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A30727
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Christian liberty asserted in oposition to the Roman yoke delivered in a sermon preached in His Majesties royal chappel of Windsor, the 8th of Decemb. 1678 / by John Butler.
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Butler, John, D.D.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing B6277; ESTC R7538
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15,021
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44
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in all cases If the Pope should so far err as to call vice De Rom. Pont. lib. 4. c. 5. vertue and vertue vice and command them to be accordingly practised and forborn the Church were bound to submit and conform her self unless she would sin against Conscience WELL said Cardinal THE good man had forgot that God himself had accursed those that call evil good and good evil But to let that pass how comes so great a man to suppose what he had taken so great pains to prove impossible i. e. that his Holiness can err and how comes he to pull down what he had before as much as in him lay built up i. e. the Popes infallibility For if we be not assured of the real and unalterable difference betwixt vertue and vice we have no certainty and where there is no certainty it is impossible there can be any infallibility Which doctrine of infallibility for I must hasten is the very beam of the yoke to be laid upon us in lieu of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free WE are by Gods providence yet free from the yoke we celebrate the Supper of the Lord with eating and drinking according to his own most holy Institution Be not therefore intangled with this yoke of bondage TAKE for a second part of their yoke the doctrine of Transubstantiation than which I am sure Jacob Behmen has not any thing in all his enthusiastick writings more monstrously mysterious and unintelligible As if no man could possibly become a good Christian unless he threw away his memory and understanding at the same time TRANSUBSTANTIATION a name and thing so unknown to all antiquity and so utterly impossible in it self that I must shake hands with my nature before I can bring my neck to the yoke INDEED if the Assertors of that doctrine can once mould me into such a temper as that with the Comoedian I could run in their hand and in one and the same breath affirm with them that a Cloud looks like a Camel like a Weazel and like a Whale much may be done Till then they must give me leave and if they will not give it me I shall make bold to take it to belive my senses both inward and outward which I humbly conceive and am verily persuaded God and Nature did not bestow upon me with a design to deceive and cheat me IF they ask as they usually do why do we then believe the doctrine of the Trinity which on this occasion they will have to be as much against human reason I answer by denying what they take for granted i. e. That the doctrine of the Trinity and that of Transubstantiation are alike against reason That I and two more can be one or that any created being can be in more than one place at the same is indeed against reason because we have distinct beings and are distinctly circumscribed by our own proper limits and places but that God who is infinite in power and fills all places with his unbounded presence may be whatever he pleaseth to reveal and declare himself to be as touching his Divine Nature is if above yet not at all against my reason BUT to end this Paragraph to what purpose should I be obliged in this matter to call white black and black white Cui bono Cannot the same God who at the Preaching of the Gospel of his Son by his Apostles conferred the Holy Ghost on those that never heard of him before and cannot that Son of God who Instituted Holy Baptism to the mystical washing away of sin confer Grace and Spiritual nourishment to my soul upon my humble and grateful commemoration of his meritorious Death and Passion in eating and drinking the Consecrated Elements without the Priests turning by I know not how many unconceivable Miracles not only the Bread and Wine but even the Bread alone into his real Body and Blood IT cannot be expected that I should within the time allotted me say all that can be said if I could do it upon these and the following subjects and therefore I refer you for your further satisfaction and confirmation to the labours of those many Pious and Learned men of our Church who have in this and all other points controverted betwixt us so baffled our Adversaries of Rome that though they will have the last word there is no help for that they have nothing left them which with modesty they can say for themselves As for us we are yet by the Grace of God free from this groundless useless and senseless yoke of Transubstantiation Be not therefore intangled with this yoke of bondage WHAT shall I say of the Doctrin of the Popes Supremacy over the whole World his pretended power to confer and take away Crowns and Kingdoms and in the stead of God himself for King David makes it his peculiar Prerogative and so doth his Son too to pull down one and set up another They tell us a great many fine stories of St. Peters Keys and St. Pauls Sword but alass they are but stories ambitious imaginations of their own brains Now before I give mine own opinion in the case so far as we are concerned I crave leave to tell you what one of their late Pamphleteers hath affirmed in it viz. That Oliver Cromwel had as much right to exclude the Royal Family and set up for himself as King Henry the Eighth had to throw off his Obedience to the Pope Spoken like a good Subject and a well read man Is there no difference between an home-born Prince and a forein Usurper And for Gods sake what power or profit had ever the Popes of Rome in this Kingdom but what was either granted them by the indulgence and bounty of devout and unwary Princes or else what they extorted by watching their opportunities and fishing in troubled waters the last of which was no Title at all and the first being abused was justly forfeited THE first considerable footing that his Holiness got here was by Austin the Monk about the year 600. and then the Foundation was laid in blood in the blood of twelve hundred Monks A truer story I am sure than that of their 11000 Virgin-Martyrs And as the Naturalists say ex quibus componimur ex iisdem nutrimur so I may say of them If you prove good children believe as the Church believes and do what she bids you right or wrong pay your first-fruits tenths Peter-pence and other perquisites which the Apostolic Sea claims all which however I think better in the King of England's Exchequer than in the Roman Aerary then his Holiness smiles at your easiness and his word is Si populus vult decipi decipiatur c. but if you do not look to your selves the note is changed into that of Nebuchadnezzar his Predecessor in old Babylon If you worship not you shall be cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace But suppose we should not grant but give them what they
knew very well that if he did not shew them as well the danger and absurdity of quitting their station as the profit and pleasure of keeping it they would be wavering still TAUGHT therefore by this blessed Apostle as well as by Moses who did not think it enough to set life and good before the people unless he shewed them also death and evil I shall pursue his method and proceed to the second general part of my Text the Dissuasion or Dehortation Be not intangled Nolite contineri nè illaqueamini nè implicemini nè retiamini for so many ways the original word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is translated and the sense in each rendition is much the same as though the Apostle should have said you are now in a state of liberty and freedome which Christ hath purchased for you have a care of such nets and snares such artifices and cunning devices as are laid and prepared to deprive you of it Have a care of their fair pretences So our Apostle as many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh they constrain Chap. vi vers 12. you to be circumcised Have a care of being intangled by their fawning concessions and crafty distinctions A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump saith the Apostle And therefore V. 9. h. c. as he tells them I testifie again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to the whole Vers 3. Law So I testifie to all those that are wavering and ready to be intangled by the arts of those perverters that they must sooner or later submit themselves to the whole law of that Church unless they would be looked upon as half Papists who are in the esteem of the ruling part of that Church little better than Protestants and shall perhaps fare little better when occasion shall serve The plain truth of it is this and herein lies the cheat If any person whom they have a mind to make a Proselyte boggle at their Antichristian doctrine and practice of giving the Sacrament under one kind only they will tell him very softly that indeed it is true the Church hath for many weighty reasons altered the primitive Institution but that yet however if he cannot with a quiet mind submit to the Canon in that particular he shall be dispensed with and receive it in both till he be clearly convinced and fully satisfied But then 't is an hundred to one they impose upon him by giving him unconsecrated Wine If he startle and stand amazed as well he may at the horrid and barbarous doctrine of excommunicating and deposing Emperours Kings and Princes from their regalities and dignities not only for being Hereticks themselves as they please to call them nay their very being male morati will do it but for not extirpating Hereticks out of their dominions with fire and sword if warned so to do and thereupon having absolved their Subjects from their allegeance of giving their dominions to others if they cannot persuade any of their own people to dispatch them out of the way by the knife or poyson If any one I say whom they are about to intangle start or stare at such horrid and barbarous doctrines they are dexterously ready to assure him that there is a very great mistake in this whole matter For alas these are only the opinions of some few private Doctors amongst them and not the doctrine of the Church No by no means God forbid Though all this while as that Church hath never yet censured such positions so one not to mention more of these Councils which they call general hath in a very Concil Lat. 4. great measure asserted them and the Popes whenever they have had a will and power enough in their hands have not been sparing to justifie and put them in execution AS for their art of intangling by striking a terror into the minds of their intended proselytes on the account of persecution telling them which is a common Topick among them Well well we shall be all of one Religion within these two or three years or within such or such a time and such like threatning expressions indeed silly women laden with iniquity and children void of understanding if they be intangled herewith may be pitied but for men and women that have been well grounded in the Principles of our Religion to be catcht with such chaff it is a crime unpardonable TO conclude this part of my discourse upon the Dissuasion or Dehortation If you find that they would intangle you by telling you as they seldom fail to do that if you come over to them undergo their penance perhaps they will get some body or other to do it for you and die in their Communion whatever your crimes be you shall be certainly saved but that if you live and die though never so full of faith and good works out of their Communion you stand Excommunicate and will be as certainly damned Fear them not stand fast and be not intangled WHAT Enter into Communion with or fear the excommunication of such as stand excommunicate themselves and that by an Apostle too Let no man startle at what I say I 'le make my words good This very Chap. i. 8. Apostle says expresly though we or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel to you than that which we have preached unto you Anathema sit let him be accursed And for fear such bold Innovators should not take his word for it he repeats it Verse 9. again as we said before so say I now again if any man preach any other Gospel to you than that you have received Anathema sit let him be accursed NOW that they have justly incurred this sentence of excommunication let them get it off how they can will easily appear if we take but a view of the yoke which upon our being intangled they have prepared for our necks 1. AND that is the first argument ab incommodo which our Apostle urgeth to enforce this Dissuasion or Dehortation there is a yoke in the case BE not therefore intangled with the yoke of bondage I will begin with the first part of their yoke which we occasionally mentioned before their denying to the people the Cup in the Holy Sacrament A yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear OUR blessed Saviour instituted eating and drinking the Symboles of his Body and Bloud apart the Apostles and the Church after them constantly practised it for above a thousand years together and now we must be sacrilegiously rob'd of it for reasons of their own invention for Christs Vicar must be wiser than his Master and because they will please to have it so THEY tell us that the Church hath an unlimited power to do such things and to make such alterations Believe it that list I have something else to do BUT this is a very small matter with them HEAR what Bellarmine says of the unbounded power of the Pope alone