of all in this sense that he means that there is a Church from which we ought never to separate our selves under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks for he understands it of that mixed Church that Field that Floor that Net that common House out of which we must never go forth nor drive out others howsoever wicked and Heretical they may be there being none but God who can make this separation and who will in effect make it at the end of the world And as it was thus that the Donatists had separated themselves so it was chiefly upon this that he convinced them of Schism for they own'd none for Christians but those of their own Party they rejected the Baptism of all the rest they looked upon them as Pagans who had no more any shadow of Christianity and when Proselytes came over to them they made them pass through all the degrees of the Catechumeni before they would receive them and they began to make them Christians anew as if they had come out of a Society of absolute Infidels as I have noted in my Fourth
Author of the Commentary on the Psalms attributed to S. Jerom does not consist in her Walls but in the truth of her Tenets She is where the true Faith is For as to the other it is but fifteen or twenty years since the walls of these Churches were in the power of Hereticks They possess'd all these Churches which you see But the Church was where the True Faith was As the Author of the Prejudices has not scrupled sometimes to make use of the Testimonies of our own Authors when he thought he could draw any advantage from them he will not it may be take it ill if I oppose to him also upon the subject about which we now dispute the Testimony of two men famous in the Roman communion and who well deserve to be heard the one is Driedo whom Bellarmine calls a most learned man and the other is Bellarmine himself both very great defenders of the Church of Rome See here therefore what Cardinal Bellarmine hath wrote in the name of both in his Controversies of the Church We must note sayes he according to the Doctrine of Driedo that it is not necessary that the Catholick Church should have that extension in all places all at once or in the same time that is to say that there should be the faithful in all Provinces and that it is enough if that be successively done From whence it follows that when there should remain but one Province alone that should retain the true Faith this Province would not fail to be truly and properly called the Catholick Church provided that we see clearly that it is the same Church which sometimes or at divers times is found spread over all the world Could any one have more clearly contradicted the Author of the Prejudices He would that this visible extension through all Nations should be a perpetual mark of the True Church and these here say that it is sufficient that it is sometimes and even in divers times successively he would that this extension should be the mark of the Church for all following Ages and these here maintain that it is not necessary He would that this reasoning should be alwayes just your society is shut up in a small part of the world Therefore it is not the Church and these here say that when there should remain but one only Province that should retain the true faith this Province would not cease to be properly and truly called the Catholick Church But it may be that Bellarmine had not observed that his opinion and Driedo's favoured the Donatists and that it was contrary to the doctrine of S. Augustine This may be so in effect not only because a man in writing may not have all things in view but because also at the bottom the sentiment of these Doctors is very remote from that of the Donatists and that it does not encounter that of S. Augustine It is yet true that Bellarmine saw that they could make that Objection which he has prevented and answered this I say to the end the Author of the Prejudices may see that this which he has treated of as an Argument and as a convincing Argument for which he has made two Chapters Bellarmine has look'd on as a very trivial objection which he proposes and resolves in a few words They will say sayes he that this is to fall into the Error of Petilianus and the Donatists who maintain'd that in truth the Church had been spread over all the world but that it was afterwards lost in all the Provinces and remain'd no where but in Africa which S. Augustine disputes against I answer that the Error of the Donatists consisted in two things the first that they would have it that the Church should be in Africa only in a time wherein it manifestly increased throughout all the world the second in that they could not connect their Church of Africa with that which had before been spread through all the world for in that Church there they had alwayes good and bad as S. Augustine proves whereas they would compose theirs of the righteous only This Answer of Bellarmine overthrows all the pretensions of the Author of the Prejudices for it establishes these following Propositions 1. That Visible Extension is not a mark of the true Church but in a certain time that is to say when we see it manifestly increase throughout all the world from whence it follows that this mark is vain at other times 2. That the Argument of S. Augustine concludes only for the time then being by reason of that manifest fruitfulness from whence it follows that it is very impertinent that the Author of the Prejudices goes to apply it to these last Ages wherein we maintain the field of the Church has been fruitful only in Errors and Superstitions 3. That if the Donatists had accused all the world to have fallen into Heresie and if they had said by consequence that it was not the time of fruitfulness for the Church it had been in vain for S. Augustine to alledge to them the visible extension of his Church to exempt himself from entring into the discussion of that accusation from whence it follows that it is also in vain that the Author of the Prejudices propounds the visible extension of his since we say that it is fallen into fundamental errors 4. That the Argument of S. Augustine concluded because the Donatists agreed that his communion was Orthodox from whence it follows that that of the Author of the Prejudices concludes nothing since we question that Orthodoxy of his Church 5. That by consequence visible extension is not a mark that can make us know which is the True Church when the dispute is between two Societies contesting that Orthodoxy between themselves but at farthest only when the dispute is between two Societies that mutually own one another to be Orthodox from whence it follows that the Author of the Prejudices makes use of this mark to no purpose since our chief question is to know whether the Church of Rome is Orthodox or no. All these consequences which flow naturally from the answer of Bellarmine contradict the Argument of the Author of the Prejudices and it concerns him to see after what manner he can decline the Authority of this Cardinal But some will say lastly It may be Bellarmine was deceived and that he had not well understood the state of the question which was between S. Augustine and the Donatists nor well comprehended the true Hypothesis of that Father I confess that this may be but it may be also that he did well understand it and that the misconstruing should be on the side of the Author of the Prejudices This is that which must be further cleared and for this effect we must note a thing that the Author of the Prejudices seems not to have comprized which is that if the Donatists had accused the Society of S. Augustine of Heresie S.
shall be shaken because many in whom grace seem'd to be resplendent shall yield to the persecutors and some of the most firm among the faithful shall be troubled The Church sayes he shall not appear Ecclesia non apparebit She will not therefore have then that visible extension which the Author of the Prejudices would have to be her perpetual mark for all Ages He further acknowledges the same thing in his Epistle to Vincentius where he treats of the state of the Church under the Arians There he teaches in express terms That the Church is sometimes obscured and covered with clouds through the great number of offences that she is then only eminent in her most firm defenders while the multitude of the weak and carnal is overwhelmed with the floods of temptation That under the reign of the Arians the simple suffered themselves to be deceiv'd that others yielding through fear dissembled and in appearance consented to Arianism That indeed some of the most firm escaped the snares of those Hereticks but that they were but few in number in comparison of the rest That nevertheless some of them generously suffer'd banishment and some others lay hid here and there throughout the Earth I pray tell me what visible extension could the Orthodox communion have then which subsisted only in a small number of the firm of whom even the greatest part had suffered exile or lay hid here and there throughout all the Earth I confess that History notes that there were yet some small flocks in some places of the East and of the West who set up their Assemblies apart as at Edessa at Nazianzen at Antioch and in some Provinces of France and Germany but what was this in comparison of the Arian communion which had fill'd the Churches and held Councils as we have so often proved We must therefore seriously profess that this visible extension is a vain and deceitful mark when they would make it perpetual to the true Church as the Author of the Prejudices would make it and that no one could abuse with greater injustice the Authority of S. Augustine than he has done We must profess also that a small handful of the Faithful a little party have right to separate themselves from the whole multitude I mean from a communion spread over all the world which has on its side the Ministry the Pulpits the Councils the Schools Titles Dignities and all that retinue of temporal splendour when it has not the true Faith For the rest that which I have handled in this Chapter about the two former Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices already sufficiently lets us see the falseness of his argument For if he would take the pains to read this Chapter with never so little application he will see all these following Propositions well establish'd there 1. That in General this Author has not compris'd the true Hypothesis of S. Augustine nor the state of his dispute against the Donatists 2. That he can draw no advantage from the divers wayes in which that Father conceived the word Church 3. That the separation which that Father judg'd to be fit to be condemned and wicked under what pretence soever it should be made is wholly different from that which is between the Church of Rome and us 4. That there is not any Christian Society from which one may not lawfully separate ones self in a certain case and manner 5. That that which is disputed between the Church of Rome and us being of this number they must consider the causes and circumstances of it rightly to judge of it and not pretend to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other discussion 6. That according to the principles of S. Augustine the Church of Rome is Schismatical in respect of us supposing that she is in error because it is she that has broken Christian Unity and that we are in respect of her in a passive separation 7. That it is absurd to make that visible extension a perpetual mark of the true Church which way soever they take it 8. That this pretended mark is contrary to the experience of our Age and does not properly agree to any one of these Societies that at this day divide Christianity 9. That it is contrary to the experience of the Ages past and to the Doctrine of the Fathers 10. That it is rejected in the sense of the Author of the Prejudices by the famous Doctors of the Roman communion 11. That it has no foundation in the dispute of S. Augustine against the Donatists 12. That it is even directly opposite to the Doctrine of that Father These are the just and natural consequences that are drawn from the things which I have handled in this Chapter I will examine in the following the other Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices CHAP. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the subject of our Separation THe Third Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices is already sufficiently confuted by what I have said He sayes that since our Society is not visibly extended throughout all Nations therefore it cannot be the True Church But we have shewn him that we cannot at this day rationally attribute that visible extension throughout all Nations to any of the Societies that divide Christianity and by consequence that it is a chimerical mark by which we may conclude that there is no true Church in the world since there is none which is not visibly excluded from many Nations We have shewn him also that his pretended mark does not agree either with the experience of the Ages past nor with the doctrine of the Fathers nor even with that of the Doctors of the Roman Church and that instead of having any foundation in the Doctrine of S. Augustine it is evidently contrary to him So that we have nothing to do at present but to go on to the Examination of the Fourth and Fifth Proposition They bear this sense That the Calvinists urge the principle of the Donatists far higher than ever those Schismaticks did For as for them they did not say that there was any time wherein the whole Church had fallen into Apostasy and they excepted the Communion of Donatus whereas the Calvinists would have it that there have been whole Ages wherein all the Earth had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation That the Societies of the Berengarians the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in which he sayes that some of us include the Church could not be that Catholick Church whereof S. Augustine speaks To establish that which he layes to our Charge concerning the entire extinction of the Church he first produces the testimony of Calvin This is sayes he that which Calvin has distinctly declared in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans where after having pretended that the threatning that S. Paul uses against those who do not remain in
the Prejudices has set before us which is that Schismaticks are out of a state of Salvation For I hold that this Proposition cannot be maintain'd after the manner that the Author of the Prejudices has propounded it that is to say absolutely and without any distinction I am not ignorant that to establish this rigorous sentiment they produce some passages of the Fathers who have in effect spoke of Schism in extreamly vehement terms as if they had a design to exclude from the communion of God and all hopes of salvation all those in general who should be found engaged in it But that very thing ought to be an example to let us see that we must not alwayes take according to the rigour of the Letter all that the Fathers have said in the heat of their disputes For unless we should be altogether unreasonable we must place a difference between three sorts of persons who are to be found in a Schismatical communion 1. The Authors of Schism who usually are the Pastors and Guides of the flock 2. Understanding persons who take part in the affairs and who very well knowing what they do give their consent to Schism and defend the Authors of it 3. The people that is to say the ignorant persons who scarce know any thing that passes or who know but very confusedly And for that which regards the Authors and other intelligent persons as it is most frequently passion interest pride and ambition that make them separate and that all those passions turn them in the end into an implacable hatred against their brethren they deserve our condemnation for those crimes are incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ and it is a manifest demonstration that the world and its corruption reigns in the souls of those who are guilty of it we must therefore say of such Schismaticks as these that while they remain in this condition there is no hope of salvation for them because that the true faith the Covenant of God and the communion of Jesus Christ cannot subsist under the reign of those brutal passions But to imagine that the whole body of a people who are to be found engaged in a Schism either through the faction of the more powerful or a conscience prepossess'd by a zeal without knowledge by a Piety too scrupulous should be depriv'd of all hope of salvation this would be without doubt to fall into a very rigid Opinion To make this clear by Examples I have already mentioned elsewhere that Victor Bishop of Rome excommunicated the Churches of Asia upon the difference about the day of Easter from whence there followed a Schism between those Churches and this of Rome I do not now enquire to which of the two parties the crime of the Separation ought to be imputed either to the Asiaticks who adhered too strictly to the custom of their Ancestors and the Authority of Polycarp or to Victor who without Prudence and Charity separated him from divers great and flourishing Churches about a matter that was left self-free and indifferent in Religion I only say that this would be an horrible injustice to condemn those people to eternal flames who should be found to be engaged in that ridiculous quarrel only through the capricious humours of their Bishops In effect we have seen that notwithstanding this Schism they did not fail both the one and the other to sit together in the Council of Nice We must pass the same judgement of a Schism that fell out in the fourth Century at Antioch between the Meletians and the Eustatians both the one and the other Orthodox and separated from the Arrians but who nevertheless would not communicate together because that although Meletius had preached and defended the Council of Nice and suffered persecution for it yet he had been created Bishop by the Arians by reason of which the other Orthodox would no more communicate with those of his party which obliged them to hold their Assemblies apart It was therefore a true Schism on one side and on the other but as it proceeded only from an excess of zeal on the side of the Eustatians we ought not to pass a sentence of damnation so lightly against them I say the same thing of the Schism that fell out about the end of the Fifth Century between Acatius Bishop of Constantinople and Felix the Third Bishop of Rome who mutually excommunicated one another for the interests of John Talaia and Peter Mongus competitors for the Patriarchate of Alexandria Acacius defended the side of Peter whom Felix accused to be a Heretick and an enemy to the Council of Chalcedon and Felix on the contrary upheld Talaia whom Acacius had accused of Perjury and to be unworthy of a Bishoprick and this Schism also lasted down to their Successors thirty and five years between the East and West But although Acacius drawn in by intrigues to the side of an hypocrite had wrong at the foundation yet we ought not notwithstanding to believe that all those great Churches who kept communion with him and defended his memory after his death were absolutely cut off from the hope of Paradise In the Sixth Century there was another Schism whereof I have already spoken which was very contentious and embroiled under the Emperour Justinian Vigilius being Bishop of Rome and Mennas Patriarch of Constantinople The ground of the quarrell was taken from the Writings that had been approved in the Council of Chalcedon and which afterwards were condemned as heretical by the Emperour Justinian and the condemnation was subscribed by Mennas and the other Patriarchs and their Bishops Vigilius who was of another opinion undertook the defence of those Writings and excommunicated Mennas and the rest who had condemned them But some Months after he took off his Excommunication at the solicitation of the Empress Theodora to whom he owed his Bishoprick and which was more in the following year he himself pronounced an Anathema against those three Writings But the Bishops of Africa Illyria and Dalmatia persisted to defend them and those in Africa assembled in Council excommunicated Vigilius as a dissembler Some time after Vigilius repenting himself of that which he had done undertook a second time the defence of those Writings Justinian on the contrary made an Edict by which he renewed their condemnation and Vigilius on his side excommunicated all those who should consent to this Edict In fine the Fifth General Council assembled at Constantinople where in spight of all the Decrees of the Bishop of Rome the three Writings were condemned and all those who should approve them were excommunicated Vigilius persisting in his opinion was banished and dyed some years after But his Successors Pelagius and Gregory approved the Council and subscribed to what had been done there and it was in fine generally received by all and reckoned for a Fifth General Council We must acknowledge that if the people were to be saved or damned according to the good or
not God his Prophets and his Altars yet among them Lord said Elias they have killed thy Prophets and thrown down thy Altars And the hundred Prophets of God that Obadiah hid in two Caves to withdraw them from the persecution of the Idolatress Jezabel the Altar of God that Elias repaired in Carmel to sacrifice there by the miraculous fire that fell down from Heaven to consume the victim the calling of Elisha and Micaiah and in a word the whole History of those schismatical Ten Tribes does it not evidently note that God looked on them as his true Church in which there was yet a means to be saved We must not therefore abuse that which the Fathers have wrote against Schismaticks in intending to aggravate their crime and to draw them from it nor must we take their expressions in the whole rigour of the letter Their meaning is not that all those generally who are found engaged in a Schismatical Communion even down to Tradesmen and Labourers who remain there with an upright heart and through the prejudice of their consciences are out of the Church and eternally damned but that the Authors and Defenders of Schism who run into it through their personal interests or out of a spirit of fierceness pride and an hatred incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ commit a horrible crime and that while they are in that state they remain deprived of all hopes of salvation That if the Fathers have said any thing more generally and which cannot be thus restrained it is just to understand it in a comparative sense that is to say that setting that Schismatical party of the Church in opposition to that which is not so the hope of salvation appears evidently in this which it does not in the other where it is obscured by that Schism The End of the Third Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FOURTH PART Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHAP. I. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the supposition that they were right in the Foundation THE Order of the Matters of this Treatise requires that we now go on to that Separation which the Author of the Prejudices calls Positive and that after having confirmed the Right that our Fathers had to Examine the State of Religion and the Church in their days after our having shewed the indispensable necessity that lay upon them to forsake the Assemblies of the Church of Rome and to live apart from her Communion that we also establish the Right that they had to set up a Christian Society among themselves notwithstanding their going off from the other Party who were not for a Reformation and to make up alone and apart a Body of the Church or an External and visible Communion This is that which I pretend to establish in this Fourth and last Part and to that end I shall here Treat of two things The first shall respect the Right of those Publick Assemblies and the Second shall be concerning that of the Gospel Ministry wherein our Function lies Howsoever these two things have a dependance one upon another it will yet be well to Treat of them with some distinction To make the First clear I shall first lay it down as an indisputable Truth That the Right of Religious Assemblies naturally follows that of Societies I mean That as far as a Religious Society is Just and Lawful so far the Assemblies that are therein made are Just and Lawful and that on the contrary as far as a Society is unjust and wicked so far its Assemblies are so too This Principle is evident to common sence and it is for that Reason that we condemn the Assemblies of the Heathens Jews and Mahometans as Unlawful and Criminal because their Societies are impious and wicked and that having no right to be united to believe and practice those Errors which they believe and practice they have also no right to Assemble themselves together in order to make a Publick Profession It is for the same Reason that we hold on the contrary the Christian Assemblies to be not only Just and Allowable but to be necessary and commanded by Divine Right because the Christian Society that is to say the Church is it self also of Divine Right It is then True that the Right of Assemblies follows that of Societies But we must further suppose as another evident and certain Truth That our Fathers before the Reformation were Latin Christians living in the Communion of the Latin Church in which they made as considerable a party as the rest of the Latins and that from Father to Son throughout a long succession Time out of mind they enjoyed with the others the rights of that Society That they were equally in possession of it with the other common Assemblies of that Religion having a part in the Ministry in the Churches in the Sacraments in the publick Prayers in the Reading and Preaching of the Word and that as far as the communion of the Latin Church was lawful so far the part that our Fathers had in it was lawful also That it was not a company of Strangers or unknown persons come from the utmost parts of America or the Southern Lands nor a sort of People dropt down from the Clouds who were newly joyned together with them in the same Society but Persons and whole Families setled a long time ago who were joyned together with them in the Profession of the Christian Religion many Ages before and who by consequence were in possession of the Rights of that Society Although had they been Strangers Americans and Barbarians on whom God should have suddenly bestowed the Favour of Calling them to the True Faith and the True Holiness of Christanity yet we could believe that by that thing alone they would have been invested in all the Rights of that Society as much as if they had had it by a long possession time out of mind But howsoever it be they were Christians from Father to Son and neither their blood nor their birth did distinguish them from the others We are now concerned only to search out whether that which hapned to our Fathers that is to say their Reformation their Condemnation by the Popes and by their Council of Trent and their Separation from the Church of Rome can be able to spoil them of all their Rights For if it be True that they were fallen off either by their own ill Carriage or by the meer Authority of the Church of Rome we must yield that our Assemblies are Unlawful and Criminal but if on the contrary they were not so fallen off if that which hapned to them did nothing else but confirm their Right and render it more pure more just and more indisputable they ought also
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their
shalt worship one only God in believing the Sacrifice of the Mass and Transubstantiation they annihilated in effect the Sacrifice of the Cross and they removed as much as in them lay Jesus Christ from the Right hand of his Father But those who took things in a good sence destroyed on the contrary the evil by the good for in adoring one only God they taught others not to pay any Religious Worship to Creatures in placing their confidence in the Death of Jesus Christ for their sakes they taught Learned to reject the Sacrifice of the Mass all humane Satisfactions and in seriously believing that Jesus Christ was in Heaven they were dis-abused about his corporal presence on the Altars In fine they could each in particular very well do what our Fathers did altogether when they Reformed themselves for their Reformation wrought nothing but what the same Doctrine which they had Taught them One only God and one only Jesus Christ made them reject all that they rejected Besides it is certain that the greatest part of those things which we believe contrary to the true Faith were then Taught and received and practised in the Latin Church more by force of Custom then any publick Authority that could impose any necessity on mens Consciences even according to the principles of the Church of Rome at this day which leaves private men liberty enough to reject them And when they should come to be even publickly determined with all the necessary formalities which they have not been yet there would always remain to every private man a natural right to examine and reject them since the Authority of Men how great soever it be can never bind the Consciences of the Faithful We do not therefore Question but that God has always preserved under that Ministry a great number of persons who have made that Separation of the good from the ill and it is in those that the Church may subsist But besides those how many simple people were there whose own simplicity and ignorance hid them from those Errors that then reigned in the Ministry They knew enough to believe in one only God the Father Son and Holy Ghost their Creator and Father and in one only Jesus Christ their Redeemer Born Crucified and raised again for them and to practice without Superstition all the Actions of Christian Piety that those Doctrines inspired into them but they did not know enough to believe the Sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation the real presence humane Satisfactions the merit of good Works and a multitude of other things that did not enter into them Their knowledge was bounded with the Articles of the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments which they received with all the submission of their hearts and which they laboured to practise the best that they could and we ought not to doubt that that knowledge alone plain and disintangled from all Error which they had furnished them with a sufficient direction for their Salvation without their being bound to make a more express rejecting of those Doctrines they did not understand But supposing that they had a knowledge of them I say that we ought carefully to distinguish two sorts of Times the one in which the falseness of a Doctrine or Worship is not so palpable discovered and open to mens Eyes that their should be only a voluntary blindness or an ill Prejudice that should hinder us from acknowledging and understanding how that Doctrine and that Worship are contrary to the True Faith and Piety and the other in which that falseness and contrariety are so openly or publickly manifested that one cannot be ignorant of them or not see them without shutting voluntarily ones Eyes For in the second of those Times every one is bound for the integrity of his Faith and Religion and the preservation of his Soul earnestly and publickly to reject those Errors to avoid them with an aversion to withdraw from those Assemblies where they are either taught or practised and not to take part how little soever or if any do they have no excuse for their crime and this is the Time wherein we are at this day But as to the former it is enough not to be corrupted with them without any absolute necessity of testifying publickly that strong aversion In the second Time they ought to look on those kinds of things as they are in Effect because they are fully discovered and they may be seen in all that have them to be opposite to the glory of God and Salvation of men But that Obligation can never be so strong in the first Time because there one has neither the same light nor the same helps nor the same easiness to own them to be such as they are not only meer natural Light dictates this Distinction but Jesus Christ himself has very well established it in the Gospel If I had not come says he and spoken unto them they had not had Sin but now they have no Cloak for their Sin which evidently establishes those two seasons I spoke of the one wherein the Manifestation of good and evil is not yet so throughly made that one can acknowledge them in their greatest Latitude and the other wherein it is so that one cannot without a crime know it confusedly But I say that before the Reformation they were in that first Time in regard of that which we call the Errors and Superstitions of the Church of Rome they were neither so well Examined nor so clearly discovered as they have been since the Faithful then could not openly believe and practise them for that could not be done according to us in any Time without destroying the true Faith and Piety but they could look upon them with a greater indifference bear them with far less Pain nor cease for all that from frequenting their Assemblies from holding their peace and contenting themselves with keeping their own Righteousness See here after what manner we believe that the Essence of the Church was preserved before the Reformation How corrupted soever the Ministry was the Foundation of Christianity remained there and God had yet his remnant there according to the Election of Grace that is to say his Truly Faithful It was those alone in all that great mixt body who were the Church for they only were in Communion with God and his Son they alone enjoyed the benefits of the Gospel Covenant to them only how small a number soever they were pertained all the Rights and advantages of the Church of the External Society of Assemblies of the Ministry of the Holy Scriptures of the Sacraments Government and Discipline according to the inviolable Maxim of Saint Paul All things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the World or Life or Death or things present or things to come all are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods All the rest then which were without in that mixed Body which they Call the Latin Church and which had
more than those External Guides that God has Established in the Church to lead men to the Scripture and even such Guides as cannot hinder us from going thither of our selves if we will and it is the Scripture the voice of the Apostles or to say better the voice of Jesus Christ that speaks by the Apostles that does all There is therefore a great difference between those two sorts of Ministers the one preceded the Church the other follows it the one is immediately Communicated by God and the other is Communicated by means of men the one has an Independent and Soveraign Authority and Infallibility on its side and the other is exposed to Vices Disorders Errours and humane weaknesses Inferior and depending on the Church the one is every way Divine and the other is partly Divine and partly Humane 7. From that sixth Observation there arises another not less important and that which I have already touched upon in divers places of this Treatise that is That the Ordinary Ministry is a Right that belongs to the True Church and of which it can never be spoiled The Reason of this Truth is taken from the very Nature of the Church For the Church being a Society that God has call'd together by the Ministry of his Apostles and which he yet every day calls together and upholds by the word of his Scriptures and the use of his Sacraments we must necessarily say that in forming it he has given it in that very thing that he has formed it a sufficient full and entire Right to make use of all the means that may help its preservation and upholding amongst which that of the Ministry is without doubt most considerable That same Providence that gives men a Natural Life and appoints them to preserve their life by that Food it furnishes them with gives them by that very thing a right to employ persons to gather that food together and to prepare it to the end they may make use of it according to what it is designed for and it would be a great Extravagance to demand of a man what Right he has to prepare himself to eat and drink for he could have nothing more to say but that the Nature that gave him life gave him at the same time all the Right that was necessary to provide for the upholding of that life And to make use of another Example The same Nature or to say better the same Providence that Assembles men together in a Civil Society and ordains them in their so uniting together to uphold that Society by a rational Order does it not give them at the very same time and by the same Right that Assembles them a Right to have Magistrates to Govern them by and to make the Laws of that Society to be Executed to have Judges to decide their differences to have Remedies for the Healing of Diseases and Tradesmen for the publick good And would it not be an absurdity to demand of a people what Right they had to have Magistrates Judges Physicians Tradesmen Teachers of Commerce Lawyers since they could not have a fuller and juster Right than that which is founded upon the reason of Order and the Society it self We need but to apply these Examples to the Subject we are upon The Church is a Body to which God has given a Spiritual Life and he has ordained it to be preserved and upheld in the use of Mystical Aliments of which he himself has made a publick Magazine in his Holy Scriptures it is therefore evident that he has given it by that very thing a Right to have Ministers or Pastors who should prepare those Sacred Aliments and season them for its Spiritual Nourishment The Church is a Religious Society composed of divers persons that God himself has Assembled to live together not in Confusion but in Order he would have that Society subsist he has appointed it to uphold and preserve it self he himself has suggested the means he has then without doubt by that very thing given a Right to have Guides to Govern her Pastors to lead them forth into the Heavenly Pastures of the Scriptures Ministers to dispense the Divine Sacraments that he has instituted for her Watch-men and Guides to be careful of her and to go before her In a word he who has given Faith Piety and Christian Holiness to the Church has at the same time indispensably obliged them to these four Duties one is to persevere in the Exercise of those Vertues unto the end The other is to defend themselves against the Assaults and wiles of the Enemy of their Salvation the third is to increase and strengthen themselves more and more and lastly to propagate them as much as in them lyes from us down to our Children and even amongst Strangers that is to say among those who are not as yet in that Relation It follows therefore necessarily that that has given the Church a sufficient full and entire Right for the Ministry since the Ministry is but a fit and lawful means for all that It could not have a Right more lawful than that which is founded upon those indispensable Duties for in that case it is not only a Right that makes the thing just but it is an obligation that imposes a necessity of it as in the State the Right that every one has to learn the Will of the Prince is indisputable because it is built upon the obligation that lies upon every one to conform himself to it It is clear then that there could not have been a Right to have Ministers more lawful than that of a Faithful People a True Church since it is founded upon those four Duties which I have noted that are indispensable and that give not only a Right but an Obligation to have a Ministry But we ought here to take notice of the Fallacy that their Missionaries are wont to make and that the Authour of the Prejudices who has Adopted their Method would have us make with them For see after what manner they argue Where there is no lawful Ministry there is no True Church But among the Protestants there is no True Church I set aside the Question Whether we have or whether we have not a lawful Ministry in the same sence that he intends I will only at present consider his way of Reasoning that makes the True Church depend upon a lawful Ministry Admitting that to be a True Church where the Ministry is and denying that to be a True Church where the Ministry is not I say that this is a vain deceitful and illusory way of Reasoning to which I oppose this other Argument Where there is the True Church there is a Right to a Lawful Ministry But the True Church is among the Protestants Therefore the Right to a Lawful Ministry is among the Protestants Of those two ways of arguing it is certain that this latter is the justest and almost only just right and natural For the True Church
there over the Good that they would make themselves Masters of those Calls and that they could neither more nor less Communicate them to the wicked and the worldly then if there were no Believers in the Church I Answer That it is true that whether those Calls come from the Pastors only or whether they proceed from the Body of the Church we could have no certainty that they should be well made as to the choice of Persons for God has not promised his Faithful Ones even when they shall be a greater number then the worldly that they shall alwayes make good Elections they may without doubt be deceived in that respect although there may be a greater Likely hood that those Elections should be more just when they should be made by a Body in which one is assured that there are allwayes True Believers then when they should be made by a more particular Body whereof one cannot have the same Assurance But not to stay upon that I say that my Argument Respects not the goodness of that Election but the Validity of the Call in it self whether it be conferred upon a good man or whether on a wicked for the Call of a wicked man ought not to cease to be good although the Choice should be illmade My meaning then is that if the Call proceed only from the Body of the Pastors without the consent of the whole Church Intervening after whatsoever manner it may be so brought about as that it may proceed from a Body of impious and Prophane Persons who should all be really Separated from the Church and who would have no part in its Interests so that it would be to make the Divine Authority that ought to accompany that Call and the Validity of the Actions of the Ministry to depend on a Body of wicked men and to make the Enemies of God the fit Depositaries of his Will which to me seems no wayes conformable to the Order of his Wisdom especially when there is another Body where we know that he alwayes preserves and upholds his Faithful But they will say yet further If your arguing took place it would take away from the Pastors all the Functions of their Ministry to give them to the Body of the Church The Pastors would have no more any Right either to Preach or to Administer the Sacraments or to Govern the Church or to censure or to suspend or to Excommunicate For it we say that that Call would not depend upon them under a pretence that we have not any Certainty that God preserves and will alwayes Preserve True Believers amongst them we must say the same that the Government of the Church Preaching the Administration of the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline could not be committed to them since we have not any more Certainty for those things that there should be any truly Faithful among them then we have upon the matter of that Call so that all must be overthrown if that Reason take place I answer That the Donatists heretofore fell into that Extravagance to imagine that the Preaching of the Gospel the Sacraments and the other Actual Functions of the Ministry ought to be performed by Holy Pastors to become good and valid and not by the Wicked so that being moreover Prejudiced with this thought that the whole Body of those Pastors who retained Communion with Caecilianus were fallen off from their Righteousness and become Wicked they held that there was not any more a Church in the World besides the Party of Donatus But Saint Augustine shew'd them that their Principle was false and it is worthy the noting by what Way he made them see the falsness of their Opinion for it was neither by telling them that the Body of the Pastors when they all became Wicked failed not to be the Church of Jesus Christ nor in holding that Jesus Christ having at first put the Ministry into the hands of the Pastors it must necessarily follow by that very thing that he was bound to preserve their Righteousness or at least alwayes to preserve the truly just and Faithful Persons in their Body and those who should make the Sacraments to all the rest He says nothing of all that but he had recourse to the Body of the Church and he says that the Sacraments are not the Pastors nor the Power of the Keys nor that of Binding and Loosing nor any of the Functions of their Ministry but that all that belongs to the Church that it is that that Baptises when the Pastors Baptise that it is that that binds when the Pastors bind and that looses when they loose and that it is to her that Jesus Christ has given all those Rights But what will you say he understands by that Church The Truly Faithful whatsoever they be the Wheat of God the good Seed the good Fish as they are called in a word the Just the Children of God in Exclusion of the Worldly It is from that Fountain that the Validity of the Sacraments is drawn and the other Functions of the Ministry and not from the Body of the Pastors I say then the same thing All that which the Body of the Pastors does it does in the name of the Church and by Consequence in the name of Jesus Christ for the Name of Jesus Christ is in the Name of the Church it is the Church that preaches by them that administer the Sacraments by them that governs by them that censures that suspends that absolves that Excommunicates by them they are only its Ministers and the Dispensers of its rights Whether then they be wicked whether they be Prophane or Impious that hurts their own Persons but it does not hurt their Functions because their Functions are not their own but the Churches Furthermore that Hypothesis of St. Augustine concerning the source from whence the Validity of the Action of the Ministry proceeds furnishes us with another Argument which to me seems Demonstrative not only from the Authority of that Father but from the Nature of the thing it self For it is evident that we ought to refer that Call to the same Body to which God originally gave the Power of the Keys and which is exercised by the Pastors so that the Pastors are no more but the Dispensers of its Rights As that which makes Baptism the Communion the Government and the Acts of Discipline good and valid is not because they proceed from the Pastors only but because they proceed from the Body of the Church So the same must be said that that which makes a Call good valid and lawful is because it comes from the Church that is to say from the truly Faithful But it is certain that it is properly the Body of the Faithful that has received Originally the Power of the Keys that is exercised by the Pastors and upon which the Validity of all the Actions of the Ministry depends as being done in the Name and Authority of the whole Body and by
House not only Vessels of Gold and Silver but Vessels also of Wood and Earth the one to Honour and the others to Dishonour They must wilfully shut their Eyes that will not acknowledge by these Passages that it is only to the Church of the Faithful and not to the Body of the Prelates that that Father refers all the Efficacy and Force of the Actions of the Ministry and all the Power of the Keys But further if you will he explains himself yet more expresly in the same Book out of which I have taken these last Words Hitherto says he I have methinks clearly enough demonstrated by the Holy Scriptures and by the Testimony of Saint Cyprian that the Wicked who have undergone no change in their Natural Estate may both give and receive Baptism Notwithstanding it is manifest that those men do not belong to the Church of God since they are Covetous Extortioners Vsurers Envious Malicious and Enslaved by such like Vices for the Church is the only Dove that is modest and Chast the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the Sealed Fountain the Paradice full of Fruits and such other Titles that are given it can be understood of none but the Good the Saints and the Righteous that is to say those in whom not only the Operations of the Gifts of God are found that are common to the good and bad but who have also the inward and Supernatural Grace of the Holy Spirit It is to those that it is said Whosoevers Sins you shall remit they shall be remitted and whosoever Sins you retain they shall be retained I do not then see why we may not say that a wicked man may Administer Baptism since he may have it and as he has it to his ruine he may give it to others also to their ruine not because that that which he gives may be a Pernicious thing but because that he himself who receives it is a wicked man For when a wicked man gives Baptism to a good man who dwelling in the bond of Vnity is truly Converted the wickedness of him who gives it is overcome by the goodness of the Sacrament and the Faith of him who receives it and when his Sins are pardoned who is truly Converted to God they are pardoned to him by those with whom he is joyned by a true Conversion For the same Holy Spirit which was given to the Saints with whom he is united by the bond of Love is he who pardons them whether he knows that Body or whether he knows it not And so when the Sins of any are retained they are retained by those from whom they are separated by the Difference of their Lives and the Malice of their Hearts whether they know that Body or whether they do not It could not methinks be said either with greater strength or Clearness that all the Efficacy of the Actions of the Ministry that the Pastors Exercise depends not on the Body of the Pastors but on the Body of the truly Faithful and that in Effect they are those who pardon and retain Sins when the Ministers pardon or retain them From whence it necessarily follows That if the same Actions of the Ministry belong to the Society of the Faithful the Call of the Ministry does so also with a far greater Reason for if the Power of the Keys the right of Remitting and Retaining Sins belongs to the body of the Faithful only it must be every way necessary that the Pastors should hold the exercise of that Power from the body of the Faithful for if they should not hold it from thence they would have no Right to exercise it nor could have it elsewhere And if they should have it elsewhere or that it should belong properly to the body of the Pastors exclusively from the Simple Faithful it would be not only not true but it would be further absurd to say that the body of the Faithful exercised that Power by the Pastors or that they pardoned and retained Sins as Saint Augustine teaches I cannot avoid taking notice here by the by of that Ordinary Error whereinto those of the Church of Rome fall who do not believe that immediate absolute and Independent Authority that the Pope ascribes to himself over the whole Church but who would that the Power of the Keys is given to the whole Body of the Hierarchy that is to say to those Pastors who are Priests and Bishops For to prove their Opinion they do not fail to set the Sentiment of St. Augustine before us which plainly as we have seen shews us that the Keys were given to the whole Church from whence they draw two Conclusions The one against that great Authority that the Pope pretends to and the other for the Authority of the Bishops which they would have to flow immediately from Jesus Christ But of these two Conclusions it is certain that the First is just and wholly conforming with the thoughts of that Father but it is not less certain that the second is not and that at least without going about to deceive our selves willingly or to cheat the World we could not say that That Church figured by St. Peter to which God gave the Power of the Keys which is exercised by the Ministry of the Pastors should be any other according to Saint Augustine then the Body of the Truly Faithful and Righteous in opposition to the Worldly and the wicked who are mixed with them in the same External Profession and this is in my Judgment so clear and evident in the Doctrine of that Father that they must needs be ignorant of it who deny it It is therefore a manifest Illusion to go about to make use of those Passages in favour of the Bishops for that Church is not the Body of the Hierarchy but that of the Truly Faithful whether they be Laymen or Pastors and it is to those only that Saint Augustine ascribes all the Rights and all the Actions of the Ministry as it may appear by what I have related and by consequence it is to those that the lawful Call of the Pastors belongs and not to the Body or Order of the Hierarchy For it would be absurd to derive that Call from any thing else then from that very Church which has received the Power of the Keys and which is exercised in her Name and her Authority by her Ministers Tosta us Bishop of Abyla seems to have acknowledged this Truth conformably to the Principles of Saint Augustine for see after what manner he explains himself in his Commentaries upon Numbers upon the story of the man who was brought before the whole Assembly of Israel because some had found him gathering of Sticks upon the Sabbath Day and put him in Prison for it First of all he says That although the Acts of Jurisdiction cannot be exercised by the whole Community yet that Jurisdiction belongs to the whole Community in regard of its Origine and Efficacy because
the Magistrates receive their Jurisdiction from it He adds afterwards That it is the same in the Keys of the Church that Jesus Christ gave them to the whole Church in the person of Saint Peter And that it is the Church that Communicates them to the Prelats but which notwithstanding Communicates them without depriving it self of them so that says he the Church has them and the Prelats have them but in a different manner for the Church has them in respect of Origine and Vertue and the Prelats have them only in respect of Vse The Church has them vertually because she can give them to a Prelate by Election and she has them Originally also For the Power of a Prelate does not take its origine from it self but from the Church by means of the Eelction that it makes of him The Church that chose him gives him that Jurisdiction but as for the Church it receives it from no Body after its having once received it from Jesus Christ The Church therefore has the Keys Originally and Virtually and whenever she gives them to a Prelate she does not give them to him after the manner that she has them to wit Originally and Virtually but she gives them him only as to Vse To this we may add that some Councils of these latter Ages as those of Constance and Basil seem to have acted themselves upon this Principle when they gave themselves the Title of Representing the whole Universal Church Vniversalem Ecclesiam Representans For to what end did they take that specious Title if they would not acknowledge that the Origine of the Authority of the Prelats or the Pastors is in the Body of the whole Society and that it is from thence that it is transmitted to them to exercise it in the name of the whole Body But that which is most considerable is That it appears from the Testimony of the Holy Scripture that the Body of the Church that is to say the faithful people in opposition to the Pastors has taken part from the beginning in the Acts of its proper Government and particularly in the Calls of Ministers which evidently notes that it is a natural Right that belongs to it For that when after the Apostacy and Tragical Death of Judas they were to substitute another Apostle in his place Jesus Christ not having done it immediately by himself before his Ascention the History of the Acts relates that the whole Church which then only Consisted in an hundred and twenty Persons was Assembled and that upon the Proposal that Saint Peter made to them they appointed two upon whom the Lot having been cast and falling upon Matthias with a common consent he was put into the number of the Apostles They were there about the Call of an Apostle that is to say of a Minister who ought to come immediately from God and therefore it was that they cast the Lot but because the Church was then formed and that Jesus Christ being no more corporally present upon Earth those Calls could not be made wholly and immediately by him men took some part in them for by their Election they limited the Lot to two persons and in the end declared by their acquiesence that they look'd upon the Declaration of the Lot as if it had been the very voice of Jesus Christ This is all the part that men could take there but it was not only the Apostles who did those two things it was the whole Body of the Church The History notes that the Assembly was about an hundred and twenty persons that Saint Peter made a Proposal to them that upon that Proposal of Saint Peter they presented Two Joseph and Matthias and that the Lot falling upon Matthias he was numbred with the Eleven Apostles by common Agreement that is to say by the common consent of all That evidently shews us that the Body of the Faithful and not meerly the Body of the Pastors is the Right source of Calls The same things appear in the Call of the Seven Deacons for the Story expresly notes that the murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews falling out and giving occasion to the Apostles to think of that Call they called the multitude of the Disciples and that when they had made a Proposal to them the Assembly approved of it and that in the end they chose seven persons whom they presented to the Apostles who after having prayed to God laid their hands on them But that further le ts us see from whence a Lawful Call proceeds to wit from the Body of the Faithful and not meerly from the Body of the Pastors for it was the whole Assembly that approved of the Proposal of the Apostles and that chose and not the Apostles alone who did nothing else but propose and lay their hands on them This is further justified by the Practice of the Apostles which would readily admit the people in the most weighty Affairs that respected the Government of the Church into their deliberations and Acts when that might be done without Confusion So in the First Council of Jerusalem the Question being ventilated whether the Observation of the Ceremonies of the Law was necessary to the Gentiles it is said that it pleased the Apostles and Elders or Presbyters for it is the same thing with the whole Church to send to Antioch and write to the Church there That Letter was in effect written in the name of all and sent to all indifferently The Apostles and Elders and Brethren unto the Brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Cyria and Cilicia and it is expreslynoted that when Jude and Silas who were the bearers of that Letter were arrived at Antioch they Assembled the multitude that is to say the people and there acquitted themselves of their Commission which distinctly shews that the people then took cognizance of the matters of Religion and that they interven'd in publick Deliberations So when Saint Paul would Excommunicate the Incestuous person of Corinth he calls the Church to that Action In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ when ye are gathered together and my Spirit let such a man be delivered unto Satan for the Destruction of the Flesh that the Body may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus which notes the same thing Those who have read the writings of Saint Cyprian Bishop of Carthage cannot be ignorant that that great Saint governed his Church by the common Suffrages not only of his whole Clergy but of all his people also and that he consulted with them in the most weighty Affairs since he has declared it himself in divers places of his writings I could not saies he in one of his Epistles to his Clergy answer to that which our Brethren Donatus Fortunatus Novatus and Gordius have wrote to me because I am alone for from the first entrance into my Bishoprick I purposed to do nothing of my self without your Counsel and the Consent