pang and sollicitude before they durst open their doors They could neither eat nor sleep in any other security than that which a good Conscience gave them But the cruelst part of all was to defame us of Treason First you make a Law that to acknowledge the Successor of S. Peter had a common superintendency over the Church was Treason and then brand us for Traitors Should a Presbyterian or Independent Power make it Treason to acknowledge Prelacy would you think it reasonable presently to conclude all the older-fashion'd Protestants Traitors Nor can I perswade my selfe I offer any violence to Charity if I plainly and roundly charge you that in all this you proceeded flatly against your Consciences it being impossible you should really judge the bare receiving Orders beyond Sea to be Treason which is abundantly convinc't by your very offer of pardon nay sometimes preferment if hee whom you made the people beleeve was a dangerous and bloody Traitor would but go to Church with you For what Priest dyed for being a Priest but hee might have rescu'd himselfe at the last hour by such submission What Priest was so bad whom you were not ready to entertain with honour if hee would take party with you So unlucky is his Lordship in this Chapter that whatever his intention is he absolves us or at least condemns himselfe if he would be understood as the Letter of his Exceptions sounds he absolutely clears our Religion of a calumny which the Protestants most injuriously charge upon us that our vassalage to the Pope destroyes our subjection to our Prince citing so many instances where Catholikes remaining such have disobey'd the Pope If he on purpose layes his sense to bee ambiguous of which I have some jealousie because hee uses that jugling phrase in effect then hee absolutely proves himselfe a Deceiver In short if he mean honestly he justifies us if otherwise every honest man will condemn him But whatever his inward meaning is the Case open'd will declare it self Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis not onely of the Roman Monarchy then flourishing but of a multitude of Kingdomes either bred out of the destruction of that or originally independent and distinct from it which in process of time should embrace his Faith saw it necessary to make such a band of Unity betwixt the Churches of which his spiritual Empire was to be integrated that it neither should be offensive to temporal Princes nor yet unprovided of meanes to keep the Church in such amity as to be able to work like the Congregation of Hierusalem which had Cor unum animam unam For this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to S. Peter and consequently to his Successors among theirs The effect of this Principality was that when publick meetings of Bishops were necessary all emulation who should have recourse to the other was taken away since it was known all were to defer to him meet as and where was most fitting for him Again if any inconvenience fel among Christians there wanted not one who was by office to look to it though in the place where it fell out there were no superior Authority to curb the offenders This one Seat might by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of Succession from S. Peter to the end of the World whereas the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not the like to be done to all the Sees where all the rest of the Apostles had signed their Faith by their precious death Hence 't is the See of Rome is invested with the special priviledge of Mother and Mistress of the Church But not to dive into all or the questionable consequences of this Primacy this onely I intend to insist upon that it is the hinge upon which all the common government and unity in Faith Sacraments Ceremonies and communication of spiritual Fraternity depends which being removed the Church vanishes into a pure Anarchy no one Province or Country having the least obligation to any other to repair to it to obey it to make Meetings and common Ordinances with it So that the whole frame of the Church will be utterly dissolv'd ceasing to be a Church and becomming a ruinous heap of stones precious indeed in themselves but without order shape or connexion By this it clearly followes whatever is the truth of those Questions which our Bishop reckons up to have been disputed between other Christian Countries and the Papacy that as long as this Principality wee speak of is acknowledged so long there is an Unity in the Christian Church all particular Churches being by this subordination perfectly one both with their Head and among themselves This is the bridle our Saviour put in the mouth of his Church to wield it sweetly which way he pleased No dissention in Faith or Discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the World if this Authority were duly preserved and governed Many excellent effects we have seen of it and more the world is likely to enjoy when the admirable conveniences of it shall bee unpassionately understood What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so disinteressed as a good Pope should be to reconcile differences and to hinder bloodshed either in his own people or between his neighbours And who sees not that the Popes office and condition among those who reverence him is perfectly proper for such an effect beyond the hopes of wisedom that had not known th'exprience of it What a desperate attempt then is it to bite at this bridle and strive to put the whole Christian World in confusion This is your crime in this consists your Schism in this your impiety and wickedness Agreeing then that this is the substance of the Papacy temporal preheminences and wealth being but accidental to it wee shall presently see all those arrows which the Bishop shoots against us fall directly on his own head For if the Papacy stand firm and strong in all those Countries that have resisted the Pope when they conceived hee encroach'd on their ' liberties it is evident notwithstanding all such disputes the Being and Nature of one Church is entirely conserved they all governing themselves in an Unity of Faith and Sacraments and Correspondence like one Body as is visible to any that will but open his eyes and so are Members of one Christian Community Whereas the Reform as they call it has cut off England from all this communication and correspondence and made it no part of any Church greater than it self and by consequence that can pretend to Universality and Catholicism but a headless Synagogue without Brotherhood or Order if joyned with any other it is not in a common head but with the tayles of opposition to the Roman Catholike No more can the several Protestant Churches be allow'd to compose one Body than all the ancient Hereticks did nay than Turks and Iewes and
other See This indeed the Doctor says and we must believe him though he brings not a word of proof for it which the second part of his Assertion concerning their independency did necessarily require onely he says the contrary hath no degree of truth in it which he makes account will carry the business without bringing the least degree of probability for it As for the first part I would ask the Doctor whether St. Paul were supreme over them in his life time or no if he were as I suppose both his Epistles to them and the Doctors former large Testimony from the monosyllable COME will manifest then their being supreme in their own Provinces consisting still with the superiority of St. Paul may for any thing deducible from that reason alone admit the Supremacy of the Head of the Church and their subjection to him And the obligation lies yet upon the Doctor to prove positively That Timothy and Titus were totally exempt from St. Peters Jurisdiction for which Negative proofs are insufficient or indeed for any thing else Yet the Doctors Quiver is full of such blunt shafts and it is an evidence with him to argue thus I have not read it or it is not exprest in this Testimony therefore there is no such thing or therefore it is false As hath been often discovered in the process of this Answer That which follows That it is the nature of Primates or Patriarchs to have no Superior to exercise Iurisdiction over them is onely his own saying and so with like facility denied as asfirmed The Ordination of them by others I have already shewn not to prejudice the Universal Authority of the Head of the Church whose duty it is not to descend to otherwise suppliable actions about particular Members of that Body but from the top of his Primacy to govern and overlook the whole and to be conversant about that more Universal sort of actions reserved and proper to his larger power to the managing of which the short-handed Jurisdictions of particular Patriarchs were not able to reach But now comes the most dangerous blow of all The Doctor did but take his aym all this while now he is fetching the fatal stroke and me thinks I see the Ax even now falling upon the neck of Rome He threatens in his ninth Section To put the whole matter out of controversie And how think you he tells us That Kings could ever erect and translate Patriachates in their own Dominions and therefore that the Kings of England may freely remove that power from Rome to Canterbury and subject all this Iland to that independent Archbishop or Primate There is a trick now for the Pope which he never dream'd of Where first you see Mr Hammond supposes as granted That the Popes power is but meerly Patriarchal which is the chief if not onely thing in question between us So as his method to put the whole matter out of Controversie is to beg the supposal of the whole matter in Controversie This supposal laid for a ground he repeats again for his first instance those two late answered Acts of Iustinian erecting Iustiniana Prima and Carthage two Arch-Bishopricks or Primacies Though himself acknowledges That Carthage was not originally dignified but onely restored to its Primacy by the said Emperor after the Wandals were driven our which being onely an Act of preserving the former Canons of the Church inviolate every good Christian Emperor and Prince not onely may but also ought to do it and when he does it it is by the power of the Canons of the Church As for the first instance concerning Iustiniana Prima the Dr. thinks perhaps good man that he doth well but put the proof in form and he will I am confident be ashamed of the consequence Iustinian erected Patriarchates saith the History therefore Kings have power to do such acts of themselves infers the Doctor where the force of the illation is the same as if one should say The late Parliament took away Bishops therefore Parliaments have a power to take them away That a particular matter of fact may conclude a self-and-proper power in him that did it you must first prove that power to be originally his own and not delegated to him by another pretending to it himself who in our case is the Pope Next you must prove That if he did it without that delegation yet his action was lawful These if you first prove your instances will come to something otherwise they are senceless and infer less then nothing wanting both the crutches which may enable them to advance forwards to a conclusion Your next instance is That the Emperor Valentinian did by his Rescript constitute Ravenna a Patriarchal Seat where you quote no Author but Anno Dom. 432. And indeed you did well for the Rescript is accounted spurious and to have been foisted into the Monuments of that Church in the time of their Schism Had you told us how invalid the Authority of it was and how not onely for that but for many other things it lay under just exceptions you had been put to the puzzling task of defending its authentickness The exceptions against it are these First It begins in a different manner from the constant tenor of all other Rescripts Next the decree is singular and consequently to be suspected in this that all the other Rescripts made in the reign of the two Emperors though constituted by one of them onely yet were ever authorized by both their names whereas the name and Authority of the Emperor Theodosius is wanting to this Thirdly the Inscription of Imperator Major is new and unheard of all the rest entitling Valentinian Imperator Maximus Fourthly the Bishops of Rhegium Placentia and Brixillis are in the Rescript named as under the Archbishop of Ravenna which is a plain forgery since not long afte◠Pope Leo commanding Eusebius Archbishop of Millain to gather a Provincial Council of the Bishops subject to him those three Bishops met there and subscribed to that Council as appears by the Synodal Epistle yet extant Fiftly The same Rescript which gives them Archiepiscopatum an Arch-Bishoprick which you make a Patriarchate granted them also the use of the Pall which was never accustomed to be given by the Emperors but by the Popes onely as appears by the Epistles of Gregory the Great to the then Archbishops of Ravenna This last rub so puzzled Hieronymus Rubens to smooth it who out of a preposterous love of his Countrey cited this Rescript for its priviledge that he was forced to explicate that Pall to be Caesarum Paludamentum such an Imperial Robe as the Cesars used to wear whereas besides the unlikeliness of the action it is plainly contrary to the Rescript it self which grants them such a Pall Sicut Caeteri sub nostrâ Christianissimâ potestate saepe degentes fruuntur Metropolitae As the rest of the Metropolitans in his Dominions often wore Which every one who hath but tasted
Folio on the Bible 167 15 How Doctor H will have the allowance of a House to dwell in and Meat to eat the erection of a Primacy 172 16 The Doctor constant to his Principles putting the strongest Argument in the Rear 173 17 The Doctor cryes he is out of his way when he comes to a Passage he cannot get over 177 18 How Doctor Hammond blows and sups all at once 187 19 The Doctor as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff 211 20 Doctor Hammonds two sorts of Gifts given and not-given 214 21 How the Doctors ill-favored c. dashes out the best 221 22 Dr. H. like the Fellow that thought the Sun set at the next Town 226 23 The Doctors confusion for Methods sake 230 24 Dr. H. neither goes to Church nor stays at home 233 c. 25 The Doctors courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of Damnation to make a leg to St. Peter 241 26 The Doctors wise appointment of time and place for his Duel in a Wilderness and a daâ—k night 246 27 A magnanimous piece of docible humility in Dr. H. and his Church 251 28 How the world must needs look upon Dr. Hammond as another St. Iohn Baptist 254 29 The Doctors Logick proving Protestants no Schismaticks because they have all Noses on their faces 270 30 How Dr Hammonds Church keeps open house for all comers 273 31 The Doctor never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the Reason that ever concerns it 277 32 The Doctors Goliahs sword has no more edg then a Beetle 278 33 Dr. Hammonds artificial incomparable nonsence 286 c. And for digestion a solid Postpast under the slight name of Down-Derry THE Introduction IT bred in me at first some admiration why the Protestant Party who heretofore seem'd still more willing to skirmish in particular Controversies then bid battle to the main Body of the Church or any thing which concern'd her Authority should now Print Books by Pairs in defence of their disunion from her and subducing themselves from her Government Especially at this time when it were more seasonable for the Church of England as they entitle themselves to denounce to those many minute Sects gone out of their Communion the unreasonableness of their Schism then plead the reasonableness of their own and to threaten them with the Spiritual Rod of Excommunication unless they return then cry so loud Not guilty after the lash has been so long upon their Shoulders But the Reason of the latter I mean why their Pens rather decline to endeavor the reducing their own Desertors I conceive is because no colourable pretence can possibly be alleaged by the Protestants why they left us but the very same will hold as firm nay much more for the other Sects why they left them For that we pressed them to believe false Fundamentals Dr. Hammond and his Friends will not say since they acknowledge ours a true Church which is inconsistent with such a lapse They were therefore in their opinion things tolerable which were urged upon them and if not in the same rank yet more deserving the Church should command their observance then Copes or Surplisses or the Book of Common-Prayer the allowance whereof they prest upon their Quondam-Brethren The Reason of the former that is their earnestness at this time to clear themselves from the imputation of Schism I conjecture to be the self-consciousness of feeling at length the smart of their own folly in the present dissipation of their Church proceeding from their leaving that Body in which alone is found the healthful vigor of Peace-maintaining Discipline the want of which causes all their distractions Yet not willing to acknowledge an inveterate Error they seek to cover the deformity of their breach with the veil of innocency that that which evidently causes their misfortune may at least seem not to have been their fault And indeed this is the last game they have to play for after their coy conceit of an Invisible Church was unmasked and found plainly to be nothing but a blinde Chimera and less then a Conventicle After that by consequence a visible Church was found necessary to perpetuate a line of Successive Governors without obedience to which they saw by dear experience all Order would be level'd into Anarchy After the consideration of this had oblig'd them to grant that to raise a Schism or to subtract ones self from Obedience to those Governors was in a high manner destructive to Gods Church and therefore a sin deserving the deepest damnation in the abetters and maintainers of it as also in their voluntary adherents Lastly since it was most manifestly acknowledged on all sides That our Church was that Body of Christianity in whose Bowels their Predecessors the first Reformers were bred with whom onely and no other community in the world before the Rupture was made they communicated and from which Body by little and little they became and now are totally disunited they saw plainly and Dr. Hammond will not stick to grant it That no Sacrifice remained to expiate that hainous sin of Schism in the present Protestants but to wipe off the Aspersion from themselves and lay the occasion of the breach at the doors of the Catholick Church This is the scope as far as I understand of Dr. Hammonds Book at which I aym this Answer Only solicitous that he was so tedious in things acknowledged by both parties or which little or nothing concern'd the main point in question as to make up three parts of his Books of these trifles And of the very hinge of the Controversie which is When and why the Schism began to say so little and so weakly that being the chief knot to be untied in this difficulty But since the Doctor will have it otherwise I must be content in most of the Book to Answer meer words that is to fight with the air at least when any thing occurs which may seem to have some mixture of a solider element I shall allow it such a reflexion as I conceive in Reason it may deserve I am his Friend and will goe along with him hand in hand through his whole Book Not that the solidness of the Treatise it self requires so exact a proceeding but the weakness of less-understanding Readers who suspect frivolous things that bear a bulk and a specious shew of Words to be important unless the Answerer either out-word them or manifest them plainly to be impertinent of which as the former is far from my intent so the later must for the reason alledged be a part of my present Task and consequently I hope a satisfactory Plea for my seeming unnecessary tediousness to the more judicious Reader SCHISM DISARM'D THE FIRST PART Containing an Answer to the four first CHAPTERS SECT 1. Notes upon Dr. Hammonds first Chapter of the Danger and Sin of Schism HIS first Chapter is most of it a good Sermonlike preparative to his ensuing Theme Who
that professes her self fallible that is uncertain of the truth of her Doctrine cannot without accusing her self of the greatest injustice and tyranny in the World binde others to the belief of the said Doctrine For it carries the prejudice of the highest unreasonableness with it for a man to tell me I will force you â—o believe that which yet I my self know not whether it is to be believed or no. Let not Dr. Hammond then blame our Church for obliging men to subscribe to her Doctrine unless he can evidence first That she hath not that which she hath ever from the beginning of the Church pretended to to wit a security from fallibility by the perpetual assistance of her Spouse and Saviour But rather let him invent if he can any rational excuse for his own Church which professing her self fallible and so wanting all power to oblige to belief would notwithstanding have others believe her accounting the Puritans Anabaptists Presbyterians and Independants Schismaticks if they do not and dares enstyle her self a Church that is a Commonwealth which hath power and means to oblige to Unity in belief whereas her own professed fallibility or uncertainty evidences that she wants all the Nerves which should connect the Members of such a Body These grounds laid it were not amiss to insert here what the Author of that Epistle which was writ from Bruxels in answer to Dr. Hammond saith upon this place By this saith he you may perceive much of his discourse to be not onely superfluous and unnecessary but contrary to himself for he laboreth to perswade That the Protestant may be certain of some truth against which the Roman Catholick Church bindeth to profession of Error which is as much as to say That he who pretends to have no infallible Rule whereby to govern his Doctrine shall be supposed to be infallible and that he who pretends to have an infallible Rule shall be supposed to be fallible at most because fallible Objections are brought against him Now then consider what a meek and humble son of the Church as this Dr. would he thought ought to do when on the one side is the Authority of Antiquity and Possession such Antiquity and Possession without dispute or contradiction from the Adversary as no King can shew for his Crown and much less any other person for any other thing together with the perswasion of Infallibility and all the pledges Christ hath left to his Church for motives of Union On the other side uncertain Reasons of a few men pretending to Learning every day contradicted by incomparable numbers of men wise and learned and those few men confessing those Reasons and themselves uncertain fallible and subject to Error Certainly without a byass of interest or prejudice it is impossible to leave the Church if he be in it or not return if he be out of it For if infallibility be the ground of the Churches power to command belief as she pretends no other no time no separation within memory of History can justifie a continuance out of the Church Thus far that Letter which had it not been strangled in the birth and miscarried in the Printer's hand might have saved me the labor of this larger conâ—ute and being exactly short might justly be styled Dr. Hammonds Iliads in a Nut-shell since the force of it was so united the Reason in it so firmly connected as might have cost the Doctor a full ten years siege ere he could make a breach into it with his Brown-Paper Bullets But now it is high time to reflect upon the Doctors manner of arguing who tells us here That he needs give no more answer to our objection of a Schismatical departure then this That they who acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be Infallible may be allowed to make a supposition which is founded in the possibility of her inserting Errors in her Confessions c. And so goes on with three or four Suppositions all built upon that first general Supposition That the Roman Catholick Church hath erred or is not infallible I commend the Doctor for his wit The whole question is reduced to this one point Whether the Church erred or no as is most manifest For if she evidently errâ—d he and his Ancestors may possibly be excused for not believing her and rejecting her Government by Schism which she told you was sacred but if she was infallible no plea nor evasion can possibly serve your turn neither is it your or their supposing it which can make her fallible and so be a fit ground to build your excuse on Now comes this Gentleman who in the first page of his Book is entitled Doctor of Divinity to handle this Question and onely desires in courtesie that the main matter in controversie out of which it was easie to infer what he pleased should first be supposed or granted and that upon that ground he would evince his cause Just like that young smatâ—eâ—er in Logick who undertook to prove his fellow a Goose but first he would needs have him suppose that whatsoever had two Legs was one of those tame Fowl which his wary fellow notwithstanding his importunity refusing to grant he was left quite blank and his wise Argument at an end Such is the on-seâ— such must be the event of the Doctors Logick You and your first Reformers are Schismaticks says the Catholick in rejecting the Government of the Church and her chief Pastor which she told you was both lawful and sacred Your Church erred saith the Doctor and so we could not be obliged to believe her I but answers the Catholick you must first prove evidently that she is fallible and subject to Error O replies the Doctor we suppose that to be most certainly true and without all dispute Risum teneatis amici Yet Mr. Hammond hath involved another Error in the same passage more unpardonable if possible then the former so fruitful is his Logick of inconsequent absurdities For what man ever arrived to that heigth of mistake as to endeavor to manifest his innocency by the voluntary confession of a crime which implies the objected fault and much more to boot or to alledge for his plea against the accusation of his adversary that which more deeply condemns and is objected to him as a far more hainous crime by the same adversary Yet such is this Doctors acuteness He is accused by us of Schism and lays for the ground of his excuse That he acknowledges not our Churches infallibility which is charged upon him not onely to be both Schism and Heresie but as the very sink of all Infidelity For what man of Reason but stands in an hovering disposition of minde to embrace any Religion or rather Irreligion nay even Turcism it self as your best Champion the Lord Faulkland professes he would when a stronger blast of a more probable Reason shall turn the sail of his Wind-Mill Judgment knowing and acknowledging as he must and does That neither
as clear as the most palpable matter of Fact can make a thing visible to the eyes of the World that there was indeed at least a material breach or Schism by you made from that Body which communicated with the Church of Rome and of which Body you were formerly as properly and truly a part as a Branch is of a Tree To which adde your proofs out of the Fathers in your first Chapter affirming No just cause can be given for a Schism and it will follow that your own words clearly convince and your own proofs evidently conclude you to be formally Schismaticks I will put the Argument in form to make it more plain onely premising That material Schism as far as it concerns us at present is the extern action of breaking from a community Formal the causlesness or unjustifiableness of that material Fact which must needs be criminal because it admits no just excuse to plead in its behalf Then thus No Separation from the whole Body of Christians can possibly be justified say the Fathers by you alleaged Chap. 1. Sect. 8. But your Separation was from the whole Body of Christians Therefore impossible to be justified Where all the evasion I can imagin in your behalf is to distinguish the Major That the Fathers meant Criminal Separation or the Crime of Schism could have no just cause given for it not the material and external fact of Schism But first this makes the Fathers very shallow to go about to shew That no just cause can be alleaged for the crime of Schism since every one knows there can be no just excuse possible for any crime Next the Fathers there alleaged pretend to particularize some special viciousness in Schism and are to that end produced by the Doctor But there is no speciality in Schism above other sins to say That no just excuse can be given for the crime of it since the like may be said of all sins as well as it The fact of Schism therefore it is which they call unjustifiable the same fact which with a large narration you here set down and acknowledge that they said it voted it swore it taking a great deal of pains to prove those whom you undertook to defend to be voluntary deliberate and sworn Schismaticks Now all the Testimonies alleaged by your self against Schism come in troops bandying against you and your cause as strongly as if they had been expresly gathered to that purpose As that a Schismatick is à semet-ipso damnatus self-condemned which you have here very learnedly performed as I lately shewed That ultrò ex Ecclesia se eâ—icerent they cast themselves voluntarily out of the Church c. Quomodo tâ— Ã tot gregibuâ— scidisti Excidisti enim teipsum How hast thon cut off thy self from so many flocks For thy self hast cut off thy self of which accusation your fifth Paragraph infers the confession Your own voluntary recession from us and our Government by your self here acknowledged is an indelible token and as it were a visible ear-mark that you are a stray sheep and a run-away à toâ— gregibus from the flock This badg of a Voluntary Recession your Church must always necessarily carry about her Nor will you ever be able to wipe it off with all the specious Id Ests or Criticisms your wit can invent SECT 9. The nature of Schism fetch t from it's first grounds and the material part of it fastened upon the Protestants TO lay this charge of Schisme yet more home to the Protestants we will open more clearly the nature of Schism and describe it more exactly that the Reader may see how perfectly the Protestant Church is cast in the mold of it For the better conceiving of which it will be necessary to shew first what it is which makes the Sons of the Catholike Church like brethren live together in Unity and this will lead us into the consideration first of the formal Unity it self and secondly of the Reason and Ground of this Unity The Unity it selfe consists in two things one is the submitting to and communicating in one common Head or Government the Authority of which if it be establish't in an undoubted possession as it was at the beginning of Mr. Drs Reformation is as necessary to the Ecclesiastical Community as the acknowledgement of the Undoubted Supreme Magistrate is necessary for the Unity of any temporal Common-wealth The second is the communication of the member-churches with one another consisting in the acknowledging the same Articles of Faith and using the same Sacraments c. To these was added anciently communicatory letters which afterwards by reason of the perfect colligation of the several members with their Head was neglected as unnecessary And these two Unities may be conceived again either negatively or positively By negative Communion in the same Head I mean a not disacknowledging only of the supreme Pastor or at least such an indifferent acknowledgment as having no tie upon it may be at pleasure refused and the Authority rejected As likewise negative communication between the member-Churches imports either a â—leight not denying of communion or such an acceptance and embracing of it as having no obligation may at pleasure be turned into disacceptance and disavowing On the contrary these two communications are then called positive when there is a positive obligation to acknowledge that Head and communicate with the other Churches And this is that which can only make a Church and found Church-government Or rather indeed there can be no Government imaginable either spiritual or corporal without such positive communion for a company of men without an expresse and positive obligation to obey their Superiors and comport themselves towards their fellows according to the laws may indeed be called a multitude such as is aâ—eâ—vus â—apâ—dum an heap of stones but not an Army City Commonwealth or Church which imply connexion and order Neither is the obligation of only Charity sufficient though in it selâ—e a great Ciment of Unity but it must be a visible one resulting out of the very Nature of Government which is visible and exterior Besides Charity extends universally to all even those out of the Church and therfore cannot be that proper peculiar and sole tie which unites the Faithfull as they are a Common-wealth of Beleevers The second thing is the Reason of this double Union or rather of this double positive obligation of Unity in the Church which to conceive more clearly the Reader may please to consider that a Christian is a Christian by his Faith and so a Congregation of Christians is a Community of the Faithfull Whence it followes that the Unity of the Faithfull as such being in Faith their faith must be one the ground therefore of the Unity of their faith is the ground of the Unity of the faithfull but the infallibity of the Church is the ground of the Unity of faith Therefore the same Infallibility is the reason of the Unity or positive
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
or at least that year was pure again For it cannot be imagin'd the doctrine of that Council was pure but the beleefe of the Faithful in that Age taught by those Pastors which there resided must be pure also Far more consonant then to their grounds is the doctrine of the Puritans denying promiscuously all Antiquity than to pick and cull out at pleasure what serves their turn as doe the Protestants and to like and reject allow and disallow what makes for or against them without giving any evident reason why they put such a difference In vain therefore does the Doctor like a very Saint pretend in behalfe of their Church an unaffected ignorance though they should mistake being conscious to himselfe what pitiful shifts he makes use of in stead of grounds In vain does he hope that this ruliness as he calls it and obedience of theirs will render them approvable to God unless they can render God an approved reason why they will at pleasure hold his sacred Spouse the Church holy in one Age and adulterate in another and shape and fashion Christs seamless coat according to the mode of their ever-changing fancy Lastly most vainly doe they hope this ruliness in holding to the first 300. yeares will lead them into all truth unless they could shew that all the points of Truth between them and us were professedly treated and decided in those times and the decision on their side He ends in a preaching manner with extolling the humble and docible temper of his Church Truly Mr. Doctor it is a wonderful commendation to your Church that she is yet to bee taught Pray when will she be at age to leave going to School when will she be out of her prentice-like tutorage and set up for her selfe to professe truth as a Church should do I thought a Church should have been Columna firmamentum veritatis the Pillar and firm foundation of Truth but yours is like the hinge of a door or a weather-cock docibly turning with every wind of doctrine How doe you think the Puritans or any other Sect should in reason yeeld any Authority to your Church since she professes her selfe yet learning her Faith that is as yet knowes it not If it be such a commendation in your Church to be docible I suppose it is so in others and consequently in the whole Church and then I pâ—ay who must teach her or what greater Professor is there on Earth of the knowledge of Christs Faith to whom the Universal Church may submit her selfe as dociâ—le Perhaps you will say that one particular Church must sisterly and charitably assist and teach another that is though each be ignorant it selfe yet like the blind leading the blind they must all be supposed mutual Mistreâ—ses and consequently all learned But let us examine a little further this docible and humble temper of your youngling Church Is it dâ—ciblenesse or humility think you to forsake a Mistress who had all the qualities which could give â—er Authority and fall to teach your selves new reformed doctrines without any Authority at all Such is the humble dâ—ciblenesse of your Church Is it docibleness to cast off the Authority of 14. General Councils and the consent of Christendome for twelve hundred yeares and rely upon your own judgments to interpret the rest as you list This is the so much brag d on docibleness and humble temper of your Church Parallel to the former or rather far ouâ—vying them though of a contrary strain is that most heroick Act of your docible humility to be willing to hold things concerning your eternal salvation upon the Authority of the four General Councils or the Doctors and Church of the first 300. yeares which Drs. and Councils notwithstanding it is an Article of your Faith that they are fallible And as for the Church of those times that it was fallible your selfe grants for you confesse that the same Church erred in the fourth Age. Now to hold Articles or points of Faith upon that Authority which it is an Article of Faith may deceive me is such a magnanimous piece of docible humility as I dare be bold to say in the Doctors behalfe neither the Apostles nor any Saint in the succeeding Church durst ever own Neither can the present Catholikes whom some who neither understand their own nor Catholike grounds laugh at as blindly humble and obedient to the Church lay claim to such an incomparable degree of humility proper and peculiar to the Protestants onely For we pretend not Faith certain but upon a deemed INFALLIBILITY in the Authority assuring it so as though they may be supposed blameable by you for failing in their grounds that is in believing the Church infallible yet they cannot be condemned for proceeding inconsequently upon those groundâ— for an infallible Authority deserves a firm assent But to stand to the acceptation of matters of Faith which you pretend most certain upon an Authority confessed by your selves uncertain is such a condiscension of humility such a prostrating your proper knowledge as is not onely a blindly-capâ—ivating your Judgment but even an utter renouncing all judgment prudence and common sence not a submitting the reason by a voluntary winking at objections but a quite extinguishing and perfect putting out of the very Eye of reason it selfe and is all one as if a man should say For any thing I know such a one may lye in what he tells mee yet neverthelesse I will strongly perswade my selfe that all hee sayes is most certainely true Yet this humility the Doctor calls here a special mark of the Church of Englands Reformation And surely you have reformed well since you have not only reform'd the Unity you before enjoy'd into distractions the Faith you formerly profest into new-fangled misbeleefes but your former reason and judgment into present folly and fancy What is said of your accepting the four Councils c. may also bee apply'd to your private interpretitions of Scripture which found your Faith which Faith you will have to be certain and firm though the persons Interpretation it is built on be fallible and obnoxious to errour The pious words in your own behalfe with which you close up your Chapter spoken in an Elegiack tone are very moanfully moving words out of a pulpit rhetorical enough for women not rational enough to satisfie any prudent man You professe you would preserve the Unity of the Apostolical Faith and primitive practises as entire as Christs body or garments Good Mr. Hammond leave mocking your Readers and tell us why the Primitive times must needs just end then when the Church began to flourish and the Fathers to write against your doctrine And as for Christs body or garments I see no such great respect in you or your Churches doctrine allow'd towards holy Reliques that I should be willing to trust those sacred pledges to your unhallowed hands from whose rude usage his mystical Body his Church Faith its Rule
absolutely renounce ere wee can deem you other than Hereticks Either wee must judge the highest Tribunal in the world upon whose living voice wee build all Faith and true sence of the Scriptures to have lyed that is wee must judge our highest Superiours Pastours Teachers and Church to be erroneous in Faith and heretical or else we must judge you our equals at most and till you out-law'd your selves her subjects to be truly criminal and rightly condemned Thirdly Unus Deus una Fides unum Baptisma there is but one Faith as there is but one God That your Faith and ours cannot be one is most evident All our whole Church condemning yours as heretical and yours when the humour takes them as much detesting ours as erroneous Nay the most dreadful sacrifice of our Saviours Body and Bloud our Holy of Holies reviled and abhorred by your Church as a blasphemous fiction and pernicioâ—â— imposture Both our Faiths therefore cannot be one and consequently one of them is none but erreur against Faith which if firmly adhered to as it is must be Heresie either your Faith then or ours under penalty of maintaining a contradiction must necessarily bee held as heresie Now comes this Doctor and accuses us for the most uncharitable men in the world because wee will not judge our own Faith heretical and so free theirs Remember our Saviours words Mr. Dr. He that believes not is judg'd already Joyn this to Una Fides and our contradicting one another in most important points of Faith and you must necessarily conclude that neither of us if hee bee certain he beleeves and has that one Faith can make conscience of judging the other since the other is judged already in receding from or not having the true Faith Nay if he judge him not to be already judged he must judge himself to be in the same state of a self-judg'd unbeleever or rather on the contrary hee must make conscience of not judging him for such but by a colloguing piece of courtesie draw him into eternal perdition and himselfe follow him for his uncharitable connivence Thus you see the Dr. never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the reason that ever concerns it Neither is it Charity but partly fear of most open shame partly ignorance of any grounds or what belongs to a Church or a Government which makes him not judge us to bee both Hereticks and Schismaticks since one of us must be such and he has a good mind to give us these new Titles whom hee very angrily here calls his vaunting enemies But as the former body of our Church out of which their few Reformers receded standing and remaining still one and the same together with that plain and common notion that a tree is not said to be broken from a branch but the branch from the tree-leaves them so much light of apprehension as not to dare to call us schismaticks so the acknowledg'd antiquity of our doctrine ever persisting the self-same and the confessed innovation of theirs frights them though unwillingly from styling us Innovators and Hereticks Fourthly our judging you may indeed seem to bee errour but malice and uncharitablenesse it cannot For since the grounds of our Faith which necessarily oblige us to judge thus of you and all such were held by us as firmly before you were ever dream'd of as at present you cannot object that wee invented new grounds to conclude so hardly of you in our thoughts nor that they were purposely and maliciously aymed at your then-unhatch'd Congregation So as you may if you please pretend that all the grounds on which wee hold our Faith Gods word and its true Interpretation are erroneous and therefore that our so judging of you necessarily springing from those Grounds is an errour yet malice or uncharitablenesse you cannot call it since wee cannot hinder the consequence from following without denying the grounds which infer it that is without denying the certainty and truth of all our Faith And me thinkes the zeal of our Missionaries to reduce others from the ill state wee conceive them in with daily hazarding and often laying down actually their lives for that end both in this Countrey and many others should transfer the charge of Uncharitablenesse to your colder partâ— for sure it can bee no lesse to judge them uncharitable who so readily and willingly lay down their dearest lives to redeem the soules of their very enemies and persecutors from a beleeved danger Yet this is the Doctors Goliah's sword as he calls it wherewith he threatned to give a fatall wound Though in truth I can discern no more edge in it than in a Beetle S. Cyprians testimony of Neminem damnantes neminem a communione nostrâ arcentes Condemning no man nor driving any from his Communion was spoken of himselfe of his own temper towards the rest of Gods Church acknowledged by himselfe to be such and that in the point of Rebaptization of Infants which though held stiffely by himselfe yet his charity so moderated his zeal that hee exprest his indifferency in those alledged words Neither had he reason to deny Communion to other Catholikes for a private opinion onely till the Church had interpos'd her Authority But where did the Doctor read either in S. Cyprian or any other Father that they admitted to their Communion those who had been condemned as Schismaticks and Hereticks by all the Churches in communion with the See of Rome as were the Protestants Unlesse hee can shew this hee abuses most absurdly that holy and learned Father by seeming to make him allow a promiscons admission of all Sects let them be what they please which savours more of Doctor Hammonds spirit who would have all come to his Church thas call themselves Christians than of Blessed S. Cyprians who knew better what belonged to Church-order and discipline But I thought there was one of the Drs mysteries in it when I saw the words of the Father alledged to an end so inâ—onsonant to his Doctrine without quotation of any place Book Chapter or Epistle But Mr. Hammond will have the thing between us to bee onely differences in opinion and indeed if that supposition that the onely ground of all our Faith in which consists our main difference were but an Opinion as on his part it is not I see no reason why either hee or I should trouble our selves to write Books in defence of an Opinionative Faith it were better in that case to eat drink shake hands and be merry nor trouble our selves with thinking whether there bee a Heav'n or no which wee can never come the ground of Faith being but an Opinion to any certain knowledge of In the last place of his first Part of this Schism hee tells us we beg the question in calling them Schismaticks because they deny it and offer to prove the contrary Certainly Mr. Hammond has been so long in the Pulpit that hee has forgot the fashion of
in Bishops and Presbyters rightly ordained and multitudes rightly baptized none of which have fallen off from their profession Where the last words are most certainly true if he means that none of those who yet stand have as yet fallen off which I conceive is his meaning for all these who have not stood have fal'n off which are enow to shew of what mettal their Church was made and whether more have fal'n or stood let the Doctor judge But as for the rest of his selfe-congratulation it is a miserable piece of self flattery and which his own grounds quite discountenance For if a Church be a Congregation of the Faithful and Faith as S. Paul argues comes by hearing hearing from preaching preaching from mission or being sent which mission is an Act of Iurisdiction it follows that if their Bishops and Presbyters have now no Iurisdiction then the Protestants have neither lawful mission preaching hearing faith nor consequently Church Now that they can claim no Iurisdiction followes out of their own grounds for when we urge them upon what Authority they cast off the former Ecclesiastical Superior governing Gods Church in chief they run for their defence to the secular Power to which they attribute supreme Iurisdiction in matters Ecclesiastical within this Island It is acknowledg'd saith the Dr. C. 7. S. 2. that the Papal Power in Ecclesiastical Affaires was both by Acts of Convocation of the Clergy and of Parliament cast out of this Kingdome Thus you see he recurs to a power meerly secular in the Parliament for renouncing and abolishing a spiritual power and Jurisdiction held before greater than ever the Protestant Prelacy was imagin'd Meerly secular I say for the Doctor confesses here that it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them could probably have inclined the Clergy to that their first Act And how great influence this apprehension of danger might have over the secular part of the Parliament is easie to be determined since they saw the gravest Patriot in the Kingdome in danger of death for holding against the Kings new pretended Title and many others for the same respect most cruelly persecuted A Parliament therefore meerly of Seculars and those such as can in no wise be presum'd free was held by you of sufficient Authority to renounce a Jurisdiction deemed formerly much higher and known to bee almost ten times longer setled in possession than your Prelacy I see not therefore why a secular power should not bee in your grounds sufficient to abolish a jurisdiction which onely leaned and relied on a secular support But what was done in King Henry's dayes being disannul'd again by both the spiritual and secular power in Queen Maries Reign must necessarily bee held of you invalid if you will goe consequently to your own grounds Let us then examine the resurrection of your Church by a Parliament held in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth In which Parliament to omit the small title the Queen had to the Crown being born of a second bedfellow whilst King Henry's former Wife was yet alive and declared illegitimate both by the whole Parliament and her own Fathers Act were wanting the spiritual Lords the Bishops who were for their Religion kept at that time in prison For which reason when a Quere was raised about the beginning of the late long Parliament whether Acts made without Bishops were valid it is said to have been resolved affirmatively upon this ground because otherwise the Protestant Religion voted by a Parliament in which was no Bishops would be invalid also I see not then what great advantages could be in that Parliament to Vote out the greater Authority of the Pope or give your new-made Bishops ordained God knowes how Iurisdiction but the same may be pretended by a succeeding Parliament to deprive them and set up a new Form of their own Certain it is that you acknowledge the Secular Power for the Source and first Fountain of your Iurisdiction Since then the present Secular Power has put a stop to your father Ordination and disannul'd your former Iurisdiction your own grounds conclude you de facto no Church for if you have no Iurisdiction you can have no influence of power over the Layity and so no spiritual Common wealth made up of Bishop as Head and Pastour and of the Layity as body and flock And as for the present this general suspension should we say no more of your Ecclesiastical power makes you de facto no Church so in time the very inward right it selfe which you pretend may be justly extinguish't For since your Jurisdiction confessedly depends on the secular Authority it followes if this be suspended or abolish't that must needs share in the same fate Now all the world agrees that not onely the possession of a secular power may be interrupted by force but the Right it selfe in time be absolutely lost and the new Government however at first introduc't be at length purged of its original blemishes into a clear and unquestionable Title In which case certainly your Church would be no more visible in England than it is now at Geneva Which sufficiently differences your condition from that of the Primitive Christians or the present English Catholikes they claiming a Jurisdiction underived from the secular power In vain therefore would it be to tell us their Character remains and therfore they are stil Bishops and Presbyters since the character can only entitle them to a name the thing being gone to wit their power of Iurisdiction and consequently their Mission For if they have no Authority to teach and preach more than the Layity they are level'd into an equal pitch with them so as now they cannot bee said to bee a body but a company of mutually distracted parts not an orderly Church or Congregation but a rude and indigested Chaos of Confusion It is not then Mr. Doctor your serving God in private Families which wee object to you for being an invisible Church which you run upon in your 5. Sect. but that which your self confesse here that Now all Order Form Bishops and Liturgy is thrown out of your Church together It is your want of Pastoral and Episcopal Authority which makes us conclude you no Church Yet so good is your Logick that in the next paragraph you think though Bishops be abolish't yet in case this come not through your fault it cannot be charged against you so as though all Prelacy and Superiority be taken away that is though there be none that have power to preach and teach and all be reduc'd into an equally-level'd Anarchy yet as long as it happens not through your fault yen are still a Church As if Doctor Hammond should say though his body were cut into millions of incoherent Atomes yet as long as this happens not through his fault it is still a well-ordered Body ID EST it is still Hammond The parts of Gods Church are compacted into a
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members One concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her Rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely to bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
but upon the conditions which pleases himself Which answer likewise serves for all Hospitals and such like pious Houses founded by the King The third example of the Abbot of Buries exemption by the King is Recorded without particular circumstances and so must stand for an example of the Kings execution or command to the secular Magistrate to proceed accordingly but proves nothing That the King did it without consent of the Bishop under whom it was These are all the cases of secular exemptions produced by that learned Lawyer which you see are pure examples of the Kings exempting either with the Bishops consent or by title of asking what conditions he thought fit to annex to his own Liberalities as every private person may or at most alleaged so abstractedly that any of these or many other causes may justly be supposed to have intervened But I mistake there is yet one more to which the Doctor thought good to give a particular efficacy by citing the very words of the Charter which are these Hoc regali authoritate Episcoporum ac Baronum attestatione constituo I appoint this by my royal Authority with the attestation of my Bishops and Barons But had the Doctor remembred he had named this King before William the Conqueror he would have understood that Regali Authoritate signified as much as in the first of Kings doth that famous phrase Ius Regis that is the power of the sword the power of taking away any mans goods and giving them to another the power of doing all wrong as is not onely known of the Conquerors other proceedings but even out of this fact taking the goods of a Bishop and the provision ordained for Souls and attributing them to an Abbey And this by the very words of the Charter without any course of Law or consent of any Justice or power in the Commonwealth So that our Doctor has brought us in a very special example for Henry the Eighth the worst of his Successors to imitate and justifie his Spiritual Authority by To that which he affirms of the Chatholick German Emperors the Kings of France and England that they claimed to be founders of all Bishopricks in their Dominions and Patrons of them to bestow them by investiture I answer they did very well to found as many as they pleased that is to enrich and enlarge the Church with Episcopal Revenues by their pious Donations and when they have done to claim deservedly the Advowsons and present whom they please to be invested by the Church whom yet if they be found unworthy the Church rejects notwithstanding the Kings presentation and authority and consequently this is done by the consent of the Church Neither is this annexed to the Kingly dignity onely as a particular badg of his Authority over the Church but even private Subjects when either themselves or their Ancestors have founded some Ecclesiastical Benefice challenge to themselves the Advowsons without any prejudice to the Church who allows it reasonable that the Friends of the Donors should rather enjoy that benefit then others Unless perhaps the persons be found unfit which in that case obliges the Church to use her Authority by interposing her resusal This therefore private persons can do as well as Kings and yet I hope the Doctor will not say That all those are Lords and Heads of the Church Lastly he might as well have made mention of the Pope and Clergies ressistance to Kings that usurped the investitures as of the others claiming of them both being equally notorious in History and the Princes in the end having yeelded that their pretence was unjust Next he tells us the Kings of France and England claimed a just right that no Legate from Rome could use Iurisdiction here without their leave What a terrible business is this Or what follows hence None can imagine but the Dr. himself who certainly had some meaning in it or other They did so indeed and so do Catholick Kings sometimes to this day who yet communicate with the Church and are accounted obedient sons as long as they proceed with due moderation But that they did it in disacknowledgment of the Popes Supremacy or that the Legate brought not his Jurisdiction with him from Rome but was glad to receive it of the King ere he could use it this the Doctor will never be able to make good Nay they were so far from denying the Popes Authority even in this kinde That our Kings of England procured of the Pope that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be Legatus Natus But now the Doctor hath resolved me of my former doubt which was with what art possible he could make these imperfect Testimonies serve his purpose adding here immediately these words All these put together are a foundation for this power of the Princes to erect or translate a Patriarchate As if he should have said Though there be not one word in any single Testimony expresly manifesting That it is principally the Kings power or excluding the Churches yet I have produced many things little to the purpose if considered in their single selves which notwithstanding I would intreat you to believe that ALL THESE PUT TOGETHER ARE A FOUNDATION c. Where note that here again also he observes his former invincible method of reserving his strongest Arguments till the last putting immediately before his Conclusion That the Legates were often not admitted in England so as out of the very non-admission of the Legates the Doctor infers an absolute power in Princes to erect and translate Patriarchates Besides were all this granted what is it to your or our purpose since we accuse you not of Schism for breaking from the Popes subjection as a private Patriarch but as the chief Pastor and Head of the Church But because the Doctor could not handsomly transfer this Primacy from Rome to Canterbury to secure him from the subjection to Antichrist therefore he was pleased to mistake it all along this Chapter for a Patriarchate and then undertakes to shew from some few Testimonies de facto That it was not the Churches but the Kings Authority to erect and translate them Whereas besides the answers in particular already given no prudent man can doubt but in the process of fifteen or sixteen hundred years and in such a vast extent as the Christian world there may be found twenty or thirty matters of Fact if one will take Histories to collect them either out of ambition ignorance rebellion or tyranny against the most inviolable right that can be imagined Besides many things might often be mentioned by Historiographers as done without particularizing the Authority by which they were done Especially in our case where by reason of the connexion between the Soul and Body of the politick world the Ecclesiastical and Secular State they seem to act as one thing The Temporal Authority most commonly putting in execution the intentions of the Church And this also makes them appear more visibly
to proceed from the Temporal part then from the Spiritual as humane actions more apparently spring from the Body then from the Soul But if the Doctor would have proved sincerely That Kings indeed had that pretended power he should not have stood piddling with half a dozen fag ends of History to prove such a thing was sometimes done de facto but recurred to the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Canons where such things are purposely treated and there he should have found another story But he is wiser then to confine himself within the proper lists of any question he had rather be in the open field where his little fayeryreason may hop and skip from bough to bryar and weary his adversary not to combate but to catch him SECT 6. The Examination of the Testimonies produced by Mr. Hammond to prove his fundamental Position that Kings are supreme in spiritual matters THe endeavours of Mr. Hammond in the foregoing part of this Chapter was first to suppose the Pope onely a private Patriarch next that the King can erect and translate Patriarchates after which though other men of reason use to put their grounds ere they deduce any thing from them he lays the grounds in this 19 Paragraph of his formerly built discourse saying that the Reason of all is the supreme power of Kings even in Ecclesiastical matters Where to omit how he has mangled that one poor Paragraph with ten parenthesisses no more he so intermingles and shuffles together in an equal tenor truths with falshoods things dubious and unprov'd with things acknowledged and that need no proof things to the purpose with things to no purpose that it would loath any well-order'd Reason to see in so little a room so perfect a map of disorderly confusion But ere we come to answer that his marginal testimonies which he huddles together briefly of all sorts would seem neglected if we should not allow them a cursory reflection First what he objects out of Chomatenus though his Author were of any Authority yet it makes nothing at all to his purpose since the very words he cites that the King is as it were the common Director and Ruler of the Church signifies rather he was not so then was so unless he can prove that quasi as it were can bear the sence of revera indeed or in reality And then how handsomely think you would these words hang together that the King is IN REALITY AS IT WERE the Ruler of the Church Nay rather the words alledged plainly signifie the contrary For if there be a common Ruler of the Church and the King be onely as it were that Ruler it is plain there is some other not as it were but truly and properly such The second is yet much more absurd for never was there Testimony nor can be imagined in so little room more expresly witnessing that Kings have nothing to do with Ecclesiastical affairs then this of Constantine which the Doctor brings to prove the contrary I mean if we take the words as the Doctor cites them in Greek without his canâ—ing translation of them The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In English thus as neer word by word as it can possibly be render'd You truly speaking to the Bishops are constituted Overseers or Bishops of those affairs which are within the Church but I am constituted under God Overseer of those affairs which are without the Church But the Doctor seems willing to take there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Church for a material Church of stone and so renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those things which are celebrated within it Yet is pittifully puzled notwithstanding rendering 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies things without the Church external things because the right words would have excluded the Emperors power over Ecclesiastical affairs and yet even so it will not serve his turn for unless he can make his own words external things signifie spiritual things to which they will be very unwilling the Testimony is still expresly against him Besides it is pretty sport to observe how sillily insincere the Doctor is telling us that Constantine the Great spake those words in an Assembly of Bishops by which and the Doctors wrong Translation the simple Reader would judge that Constantine had told a General Council of Bishops to their face that he was Head of the Church but when I came to finde out the Author and the place both which the Doctor had prudently omitted I found it was onely spoken when he was at dinner with some Bishops The Author is Eusebius de vita Constantini l. 4 c. 24. The title of the Chapter is this as I finde it in the Translator for I had not the Greek Quod externarum rerum quasi Episcopum se quendam professus est That he professed himself as it were a kinde of a Bishop over external things Then follows the Chapter in these words Ex quo etiam factum est ut cum Episcopos nonnullos convivio excepisset ipse se nobis audientibus Episcopum appellaret his ferè verbis Vos inquit intra Ecclesiam ego extra Ecclesiam à Deo Episcopus constitutus sum Itaque cùm quae loquebatur eadem secum mente cogitaret animum in omnes qui ejus suberant imperio intentum habuit hortatus pro virili utpiam omnes vitam excolerent Whence it came to pass that when he had entertained some Bishops at a feast or Banquet he in our hearing called himself a Bishop in those words You saith he are constituted Bishops within the Church I without the Church Wherefore since his thought went along with his words he apply'd his mind to those who were under his Empire exhorting them to his power that they should all lead a pious life Where besides what I formerly found the Doctor faulty in we see that the Author of this Testimony who was present when the Emperor spake these words and so could best judge of his meaning by the circumstances deduced no more out of them then that he called himself Bishop because it belonged to his Calling to exhort all his subjects to lead a pious life and administer rightly those things of which they were Overseers by God His third Testimony to prove the King Head of Ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs is that irreprehended saying of Leo Isaurus who said to the Pope 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am a King and a Priest which was indeed a saying worthy an Anti-heretick as Isaurus was being a ring leader of the Iconoclasts A wise man would wonder what the Doctor intended by producing such a saying which himself must acknowledge extravagant since none of the late Kings of England ever assum'd to themselves the title of a Priest as did this infatuated Emperor who gave more credit to Sooth-sayers and fortune-tellers then to God and his Church The third is from Socrates who says the affairs of the Church depended on the Emperors And
to overload a weak patience and every small discountenancing makes those that have enjoy'd a long case cry out persecution I see your parchment Church shrinks and â—naâ—kles at the sight of the fire while the Catholike remaines firm and unconsum'd nay growâ— clearer in the midst of it And yet I doe not intend to deny many of you have been very great losers by these late Revolutions but onely to say your sufferings are to bee refer'd to a civil not religious account or at least that nothing even in your own judgment essential to Religion is persecuted or so much as deny'd in England for Bishops and Service-book and Kings Supremacy you must not call essential without contradicting your own both profession and practise since you can so kindly embrace your Sister-Churches and communicate with them who deny those points as zealously as the fiercest Anabaptist Lastly our literal sound of Hoc est Corpus meum which the Doctor calls our principal espoused doctrine of Transubstantiation Indeed wee had rather wed our beleefe to that sence of Gods word which Fathers Councils and the perpetual doctrine and practise of Gods Church hath recommended to us as the Virgin-daughter of him who is the Truth than to a loose Polygamy of 40. several interpretations Minerva's born of your own heads whose mutually-contradicting variety â—hews them to come by the paternal line from him who is the Father of all falshood For these prejudices instill'd into the hearts of Catholikes the Doctor and his Church spare us very charitably and are far from casting us out of the Church For Gods sake Mr. Dr. whither would you have cast us Would you throw the house out of the windowes I mean the Church Gods house out of the window of Schism which you broke in the side of it Again let us but see how artificial nay incomparable nonsence this Dr. speakes I conceive nothing can bee cast out of a thing that was never in it shew us then that there was once a constituted Church of Protestants govern'd by the King as Supreme Head and holding their doctrines and practises in which the Roman Catholike once was but receded from that Doctrine and Government and invented this new Religion which hee holds at present Unlesse the Catholikes were once thus in you how could you cast them out What a weakness is this to think that Robin Hood Little Iohn and a few Outlawes doe King Richard and all England a great deal of favour in not casting them out of their Rebel-commonwealth as no true members of it and denying them the protection of their seditious counter-lawes under which Lawes and in which Common-wealth neither the King nor his good subjects were ever reputed One word more ere I leave this point to let the rational Reader see whether the Protestants or we bee more chargeable of judging and despising others Suppose Mr. Doctor wee who are sons of the Catholike Church had both judged and despised you upon our own private heads it had been but to judge and despise our equals But your Reformation had been impossible unlesse you had first both judged despised and prefer'd your selves above your Supreme Governours the Church and all your Forefathers The chief Government impower'd actually over you in Ecclesiastical Affaires you rejected and cast out of this Island Next many of your wise Brethren since preaching teaching and writing whole Bookes to shew that that Governour is Antcichrist the Beast in the Apocalypse and what not Could these things bee done without judging and despising You made Reformations and recessions from the former Churches doctrine cry'd out she had erred was a Strumpet the Whore of Babylon impious sacrilegious idolatrous Was not this the most rash judging the most venemous railing at and reviling of Gods sacred Spouse formerly your Mistresse and Mother that ever was foam'd out of the mouth of madness it selfe Again the whole world whom you esteemed before good Christians and all your Ancestors in England condemned by their contrary beleefe your new Reformed Doctrine And doe you think your innovators could have broach't their opposite doctrines without both judging and despising all this vast Authority Your Charity then Mr. Doctor in this point can bee onely imagin'd to consist in this that you have not judged and despised your selves for all else that you thought formerly to deserve any Authority you both judged despised rejected revil'd and condemned In a word our judging you is our subscribing in our own thoughts to that Verdict which the Church has past against you whose tribunal was held by all the whole Christian world and your selves also till you became guilty to be the most high and sacred that ever gave sentence since the world's Creation As for despising your persons we deny it as a meer calumny and professe our selves bound to honour every one according to his quality and degree the reasons indeed which you produce to clear your selfe from Schism we despise as worse than ridiculous A Paradox in a matter indifferent if maintain'd ingeniously deserves its commendations but the most manifest absurdities that can bee imagin'd and in which are interessed mens salvations such as is the renouncing an Authority granted to bee the most ancient most sublime most sacred in the world upon fallible incertain and unevident grounds and onely sustain'd by plain contradictions false and self-â—eign'd suppositions ID ESTS of our own adding the best proof not arriving so high as a probability These I say Mr. Doctor have nothing to secure them from our despising unlesse perhaps it bee their falling below ouâ— contempt Of the mixt temper of these is the constitution of your Book which shews that you have been used to row at your own dull pleasure in the shallow and softly-murmuring current of a Sermon but never launch't with a well rigg'd Ship of Reason into the â—oysterous Maine of deeper controversies Thus the Doctor concludes his Treatise of Schism closing up his tenth Chapter with these words I foresee not any objection which may give mee temptation or excuse further to enlarge on this matter No truly I could never yet discern you guilty of that fault that objections gave you any great temptation to answer them since I have not seen you put one Objection or Argument of ours worth a straw from the beginning of the Book to the end On the contrary when you light on a wrong supposition of your own as that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch that the Papal Authority in this Island came to the Pope from the Title of its Conversion or from Concession of our Kings then I observe a very strong temptation in you to enlarge a whole Chapter upon that which no body objects except your own fancy Hee adds that he professes not to know any other branch of Schism or colour of fastning that guilt upon our Church made use of by any which hee hath not prevented Yes Mr. Doctor I told you before how you
have omitted the two chief branches of Schism and most of all made use of by us against you to wit Schism from the whole body of the Church and from its highest Tribunal The General Councils which wee as freshly and more chiefly charge upon you than any of the â—est The Last SECT Our Objection that the pretended Church of England is now invisible maintained and asserted to be just SChism being thus establish't as legitimate and laudable the Patron of it resolvs to prosecute his Project home and therefore strives in this last Chapter to wipe off any prejudice arising from their present distractions and persecutions the proper effects of their Schism The occasion seemes taken from some of our side calling them The late Church of England as if now a FUIT were put to their former being by their present misfortune Our advantage offer'd from thence hee formes and that rightly in to this objection that it is absolutely necessary to communicate with some one visible Church that now the Church of England is not such and consequently the Church of Rome so illustriously visible must be taken up in stead of it Thus far abstracting from the partiality in his manner of expression wee both agree In answer to which the Doctor alledges first That a member of the English Church was not under this guilt of not communicating with some one visible Church twenty yeares agoe and consequently unlesse he have contracted this guilt since by commission or omission of something hee can no more bee charged with the Crime now than formerly All this while the Doctor is in a mistake and runs on very currantly but quite out of his way For we doe not object this present condition to them as a crime or guilt rather that which was twenty yeares and more ago was their crime and this their punishment but as a different state from the former or indeed more truly the want of a State For twenty yeares agoe though they wanted the substance yet they had at least a shadow or Ghost of a Church which might delude the eyes of the simple but now even that has disappear'd and vanish't into Aire Our advantage not taken but offer'd from thence is this that as before they had a shew of a Church so their adherents whose weaker eyes could not distinguish substance from shadow might have then some shadow of motive or excuse for remaining in it and not returning to us but now this fayery apparition being gone not even so much as the least resemblance of a motive is left to lead them through the wayless path of their dark doctrine or hinder them from returning to the common beaten road of their Ancestors The objection of this then is not vain as the Dr. imagins since a new and stronger motive offer'd deserves in reason a new distinct and fresh proposal I grant therefore Mr. Dr. that it is not your choice crime or offence to bee in this misery though it bee your fault that you were brought into iâ— it bring a connatural punishment orderly subsequent to the vice of Schism as shall afterwards be shewn And the present invisibility of your Church is never the lesse true and real though we admit it be your misfortune not your crime since a ship may as well bee cast away in an unavoydable storme as by the negligence of the Pilot Neither doe I take it to be the saddest part of your infelicity as you call it but rather the greatest happiness that Gods sweetly-chastising mercy could have sent you that by weighing your present dissolution and the causes of it you may retrive your wandrings and recollect all your scatter'd and distracted members into the ever-firmly United Body of the holy Catholike Church Thirdly for the Doctor was so eagerly zealous to clear his twenty-years-ago Protestant that hee put first and thirdly but quite forgot secondly he runs on in his errour that wee impute this state of their Church to the Protestant as a guilt from which he goes about to clear him For if he hath contracted this guilt saies the Dr. it must be by some irregularity of actions contrary to the standing Rule Canons of this Church whereas I conceive it very regularly consequent to your new Canons that you should fall into this very condition you now groan under For your Rule and Canons granting the Authority of the Secular Power to be the BASIS of your Reformation Head of the Church-Government Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and your onely defence and excuse when wee ask you upon what Authority you left us it is natural and imbred in the very primogenial Constitution of your Church that it should be dissolvable at the pleasure of the same power which set it up It is not therefore the standing to the Rule and Canons of your Church which secures you in a firm and immutable perpetuity but those very grounds are they which engage you in a fleeting and perpetual mutability You applaud with your Encomiums the Protestant that hath actually lost his possessions liberty c. rather than depart from his rule which truly I conceive a very irrational action in him and deserving more pity than commendations For the 39. Articles being the most distinct Rule Protestants have one of which defines that General Councils both can Erre and have erred whence follows a fortiori that their own Meeting where these Articles their Rule were made being at most but a Provincial Assembly is much more lyable to errour I see no reason why hee shold lose the certain possession of present goods for maintaining an uncertain opinion especially since hee holds salvation can bee had in other Sects as appeares by Dr. Hammonds admitting all whom hee calls Christians to his Communion And if the Doctor reply it was their conscienciousness to hold what they supposed true I answer their conscience is imprudently govern'd whilst it instigates them to professe with their own so great disadvantage and loss what they had no obligation to hold for none can be oblig'd to the beleef of a point which himself those who propose it are uncertain whether it be true or no. Though if I be not misinform'd the greater part of your suffering-fellow-Protestants have had more wit and most commonly were put out upon other pretences than their Religion Thus far the Doctor hath proceeded clearing himselfe from the want of a visible Church imagining we object it a guilt or crime whereas we only propose it and more urgingly press it to the consideration of the misled Protestants as a decay corruption annihilation of the former visible shadow of a Church and the occasion of a new fault in them that having lost their own they return not to ours out of which they confesse they came and of which they protested theirs to be a member In the next place hee tells us that as yet Blessed bee God the Church of England is not invisible it is preserved
Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant