Provincial Synod However the constant Appeal now is from the Sentiments of Private Men and particular Synods to the Definitions of General Councils which are appealed to with as much confidence as if not one of them had ever been suspected or called in question but were all of undoubted Authority whereas there is indeed nothing more suspected than the credit of most of them and the chief Tenets of Popery will be found to have but little Authority from General Councils The Worship of Images will stand in great need of the second Council of Nice and Transubstantiation Auricular Confession c. will want support from the fourth of the Lateran and in short it will be almost as difficult to defend the Councils brought to authorize them as to defend the Doctrines themselves I think I have made it evident that this Argument from the Authority of Councils will be as unsuccessfull as all other Arguments have hitherto proved for it is a vain thing to attempt by any means the Defence of a Cause which will not be defended But in my Opinion the famous Mr. Schelstrate has gone the farthest towards the finding out an Expedient which may be of equal force in all Controversies For in the year MDCLXXXV he put out a Book intituled Dissertatio Apologetica de Disciplina Arcani against Ernestus Tentzelius a Lutheran Divine in defence of his Commentaries upon the second Canon of the Council of Antioch In this Book he shews that the Church concealed her Doctrines a long time and that the stream of Tradition like some Rivers ran for a great way under ground till at last it broke out and discovered it self in this Age or that Council If you enquire why we reade nothing of Transubstantiation in Ancient Authours The Answer is very easie and ready Disciplina Arcani p. 150 151. Why the Fathers did not assert the Worship of Images Disciplina Arcani p. 124. Why the Doctrine of the Trinity was not clearly taught before the Council of Nice Disciplina Arcani p. 10 17. Why we have no Accounts of the Seven Sacraments before the seventh Century Disciplina Arcani p. 104 106. Why the Writings of St. Denys the Areopagite lay so long concealed Disciplina Arcani p. 120. And so for any Novelty else Disciplina Arcani still returns upon you and it is so great a Charm that some would be almost afraid of it for it has a strange faculty of making every thing look aged that it can but come near This Disciplina Arcani is an occult Quality to salve all Difficulties by and say what you will prove what you will these two Emphatical Words shall bear down all before them And I am persuaded the following Considerations will stand out against any Attack but that of Disciplina Arcani A TABLE of the CONTENTS PART I. § THE False Dealing that has been used in publishing the Councils Page 1. § I. In putting out those which are forged ibid. § II. In suppressing those which are genuine 3. § III. In depraving those which are genuine which they have not wholly suppressed 5. 1. By Corrupting all the later Editions ibid. 2. By their Indices Expurgatorii ibid. 3. Instances of this in the four first General Councils 6. 4. Instances in the Councils of Basil and Trent 8. PART II. § I. PApists not agreed about the Number of General Councils 10. § II. Nor about their Authority the fifth Canon of the second General Council at Constantinople and the twenty eighth of the fourth General Council at Chalcedon have been thrown aside 12. § III. The fifth General Council at Constantinople was opposed by Pope Vigilius § IV. The sixth General Council contradicted as entirely forged or at least much corrupted 13. § V. The Council in Trullo is disputed about 14. § VI. 1. The second Council of Nice can scarcely be defended as general ibid. 2. The History of the Council 15. 3. Opposed by the Council of Frankford 17. 4. This farther proved 18. 5 6. The Objections against the Can. of the Council of Frankford which condemned Images answered 20 21 22. 7. The Council of Nice was not received for at least one Age in the Eastern or Western Churches 23. § VII 1. Papists cannot agree which is the eighth General Council 25. 2. The Pope's Legates were at the Council which restored Photius ibid. 3. And his Restoration was in effect approved on for some time after 26. 4. Though all is deny'd since with execrable Calumnies against Photius 27. 5. Which are sufficiently taken off by P. Nicholas and his Legates carriages and by Photius 's own Letters 28. 6. This is farther cleared 33. 7. It is no ways likely that Photius corrupted P. John the Eighth's Ep. Commonitorium in favour of himself 34. 8. Conclusion 35. § VIII Small proofs that the three first Councils of the Lateran were general 36. § IX 1. The fourth Lateran Council thought general by the Church of Rome 37. 2. Its Decrees in point of Doctrine 38. 3. in point of Discipline ibid. 4. Yet it lay unregarded for three hundred years 39. 5. Nothing decreed in this Council 40. 6 7. Papists shuffle about its Authority 42 43. § X. 1. The first Council of Lyons not thought general at first 46. 2. Omitted in the Venice Edition 47. 3. Its Decrees not much valued in France ibid. § XI Nothing in the second Council of Lyons to make it general 48. § XII The Council of Vienne was called onely upon a particular occasion 49. § XIII 1. Of the Council of Constance 50. 2. That Council above a Pope 51. 3. Not allowed by Martin the Fifth chosen by that Council 52. § XIV 1 2. Quarrels between Eugenius and the Council of Basil 53 54. 3. The Acts of this Council were ratified by Eugenius 54. § XV. 1. Causes of citing the Council of Florence 56. 2. The Gallican Church disown the principal Decree of this Council 57. § XVI 1. The French own the second Council of Pisa against the Fifth of the Lateran 58. 2. Though for politick Reasons Francis the First with his Clergy allowed the Fifth Lateran ibid. 3. And three years after they renounce it 59. 4. Even the highest Opposers of the Gallican Privileges speak doubtfully of it 60. 5. And it was onely a meeting of Sixty most Italian Bishops ibid. § XVII 1. The Council of Trent may be suspected by their own Concessions ibid. 2. Its Decrees about Discipline not received in France ib. 3. Which yet ought to be if it were received as general 61. 4. So that on both hands the Authority of the Council of Trent is rejected 62. § XVIII Modern Papists not agreed what Authority to give to Councils ibid. § XIX English Papists differ from all others in this Matter 63. § XX. Jesuits make the Pope infallible in Matters of Fact 64. § XXI 1. Herein contradicted by the French Clergy ibid. 2. Who in their Assembly censure the Arch-bishop of Gran for
in an Exception to reserve the Liberties of the Gallican Church entire And in the e Id. p. 348. Low Countries when Margaret Dutchess of Parma then Governess there required the Magistrates of every Province to make search whether any thing in the Decrees of the Council of Trent were contrary to the Rights of his Catholick Majesty or to the ancient customs of their Countrey they animadverted upon several Chapters particularly upon C. 5. Sess 24. which the French likewise particularly except against and they said it was an Innovation and the King might insist upon his Ancient Right 3. I think nothing can be a greater Evidence that this Council was not General than the opposition of National Churches in behalf of their particular Privileges in points of Reformation for a General Council may undoubtedly prescribe to particular Churches in matters of Discipline as the first General Councils did and oblige them to a compliance for the peace and benefit of the whole and the Council must be judge what is most conducing to that end To deny this Authority to a General Council is plainly to lay its Authority quite aside and to receive onely as much of it as particular Churches shall think fit for it were an extravagant thing to demand absolute obedience and submission in matters of Faith when points of Discipline are insisted upon against the express Decrees of the Council a Council may err in Doctrine but if it have any Authority this must extend at least to points of Discipline which are in themselves indifferent and may be altered as it shall seem most conducing to the good of the whole Church * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Euseb de Vita Constantini lib. 3. cap. 20. Constantine after the Council of Nice not onely determined the Controversie against Arius but the time of keeping of Easter and other things of Order and Discipline to which all Churches submitted whatever eager Debates they had had amongst themselves before The erecting the Churches of Constantinople and Jerusalem into Patriarchates and the settling of Church-Government was performed in the four first General Councils yet nothing was objected against the Authority of Councils in such Affairs nor did the Churches placed under the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Constantinople insist upon their particular Privileges onely the Church of Rome was unwilling to have Constantinople equalled to her self and therefore made a troublesome but fruitless opposition in the Council of Chalcedon 4. But if at this day the Church of France be so jealous of her Privileges in matters of Discipline we have much more reason to be carefull of the Privileges of our common Christianity in matters of Faith if she insist that her Bishops have Authority to decide the Causae Majores i. e. all Debates arising whether in matters of Faith or Discipline according to the Decrees of General Councils how can it be denied us to defend the Ancient Faith according to General Councils truly such if they reject the Decrees of Reformation how shall we subscribe Pope Pius's Creed nay how shall they subscribe it not by virtue of any obligation from this Church but because they otherwise think the Articles of it True and for the contrary reason we cannot subscribe them because we think them false so that the Authority of the Council of Trent is really laid aside on both hands and the merits of the cause must be the onely thing in Debate For to say that a General Council properly speaking cannot abridge a particular Church of her Privileges is to say that a particular Church is above a General Council or at least exempt from its Jurisdiction This is well enough understood at Rome where Gerbais's Book in defence of the Gallican Privileges is condemned § XVIII I have done now with their Councils and have shewn how far Papists themselves have been from thinking them infallible or from acknowledging most of them to be General whatever credit they may have gained by the ignorance and superstition of latter Ages when every Assembly of Bishops greater than ordinary was esteemed a General Council and every General Council voted it self infallible For 't is certain that in the most ignorant Ages they first fansied themselves infallible and then took the liberty to say and doe what they thought fit and so imposed many superstitious conceits and gainfull Projects on the world for infallible Truths It now remains onely to consider whether we can meet with any better satisfaction from the consent of the present Roman Church and to enquire whether there be any expedient to reconcile these differences concerning the Authority of their several Councils But here we are so far at a loss that we find them in nothing more disagreeing than in the very Fundamental Point upon which all the Authority of Councils depends and so disagreeing in this they must be at an eternal disagreement concerning the Councils themselves For some making the Pope above a General Council others a General Council above the Pope and a third sort making them co-ordinate those that place infallibility in the Pope alone have little reason to regard a Council and those that place it in a Council alone do upon occasion as little respect the Pope or judge of General Councils by Bellarmin's Rule and seek no farther than for the Pope's confirmation but those that think it is in neither separately can acquiesce in the Determinations neither of Pope nor Council unless they both concur unanimously in their Determinations and whoever make the Church diffusive to be the Judge of what Councils are General and what are not so are still at a wider difference from all the rest § XIX Our English Papists seem generally to be of the last Opinion placing the Authority of the Church in the Agreement of the Pope with a General Council but making the Authority of General Councils to depend upon the Reception of the Church diffusive hereby placing the Authority Executively onely in General Councils confirmed by the Pope but fundamentally and radically in the Church upon whose Approbation all depends but by Church they understand onely the governing part of it and such as would have had a right to vote if they had been assembled in Council This is the Doctrine advanced in the Book so much valued by our English Papists The Guide in Controversies and because this way has most Artifice and Amusement in it they are willing to put the issue here though most of their Priests must needs have great Prejudices against it from a foreign Education For the French are of the second opinion and the Pope with all his Adherents of the first How well the Guide's Hypothesis has been accepted abroad I am not able to say but it will be best guessed at by the contest that has been about the two other opinions whether the Parties seem inclinable to admit of the Guide as a Reconciler § XX. The Jesuites are for no less than a Personal
Labbé had caused a Draught of the Work to be printed and I am apt to think that through this Authour's Complaint the Council of Basil had more right done it than otherwise at would have had But the Treatises prefix't in the Apparatus are such as quite overthrow the Gallican Privileges and the Doctrines peculiar to that Church For Cardinal Jacobatius de Conciliis sets himself purposely to prove the Superiority of the Pope to a Council and answers all Objections against it lib. 10. p. 519. in Appar Concil Labbé and in plain terms denies the Authority of the Decrees of Constance and making use of those known Evasions that these Decrees were to take place onely in the times of Schism between two contending Popes or in case of Heresie or that it was no general Constitution but limited to the present exigency of Affairs in short he denies that any Constitution of a Council can bind the Pope because he has no Superiour but God and so in all points he palpably contradicts the Doctrine of the French Church p. 536. Paulus Fabulottus de Potestate Papae supra Concilium proves his Tenets by all manner of Arguments from Scripture from Reason from History from Fathers and from Councils and in his fifth Chap. where he shews the Pope's Superiority from Councils be shews particularly that the French ought not to except against the Authority of the last Council of the Lateran because they acknowledge its Authority in enjoying the Privileges granted them in the Bull of Leo the Tenth which confirmed it and it is unreasonable says he that they should allow it when it makes for their advantage and reject it in other matters Fabulott ib. p. 69 70. He pretends to shew that Martin the Fifth did by his Bull retract the Decrees of the Fourth and Fifth Sessions of Constance made says he in Schism by appointing the Question to be put to all suspected of Heresie An credant Romanum Pontificem in Dei Ecclesia supremam habere Potestatem Whether they believe that the Pope has supreme Power ' in the Church of God And so turns the Council of Constance upon the French ib. In a word he concludes that whoever persists obstinately in the contrary Opinion against so many Councils for he produces no fewer than six whereof that of Constance is the second must needs be an Heretick He particularly answers the Objections brought from the Council of Constance in the usual manner as for the Council of Basil he says all Catholicks confess it was not a lawfull Council when it defined Councils to be above the Pope At last he concludes with admiration that any one should to the destruction of his Soul be so perverse as to call in question so certain a Truth established on so strong Arguments and so great Authorities Caranza maintains the Popes Infallibility and says it was never doubted of 'till the Councils of Constance and Basil Controver 3. p. 112. in Appar Labbei He spends his fourth Controversie in shewing against these two Councils that Pope's are against General Councils Petrus de Monte in his Monarchia runs as high as any of the rest and to make a Pope a complete Monarch exempts the Clergy from the Obedience and their Possessions from the Dominions of temporal Princes in Apparat. p. 155. But Jacobatius if it be possible goes beyond this For he maintains the Deposing Power and affirms that the Pope alone may depose Emperours and Kings and whomsoever he pleases and particularly the King of France and this without the advice and concurrence of his Cardinals he makes no doubt of his deposing Power the onely Question is whether he can doe it alone without his Cardinals and he determines in the Affirmative ibid. pag. 329. so little regard is to be had to that which is esteemed the Doctrine of the French Church and which some would have us think is the Roman-Catholick Doctrine and the Doctrine against the Pope's Infallibility the Sententie Parisiensium as it is called in contempt is every where decryed even in Paris it self The Jesuits at Cologne laid down this Rule In Censura Coloniensi fol. 132. If any Man examin the Doctrine of the Pope by the Rule of God's Word and seeing that it is different chance to contradict it let him be rooted out with Fire and Sword Walsh Irish Remonstr Treat 4. p. 61. And both the Clergy and People of the Roman Communion in Ireland generally hold the Pope's Infallibility being influenced by the Jesuits as they are in most places Insomuch that in MDCLXVI they refused to sign the three last of the six Propositions which the Sorbon in MDCLXIII had presented to the most Christian King and to apply them as they did the first three to his Majesty of Great Britain and His Subjects though they contain nothing but an Assertion of the King's Prerogatives and a Denial of the Pope's Infallibility Irish Remon Treat 3. p. 23. and Treat 4. p. 58. This we are told by One who is an Advocate for Popish Loyalty and it is confessed by Another who made it the Business of his Life to write against the Deposing Doctrine that this is the Doctrine most generally received amongst those of that Communion Neque quenquam movere debet ut aliàs observavi in Apol. num 4.49 utì citatur in margine quod opinio haec quae Summo Pontifici hanc potestatem tribuit communio sit quà m opposita plurésque Doctores eam sequantur c. Widrington Discuss Discussionis Praef. So little security have we that Popery is the same thing in France that it is at Rome and in other Popish Countries or that the Bishop of Meaux's Exposition is good Popery even in Paris it self But that which is the Doctrine generally taught we are often told by the Guide is equivalent to the Definitions of a General Council inasmuch as no Council can be known to be general nor consequently to teach true Doctrine but by the Reception it meets with from the Church and so the Misrepresenters will be found to be those that soften and palliate Popery contrary to the sense of the most of that Communion I am sure Cardinal Poole and his Synod at Lambeth MDLVI were for Popery as it is at Rome they did not content themselves to fetch it from France For they receive the Bulla Coenae equalling its Authority even to the Decrees of General Councils and Apostolical Traditions and they profess to own the full extent of Power attributed to the Pope by the Council of Florence Decret 2. and they quote it in the usual form Quemadmodum etiam in gestis OEcumenicorum Conciliorum in Sacris Canonibus continetur not Quemadmodum c. as we are now taught to reade it according to the true Translation vid. Walsh Lett. to the Bishop of Lincoln p. 274. if such a nicety will make any material difference and this was done by Cardinal Poole by virtue of his Legantine Power in a
giving the Pope an unlimited Power to judge of Controversies in the Faith 65. § XXII The nature of the Question will bear no accommodation 67. § XXIII The Exceptions against many Councils the Papists call General are sufficient against their Infallibility ibid. § XXIV Allowing them General they would not therefore necessarily be infallible ibid. § XXV If they are infallible in Matters of Faith they ought to be so in Matters of Discipline 69. § XXVI 1. Great difference is to be put between ancient and modern Councils ibid. 2. Especially when the Pope had arrogated a Power of calling them 71. AN HISTORICAL EXAMINATION OF The Authority OF COUNCILS I Design two Things First To shew the false dealing that has been used in putting forth the Councils Secondly To shew that Papists are not agreed in the Authority of them as they are put forth PART I. The false dealing that has been used in putting forth the Councils And this 1. By putting forth those that are wholly forged 2. By suppressing those that are genuine 3. By depraving those that are genuine which they have not thought fit to suppress § I. By putting forth those that are forged Of this number is the Synod pretended to have been held at Antioch by the Apostles The eighth Canon whereof is produced for the Worship of Images and the Council of Sinuessa brought by Bellarmin to prove the Pope above a General Council which notwithstanding the improbability that three hundred and three Bishops a De Conc. lib. 2. c. 17. could meet together under Diocletian and many other Inconsistencies yet must stand upon record as an authentick Council The two Councils held at Rome under Silvester I. brought to establish the Pope's Authority and the last of them to warrant many other Points of Popery as Chrism the Coelibacy of the Clergy c. Though they have been detected of manifest Forgery * Vid. Rob. Coci Censuram quor undam Scriptorum vers finem yet retain as good a Place in the Body of the Councils as ever onely the last Canon of the second Roman Council was so palpable that though it be very honourable for the Pope yet Labbé could not but remark that perhaps it might be forged by Isidore Mercator or at least that the expression à Regibus was thrust in To pass by the Acts of the Council of Nice and the eighty Arabick Canons which some are willing to impose upon us for genuine and quote them upon occasion though Baronius confesses the Acts suppositious and all Historians testifie that the Nicene Fathers made but twenty Canons To pass by these and the early Fraud and inexcusable Mistake of putting the Sardican Canons into the number of the Nicene to warrant the Right of Appeals to Rome as well as the many Contests about forged Acts that have been between the Greeks and Latins which shall be enquired into when we come to the Case of Photius To mention I say no more of this kind The Decretal Epistles which cannot be denyed to have been forged and imposed upon the World by Isidore Mercator yet have not lost their place among the Councils but stand there as if they expected some second Turrianus to defend them for unless more credit were designed them by it than they deserve 't is unaccountable why they should be suffered to take up so much room which might be better filled I conclude this particular with the observation of Richerius b Hist Conc. Gen. l. 1. p. 36. upon occasion of the Forgery of an Epistle from the Council of Nice to Pope Silvester to desire his confirmation Equidem cum maximo animi moerore dicere cogor nullos extare libros in quibus tot tantáque fictitia adulterina scripta quà m in Tomis Conciliorum legantur c. Indeed I am forced to say with exceeding great grief of mind that there are no Books in which there are so many and so egregiously counterfeit and spurious writings as may be read in the Tomes of the Councils § II. By suppressing Councils that are genuine The first and second Councils of Pisa are omitted by all the Collectors of Councils before Labbé and the Acts of the second Council are omitted by him too though the Council of Constance was but a Continuation of the first Pisan Council and the second being owned by the French in derogation to the last of Lateran was published out of the French King's Library with the former by the special privilege of his most Christian Majesty A. MDCXII And though Labbé thinks fit to excuse the omission by saying that the Acts and Apology of this pretended Council Conciliabulum Pisanum were collected by Schismaticks and Hereticks and published under a false name and that Lewis the Twelfth in MDXIII called it onely a pretended Council and denyed it all favour and assistence yet the Royal Approbation of this Edition and the exact agreement of all these Acts with the Acts of the same Council as we find them in Richerius is a sufficient evidence against the imputation of Forgery neither need they have been so very scrupulous upon this Head who have themselves inserted Canons and Synodical Rescripts which they acknowledge to be spurious but a Lye when it makes for them shall pass with a gentle Censure whereas Truth when it makes against them shall be stifled if any thing like an Excuse can be brought to palliate their proceedings As to Lewis the Twelfth there is this to be said That he was engaged in a War with Julius the Second the Venetians and the Spaniards at the same time and gained a memorable Victory at Ravenna over their united Forces but the English setting upon him at home he was forced notwithstanding to give over in Italy in MDXIII and so 't is not unlikely that to reconcile himself to the Pope he might then send that message but it is manifest from the Acts themselves and the Letters printed at the End of them that from the beginning of the Council to that time he could be no Friend either to the Pope or to his Council The same Year Julius dyes and Leo the Tenth succeeds A Peace being concluded with England and Lewis taking in Marriage Mary Sister to Henry the Eighth he prepares for War again in Italy but dyes in MDXV From whence it evidently appears which Council Lewis was most for and for what Reason he disclaimed the Council of Pisa The Council of Basil is wholly left out in the Roman Edition as spurious and was left out by Cardinal Bellarmin's Advice as Richerius c Rich. Hist Conc. Gen. lib. 111. c. 6. was informed by those who were well acquainted with him Quod inceptum facinus quidem says Richerius est absolutâ dignum Monarchiâ Curiae Romanae cui propositum est quod jure non potest id viâ facti consequi Which Action of theirs is worthy of the absolute Monarchy of the Court of Rome which is
resolved to obtain that in fact that they cannot defend in right And it is remarkable that Sirmondus was the Publisher of this Edition d Cossart Praef. ad Conc. a man so much suspected at Rome for too great Integrity that he was not allowed free access to their MSS. In the first Draught of the Councils put out by Labbé the Council of Basil was styled onely Concilium Basiliense whereas in Binius 't is intituled Concilium OEcumenicum ex parte reprobatum though in the same Draught he gave the Title of OEcumenical to that of Florence and to the last of the Lateran but perhaps the Complaint that was then made of it by an Advocate of Parliament in a Book intituled The pernicious Consequences of the New Heresie of the Jesuites might give occasion to the alteration in the Title of the Council of Basil for we have it now printed as it is in Binius But as that Authour observes e New Heresie of the Jesuites p. 140. all means have been used to discredit the Council of Basil insomuch that a List of the General Councils at the Beginning of the Epitome of Canon-law by Antonius Augustinus has been falsified by leaving out the Council of Basil which that Learned Archbishop had inserted among the rest as may be seen for after these words Constantiense sub Martino quinto there follows in the falsified Editions Florentinum sub eodem which is ridiculous the Council of Florence not having been held under Martin the Fifth but it sufficiently shews how the uncorrupted Copies were viz. after that of Constance Basiliense sub Eugenio and then Florentinum sub eodem The Concilium Delectorum Cardinalium Concilium delectorum Cardinalium aliorum Praelatorum de emendanda Ecclesia S. D. N. P. Paulo Tertio ipso jubente conscriptum exhibitum Anno MDXXXVIII which was preparatory to the Council of Trent and may well be reckoned a part of it yet could never be admitted among the Councils since Crabbe's Edition in MDLL since it is not in two other of his Editions though William Crashaw particularly complained of the omission in a printed Letter to Binius Ad Severinum Binium Lovaniensem Theologum Epistola Commonitoria super Conciliorum Generalium Editione ab ipso nuper adornata c. Londini MDCXXIV and afterwards reprinted it himself and it has been since published twice at Paris once with the two Councils of Pisa c. MDCXII and again lately with some pieces of Clemanges Durandus de modo celebrandi Concilii c. But because that Council too fully sets forth what great necessity there was of a Reformation in capite membris it has been excluded all the Editions of Councils since Crabbe's time § III. 1. By depraving the Councils which are Genuine And here we have reason to suspect much more than has hitherto been discover'd for in the Vatican Library there have been certain men employ'd onely to transcribe Acts of the Councils and Copies of the Fathers works and in transcribing to imitate the ancient Copies as near as is possible Tho. James Treat of the Corrupt of Script c. in Append. to the Reader as Dr. James of Oxford was informed by a Gentleman who saw them at this work in the Vatican and profer'd to make oath of it if need was It has been long ago observed that the last Editions of the Councils are always the worst so that Dr. Whitaker made it his earnest request to the Archbishop of Canterbury that there might be some order taken for the preserving of Crabbe's Edition which he foresaw would never be printed again and Dr. James f James ibid. p. 102. shews that Crabbe himself is not without corruptions which made him complain that no Protestant had put forth an Edition of the Councils or set himself to rectify the Errours of Popish Editions but he says Dr. Ward Master of Sidney College in Cambridge was then about it 2. 'T is certain the Indices Expurgatorii reach MSS. as well as printed Books g Possevin Bibliothec. lib. 1. c. 12. and 't is as certain h James Index Lib. Prohibit à Pontificiis that the Inquisitours of several places cannot agree among themselves but Arias Montanus who was himself a chief Inquisitour in the Low-Countreys has his own Books put into the Roman Index so that no body can tell whither this expedient of Purgation may come at last or how far it has already come it is but mangling the old MSS. and then counterfeiting them in a new Transcription and the MSS. will all speak as they would have them Ludovicus Surius shewed Junius * Jun. Praef. ad Ind. Expurg what depravations he was to make in the Edition of St. Ambrose and assur'd him that it would be the worst and most corrupt Edition of that Father And we cannot wonder if these practices had a great share in the motives to the conversion of Henricus Buxhornius i Com. de Euchar Harm lib. 3. in principio who before was one of the principal Expurgators For some time these Indices Expurgatorii k W. Crashaw's Romish Forg Pref. were a great Mystery and the English Papists would not believe but it was some trick of Beza's or Junius's to disgrace the Catholick Cause l James Mystery of the Ind. Exp. p. 22. The Index Expurgatorius of Antwerp was by chance first discover'd by Junius those of Spain and Portugal were never known till the taking of Cales and the Roman Index was procured not without much difficulty After all these discoveries they could no longer complain of being misrepresented though our English Papists were so backward in believing this part of Popery that m Crashaw ibid. Crashaw was forced to be at the trouble of procuring two Editions of Ferus upon St. John one that had undergone the Index and another that was printed before the invention of Indices to convince them 3. Let us now see what exploits have been done by these Arts The Discoveries of Crashaw and Coke and Reynolds but especially of James in this kind will never be forgotten and so need no repeating any farther than they concern the Councils to which I shall confine my self and shew that very material passages in them have been mangled or wholly omitted 'T is very well known what attempts have been made to give us various Readings of the sixth Canon of Nice to procure the Pope's Supremacy and that for the same reason the fifth Canon of the second General Council and the twenty eighth of Chalcedon have been rejected and branded as spurious All the Editions of Councils bear * James Corrupt of Script c. p. 91. that St. Cyrill did preside in the Council of Ephesus as Pope Celestine's Deputy against the Authority of the Translation of Dionysius Exiguus and the Greek MSS. as Dr. James witnesseth But this is not the onely forgery we meet withall in this Council
they would have Request made to the Pope to confirm the Council It is subjoined Responderunt Placet They all desire it And there is no mention of the least dissent and presently follows the dismission of the Fathers And after this manner have all the Editions been printed ever since without the least intimation that one Bishop demurred upon it h Richer ib. Ex quo patet Curiae Romanae propositum esse omnia delere atque supprimere Acta quae juribus suis usurpatis adversantur hinc etiam fit ut nulla Apocrypha pro veris legantur etiam in antiquis Conciliis Whence it appears that the Court of Rome is resolved to suppress and abolish all those Acts which shall contradict their usurped Rights and hence it is that many spurious things are read as genuine even in the ancient Councils I need pursue this subject no farther nor seek for Instances to make good this observation of Richerius his Testimony may suffice instead of a thousand Instances Nor shall I make any advantage of the many other great Corruptions wherewith partly through Ignorance partly with Design the monuments of Antiquity are defaced as the Authour of the Preface to Paul the Fifth's Edition of General Councils complains who was Sirmondus as i Praef. ad Conc. Cossartius informs us nor of the great alterations under that pretence made in innumerable places of the Roman Edition which have been retained ever since besides the carelesness of the several Publishers that has made the best Editions extreamly uncorrect which put Baluzius k Praef. ad Conc. Tem. 1. upon a new Collection And we have some better hopes of him if his skill in the Greek Tongue qualifie him for such a Work notwithstanding the sharp Contest that has been between him and M. Faget concerning Peter de Marca's posthumous Works or the undervaluing l Gerbais de Causis majoribus Character lately given him by a Doctour of the Sorbon PART II. § I. PApists are not agreed in the Authority of Councils I mean they are not agreed what Councils are General and what are not so They differ as much about the Councils as they do about the Notes of the Church For as Costerus assigns three Coccius five Bellarmin fifteen Bozius an hundred Notes so some assign more some fewer General Councils though the common computation proceeds no higher than to eighteen of such as are without exception As the seventh and eighth General Councils were not a long time received into the Professions of Faith which I shew in the seventh so the number of Councils recited in those Professions not exceeding eight as is manifest by those Professions in the Diurnus Romanus published by Garnerius shew that eight onely were looked upon as truly General and the rest not as of equal Authority Cardinal Contarenus in his short account of Councils written to Paul the Third and presented to him on his calling the Council of Trent or that of the delegated Cardinals in order to it he being one of the number reckons that for the eighth General Council which deposed Photius and the Council of Florence for the ninth not so much as naming any of the Lateran Councils but the last and not esteeming either this or that of Lyons under Gregory the Tenth nor that of Constance or Basil General though he does name them m Contarenus Sum. Conc. Edit Venet. MDLXII Cardinal Pole with his Synod at Lambeth under Paul the Fourth A. D. MDLVI calls the Council of Florence the eighth General Council though they own the fourth Lateran under Innocent the Third for General as they doe likewise the fifth Lateran n Decret 2. They mention the fourth of Lateran frequently and never but under the Title of a General Council and that of Lyons under Gregory the Tenth they mention under the same Character o Decret 3. Abraham Cretensis the first Publisher of the Council of Florence gives it the Title of the eighth General Council and so the Approbation of Clement the Seventh prefix'd to that Edition styles it and so Cardinal Pole with his Clergy account it So that this was the opinion of the Members p Launoy Epist part VIII ad Francisc Bonum of the Council and of the first Publishers of it and of our English Clergy in Queen Mary's Reign whereas in the common account new style the Council of Florence is the Sixteenth Merlin gives us but eight General Councils which are the first six with those of Constance and Basil In the Vatican Library as it now stands and was erected by Sixtus Quintus A. D. MDLXXXVIII where all the General Councils are represented in painting with Inscriptions to explain them there are but two Lateran Councils viz. Those under Alexander the Third and Innocent the Third q Angelus Roccha de Biblioth Vatican p. 200. Roccha in his Explications reckons the Council of Vienne the fifteenth and then proceeds to the Council of Florence which he calls the eighteenth as it is indeed computing the two intermediate Councils of Constance and Basil but Sixtus Quintus thought fit to take no notice of them in the Vatican but Roccha makes them up a full Score though the Councils of Constance and Basil be onely supposed not expressed in the number So many differing accounts we have concerning the number of General Councils to which may be added one more by taking in the Council of Arles as it ought to be in St. Augustine's opinion and in the opinion of Launoy Albaspinaeus Marca Labbé Sirmondus and others r Launoy confirmat dissert de vera plenarii Concilii ap Augustin notione p. 96. in which Council the Bishop of Arles presided to examine the Cause of the Donatists which had been before determined by the Bishop of Rome and his Synod they confirmed the Judgment past at Rome but would have as certainly nulled it if the Sentence had been wrong The two latter Editions of the Councils for awhile continue the Tale of them and the last continues it longer than the Royal Edition does but afterwards they break off and cease numbering onely giving us them as they come which may be a farther evidence how little certainty and exactness there is in any thing that relates to a Catalogue of General Councils It seems then we are at last reduced to that notable Expedient which is said to have been in a late Preachment proposed about the Sacraments If we must have Councils my Beloved let us take the greatest number and then we are sure to have all and so for the largest Bible and the largest Creed that we may be sure to have enough of whatever it be But because Bellarmin's number of Councils seems to be most in vogue I shall consider his eighteen which he assures us are all over Infallible and fully approved whereas there are half a dozen that have had the ill luck not to pass muster though they are pretty tolerable in the
main and we must take part and leave part as the Popes have thought fit but there is a third sort so abominable that they are utterly condemned § II. I shall examin what agreement there is amongst Papists concerning the Authority of the several approved General Councils The second Gen. Council at Constantinop circa A.D. CCCLXXXI secundum Richer part 1. c. 5. p. 169. And here we need not go far The second General Council it self as was before observed has not escaped For Baronius An. CCCLXXXI says that the fifth Canon of that Council was not received by the Church of Rome and he suspects it is forged Bellarmin says it was not consented to by the Pope ſ Lib. 2. de Rom. Pontif. c. 18. and therefore void so says Albertus Pighius t In Diatriba de Conc. 6 7. p. 279. and Coriolanus v In Summa Concil The four reasons which Baronius brings to invalidate its Authority Binius has transcribed into his Notes which Labbé and Cossartius have printed in their Edition without the least censure or animadversion but in the margin over against the Canon add a Note of their own referring to some Epistles of Leo which are quoted by Baronius to disprove its Authority Now the onely fault they can find with this Canon is that it makes the Bishop of C. P. next Primate to the Bishop of Rome for this reason because that City was new Rome which would make the Pope's power and greatness depend upon the Preheminence that the City of Rome held in the Empire not upon any Divine Right And for no better reason they reject the twenty eighth Canon of Chalcedon The fourth Gen. Council at Chalced. circa An. D. CCCCLI Richer part 1. c. 8. p. 333. and would undoubtedly have rejected all the Canons of the first four General Councils if they had stood in the way of the Pope's Authority For the fifth Canon of C. P. is in all Copies and there is no more cause to suspect it than any other Canon of the Council The twenty eighth of Chalcedon with those that follow it is wanting indeed in some Copies but this as well as that of C. P. must be owned by all in the Church of Rome that hold a Council above the Pope for if the major part of the Church is of sufficient Authority to make them so these Canons are as authentick as any in all the Volumes of Councils * Du Pin dissert 1. p. 57. For the honour and jurisdiction of the Patriarch of C. P. is founded upon the Laws of the Empire and the consent of the universal Church The fifth General Council held at C. P. An. Do. DLIII and these Canons have generally been so far owned as to be inserted into the Books of Canons § III. The fifth General Council held under the Emperour Justinian about the middle of the sixth Century was opposed by Pope Vigilius x Baluz Nova Collect. Conc. Tom. 1. col 1546. to the utmost till he was forced to submit and retract his Heresie to recover himself from Banishment From whence a Query will arise How a Papist can be better assured that this Council is true than that it is false or Whether a Council can be first false and then without the least alteration in its Doctrine Infallible or How long time a Pope's Sentence must be past before its Effect of Infallibility be produced Whether one Pope may not retract another's Sentence as well as the same Pope his own And if so Whether Innocent the Eleventh for instance may not retract the Sentence of Pius the Fourth and so vacate the Council of Trent § IV. Albertus Pighius wrote a Book y Diatriba de Conc. 6 7. on purpose to prove the sixth and seventh Councils both forged The sixth Gen. Council held at C. P. circa An. Do. DCLXXXI vel ut alii putant DCLXX. Richer Hist Conc. Hist Gen. p. 1. c. 10. p. 525. The seventh was then newly published but from what Copy or upon what Authority he says was unknown Franciscus Turrianus undertook their defence Bellarmin is for compounding the business and is inclined z De Rom. Pontif. l. 4. c. 11. to think that many Forgeries may indeed be crept in Binius follows him onely he is more positive as his manner is to give us something that is his own Labbé and Cossartius let his Notes pass without censure All the stir is that the sixth Council condemned Pope Honorius for a Heretick and the seventh approves the Sentence and several times anathematizeth him whom these men would willingly acquit though there be as much evidence for it as can well be for any matter of Fact. The Anathema against him was solemnly pronounced every year till of late on the Festival of St. Leo the Second and every Pope anathematized him in the Profession of Faith which he made at his Consecration and sent it to the other Bishops a Garnerli Liber Diurnus in Professione Fides secundâ dissert in eandem Launoil Epist part 5. ep 2. p. 12. c. The Arguments of Baronius to prove the sixth Council corrupted are now laughed at b Du Pin dissert 5. p. 350. though F. Combesis c New Heresie of the Jesuites p. 91. was violently treated by Raynaud a Jesuite not long ago in a most malitious Satyr against the whole Dominican Order onely because he had exposed Baronius on this subject But Garnerius endeavours to palliate the matter by saying He was condemned onely for favouring Hereticks and conniving at them Natales Alex. formally proves d Sec. 7. that he spake like a Heretick and acted like a Heretick and communicated with Hereticks and yet at the same time proves he was no Heretick So impossible is it for Popes to be Hereticks For any other Bishop had certainly been an Heretick though he had done but half so much But Du Pin e Dissert 5. p. 349. has confuted all this Sophistry and so 't is to be hoped that now these Councils may be genuine in France where Honorius is an Heretick or at least anathematized for a Favourer of Hereticks but of what credit they are at Rome as to this Point is easie to be imagined He will scarce pass for a true Catholick there who had not rather part with two Councils than one Pope § V. But here we must not omit the Dispute betwixt the Greeks and the Latins concerning the Council in Trullo Synodus Quinisexta in Trullo circiter An. Dom. DCLXXXI secundum Labbé in Tom. Conc. called Synodus Quinisexta because it was a kind of Supplement to the fifth and sixth Councils The Greeks maintain against the Latins that this Council was General they alledge that the Pope's Legates were present and subscribed its Canons which the Pope himself indeed afterwards refused to doe but the Council styles it self General and if want of the Pope's approbation could
into other causes Holstenius would not allow this to be the rise of the Schism but Pet. de Marca p Concord Imp. Sacâ—rd lib. 1. § 4. cum Baluz observ Prolegom p. 1â— defends himself against his objections and maintains what he had before asserted that no other cause could be assigned Baluzius adds that he might have said farther that the Popes of Rome were in the fault and could never justifie their pretensions which had been no more says he than our Ancestours have said before as he there shews by particular Instances We see that Pope John's Epistles are as fully for abrogating this Council in Ivo Carnutensis as Photius could make them though he had endeavoured it never so much and for my part I cannot believe that Photius was so much concerned for the Pope's Approbation as that he would be at the pains to falsifie the Acts of a Council upon that account he q Anast Praefat col 967. had excommunicated and deposed Pope Nicholas and though he was himself afterwards deposed yet was he restored without the Pope's leave or knowledge onely the Pope had some hopes of having his pretensions to Bulgaria succeed and upon that sent to ratifie what he could not hinder but when he r Bin. ex Baronio Conc. Tom. 9. col 326. found himself mistaken in his design and Photius the same man still he fell foul upon him as his Predecessours had done Now cannot I be persuaded that Photius if he could be so base and wicked as to make a thousand Forgeries would yet doe it here when he could not hope to be undiscovered or would condescend to use such vile and foolish Arts onely to countenance his proceedings with the appearance of that Authority which he had in so much scorn and defiance This would be as if Archbishop Cranmer after he had renounced the Pope's Supremacy should have falsified the Bulls which the Pope dispatched hitherto for his promotion to the See of Canterbury The Greeks we have seen looked upon this as the healing Synod which after the death of Ignatius had reconciled all differences amongst them by making void the Council held against Photius and settling him in his See again and therefore whatever heats had passed between Ignatius and Photius as it often happens between very good men and had happened between their own St. Chrysostom and Epiphanius yet now these things being composed into a happy peace and settlement notwithstanding the Pope's Anathema they received the names of both Photius and Ignatius into their Diptychs and register'd them among their Saints whom they most solemnly commemorate in their Prayers 8. There are so many Improbabilities in the Story against Photius that they will hardly gain belief without a Miracle and therefore we are told that in the Council held against him at Rome under Adrian the Second when the Book which contained his Vindication after it had been trampled upon by all the Reverend Assembly was at last thrown by his Holiness into the fire the flames catched at it and devoured it immediately in a strange manner with a noisome smell and a kind of Pitch colour tinctured the fire and besides a great showr happening at the same time increased the flames as if so much Oil had been thrown upon them And now who is so hardy as to deny the Authority of any thing that was said or done against Photius or to doubt but that the fourth Council of C. P. is in full force and infallibly the eighth General Council § VIII The imperfect account we have of the three first Lateran Councils serves onely to shew the little esteem which was formerly had of them The first Later Council A. D. MCXXIII The second Lat. Council A. MCXXXIX The third Lat. Council A. MCLXXX or MCLXXIX secundum Lab. how General or Infallible soever they might be Bellarmin confesses that the two first are not extant and no great discoveries have been made of them since his time Caranza and Sylvius mention none of the three and Platina passes them all over without bestowing so much as the Title of General upon them and with so little remark as shews that he esteemed them none of the most considerable Actions of those Popes Lives who called them Indeed there are few Provincial Synods the Records whereof less care has been taken of nor could it f Platina in Calixto Secundo Innoc. Secundo Alexan. Tertio be that any Council should universally obtain amidst so much Faction and Schism and among so many Antipopes as then vexed and divided the Church But it was the custome of those times to call all Councils General which made any tolerable settlement of the Popedom with the approbation of some of the chief Western Princes Thus William of Tyre t Bell. sacr lib. 21. c. 26. speaking of the Third Council of Lateran Cùm anno praecedente indicta esset per universum Latinorum orbem Romae Synodus Generalis ad eandem Synodum vocati profecti sunt de nostro Oriente c. When there was a general Synod called at Rome the foregoing year throughout all the Latin World those who were called went out of the East c. He mentions no more out of the East but himself and three other Bishops with one Prior and one Abbat and he as most think was a Latin and so 't is probable were all the rest however the Greeks in this Council opposed the Latins and would not yield in the least But not onely Western Councils but National and Provincial Synods were sometimes styled General and Sir Roger Twisden v Historic Vindic. cap. 8. p. 162. Eodem a MCCXXII Magister Stephanus de Langetuna Generale Concilium celebravit apud Oxonlum Hist Maj. ad annum MCCXXII gives many Instances to shew that the distinction of General Councils at least in that sense in which it is now taken was not suddenly brought into the Church many Synods by our Writers being called General to which the obligation was never of that nature as if they did not or could not err and the same learned Authour proves * p. 167. that the Lateran Council under Innocent II. was never received in England thus Matt. Paris says that Stephen Langton held a General Council at Oxford yet the name of General bestowed upon them by some well disposed to that Popes Interest who called them is almost all that can be shewn for the Authority of these three Councils It doth not appear that any of the Eastern Bishops were in the two first and it is certain that the Greeks dissented in the third as they ever did when they had no restraint upon them 'T is remarkable that in this Council an Oath was drawn up by which all the Bishops that had rejected Alexander the Third abjured and sware Allegiance to him against all men contra omnem hominem which x Labbé Conc. Pontificale Rom. The fourth Lat. Councâ—â— MCCXV Oath
Laws of God and the Decrees of the Council so that here it seems we have the same Council contradicting it self § XIV 1. The Council of Basil as Richerius observes The Council of Basil MCCCCXXXI was but the practick and executive part of the Council of Constance and therefore in the second Sess g Lib. 3. cap. 1. § 1. they lay down the fourth and fifth Sess of Constance as the ground and Foundation upon which all their proceedings were to depend This startled Pope Eugenius so that he immediately sent to his Legate to dissolve this Council and indict one at Bononia under pretence of receiving the Greeks there with more conveniency and thither he would come and preside in person The Cardinal St. Angelo his Nuncio dissuades him all he can The Synod in the mean time is dealt with about a dissolution by the Bishops of Tarentum and Colosse but is refractary and in the third Session desires his Holiness not to be troublesome they recount to him the Decrees of the Council of Constance concerning a Council's being above the Pope in a word they tell him plainly 't is not in his power to dissolve them In the twelfth Session they set him a time in which if he think fit to join himself to the Council well if not they cannot help it he must take what follows the time set was at first sixty days and in the thirteenth Session because these were expired and he had not revoked his Bulls whereby he pretended to have dissolved the Council he is accused of Contumacy yet in the fourteenth Session they were so kind as to enlarge the time to ninety days and to propose three several forms to him by which he might acknowledge the Authority of the Council and join himself to it The Pope could not but remember how the Council of Constance had dealt with three of his Predecessours and so at last is brought to a compliance he owns the Council to be general and recalls the Bulls issued forth for its dissolution and declares them void and that the Council is and had been all along from the beginning legal and that his Bulls to dissolve it did not in the least invalidate its Authority Hereupon his Legates are admitted into the Council but not before they had been sworn to the Decrees of the fourth and fifth Session of Constance which define the Superiority of Councils This was done in the 16th Session but would not suffice it seems for in the eighteenth Session they again repeat and renew these Decrees now a Fifth time and give this reason for it because it highly concerned the whole Christian World to be certified in the point that the Pope in three cases is inferiour to a Council viz. when matters of Faith or the extirpation of Schism or the reformation of the Church in Capite Membris is in agitation 2. Now one would imagine all had been well between the Pope and the Council yet no sooner was the Emperour Sigismund dead of whom he stood most in awe but Eugenius appoints a Council at Ferrara and that of Basil is as angry and peremptory with him as ever and Session the twenty sixth sends him word that unless he appear either in person or by his Legate within sixty days they will proceed against him and they are as good as their word for at the end of that term of time they pronounce his Bull void and shew the invalidity of it in all particulars insisting on the Council of Constance Session the thirty third they proceed yet higher and in vindication of that Council pronounce all those Hereticks that deny the Superiority of Councils and hereupon pronounce Eugenius not onely a Heretick but a Heretick relapsed and this they did after the most strict and deliberate determination in the most deliberate and solemn manner 3. Thus we see the Decrees of the Council of Constance were in five several Sessions confirmed by this of Basil all which were ratified by Eugenius himself and Pius the Second in the same Bull whereby he retracts that which he had written for the Council of Basil against Eugenius formally approves the Council of Constance without making any Exceptions besides they were twice confirmed after his falling off from the Council and all those were declared Hereticks not excepting Eugenius himself that should oppose this Doctrine so that in the sense of this Council and of those that acknowledge its Authority about half of the Roman Communion are Hereticks and particularly Eugenius with all the Popes since his time Panormitan h Richer Lib. 3. cap. 6. § 5. indeed undertook to prove that Eugenius was no Heretick but was answered by Segovia and Almain President of the Council and Panormitan himself afterwards wrote a Treatise Pro authoritate veritate justitia Basileensis Concilii For the authority truth and justice of the Council of Basil Which makes it evident that what he before said was rather to serve his Master the King of Arragon then Feudatory to the Pope than to speak his own sense and indeed there were none but the Bishops of Italy and Arragon that withstood the Decree 'T is very well known how wonderfully the Popedom illuminated Pius the Second and Julian Cardinal of Sancta Crux who had been as stout a Champion for the Council of Basil at last was brought over to the Pope's Faction But I cannot say Panormitan dealt so foul as these two or as Cardinal Cusanus i Ibid. § 6. who after he had writ for the Authority of the Council of Basil against Eugenius was at last drawn over to his side and was sometime after created Cardinal by Nicholas the Fifth upon which Richerius has this Remark k Ib. p. 479. that many who stand up in defence of the Truth while they are in a low condition desert it upon hopes of making their Fortune Praesertim desiderio Purpurae Cardinalitiae Especially with a desire to get a Cardinal's Hat. And upon this occasion he quotes John Major c. 18. comment in Mat. vers fin Nemini deberi mirum videri quòd plures Papam esse supra Concilium quà m contrà Concilium suprà Papam doceant cùm Papa det dignitates beneficia Ecclesiastica Concilium verò nihil det imò est Censor acerrimus morum atque disciplinae severioris Assertor It ought not to appear strange to any Body says John Major that more are for the Pope against a Council than for a Council against the Pope they may assert a Council's Authority above the Pope as long as they please since the Pope conferrs Eccleclesiastical Dignities and Benefices whereas a Council has nothing to give but on the other hand is a sharp Censour of Manners and a rigid Exactour of strict Discipline So that in his time the greatest part of the Roman Communion were Hereticks according to the Council of Basil's Decree but in this Session whereof we have been speaking Almain
tells l Ibid. p. 466. Panormitan That it was falsly asserted by Panormitan that they had more Bishops of their side Minùs etiam verè dictum à Panormitano plures habere Episcopos suarum partium cùm illi ipsi quos asseclas habet longè aliter inter privatos parietes cum familiaribus quà m in publico Sessionum Actionum Theatro loqui dicere soleant se libertate dicendae sententiae non pollere à principibus suis praepediri metu amittendorum Temporalium when even those who openly declare for them talk quite otherwise in private Houses amongst their Friends than when they speak in the Theatre of the Sessions and Actions of the Council and they used to say that they had not liberty to give their opinion and that they were kept in by their own Princes for fear of losing their Temporalities He means the Bishops of Italy and Arragon for all the rest were for the Decree of the three Verities m Sess 39. as they are termed of Catholick Faith whereby 't is pronounced Heresie to maintain the Pope's Authority above that of a General Council The Council of Basil proceed to the Election of a new Pope and make choice of Felix the Fifth though he soon after resigned upon the valuable consideration of being made Dean of the College of Cardinals and perpetual Legate of the Apostolick See for all Germany § 15. Council of Florence An. Dom. MCCCCXXXVIII Secundum Labbé 1. By this means Eugenius the Fourth was at liberty to call the Council of Florence and to carry all things at his pleasure in it Thither the Greeks are invited to enslave themselves to the Pope rather than to the Turk and by pawning their Consciences to save their Bodies and Estates The business had been in agitation under Martin the Fifth who sent his Nuncio to Constantinople to prepare matters and he bespeaks the Greek Emperour and the Patriarch in a very n Sanctissimus Beatissimus qui habet Coeleste arbitrium qui est Dominus in Terris Successor Petri Christus Domini Dominus Vniversi Regum Pater Orbis Lumen summus Pontifex Papa Martinus Divinâ Providentiâ Papa Quintus mandat mihi Magistro Antonio Massano c. Acta Conc. Senens ap Richer L. 3. p. 289. magnificent style The most Holy and Blessed who has the disposal of Heaven who is Lord on Earth the Successour of S. Peter the Christ of the Lord the Lord of the Universe the Father of Kings the Light of the World the Chief Priest P. Martin by Divine Providence the Fifth commands me Mr. Anthony Massanus c. This Nuncio when he has done his Preamble and wiped his mouth tells the Emperour that his Embassadours at Rome o Ibid. had desired an Union of the Greek and Latin Churches but the Emperour in return says that his Embassadours went beyond their Commission if ever they proposed a Union with the Roman Church in general terms but that which they had in command was onely thus much to procure a General Council after the order and manner of the seven Holy General Councils and then the Holy Ghost would confirm it and establish it into a peace In the time of Eugenius the Fourth the Greeks came p Hist Conc. Florent Concil Vol. 13. and were pressed by importunity and subtilty and wrought upon by convenient management to consent to more than ever they designed or than their Church would afterwards own Bessarion Archbishop of Nice and Isidore Archbishop of Thessalonica for their good services were created Cardinals but not a Greek would ever own this Council except those few that were present at it and subscribed it being over-ruled by more persuasive kind of Arguments than any Marcus Ephesius and his party could produce I shall enter into no long story of this Council 't is sufficient that it contradicts the Councils of Constance and Basil in the point of the Pope's Supremacy and that it was its main business and design to contradict them Bellarmin Possevin Binius Duval c. maintain that the Decrees of the Council of Constance and Basil are nulled by a contrary Decree at Florence though Bellarmin and Duvall as Richerius observes q Lib. 3. c. 7. § 4. retract what they have said and contradict themselves yet still they exclaim against all that adhere to the Decrees of these two Councils as Schismaticks and Hereticks though sometimes in a fit of good nature they would fain offer something in their excuse Duvall r Ibid. p. 639. makes no more account of the Council of Basil than of the second of Ephesus but Bellarmin * Vid. Bellarm de Concil lib. 2. c. 13 17. allows it to have been lawfull till the Deposition of Eugenius though he advised ſ Ibid. p. 669. that this Council should be left out of the Roman Edition as spurious 2. 'T is pretended of late that the Council of Florence does not set up the Pope above a General Council t Launoy Epist Part. 3. ad Thom. Rulland though the same Authour tells us that the Cardinal of Lorrain understood it otherwise in his Commonitorium to Pope Pius the Fourth v Id. apud F. Walsh ' s Letter to the Bishop of Lincoln p. 282. For the Cardinal in the name of the whole French Clergy alledges this as the reason why the Councils of Constance and Basil are received in France but that of Florence rejected as neither Legal nor General because in France 't is held that the Pope is subject to a General Council and those who teach otherwise are accounted Hereticks and he moreover affirms that the French would sooner lose their lives than depart from this Doctrine and admit of the Titles bestowed upon the Pope in the Council of Florence And this is enough to ruine for ever the credit of the Council of Florence with sober men whatever fine expositions may be now put upon it by some that the whole French Nation declared against it as neither Legal nor General § XVI The fifth Council of Lateran An. Dom. MDXII The second Council of Pisa MDXI. 1. The last Council of Lateran is yet rather more obnoxious than that of Florence For the second Council of Pisa was owned and desended as General by the French and the Sorbon deputed three of their Body * Richer Hist Con. Gen. Lib. 4. Part. 1. c. 2. p. 167. to write against Cajetan on the point viz. Almain Major and another whose Book Richerius saw in Manuscript besides the learned Discourse of Philippus Decius which Richerius gives at large This second Council held at Pisa was called by the Emperour and the King of France and by the Pope himself as far as the obligation of his most solemn Promise and Oath could contribute towards it but the Pope would be held by no such Ties The Council charge him with Perjury the Pope tells them they are a company of
such a Cause should dye with Maimbourg and no body else should be found to defend the Roman-catholick Church of France against the Catholick Church of Rome Schelstrate quotes Nine Manuscripts of the Council of Constance and Maimbourg Ten and which is very surprising the Manuscripts on both sides have all the Appearance of being Authentick which can be desired if we may believe one of our own Church who is a very able Judge in those matters But Maimbourg has out quoted him by one and whether it be in confidence of this odds or for some other reason he is positive that the Decrees of a General Council are valid without the confirmation of the Pope § XXII Thus we see that notwithstanding the glorious pretensions to Unity and the Advantages of an Infallible Church so much magnified the divisions concerning Infallibility are so many and so great that it is onely a fine pompous thing that may serve them to boast of but is otherwise of no use For we have at this day the Jesuites against the Jansenists M. Schelstrate against M. Maimbourg and Nine Manuscripts against Ten the Archbishop of Gran against the Archbishop of Paris and the Synod of Hungary against that of France Amidst so much opposition how shall we hope to find any agreement The grand Debate between these two contending Parties is whether the Pope or a General Council should have the Preheminence There is but one way more of disagreement possible in this matter which is that neither Pope nor Council is superiour but that the joint Definitions of both are infallible this way the Guide in Controversies and his Followers here in Iâ—â—gland take If the nature of the thing would admit any more differences of opinion they would undoubtedly be as numberless as they are opposite in a dispute which has so much of Prejudice and Interest and so little of Reason or Scripture in it Neither is there any way to reconcile these contrary Doctrines unless they would all conclude in that which they all help to prove viz. That there is no such thing as an Infallible Judge or Guide here on Earth The Pope in the mean while whom one would think it most concerns to interpose his Authority and decide the difference yet sits by as Neuter countenancing and encouraging the one but not by any Authoritative Act disavowing the other opinion And indeed how is it possible for him by his Authority to decide the Controversie when his Authority is the very thing in controversie When I say there is no way besides of disagreement possible in this matter I speak onely of the Point now before us and would not be thought by any means to exclude the Infallibility of Oral Tradition nor the Infallibility of the Church diffusive including every member of it nor any other Infallibility which can be named but these are disliked as much by Papists abroad as they are by Protestants at home and are utterly inconsistent with the Authority of Councils § XXIII From what has been said I suppose it evident that General Councils cannot be relyed upon as Infallible if there were no other reason against it but this that it is so uncertain and doubtfull which Councils are General And I can foresee nothing that can be objected against this Consequence but that the Council of Trent comprehends all the rest and is instead of All. Which indeed magnifies the Council of Trent very much but is not so much for the credit of all the General Councils before it for besides that the Council of Trent grounds many of her Definitions upon the Authority of General Councils that went before I conceive that all who lived three hundred years ago were as much concerned to know what Councils were General as any Body can be at this day and an Infallibility which could be of little or no use till since the Council of Trent is something suspicious unless we had better proof than the Authority of that Council to recommend it I have shewn that that Council it self is not received in France as a General Council but onely its Doctrines acknowledged for true as they were acknowledged they tell us before the Councils sitting for any thing farther they desire to be excused And how can that Council be General enough to be Infallible which is not so far General as to oblige a particular Church in points of Discipline 'T is apparent from the account I have given of them that we have but the four or almost but the six first General Councils without Exceptions and those most of them very considerable too so that when all is done we have no reason that I can see not to be contented with our ancient Creeds and the Councils of the first Ages which have been acknowledged by all because they teach the Faith necessary to the Salvation of all while others who have taught some particular fancies have found a suitable reception § XXIV But if all the eighteen Councils were as General as they are pretended to be yet it is no good Consequence that they are infallible I could never yet see any Grounds from Antiquity to believe the Infallibility of General Councils I am sure St. Austin k De Baptismo contra Donatistas lib. 2. cap. 3. could believe no such thing when he affirms that later General Councils may correct the Errours of the former in that known place Nor Gregory the Great l Lib. 1. Epist 14. who equals the four first General Councils to the four Gospels but none besides and thereby puts a manifest difference between General Councils and so could not hold all to be infallible If we meet with high Expressions in the Fathers concerning the extraordinary assistence of the Holy Ghost in General Councils I know no man but will acknowledge it if they say that the Holy Spirit did effectually guide them in the Truth this is no more than we always profess to be believe that the First Councils did determine Infallible Truths and so were not mistaken in their Determinations but it is but an ill consequence to say that they could not be mistaken because they were not or that all succeeding Councils cannot possibly err because the first Councils actually did not err § XXV It is not pretended that General Councils are Infallible in matters of Discipline yet I am confident many Expressions of the Ancients run as high for these as for matters of Faith. The first Council that ever was that of the Apostles themselves Act. XV. was about matters of Discipline and as the Apostles there write It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us so the following Councils were persuaded they had immediate directions from the Holy Ghost in things of this nature which made the Emperour Constantine the Great and the Council of Nice it self urge the uniform observation of Easter in the same Terms and from the same Arguments that they used to enforce the Nicene Creed And afterwards Leo the
upon the Epist to Titus to the Centum Gravamina to an entire Collection of Discourses to this purpose called Fasciculus rerum expetendarum fugiendarum or to the History of the Council of Trent or to the Concilium Delectorum Cardinalium to get rid of this Argument which is so plausibly urged by the Guide and runs through all his Discourses for if men will so apparently transgress all the measures of Right and Wrong we have no reason to confide much in them about what is True and False when it is so much for their Interest to uphold the opinion of Infallibility which implies Industry and Abilities as well as Integrity * Loci Theologici lib. 5. cap. 5. Melchior Canus asserts that Councils as well as Popes may err unless they take care to use all due means in examining the Doctrines defined That Councils have sometimes acted by Interest and Design is confessed on both hands the onely Question is what and how many these Councils have been He says indeed that as for himself he will never admit that any Pope or Council has not used all necessary diligence in determining Questions of Faith But what matter is it what he will admit unless he will answer his own Arguments if he will admit the Premisses and deny the Conclusion what is that to us others of his Communion will own that Popes have erred è Cathedra and he owns that Honorius and other Popes have erred in matters of Faith now 't is but carrying the Argument one step farther subsunt omninò causae eaedem and General Councils may err in their Definitions as well as Popes His words which are very remarkable are these So that we are not to look upon those as the Judgments of the Apostolick See which are made in private malitiously or inconsiderately by the Pope alone or by some few of his Party but those which appear to have been first well examined and by the advice of several wise Men Now we have the very same Reasons to say the like of Councils if there be the same cause for it for we ought not to think that the Pope onely should be mistaken when he is asleep and should speak the truth when he is awake and that the Fathers of a Council alone should go on right sleeping or waking and that they should discern difficulties with their Eyes shut or in the dark It is an usual thing believe me for all the Judges of the Church when they publish their Decrees to be driven on by a certain rashness and suddenness of Judgment as by a wind so that they effect nothing which may be looked upon as solid grave or certain Clemangis is yet sharper Vpon whom shall my Spirit rest Disputat super mater Conc. General in Fasciculo rerum expet fugiend pag. 200. E. but upon the humble man and him who trembles at my Word But if as our Lord bears witness it onely rests upon those then according to the temper of this Age there are in all probability but few such in our Councils There are usually in every Assembly great numbers of carnal or worldly Men ambitious and contentious Men swelling with that humane knowledge which puffs up see therefore the necessity of believing that the Holy Spirit has always the upper-hand in Councils when the minds of the Consulters always resist and put a bar to any thing which might produce sounder and more saving effects especially since the Decrees of Councils proceed for the most part from the major part of the concurring Votes This I speak not positively but by way of Inquiry c. But says Bellarmin it is a sufficient evidence that a Council has not erred if the Pope has confirmed it and his Confirmation is the Criterion of a truly General Council or rather of Infallibility for Councils whether general or particular in Bellarmin's d De Concil Auctoritate lib. 2. cap. 5. account cannot err if the Pope has once confirmed them But first Popes have confirmed Councils which are not acknowledged to be General as we have seen of the Councils of Constance and Basil nay Liberius confirmed the Council of Sirmium which was Heretical Secondly This involves us yet in farther Difficulties for these Men who hold that without the Pope's Confirmation no Councils can be legitimate or of sufficient Authority to propose Articles of Faith are brought to this Vid. Francisc Long. Coriol Praelud ad Conc. Carleton cursus Theolog. Tom. poster Disp 22. §. 3. that they assert it to be De Fide that the present Pope whoever he be is Christ's true Vicar and Successour to Saint Peter which is the general opinion of the Jesuits But how this could be De Fide when there were so many Antipopes for about seventy years together or how any Council can be known to be General upon these Grounds is impossible to understand since if there should be any defect in his Baptism either as to the Form or the Intention of the Priest or if any thing should be amiss in his Election or Consecration he is by a constitution of Nicholas the Second by a Bull of Pius the Fourth and by a plain and necessary Consequence from their own avowed Principles not a Pope but an Invader and is to be anathematized and withstood by all Christian People The French King would not acknowledge Clement the Seventh for Pope till the Cardinals who chose him had sworn that they proceeded canonically which yet would not satisfie the University of Paris and the French Clergy And Bellarmin e De Conciliis lib. 1. cap. 8. confesses that it is doubtfull whether the first Council of Pisa MCCCCIX which deposed Gregory the Twelfth and Benedict the Thirteenth and elected Alexander the Fifth were approved or not but if it had been certainly rejected Alexander the Sixth would certainly have styled himself not Alexander the Sixth but the Fifth And it is besides says he almost the common opinion that Alexander the Fifth and John who succeeded him were true Popes However of the Three Pretenders to the Popedom these were most generally owned for such So that if a man can extend his Faith in such an intricate business to all the circumstances requisite to the making a Pope duly qualified for the confirmation of a Council he can have no reason to make the least scruple of whatever the Council delivers and so may as well take the Councils word and never stay for the Popes confirmation However the Infallibility of Councils resolves itself into the Infallibility of Confessours at last and every private man believes as much and no more of Councils than his Confessour thinks fit to acquaint him with and since the Jesuits have every where almost that office the Councils are generally received as they have put them forth and understood as they explain them and will be so received and understood though these I have mentioned or a thousand more objections lye against
hinder it from being so it was some time before the Fifth could deserve that Title however it came by it at last but the greatest fault of this Council in Trullo is that it approves f Can. Trull 36. and confirms the second Canon of C. P. and the twenty eighth of Chalcedon in which the Latins are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Balsamon observes However the hundred and two Canons of this Synod are cited in the second Council of Nice g Act. 4 5 6. And Adrian the First in his Epistle to Tarasius says that he receives the sixth Council with all its Canons by which he can mean no other but this for the sixth as it is distinguished from this made no Canons Nicholas the First in an Epistle to Michael the Greek Emperour says that they were confirmed by Pope John the Seventh at the request of Justinian the Second whom that Pope commends there as a most holy Emperour besides Gratian attributes them to the sixth Council and so does the Council of Florence h Sess 5. All which was so convincing to Caranza i Sum. Conc. that he sets them down as the Canons of the sixth General Council and after him Sylvius chose rather to distinguish and refine upon the thirty sixth Canon than to reject them all Angelus Roccha k Bibl. Vatic p. 71. says plainly it was a continuation of the former Synod not a new one since both were subscribed by the same Bishops The second Council of Nice A. D. DCCLXXXI vel DCCLXXXV vel DCCLXXXVII secundum Labbé as he proves out of the Second Council of Nice § VI. 1. The second Council of Nice which is the seventh General Council is a Council they find themselves as much concerned to defend as any of them all and have had as much trouble in defending it unless this be General the worship of Images is at a great loss for Authority from Antiquity and yet to defend this Council is almost as difficult as to defend the worship of Images without it 2. Gregory the l Lib. 9. Ep. 9. Great is well known to have been against the worship of Images but his Successours not long after were for promoting it what they could so zealous they were in the Cause that great Contentions arose between the Iconoclastae and the Iconolatrae for no wonder if some were moved to break those Images which they could not but abhor to see others worship These m Cedren Hist Zonar Annal. heats grew to that height that the Emperour Leo the Third forbad by his Edict the worship of Images following herein the Example of two of his Predecessours and commanded them to be removed out of all Churches considering that the lawfull use and ornament of Images might much better be spared than the worship of them suffered n Cedren p. 453. Gregory II. upon this calls a Council at Rome This some attribute to Gregory the Third who Platina says excommunicated and deposed Leo Hic statim ubi Pontificatum iniit Cleri Romani consensu Leonem Tertium Imperatorem Constantinopolitanum imperio simul communione fidelium privat quod sacras Imagines è sacris adibus abrasisset Statuas demolitus esset quodque etiam de Homusio malè sentiret Platina in Greg. Tert. So natural is it for every one to be made an Heretick who withstands the Corruptions and Innovations of the Church of Rome determines for Image-worship and anathematizeth the Emperour and moreover forbids that Taxes or Tribute should any longer be paid to him from Rome or any other part of Italy in short he denys obedience to him and betakes himself to the Franks Leo Isaurus being dead his Son Constantinus Copronymus calls a Synod at C. P. in which the worship of Images is condemned in DCCLIV In this state o Conc. Tom. 7. col 655. things continued till about DCCLXXX when the Empress Irene being left a Widow by the death of Leo the Fourth with her young Constantine the Sixth resolved to call another Synod at C. P. to null the late Council held there under Constantinus Copronymus and to determine for the worship of Images but the People and the Souldiery of the City would endure no such thing and they had most of their own Bishops so far on their side as to instruct and encourage them against such worship The Citizens were not difficultly persuaded to be constant in their old Professon which Edicts and Councils and their own Practice required them not to abandon but they were led by too violent a Zeal to betake themselves to a way not justifiable and together with the Souldiers were immediately in an Uproar upon these Proceedings of the Empress The Council was forced to adjourn to Nice no fewer than three hundred and fifty Bishops in number and there they did the business the following year There were none p Con. Tom. 7. col 55. from the West in it but the Pope's two Legates and such was the freedom used in their Debates that the Bishops who had been against Images abjure in the beginning of the Council and so are admitted to take their places in it This happened DCCLXXXVII as the last Editours compute it Adrian the First sent his Legates thither who brought a Copy of the Acts home with them signed by Constantine and Irene those the Pope procured to be turned into Latin q Anastas in Adrian I. p. 172 173. and put them into his own Library They were not so confined there but they soon caused no small debate in the Western Church The Pope sends them r Hincmar Rhemens ad Laudunens cap. 20. to Charles the Great to be examined and approved by him and his Bishops The Emperour opposed them and either wrote himself against them or however sent a Confutation to Adrian and caused it to be published by his Authority whether this was written in the Council of Franckford as Bellarmin and Baronius suppose or after it or before it has been doubted Labbé and Cossartius place it in the same year with the Council of Nice and Adrian ſ Ep. ad Carolum M. pro Synodo Nicaena II. Con. Vol. 7. styles it onely a Capitular without taking notice that a Council had any thing to doe in it which he would scarce have omitted of a Council in which his own Legates were present and dissented from the rest of the Bishops as Baronius and Bellarmin imagine or if they had agreed with them yet this probably had been intimated either by the Emperour or the Pope But that which puts this Controversie beyond all dispute is that the Book it self t Opus Carolinum p. 7. informs us that the Synod in Bithynia against which it is written was held not quite three years before whereas the Council of Franckford was held seven years after that of Nice so that the Book was writ above four years before the Council of Frankford However this be The Pope
distinguish betwixt Latria and Doulia as Bellarmin himself and then proves that neither of them may be given to Images That the Council of Frankford could be ignorant of the Doctrine established at Nice can seem probable to no man who considers that the Pope had caused the Canons of Nice to be translated into Latin that his Legates were present at Frankford and that they refused to consent to the Decree of that Council as Bellarmin and Baronius affirm To imply that the Bishops at Frankford did not understand Greek might pass well enough from Sirmondus but might have been spared by men of no greater accuracy in that Tongue than the two Cardinals if not one among them all were skilled in the Greek yet why could they not read the Translation why could they not consult the Legates The Cardinals perhaps might be sensible enough how liable men are to mistakes for want of a little Greek and Anastasius a Praefat. in septim Synod Concil Tom. 7. Col. 29. says the Translation was very perplext and hardly intelligible but I can never be persuaded that the Legates would stand by and deny their consent and yet not endeavour to undeceive the Council and at least advise them to send to Rome for Instructors Pope Adrian wrote himself in defence of the Synod of Nice which he had confirmed and so must be allowed to understand it and Greek could then be no very strange Language at Rome nor consequently at Frankford neither among three hundred Bishops gathered together from all parts of the West when the Pope had so lately renounced his Allegiance to the Greek Emperour and yet still a correspondence was held between Rome and C. P. by Adrian with Constantine and Irene and Tarasius b Concil Tom. 7. as appears by their Letters 5. But 't is in vain to argue from probabilities if the Canon it self as is pretended be grounded upon a mistake Allata est in medium quaestio de novâ Graecorum Synodo quam de adorandis Imaginibus Constantinopoli fecerunt in quâ scriptum habebatur ut qui imaginibus sanctorum ita ut Deifici Trinitati servitium aut adorationem non impenderet anathema judicaretur qui supra sanctissimi Patres nostri omnimodis orationem aut servitutem eis impendere renuentes contempserunt atque consentientes condemnaverunt The question about the new Greek Synods held at C. P. about Worshipping of Images was then debated therein it was written that whosoever should not pay that Service or Adoration to the Images of the Saints which he would pay to the B. Trinity should be anathematized whereupon our Holy Fathers by all means refusing to pray to them or pay them service despised and unanimously condemned it Here is first C. P. mistaken for Nice and then it is said that the same Worship is under Anathema commanded to be given to Images which is given to the blessed Trinity Sirmondus c Not. in Concil Francoford Conc. vol. 7. Col. 1066. is so ingenuous as to propose a way of reconciling the first mistake of C. P. for Nice by supposing that the Synod is said to have been at C. P. not that it was held in that City but because it was in the Constantinopolitane Empire and at the command of the Greek Emperour Constantine and his Mother Irene This I must confess seems to me strained but it were yet a grearer force upon the imagination to be told that Charles the Great with three hundred Bishops met together to condemn the Worship of Images decreed in a General Council about seven years before should yet not be certified where this Decree was made nor be able to distinguish Nice from C. P. and that the same Pope should send his Legates to both Synods and yet give them no better instructions than to suffer them to be ignorant in so late a matter of Fact which must be known all over Europe For when the Worship of Images which had undergone so much debate and had been the cause of so great Troubles and occasioned the calling divers Councils but had never the good luck to succeed was at last in a General Council enjoyned under Anathema and when the Popes Legates at their coming from the Council brought a Copy of it subscribed by Constantine and Irene which the same Pope that now sent his Legates to Frankford commanded to be translated into Latin and placed in his Library when the Pope himself had answered the objections propos'd by the Emperour against this very Council of Nice who can conceive that the whole Transaction should not be noised abroad and talked of in all places and among all persons and in all its circumstances so exactly known that it would have been impossible to have picked out three hundred men of any tolerable rank and conversation who could be ignorant that the General Council of Nice had at length decided the vexatious controversie about Images If its judgment had been acquiesced in as infallible or but of sufficient Authority to enforce any submission upon the conscience it certainly had been taken more notice of than to be unknown to any man of ordinary observation in its less material circumstances of time and place and number of Bishops the Doctrine however had been taught and practised every where among all sorts of People or if it had been rejected by some yet these would have found themselves obliged to give an account why they rejected it and so to enquire thorowly into it but to suppose so many Western Bishops with the Pope's Legates among the rest and the Emperour himself in the midst of them so grosly and even stupidly ignorant as to know neither the Doctrine it self nor the place where the Synod was held but seven years before is to cast too great a blemish upon the Western Church and would be apt to make men suspect that the Western Clergy at that time could make no pretence to the least share of infallibility either in a Council or out of it The Emperour's Book mentions the Greek Council as held in Bithynia and it were extreme weakness to imagine that Charles the Great after he had been at the pains to write a Book upon the subject or had ordered one to be written had not intelligence good enough to set the Synod right in the circumstance of place at least if any will be so free with him as to say he was rash enough to oppose he knew not what 6. But to free that wise and great Emperour and the whole Western Church from so stupid an absurdity It can be no wonder that the Decree concerning Image-worship should be related in the Council of Frankford as made at C. P. to him who remembers that the first meeting of the Nicene Fathers was at C. P. and that there first they began to Anathematize those who were against the worship of Images but finding C. P. too hot for them were forced to remove to Nice And this may give a
Prelates of that Church de Marca and Bosquet have endeavoured to explain this Canon so as to justifie their own Doctrine and Practice but Christianus Lupus was so little satisfied with the attempt that he exclaimes against it as becoming rather Eusebius of Nicomedia or Acacius of Caesarea than Bishops of the Gallican Church and whereas they alledge the Authority of Hincmare of Rhemes he plainly says that they might as well have alledged Luther's testimony against the Council of Trent Natalis Alex. interposes to mediate the business and would willingly make up the Debate with what success let Lupus's Party judge But still these Canons must be all acknowledged authentick though they are not in the Greek but if the Greek differ from the Latin in any thing material that goes in the least against the Church of Rome loud Outcries are presently made of Falshood and Forgery For the Charge here seems to lye not against Photius alone but against all the Greeks in general even from the second to the eighth General Council So Anastasius i Praef. in Conc. C.P. IV. col 972. complains that they had falsified the second the third the fourth the sixth the seventh General Councils and he suspects that they might use the same fraud as to the eighth Nay they did so The sly Greeks k Anastas not ad Action 1. col 989. stole away the Subscriptions which they had made in the beginning of this Council and though they restored them after they were discovered Omne quod ad laudem Serenissimi nostri Caesaris sancctissimus Dominus Hadrianus in Epistola sui decessoris Arsenlo Episcopo imminente adjecerat c. Guilielmus quidam alter Bibliothecarius continuator Anastasii in Adrian II. p. 389. yet at the end of the Council they had shewn them such another trick if Anastasius had not been too cunning for them They had already taken out some expressions which Adrian the Second foisted into an Epistle of his Predecessour and so they had robbed the Western Emperour of all the fine things which the present Pope had made his Predecessour say of him but Anastasius who with another as cunning as himself by great Providence as 't was thought was there found out the wrong done the Emperour and great Clamours were raised about it nor would the Legates at last subscribe otherwise than conditionally Vsque ad voluntatem ejusdem eximii Praesulis l Anastasii Continuat in Adrian II. p. 339. As far as it was the desire of that worthy Prelate which may convince us what a noise has used to be made of Forgery against the Greeks of whatever Party for Basilius and Ignatius we see are not exempted the whole Greek Church of all Ages is accused of these fraudulent Practices which assures us that there have been such Practices on one side and which side the fraud lyes may easily be determined if we consider that the passages pretended to have been forged were received by all other Churches and are not now denyed to be genuine by the most learned men in the Church of Rome as has been shewn T is no new thing to hear of Complaints of Forgery when any thing goes against the Church of Rome and Photius is not the first man that has been blackned to make the Charge find a more easie belief 6. Well! But Photius has before been guilty of making alterations in an Epist of Pope Nicholas m Epist 6 10. as that Pope complains Very likely and that he might be sure not to be discovered it was sent n Ibid. back again falsified to the Pope with the Acts of Photius's Council This is such an odd kind of Cheat that it lays one thing to his charge which his worst enemies never durst brand him with and is so great an Instance of Folly that it ruines all the rest of the Character they have been pleased to bestow upon him for it is acknowledged on all hands that he was peculiarly eminent for his Learning and for that which his Enemies call subtilty and his Friends wisedom That John the eighth did consent that Photius should be Patriarch is not denyed nor that he sent his Legates with Instructions for that purpose as both his Epistles and his Commonitorium certifie So far no Forgery is pretended but they say John never consented to the abrogating of the fourth Council of C. P. and that if the Legates consented to any such thing they went beyond their Commission but they rather incline to think that though the Legates were guilty of too much connivance and so betrayed the Trust reposed in them yet the Acts of the Council that restored Photius are falsified as the Epistles of John the eighth are in all those passages which speak any thing in derogation to this fourth Council of C. P. 7. But first it is certain that the restoring of Photius and the owning him not onely for a Patriarch but even for a Bishop onely is so far a derogation to this Council which fourth Canon decrees that Photius is no Bishop and pronounceth all his Episcopal Acts void so that the Council which afterwards by the consent and approbation of John the eighth acknowledges Photius for a Bishop and a Patriarch too does most certainly declare this whole Canon null and bids fair towards the justifying all that is pretended to be forged in John's Epistles I cannot think the Alterations in these Epist by whomsoever they were made are so ancient as Photius's time perhaps they may be much later than Ivo Carnutensis but if they be of so ancient date and if it be true that this Pope afterwards recalled his approbation and renounced communion with Photius and anathematized him and his own Legates for no other reason but because he was laugh'd at for a Tame-man o Bin. Not. in vit Joh. Octavi Andr. Schot Praef. ad Photii Bibliothecam and in mockery called a Woman Pope Pope Joan instead of Pope John if he was so weak and unconstant so soon to contradict his own Epistles and his Commonitorium which are confessed to have been sent on purpose to restore Photius for no other reason but because he was upbraided with casting such a reflexion upon his two Predecessours Nicholas the First and Adrian the Second the sworn Enemies of Photius he might then be willing to have his Epistles so altered as to make him most consistent with his Predecessours and with himself But much more would he be inclined to be consenting to such an alteration if there were other motives more forcible for the Truth is Photius was the great Champion for the Liberties of the Greek Church and therefore he must be sure to enjoy no favour from the Church of Rome which began to be as angry with Ignatius when he shewed himself in the same cause For the first breach between the Greek and Latin Churches was occasioned by contentions about Jurisdiction though afterwards it spread it self farther
was afterwards improved into that which all Bishops c. take at their Consecration § IX 1. The fourth Council of Lateran under Innocent the Third An. MCCXV is reckoned the twelfth General Council in order by Bellarmin Possevin c. Cardinal Pole with his Synod at Lambeth owns it for General they frequently mention it and never but under the Title of General though they do not put it in the same rank among the General Councils they profess however to receive and embrace the Faith of the Church of Rome according to the Decrees of the General Council of Lateran under Innocent the Third v Decret 2. The Council of Constance * Session 39. requires all Popes to make profession of the Faith established in the VIII Sacred General Councils whereof this is set down for one and the Council of Trent x Session 24. cap. 5. it self calls this a General Council The Great General Council of Lateran y Session 14. cap. 5. and makes use of its authority again z Session 21. cap. 9. and which is yet more to the purpose a Council of English Bishops held at Oxford a Conc. Tom. 11. Part. 1. A. MCCXXII cap. 24 28 29 33. not above seven years after acknowledge the Authority of this Council of Lateran and several times quote its Decrees In short as this is placed by Bellarmin among those Councils which are received with full approbation beyond all dispute by the Church of Rome so he looks upon it as no less than Heresie to deny the Authority of it and therefore when he has produced the third Canon of this Council in defence of the Deposing Doctrine against Barclay he cries out with great zeal and vehemence Quid hic Barclaius diceret si haec non est Ecclesiae Catholicae vox ubi obsecro eam inveniemus si est ut verissimè est qui eam audire contemnit ut Barclaius fecit annon ut Ethnicus Publicanus nullo mode Christianus pius habendus erit What can Barclay say to this if this be not the voice of the Catholick Church where I pray shall we find it and if it is as questionless it is he that despises to hear it as Barclay has done is he not to be look'd upon as an Heathen-man and a Publican and by no means a Christian or a pious Man This Widrington b Discussio Discuss Part. 1. § 2. p. 28. complains of as intolerably insulting others may rather think he speaks as a Cardinal when he was managing the Popes cause so victoriously from so infallible evidence For such is the authority and esteem in the Church of Rome of this Council that it is usually called The Great Council of Lateran either from the great number of Bishops in it or from the great importance of the matters decided or both The number of Bishops was no less than CCCCXII or in Bellarmin's reckoning CCCCLXXIII and among these were the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem and the Delegates of the other two Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch LXXVII Primates and Metropolitans besides DCCC Abbats and Priors these were all there in person and proxies were sent innumerable The Emperour likewise of Constantinople the King of Sicily Emperour of the Romans Elect the Kings of England France Hungary Jerusalem Cyprus Arragon and other Princes and Cities sent their Embassadours hither so that never was there such a show perhaps in the world again 2. The matters Determined both of Faith and of Discipline were extraordinary and of the greatest importance The Doctrines of Faith defined were Transubstantiation c Cap. 1. the Articles concerning the Holy Trinity asserted and vindicated from the errour of Abbat Joachim and those errours condemned and the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son declared d Cap. 2. The Deposing Doctrine established e Cap. 3. The Church of Rome declared to be the Mother and Mistress of all Christians universorum Christi fidelium and to have by God's appointment the Dominion over all other Churches of ordinary Authority by her extraordinary Prerogative f Cap. 5. 3. The Decrees in points of Discipline are in their kind no less considerable against the Incontinency of the Clergy g Cap. 14. against their Drunkenness h Cap. 15. against the Negligence and Debauchery of Prelates i Cap. 17. that no Clergy-man should give Sentence in Capital Causes k Cap. 18. Auricular Confession enjoyned once every year l Cap. 21. That no Clergy-man should take an Oath of Allegeance to any secular Persons unless he held some temporal Estate of them m Cap. 43. That no Clergy-man should be obliged to pay Taxes n Cap. 46. The manner of proceedings in Excommunications regulated o Cap. 47. The Prohibition of Marriages restrained to the fourth degree p Cap. 50. Clandestine Marriages forbidden and that Children of Parents married within the degrees prohibited declared illegitimate q Cap. 51. Against Simony r Cap. 63. and many other things of like nature which are of the highest consequence and fall under daily practice 4. All this one would think were sufficient to put the Authority of the fourth Council of Lateran beyond all contradiction or debate for who can imagine that a Council celebrated with so much solemnity which decided Controversies of so mighty concernment in the Church and determined things of continual use among all sorts and Orders of Men should not immediately meet with the most entire submission and always retain an undoubted Authority and veneration Thus much would have been due if it had not been infallible but being infallible what regard must every Age and every Nation and every Writer at least every Traditionary Christian pay to it yet this very Council so famous and so renowned in its Members so extraordinary in its Determinations and Decrees lay dormant unregarded and unknown till the year MDXXXVII that is till above CCC years after it was held 'T is very surprising that neither Innocent himself nor his Nephew and next Successour but one Gregory the Ninth who published his Uncle's Decretal Epistles and these very Decrees which now pass for the Decrees of this Council among the rest should put this forth among the other General Councils 't is strange that no other Pope or Bishop or at least some Canonist or other learned man should ever think of it but 't is yet more strange that Merlin in his Councils printed but three years before the fourth Council of Lateran was published should omit this though he sets down the Councils of Constance and Basil But when this Council did come to light with what Credentials did it come what evidence does it bring for its Authority is it printed from some ancient Manuscripts in the Vatican it might then be wondred how it should lie so long concealed never published never quoted nor mentioned but 't is a much greater
wonder how the Pope's own Library so fam'd for Manuscripts should miss of this where so much of Popery and the principal and nicest part of it his own Prerogative is concerned Would the Popes of Rome keep no authentick Records in a thing of this nature which so nearly touches them They are not used to be so careless in these matters the other Patriarchs as Cossartius would persuade us had all of them Copies and the Decrees were turned into Greek for that very purpose how came the Pope himself then to have none or where had the Copies of the other Patriarchs lain so many hundred years hid it was perhaps from one of those Copies that we have now the Decrees of this Council no such matter but Johannes Cochleus a German one of Luther's Adversaries produces them after above CCC years concealment and about XX. years after the Reformation begun by Luther out of some obscure Manuscripts and sends them to Peter Crabbe to be annexed to his Councils and what was wanting in that has been picked up here and there and pieced together since 5. But first there are no Subscriptions to this Council and then Matt. Paris ſ In Johanne MCCXV who lived at that time says that LX. Capitula were proposed which some liked others thought burthensome He mentions but LX. Capitula but in the Council as we now have it are LXX and in Innocent's Works LXXII Papa jam acceptâ pecuniâ quaestuosum hoc Concilium dissolvit gratis totúsque Clerus abiit tristis Hist Min. apud Antiquit. Britannic in Vit. Steph. Langton p. 158. Edit Hanov. Matt. Paris in plain terms says that this Council ended in Laughter and Mockery that the Pope got a good sum of money from the Fathers before he would let them part and that they were forced to borrow the money and make present payment before he would give them leave to be gone and that then the gainfull Synod was dissolved and the Clergy went with heavy hearts away Some have excepted against the Testimony of Matt. Paris Vir probatae vitae Religionis expertae Vid. Matt. Paris ad An. MCCXLVIII but without reason for Innocent the Fourth gives him this Character that he was a man of known vertue and piety and indeed he is observed to be so impartial an Historian that 't is his manner to relate the plain Truth of things whoever may suffer by it not sparing so much as Henry the Third at whose command he wrote his History nor the very Monks of his own Order The Archbishop of Spalato upon citing Matt. Paris on this occasion says that he knew very well how the poor Monk would be exclaimed against as a Schismatick a Lyar and an Enemy to the Apostolick See whatever were alledged in his Defence t Anton. de Dominis Lib. 6. c. 10. p. 815. For it is an usual thing for us Romanists adds he to lay aside grave Authours with the unjust reproach of Heresie and Schism when they contradict our vain devices Godefridus v Annal. ad An. MCCXV another Historian of the same Age agrees with Matthew Paris that nothing was concluded in the Council onely he observes indeed that the Eastern Church a thing says he never heard of before submitted it self to the See of Rome Platina says the same thing that nothing was decreed in this Council but that it broke up of a sudden and that the Pope going to reconcile the Pisans and the Genuese who were then at War by Sea and the Cisalpines by Land died at Perugia Some would understand Platina so as if he meant onely that nothing was done towards the Expedition into the Holy Land but this can be none of his meaning because in the last of those Decrees we now have this whole business is fully concluded upon and determined which Platina could not have been ignorant of if there had been any such Canons then or if they had passed for Genuine Nauclerus in the words of Platina says many things were debated but nothing concluded but that however some Constitutions are said to have been published one whereof says he is extant importing That if one Prince offend against another the correction of him belongs to the Pope so it seems 't was onely Report in his time at the latter end of the fifteenth Century that ever any such Decrees were published and he knew of but one then extant which yet is not to be found in this Council as we have it nor in Innocent's Decretals though these are the onely Canons that then could make any pretence to the Authority of this Council The Preface to Innocent's Works informs us that these Decrees were written by Innocent himself and so are His not the Councils Constitutions if they were read in Council that is the most that can be granted and then they seemed to some easie or pleasing to others burthensome but if they were rather made after the Council was dissolved because mention is frequently made of the Council as past in them then they must be written by that Pope in haste on his Journey or in the hurry of other business for he went to make up a Peace between the Pisans and Genoese and other Italians but died before he could effect it at Perugia The Editor of his Works printed by w Cap. 29 33 41. Cholinus gathers from several places that Innocent himself drew them up into this Form which we have them now in after the dissolution of the Council he might have added many others x Cap. 11 61 65 42 46 48. as they are set down in the Council but they are differently numbred in the Decretals for the Council is quoted in all of them but these quotations Cossartius refers to the Lateran Council under Alexander the Third except the forty sixth which he refers to the nineteenth Chapter though for no reason that I can imagine unless the reason why the Clergy should not pay Taxes were because they must keep their Churches clean the nineteenth being against the nastiness and the profanation of Churches and the forty sixth saying that the Council of Lateran forbad the raising of Taxes or Contributions upon Churches or Churchmen But farther yet y Widrington Discuss Discuss Part. 1. § 1. p. 10. Gregory the Ninth though he have transcribed all the seventy Capitula into the Decretals yet ascribes not one of them to the Council but to Innocent himself onely Innocentius Tertius in Concilio Generali though he often mentions the Decrees made in the Lateran Council under Innocent the Third as the Decrees of the Council taking no notice of Alexander Platina likewise attributes the condemning the Errours of Abbat Joachim and Almarius not to the Council but to Innocent 6. Notwithstanding all this the great Cardinal Perron z Ibid. p. 11 12 pronounces roundly that those who denied the Authority of this Council deserve to be pitied rather than answered perhaps because he found pitying
more easie than answering but he gives this very good reason for what he says because at this rate the Precept concerning Auricular confession would not be valid nor Transubstantiation de Fide no nor the Procession nor the opposite Articles to the errours of Joachim and so the Schoolmen in their Writings and the Inquisitors in punishing Hereticks had been all to blame Widrington replies that the Practice of the Church and the inserting these Canons into the Body of the Canon Law by Gregory the Ninth was sufficient to give Authority to them But this is to bring us back again from a Council to the Pope and from him to send us to the Church diffusive to inquire into her Faith and Practice and so we are disappointed of the vast hopes conceived from so numerous an Assembly But if these things had then been of known Practice and undoubted Truth how came they not immediately to be consented to in Council how came they to seem grievous and burthensome to the Bishops there was not Transubstantiation one of those Grievances the Deposing Doctrine another Auricular Confession a third and might not many more Grievances be mentioned Well but the Procession of the Holy Ghost and the true notion of the Trinity must be called in question if we reject this Council by no means because this had been explained in other Councils as far as was necessary and the Greek and Latin Manuscripts of Cossartius leave out the Procession so that that was it seems but in some Copies and cannot be proved from this Council But all these Doctrines says Widrington a Ibid. p. 12. have been received and embraced by the Catholick Church and from thence derive their Authority This we deny neither the Deposing Doctrine as Widrington himself confesses and maintains nor Transubstantiation nor Auricular Confession was ever received by the Catholick Church But the truth is he was forced to say something he was loth to deny the Authority of a Council now generally received by the Church of Rome he rather chose to evade the third Canon as well as he could nor durst he either in his Answer to Lessius b Discuss ib. p. 22. or in his last Rejoinder to Fitzherbert c Rejoynder cap. 9. disown the Council but after he has raised all the Objections he was able professes at last that as for his own part he receives it The same Objections have been lately renewed by Father Walsh yet still he too does not profess to disown the Authority of the Council 7. But Cossartius produceth a Greek Translation of this Council which he says is of the same Antiquity with the Council it self and he is positive that the very sight of this is enough to convince all men the Decrees are Genuine this Translation shewing the agreement between the Greeks and the Latins for that the Decrees which were made by the unanimous consent of all might be by all observed they were turned into the Greek Language for the use and benefit of those who did not understand the Latin. The Greek he confesses is in many places barbarous and his Manuscripts in some places imperfect and therefore in those places he was forc't to give us onely the Latin leaving void spaces in the opposite Column where the Greek was defective but here I observe that the whole first Chapter is not extant in the Greek Copy nor does it appear by any vacancies left in the Print that the Manuscript was imperfect but that the whole Chapter was omitted by the Greek Translatour and so if this Manuscript prove any thing it proves that the Greek Church did not concurr with the Latin in the Article of Transubstantiation for this being the first time that ever that Doctrine was asserted in a General Council certainly the Greeks would never have omitted to translate so material a Passage of the Council wherein this is contained if they had agreed to it All that part of the third Chapter which concerns the Deposing Doctrine is likewise wanting in the Greek but here he tells us is a leaf of the Manuscript wanting both in the Greek and the Latin 't were to be wished we could know how it came to be wanting but however this serves to confirm to us that nothing is deficient in the first Chapter but that the Manuscript is entire though the whole Chapter be onely in Latin and so the Doctrine of Transubstantiation had the ill luck to be left out in the Translation of the first Council in which it ever was defined for which no other reason can be given if this Manuscript be Authentick but that the major part of the Church i. e. all the East and four Patriarchs of five rejected it The Translatour often mistakes the Latin and quite alters the sense and in the second Chapter where the Catholick Doctrine concerning the blessed Trinity is explained the Particle non is omitted in the Latin and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek a small mistake in a matter of Faith but such a mistake as could not easily escape in both Languages or if it did must needs give a very exact and faithfull account of what was defined in the Council This and other gross faults do not make much for the credit of this Manuscript nor engage us necessarily to believe upon its sole Authority that the Greek Church received the fourth Lateran Council or indeed that it was ever received at all till of late years which many learned men in the Church of Rome have been so sensible of that they have never alledged its Authority but when they had nothing else to alledge For neither the more ancient of our Modern Divines says Widrington d Last Rejoynder c. 9. who are vehement maintainers of the Popes power to depose Princes as Victoria Corduba Sanders and others nor Cardinal Bellarmin himself in his Controversies did make any great reckoning of the Decree of this great Council This was Bellarmin's last Refuge when he was beaten off from his other Arguments by Barclay and though he urges it with great confidence and earnestness yet if he had much relied upon its Authority he would have used it before for if the Council be General the Argument is unanswerable and infallible in their account whatever disguises may be put upon it The opposers of this Lateran Council farther add e Widrington ib. p. 20. that the Council of Constance meant not this Council but that of Lateran under Alexander the Third and that the Council of Trent spoke according to the common opinion that is in plain terms the Council of Trent was mistaken and that in a matter of no small consequence for if one General Council tell the world that another is General which really is not so what assurance can men have of any Council that it is General or what Errours may not a General Council by this means lead men into What they answer to the Testimony of the Council held at
Oxford so soon after I am yet to learn but it can be no wonder that our Clergy should at that time yield to any thing the Pope desired when the Archbishop of Canterbury had had so fresh an Instance of his Power who had been suspended in this very Council of Lateran and was willing to comply with any thing that might advance his Interest at Rome The Pope openly styled King John his Vassal and had reduced all Christendom to such dependence and obedience that there was not one of those secular Princes and States that gave their attendance at this Council but were some way or other obnoxious to him and stood in awe of him the Croisade left the Popes at liberty to play their own game at home and had gained them more in the East than could ever be gotten by all the Councils that were ever called Henry Brother to Baldwin Earl of Flanders was then possessed of Constantinople with the Title and Honour of Greek Emperour and the four Eastern Patriarchs were all Western Bishops one Frenchman and three Italians who held their Patriarchates of the Pope and were never owned in their respective Titular Sees Upon this account 't is rather strange that any demur should be made to this Pope's Dictates in Council or that this Council should not be every where reverenced as an Oracle than that one Nation which had smarted so much under the Pope's displeasure should acknowledge it in his Successour's days for Honorius the Third was no degenerate Successour to Innocent the Third and our Nation then had learnt to submit to harder terms than these yet sure there must be something in these Decrees very irksome which could not pass the Votes of an Assembly so entirely addicted to the Pope and here is no mention of the Doctrines of the Lateran Council in that of Oxford besides 't is remarkable that Richard Bishop of Sarisbury An. MCCXVII two years after the Council cites it c. 7. yet c. 4. where he gives an Exposition of the Catholick Faith does not follow this Council in putting down Transubstantiation for one Article of it And Sir Roger Twisden f Historical Vindication cap. 8. p. 165. shews that notwithstanding this Council of Oxford the fourth Council of Lateran was not received in England Not to dissemble any thing material in this business Mat. Paris himself g Ad Annum MCCXLVI relates that the Arch-deacon of Saint Albans quotes the twenty first Canon as a Canon of this Council and so Innocent the Fourth calls it but Alexander the Fourth takes not the least notice of this Canon when he reverses Innocent's Decree in favour of the Monks giving them liberty to hear Confessions without the consent of the Parish Priests nor do his Cardinals when he advised with them h Launoii explicat Tradit Eccles circa Canon utriusque sexûs c. 2. upon this occasion in the Instrument which they drew up about that Controversie make mention of any Canon of a General Council in favour of the Parish-Priests But whether it were that it could not be easily believed that so many men should meet together to no purpose or that Innocent's Decrees in the Lateran Council were mistaken for the Decrees of the Council it self or whether Innocent the Fourth having called it a General Council 't was thought no good manners to contradict him however it were in process of time the Canons were owned as genuine and some of them more early than one would expect as may be seen particularly of the twenty first Canon Omnis utriusque sexûs c. Yet after all a late Doctour of the Sorbon with the Approbation of the Faculty i Du Pin Dissert p. 573. has concluded from the foregoing Arguments that no Canons were made by the Council but that some Decrees onely being framed by the Pope and read in Council some of them to the major part seemed burthensome § X. The first Council of Lyons A. D. MCCXLV 1. Launoy k Ep. part 7. ad Raymundum Formentinum p. 228 c. proves against Bellarmin that the first Council of Lyons under Innocent the Fourth was not General because Innocent in his Sentence against Frederick though he often mentions the Council yet never calls it General or Universal or OEcumenical and so in his Epistles to the Arch-bishop of Sens and to the Chapter of that Church to the Bishops of England and to the Bishop of Ostia he never so much as once calls it General which certainly he would have done if he could have ascribed to it so great Authority but he called thither onely the King of France the Arch-bishop of Sens and his Chapter besides the Bishops of England and the Bishop of Ostia The Bishops of Italy Sicily Germany Arragon Castile and Portugal it doth not appear that he ever called For Odoricus Rainaldus in his Continuation of Baronius gives a Register of the Epistles which Innocent wrote upon this account but mentions none sent to any of these Bishops I omit says Launoy the Eastern Bishops Qui profectò vocati non fuere who assuredly were not called He shews that Bellarmin contradicts himself in this matter and goes against his own Principles tacitly retracting in his eighteenth Chapter de Concil lib. 1. what he had said in his fifth of this Council and besides does abuse Palmerius and Platina whose Authority he brings to prove it General whereas neither of them say any such thing And thus says he has Bellarmin run himself into such difficulties as he will never be able to get clear of For if the Conditions required by him to make a Council General be true then is this not General if this be General then are not those Conditions rightly lay'd down nor the business truly stated But as for Palmerius and Platina who are falsly quoted he can never bring himself off unless he pretend negligence which indeed makes the case but so much the worse 2. This Council of Lyons is not in Nicolin's Councils printed at Venice MDLXXXV with the Approbation of Sixtus the Fifth under this Title Conciliorum omnium tam Generalium quà m Provincialium quae jam indè ab Apostolicis temporibus hactenus legitimè celebrata haberi potuerunt Caranza likewise and Sylvius either knew nothing of it or thought it not worth their taking notice of 3. But it is more considerable l Burnet's History of the Rights of Princes c. p. 309. that in the late contest between the Pope and the King of France the Court of Rome contending that the Regale are onely Concessions of the Church which were restrained in the Council of Lyons and that therefore they ought not to be extended to Churches which were not then subject to the French the Arch-bishop of Rheims in an Assembly at Paris of twenty six Bishops and six that were named to Bishopricks being chief of the Committy of six deputed to consider the affair of the Regale and make Report
Schismaticks and Hereticks and they are not behind-hand with him for in their complaint to Maximilian they tell him that of all the wicked things which had been wont to be done by Popes there never was such a thing as this in which Julius had exceeded the worst of his own Actions as well as of his Predecessours x Id. Lib. 4. Part. 1. c. 2. they charge him with breach of Promise and of his Oath and make the greatest Villain of him that ever lived Quid enim jam in Christiana Republica deterius quid perniciosius expectari potest quà m ipse Christi Vicarius For what can be now expected worse or more pernicious in the Christian Religion than the Vicar of Christ himself though they all this while give him the Title of Sanctissimus Julius the Second had sworn to call a Council within two years but resused to call it any where but at Rome and thereupon appoints one in the Lateran to oppose this at Pisa The Council of Pisa protest against these proceedings and declare that Julius is of a violent and heady temper and had such a force of Souldiers about him y Apolog. Conc. Pisani ap Richer L. 4. Part. 1. c. 2. that they durst not venture thither nor durst they so much as mention the calling of a Council while they were at Rome in fine after a horrid charge and declaration of all his crimes they proceed to suspend his Holiness as they call him in the very Act of Suspension 2. 'T is true the King of France and all the French Clergy after the death of Julius renounced the Council of Pisa and adhered to the fifth of Lateran under Leo the Tenth but whether this were not more consistent with their Interest than with their Principles any man may see that reads the Acts of the French Clergy afterwards and considers that the Pisan Council proceeded all along upon the Decrees of Constance and Basil and that the abrogation of the Pragmatick Sanction in the Council of Lateran was but ill received at Paris insomuch that the Sorbon made an Appeal against the Concordate in vindication of the Decrees of Constance and Basil and the whole Clergy of France appeal from the Pope in the Council of Lateran ad Papam melius consultum futurum Concilium Generale legitimè congregandum z Richer Hist l. 4. Part. 2. c. 1. § 8. p. 25. to a Pope better advised and to a future Council which should be lawfully assembled 3. Here we have the French Clergy first maintaining the Council of Pisa and then renouncing it denique Protestantur se nomine totius Ecclesiae Gallicanae tum Ecclesiasticorum tum Secularium cujuscumque sint gradûs statûs dignitatis qui in Pisana interfuerunt Congregatione obtemperando mandatis Apostolicis Regis Franciae exhortationibus Pisano conventui jam dissoluto renunciare Laterano Concilio adhaerere and at last they protest in the name of the whole Gallican Church as well Ecclesiasticks as Seculars of whatsoever degree state and dignity they are who were in the Assembly at Pisa that now in obedience to the Apostolical commands and the King of France's exhortations they renounce the Assembly at Pisa and stand by the Lateran Council this was May the fifth MDXVII They renounce the Council of Lateran and appeal to another when nothing new that appears had happened in either of the Councils to make this alteration for that of Pisa proceeded always upon the same grounds and alledged the Councils of Constance and Basil in its justification that of Lateran drove the same course under Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth as the French Clergy say in their Appeal from it onely the necessity of the King's Affairs forced him to yield and his whole Clergy with him But if the acknowledging or disclaiming of Councils be onely a matter of state and changeable with every turn of Affairs 't is easie to see how much certainty we can have of a Council's being General when in the space of three years the Council of Pisa shall be General and then disavowed by the very Members of it and another received in its stead and then this as much disclaimed as the former and that of Pisa shall afterwards be again owned in derogation to the Lateran Council and published out of the French King's Library with the special Privilege of his most Christian Majesty MDCXII 4. Bellarmin himself ‖ De Concil lib. 2. c. 13. seems to confess that there is some reason to doubt of the Authority of this last Council of Lateran and Duvall in his Book De Suprema Potestate Papae against Vigorius Richerius and others that deny its Authority durst not be positive in the main difficulty concerning the Bull of Leo the Tenth how far and to what that obligeth but as Richerius observes a Ibid. p. 48. plays Childrens sport he builds Castles with Nutshels and then plucks them down again 5. There were scarce eighty in it in all of which about sixty onely were Bishops and of these a great part Italians and none from France nor b Du Pin. Dissert 6. p. 430. no Embassadour It was composed says the Advocate of Parliament c New Heresie p. 103. of a few Italian Bishops who had no other aim but the ruine of our Canonical Elections and against which the French have always protested as it is to be seen by the History of the Concordate by M. Du Puy § XVII C. of Trent An. Dom. MDXLV 1. We are come at last to the famous decreeing reforming defining Council of Trent which is so well known that very little needs here be said of it The French Clergy it must be confessed and all others who maintain the Pope to be subject to a General Council are extremely obliged to Pope Pius the Fourth for if we believe Cardinal Pallavicini and the Guide in Controversies who says it after him that Pope had nine parts of ten in the Council ready to vote the Pope superiour to a General Council and yet suffered the Controversie to continue as it was And indeed the Pope if he had found no other restraints upon him but what were in the Council might have done his pleasure in any thing for there were CLXXXVII Italians and but LXXXIII of other Nations so that the Italians exceeded all other Nations besides by CIV a small number to secure a casting Vote who then can deny that the Pope was infallible in the Council of Trent and was absolutely certain to gain his point 2. But I shall onely observe that the Decrees of Reformation are not in force to this day in France because they are thought to encroach upon the Privileges of the Gallican Church and therefore whenever d Gerbais de Causis Majoribus p. 347. the Assembly of the Clergy or Kingdom of France have dealt with the King about the Reception and Publication of that Council they have always put
Infallibility in the Pope and that in matters of Fact. This is the Dispute so hotly debated of late years between them and the Jansenists For the Pope having condemned five Propositions in a Posthumous Book of Jansenius entituled Augustinus Forms were drawn up to be subscribed under pain of Excommunication though the Propositions could no where be found in that Book But as the Flatterers of the Court of Rome first raised the Pope above a General Council to secure him against the Reformation in Capite Membris which the other Bishops have so often required so the Jesuites have extended his Infallibility yet farther even to matters of Fact and so whatever he determins must be right in all cases It was upon these grounds that Subscription was to be made to the five Propositions by the Seculars and by the Regulars of both Sexes and was enforced not onely by the Pope but by the Gallican Church Notwithstanding certain Divines and the Nuns of the Port Royal resused to make the Subscription enjoyned not that they made any scruple of the Doctrine it self which they were required to acknowledge but because the contrary to it was no where to be found in the Book condemned but the Pope they said had been imposed upon by those who pretended to have taken the Propositions out of that Book Hereupon arose a Controversie concerning the Infallibility of the Church and of the Pope the Jesuites maintaining that the Pope cannot be mistaken in a matter of Fact and that therefore the Propositions are in that Book whatever ordinary Readers may think of it his Holiness has determined so and he cannot be mistaken For they f Les Imaginaires les Visionnaires la Traitè de la foy humaine Octavo à Cologne 1683. p. 81 86 88. make no scruple to assert that the Pope is as infallible in matters of Fact as our Saviour himself that he saw with the eyes of the Church as they phrase it and discovered those Propositions by the illumination of the Holy Ghost This is but what the Jesuites maintained in that famous Thesis of Decemb. 12. MDCLXI in the College of Clermont as a Catholick Truth repugnant to the Greek Heresie concerning the Primacy of the Pope viz. That Jesus Christ hath given to all Popes whenever they shall speak è Cathedra the same infallibility himself had both in matters of Right and of Fact. The Nuns of the Port Royal and all others that refused to sign the Formulary wherein the five Propositions of Jansenius are condemned were used with great severity and the Archbishop of Paris would not be dissuaded from imposing the Subscription But however the Church of France might stand affected towards the Pope at that time and in that affair yet the opinion against the Pope's Infallibility is so generally maintained in that Church that it is almost peculiar to it and is termed g New Heresie of the Jesuites p. 79. by the Jesuites Sententia Parisiensis A.D. MDCLXXXII the French Clergy in a Synod held at Paris determined that a General Council is above the Pope according to the Decrees of the fourth and fifth Sessions of the Council of Constance Against this Determination Emanuel à Schelstrate the present Vatican Library-keeper wrote a Book printed at Antwerp An. Dom. MDCLXXXIII wherein he endeavours to shew from ancient Manuscripts that those Decrees of the Council of Constance which have passed so long upon the World for authentick and were so often approved and confirmed in the Council of Basil are notwithstanding false and he sticks not to affirm that they were partly falsified by the Council of Basil and partly obtruded upon the Council of Constance against the consent of a great number in it and in the absence of others and so have been imposed upon the Church ever since in so many Editions and by so many Licences and Approbations particularly by the Bull of Paul the Fifth before the Roman Edition of the Councils and had the good luck never to be discovered by any before himself when he now sets himself to oppose the Determination of the French Clergy 2. But M. Schelstrate is not the onely man that opposed the Gallican Church in this Controversie For George Szelepechemy Archbishop of Gran and Primate of Hungary put forth his Synodical Letter containing a Censure of the four Propositions in which h Vide Not as in Censur Hungaricam 4. proposition Cleri Gallicani apud Edmun Richer Vindicias Doctrin major Schol. Paris is this assertion Ad solam sedem Apostolicam divino immutabili privilegio spectat de controversiis Fidei judicare It onely belongs to the Apostolick See by a Divine immutable Privilege to judge of Controversies in the Faith. And he with his Bishops were so zealous in the defence of that Doctrine that they profess in the conclusion they would spend the last drop of their Bloud rather than depart in the least from it This Proposition Jan. 30. MDCLXXXIII the Parliament of Paris delivered to M. Edmund Pirot Syndick of the Faculty to be examined which when the Faculty had received from him on the first of February they chose certain of their body to study and consider the Point and then after due deliberation to give their Judgment upon it This they did March the first and asterwards for three months together in their several Assemblies which were no less than fourty five in number the Question was propounded to be disputed upon and when they had by this means throughly debated and concluded the Controversie they declared That the Proposition as it excludes Bishops and General Councils from that Authority which they have immediately from Christ in judging in matters of Faith is rash erroneous contrary to the practice of the Church and to the Word of God as well as to the constant Doctrine of the Faculty This answer the Faculty of the Sorbon gave to the question May the eighteenth and then reviewing it the day following confirmed it moreover from the several Censures which had been formerly passed by their Body in this and former Ages upon such Tenets Thus that Reverend and Learned Society i Censura sacrae Facultatis Theolog. Paris ad dandum Senatui responsum data in propositionem de qua ille quaesierat quid ipsa sentiret Parisiis 1683. made the most deliberate and solemn determination that could be possibly made in any case But the controversie would not end here for another Authour under the name of Eugenius Lombardus took the Propositions into Examination MDCLXXXV and in contradiction to them asserts that the Pope has Authority to depose Kings that he is above a General Council that he is Infallible when he determines è Cathedra that he can dispense with Oaths and Vows made to God Almighty And the same year M. Maimbourg answered M. Schclstrate but Schelstrate replyed the year following and so the dispute is still depending unless we can suppose the desence of
every one of them ADDENDA Page 10. line 14. before Cardinal Contarenus add And as the form of the Profession of Faith in the Council of Constance Session 39. mentions but eleven General Councils in all so it gives higher respect to the first eight than to the rest and takes no notice of any more than one of Lateran and one of Lyons Ego N. electus in Papam omnipotenti Deo cujus Ecclesiam suo praesidio regendam suscipio beato Petro Apostolorum Principi corde ore profiteer quam diu in hac fragili vita constitutus fuero me firmiter credere tenere sanctam fidem Catholicam secundum Traditiones Apostolorum aliorum sanctorum Patrum maximè autem sanctorum octo Conciliorum generalium viz. primi Nicaeni secundi Constantinopolitani tertii Ephesini quarti Calchedonensis quinti sexti Constantinopolitanorum septimi item Nicaeni octavi quoque Constantinopolitani necnon Lateranensis Lugdunensis Viennensis Generalium etiam Conciliorum Et illam fidem usque ad unum apicem c. Page 36. line 15. after none of the three add and at the end of the Fourth Lateran Caranza puts Explicit Concilium Lateranense primum Page 42. line 10. leave out from except the forty sixth to Churches or Churchmen line 17. in the room therof add though it is not probable that that Council should be quoted at large under the name of the General Council of the Lateran without some particular note of distinction either of the Popes name under whom it was called or of the third Lateran Council for this is the usual way in Citations and had been necessary here to distinguish it from the other two Lateran Councils but if we suppose these Canons drawn up by Innocent the Third after the Dissolution of the Council there could be no need of particularizing the Council which had been so lately held by himself and he could be reasonably understood to mean no other than his own Council unless he had specified it But farther yet c. Page 66. lin ult But Mr. Schelstrate has one Argument which indeed is extraordinary in that it makes a remarkable discovery of the Artifices of the Court of Rome for he assured the same Person that at the very same time in which the necessity of their Affairs obliged P. Martin to confirm the Decrees of the Council of Basil he contrived a secret Bull which in another Age might be made use of to weaken the Authority of the general Confirmation and withall Mr. Schelstrate promised him a sight of the original of this Bull. Page 50. lin 27. after Bishop of Rome add Though indeed he did revoke it as to its Exercise in the Kingdom of France by declaring that the Privileges of the Gallican Church were no ways infringed by it Inter Extravag cap. Meruit tit de Privilegiis CORRIGENDA Pag. 3. lin 3. for before Labbé and the Acts of the second Council are omitted by him too reade before Binius and the Acts of the second Council of Pisa are omitted by Labbé too p. 4. l. 5. marg for c. 6. r. c. 7. p. 669. p. 6. l. 2. Buxhornius r. Boochornius p. 10. l. 35. the quotation of Launoy should be set against Abraham Cretensis p. 12. l. 29. r. make them so these p. 15. l. 31. r. young son Constantine p. 18. l. 12. r. appear p. 20. l. 10. r. Deificae p. 27. l. 14. dele p. 29. l. 9. r. why he ought p. 30. l. 14. dele own p. 48. l. 18. r. Emperours to explain ibid. l. 34. for recalling r. reconciling p. 50. l. 26. for accessory r. necessary p. 52. l. 11. marg r. cap. 3. p. 54. l. 38. marg r. cap. 4. p. 62. l. 14. for Church r. Council p. 68. l. 24. almost r. at the most THE END