of their Spiritual Authority and where Subjects are also absolved from their Obligations in Conscience to obey them And this is also a dissolving the Catholick Church as to such as live in such Dominions and as to any Benefits they can derive from the Catholick Church also For Subjects of particular Districts are no otherwise received into the Catholick Church than as they derive a Right to Communion with all the Churches in the World by their being admitted Members of the Churches of their particular Districts And they are also deprived of their Right of Catholick Communion when they are Excommunicated by the lawful Authority of their particular Districts I cannot therefore see how our Adversaries can excuse themselves herein from Erring fundamentally if the Church's being a Society be admitted for a Fundamental CHAP. VI. Arguments and Objections against this Doctrine from Instances of Fact and Publick Good answered AGAINST this truly Catholick Doctrine two things were opposed by the Adversaries The one a Collection of Eighteen Instances of Bishops who being deprived and not for Heresie did not insist on their Right or were not seconded by their Subjects in the History of 900. Years Which way of Reasoning he shews is neither Conscientious nor Prudent For if Matters of Fact so nakedly related without Evidence of the Principles on which they were acted be urged as Precedents barely because done and no Opposition against them it will be impossible to make any thing of such arguing from History For what History is there that in a Succession of 900. Years does not afford Examples against Examples And how easie were it for an Historian by this way of Reasoning to justifie the Wickedest things that can be § 9. And in this case are divers circumstances which not appearing in any of the Instances make them insignificant § 10-14 Nor do the Instances produced prove the Sense of the Catholick Church but only of the Greek and especially of Constantinople nor even of that Church in the first and earliest Ages § 15. but most of modern barbarous and divided Ages § 22. and in different cases Part 2. § 1. and the Deprivations either by Synods or disagreeable to the Canons of that very Church § 8 9 11. and no such Power so much as pretended by the Lay-Magistrate § 3. but the Emperors indeavouring to obtain their Wills by Authority of Synods or by gross Violence murdering disabling or banishing the Incumbents The other their great Plea of the Publick Good § 47. which he well retorts upon them That the Eternal Interests of Souls and of Religion are more to be valued in a Publick Account than Worldly Politicks That it is more the Publick Good of the Church and of Religion that Subordinations be preserved than that any particular Person be made a Bishop by offering Violence to them That the Glorious Passive Doctrines of the Church be maintained in opposition to Worldly Interests than seem prostituted to serve them That the Credit of the Clergy be maintained than that they enjoy the Benefits of Worldly Protection And that the Independency of that Sacred Function on the State be asserted by challenging the Right than that by yielding the Lay-Power should be owned to have any Power of Depriving us of the Comfort of Sacraments in a time of Persecution And that this is more for the Interest of the State even of the Civil Magistracy than what is like to obtain upon the Cession Even the State cannot subsist without Obligations of Conscience and the Sacredness of Oaths * This hath respect to with he said before of the Sacred Vows of Canonical Obedience for securing that Right and Duty where no Worldly Power can force them to it which no other Power in the World can dispence with but that for whose Interest they were imposed and the dreadful Imprecations implied in them as an Obligation for Performance which can signifie nothing for the Security of any future Government if they must signifie nothing for the time past It is not for the Interest of the Publick to secure ill Titles in their Possession and thereby to incourage the Frequency of ill Titles and frequent Subversions of the Fundamental Constitutions and all the Publick Miseries that must follow on such changes But these things are more largely treated and very solidly in the Defence of the Vindication upon a farther occasion For the Adversaries being so home pressed with this that they had little to reply were forced to seek for new Arguments And first without any Answer to his Argument and granting the Proposition of the Invalidity of Lay-Deprivation the Lawfulness of Submission in the Ecclesiastical Subjects to Intruders is only insisted on and only from other Later Facts and pretence of Peace and Tranquility of the Church To which it is replied that such Submission is Sinful by the Law of God makes the Subjects Accomplices in the Injustice and moreover in the Clergy on account of their Oaths of canonical Obedience c. and That turning the Dispute to later Facts draws it from a short and decisive to a tedious and litigious Issue with which there is no reason to comply And concerning the Case of Abiathar he shews That the Fact is not commended in the Scripture as a Precedent That the Magistrate could not by the Doctrine of that Age have any direct Power over the Priesthood That in the Apostle's Age the Priesthood was expressly owned to be far more Honourable than the Magistracy it self and That Solomon's Act was only of Force and what God had threatned against the House of Eli Nor was Abiathar then the High-Priest properly so called but Zadoc c. Moreover That Christian Bishops are properly Priests and the Gospel Priesthood more noble than that of Abiathar and that these Principles and Inferences were admitted in the Apostolick Age c. by Clemens Romanus c. But the Principal Pretence of all is proposed by another Author That tho' the Argument holds where the State are Infidels and so the Church and State distinct Bodies yet not so where the State professes the Christian Religion And That the Benefits of Protection of Honor and Profit of Security and of Assistance which the Church receives from the State require in Gratitude a compensation To which is replied That more is required for such a Power than meerly being Christian which gives no Title to any Spiritual Authority That the same Persons may be of distinct Societies That the Church's Obligations are more necessary for the Subsisting of the State than those she receives from the State for hers That the Benefits also received from her by the State are greater than what she receives from it That a Pious Magistrate would not desire such a Recompence if she could grant it But it is not in the Power of Ecclesiastical Governours to make such Contract Nor is it agreeable to the Mind of God that the Church should so incorporate with the State To which
there are any other Inducements to keep them in it besides those of Conscience Only it may perhaps be fit to be consider'd whether it be prudent to trust such Persons with the Management of the Government of the Church who have no Obligation of Principles or Conscience to maintain it as an independent Society or to suffer for it that is indeed who are never likely to maintain it in that very Case which was most in our Saviour's and the Apostles View that is of a Persecution But when they actually divide that Communion which they were never obliged in Conscience to maintain if they took the utmost Liberty their Latitudinarian Principles would afford them and when their lax Principles are the very grounds of their dividing the Communion without any remorse of Conscience for doing so when they are hereby emboldned to do those things which inevitably cause a Breach from those who cannot follow them in these very Principles This is the Case wherein these Principles are Characters of a distinct Communion and therefore by the Reasoning now mentioned become Heretical Especially the Principles being withall false not only in the Opinion of those from whom they have divided themselves but also of our earliest purest Ancestors even those of the Apostolical Age it self Yet I deny not but that in this Case of Heresie there is also regard to be had to the Momentousness of the Opinion it self Whoever sets up or abets a Communion opposite to that of the Church on account of Opinions is as I have shewn in the Judgment of the Primitive Church an Heretick and is the more not the less so if the Opinions be also frivolous But for such Opinions the Church would never have driven him out of her own Communion if himself had been pleased to have continued in it Her Judiciary Censures ought no doubt to be confined to Opinions Fundamental and of great Importance especially if an internal Assent be required and that under pain of Excommunication CHAP. IV. That the Church of Christ is a Society independent on any of the Powers of the World and its Spiritual Rights derived immediately from a higher Authority subject to none of them according to the Doctrine of the Catholick Church in the earliest Ages EVEN in the Age of St. Cyprian which is the ancientest we know of that an Anti-Bishop was set up against a Bishop in the same See it is 1st very notorious that they then owned no such Power of the Secular Magistrate to deprive Bishops of their purely Spiritual Power and that the Church as a Society distinct from the State subsisted on their not owning it even as to a Deprivation of their particular Districts and Jurisdictions It is notorious and as notorious as any one Tradition of the Catholick Church in those Ages not excepting that of the Canon of the New Testament it self that Christians then and not only then but in all the former Persecutions that had been from the times of the Apostles to that very Age did own themselves bound to adhere to their Bishops when it was notorious withall that those Bishops were set up and maintained against the Consent of the Civil Magistrate It is as notorious also that this Adherence of theirs was not only Matter of Fact which is all our Adversaries pretend here but a Duty owned by them as obliging in Conscience and as the result of Principles This appears not only by the unquestionable Sincerity of the Christians of those Ages who were generously influenced by no Considerations but those of Conscience not only by their Suffering those severe Penances imposed on them in order to their recovering the Bishop's Communion even when the Magistrate was against him which no other Considerations could recommend but only those of Conscience but from the Principles themselves insisted on in the Reasonings of St. Cyprian Such were these That all hopes of Pardon of Sin of the Holy Ghost of Eternal Life on Performance of Duty were confined to the visible Communion of the Church that their visible Communion with the Church could not appear but by their visible Communion with the Bishop as the Head of that Church and the Principle of its Unity that who that Bishop was to whom any particular Person owed his Duty was not then any otherwise distinguishable but by the visible Districts in which themselves lived and to which he was therefore supposed to have a Title whether the Magistrate would or no. It is also as notorious that these Reasonings were not then the sense of private Persons but the received sense of Christians in general and indeed Fundamental to that Catholick Communion which was then maintained where-ever there were Christians Not only every particular Christian of a Diocess did thus assure himself of his Right to Ecclesiastical Privileges by his Communion with the Bishop of that particular District but he was intitled also to Communion with all the other Bishops of the World and consequently with the Catholick Church in general by the communicatory Letters of the Bishop of his own particular District For it was by the mutual Obligation all Bishops of the World had to ratifie the Acts of particular Districts that he who was admitted a Member of one Church was intitled to the Communion of all and that he who was excluded from one was excluded from all others also because no other Bishop could justifie his Reception of a Christian of another Jurisdiction to his own Communion if he had not the communicatory Letters of his own Bishop Thus it appears that the Obligation even of particular Districts without Consent of the Magistrate was then Catholick Doctrine Whence it plainly follows that this Lay-deprivation which is all that can be pretended in the Case of our present Bishops is in the Principles of the Catholick Church in St. Cyprian's Age a perfect Nullity and consequently that in regard to Conscience at least our present Bishops are still Bishops and Bishops of those particular Districts as much as ever and the Obligations of the Clergy and Laity in those Districts as obliging to them now as ever And it thence follows 2dly that Anti-Bishops consecrated in Districts no otherwise vacated than by the Power of the Secular Magistrate are by the Principles of that earliest Catholick Church no Bishops at all but divided from the Church It is plain that Novatian was disowned as soon as ever it appeared that Cornelius was canonically settled in Fabian's Chair before him and disowned universally so universally that who-ever did not disown him was for that very reason disowned himself This is as clear as any Particular mentioned in our Adversaries Collection But we do not satisfie our selves with that It is also further as notorious that he was disowned by Principles obliging them in Conscience to disown him and those again not private Opinions but Principles also Fundamental to the Correspondence then maintained in the whole Catholick Church as the other were that we mentioned under the
particular Churches paid a Deference From the Time of Hadrian there could be no pretence for that Church above others when it consisted not of Jews but Greeks and Romans What was there therefore that could make them unanimous in Variations and Variations of such Importance as this had been They had then no General Councils And the absolute Supremacy of particular Bishops in their proper Districts is by none maintained more expressly and more zealously than by St. Cyprian with particular regard to all other Powers that in later times have pretended to oblige Bishops that is to Councils and the Bishop of Rome This Catholick Communion grounded on the common Interest of all the Bishops to have all their Acts of Discipline in their particular Districts ratified over the whole World might have brought in other things that were consequential to these common Interests But there was nothing antecedent that can be imagined that could have brought in this Catholick Communion of those times among such a multitude of absolute and independent Societies as the Churches were then if it had not been brought in from their very first Originals And yet these Notions we were speaking of were Fundamental to that Catholick Communion it self as managed in those earlier Ages CHAP. V. That Intruders or Anti-Bishops by lay-Lay-Authority cannot be defended but by Principles fundamentally destructive of the Church as a Society distinct from the State in time of Persecution IF those Errors that destroy the very Being of the Church as a Society be Fundamental I cannot for my part see how such Anti-Bishops and all that own them can be excused by Principles from Erring fundamentally Their being Bishops supposes such Doctrines as if they be once admitted make it impossible for the Church to subsist as a Spiritual Society whenever the State is pleased to persecute it They cannot possibly be supposed Bishops of those Dioceses to which they are consecrated till it first be supposed that their Predecessors are validly deprived and consequently that the Sees are vacant in Gonscience If it should prove otherwise the Clergy and Laity of those same Jurisdictions will still be obliged in Conscience as much as ever to adhere to their Canonical Bishops till they be Canonically deprived and to disown such Intruders as are put over them not only without any Canonical Procedure but without any Authority also that can oblige in Conscience The only Principle therefore on which they can pretend that their Rival Bishops have lost their Right as to Conscience must be the Power that even the Lay-Magistrate has to deprive Bishops even with regard to Conscience If therefore they will defend their Schism by Principles it will be necessary that they defend this Principle also without which it is not possible that it should ever be defended They have no Ecclesiastical Judicatory Just or Unjust that they can so much as pretend in this Case And the defending this is that which will increase their Guilt and will add to their charge of Schism the aggravation of Heresie also For in order to the asserting such a Right as this to the Secular Magistrate it will be necessary to assert that the Authority of the Church even as to Spirituals is in Conscience the Right of the Civil Magistrate If it should not be so then the Subjects of the respective Dioceses may still be at liberty in Conscience to adhere to their deprived Bishops And if they may they must because then all their former Obligations in Conscience will still hold as obliging in Conscience to it is impossible that those antecedent Obligations in Conscience to adhere to their spiritual Superiors can be dis-anulled or diminished by a Power that can pretend no Right in such Matters with regard to Conscience But if we grant this Power to the Magistrate this will perfectly overthrow the Church as a Society distinct from the State and perfectly disable it to subsist as a Society in a time of Persecution For when the Magistrate persecutes it it cannot then subsist as a Society without a Government and a Government obliging in Conscience and not derived from the persecuting Magistrate But if the Right of that spiritual Government be in Conscience the Magistrate's Right it must be an invading the Magistrate's Right to pretend to it when he expressly forbids it And if so how can spiritual Governours in such a Case pretend to it How can they pretend to a Right that is none of their own consistently with Conscience How can their pretending to it with ill Consciences oblige their Subjects to adhere to them on account of Conscience Nay how can it even excuse them in Conscience for not adhering rather to him whose Right it is supposed to be and that even in Conscience No Necessity whatsoever can excuse a Sin much less lay an Obligation in Conscience on Subjects to abet it least of all lay an Obligation on God to ratifie such Acts of Authority as must be supposed no better than Usurpations And yet all Acts of Ecclesiastical Authority in a time of Persecution can signifie nothing if they be not such as may oblige in Conscience and such as God as well as Men is obliged to ratifie Thus it had been Sin in the Romans to set up Cornelius as plainly they did not only without the Consent but against the Will of Decius It had been Sin in him and not in him only but in all the Bishops of his Age to pretend to any Districts in the Roman Empire It had been Sin in them to exercise Authority in Districts not belonging to them Thus the Church had been perfectly dissolved as a Society at least within the Roman Empire unless we can suppose a Notion of a Society without Governours without Districts without any lawful Exercises of Authority And yet the Bishops of those Ages never thought themselves obliged in Conscience to go out of the Roman Empire to retrieve the Power which is pretended to belong to them as Bishops of the Catholick Church And very probably it had signified nothing to have done so They could have gone into no civilized inhabited Countries but they must have expected Magistrates who could pretend to the same Right as well as Decius and who were as much disposed as he to use their Right to the Prejudice of the Christian Religion What therefore would our Adversaries have advised the Christians of those Ages to have preserved themselves in a Society Would they have had them retired into unoccupied Wildernesses But how could they make Societies there where there were no Numbers of Subjects requisite to make a Society Plainly therefore the Catholick Church had then been dissolved as Societies if these New Principles had been maintained in those earlier Ages And these same Principles do still put it as evidently in the Power of the Civil Magistrate to dissolve the Church as a Society within his own Dominions For how can a Church continue a Society where Bishops are in Conscience deprived
may be added That the Catholick Church and particular States are by order of Divine Providence of different unequal and inconsistent Dimensions and That Particular States are many intire independent Bodies but all Particular Churches Members of One great Body and subject to the Supream and Vniversal Authority thereof Nor ought any State Prince or Emperor be admitted or reputed Christian who will not submit all their Authority to the Authority of Christ in his Kingdom upon Earth Which being the Chief of all Powers who-ever resists resists the Ordinance of God and shall receive to themselves Damnation Rom. 13.2 CHAP. VII Of the Authority of the Church of England and that the Authority of the Primitive Catholick Church is greater than that of any Modern Particular one and to be preferred before it THE last Refuge is Argumentum ad hominem a poor Cause indeed that is reduced to that which tho' tolerable as an Adjective with others more substantial yet cannot stand alone much less support such a Cause as this Two things are alleadged the Oath of Supremacy Deprivation of the Bishops in Q. Elizabeth 's time for refusing that Oath for Proof of the Doctrine of the Church of England in this case To all this in general our Author opposeth the Authority of the Church of Christ the Catholick Church of the Primitive Ages which the Church of England it self admits and having set out the Objection fully makes this Reply I should most heartily congratulate the Zeal of these Objectors for our Church were it really such as it is pretended to be But I can by no means commend any Zeal for any particular modern Church whatsoever in Opposition to the Catholick Church of the first and purest Ages We cannot take it for a Reformation that differs from that Church which ought to be the Standard of Reformation to all later degenerous Ages at least in things so essential to the Subsistence and Perpetuity of the Church as these are which concern the Independence of the Sacred on the Civil Authority Nor is it for the Honor of our dear Mother to own her Deviation in things of so great Importance from the Primitive Rule much less to pretend her Precedent for over-ruling an Authority so much greater than hers so much nearer the Originals so much more Universal so much less capable of Corruption or of Agreement in any Point that had been really a Corruption It is impossible that ever the present Breaches of the Church can be reconciled if no particular Churches must ever allow themselves the Liberty of Varying from what has actually been received by them since the Ages of Divisions the very Reception thereof having proved the Cause of those Divisions If therefore our modern Churches will ever expect to be again united it must be by Acknowledgment of Errors in particular Churches at least in such things as have made the Differences and which whilst they are believed must make them irreconcilable Such things could never proceed from Christ who designing his whole Church for One Body and One Communion could never teach Doctrines inconsistent with such Unity and destructive of Communion And why should a Church such as ours is which acknowledges her self Fallible be too pertinacious in not acknowledging Mistakes in her self when the Differences even between Churches which cannot all pretend to be in the Right whilst they differ and differ so greatly from each other are a manifest Demonstration of Errors in Authorities as great as her own Nor can any such acknowledgments of actual Errors be prejudicial to Authority where the Decisions of the Authority are to be over-ruled not by private Judgments but by a greater Authority And if any Authority be admitted as competent for arbitrating the present Differences of Communion between our modern Churches I know none that can so fairly pretend to it as that of the Primitive Catholick Church Besides the other Advantages she had for knowing the Primitive Doctrines above any Modern ones whatsoever she has withall those Advantages for a fair Decision which recommend Arbitrators She knew none of their Differences nor dividing Opinions and therefore cannot be suspected of Partiality And it was withall an Argument of her being constituted agreeably to the Mind of her blessed Lord that she was so perfectly one Communion as he designed her And the Acquiescence of particular Churches in her Decision is easier and less mortifying than it would be to any other Arbitrator To return to her is indeed no other than to return to what themselves were formerly before their Divisions or dividing Principles So that indeed for modern Churches to be determined by Antiquity is really no other than to make themselves in their purest uncorruptest Condition Judges of their own Case when they have not the like Security against Impurities and Corruptions I cannot understand therefore how even on account of Authority our late Brethren can excuse their pretended Zeal for even our Common Mother the Church of England when they presume to oppose her Authority to that of the Catholick Church and of the Catholick Church in the first and purest Ages I am sure we have been used to commend her for her Deference to Antiquity and to have the better Opinion of any thing in her Constitution as it was most agreeable to the Pattern of the Primitive Catholick Church CHAP. VIII Arch-Bishop Cranmer 's Opinion perfectly destructive of all Spiritual Authority and his Authority in these matters none at all FOR more particular Answer he first shews the Author and Original and so the Novelty of these pernicious Opinions in England and then answers to both the Allegations aforesaid the first not being very long and therefore recited in his own Words at length is as followeth In Henry the Eighth's time under whom the Oath of Supremacy was first introduced the Invasions of the Sacred Power were most manifest Yet so that even then they appear to have been Innovations and Invasions But who can wonder at his Success considering the violent ways used by him So many executed by him for refusing the Oath The whole Body of the Clergy brought under a Premunire for doing no more than himself had done in owning the Legatine Power of Cardinal Wolsey and fined for it and forced to Submissions very different from the sense of the Majority of them He did indeed pretend to be advised by some of the Ecclesiasticks as appears from several of their Papers still preserved But they were only some few selected by himself never fairly permitted to a freedom and majority of Suffrages And when even those few had given their Opinion yet still he reserved the Judgment of their Reasons to himself And to shew how far he was from being indifferent those of them who were most open in betraying the Rights of their own Function were accordingly advanced to the higher degrees in his Favour and were entrusted with the Management of Ecclesiastical Affairs None had a greater share in his
Ecclesiastical Councils than Arch-Bishop Cranmer Nor is there any who upon all the Questions proposed wherein Ecclesiastical Power was concerned does more constantly side with the King 's imperious Humour against the true Rights of his own Order He allows the King the Rights even of Preaching the Word and Administring the Sacraments and allows neither of them to the Ecclesiasticks any further than as they derived them from the Prince's Lay-Commissions He permitted indeed their Consecrations as he had found them by those of their own Order but derives nothing of their Power from those Consecrations He makes the Ceremonies of Consecration indifferent things no way concerned in conveying the Spiritual Power That he derives wholly from their Lay-Deputation He gives them a Power of Preaching the Word and Administring the Sacraments where the Lay-Powers allow it and he allows them neither where the Secular Magistrate forbids them They must admit whom the Laws oblige them to admit and they must not excommunicate any whom the Secular Laws take into their Protection The Magistrate notwithstanding his being a Lay-Man may perform these Offices himself if he pleased And the Ecclesiasticks notwithstanding their Consecration are not by him permitted to perform them unless the Magistrate be pleased to give them leave Nay so far he proceeds in his Flattery of the Civil Magistrate that he allows no more Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the Laying on of the Hands of the Presbytery than in the collation of any Civil Office Even in the Apostles themselves he rather excuses than commends all the Exercise of their Spiritual Authority as necessitated to it by the Exigency of their present Circumstances As if any Necessity could excuse Usurpation As if any Exercise of a Power not belonging to them could have been seconded by so visible manifestations of God himself as that was which was exercised by the Apostles Yet even their Authority he makes perfectly precarious He owns no Obligation on the Consciences of the Christians of those times to obey even the Apostles themselves but ascribes their Obedience then wholly to their good Will so as to leave it to their own Liberty whether they would be subject or no. And why so Only because the Apostles had no Civil Empire This wholly resolves all Obligation of Conscience into Civil Empire and makes it impossible for the Church to subsist as a Society and a Communion without the Support of the Civil Magistrate Accordingly the same Arch-Bishop Cranmer took out a Patent for his Episcopal Power * And another before from King Henry long before Bonner was Bishop from which and from the Composure it is plain who was the Projector preserved by Bishop Burnet full of a Style so pernicious to Ecclesiastical Authority He there acknowledges all sort of Jurisdiction as well Ecclesiastical as Civil to have slowed originally from the Regal Power as from a Supream Head and as a Fountain and Spring of all Magistracy within his own Kingdom He says they who had exercised this Jurisdiction formerly for which he took out this Patent had done it only PRECARIO and that they ought with grateful Minds to acknowledge this Favour derived from the King's Liberality and Indulgence and that accordingly they ought to yield whenever the King thought fit to require it from them And to shew what Particulars of Ecclesiastical Power he meant his Patent instances the Power of Ordering Presbyters and of Ecclesiastical Coercion meaning no doubt that of Excommunication Nay further the same Patent gives him a Power of Executing by the King's Authority those very things which were known to have been committed to him by God himself in the Scriptures per ultra caquae tibi ex Sacris Literis divinitus commissa esse dignoscuntur By which we understand that no Branch of Spiritual Power whatsoever was excepted Yet all this Grant was to last no longer than the King's Pleasure I know not what the Lay-Encroachers themselves can desire more Here is so little Security for the Church's subsisting when the Secular Laws discountenance her as that she is not allowed the same Liberty that other Subjects have of pleading the Secular Laws already made in favour of her but is left exposed to the Arbitrary Pleasure of the Prince which is thought hard in the case of other Subjects This Yoke the Politicians have lately imposed on the Church of Scotland GOD in his good time release her from it I have often wondred how the most learned Bishop Stilling fleet who first published the fore-mentioned Papers as far as they concerned Arch-Bishop Cranmer could think them consistent with his own Principles They are so perfectly contradictory to his Discourse concerning the Power of Excommunication subjoined in the Second Edition of the Irenicum and indeed to the Doctrine of the Irenicum it self as far as it was consistent with it self or with any one Hypothesis For sometimes he seems to doubt whether there can be any Power properly so called without Coercion or any Coercion without external Force As if indeed the Fears of the future Mischiefs attending Exclusion from the Privileges of Church Communion had not been in the purest Ages of the Christian Religion more properly Coercive than the fear of any Evils that were in the Power of the Secular Magistrate It is certain that good Christians then chose rather to suffer any thing the Magistrate could inflict than Excommunication But I more admire that such a Betrayer of Ecclesiastical Rights should by our Ecclesiastical Historian of the Reformation be proposed as the Hero of his times and as Exemplary to such as might in his Opinion deserve the Name of Heroes still Yet he calls it a strange Commission in Bishop Bonner when he took out a Commission from the King as to his Spirituals conceived in the same terms with that of Cranmer in the Particulars now mentioned He grants that * It is not only a groundless Charge upon Bonner but false disproved both by this which discovers Cranmer the Contriver and by Evidence of Fact that he and others took out such Commissions long before Bonner v. A. Harmar pag. 51 52. The Historian to excuse Cranmer cast the Odium of it upon Bonner and devised a reason to render it credible Bonner's Inducement to take out that Commission was that it was observed that Cranmer's great Interest in the King was chiefly grounded on some Opinions he had of the Ecclesiastical Officers being as much subject to the King as all other Civil Officers were Yet Cranmer was to be excused because that if he followed that Opinion at all it was out of Conscience Why he should doubt whether he was of that Opinion I cannot guess when himself has published those very Papers of the learned Bishop Stillingfleet wherein Arch-Bishop Cranmer does so plainly own himself of that Opinion when he has also published Cranmer's own Commission to the same purpose As little Reason I can see why he should say that Cranmer
at least is certain that we are intitled to all the Benefits of our Religion by our owning the Church not only as a Sect but as a Society also and that tho' we believe all its Doctrines as it is a Sect yet if we be divided from it as a Society that Belief alone will not secure us a Title to any of the Benefits of our Religion Excommunicates however Orthodox in their Opinions were never suppos'd in the Discipline of the Church to have any actual Title to the Benefits of Religion if they persisted wilfully in that State of Excommunication The same is to be observed concerning the Case of Schismaticks on the Principles of the early Age of St. Cyprian Hence therefore it appears that this Notion of the Church as a Society whatever it be in its self is at least Fundamental as to us in order to our partaking of any of the Benefits of Religion That is indeed it is Fundamental to all intents and purposes that we can think worthy our Enquiry Without this the other Notions if any be will never be beneficial to us So that whatever those other Notions may be in order of Reasoning yet this Notion of the Church as a Society must be Fundamental to them in order to their being beneficial that is as far as we have any reason to concern our selves for them These things ought certainly to be taken for Fundamental as to the Discipline and Censures of the Church She ought certainly to be most concerned for those things that are most influential on the Interests of Souls and those are so whose Belief is most beneficial and their Dis-belief most hurtful to those most valuable Interests I cannot therefore see why she should not think Doctrines of this kind Fundamental and reckon them among those Fundamentals on which she ought to lay out her principal Care If therefore she ought to excommunicate for any Errors at all certainly she ought in the first place to do it for Errors so destructive of all Obligation to her Communion it self and of her Authority of Excommunicating that is indeed so destructive to all that Power she has either for the Preservation of Truth or the Prohibition of Error in general And if she ought not to inflict her Censures at least these highest of them for any Errors but those which are Fundamental it will plainly follow that Errors of this kind must be reckoned for Fundamental ones Our Adversaries would have Errors in Fundamentals published and punished as a Spiritual Crime by a purely Spiritual Authority but they do not in the mean time seem to be aware how Fundamental this very Notion of the Church as a distinct and spiritual Society is to its having any Authority or Power to punish so much as Spiritually All they can do as a Sect is only to reason with Hereticks concerning their Errors and all the Means to reduce them are those reasons which can no farther prevail with them than as they may seem convictive in the Judgment of the Hereticks themselves But on that account they stand on even Terms with the Hereticks whose Reasons ought also to take place with the Ecclesiasticks so far as they are also in Conscience convinced by them A true Authority and a Power of punishing refractory Persons by excluding from Communion do Fudamentally suppose a spiritual Society over which they are to exercise this Authority and from which Delinquents are to be excluded by spiritual Censures and Excommunications How can they therefore avoid reckoning those Errors from being Fundamental ones as punishable by a spiritual Authority which ruine Fundamentally that very Authority by which such Errors are to be punished which destroy the Society on which that Authority is grounded Fundamentally If there be degrees of Fundamentals I should think the Fundamentals concerning the Church as a Society to be of the greatest consequence and therefore Fundamental in the highest degree The Church is indeed obliged to keep the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 5.11 1 Tim. 1.16 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are the Expressions by which our Adversaries themselves I believe conceive the Articles themselves call Fundamental to be signified But she is obliged to keep them as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Tim. 6.20 as a Trust committed to her How so by avoiding Disputings by stopping the Mouths of Hereticks by rebuking them with all Authority by rejecting and avoiding not their Doctrines only but their Persons also when they prove incorrigible Now these things plainly suppose Governors invested with Spiritual Authority and a Communion from whence incurable Hereticks are to be rejected So that in order to the keeping these other Fundamentals the Church as a Society is supposed antecedently as a Condition that alone can qualifie her for having such a Trust committed to her This Notion therefore as antecedent must be Fundamental to those other Fundamentals and therefore Fundamental in a higher sense than those things can be whose Security is superstructed upon it And accordingly the Damage of the Publick in subverting these Notions of the Church as a Society is proportionably greater than that which follows from the denial of other particular Articles which are commonly taken for Fundamental He that denies one of the other Articles may yet believe all the rest and zealously defend them and that by Principles too against all other Hereticks But he that denies the Church as a Society invested with a spiritual Authority does as effectually contribute to the Ruine of all the other Fundamentals at once as he does to the Ruine of a House who subverts the Foundations of it It brings in Impunity for Heresie in general and suffers Hereticks still to hope as well in their separate Sects as if they were in the Orhtodox Communion It leaves them destitute of even any Presumptions that might oblige them to judge in Favour of the Church's Doctrine as the safest Error if it should prove one It does by this means reduce the trial of the Cause to the Reasons themselves and their native Evidence and puts it in the Power of assuming Men to pretend greater Evidence than either they have or they really believe And things being reduced to this pass it is more God's Providence than the Security of Principles that hinders any Heretick who disputes any one of the other Articles from questioning all the rest CHAP. III. That the contrary Doctrine is a Fundamental Error and obstinately asserted Heresie very pernicious to the Church of Christ and to the Assertors of it themselves ST Augustin observes that Schisms generally end in Heresie That is the natural consequence of Defending it as our Adversaries do by Principles A single Act of Vndutifulness to Superiors will in course pass away with those who are guilty of it so that Posterity will not be concerned in it But when it is defended by Principles it turns into false Doctrine and Doctrine of that pernicious Consequence that the Church is
former Head It was then a Principle that * Epist 55. ad Antonianum Edit Oxen Cypr. Secundus was Nullus which will as much invalidate the Consecrations of the present Anti-Bishops as it did that of Novatian This is a Principle so universally acknowledged where-ever there can be but one that it needs no Authorities to recommend it No Man can convey the same thing twice and therefore if there be two Bonds for the same thing to several Persons the second can never be thought obliging but by supposing the Invalidity of the first So also in all Monarchical Districts none can suppose an Anti-Monarch's Title good till he has shewn that the first Monarch's Title is not so Thus this Principle needed no Authority and yet it had all the Authority of the whole Catholick Church of that Age. The whole Collegium of Catholick Bishops that is St. Cyprian's Term gave their communicatory Letters not to Novatian but Cornelius and received none to their own Communion on the communicatory Letters of Novatian but only on those of Cornelius And that upon this same common Principle that Cornelius being once validly Bishop of Rome Novatian could never be a Bishop of that same District without the Death or Cession or Deprivation of Cornelius and that supposing him no Bishop of that Place to which he was consecrated he could be no Bishop at all So far they were then from our late Fancy of a Bishop of the Catholick Church without a particular District Had they thought so they might have ratified Novatian's Acts as a Bishop because he had received his Power from Bishops tho' not as Bishop of Rome Comparing the Catholick Church to a Fanum or Temple he was Profanus as not being in the Temple nor having a Right to enter into it Comparing it to the House in which the Passover was to be eaten by the Jews he was Foris not in that House in which alone the Passover was to be eaten These were the Notions of St. Cyprian and were by him and his Colleagues understood of the Catholick Church in general when they all supposed Novatian out of the Catholick in general by being out of that particular Church of Rome of which he had formerly been a Member Just as in ordinary Excommunications they also always supposed that he who was by any Act of obliging Authority deprived of his Right to his own particular Church had also lost his Right thereby to all the particular Churches in the World And they also supposed Novatian to have cast himself out of his own Body by assuming to himself the Name of a Head of that Body which already had a Head and could have no more than one And these Notions and this Language of St. Cyprian were supposed and owned universally by the whole Body of the Catholick Bishops of his Time when they acted consequently to them and took them for the Measures by which they either granted or refused their own Communion Nor is it to be thought strange that these Notions should be received and received universally not as the Opinions of private Persons but as the publick Doctrine and Fundamental to the Catholick Communion as practised not only in that early Age of St. Cyprian but as derived from the Apostles themselves and the very first Originals of Christianity For these were not as private Opinions usually were only the result of private Reasonings they were received as the Fundamentals of Christianity which were not as new Revelations generally were ... from the like Notions received among the Jews and among them received not as private Opinions but as publick Doctrines and Fundamental to the then practised Sacrifical Communion of the then peculiar People and only thence deduced as other things also are in the Reasonings of the New Testament to the Case of the new Mystical Peculium and their new Mystical Sacrifices The Language of erecting Altar against Altar in St. Cyprian is derived from the like earlier Language received among the Jews * V. Discourse of one Altar c. Edit Lond. 1683. 80. concerning the Samaritan Altar of Manasses against the Jerusalem Altar of Jaddus that is of a High Priest against a High Priest when God had appointed but one High Priest in the whole World and him only at Jerusalem And it is also plain that the Body of the Jews did look on such Schismatical High Priests and all their Communicants as cut off from the Body of their Peculium and consequently from all their publick Sacrifices and all the Privileges consequent to them Why should we therefore think it strange that the Apostolical Christians should have the like Opinion of them who set up themselves as opposite Heads of their Mystical Sacrifices But this is not all It is further as notorious 3dly St. Cyp. Epist 43. Edit Oxon. that all who any way professed themselves one with Novatian were for that very Reason of their doing so taken for divided from the Catholick Church as well as he was with whom they were united Here also the reason was very evident that he who professed and by publick Profession made himself one with a Person divided must by the same Analogy of Interpretation profess himself divided and by that very Profession actually divide himself also by making himself one with the Person supposed to be divided Nor was this reason more evident than universally acknowledged in the Discipline of that Age. All such Uniters with the Schismatick were refused to be admitted to Communion not by particular Bishops only as the Case would have been if the Opinion had been singular but by all the Bishops of one Communion in the World Not only so But it is also as notorious 4thly from the Practice and Discipline of that Age that all whom they looked upon as united with Novatian they consequently looked on as divided from themselves To be sure in the first place those who had any hand in his pretended Consecration which were principally and particularly reflected on by Cornelius in his Epistle to Fabius of Antioch Nor would his People be receiv'd to Communion by any Catholick Bishop on the communicatory Letters of Novatian and they could expect none from Cornelius whilst they were divided from him Thus all his Subjects came to be involved as well as himself But that which was highest of all was that even Bishops were supposed to have divided themselves from their Brethren if they communicated with him that is if according to the custom of that Age they either gave communicatory Letters to him or receiv'd any to their own Communion on the like communicatory Letters receiv'd from him This appear'd plainly in the Case of Martian of Arles who was on this very account denied the communicatory Letters of his Brethren and would no doubt have appeared also in the Case of Fabius of Antioch if he had proceeded so far And this does plainly suppose that such Bishops also had cut themselves off from Catholick Communion
by their own Act. And by this means it also appeared to have been more than a private Opinion in that Age when even no Bishop could be permitted in the Communion of his Brethren if he dissented from them in this particular Thus to make Application to our present Case all the Bishops will be involved who communicate either with the Principal Schismaticks or the Schismatical Consecrators And this will also take in by the same Principles all Communicants with such Bishops For when the Bishop was refused Communion the Effect of such refusal was that none should thence-forwards expect to be received to the Communion of those who had refused him on his communicatory Letters and no other communicatory Letters could be hoped for whilst they continued in Communion with him And then 5thly it is also as notorious on the same Principles of St. Cyprian's Age that such Schism from the visible Communion of the Catholick Church was also supposed to deprive the Person so divided of all the invisible Benefits of Church Communion God was supposed obliged to ratifie in Heaven what was done by those whom he authorized to represent Him on Earth He avenged the Contempts of his Ministers and would not be a Father to those who would not own his Church for their Mother by paying her a Filial respect They were not to expect any Pardon of their Sins They could not hope for the Holy Ghost who dissolved the Unity of the Spirit V. Cypr. de Unitate Eccl. Ep. 49. Edit Ox. Ep. 52 54 55. They were uncapable of the Crown of Martyrdom whatever they suffered in the State of Separation This is the result of many of St. Cyprian's Discourses on this Argument And indeed it is very agreeable with the Design of God that they who cut themselves off from the Peculium should by their doing so lose all their pretensions to the Rights and Privileges of it Not only so but that they should also incurr all the Mischiefs to which they were supposed liable who had lost their Right of being Members of the peculiar People Accordingly as they believed all Persons at their first Admission into the Church to be turned from Darkness to Light and from the Power of Satan unto God so upon their leaving the Church or their being cast out of it by the judicial act of their Superiors they were supposed to return into the State of Heathens to lose the Protection of those good Spirits who minister only to the Heirs of Salvation and again to relapse into their former condition of Darkness and being consequently obnoxious to be infested by the Devil and his Powers of Darkness And that this was so appeared by several ordinary Experiments in those earlier Ages not only of the Apostles but that also of St. Cyprian who has many Examples of it in his Book de Lapsis And this Confinement of the Spiritual Privileges of the peculiar People to the external Communion of the Church as it was Fundamental to their Discipline so it was rational consequently to their other Principles God was not thought obliged to confer those Privileges but by the Act of those whom Himself had authorized to oblige Him But Dividers were supposed not to belong to that Body to which the Promises were made and ambitious Intruders into other Mens Offices could not in any Equity pretend to have their Acts ratified by God from whom they could not be supposed to receive any Authority when they did not receive it by the Rules and Orders of the Society established by Him These things were then believed and believed universally Indeed nothing but an universal Belief of them would have maintained that Discipline which was then observed in the Church could have obliged them generally to suffer as they did then the severest Inflictions from the Magistrate rather than incurr the much more feared Displeasure of their Ecclesiastical Superiors When we are also of the same Mind and alike influenced by Principles and Regard to Conscience then indeed and then alone we may pretend to be a Posterity not degenerous from the great Examples of those glorious Ancestors Then it will not be in the Power of Acts of Parliament to drive us from our Principles and bring a Scandal on our Religion Then where our Bishops follow Christ we shall follow them and it will not be in the Power of the Worldly Magistrate or the Gates of Hell it self to prevail against our Church and to dissolve the Union between us Then Magistrates themselves will be more wary of involving Consciences on occasion of their little Worldly Politicks at least they will not pretend Religion and the Religion of that very Church which suffers by them for doing so May we live at length to see that happy day However it will hence appear how impossible it will be to excuse our Adversaries present Case from Schism if it be tryed by that Antiquity which we do indeed profess to imitate and alledge Now in this Case I am discoursing of I have purposely selected the Instances of St. Cyprian's Age rather than any other not only because they are the Ancientest indeed the first we know of of one Bishop's invading another's Chair not vacant but because we have withall in him the most distinct account of the Sense of the Church in his Age of such Facts and of the Principles on which they proceeded in condemning them He had occasion given him to be so distinct by two Schisms one of his own Church in Carthage where Felicissimus was set up against himself another that I have principally insisted on of Novatian set up against Cornelius in Rome On these Occasions he has written one just Discourse besides several Epistles But these Principles were not singular and proper to that Age they descended lower and are insisted on by Optatus and St. Augustine in their Disputes with the Donatists whenever they dispute the Question of their Schism without relation to their particular Opinions We have here given them the sense of the Church in an Age wherein her Testimony is every way unexceptionable wherein she had certain means of knowing the Truth and withall valued it as it deserved Even there we find the Principles now mentioned universally received and universally received as the Grounds of that universal Catholick Communion which she had received by an uninterrupted Tradition from the Apostles to that very Time Even there I say we find them received where nothing could have been received universally that had been an Innovation In so short a time it was hard to bring in Variations from the Primitive Rule and harder yet that all the Churches could have been unanimous in them if they had been Variations as Tertullian reasons in his Prescriptions especially when there was no Universal Authority received over the whole Catholick Church that could induce them to it From the Time of Trajan the Succession of our Saviour's Family failed in the Church of Jerusalem to which all
was once of that Opinion as if he had afterwards retracted it The Papers upon the Consult were written in Henry the Eighth's time in the Year 1540. And then even by the Bishop's Observation the Change of his Opinion had lost his Interest with the King if his Interest had been grounded on that Opinion But Cranmer kept to the same Opinions in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth Then it was he took out his Commission The young King himself seems to have been of the same Opinion in his second Paper of the Bishop's Collections which I can ascribe to nothing more probably than to the Instructions of his God-Father Nor does it appear the Arch-Bishop chang'd his Mind afterwards The only thing insisted on by our Historian to prove it is his subscribing a Book set out soon after which teaches the contrary But having already shewn that he still retained the same Opinion in the time of Edward the Sixth his Subscription cannot prove any change of his Opinion but that he complied whatever his Opinion was when he found his non-compliance could not hinder the contrary Opinion from being acceptable But indeed that Book was not so clear in that point that his Subscribing it would argue any change from his former Opinions But our Historian says that when Cranmer maintained that Opinion he did it out of Conscience Perhaps it might have been so But I am sure it is but an ill Argument to prove it so that his Interest in the King was visibly promoted by it Yet if he had frequently followed Opinions contrary to Worldly Interest that I grant might have been an Argument that tho' his Interest was indeed promoted by this Opinion yet that might have been no Inducement to him why he did imbrace it But on the contrary in the great Actions of his Life it was the Serviceableness of his Opinions to the Princa's Designs that principally recommended him It was notoriously his Opinion for the Divorce from Queen Katherine that first brought him into the Court and into the King's Knowledge Nor is it denied by our Historian that it was so And in the Case of Prosuming Consummation of Marriage from Bedding he gave contrary Judgments concerning the Marriage with Queen Katherine and that with Anne of Cleve exactly according to the King's Inclinations and his own Interest in gratifying them In Queen Katherine's Case he allowed it for a good Presumption but not so in the Case of Anne of Cleve Nay when the Protestant Reformation it self was against his Interest with the Prince then in Possession he ranounced even that Nor did he recant that Recantation at least he gave no publick Signification of his recanting it till he was assured by Dr. Cole in a Sermon before him at St. Maries that even his Compliance should avail him nothing for the Saving of his Life And even in that compleater Collection published by Bishop Burnet none of the other Bishops or Divines consulted on that Occasion is so perpetually thorough-paced for the King's Inclinations as he was Which Singularity alone not only against the Interests but the Suffrages of his Function in Favour of Encrcachments sufficiently shew how far he was from being Impartial in Questions of this Nature Having given this account of the Worthy Author of this Doctrine and of his Principles he proceeds farther to shew That it is not the Interest of the Church that his Authority in these things should be regarded That neither He nor the Duke of Summerset did deserve the Elegies by our Ecclesiastical Historian bestowed upon them nor the Historian himself any great Commendation or Thanks for his mistaken Service in it That there were many in those Reigns under which the Reformation was transacted who very much promoted the Reformation but with no good Design on Religion or Reformation as K. Henry himself Cromwell and the Duke of Northumberland who both at their Executions declared themselves of the Roman Communion That the part acted by Cranmer was not really contributive to a Reformation but if his Principles freed the Church from the Tyranny then in being they naturally introduced a Tyranny of more pernicious Consequence which perfectly destroys the Government of the Church and thereby dissolves the Society which was the thing to be reformed That as little reason there is for that advantageous Character he gives his other Hero the Duke of †This is but part of the Sacrilege he was guilty of and nothing of what he committed in Church Lands and Churches themselves for his own use Summerset for he was one that advanced the Sacrilege of the former Reign against Monasteries and in the time of his Protectorship against the Vniversities themselves and wrote a very angry Letter to Bishop Redley for opposing his designed beginnings of it in the Suppression of Clare-Hall and how could he reconcile any true Zeal for Religion and the Church with his Sacrilegions Designs and Practices too against that very Church whose Communion was owned by him After this he shews from the several Acts of Parliament how the Impious Notion of the Supremacy was by degrees settled by that Authority and continued in the Reign of Prince Edward who lived not to the Maturity of Judgment to discern the Falshood and ill Tendency of those ill Principles so destructive to all Religion and to the very Fundamentals of the Church as it is a Society and Communion which had been instilled into him by his God-Father Cranmer who was always the most forward Promoter of them And thus far our Author hath proceeded very clearly but his more particular Answer to the two Objections being not fully concluded but still under Consideration a more compleat account of that is reserved for another Occasion but may be expected ere long And in the mean time to do him right and gratifie the Reader we shall conclude with the recital of part of a § of the Vindication which had been altered without his Consent according to his Mind and Original Manuscript It is § 25. Pag. 71. as followeth neither did the Emperor think that his own Authority was alone sufficient for the purpose Calinicus by having his Eyes put out was incapacited and by that Incapacity deprived of his Office without a Judicial Sentence The way that was taken to deprive him was the same that was usually taken to deprive Emperors without taking away their Lives who notwithstanding being the supream Authority were never thought deprivable by any proper Exercise of Authority That was not by a Legal Sentence but by reducing them to a natural Incapacity for Government by putting out their Eyes This perfectly disabled them to judge of the Decrees to be subscribed by them without which it was impossible for them to govern Nor was it ever thought Vndatiful to deny such Princes Subjection whatever their Right was otherwise when they once come to be so incapacitated however they came to be so No more than if they were Lunatick Incapacity was alone sufficient for that And this Incapacity was so notorious that we never read that even the Princes themselves who had been thus incapacitated did ever judge so partially even in their own Case as to think fit to resume Such a Case therefore as this did not put it in the Power even of partial Subjects to deny their Duty where it ought not to have been denied by judging Incapacities where really there were none And thus the Law never designs an Office for a Person incapable of it where the Incapacity is so notorious as that it cannot be falsly applied by corrupt Interpretations Thus therefore that Emperor deprived this Patriarch Callinicus by putting out his Eyes Nor was this such a Maiming only as had made him at first unfit to be elected but such as disabled him to hold his Office tho' the Emperor had never taken it from him however he had come to it by a Disease or by any other Providence It was not like Antigonuss's biting of the Ear of Hyrcanus That only unqualified Hyrcanus for holding the Priesthood by the particular Constitution of the Jews which allowed none for Priests who had any such corporal smperfections Nor was it like the slitting of the Nose of this Emperor Justinian That only deprived him of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the graceful and Majestick Presence becoming a Prince but was still consistent with the Essential Qualifications for Government But this Blindness perfectly disabled our Patriarch Callinicus from ever Exercising any Patriarchal Office especially that most essential one of our Christian Eucharistical Sacrifice and no Law could ever design to keep an Office perpetually unless by allowing a perpetual unextinguishable Right in a Person who is under a perpetual natural Incapacity of Exercising it Thus therefore there was no need of a depriving Sentence against Callinicus when he was under this Incapacity himself could now pretend no Right to an Office which he could never hope to be able to exercise What Pretence therefore could he have for Separating from the Communion of Cyrus when himself was disabled from Officiating in any Communion What pretence could the Church have for Questioning the Ordinations of Cyrus when his Rival was not capable of exercising any better Ordinations But God be praised this is none of our present Fathers Case They are not under any such Incapacities FINIS