thither that they Personally examin'd all the People in that place who with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake And yet they laid their hands on them being I presume well satisfied with Philip's account of them and they received the Holy Ghost For Philip's Examination of them was in order to Baptism and after that it was usual to administer Confirmation and the Eucharist also to Adults at the same time For his Exception at Baptizing tolerated in Necessity to Midwives and he would gladly see any such thing in Antiquity Tolerated by whom by the Church Pray let him look upon the Rubrick concerning Private Baptism before he writes again where the words are these First let the Minister of the Parish or in his absence any other lawful Minister that can be procured with them that are present call upon God Yet were Tertullian now alive who knew the Customes of the Ancient Church as well I suppose as this Author he would not have censur'd our Church for Tolerating so much in that point For sure he goes much farther and will shew him somewhat more than this in Antiquity in case of Necessity such a Necessity they did believe of Baptism his known words are these that in such a case Quilibet Laicus ting it And I know not in this case and according to this Author's Principles what a Lay-man can do more than a Woman For the great things he speaks of the Power of the Keys in his Chapter of Church-Government they are well and truly spoken but so is not that which follows Yet this is in a manner quite relinquisht to Chancellors Lay-men c. The Church perhaps was never happier since the Reformation in men of this Profession that fill up those places with great Ability and Integrity and I add with great deference to their Superiours the Bishops No doubt they are most capable to examine and declare upon matter of Fact whether or no this or that person have done the fact to which the Canon has decreed Excommunication but they understand too well to think they have the Power of the Keys wherefore the Sentence where things are regularly done is pronounc'd by a Priest not by a Lay-Chancellour And his Similitude of the Parish-Clark jingling the Keys when the Rector has lockt any one out of the Church to which he likens those proceedings in the Spiritual Court is a Jingle it self and no better You will answer me saies he The Bishops themselves pass it over c. Truly in this you have reason and the blame must wholly light on them No I will not answer him so but I will ask him one plain Question Are the Bishops wholly to blame that the Canons of 1640 are not observed which make abundant provision against such Abuses or rather Are not those to blame who explode these Canons He tells us that in the times of Popery when Spiritual and Temporal affairs were all intermingled and horribly confounded the Bishops were frequently Lord-Keepers Treasurers Chief-Justices Vice-Roys and what not which is strangely Unapostolical and unlawful No men were greater Blessings to their times even in those times of Popery when they sat at the Helm than the Bishops 'T was Bishop Morton's Industrious brain that made up the Fatal breach and United the two Houses of York and Lancaster in the happy marriage between King Henry the Seventh and the Lady Elizabeth and it was under the Ministry of Bishop Fox who was Lord Privy-Seal and by his reaching Parts that the grounds were laid for a more happy Union between the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland in that Marriage which was design'd with a deep and long train of memorable Policies that the eldest Daughter of Henry should marry James of Scotland and the younger should maâ—ch into France that so if ever they should come to inherit Scotland might be the Annexe to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and that England might never be in the nature of a Province to France In the Old Testament there are Examples enow of Priests that were Ministers of State those I confess were Unapostolical that is long before the Apostles but he will have much adoe to prove them unlawful He might have omitted Lord-keepers and Treasurers for Bishop Williams and Bishop Juxon's sake one of them as able in the Chancery as the other in the Treasury And whereas the King is graciously pleased at this time to bestow the great Seal of Ireland upon a Reverend Praelate there I hope this Author will not deny but his Majesty has put him into a lawful Calling But whereas in the end of this Chapter he justly complains of exempt Jurisdictions as meerly Papal and a thing altogether unknown to Antiquity wherein he is much in the right I wonder he does not discern his own Scheme concerning Bishops and Priests to be Papal too and that Presbyterianism has no pretence to Antiquity but what it has from Popery It was Pope Innocent the 4th whom for such pranks as these his Party celebrate for a most wise Pope who decreed that ex dispensatione deputatione solius Pontificis Romani one Priest might ordain another whosoever then writes the History of Presbytery should make it begin from Rome and not take its rise from Geneva who does not know that the Popish Schoolmen and Canonists have made it their business to degrade their Bishops and confound them into one and the same order with the Presbyters to exempt the Regular Clergy from Episcopal Jurisdiction and as many of the Secular as they please who made the Cardinals that were but mere parish-Priests and many of them no Bishops to this day superiors to all the Bishops nay Governers and Judges over all Prelates in the vacancy of the Popedom The Consistory of Cardinals is then their only head of the Catholick Church upon earth which is all one as if it were headed with a Geneva-Consistory both Papists and Presbyterians take down the Superior order and advance the middle only Mr. Calvin and his Followers will have all this depend immediately on Christ himself whereas the Romish Party makes it depend immediately on one they call Christ's Vicar For how vehemently did the Papalins even in their Council of Trent urge and press it That the Power and Jurisdiction was wholly given to the Bishop of Rome and that every particular Bishop being only de Jure Canonico may be removed by the Pope's Authority he that would see more to the same purpose let him consult the Cardinal Pallavicino if he will not trust Padre Paolo where he may read the long Speech of Father Laynez all to this effect But though I had prepared some Animadversions upon this Chapter too concerning Bishops and Priests yet it has been so learnedly confuted in a Sermon preached at Whitehall which I hear is to be published by His Majesties special Command that I shall not need nor presume to touch that Chapter Animadversions on his Charitable
to the Church and the State is not that also Turbulent And if they were thus solicitous to preserve and establish as a sacred inviolable thing the Idolatrous worship of their false Gods what care of ours can be great enough to secure the Godly worship of the only True God when it is shaken by such Divisions But to return to St. Austin how did the Civil Magistrate proceed to punish the Donatists for their sedition even by laying his Commands upon them at that good Father's Request That they should come to Church A severe punishment and very likely indeed to be inflicted upon them as Traytors to the Imperial Crown But secondly says he to answer more particularly this story I suppose says he there is no man such a stranger to the world as to be ignorant that there are Hypocrites in it and such for ought we know these seeming converted Donatists might be who for love of this World more than for love of the Truth forsoâ—k their heretical Profession though not their Opinion c. Incomparable for ought he knows they were Hypocrites So for ought we know This Author is all this while a Jesuite and writes this Pamphlet only to embroyl us Protestants But he goes on unless it can be evidenc't that these Donatists hearts were changed as well as their Profession a thing impossible to prove all this proves nothing Very good So unless it can be evidenc't that he writes all this Pamphlet from his Heart which is impossible to be prov'd it all signifies just nothing But thirdly says he put the case their hearts were really chang'd as to matter of belief 't is evident their hearts were very worldly still groveling on the earth not one step nearer Heaven A horrible charitable saying we may forgive him any thing after this as his supposing in this next sentence that the pruning of the Tree by the Magistrate's Sword is doing evil As for his putting the Case Malchus had been converted by St. Peter 's cutting off his ear and saying this would not have excus'd St. Peter 's act which our Saviour so sharply reprov'd and threatned by perishing with the sword In the first place I humbly conceive St. Peter was no Civil Magistrate unless he that will not allow him to draw oâ—e Sword here as a private Person will admit the fine Monkish conceit of Ecce duo Gladii behold here are two Swords the Spiritual and the Temporal for St. Peter and his Successors And secondly for his cutting of Malchus's ear I suppose there is some difference between the Magistrat's giving one an ear to hear with or compelling one to hearken and listen to reason and cutting off ones ear or setting one in the Pillory But all this he says in reference to compelling men to believe or conform still reserving to the Magistrate power according to Scripture to punish evil doers not evil believers not who think but do publish or do practise something to subvert the Fundamentals of Religion or disturb the Peace of the State or injure their Neighbour God the only searcher of hearts reserves to himself the punishment of evil thoughts of evil belief which man can never have a right cognizance of And does he take all this pains only to put a fallacy upon us and only to prove the truth of an old Adage that Thought is free And that no body can be punisht in this world for his Thoughts only or that it is all one for a thing not to be and not to appear to be But for all this evil believers if they profess their evil belief plainly appear evil doers and are to be treated accordingly Though I speak nothing more against them or their greatest Speakers than that they may be brought to our Churches and give us a fair hearing Animadversions upon his Appendix to the former Subject HIS Appendix to the former Subject begins with censuring the modesty of our first Reformers for their deference to the Ancient Fathers and Councils We thank him for this reproach Hereby says he they were reduc't to great straits in their Disputations He shall find himself reduc't into much greater before we have done with him for thus aspersing and deserting both the Ancients and the Modern Fathers as I may style them of this Church and the Reformation His reason for thus rejecting Antiquity is because some Popish Errors were crept very early into the Church The Superstition of the Cross and Chrism were in use in the second Century They were in use but none were then allowed in any superstitious abuse of them As for the Millenary Error and the Necessity of Infants receiving the Blessed Sacrament Errors indeed but no Heresies and common Errors but by no means to be charged on the Church Universal of those Ages which is but a Vulgar Error since the Papists he confesses reject them both I hope these do not prove the Fathers Papists nor yet Heretiques that the Reformers should balk them on these Surmises However this Reformer urges them where he thinks they serve his turn St. Cyprian tells us that every Praepositus which we call Bishop is to be guided by his own Reason and Conscience and is responsible to God only for his Doctrine St. Cyprian only says in the place which he means though he is not pleas'd to quote it that a Bishop was Praepositus and responsible to no other that is to no other Bishop and particularly not responsible to the Bishop of Rome But St. Cyprian never says that a Bishop is not responsible to the Church or a Council of Bishops which without any usurpation have always taken to themselves the authority of calling even Patriarchs to an account for their Doctrine as that General Council held at Constantinople by the Emperour Constantinus Pogonatus judg'd and condemn'd five Patriarchs at once and Honorius the Pope of Rome for one of them But St. Augustine believed it a direct Heresie to hold there were any Antipodes 'T is true he held there were none and rally'd those that held there was any such thing This was for want of understanding the System of the World which in those Ages few understood before the late Discoveries But St. Augustine is so little guilty of believing it either a Direct or an Indirect Heresie that he scarce makes Religion at all concern'd in it And if he touch it only as a point of Philosophy then his Reputation of Wit is as safe as that of Herodotus and Lucretius and many of the greatest Wits that made as fine Burlesques as he upon this opinion of Antipodes But if so great a Divine as St. Augustine and so great a Scholar as Lactantius were liable to such mistakes for want of skill in the Mathematiques Then why does this Author inveigh against that part of Learning for a Divine in his preaching Chapter p. 27. 28 He can't but wonder that men of any brains or modesty should so grosly abuse this saying of our Saviour He
that will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen and a Publican spoken of private differences between man and man to be referr'd to the Determination of the Church that is the Congregation of the Faithful which they usually and by order should assemble in and refer this to the Church in General in matters of Faith not in the least pointed at there He will have much ado to make us believe that a man is not bound to tell his Brother of Heresie a matter of so great Consequence and to tell it to the Church if his Brother will not hear him and yet prove that he is bound to do this in matter of private difference or petty quarrel between them Wherefore to borrow his own Conclusion of this matter I pass this over as very Impertinent And so is that which follows I do not believe nor am I bound by Scripture to believe such Expositions as the Popish Church makes of this place That the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church Who bids him believe the Popish Expositions But if that place be not spoken of the Roman Church therefore does it signifie nothing to prove the Visibility or Indefectibility of the Catholique Church But 't is plain he advances the notion of a Church Invisible a Church that shall be driven into the Wilderness where her Ninety nine Ceremonies are to be left to attend her scarce visible in the World whereas the Learned understand that place of the Churche's Persecutions the first three hundred years which made it the more illustriously visible and our nineteenth Article calls it the visible Church of Christ Now he proceeds to the business of General Councils whether they may Err in some points of Faith The Church of England acknowledges they may Err and have Err'd in things pertaining to God No doubt of it But this Author immediately flies higher with a why not in some points of Faith All the Evangelical Doctors grant says he that the later General Councils have Err'd if so why not the former what promise had the former from Christ more than the later True there is no more promise to a Council of the fourth Age or to that of Nice than to one that should be held in the seventeenth if it were as General and as free He asks concerning this promise The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church what 's this to a general Council which is not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Church We shall find him mistaken in this Account at long running Lastly he shews his charitable Divination in foretelling how much more mischief General Councils would have done if more of them had been conven'd But say you says he No General Council determin'd those errors Why because none was call'd about them had any been call'd who can doubt but they would have avow'd that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches This he says but his Yea's and Nay 's are no Oracles with us For why should they be when a General Council is not so with him Then presently he humbly craves pardon for his bold presumption viz. of these hard sayings against General Councils And I as humbly beg leave to speak for them in behalf of the Church of England and the Law of the Land both which I 'me sure I have on my side and both give much deference to General Councils The twentieth Article of our Church has these words The Church has Authority in matters of Faith And the Statute of the Land runs thus Eliz. 1. c. 1. That none however commissioned shall in any wise have authority or power to order or determine or adjudge any Matter or Cause to be Heresie but only such as heretofore have been determined ordered or adjudged to be Heresie by the authority of the Canonical Scriptures or by the first four General Councils or any of them or by any other General Council wherein the same was declared Heresie by the express and plain words of the said Canonical Scriptures or such as hereafter shall be ordered judged or determined to be Heresie by the Court of Parliament of this Realm with the Clergy in their Convocation But for all this we do not confess or acknowledge all or many of those for General Councils which they at Trent or which Bellarmine is pleas'd to account for such a parcel of eighteen of them But those very few we count for General which the Church Universal before the unhappy breach between East and West receiv'd for General But now to unravel the skein which is much entangled and ruffled in his confused way the diminutions he puts upon general Councils may be reduc'd to these three Heads 1. That General Councils may err in points of Faith because they have no promise to the contrary 2. Because they want Numbers even of the Clergy being not the thousandth part of them and therefore to put this Argument as far as ever it will go are not truly General 3. Because of the prejudices they that should sit in Council would bring along with them then who can doubt but they would avow that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches 1. In answer to his first Exception I premise these limitations If by erring in some points of Faith he means some points belonging to the Piety of Faith as Divines use to speak or to the Perfection of Faith or remotely belonging even to the essence or necessity of Faith and wounding it by far-fetcht Consequences I will not deny but even great Councils may possibly be circumvented for a time yet I may safely venture with our Learned Pious Dr. Hammond in his Paraenesis to reckon it among the pio credibilia or a thing piously credible as we say that God will not permit a Council truly General and Free to err in Fundamentals which thus far only I presume to explain that God will never permit them to deny and declare against any Fundamental Truth and much less to affirm and declare any Fundamental Errour to be a Truth and least of all to declare it a Fundamental Truth And if this Author asks which of God's Promises give us encouragement to hope and believe this I refer him to the Prophet Isaiah ch 30. v. 20. And though the Lord give you the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yet shall not thy Teachers be removed into a Corner any more but thine eye shall see thy Teachers That this Chap. is Evangelical will not I suppose be denied and so is that Isai 54. 17. and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment shalt thou condemn If this be denied to be spoken of the Christian Church I prove it undeniably from our Saviour's application of the Context And all thy Children shall be taught of God It was then a Prerogative of the Christian Church that her Teachers should be driven into
a corner no more that is be always Visible even when the Lord gave them the bread of affliction that is even in times of Persecution as the lawful Catholick Bishops were never more Visible than when the intruding Arrians that were far enough from being Lawful Bishops persecuted them away from their Bishopricks and drove their Persons indeed into Corners yet they held intelligence and kept exact correspondence with one another still and with all their Flock's that persever'd in the Faith and disowned the uncanonical Arrian Bishops This they did by their Literae Formatae by this method the Church preserv'd in her Communion her own Members amidst their Dispersions and before any General Councils except at Jerusalem held by the Apostles themselves though the greatest Heresies arose early by this means they proclaim'd their Faith loudest of all then when they were silenc'd and excluded by the Arrians from their own Pulpits as the Sufferings which happen'd to St. Paul fell out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel So that his bonds in Christ were manifest in all the palace and in all other places and many of the Brethren in the Lord waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the word without fear Phil. 1. 12 13 14. And if the Church has a power of Condemning in judgment every tongue that rises up against her I think this amounts to a promise a glorious promise and there are many such that all or near all the Bishops in the Christian world shall never apparently fall from an Outward Profession at least of the Catholick Faith in Fundamentals and profess the quite contrary Heresies instead of them And he that will not allow thus much at least to the Church must run into wild aery suppositions of sheep without any shepherds People without any Priests a Church without any Orders and as invisible as the Leviathan makes it in his parallel between the Church of Rome and the Kingdom of Fayries Thus sar methinks this Author should go along with me for all his asking What 's this to a General Council for the promise was made to the whole Body of the Church since even he acknowledges that the Gates of Hell would prevail against Her if the Devil could so wound the whole Body of the Church as to destroy the Vitals the Fundamentals And if this be not a mortal wound to the Body to lose all its Pastors and Teachers by their falling into formal and mortal Heresie then nothing at all can wound it deadly but a total Dissolution of all and every one of its members and at this rate this Author may fancy as a certain great Enthusiast did before him that Himself alone might be the Catholick Church and that it might wholly subsist in his Single Person But he would fain avoid this inconvenience though a General Council should fall into such Fundamental Errour and persist in it because Secondly says he 'T is not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Church which in the Scripture is always put for the whole Body of the Faithful though of late it be translated into quite another notion and taken for the Clergy only I answer if the Church be always put for the whole Body yet the Clergy sure are the voice or the mouth of that Body and God has promised Isa 59 20. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion to put it out of doubt that all this Chapter is Gospel and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob saith the Lord As for me this is my Covenant with them saith the Lord my Spirit which is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seeds seed saith the Lord from henceforth and for ever Farther I add out of the Author 's own confession in his Chap. concerning Bishops and Priests The Church was always governed by Bishops that is by one whatsoever you please to call him set over the rest of the Clergy with Authority to ordain to exhort to rebuke to judge and censure as he found cause no other form of Government is mentioned by any Author for fifteen hundred years from the Apostles downwards I make account then that a General Council of Bishops is as Tertullian styles it Representatio totius nominis Christiani a Representative of all that are called Christians Inferiour Clergy as well as Laity And what then if they are not the thousandth part of the Clergy nor the thousand thousandth part of the Laity nay to strengthen his Argument what if there is not actually met in Council the twentieth part of the Bishops that are in the Christian World Suppose that all are invited with assurance of safe conduct to a place of security and time enough allow'd for their convening all which can never be effected without the consent of Kings and Princes and without that it never must be attempted nevertheless because very many cannot possibly take such a voyage and must needs be absent it was never pretended to have the force of a General Council till it was manifestly accepted by those absent Bishops of the Church Universal wheresoever dispersed or at least by the visibly Major part of them so that it might appear to any one at first glympse as they say and without any scrupulous enquiry which way their much greater number had declared themselves If there be still a few Dissenters 't is inconsiderable as what were seventeen Arrian Bishops for there were no more Arrians that were lawful Bishops in the Council of Nice where there were three hundred and eighteen Catholique Pastors equal almost to the number of Servants bred up in the House of Abraham I know not then what they mean that would evacuate and annihilate almost the whole authority of general Councils by sending us to Ortelius's Mapps or Geographical Tables bidding us take a survey of all the great Cathedrals or Metropolitical Churches and then demand of us whether there were ever any Councils so Oecumenical from which above half the Bishops of these Sees were not absent True but if they were present upon their own Charges and did but what would be certainly required and exacted of them there or wherever they were they must needs accept subscribe recite publish and preach and cause to be preacht over all their Dioceses the Decrees concerning the Faith such as the Nicene Creed or the Constantinopolitan Nay the Bishops did many times summon Provincial and National Councils to sit a little before and at the same time with the General on purpose to ratifie and spread their Decrees And if any Council was pretended to be General and Free when it was not so as was the second of Nice which being overaw'd by an Imperious woman Irene decreed Image-worship Immediately two or three other great Western Councils as that of Francfort in Germany