Fornication Indeed he saith that this falling from that holy chastity which was vowed to God may in some sense be said to be worse than Adultery but he never imagined such a construction could be made of his words as though the act of Fornication were not a greater falling from it than meer marriage could be So much shall suffice for the Instances produced in the Roman Church of such things which tend to obstruct a good life and devotion § 14. The 3. argument I used to prove the danger a person runs of his salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because it exposeth the faith of Christians to so great uncertainties which he looks on as a strange charge from the Pen of a Protestant As strange as it is I have at large proved it true in a full examination of the whole Controversie of the Resolution of faith between us and them to which I expect a particular Answer before this charge be renewed again To which I must refer him for the main proof of it and shall here subjoyn only short replyes to his Answers or references to what is fully answered already 1. His distinction of the authority of the Scripture in it self and to us signifies nothing for when we enquire into the proofs of the Authority of Scripture it can be understood no otherwise than in respect to us and if the Scriptures Authority as to us is to be proved by the Church and the Churches Authority as to us to be provved by the Scripture the difficulty is not in the least avoided by that distinction And as little to the purpose is the other that it is only an argument ad hominem to prove the Infallibility of the Church from Scriptures for I would fain know upon what other grounds they build their own belief of the Churches Infallibility than on the Promises of Christ in the Scripture These are miserable evasions and nothing else For the trite saying of S. Austin that he would not believe the Gospel c. I have at large proved that the meaning of it is no more than that the Testimony of the Vniversal Church from the Apostles times is the best way to prove the particular books of Scripture to be authentical and cannot be understood of the Infallibility of the present Church and that the testimony of some few persons as the Manichees were was not to be taken in opposition to the whole Christian Church Which is a thing we as much contend for as they but is far enough from making the Infallibility of our faith to depend on the Authority of the present Church which we say is the way to overthrow all certainty of faith to any considering man 2. To that of overthrowing the certainty of sense in the doctrine of transubstantiation he saith that divine revelation ought to be believed against the evidence of sense To which I answer 1. that divine revelation in matters not capable of being judged by our senses is to be believed notwithstanding any argument can be drawn from sensible experiments against it as in the belief of God the doctrine of the Trinity the future state of the soul c. 2. that in the proper objects of sense to suppose a Revelation contrary to the evidence of sense is to overthrow all certainty of faith where the matters to be believed depend upon matters of fact As for Instance the truth of the whole Christian doctrine depends upon the truth of Christs resurrection from the dead if sense be not here to be believed in a proper object of it what assurance can we have that the Apostles were not deceived when they said they saw Christ after he was risen If it be said there was no revelation against sense in that case that doth not take off the difficulty for the reason why I am to believe revelation at any time against sense must be because sense may be deceived but revelation cannot but if I yield to that principle that sense may be deceived in its most proper object we can have no infallible certainty by sense at all and consequently not in that point that Christ is risen from the dead If it be said that sense cannot be deceived where there is no revelation against it I desire to know how it comes to be deceived supposing a revelation contrary to it Doth God impose upon our senses at that time then he plainly deceives us is it by telling us we ought to believe more than we see that we deny not but we desire only to believe according to our senses in what we doe see as what we see to be bread that is bread that what the Apostles saw to be the body of Christ was the body of Christ really and substantially and not meerly the accidents of a body Besides if revelation is to be believed against sense then either that revelation is conveyed immediately to our minds which is to make every one a Prophet that believes transubstantiation or mediately by our senses as in those words this is my body if so than I am to believe this revelation by my senses and believing this revelation I am not to believe my senses which is an excellent way of making faith certain All this on supposition there were a revelation in this case which is not only false but if it were true would overthrow the certainty of faith 3. To that I objected as to their denying to men the use of their judgement and reason as to the matters of faith proposed by a Church when they must use it in the choice of a Church he answers that this cannot expose faith to any uncertainty because it is only preferring the Churches judgement before our own but he doth not seem to understand the force of my objection which lay in this Every one must use his own judgement and reason in the choice of the Church he is to rely upon is he certain in this or not if he be uncertain all that he receives on the Authority of that Church must be uncertain too if the use of reason be certain then how comes the Authority of a Church to be a necessary means of certainty in matters of faith And they who condemn the use of a mans reason and judgement in Religion must overthrow all certainty on their own grounds since the choice of his Infallible Guide must depend upon it Now he understands my argument better he may know better how to answer it but I assure him I meant no such thing by the use of reason as he supposes I would have which is to believe nothing but what my reason can comprehend for I believe an Infinite Being and all the Doctrines revealed by it in Holy Scriptures although I cannot reconcile all particulars concerning them to those conceptions we call reason But therefore to argue against the use of mens judgements in matters of faith and the grounds of believing is to dispute against that which
or asked their opinion and Pope Adrian himself he saith in his defence of it against the Caroline Books never gives it the name or authority of an Oecumenical Council The same Council was rejected here in England as our Historians tell us because it asserted the adoration of Images which the Church of God abhors which are the words of Hoveden and others And we find afterwards in France by the Synod of Paris called by Ludovicus Pius upon the Letters of Michael Balbus Emperour of Constantinople in order to the Vnion of Christendome in this point that these Western Churches persisted still in the condemnation of the Nicene Council which they would not have done after so long a time to inform themselves if a meer mistake of their Doctrine at first had been the cause of their opposition But whosoever will read the Caroline Books or the Synod of Paris or Agobardus and others about that time will find that they condemn all religious worship of Images as adoration and contrary to that honour which is due to God alone and to the commands which he hath given in Scripture And I extreamly wonder how any men of common sense and much more any of learning and judgement that had read the Book of Charles the Great against the Nicene Synod could imagine it altogether proceeded upon a mistake of the meaning of it when it so distinctly relates and punctually answers the several places of Scriptures and Fathers produced by it for the worship of Images In the first Book an answer is given to many impertinent places of the Old Testament alledged in that Council which the second proceeds with and examines several testimonies of the Fathers and in the two remaining Books pursues all their pretences with that diligence that no one can imagine all this while that the Author did not know their meaning And that by adoration he means no more than giving Religious Worship to Images appears from hence because he calls the Civil worship which men give to one another by the name of adoration when he shewes that it is another thing to give adoration to a man upon a civil respect and to give adoration to Images upon a religious account when God challenges all religious worship or adoration to himself and whatever reason will hold for such a worship of Images will much more hold for the worship of men who have greater excellency in them and more honour put upon them by God than any Images can ever pretend to That God allows no other kind of adoration to be given to any but himself but that which we give to one another Can any be so senseless to think that by this civil adoration he meant we honoured every man we met as our Soveraign Prince And as little reason is there to say that by adoration given to Images he meant only the incommunicable worship due only to God in the sense of those Fathers Can we imagine saith he that S. Peter would allow the worship of Images who forbad Cornelius to worship him Or St. John whom the Angel checked for offering to worship him and bid him give that honour to God Or Paul and Barnabas who with such horror ran among the men of Lycaonia when they were about to worship them and yet surely Angels and such persons as these deserved more to be worshipped than any Images can do But we see by these examples that even these are not to be adored with any other kind of adoration than what the offices of civility require from us Besides in his language those who followed the Council of Constantinople are said not to adore Images by which nothing else can be meant than their giving no Religious worship to them and when he shews the great inconsequence of the argument from the adoration of the Statues of the Emperours to the adoration of Images because in matters of Religious Worship we are not to follow the customes of men against the will of God he thereby shews what kind of adoration he intended not the worship of Latria but supposed to be of an inferiour sort In so much that Binius confesseth that the design of these books was against all worship of Images It is true Pope Hadrian in the answer he sent to these Books which is still extant in the Tomes of the Councils doth deny that the Synod intended to give proper divine worship to Images but that is no more than the Synod it self had in words said before but that was not the Question what they said but what the nature of the thing did imply Whether that religious worship they gave to Images was not part of that adoration which was only due to God And he that expects an answer to this from him will find himself deceived who is so pitifully put to it for an answer to the demand of any example of words of the Apostles to justifie Image-worship that he is forced to make use of some Mystical passages of Dionysius the supposed Areopagite wherein the word Image hapning to be is very sufficient to his purpose And this answer of Hadrians gave so little satisfaction to the Western Bishops that A.D. 824. the Synod at Paris being called by Ludovicus Pius to advise about this point did condemn expressely Pope Hadrian for asserting a superstitious adoration of Images which they look on as a great impiety and say that he produces very impertinent places of the Fathers and remote from his purpose and that setting aside his Pontifical authority in his answer to the Caroline Books there were some things apparently false and they have nothing to excuse him by but his Ignorance And therefore they at large shew that the Religious worship of Images came first from Hereticks and that it was alwayes condemned by the Fathers of the Christian Church and answer the arguments produced on the other side out of the Writings of the Fathers And supposing that superstitious custome of worshipping Images had for some time obtained yet they shew by several testimonies that it ought to be abrogated No wonder then that Bellarmine is so much displeased with this Synod for offering so boldly to censure the Popes Writings and a Synod approved by him wherein the saith they exceed the fault of the Author of the Caroline Books because as he confesseth they offered to teach the Pope and resisted him to the face And yet no doubt they had read and considered Hadrians words wherein he disowns the giveing true divine honour to Images Not long after this Synod came forth the Book of Agobardus Archbishop of Lyons against Images occasioned saith Papirius Massonus by the stupendous superstition in that Age in the worship of them And this saith he is the substance of his Doctrine out of St. Augustine and other Fathers that there is no other Image of God but what is himself and therefore cannot be
persons they have ten times more cause to fear than the common people And considering the advantage they once had by the horrible Ignorance of Priests and people it must be imputed only to the watchful eye of Divine Providence that the Scriptures being of so little use in the Roman Church have been preserved entire to our dayes There had been no such means in the world to have prevented a Reformation as this for they are not out when they take the Scripture so much for their enemy as appears by the force and restraint they put upon it and the fear and jealousie they are in about it continually If it had not been for this would any one have compared the Scriptures in the hands of the common people as my Adversary doth to a Sword in a mad mans hand Is it of so destructive a Nature and framed for no other use than a sword is which nothing but discretion keeps a man from doing mischief by and all the way a man hath though never so meek and humble to defend himself by it is by destroying his enemy with it if he continues his assault These expressions do not argue any kindness to the Scripture nor an apprehension of any great good comes to the world by it but that really men might have been more at ease and fewer differences in Religion had happened if all the Copies of the Bible had been lost assoon as the Pope had placed himself in his infallible Chair This design was once attempted as I shall shew afterwards but failed of success and I know not how far the principles of this prudence may carry them if ever such a season should fall into their hands again having found so much trouble to them from the Scriptures and so little benefit by them their Church being once owned as infallible For I would fain know whether the Scripture hath not done more mischief according to them in the hands of the Reformers than it can be supposed to do in the hands of the common people If it must be a sword in a mad mans hand whether the more strength and cunning such a one hath he be not capable of doing so much the more mischief by it And if it were possible to get it out of such a mans hands whether it were not the highest prudence and care of the publick safety to do it It can be then nothing but the impossibility of the thing which makes them suffer the Scripture to be in the hands of any who are capable of doing mischief by it and the more mischief they may do the more desirable and prudential it is to take it from them But all men see none are so capable of doing mischief thereby as men of the greatest wit and learning and that have the fairest appearance of piety to the world the consequence then of this doctrine is if pursued to the true design of it that the Scripture should be kept if possible out of the hands of the most subtle learned and pious men above all others if they be not true to the interests of the Roman Church It is but a meer shew to pretend only to keep the people in order for when are they otherwise but when cunning men have the managing of them the true meaning of this principle is that it will never be well with the World till the Books of Scripture are all burnt which are abroad and that only one Original be preserved in the Vatican to justifie the Popes title to Infallibility and that as the Sybilline Oracles of old never to be consulted but in cases of great extremity and that under the inspection of some very trusty officers nor to be interpreted but by the Pope himself If I were of the Church of Rome and owned the principles of it I must needs have condemned the great men of it in former times for want of Prudence in this matter That would have served their turn much better than forging so many decretal Epistles falsifying so many testimonies perverting so many Texts of Scripture to maintain the dignity of the Papal Chair There was only one small circumstance wanting their good will we have no cause to question and that was the possibility of it for although the Roman Church called it self Catholick they were wise enough to know there were many considerable Churches in the world besides theirs where the Scriptures were preserved and from whence copies might be procured by persons who would be so much the more inquisitive the more they were forbidden to get it Therefore they pitched upon an easier way and finding the people under a very competent degree of Ignorance they indulged them and soothed them up in it and told them they could never miss the way to Heaven though never so narrow in the dark Their only danger was too much light for then probably they might be in a great dispute whether the broad way was not the true for there they saw most of their Friends and Leaders And while they kept the people in this profound Ignorance and superstition they jogged on in their opinion as securely to Heaven as Ignatius Loyola's Mule did to Mount-serrat when he laid his Bridle on his neck to see whether he would take the way to pursue the Moor which was the more beaten track or the more craggy and untrodden way to that place of devotion and by a mighty providence and I suppose a little help of the Rider the Beast took the more narrow way But when persons began to be awakened by learning and thereby grew inquisitive in all matters and so by degrees in those of Religion they then espied their errour in letting such a Book lye abroad in so many hands from whence so many irresistible arguments were drawn against the Doctrine and practices of the Roman Church This I assure my self is the true ground of the quarrels against the Reading the Scriptures but that being now irremediable they betake themselves to smaller arts and endeavour to hinder any one particular person whom they have the least suspicion of from meddling with a Book so dangerous to their Church and Religion § 10. For if this were not it what makes them to be more jealous of the use of the Scriptures than ever the Christians were in former Ages Was there not much more danger of misunderstanding the Doctrine of the Gospel at first than ever after Nay were there not very many who were false Apostles and great and dangerous Hereticks presumptuous and arrogant if ever any were But did Christ or his Apostles for all this think it unfit to communicate the doctrine of the Gospel to the people or were the Books containing it written in Languages not to be understood by them no they chose the most popular languages of that time most largely spread and generally understood The Apostles never told their Disciples of the danger of reading the Divine Writings that were among them when they were
to her Confessors they were strictly examined and after them by the Bishops and Divines of Sweden and approved as divine revelations from them they were sent as such to the Council of Basil from thence they were examined over again at Naples and there allowed and preached in the presence and by command of the Queen and Archbishop before all the people of the City again examined at Rome by Prelats and Cardinals A. D. 1377. by the Popes appointment and there approved and A. D. 1379. they are declared by those Vrban the sixth committed the new examination of them to to be authentick and to come from the Spirit of God and so much is declared by Boniface the ninth in the Bull of her Canonization and at last approved saith Wadding at the General Council of Basil. What could be expected less after this than that they should have been received as Canonical Scriptures they having never taken so much pains in examining and approving any controverted Books of the Bible as they had done about these revelations And no man knows how far their authority might have prevailed if the whole Sect of Dominicans had not been engaged in the opposite opinion For nothing else that I can find hath given any discredit to her revelations but this which makes Cajetan call them old Wives dreams as Wadding confesseth But it falls out very conveniently that S. Catharines revelation was just in the Dominican way in which she had been educated and for all that I can see wants little of the reputation of St. Brigitt For they were both very wonderful persons and had more familiar reyelations than any of the Prophets we read of S. Brigitt in her Childhood if we believe the account given of her in the Bull of Canonization by Bonifacius and her life by Vastavius had Visions as frequently as other Children have Babyes and was as well pleased with them the Virgin Mary was once her Midwife as the Pope very gravely tells us but her revelations after Christ took her for his Spouse have filled a great Volume Wherein a person that hath leisure enough may see strange effects of the power of imagination or a Religious Melancholy and to that Book the Pope in his Bull refers us and if any thing can be more considerable than the Popes authority the whole Roman Church in the prayers upon S. Brigitts day do confess these revelations to have come immediately from God to her and in one of the Lessons for that day do magnifie the multitude of her divine revelations But to say truth the Church of Rome allows fair play in the case for it magnifies S. Catharine as much as S. Brigitt for her holy Extasies are mentioned in the Lessons upon her day in one of which were five rayes coming from the five wounds of our Saviour to five parts of her body and she being wonderfull humble prayed our Lord that the wounds might not appear for fear she should have been thought as holy as S. Francis and immediately the colour of the blood was changed into pure light upon her hands and feet and heart And her Confessor Raimund who is alwayes a principal man in these things as Matthias a Suecia was to S. Brigitt without whom she was advised from Heaven to do nothing saw these splendid wounds upon her body but by what instrument did he see the wound in her heart Well though we Hereticks are not apt to be too credulous in these cases the Church of Rome very gravely tells us in the next Lesson that her learning was not acquired but infused by which she answered the most profound Doctors in the most difficult speculations in Divinity but these were nothing to her revelations and the service she did the Church of Rome by them in a time of Schisme But one gift she had above S. Brigitt which was that while she was on earth she could not only see but smell souls too and could not endure the stench of wicked souls as Raynaldus tells us from her Confessor Raimund a gift very few had besides her and Philip Nerius the Father of the Oratorians for Raynaldus one of his Order tells us from Bacius the Writer of his life that he was sometimes so offended with the smells of filthy souls that he would desire the persons to empty the Iakes of their souls Such divine Noses had these two Saints among them A degree of Enthusiasme above the Spirit of discerning any Quakers among us have ever pretended to Pope Pius the second in the Bull of Canonization of S. Catharine not only acknowledgeth a gift of Prophecy to have been in her but that sometimes her Extasies were so great that she was sensible of no kind of pain in them And S. Brigitt was often seen much above ground in her devotions and one saw Rivers and another Fire came out of her mouth but I think not at the same time These are things we rake not the old Kennells of the Golden Legends for but are at this day allowed and approved of in the Roman Church and their dayes kept and they prayed to upon the account of such things as these are § 3. Yet still we are to seek what is to be done when two Revelations contradict each other for the Dominicans are as peremptory for the revelation of S. Catharine as their adversaries are for that of S. Brigitt Two bold Fellows called Henricus de Hassia and Sybillanus knew no other way but to reject both as illusions and fancies but what becomes then of the Popes and Councils infallibility who have approved both Franciscus Picus Mirandula being a Learned and Ingenuous man confesseth himself at a loss both being concerning a thing passed there must be truth on one side and falshood on the other for the case is not the same saith he as to past and future things in which a condition may be understood By which means St. Bernard escaped when he promised great success to an expedition into the Holy Land and they who went in it found the quite contrary But at last gives us leave to conjecture his meaning when he saith That if any thing be false in a prophecy though some prove true we have cause to suspect all especially if it come from women whose judgements are weak and their passions vehement and imaginations easily possessed with what they are most desirous of and least able to distinguish between the strength of imagination and a divine revelation but as to that particular case of S. Catharine and S. Brigitt where both were women he saith The Divines were generally for the former and the Monks for the latter but which was in the truth he thinks cannot be known upon earth Martin Del Rio discoursing of the Revelations of Canonized Saints who were women in the Church of Rome reckons up S. Angela a Carmelitess whose Book of Revelations came out above four hundred years
8. Febr. 4. A. D. 1625. not long after he comes into England and was received with so great kindness by their party here as made the Iesuits who are friends to none but themselves soon to become his enemies especially when he began to exercise his Episcopal jurisdiction here in laying restraints upon the Regulars which the Iesuits with other Regulars grew so impatient of that they soon revived the old quarrel concerning the authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and managed it with so great heat and fierceness that the titular Bishop was fain to leave the field and withdraw into France The bottom of the quarrel was they found the kindness of their party to them abated since the Bishops coming who before had sway'd all and lived in great plenty and bravery when the poor Seculars got scarce bread to eate as Watson very sadly laments in his answer to Parsons but now the necessary support of the dignity of a Bishop made the charity of their party run in another channel which the Provincial of the Iesuits complains of in a Letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon Therefore they endeavour all they can to make a party against him among the people too which they did so effectually as amounted to his withdrawing a more civil word for his exile And now both parties being sufficiently heated the battel begins in which not only England and Ireland but France and Flanders were deeply engaged The first who appeared was Dr. Kellison Professour of Doway in a Book in Vindication of the Bishops Authority to whom Knot then Vice-Provincial of the Iesuits returned his Modest and brief discussion c. under the name of Nicholas Smith a Iesuite then dead Soon after came out another written to the same purpose under the name of Daniel of Iesu whose true name was Iohn Fluide which the other writing Ioanes for Iohn was the Anagram of he was a Iesuit too and Professour at St. Omars which Books were first censured by the Arch-bishop of Paris then by the Sorbonne and at last by the Bishops of France in an Assembly of them at Paris but the Iesuits were so far from giving over by this that they new set forth their Books in Latin with large approbations of them and publish a Remonstrance against the Bishop of Chalcedon in the name of the Catholick party in England which was disowned by the greatest number of them and cast wholly upon the Iesuits the same year 1631. three Books were published by the secular Clergy here in opposition to the Iesuits Who were so far from quitting the Field by the number of their enemies that they begin a fresh charge against both the Sorbonne Doctors and the French Clergy under the fained name of Hermannus Loemelius whose chief Author was the fore-named Iesuite Lloyd with the assistance of his Brethren as the diversity of the style shews and another Book came out against the Faculty of Paris in Vindication of Knot or Nicholas Smith with many approbations of Bishops Vniversities and private Doctors and in Vindication of the Propositions of Ireland likewise censured at Paris another Book came forth under the name of Edmundus Vrsulanus whose true name was Mac-mahone Prior of the Franciscan Convent in Lovain About the same time the Iesuits published their Censure of the Apostolical Creed in imitation of the censures at Paris against their Doctrine as though their Doctrines were as certain as that and themselves as infallible as the Apostles wherein they charge the Bishops their enemies with reviving old Heresies and broaching new ones The Iesuits having now done such great things triumph unreasonably in all places as having utterly overthrown their enemies and beaten them out of the field when in a little time after Hallier and le Maistre two Doctors of the Sorbonne undertake the quarrel against them but none was so highly magnified and infinitely applauded by the French Clergy as a person under the disguised name of Petrus Aurelius whose atchievements in this kind they celebrate next to those of the Pucelle d' Orleans and Printed all his Works together at their own charge and writ a high Elogium of him which is prefixed before them And the secular Clergy of England sent him a letter of Congratulation for his Triumphs subscribed by Iohn Colleton Dean of the Chapter and Edmond Dutton Secretary wherein they sadly lament the discords that have been among them here and the Heresies broached by their Adversaries by occasion of them The main of-this Controversie did concern the dignity necessity and jurisdiction of the Episcopal Order as appears by the Censures of the Bishops of France and by Aurelius who saith that although the Dispute began upon occasion of the Bishop of Chalcedon and the English Clergy yet it was now carried farther whether the Episcopal Order was necessary to the Being of a particular Church Whether it was by divine right or no Whether confirmation might be given without Bishops Whether the Episcopal Order was more perfect than the Monastical Whether the Regulars were under the jurisdiction of Bishops And therefore the Iesuits are charged by their Adversaries with a design to extirpate and ruine the whole Order of Episcopacy Have not these men now great reason to insult over us that some of these questions have caused great differences among us when the Iesuits in England had laid the foundation of them by their quarrels of the same kind but a little before and furnished the enemies to Episcopacy and the Church of England with so many arguments to their hands to manage their bad cause with But what becomes of the Court of Rome all this while do the Pope and Cardinals only stand still to see what the issue of the Battel will be without ever offering to compose the difference between the two parties No. The Iesuits finding how hard they were put to it make their address to Rome as their greatest Sanctuary and A. D. 1633. obtained a Decree of the Sacred Congregation for suppressing the Books on both sides without judging any thing at all of the merits of the cause or giving any censure of the authority on either side And is not now the Popes authority an excellent remedy for all divisions in the Church When in so great a heat as this was the Pope durst not interpose at all in the main business for fear of losing either side which is a plain argument that they themselves look on his Authority as so precarious a thing that they must by no means expose it where it is like to be called in Question Were not here Controversies fit to be determined To what purpose is that authority that dare not be exercised when there is most need of it and when could there be greater need than in such a time when the Church was in a flame by these contentions And yet so timerous a Decree as this was could find no acceptance For at Paris immediately comes out a disquisition upon it shewing
Reply but hearing for a great while no further of the person for whose sake this Discourse began and having affairs more than enough to take up my time I laid aside the Papers supposing that business at an end But about Christmass last they were called for by a near Friend of the party concerned and a personal Conference being declined an intimation was given me that the Papers were thought unanswerable I began to fear so too for at first I could not find them but assoon as I did I found the great improvement they had made by lying so long for what at first I looked on as inconsiderable was in that time thought to be too strong to be meddled with and I could not tell what they might come to in time if I let them alone any longer And I was informed by a worthy person that I. S. the man of confidence and principles had expressed great wonder I had not answered them as though we had no cause to wonder that the noble Science of Controversie should be so abandoned by him and that a man of such mettal should all this while leave his poor demonstrations alone to defend themselves Vpon these suggestions I resolved as fast as other imployments would give leave for we are not those happy men to have only one thing to mind to give a full and punctual answer to them Which I have now made publick and printed the Papers themselves at large that my Adversary may not complain of any injury done him by mis-representing his words or meaning And besides other reasons I the rather chose to appear in publick to draw them from their present way of pickeering and lying under hedges to take advantage of some stragling members of our Church not so able to defend themselves and whom they rather steal from us than conquer being blinded with their smoke more than overcome by any strength of argument If they have any thing to say either against our Church or in Defence of their own let them come into the open Field from which they have of late so wisely withdrawn themselves finding so little success in it And since these Disputes must be I am very well pleased that the Adversary I have now to deal with hath the Character of a Learned and Ingenuous man and I do not desire he should lose it in the Debate between us hoping that nothing shall proceed from me but what becomes a fair and ingenuous Adversary If I were not fully satisfied that we have truth and reason on our side I should never have been engaged in these combats I am so great a friend to the peace of the Christian world that I could take more pleasure in ending one Controversie than in being able to handle as many as the most Voluminous Schoolmen have ever done For however Noble some may think the Science of Controversie to be I am not fond of the practice of it especially being managed with so much heat and passion such scorn and contempt of Adversaries so many reproaches and personal reflections as they commonly are as if men forgot to be Christians when they began to be Disputants I do not think it such a mighty matter to throw dirt in a mans face and then to laugh at him or rather to take a Metaphor now from dry weather to raise such a dust as may endanger the eye-sight of weaker persons I think it no great skill to make things appear either ridiculous or dark but to give them their due Colours and set them in the clearest light shewes far more art and ingenuity And even that smartness of expression without which Controversie will hardly go down with many seems but like the throwing Vinegar upon hot Coals which gives a quick scent for the present but vanishes immediately into smoke and air In matters of Truth and Religion reason and evidence ought to sway men and not passion and noise and though men cannot command their judgements they may and ought to do their expressions And although this looks as like an Apologie for a dull Book as may be yet I had much rather it should suffer for want of wit and smartness than of good nature and Christianity My design is to represent the matters in difference between us truly to report faithfully and to argue closely and by these to shew that no person can have any pretence of reason to leave our Church to embrace the communion of the Church of Rome because the danger is so much greater there in the nature of their Worship and tendency of their doctrine and what they object most against us in point of Fanaticism and divisions will equally hold against them so that they have no advantages above us but have many apparent dangers which we have not Among the chiefest dangers in the communion of that Church I have insisted on that of Idolatry not to make the breach wider than some others have done but to let persons first understand the greatness of the danger before they run into it I wish I could acquit them from so heavy a charge but I cannot force my judgement and while I think them guilty it would be unfaithfulness in me not to warn those of it whom it most concerns to understand it And where other things are subtle and nice tedious and obscure this lyes plain to the conscience of every man if the Church of Rome be guilty of Idolatry our separation can be no Schism either before God or man because our communion would be a sin And although it may be only an excess of charity in some few learned persons to excuse that Church from Idolatry although not all who live in the communion of it yet upon the greatest search I can make I think there is more of charity than judgement in so doing For the proof of it I must refer the Reader to the following Discourse but that I may not be thought in so severe a censure to contradict the sense of our Church which I have so great a regard to I shall here shew that this charge of Idolatry hath been managed against the Church of Rome by the greatest and most learned defenders of it ever since the Reformation What greater discovery can be made of the sense of our Church than by the Book of Homilies not barely allowed but subscribed to as containing godly and wholsom doctrine and necessary for these times and nothing can be more plainly delivered therein than that the Church of Rome is condemned for Idolatry So the third part of the Sermon against the peril of Idolatry concludes Ye have heard it evidently proved in these Homilies against Idolatry by Gods Word the Doctors of the Church Ecclesiastical Histories reason and experience that Images have been and be worshipped and so Idolatry committed to them to the great offence of Gods Majesty and danger of infinite souls c. Who the Author of these Homilies was is not material
Martyrs with that Worship of love and society with which even in this life also holy men of God are worshipped whose heart we judge prepared to suffer the like Martyrdom for the truth of the Gospel But we worship them so much the more devoutly because more securely after they have overcome all the Incertainties of this world as also we praise them more confidently now reigning Conquerors in a more happy life than whilst they were sighting in this but with that Worship which in Greek is called Latria and cannot be expressed by one word in Latin for as much as it is a certain service properly due to the Divinity we neither worship them nor teach them to be worshipped but God alone Now whereas the offering of Sacrifice belongs to this Worship of Latria from whence they are called Idolaters who gave it also to Idols by no means do we suffer any such thing or command it to be offered to any Martyr or any holy soul or any Angel And whosoever declines into this Error we reprove him by sound Doctrine either that he may be corrected or avoided And a little after It is a much less sin for a man to be derided by the Martyrs for drunkenness then ever fasting to offer Sacrifice to them I say to sacrifice to Martyrs I say not to sacrifice to God in the memories or Churches of the Martyrs which we do most frequently by that rite alone by which in the manifestation of the New Testament he hath commanded Sacrifice to be offered to him which belongs to that Worship which is called Latria and is due only to God This was the Doctrine and practice of Christian people in St. Augustines time and that he himself held formal Invocations a part of the Worship due to Saints is evident from the prayer he made to St. Cyprian after his Martyrdom Adjuveritque nos Beatus Cyprianus orationibus suis c. Let Blessed Cyprian therefore help us who are still encompassed with this mortal flesh and labour as in a dark cloud with his prayer that by Gods grace we may as far as we are able imitate his good works Thus St. Austin where you see he directs his prayer to St. Cyprian which I take to be formal invocation and for a further confirmation of it we have the ingenuous Confession of Calvin himself Instit. li. 3. ch 20. n. 22. where speaking of the third Council of Carthage in which St. Austin was present he acknowledged it was the custom at that time to say Sancta Maria aut Sancte Petre Ora pro nobis Holy Mary or Holy Peter pray for us But now Madam what if after all this he himself shall deny that any of the opposite Tenets are Articles of his faith viz. That honour is not to be given to the Images of Christ and his Saints that what appears to be bread in the Eucharist is not the body of Christ That it is not lawful to invocate the Saints to pray for us Press him close and I believe you shall find him deny that he believes any one of these Negative points to be Divine truths and if so you will easily see his charge of Idolatry against us to be vain and groundless Having thus given a direct and punctual answer to his argument I must now expect as much charity from him as is consistent with Scripture and Reason How much that is you will see in his third Answer to the first Question But to proceed § 8. He brings a Miscellany of such opinions and practices as he calls them which are very apt to hinder a good life and therefore none who have a care of their salvation can venture their souls in the communion of such a Church which either enjoyns or publickly allows them He reckons up no less than ten 1. That we destroy the necessity of good life by makeing the Sacrament of Penance that is confession and absolution joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation And do not Protestants make contrition alone which is less sufficient for salvation But perhaps the joyning of confession and absolution with contrition makes it of a malignant nature If so certainly when the Book of Common Prayer in the visitation of the sick enjoyns the sick man if he find his conscience troubled with any weighty matter to make a special confession and receive absolution from the Priest in the same words the Catholick Church uses it prescribes him that as a means to prepare himself for a holy death which in the judgement of the Objector destroyes the necessity of good life 2. Catholicks he sayes take off the care of good life by supposing an expiation of sin by the prayer of the living after death But certainly the belief of temporal pains to be sustained after death if there be not a perfect expiation of sin in this life by works of penance is rather apt to make a man careful not to commit the least sin than to take off the care of a good life And though he be ascertained by faith that he may be holpen by the charitable suffrages of the faithful living yet this is no more encouragement to him to sin than it would be to a Spendthrift to run into debt and be cast into Prison because he knows he may be relieved by the charity of his Friends If he were sure there were no Prison for him that would be an encouragement indeed to play the Spend-thrift And this is the case of the Protestants in their denyal of Purgatory 3. The sincerity of Devotion he sayes is much obstructed by prayers in a language which many understand not If he speak of private prayers all Catholicks are taught to say them in their Mother Tongue If of the publick prayers of the Church I understand not why it may not be done with as much sincerity of devotion the people joyning their intention and particular prayers with the Priest as their Embassador to God as if they understood him I am sure the effects of a sincere devotion for nine hundred years together which this manner of Worship produced in this Nation were much different from those we have seen since the readucing of the publick Lyturgie into English as is manifest from those Monuments which yet remain of Churches Colledges Religious Houses c. with their endowments and in the conversion of many Nations from Heathenism to Christianity effected by the labours and zeal of English Missionaries in those times c. But this is a matter of Discipline and so not to be regulated by the fancies of private men but the judgement of the Church and so universal hath this practice been both in the Primitive Greek and Latine Churches and is still by the confession of the Protestant Authors themselves of the Bible of many Languages Printed at London Anno 1655. in most of the Sects of Christians to have not only the Scriptures but also the Liturgies and Rituals in a Tongue unknown but to
painted and he ought not to be worshipped in any Image but what he hath prescribed us to worship which is Christ that adoration is external or internal that both of them are called Religion by which we are bound eternally to God and only to him from whence it follows that neither Angels nor Saints are to be worshipped by any religious worship for this is the Law of Adoration that no creature no phantasm of God in our minds no work of mens hands ought to be worshipped for if Gods creatures are not to be worshipped much less ours such as Images of God Angels and Saints are Neither is it enough to say that they do not worship the Image but the thing represented for the object terminates the worship and it is a deceit of the Devil under the pretence of honouring the Saints to bring mens minds to Idols and from the true God to carnal things that Images are to be used only for shew and memory and not at all for Religion that God alone is to be worshipped with all Religious worship whether called Latria or Doulia or what name soever and for the casting away all superstition that no Images be painted in Churches no Statues erected nor accounted holy that the true God may be worshipped alone for ever This is the abstract of his Doctrine delivered by Massonus whose other Writings shew he was far from being partial towards the Reformation And the Book it self is lately published by Baluzius again where any one may easily satisfie himself concerning fidelity But Baluzius very honestly tells us some have suspected this Book not to be very Catholick and therefore it was censured by Baronius and the Spanish Index yet he ingenuously confesseth he saith no more than the whole Gallican Church believed in that Age. What that was I have already shewed This I have the larger insisted upon to shew that it is no new thing for us to plead for all Religious worship being appropriated to God and that the command against Image-worship was no Ceremonial Law respecting meerly the Iews but that the reason of it doth extend to all Ages and Nations and especially to us who live under the Gospel From all which it follows that it was not meerly the Heathen Idolatry which was forbidden by God nor barely to prevent their falling to that by degrees but the giving to himself such a worship which he judges so unworthy of him § 10. 3. From those who were best able to understand the meaning of it We can imagine none so competent a Judge of the meaning of a Law as the giver of it and what he afterwards declares to be the sense of this Law The first occasion given for knowing the meaning of the Law concerning Images was not long after the making of it when upon Moses his absence they compelled Aaron to make them a Golden Calf Exod. 32. 4. Here was an Image made contrary to the Law as is on all sides acknowledged but the question is Whether by this the Israelites did fall into the Heathen Idolatry or only worship the true God under that Symbol of his presence That they did not herein fall back to the Heathen Idolatry I thus prove 1. From the occasion of it which was not upon the least pretence of Infidelity as to the true God or that they had now better reason given them for the worship of other Gods besides him but all they say was that Moses had been so long absent they knew not what was become of him and therefore they say to Aaron make us Gods or a God as in Nehem. 9. 18. to go before us We cannot imagine the people so sottish to desire Aaron to make them a God in the proper sense as though they could believe the Calf newly made to have been the God which before it was made brought them out of the Land of Aegypt as they say afterwards v. 4. but it must be understood as the symbol of that God which did bring them from thence the controversie then lyes here Whether they thought the Aegyptian Gods delivered them out of Aegypt while they forsook all their own worshippers to preserve those who were so great enemies to them that their very way of worship was an abomination to all the Aegyptians Exod 8. 26. and whether they could think the Gods of Aegypt had wrought all the Miracles for them in their deliverance and after it Whether they appeared not long before on Mount Sinai and delivered the Law to them Or whether it were not the true God they meant who had made that the Preface to his Laws I am the God that brought thee out of the Land of Aegypt to whom they intended still to give honour but the only question was concerning the symbol of his presence that was to go before them For which we are to consider that immediately before Moses his going up into the Mount the last promise God made to them was that he would send his Angel before them Exod. 23. 20 23. which is elsewhere called his presence Exod. 33. 14. Moreover they understood that there should be some extraordinary symbol of this presence but what it was they could not tell for Moses was then gone into the Mount to learn but he not being heard of in forty dayes they took it for granted he was not to be heard of more therefore they fall upon devising among themselves what was the fittest symbol for the presence of God going before them and herein the greatest number being possessed with the prejudices of their education in Aegypt where golden Bulls were the symbols of their chief God Osiris they pitch upon that and force Aaron to a complyance with them in it 2. There is no intimation given in the whole story that they fell into the Heathen Idolatry for when afterwards they fell into it the particular names of the Gods are mentioned as Baal-peor Moloch Remphan Numb 25. 3. Acts 7. 43. But here on the contrary Aaron expresly proclaims a Feast to the Lord Exod. 32. 5. and the people accordingly met and offered their accustomed offerings v. 6. whereas if it had been the Aegyptian Idolatry their common Sacrifices were abominations they must not have sacrificed Sheep and Oxen as they were wont to do And that it was not the Idolatry of other Nations who worshipped the Host of Heaven is plain from St. Stephens words Acts 7. 41 42. And they made a Calf in those dayes and offered Sacrifice unto Idols and rejoyced in the works of their own hands then God turned and gave them up to worship the Host of Heaven Whereby it is both observable that the Idolatry of the Calf was distinct from the other Heathen Idolatry this being a punishment of the other and withal though the Calf was intended by them to be only a symbol of Gods presence yet being directly against Gods Command and having divine worship given it it is by S. Stephen called an Idol
no material difference that the Heathen called those they worshipped Gods but they do not so in the Roman Church For St. Austin saith there was scarce any difference between the Heathen and them about the name whether Angels might be called Gods or no for he thinks that they are called so in Scripture as well as Origen but the Question was about the thing whether they were to be Worshipped as Gods or no i. e. by giving any part of religious worship to them which they utterly deny And were I in the communion of the Roman Church I should much less scruple calling Canonized Saints or Angels by the names of Gods than giving them the worship of Invocation or the honour of Sacrifices but in so doing they are not only condemned by plain Scripture and reason but by those of the primitive Church who writ against the Heathen Idolatry which was the thing to be shewed § 13. 2. Another disparity is insisted on by him which is as to the manner of Worship And as to this he saith all that they understand by formal invocation is desiring or praying those Iust persons who are in glory in heaven to pray for us and if the Catholicks be guilty of Idolatry in this we must not desire the prayers of a just man even in this life because this formal Invocation will be to make him an inferiour Deitie To shew the palpable weakness of this answer I shall prove these two things 1. That those in the Church of Rome do allow and practise another kind of formal Invocation from what he asserts 2. That supposing this were all it would not excuse them and that it is of a very different nature from desiring the prayers of just men for us in this life 1. That they do allow and practise another kind of formal Invocation from what he asserts He might very well say he did understand well what I meant by formal Invocation when he makes this to be the meaning of it for never any person before him imagined that sense of it And that term of formal Invocation was purposely chosen by me to distinguish it from the rhetorical Apostrophe's of some of the Greek Fathers the Poetical Flourishes of Damasus Prudentius and Paulinus from general wishes that the Saints would pray for us Of which are some instances in good Authors from assemblies at the monuments of Martyrs which were usual in ancient times and that which I thought any man would understand by it was that which is constantly practised in the Roman Church viz. in places and times purposely appointed for divine and religious worship with all the same external signes of devotion which we use to God himself to offer up our Prayers to Saints or Angels to help us in our necessities as well as to pray to God for us The former part none can be ignorant of that have but so much as heard of the devotion of the Church of Rome all the difficulty lies in that whether they pray to them to help their necessities as well as pray for them And so many forms of Prayer allowed and practised in their Church have been so often objected to them wherein these things are manifest that I cannot but wonder this should be denyed Do they believe we never look into their Breviaries Rosaries Houres and other Books of Devotion wherein to this day such Prayers are to be found Do they think we never heard of the Offices of the B. Virgin or our Ladies Psalter a Blasphemous Book never yet censured wherein the Psalmes in their highest strains of Prayer to God are applyed to the V. Mary I have known my self intelligent persons of their Church who commit their souls to the V. Maries protection every day as we do to Almighty Gods and such who thought they understood the doctrine and practice of their Church as well as others But Madam these are mysteries not to be known till they have their Proselytes safe and fast enough then by degrees they let them know what is to be done when they have given away all liberty of judging for themselves Then it is no matter what they are commanded or expected to do they must do as others do or else their sincerity is questioned and they are thought Hereticks in their hearts whatever they profess I shall not insist upon any ancient Breviaries or obsolete Forms or private Devotions which yet they are accountable for till they do condemn them I need no more than the present Roman Breviary restored according to the Council of Trent and authorized by three several Popes In the Feast of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin as though it were not enough in the Antiphonae to say Hail Blessed Virgin thou alone hast destroyed all Heresies in the world but lest this should be interpreted of doing it by her Son a formal Invocation of her follows Vouchsafe to let me praise thee O Holy Virgin and give me strength against thy enemies And in the Hymn frequently used in her Office and particularly that day she is not only called the Gate of Heaven but she is intreated to loose the bonds of the guilty to give light to the blind and to drive away our evils and to shew her self to be a Mother or as it is in the Mass-book at Paris 1634. Iure Matris impera redemptori as thou art a Mother command the Redeemer In a word They pray to her therein for purity of life and a safe conduct to Heaven But lest the Hymns should be thought only Poetical in the Feast of S. Maria ad Nives Aug. 5. a formal prayer is made to her to help the miserable to strengthen the weak to comfort those that mourn and that all who celebrate her holy Festivity may feel her assistance By which we may understand the meaning of that solemn Hymn used in her Office wherein she is called the Mother of Mercy and Clemency and is prayed to protect us from our enemies and to receive us in the hour of death Is all this only praying to her to pray for us What could be more said to Almighty God or his Son Iesus Christ Nor is this devotion only to the Blessed Virgin but we shall see it alike in that to Angels and Saints in the Antiphona upon the apparition of Michael the Archangel May 8. he is prayed to come to the help of the people of God And in the Feast of the Guardian Angels recommended to all Catholicks by Paul the fifth in the last words of the Breviary they are prayed to defend them in War that they may not perish in Gods terrible judgement In the Hymn to the Holy Apostles they are prayed to command the guilty to be loosed from their guilt to heal unsound minds and to increase their vertues that when Christ shall come they may be partakers of eternal glory These may suffice for a present taste of the sincerity of such persons who say that in
the corrupt lives of those who believe it From hence the trade of saying Masses hath proved so gainful and such multitudes of them have been procured for the benefit of particular persons this being a much easier way of procuring Grace and Salvation than fervent prayer constant endeavours after a Holy Life Mortification Watchfulness and other things we make necessary to enjoy the benefit of what Christ hath done and suffered for us And these things have been complained of by persons of their own communion who have had any zeal for devotion and the practice of true Goodness Cassander although he denyes the doctrine of the efficacy of the Sacraments without the devotion of the receiver to be the received doctrine of the Roman Church yet cannot deny but such a Pharisaical opinion as he calls it had possessed the minds of many of those who did celebrate Masses and were present at them and that too just an occasion was given to those who upbraid them with that opinion because of the multitude of Masses which were celebrated by impure and wicked Priests meerly for gain at which those who are present think they depart from them with a great deal of sanctity although they never once resolve to change their lives but return from thence immediately to their former sins Mons. Arnauld in his Book of frequent communion written upon that occasion confesseth that some in the Roman Church by their doctrine and instructions given to persons did destroy all preparations as unnecessary to the partaking the benefits of the Eucharist and that the worst persons might come without fear to it And that the most required as necessary by them is only the Sacrament of Penance to recover Grace by which he saith they reduce to bare confession and that this by them is not made necessary neither by the more probable opinion but only being at that time free from the guilt of mortal sin It is not to be denyed that Mons Arnauld hath proved sufficiently the other opinion to be most consonant to Scripture and Fathers and the rules of a Christian life but when that is granted the other opinion is yet more agreeable to the doctrine of the Roman Church For although Cassander produce some particular testimonies against it of persons in that Church yet we must appeal for the sense of their Church to the decrees of the Council of Trent which are so contrived as not to condemn the grossest doctrine of the opus operatum For when it doth determine That whosoever shall say that the Sacraments do not confer grace ex opere operato shall be Anathema it cannot be interpreted according to the sense of Cassander and those he mentions that the efficacy of Sacraments doth not depend upon the worth of the Priest For the twelfth Canon relates to that Whosoever shall say that the Minister being in mortal sin although he useth all the essentials to a Sacrament yet doth not celebrate a Sacrament let him be Anathema Those reverend Fathers were not sure so prodigal of their Anathema's to bestow two of them upon the same thing Their meaning then in the eighth Canon must be distinct from the twelfth and if it be so the opus operatum cannot have respect to the worth of the Priest but the devotion of the receiver and it is there opposed to the faith of the divine promise This will appear more plain by the account given of it in the History of that Council After they treated of condemning those who deny Sacraments do confer grace to him that putteth not a barr or do not confess that Grace is contained in the Sacraments and conferred not by vertue of faith but ex opere operato but coming to expound how it is contained and their causality every one did agree that grace is gained by all those actions that excite devotion which proceedeth not from the force of the work it self but from the vertue of devotion which is in the worker and these are said in the Schools to cause grace ex opere operantis There are other actions which cause grace not by the devotion of him that worketh or him that receiveth the work but by vertue of the work it self such are the Christian Sacraments by which grace is received so that there be no barr of mortal sin to exclude it though there be not any devotion So by the work of Baptism grace is given to the Infant whose mind is not moved towards it and to one born a Fool because there is no impediment of sin The Sacrament of Chrisme doth the like and that of extream Vnction though the sick man hath lost his memory But he that hath mortal sin and doth persevere actually or habitually cannot receive grace by reason of the contrariety not because the Sacrament hath not vertue to produce it ex opere operato but because the receiver is not capable being possessed with a contrary quality I dare now appeal to the most indifferent Judge Whether what I objected to them concerning the efficacy of Sacraments whether the minds of the receivers of them be prepared or no were not so far from being a calumâ—y that there is not so much as the least mistake in it if the doctrine of the Council of Trent be embraced by them And any one who shall consider their number of Sacraments and the admirable effects of every one of them may very well wonder how any man among them should want Grace or have any Devotion For Grace being conferred by the Sacraments at so many convenient seasons of his life whether he hath any devotion or no he is sure of Grace if he doth but partake of their Sacraments and need need not trouble himself much about devotion since his work may be done without it Never any doctrine was certainly better contrived for the satisfaction of impenitent sinners than theirs is Our Saviour seems very churlish and severe when he calls sinners to repentance that they may be saved but they have found out a much easier and smoother passage like that of a man in a Boat that may sleep all the while and land safe at last Not so much as the use of reason is required for the effect of that blessed Sacrament of extream Vnction by which like a Ship for a long Voyage a person is pitched and calked for eternity Surely it is the hardest thing that may be for any one to want Grace among them if they do but suffer the Vse of Sacraments upon them and they are the gentlest givers of it imaginable for all they desire of their Patients for Grace is only for them to lye still but if they should chance to be unruly and kick away the Priests or their rites of Chrisme I know not then what may become of them Yet the Church of Rome hath been so indulgent in this case that supposing men under a delirium or wholly insensible if before it be but probable they desired
first spread abroad and never so proper a season to give them caution as then But instead of that they advise them to take heed to the sure word of Prophecy and that they did well therein that the Scriptures were written for their instruction and comfort that being divinely inspired they were able to make them wise unto salvation What did the Apostles never imagine all this while the ill use that might be made of them by men of perverse minds yes they knew it as well as any and did foretell Schismes and Heresies that should be in the Church and saw them in their own dayes and yet poor men wanted that exquisite prudence of the Roman Church to prevent them by so happy an expedient as when they had written Epistles to several Churches to forbid the promiscuous reading of them But it may be it was the awe of the Apostles and their infallible Spirit in interpreting Scripture made this prohibition not so necessary in their own time did the Church then find it necessary to restrain the people after their Decease We have an occasion soon after given wherein to see the opinion of the Church at that time the Church of Corinth fell into a grievous Schisme and opposition to their spiritual Governours upon this Clemens writes his Epistle to them wherein he is so far from forbidding the use of Scripture to them to preserve unity that he bidds them look diligently into the Scriptures which are the true Oracles of the Holy Ghost and afterwards take St. Pauls Epistle into your hands and consider what he saith and commends them very much for being skilled in the Scriptures Beloved saith he ye have known and very well known the holy Scriptures and ye have throughly looked into the Oracles of God therefore call them to mind Which language is as far different from that of the Roman Church as the Church of that Age is from theirs Nay the counterfeit Clemens whom they can make use of upon other occasions is as express in this matter as the true For he perswades private Christians to continual meditation in the Scriptures which he calls the Oracles of Christ and that this is the best imployment of their retirements But we need not use his testimony in this matter nor the old Edition of Ignatius wherein Parents are bid to instruct their Children in the Holy Scriptures nor that saying of Polycarp to the Philippians out of the old Latin Edition I am confident you are well studied in the Scriptures for in the Greek yet preserved he exhorts them to the reading of St. Pauls Epistles that they might be built up in the faith So little did these holy men dream of such a prudent dispensing the Scriptures among them for fear of mischief they might do themselves or others by them Clemens Alexandrinus mentions the reading the Scriptures among Christians before their Meales and Psalmes and Hymns at them and Tertullian mentions the same custome Origen in the Greek Commentaries lately published perswades Christians by all means by attending to Reading Prayer Teaching Meditation therein day and night to lay up in their hearts not only the new Oracles of the Gospell Apostles and Apocalypse but the old ones too of the Law and the Prophets And elsewhere tells his hearers they ought not to be discouraged if they met with difficulties in reading the Scriptures for there was great benefit to be had by them But lest it should be thought he speaks here only of publick reading the Scriptures in his Homilies on Leviticus he speaks plainly that he would not only have them hear the Word of God in publick but to be exercised and meditate therein in their houses night and day For Christ is every where present and therefore they are commanded in the Law to meditate therein upon their journeys and when they sit in their houses and when they lye down and rise up But had not the Church yet experience enough of the mischief of permitting the Scriptures to the people Were there ever greater and more notorious heresies than in those first ages of the Church and those arising from perverting the words and designes of the Scriptures But did the Church yet afterwards grow wiser in the sense of the Roman Church In the time of the four General Councils they had tryal enough of the mischief of Heresies but did the Fathers of the Church forbid the reading the Scriptures on that account No but instead of that they commend the Scriptures to all as the best remedy for all passions of the mind so St. Basil and St. Hierome call it and this latter commends nothing more to the Women he instructed in devotion than constant reading the Scriptures and withall they say that infinite evils do arise from ignorance of the Scriptures from hence most part of Heresies have come from hence a negligent and careless life and unfruitful labours Nay so frequent so earnest and vehement is St. Chrysostome in this matter of recommending the reading of Scriptures that those of the Roman Church have no other way to answer him but by saying he speaks hyperbolically which in plain English is he speaks too much of it But how far different were the opinions of the wise men of the Church in those times from what those have thought who understood the interest of the Roman Church best We may see what the opinion of the latter is by the counsel given to Iulius 3. by the Bishops met at Bononia for that end to give the best advice they could for restoring the dignity of the Roman See that which was the greatest and weightiest of all they said they reserved to the last which was that by all means as little of the Gospel as might be especially in the vulgar tongue be read in the Cities under his jurisdiction and that little which was in the Mass ought to be sufficient neither should it be permitted to any mortal to read more For as long as men were contented with that little all things went well with them but quite otherwise since more was commonly read For this in short is that Book say they which above all others hath raised those Tempests and Whirlewinds which we are almost carryed away with And in truth if any one diligently considers it and compares it with what is done in our Churches will find them very contrary to each other and our very doctrine not only to be different from it but repugnant to it A very fair and ingenuos confession and if self-condemned persons be Hereticks there can be none greater than those of the Roman Church especially the prudential men in it such as these certainly were whom the Pope singled out to give advice in these matters But how different is the wisdom of the Children of this world from that of the Children of Light We have already seen what another kind of judgement
ago S. Gertrude A. D. 664. S. Hildegardis in Germany A. D. 1180. and about the same time S. Elizabeth of Sconaugh all whose revelations were published and the last collected by Roger an English Cistertian and in latter times he mentions S. Brigitt and S. Catharine whose revelations he saith were opposed by some but he declares for his part that he is not at all moved with their arguments for that would diminish too much the honour due to those holy Spouses of Christ as he calls them but in truth he confesses the honour of their Church is concerned in it for saith he several Popes upon diligent examination have allowed and approved these revelations as Eugenius the third did those of Hildegardis as well as Boniface the ninth those of S. Brigitt For the argument from the contradiction of these revelations he knows not how to come off but by a charge of Forgery on the Dominican side and why might not they as well return it on the other unless Matthias a Suetia Confessor to S. Brigitt were more infallible than Raimundus or those who believed S. Catharine But this is not the only case wherein these female revelations so much approved by the Church of Rome are contradictory to each other in those things whereon the proof of a point of doctrine depends For who knows not to what end the revelation of S. Gregoryes delivering the soul of Trajan by his prayers is so frequently urged and this is confirmed by a revelation of S. Brigitt to that purpose from whence Salmeron calls it an unanswerable argument and Alphonsus Ciacconius published by the Popes authority an Apology for that revelation Yet Baronius tells us that S. Mathildis had a revelation to the contrary and if it were not contradictory to S. Brigitts it must be contradictory to it self And therefore he very fairly rejects them all but with what honour to his Church which had before approved them I can by no means understand And Bellarmin to the revelation of Mathildis wherein she desired to know what became of the souls of Sampson Solomon Origen and Trajan and God answered her that none should know what he had done with them opposes another revelation wherein the soul of Origen was seen together with that of Arius and Nestorius in Hell So infallible are these revelations even when they contradict each other How often have visions and apparitions of souls been made use of to prove the doctrine of Purgatory Witness the famous testimonies to this purpose out of S. Gregories Dialogues and Bedes History which latter is at large recited being very proper for it in the late great Legend published by Mr. Cressy under the name of a Church History who justifies the substance of the story as far as it concerns the Doctrine of Purgatory although he doth not think the person really dead but only in a Trance which is all one to our purpose as long as such arguments as these are made use of to prove matters of faith by We need not go so far back as Gabriel Biel to shew that the doctrine of Transubstantiation hath been proved by the appearance of a Child in a Host such an argument hath been lately published to the World and Bellarmin reckons up several to this purpose one wherein instead of Bread was seen real Flesh and another wherein Christ was seen in the form of a Child Which are well attended with St. Anthony of Padua 's Horse which would never have left his Provender to Worship the Host unless he had seen some notable sight there And he very doughtily proves Auricular Confession by a certain Vision of a tall and terrible man with his Book in his hand which blotted out presently all the sins which the humble Thief confessed upon his knees to the Priest but he hath not proved that terrible man did not represent the Devil who by that Ceremony might shew that he turned over the keeping of his Books of Accompts to the Priest who upon Confession might tell mens sins as well as he could do without But they have not only attempted to prove matters of Doctrine by these things but things have been defined in the Church meerly upon the credit of private revelations So the Spanish Ambassadour urges the Pope smartly upon the Revelations of St. Bridgitt That there were many of his predecessors that had determined more things in the Church partly relying upon private Revelations therein whose authority was not greater than hers were Pius 1. he saith determined the Controversie of Easter-day upon the credit of a Revelation made to Hermes Urban 4. Instituted the Festival of Corpus Christi in opposition to the denyers of Transubstantiation upon the instinct and revelation of a certain Woman Paul the Hermite was Canonized for a Saint upon the Authority of a Vision and Revelation to Anthony the one of his soul flying to Heaven the other of his being there The Feast of the apparition of the Arch-angel Michael which is constantly observed in the Church of Rome depended upon a revelation to the Bishop of Siponto and a few Drovers upon the Mountain Garganus These are things briefly touched by the Ambassadour but it will not be amiss to give a more particular account of those instances which concern the Institution of Festival Solemnities by which it will appear that they are Fanatical even in their Superstitions Pope Vrban 4. in the Bull still extant for the Celebration of Corpus Christi day mentions that as one of the great reasons of appointing it that while he was in a lower capacity he understood that a revelation had been made to certain Catholicks that this Feast should be observed in the Church This which is only intimated here is at large explained by Ioh. Diestemius Blaerus Prior of St. Iames in Liege where these things happened In an Hospital hard by the Town he tells us there was a famous Virgin called Iuliana which had many Extasies and Raptures and so Prophetical a Spirit as to discern the thoughts and intentions of her Neighbours Hearts she wrestled with Devils discoursed with the Apostles and wrought many Miracles But one thing peculiar to her was that in her Prayers she almost alwayes saw the Moon in her brightness but with a snip taken off from her roundness at which she was much troubled but by no means could get it out of her Phancy At last God was pleased to reveal it to her that the Moon signified the present Church and that fraction the want of one solemnity more to be observed in it upon which she received a command from Heaven to proclaim the observation of this solemnity For twenty years she prayed that God would excuse her and make choice of a more worthy person but none being found she communicates it to Iohannes de Lausenna and he to Iacobus de Trecis then Arch-deacon of Liege and afterwards Vrban 4. But although
properties in the Holy Trinity of the Fatherhead of the Motherhood and of the Lordship and she further saw that the second person which is our Mother substantially the same dear worthy person is now become our Mother sensual for we be double of Gods making substantial and sensual We may justly admire what esteem Mr. Cressy had of that Lady to whose devout retirements he so gravely commends the blasphemous and senseless tittle tattle of this Hysterical Gossip It were endless to repeat the Canting and Enthusiastick expressions which signifie nothing in Mother Iuliana's Revelations and one would wonder to what end such a Book were published among us unless it were to convince us of this great truth that we have not had so great Fanaticks and Enthusiasts among us but they have had greater in the Roman Church And by this means they may think to prevail upon the Fanaticks among us by perswading them that they have been strangely mistaken concerning the Church of Rome in these matters that she is no such enemy to Enthusiams and Revelations as some believe but that in truth she hath not only alwayes had such but given great approbation and encouragement to them So that among all their visions they do but mix some that confirm their particular Doctrines as the Visions of Iuliana concerning the great Worship of the B. Virgin from her son the holy Vernacle at Rome and such like fopperies these make all the rest very acceptable among them § 6. 2. That which they account the most perfect way of life hath been instituted by Enthusiastick persons and upon the credit of visions and revelations and the highest way of devotion in that Church is meer Enthusiasme 1. That the Religious orders were instituted among them by Enthusiastick persons upon the credit of their visions and revelations The most celebrated orders at this day in the Roman Church are the Benedictines Carthusians Dominicans Franciscans and Iesuites and if I can prove this concerning each of these we shall see how much Fanaticism hath contributed to the support of the Roman Church And it is a very fair way towards the proof of it that Bellarmin confesseth concerning the four first and that of Romoaldus that they were at first instituted by St. Benedict St. Romoaldus St. Bruno St. Dominick St. Francis by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and for Ignatius Loyola if he do not appear as great a Fanatick as ever hath been in the world we shall be contented to be upbraided with the charge of Fanaticism among us It is observable in the life of St. Benedict as St. Gregory relates in the second Book of his Dialogues that he was a great hater of humane learning and that was the first occasion of his retiring from the World being very much afraid a little knowledge should have destroyed him He therefore forsook not only his Studies but his Fathers house and business being as St. Gregory saith knowingly ignorant and wisely unlearned he might as well have said ignorantly learned and foolishly wise One might have suspected it had been rather hatred of his Book than devotion at his age which made him run away from School and his Fathers house but one of his Visions in his Cave makes it more probable there was some other occasion of it But however away he goes and only an old Nurse with him and he requited her soon for it for he by his Prayers set together the winnowing Sieve which she had broken in pieces which was after hanged up before the doors of the Church to the Lombards times But this is nothing to his being three years in a Cave without the knowledge of any but St. Roman who let him down victuals by a rope and a Bell and the Devil owing him a great spight threw a huge stone and broke the Bell. Here he lay so close that he was fain to be discovered by a vision and was so devout that he had forgotten Easter day till he was put in mind of it by the person who by a vision was sent to him and was so little like a man that the shepherds took him for a beast lying in a den But at last he is brought to light and found to be a wonderful person for among superstitious people ignorance and devotion are most admired together and now many are sent to him for education having conquered his amorous passions by rowling himself naked among thornes and nettles which thorns a long time after St. Francis grafted Roses upon as Bollandus well observes which bear in the coldest part of Winter and of them Rose water is made which is sent as a present to the greatest Princes He had an admirable Sagacity in spying Devils for he saw a little black Devil which led away a Monk from Prayers and was fain to pray two dayes with Pompeianus and Maurus that God would afford them the Grace to see him too and at last Maurus being young and his sight good saw him but Pompeianus being older and wiser could not However St. Bennet sent the little Devil packing with a stroke of his rod as he did at other times with the sign of the cross and easily caused a stone to be lifted up whereon the Devil sate which could not be stirred before his coming It would take up too much time to tell of his Miracles my business is only with his visions and revelations by which he could not only foretell things to come but could discover absent things so that the Monks could not eat out of his sight but he could tell as well as if he saw the meat in their teeth when they denyed it He discovered Riggo's fraud when he came to him in Totila's habit and told Totilas how long he should raign nay if we believe St. Gregory he knew the secrets of the Divinity being one Spirit with God no wonder then the unhappy Boy could not hide one Flask of Wine nor the Monks receive handkerchiefs of the Women but he found it out but most admirable was his sight of his Sister Scholastica's soul entring into Heaven in the shape of a Dove and another time the soul of Germanus Bishop of Capua in a fiery Circle carryed by Angels to Heaven but above all was his seeing all the world under one ray of the Sun which he could not do Gregory concludes without a Divine internal light upon which a dispute hath been raised in the Schooles whether St. Benedict saw the divine Essence or no Aquinas thinks not but only that he had an extraordinary revelation Vasquez doth not seem much to oppose it but upon two grounds the one very considerable that we never read the Virgin Mary did it who ought to have the highest share in revelations and visions the other only a plain place of Scripture No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son of the Father he hath revealed him As
though that were intended to exclude St. Benedict and other Founders of Religious orders and not rather the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles who came not near them in Visions and Miracles But no one hath handled this profound question with that care and accuracy which Angelus de Nuce hath done in his Notes upon St. Gregories life of St. Benedict he tells us therefore the Question is not concerning the highest sort of abstractive contemplation of any thing short of the Divine essence for that he saith none doubt of but of an intuitive vision by which the divine essence is seen clearly in it self immediately and not in any created image the Negative he grants is held by Aquinas and many of the Schoolmen but yet he saith many Schoolmen of great note are for the affirmative and he deduces many arguments to prove it from St. Gregories words but that which addes most weight to it besides the number of authors quoted by him is that Vrban 8. in a Bull upon the feast of St. Benedict A. D. 1632. doth expresly assert it And Ioh. Bona a present Cardinal at Rome saith that St. Benedict was rapt up into the third Heavens where he heard the Choire of Angels and saw God face to face for which besides Gregory he cites St. Bernard Rupertus Tuitiensis Bonaventure Dionysius Carthusianus Maximilian Sandaeus and others And addes to this as extraordinary a thing as any hath been yet said of him that he and his Sister Scholastica sung very distinctly in their Mothers Wombs a presage saith he of the chearful singing of their Order For which he quotes several Authors of the Benedictines and although he grants it may be suspected because it doth not occurr in the more ancient writers yet he justifies it by many parellel Stories These things are enough for St. Benedicts Enthusiasme St. Romoaldus was as happy as St. Benedict in his ignorance For as Petrus Damiani reports in his life when he first entred himself under the discipline of Marinus the Eremite he could hardly read his Psalter though he had been a Monk three years before and he adds it as a great instance of his patience that when Marinus in teaching him did often beat him with a wand upon the left side of his head for his dulness he desired his Master that he would now change his side for he had by his strokes quite lost his hearing in his left eare and yet he met with a worse companion than Marinus for for five years together he saith the Devil lay upon his feet and his leggs in the night that he could not easily stirr himself He was so possessed with the thoughts of him that a Monk could not knock at his Cell door but he asked the Devil what he did there in the Wilderness and was ready to encounter with the Devil when he found him to be one of his Brethren But the Devil once got him down as he imagined while he was saying his Psalms and wounded him and bruised him sadly but of a sudden he rose up as sound as ever and went on just where he left All the crows and ugly birds he saw in the Wilderness he fancied to be Devils and challenged to fight with them and exceedingly triumphed when at his loud cries they flew away He was converted by a vision of St. Apollinaris as his Father Sergius ran stark mad with a vision of the Holy Ghost he wept so abundantly that he never durst say Mass in publick and bid his Brethren have a care of shedding too many tears because they hurt the sight and the brain Yet by immediate revelation he writ an excellent commentary saith Mugnotius on the Book of Psalms though not very agreeable to Grammar saith Petrus Damiani and being led by the Divine Spirit to the top of a Mountain in his sleep he saw Ladders reaching from thence to Heaven and a great many Monks going up to Heaven upon them A divine vision indeed and he meeting with Maldulus who by great fortune had the same vision they presently agreed about erecting a Monastery there If the order of Carthusians did not begin upon the story of the Doctor of Paris speaking those dreadful words after his death which is delivered say the defenders of it by sixty authors of the Roman Church yet it is agreed on all hands among them that Hugo who joyned with Bruno in laying the foundations of that order had a vision of Gods building a house of seven stars conducting them to the place called la grand Chartreuse from whence the whole order hath taken its name The Carmelites have an especial vision of Simon Stock wherein the B. Virgin upon his devout prayers to her appeared with the habit in her hand which she would have them wear with a promise greater than ever her son made that whosoever dyed in that habit should not perish by everlasting flames § 7. But S. Francis and S. Dominick were the persons whom Innocent the third saw in a Vision supporting the tottering Fabrick of the Lateran Church whereby he understood what Props and Supporters those two Orders would be to the Church of Rome From hence those high Elogiums are given of those two persons by Bonaventure Antoninus Bozius and others that they were the two great lights of Heaven the two Trumpets of Moses the two Cheruâ—ims or rather the two Calves of Dan and â—ethel the two breasts of the Spouse the two Olive branches the two Candlesticks the two Witnesses almost all the noted two's of the Bible but the two Thieves and the two Testaments and these as will appear presently were in no great esteem among them But S. Francis got the start of the other for if a Canonized Saint may be believed upon his Oath Bonaventure did publickly swear at Paris saith Bernardinus a Bustis that Christ did reveal it to him that S. John Apocalyps 7. 2. by the Angel ascending from the East having the seal of the living God meant no other than S. Francis And therefore that is the Motto placed under his Picture and is applyed the same way by Pope Leo the tenth I shall not take the advantage that is sufficiently given us by the Book of Conformities the Alcoran of the Franciscans nor the declared enemies of those Orders to represent S. Francis by but only take the account given of him by persons of greatest reputation in the roman-Roman-Church Cardinal Vitriaco who saith he saw him when he went to Damiata calls him a simple and illiterate man Cardinal Bonaventure is received as the most approved Writer of his life and he describes him as an ignorant Enthusiast being bred a kind of Woollen draper as appears by the selling his Cloth and his Horse at Foligno after he left off trading upon the Vision of building Churches His first conversion to Quakerism was by Dreams and Visions
in which he was sometimes swallowed up in God as Bonaventures expression is and his soul melted at the sight of Christ and was so tender hearted to the poor that he sometimes put off his clothes to give them sometimes unript them sometimes cut them in pieces I suppose that he might give to the more All this while he had no Teacher but Christ and learnt all by inspiration but went besides himself at hearing the voice come from a Crucifix as any one almost would have done and it seems he was not well recovered when he came from the Cave for the people flocked about him as a mad man and gave him the common Civility to such persons of dirt and stones and his Father entertained him with dark rooms and chains as the fittest for him whom neither words nor blows could bring to himself But finding no amendment he made him renounce his Patrimony and so discharged him which S. Francis did so readily that he would not so much as keep the Clothes on his back Whereby saith Bonaventure in a wonderful zeal and being drunk in the Spirit casting away his very Breeches and being stark naked before them all said thus to his Father Hitherto I called thee Father on earth but hence forward I can securely say Our Father which art in Heaven As though his duty to God and his Parents had been inconsistent The Bishop in whose presence all this was done gave order to have his nakedness covered highly admiring his zeal and he no sooner had got some rags about him but he falls to makeing Crucifixes in Mortar with his own hands as Children do Babies in the dirt In this height of Fanaticism he goes about and preaches to the people whose words pierced their hearts much sooner than sense and reason would have done and he soon brought the superstitious and ignorant multitude to a great admiration of him for his very way of saluting the people he pretended he had by revelation At last one Bernard joyns with him but S. Francis tells him They must seek God for direction what to do and after prayers he being a great worshipper of the Trinity in honour to it opens the Gospel three times and the first three sentences he met with were to be the rule of their Order their second Brother was F. Gyles who though an Idiot and a simple man was full of God as he saith and had so many extasies and raptures that he seemed to live rather among Angels than men One day when S. Francis was alone in a solitary place He fell into an extasie of joy and had full assurance of the remission of his sins and being transported beyond himself he was catched up into a wonderful light wherein his mind being inlarged he foresaw all that should come to pass concerning his Order His number being increased to Rome he goes to confirm his Order but the Pope rejected him with scorn but in the night he saw a Palm growing between his feet into a goodly Tree which he wisely interpreting to be S. Francis sent for him and promised him fair things and upon the other Vision of his supporting the Lateran Church he approves his Rule and establishes his Order And his whole life afterwards was agreeable to this beginning 〈◊〉 and the Rule of his Order he called as Possevine tells us The Book of life the hope of salvation the marrow of the Gospel the ladder of Heaven the key of Paradise the Eternal Covenant Let any Fanaticks be produced among us though we are far from looking on them as the supporters of our Church who have exceeded S. Francis in their actions or expressions S. Brigitt saith of the Rule of S. Francis That it was not dictated or composed by the wisdom of man but by God himself nay every word therein was inspired by the Holy Ghost which she saith likewise of all the other Rules of Religious Orders What horrible blasphemy is this which is so solemnly approved in the Church of Rome for divine Revelations But lest Dominicus should seem to come behind S. Francis in â—â—sions he tells him at Rome where they met That it was revealed to him in a Vision that Christ was just coming to destroy the world for the wickedness of it and his Mother stopt him and told him she had two servants would reform it whereof himself was one and Christ approved of him as one that would do his work but his companion he did not know till he met S. Francis and so they embraced one another Which Vision out of his great humility S. Francis reported having it from the others own mouth I shall not insist on any more of Dominicus nor on the blasphemous Images set up in S. Marks Church at Venice one of which was of S. Paul with this Inscription By him we go to Christ the other of Dominicus with this but by him we go easier to Christ but I shall proceed to their followers among whom we meet with one of the most blasphemous pieces of Enthusiasm the world hath ever known § 8. For which we are to understand that in the beginning of the thirteenth Century one Almaricus a Student in Paris was suspected for some dangerous Opinions for which he was sentenced to recant and soon after dyed Among these Opinions he broached this blasphemy which was privately instilled into his followers That every person of the Trinity had his successive time of ruling the world that the Law of the Father continued till Christs comeing the Law of the Son to their time and then the time of the Holy Ghost was to begin In which the use of Sacraments was to cease and all internal administrations and every one then was to be saved by the inspiration and inward grace of the Holy Ghost without any external actions They so highly extolled Love that what would have been a sin without it they thought to be nothing with it as Fornication Adultery c. and promised impunity to the women with whom they committed these things because they said God was only good and not just That these were their opinions is delivered by Rigordus who lived in that age and was upon the place being a Monk of S. Denys and Physitian to the King of France and by Eymericus and Pegna and many others But by the care and endeavour of the Bishop and Vniversity of Paris though they had spread very far abroad and with a great deal of secrecy yet by the fraud and artifice of one imployed among them who pretended to revelations and the Spirit as highly as they could do they were convicted condemned and some of them executed Notwithstanding which severity about fifty years after this came forth a Book with the Title of Evangelium aeternum or the Eternal Gospel published by the Mendicant Fryers and supposed to be written by Iohannes de Parma
about A. D. 1254. who was General of the Franciscan Order but the Book was received and defended by both Orders as will presently appear But it will be first necessary to consider what the doctrines are which are contained in this Book and if ever there were higher Fanaticism than is therein or rather greater blasphemies let them have leave to triumph The most perfect account we have of it is from Nicol Eymericus who was himself an Inquisitor and tells us these Heresies or Errors are contained in it 1. That the doctrine of Abbot Ioachim a great Fanatick excelled the doctrine of Christ and consequently the New and Old Testament 2. That the Gospel of Christ is not the Gospel of the Kingdom and therefore is not edifying 3. That the New Testament is to be evacuated or lose its force as the Old hath already 4. That the New Testament shall not remain in force above six years longer viz. to A. D. 1260. 5. That they which shall live beyond that time shall be in the state of perfection 6. That the Gospel of Christ shall give way to another Gospel and so instead of the Priesthood of Christ another Gospel shall succeed 7. That no simple man is fit to instruct men in spiritual and eternal things but they that walk barefoot 8. That although God afflict the Iews in this world yet he will save them though they remain in Iudaism and will in the end deliver them from all the opposition of men remaining such as they are 9. That the Church hath not yet brought forth Children nor will do before the end of the temporal reign which shall be after six years and by this we are to understand that the Christian Religion which hath brought forth many called to the faith of Christ is not the Church 10. That the Gospel of Christ brings no man to perfection 11. That the Gospel of the Holy Ghost coming or Ioachims work obtaining called the Everlasting Gospel or of the Holy Ghost the Gospel of Christ shall be done away 12. That no man in Religious Orders is bound to expose his life for defence of the faith or preserving the worship of Christ but other men are 13. That as when Iohn Baptist came the things that were before must needs be confuted because of new things coming in their place so when the time of the Holy Ghost shall come or the third state of the world the things that were before must be confuted for the sake of the New which are to come from whence it must be understood that the New Testament must be refuted and the old cast away 14. That Christ and his Apostles were not perfect in the contemplative life 15. That the Order of the Clergy shall perish but one of a Religious Order shall be perferred above all in dignity and honour and that as the authority under the Father was committed to one of the married order so under the Holy Ghost to one or some of the order of Monks 16. That those who are over the Colledges of Monks ought in those dayes to think of departing from the Seculars and prepare themselves to return to the ancient people of the Iews 17. That the Preachers which shall be in the last state of the world shall be of greater dignity and authority than the Preachers of the Primitive Church 18. That the Preachers and Doctors of Religious Orders when they shall be infested by the Clergy shall go over to the Infidels and it is to be feared lest they go thither for that end to bring them in battel against the Roman Church according to the doctrine of S. Iohn Apocalyps 15. These may suffice out of twenty seven to let the world know where the height of Blasphemy and Fanaticism was first hatched and no one could imagine that any who had the face or name of Christians should own these things yet they came from those excellent and inspired persons of the newly founded Religious Orders And if it had not been for the mortal hatred that then was between the University of Paris and the Mendicant Fryers who usurped the Professors places in the Vniversity against their will God knows how far this doctrine might have prevailed without the least censure For the Popes were extreamly partial to the Fryers and would hear no ill of them they now finding them their most useful instruments in all their quarrels with Princes the Secular Clergy and the People So Matth. Paris relating the Story of the quarrels between the University and the Fryers tells That though the King and the City were for preserving the priviledges of the Vniversity yet the Fryers being at the Popes devotion and doing them a great deal of service were more acceptable in the Court of Rome and therefore got the better of the Vniversity Nay so zealous was Alexander the fourth in the cause of the Fryers against the Vniversity that in the six years of his Popedom he sent out near forty Bulls against the Vniversity of which not one now appears in the Bullarium but most of them are preserved in that accurate Preface before the Works of Gul. de Sancto Amore the zealous Defender of the Vniversity against the encroachments of the Fryers and in the late History of the Vniversity of Paris In the midst of these heats some intimation was given the Divines of the Vniversity of such a Book which was in great esteem among the Fryers called Evangelium aeternum wherein were very dangerous doctrines which were saith Matthew Paris preached read and taught by the Fryers and were put together by them in a Book called Evangelium aeternum and taken saith he chiefly out of the Books of Abbot Joachim and Richerius acknowledgeth that the Book was composed by the Fryers and that the Divines of Paris by some art got a Copy of it and extracted some Heads out of it which were contrary to faith and upon that as Du Bouley saith they caused it to be burnt publickly at Paris But not being satisfied herewith they preached against it as appears by a Sermon of Gul. de Sancto Amore at the end of his Works wherein he saith That he had seen no small part of that Book and he had heard that it doth in all contain more than the Bible and therein he saith it is taught that the Sacraments of the Church are nothing that the Gospel of Christ is not the true Gospel and that the Book it self is the Gospel of the Holy Ghost and the everlasting Gospel and that the Gospel of Christ should be preached but for five years to come that then men shall have another Rule of life and the Church shall be otherwise managed Which saith he is execrable and abominable to be spoken But not content with bare preaching against them he writ a very smart Book in the name of the Vniversity of Paris de periculo novissimorum temporum of the dangers of the
last times wherein he doth at large set forth the hypocrisie idleness flattery and baseness of the Fryers but coming to shew the near approach of the dangers he mentions he saith It is now fifty five years for about that time Almaric broached his doctrine that some have endeavoured to change the Gospel of Christ into another Gospel which they said would be better more perfect and worthy which they call the Gospel of the Holy Ghost or the everlasting Gospel which will by its coming turn the Gospel of Christ out of doors as saith he we are ready to prove out of that cursed Gospel and a little after he adds That this Everlasting Gospel was publickly explained at Paris A. D. 1254. from whence it is certain that it would be preached unless there were some other thing which hindered And afterwards he saith That in that Book this Everlasting Gospel is said to exceed the Gospel of Christ as much as the light of the Sun doth that of the Moon or the Kernel doth the Shell This Book of his extreamly incensed the Fryers and they presently sent informations against him to the Pope and by their interest got his Book to be condemned and burnt publickly before the Pope and the Court at Anagnia and afterwards at Paris to which purpose the Pope published a Bull and denounced the sentence of excommunication against any who should presume to defend it and the Write of it was deprived of his Ecclesiastical Promotions and banished France as far as the Popes power could do it All this was done in great haste before the Legats from the Vniversity could appear and when they came three of them recanted and returned only Gul. de S. Amore resolved to stand it out and answered all their objections and persisted still in the accusation of that horrible Book and at last prevailed so much that the Pope was fain to condemn the Evangelium aeternum together with S. Amours Book but it appears how unwillingly he did it by his carriage in it which is related by Matth. Paris for he condemned the other Book solemnly and caused the sentence to be publickly executed but he gave order that this Book should be secretly burnt and as much as might be without any offence to the Fryers Lo here the true zeal of the Head of the Church A Book only writ against the Mendicant Fryers is condemned as impious wicked execrable and what not in the Bull against it and a Book against Christian Religion in the highest manner hardly procured to be condemned and when it is with great fear of displeasing the Authors and approvers of it And since that time they have been very careful to suppress the least mention of the latter but very forward to set forth the other For in the Roman Bullarium the Bull against S. Amours Book is set forth at large but not the least intimation of any such Book condemned as the Evangelium aeternum So much dearer to the Pope is the honour of Fryers than of Christ and the Christian Religion And therefore S. Amour said well in the University of Paris before they went That it was to no purpose to go about to procure the condemning that Book at Rome where it had so many Favourers the design of it being to advance the honour of Religious Orders though to the overthrow of the Gospel of Christ. It is well these things were written and preserved by Writers of their own Church and persons of the same Age out of whom only I have given account of them for otherwise according to their usual Method of confuting things which do not please them they would be denyed with a mighty confidence and the world should be told that these are only the Lyes and Forgeries of Hereticks But these are to their shame preserved in their own Books and we can shew them the very words if occasion requires it § 9. Yet we are not to think that only the preaching Fryers sell into these extravagancies for the Franciscans had a great hand in them too and were as forward to promote that which they accounted their common interest And notwithstanding the Popes condemning the Book said to be taken out of Abbot Ioachims Writings yet his doctrine did in no long time after break forth again in the Franciscan Order For toward the latter end of the same Century or as most think in the beginning of the next in the time of Clement the fifth appeared one Petrus Iohannis de Oliva a great Disciple of Ioachims as Guido Carmelita Alphonsus a Castro and Franciscus Pegna affirm All the difference saith Alphonsus between them was that Ioachim made the spiritual State to commence from the founding the Benedictine Order but Petrus Iohannis would have it begin only from S. Francis Which State as Eymericus relates where he recounts his errors began with the Franciscan Order when the Angel of Christ that is S. Francis did set his mark upon all his Souldiers and that S. Francis appeared as Christ did with his wounds upon him For we are to understand that S. Francis in one of his Visions upon the very day of the exaltation of the Cross had the same bleeding wounds on his hands feet and side which Christ had upon the Cross and carried them for two years together before his death and lest this should be suspected Pope Alexander the fourth preached it in S. Bonaventures hearing that himself saw them as the sixth Lesson on S. Francis day in the Roman Breviary and Bonaventure assure us And who dares question the infallibility of the Popes eye-sight Unless the Story in latter times of Maria Visitationis as she was called Abbesse of the Annuntiation in Lisbon may give some suspicion of it For this Virgin had gained so great a reputation for sanctity not only in Portugal but in Spain Italy and the East Indies that she seemed to be a fit match for S. Francis And she out-did him in the number of her wounds for she had thirty two upon her head caused by Christs putting his Crown of Thorns upon her and in her hands and â—eet and side they were as exact as in St. Francis she made no difficulty of shewing them if her Confessor bid her but never otherwise lest she should seem too much to glory in the honour which Christ had done her This Confessor was no less a man than Ludovicus Granatensis a man highly commended for learning and piety who as verily believed them as Pope Alexander did those of S. Francis One day in the Week she laid raggs to her wounds upon which the print of the wounds was made These rags with incredible devotion saith the Writer of the Story were sent to the Pope himself and to the greatest and most religious persons in all parts by whom they were received with great Veneration And when he was Inquisitor in Sicily he saith he saw many of them
condemn them And they triumph in nothing more than when they can handsomely revenge themselves on that bitter enemy of theirs called Reason which they never do with greater pleasure than when they pretend it to be upon the account of Religion In the Church of Rome the case hath been thus among them as in all Religions and places in the World there are some persons of a temper naturally disposed more to Religion than others are being melancholy thoughtful tender and easily moved by hopes and fears These do more easily receive the impressions of Religion which they being possessed with if they be not carefully governed are more lyable to fall into the dotages of superstition or to be transported by the heats of Enthusiasme Against both of them there can be no better cure imaginable than the true understanding the nature and reasonableness of the Christian Religion which fills our minds with a true sense of God and goodness and so arms us against superstition and withall acquaints us that the conduct of the Spirit of God is in the use of the greatest reason and prudence and so prevents the follies of Enthusiasme But it being so much the design of that Church to keep the members of it from knowing any thing against her interest so much as the true practice of Christianity is and therefore keeping the Bible out of the hands of the people they must substitute some other wayes in the room of that to gratifie the earthy dulness of a superstitious temper and the airiness and warmth of the Enthusiastical For the former they are abundantly provided by a tedious and ceremonious way of external devotion as dull and as cold as the earth it self to the other they commend abstractedness of life mental prayer passive unions a Deiform fund of the soul a state of introversion divine inspirations which must either end in Enthusiasme or madness And the perfection of this state lying in an intime Vnion with God as they speak whereby the soul is Deified is to be attained only in the way of unknowing for nothing so dangerous as the use of reason and self-annihilation and many other things as impossible to be understood as practised Which makes it difficult to give any account of such unintelligible stuffe for we must only grope in obscurity and profound darkness and draw a Night piece without lights This way came first into request in the Monastick orders by the examples of their founders as will easily appear by our former discourse but the men who most solemnly preached and divulged it were Rusbrochius Suso Harphius c. and he who in these latter ages hath gathered together most that had been said before him and is commended by Balthasar Corderius and others as a most sublime interpreter of mystical Divinity Ludovicus Blosius from these it were not difficult to put together some of their words and phrases as an account of their Divinity but I rather choose to do it chiefly from a late Author published by Mr. Cressy not many years since who after his many turnings and changes of opinions sits down at last as appears by his publishing Mother Iuliana's revelations and the Preface to Sancta Sophia with the deserved Character of a Popish Fanatick Which Book of Sancta Sophia being compiled by Mr. Cressy out of many writings of Father Augustin Baker and set forth A. D. 1657. with large approbations at the beginning and end of it I hope no doctrine contained therein will be thought a scandal to their Church The design of it is as the title tells us To give directions for the Prayer of Contemplation c. I would they had given directions for understanding it in the first place for if we have no other help than what Mr. Cressy gives in his Preface we may as well hope to understand the Quakers Canting as Mr. Cressy's Let the Reader judge by these few passages in his Preface The only proper disposition towards the receiving supernatural irradiations from Gods holy Spirit is an abstraction of life a sequestration from all business that concern others though it be their salvation and an attendance to God alone in the depth of the Spirit and a little after the lights here desired and prayed for are such as do expel all images of creatures and do calm all manner of passions to the end that the soul being in a vacuity may be more capable of receiving and entertaining God in the pure fund of the Spirit What this pure fund of the Spirit means I had been somewhat to seek for had not Lud. Blosius in the Preface to his spiritual Institution told us that the Deiform fund of the soul is the simple essence of the soul stamped with a divine impress or if this be not plain enough that from whence ariseth a super-essential life but if yet it cannot be understood we may be the less troubled at it since the same Author saith afterward that very few do know that hidden fund of their souls or believe that they have such a thing within them It being it seems like some very cunning drawer in a Cabinet where the main treasure lyes which the owner himself cannot find out till it be broken to pieces for self-annihilation is necessarily required in order to it And this super-essential life as he admirably describes it is a way of knowing without thoughts of seeing in darkness of understanding without reason of unknowing God by perceiving him of being melted and brought to nothing first and then being lost and swallowed up in God by which means all created being is put off and that which is only divine put on being changed into God as iron heated into the nature of fire This being the state of perfection aimed at here in this world we must now consider the directions given in order to it To this end in the first place a contemplative state is commended above an active as more perfect and more easie more simple and more secure from all errours and illusions which may be occasioned by an indiscreet use of Prayer Where by an active and contemplative state we must not understand what we commonly do by those terms but the active-state is the use of reasoning and internal discourse to fix our affections upon God and expressing it self in sensible devotion and outward acts of obedience to Gods will the contemplative in the Authors language is seeking God in the obscurity of faith with a more profound introversion of Spirit and with less activity and motion in sensitive nature and without the use of grosser images and such souls are not of themselves he saith much inclined to external works but they seek rather to purifie themselves and inflame their hearts to the love of God by internal quiet and pure actuations in spirit by a total abstraction from creatures by solitude both external and especially internal so disposing themselves to receive the influxes and inspirations of God
whose guidance chiefly they endeavour to follow in all things Now he saith the security of such a state above the other lyes in this that a contemplative soul tending to God and working almost only with the heart and blind affections of the will pouring themselves upon God apprehended only in the obscure notion of faith not enquiring what he is but believing him to be that incomprehensible being which he is and which can only be comprehended by himself rejecting and striving to forget all Images and representations of him or any thing else yea transcending all operations of the imagination and all subtlety and curiosity of reasoning and lastly seeking an union with God only by the most pure and most intime affections of the spirit what possibility of illusion or errour can there be to such a soul none doubtless for this is more than a meer sleep of the soul for all reasoning and images of things being wholly laid aside there is not so much as a possibility of dreaming left The next thing he takes notice of which is very well observed is that men given to sublime speculations or I suppose any who have the use of reason are not so capable of it as unlearned persons and Women and therefore Father Leander à Sancto Martino approves the Book as containing very sound and wholesome doctrine for the direction of devout souls and fit and agreeable to our calling and rule and especially for the use of our Dames because they might more easily swallow it as they do pills without chewing and so find not any bitterness in it which is to the same purpose with that reason Baker himself gives viz. that the perfection of contemplation scarcely at all lyes in the operations of the understanding A most admirable way of contemplating with the will but why might it not consist as well in the volition of the understanding as in the contemplation of the Will The proper end of this contemplative life he addes is the attaining to an habitual and almost uninterrupted perfect union with God in the supream point of the spirit or rather fund as Mr. Cressy more mystically calls it and such an union as gives the soul a fruitive possession of him and a real experimental perception of his divine presence in the depth and center of the spirit which is fully possessed and filled with him alone And lest we should think this were all to be hoped for in this contemplative state he saith further that besides this active union wherein the soul her self concurrs there are others meerly passive in which God after a wonderful and inconceivable manner affords them interiour illuminations and touches yet far more efficacious and Divine in all which the soul is a meer patient and only suffers God to work his divine pleasure in her being neither able to further or hinder it The which unions though they last but even as it were a moment of time yet do more illuminate and purifie the soul than many years spent in active exercises of spiritual Prayer or Mortification could do The steps he sets down in order to this state of perfection are 1. The way of external and imaginary exercises of Prayer in which without a discreet diligence and constancy in them the soul may perhaps end her dayes therein A sad case to end our dayes as Christ and his Apostles did who used this low dispensation of praying to the last But alas they never understood these passive unions with God in the fund of the spirit they taught men a plain and intelligible way of serving God and bid them look for perfection in another world 2. Aspirations and pure elevations of the superiour Will 3. The divine inaction 4. Then when one would least expect them follow woful obscurities and desolations and after them 5. Comes the State of perfection Elsewhere he describes the progress towards this State of perfection thus that he who would come to it must practise the drawing of his external senses inwardly to his internal there losing and as it were annihilating them then he must draw his internal senses into the superiour powers of the soul and there annihilate them likewise and those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is called their unity and lastly that Vnity which alone is capable of perfect union with God must be applied and firmly fixed on God wherein the perfect divine contemplation lyes In which union he saith all is vacuity or emptiness as if nothing were existent but God and the soul yea so far is the soul from reflecting on her own existence that it seems to her God and she are not distinct but one only thing This is called by some mystick Authors the state of Nothingness by others it being indifferent it seems among them the state of Totality but the most sublime description of it is that of the Vnion of nothing with nothing which being hard terms to be understood he explains them thus that the soul being no where corporally or sensibly is every where spiritually and immediatly united to God this infinite nothing By which it is just as intelligible as it was before Nay which I think is the highest state of all it is that the soul comes to a feeling of her not being and by consequence of the not being of creatures the which is indeed a real truth or else intolerable nonsense as we cannot think it otherwise who know we have cause to thank God we are yet in our Wits and are not possessed with such a Spiritual Frenzy as this Author saith Fryer Bernard one of the disciples of St. Francis had neither was the other free from it who as Baker related in the heat of his interiour affection could usually cry out nothing but V. V. V. Neither can any persons who have any use of their understandings left think such discourses the effect of any thing but the height of Enthusiasm or a Religious Madness I do not think such expressions as those I have already produced can be paralleld by the most frantick Enthusiasts that have been since the beginning of the Family of love Yet these Books are licensed approved nay admired in the Roman Church whereas we have alwayes disowned disproved and condemned any such Writers among us and have used all care to suppress and confute them The plain effect of such Enthusiastick fooleries is to make Religion laughed at by some despised by others and neglected by all who take no other measures of it than from such confounded Writers If once an unintelligible way of practical Religion become the standard of devotion no men of sense and reason will ever set themselves about it but leave it to be understood by mad-men and practised by Fools § 15. But supposing this way were intelligible and practicable which it is not yet what would the effect of it be but the highest Enthusiasm For
disturbances which have been among us upon their account whereas among them the Government of the Church is so ordered as to keep all in peace and Vnity This makes it necessary to examine that admirable Vnity they boast so much of and either they mean by it that there hath been less disturbance in the world before the Reformation or no Schisms among themselves or no differences in the matters of Religion But I shall now prove 1. That there have never been greater disturbances in the World than upon the account of that Authority of the Pope which they look on as the Foundation of their Vnity 2. That there have happened great and scandalous Schisms among themselves on the same account 3. That their differences in Religion both as to matter of Order and Doctrine have been as great and managed with as much animosity as any among us 1. The disturbances in the World upon the account of the Popes Authority I meddle not barely with his usurpations which work is lately and largely done but the effects of them in these Western Churches For which we are to consider what authority that is which the Pope challenges and what disturbances hath been given to the peace of Christendome by it The Authority claimed by the Pope is that of being Vniversal Pastor over the Catholick Church by vertue of which not only spiritual direction in matters of faith but an actual jurisdiction over all the members of it doth belong unto him For otherwise they say the Government of the Church is imperfect and insufficient for its end because Princes may easily overthrow the Unity of the Church by favouring Hereticks if they be not in subjection to the Pope as to their temporal concernments because it may happen that they have a regard to no other but these if it were not therefore in the Popes power to depose Princes and absolve Subjects from their Alleagiance when they oppose the Vnity of the Church his power say they is an insignificant title and cannot reach the end it was designed for Besides they urge that all Princes coming into the Church are to be supposed to submit their Scepters to Christ so as to lose them in case they act contrary to the Catholick Church of which they are made members for whosoever doth not hate Father and Mother c. cannot be my Disciple And what officer is there so fit to take all Escheats and Forfeitures of Power as Christs own Vicar upon Earth But to adde more strength Bellarmin very prettily proves it out of Pasce oves for every Pastor must have a threefold power to defend his flock a power over wolves to keep them from destroying the Sheep a power over the Rams that they do not hurt them and a power over the Sheep to give them convenient food now saith he very subtilly if a Prince of a sheep should turn a Ram or a Wolf must not he have power to drive him away and to keep the people from following him This is then the only current doctrine concerning the Popes Authority in the Court of Rome although some mince the matter more than others do and talk only of an indirect power yet they all mean the same thing and ascribe such power to the Pope whereby he may depose Princes and absolve subjects from the duty they owe to them And how much in request this Doctrine continues at Rome appears by the Counsel given by Michael Lonigo Master of the Palace to Pope Greg. 15. Printed A. D. 1623. about perswading the Duke of Bavaria then newly made Elector to receive a confirmation of his title from the Pope to which end he saith some skilful person ought to be imployed to acquaint him that the power of the Empire was the meer issue of the Church and did spring from it as a Child from the Mother and that it was a great sin for any Christian to call this into Question and consequently the Popes power and authority to determine concerning the State and affairs of the Empire and this he attempts to prove by no fewer than nineteen arguments all of them drawn from the former Usurpations of the Popes and encroachments upon the Empire from whence he concludes that the Electorship could not be lawfully taken away from one and given to another without the Popes consent and authority and that such a disposal of it was in it self null and of no force The same year came forth a Book of Aphorisms concerning the restoring the state of the Church by the decree and approbation of the Colledge of Cardinals collected by the same person and by him presented to the Pope wherein the same power of the Pope is asserted and that it belongs to him to transferr the Electoral dignity from one to another and that it ought to be taken away from the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg for opposing his Authority and that to allow the Emperour authority in these things was to rob the Apostolick See of its due rights By which we may understand what that Authority over the Church is which is challenged by the Pope as supream Pastour in order to the preserving the Unity of it § 2. We now consider what the blessed effects of this pretended power hath been in the Christian World and I doubt not to make it appear that this very thing hath caused more warrs and bloodshed more confusions and disorders more revolts and rebellions in Christendome than all other causes put together have done since the time it was first challenged and this I shall prove from their own Authors and such whose credit is the greatest among them The revolt of Rome and the adjacent parts from the subjection due to the Roman Emperour then resident at Constantinople was wholly caused by the Pope The first Pope saith Onuphrius that ever durst openly resist the Emperour was Constantine 1. who opposed Philippicus in the matter of Images which the Emperour commanded to be pulled down because they were abused to Idolatry and the Pope utterly refused to obey and not only so but set up more in opposition to him in the Pertico of St. Peter and forbad the use of the Emperours name and title in any publick Writings or Coines The same command was not long after renewed by Leo 3. upon which saith Onuphrius Gregory 2. then Pope took away the small remainder of the Roman Empire from him in Italy and Sigonius more expresly that he not only excommunicated the Emperour but absolved all the people of Italy from their Alleagiance and forbad the payment of any Tribute to him whereupon the inhabitants of Rome Campania Ravenna and Pentapolis i.e. the Region about Ancona immediately rebelled and rose up in opposition to their Magistrates whom they destroyed At Ravenna Paulus the Emperours Lieutenant or Exarch was killed at Rome Peter the Governour had his eyes put out in Campania Exhilaratus and his Son Hadrian were both
with one another and although there may be many other sorts of Vnity in the Church yet the essential Vnity of the Church they tell us lyes in conjunction of the members under one Head But what becomes then of the Unity of the Roman Church in the great number of Schisms and some of long continuance among them Were they all members united under one Head when there were sometimes two sometimes three several Heads Bellaâ—mine in his Chronologie confesseth twenty six several Schisms in the Church of Rome but Onuphrius a more diligent searchâ—r into these things reckors up thirty whereof some lasted ten years some twenty one fifty years And it seems very strange to any one that hears so many boasts of Unity in the Church of Rome above others to find more Schisms in that Church than in any Patriarchal Church in the World We should think if the Bishop of Rome had been designed Head of the Church and the fountain of Vnity that it was as necessary that Church should be freed from intestine divisions on that account as to be secured from errours in faith if it had the promise of Infallibility for errours are not more contrary to infallibility than divisions are to Vnity and the same Spirit can as easily prevent Schisms as Heresies But as the errours of that Church are the clearest evidence against the pretence of infalâ—ibility so are the Schisms of it against its being the fountain of Vnity for how can that give it to the whole Church which so notoriously wanted it in it self I shall not need to insist on the more ancient Schisms between Cornelius and Novatianus and their parties between Liberius and Felix between Damasus and Vrsicinus between Bonifacius and Eulalius between Symachus and Laurentius between Bonifacius and Dioscorus between Sylverius and Vigiâ—ius and many others I shall only mention those which were of the longest continuance in that Church and do most apparently discover the divisions of it I begin with that which first brake forth in the time of Formosus who was set up A. D. 821. against Sergius whom the faction of the Marquesse of Tuscany would have made Pope but the popular faction then prevailing Sergius was forced to withdraw and Formosus with continual opposition from the other party enjoyed the Papacy four years and six months not without the blood of many of the chief Citizens of Rome slain by Arnulphus in the quarrel of Formosus After his death Boniface 6. intruded saith Baronius into the Papal See but was after fifteen dayes dispossessed by Stephanus 7. who in a Council called for that purpose nulled all the acts of Formosus deprived all those of their orders who had been ordained by him and made them be Re-ordained and not content with this he caused his body to be taken out of the Grave and placed it in the Popes Chair with the Pontifical habits on where after he had sufficiently reviled him that could not revile again he caused the three Fingers to be cut off with which he used to give Benediction and Orders and the body to be thrown into Tiber. This last part Onuphrius would have to be a fable and Andreas Victorellus from him but Baronius saith they are mistaken who say so for not only Luitprandus who lived in that Age expresly affirms it although he attributes it to Sergius upon whose account the Schism begun but the acts of the Roman Council under Iohn 9. extant in Baronius make it evident and Papirius Massonus cites other ancient Historians for it Upon this nulling the Ordinations of Formosus a great dispute was raised in the Church for many of the Bishops would not submit to re-ordination and particularly Leo Bishop of Nola to whom Auxilius writ his Book in defence of the Ordinations of Formosus a short account whereof is published by Baronius from Papyâ—ius Masso but the whole Book is now set forth from ancient Manuscript by Morinus by which we understand the controversie of that time much better than we could before Two things were chiefly objected against Formosus his Ordinations 1. That against the Canons of the Church he was translated from one See to another being Bishop of Porto before he was made Bishop of Rome 2. That having been degraded by Iohn 8. although restored by his successour Marinus and absolved from his Oath he was not capable of conferring Orders Against the first of these Auxilius shews that translation from one See to another cannot null Ordination from the testimony of Pope Anterus the example of Greg. Nazianzen Perigenes Dositheus Reverentius Palladius Alexander Meletius and many others That the Nicene Canon against translations was interpreted by the Council of Chalcedon so as not to extend to all cases and it was so understood by Pope Leo and Gelasius and however that only nulls the translation and not the ordination Against the second he pleads that supposing it not to be lawful to remove from one Episcopal See to another yet the Ordination may be valid for Formosus was not Consecrated again himself but only reconciled by Marinus that the Popes Gregory and Leo had declared against Re-ordination as much as against Re-baptizing that the Canons of the Apostles had forbidden it that the Ordinations by Acacius were allowed by Anastasius that the Bonosiaci though Hereticks had their Orders allowed them that the Cathari were admitted to the Churches Communion by the Council of Nice only with imposition of hands that though Liberius fell to the Arian Heresie yet his Ordinations afterwards were not nulled neither those of Vigilius although he stood excommunicated by Silverius and added Homicide to it that the nulling these Ordinations was to say in effect that for twenty years together they had been without the Christian Religion in Italy that none but Hereticks could assert these things that if any Popes themselves speak or act against the Catholick faith or Religion they are not to be followed in so doing This is the substance of the first Book of Auxilius which things are more largely insisted upon in the second But by that Book it appears most evidently that the Barbarous usage of the body of Formosus was most true it being expresly mentioned therein and justified by him in the Dialogue that pleads for Re-ordination And now saith Baronius began those most unhoppy times of the Roman Church which exceeded the persecutions of Heathens or Hereticks but he out of his constant good will to civil Authority lays the fault altogether upon the power of the Marquesses of Tuscany who had then too great power in Rome but he strangely admires the providence of God in keeping the Heads of the Church from Heresie all that time Alas for them they did not trouble themselves about any matters of faith at all but were wholly given over to all manner of wickedness as himself confesseth of them when Theodora that Mother of the Church of Rome ruled in chief and her
Vnity they look after all such who hold opinions contrary to their Interest must be proceeded against and condemned but for others let them quarrel and dispute as long as they will they let them alone if they touch not the Popes Authority nor any of the gainful opinions and practices which are allowed among them And supposing their Interest be kept up which the Inquisition is designed for the Court of Rome is as great a Friend to toleration as may be only what others call different perswasions they call School points and what others call divisions they call disputes the case is the same with their Church and others only they have softer names for the differences among themselves and think none bad enough for those who cast off the Popes Authority and plead for a Reformation Here then lyes the profound mystrey of their Vnity that they are all agreed against us though not among themselves and are not we so against them too May not we plead for the Vnity that they have on the same grounds We are all agreed against Popery as much as they are against Protestants only we have some Scholastick disputes among us about indifferent things and the Episcopal Authority as they have we have some zealous Dominicans and busie and factious men such as the Iesuits among them are but setting aside these disputes we are admirably well agreed just as they are in the Roman Church § 15. 2. They say they doe not differ in matters of faith But this is as true as the other for are they agreed in matters of faith who charge one another with heresie as we have already seen that they doe But if they mean that they doe not differ in matters of faith because those only are matters of faith which they are agreed in they were as good say they are agreed in the things they doe not differ about for the parties which differ doe believe the things in difference to be matters of faith and therefore they think they differ from one another in matter of faith But they are not agreed what it is which makes a thing to be a matter of faith and therefore no one can pronounce that their differences are not about matters of faith for what one may think not to be de fide others may believe that it is we see the Popes personal infallibility is become a Catholick doctrine among the Iesuits and declared to be plain heresie by their Adversaries The deliverance of souls from Purgatory by the prayers of the living is generally accounted a matter of faith in the Roman Church but we know those in it who deny it and say it was a novel opinion introduced by Gregory 1. against the consent of Antiquity It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans and Iansenists to attribute to God alone the praise of converting grace and that grace efficacious by it self was the doctrine of Fathers and Councils and the Catholick Church and is it not then a matter of faith in their opinion wherein the Iesuits and they differ from each other To which purpose it was well said by the author of a Book printed at Paris A. D. 1651. containing essayes and reflections on the state of Religion that because of the Controversies between the Iansenists and the Iesuits it might with more reason be affirmed now than in the time of Arrianism it self that the whole Church seems to become heretical For admitting saith he what is most certain that the Church hath decreed Calvinism Pelagianism and Semipelagianism to be heresies and that the Doctors are those who sit in the Chair to be consulted withall upon points of Religion all Catholicks are reduced to a most strange perplexity For if a man shall address himself to those of the Iansenian party they will tell him that those who are termed Molinists are Pelagians or at least Semi-pelagians and on the other side the Molinists will bear him down that their Adversaries are Calvinists or else Novatians Now all the Doctors of the Catholick Church a very few excepted are either of the one or the other party I leave you then to consider to what prodigious streights mens minds are reduced since this is held as a general Maxime that whosoever fails in one point of faith fails in all It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans that all persons Christ only excepted were born in sin and therefore the contenders for the immaculate conception must in their judgment differ in a point of faith from them But if this distinction should be allowed to preserve the unity of their Church why shall it not as well cure the divisions of ours The most considerable in all respects of the dissenters from the Church of England declare that they agree with us in all the articles of doctrine required by our Church will this be enough in their opinion to make us at unity with each other if not let them not plead the same thing for themselves which they will not allow to us I cannot understand that the controversies about Ceremonies considered in themselves among us are of any greater weight than the disputes among the Fryars concerning their habits have been and yet this controversie only about the size of their hoods lasted in one Order almost an Age together and was managed with as great a heat and animosity as ever these have been among us and was with very much adoe laid asleep for a time by the endeavours of 4. Popes successively But if this signifies nothing to unity to say that the matters are not great about which the Controversies are if the disturbances be great which are caused by them that will reflect more sharply on their Church than on ours which hath so many differences which they account not to be about any matters of faith But if these differences in point of doctrine among them prove to be none in matters of faith it would be no difficult task upon the same grounds to shew that they have no reason to quarrel with us for breaking the unity of their Church because then we may differ from them as little in matters of faith as they doe from one another This I need not take upon me to shew at large because I find it already done to my hand by F. Davenport al. Sancta Clara in his paraphrastical exposition of the 39. articles of our Church about half of them he acknowledges to be Catholick as they are without any further explication The first he meets with difficulty in is that about the number of Canonical books point blank against the Council of Trent but he acknowledges that Cajetan and Franciscus Mirandula fully agree with our Church in it who quote Hierom Ruffinus Antoninus and Lyra of the same opinion as they might have done many others but because our Church doth not cast them wholly out of the Canon he dares not say it is guilty of heresie simply and the rather because Waldensis and Driedo
do hold that it is only in the power of the whole Church successively from the Apostles to declare what books are Canonical and what not For the 11. article about justification he saith the Controversie is only about words because we are agreed that God alone is the efficient cause of Justification and that Christ and his passion are the meritorious cause of it and the only question is about the formal cause which our Church doth not attribute to the act of faith as he proves by the book of Homilies but only makes it a condition of our being justified and they believe that by faith we obtain our righteousness by Christ so that he can find no difference between them and us in that point He saith the Controversie about merit may be soon ended according to the doctrine of our Church for they deny as well as we article 1. 3. that any works done before the Grace of Christ and Inspiration of his Spirit can merit any thing and when we say article 12. that good works which follow justification are pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ if by that we mean that they are accepted by Christ in order to a reward by vertue of the promise of God through Christ that is all the sense of merit which he or the school of Scotus contends for For works of supererogation article 14. he saith our Church condemns them upon that ground that men are said to do more by them than of duty they are bounden to do which being generally understood they condemn he saith as well as we because we can doe no good works which upon the account of our natural obligation we are not bound to perform though by particular precept we are not bound to them In the 19 article where our Church saith that the Church of Rome hath erred not only in their living and manner of ceremonies but also in matters of faith he distinguisheth the particular Church of Rome from the Catholick Church which is frequently understood by that name and he saith it is only a matter of faith to believe that the Catholick Church hath not erred and not that the particular Church of Rome hath not In the 20. article our Church declares that the Church ought neither to decree any thing against holy writ so besides the same it ought not to enforce any thing to be believed of necessity to salvation this he interprets of what is neither actually nor potentially in the Scriptures neither in terms nor by consequence and so he thinks it orthodox and not against traditions Article 21. wherein our Church determins expresly against the infalibility of general Councils he understands it only of things that are not necessary to faith or manners which he saith is the common opinion among them The hardest article one would think to bring us off in was the 22. viz. that the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory Pardons worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Reliques and also Invocation of Saints is a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture But we need not despaire as long as one bred up in the Schools of Scotus designes our rescue he confesses it to be a difficult adventure but what will not subtilty and kindness doe together He observes very cunningly that these doctrines are not condemned absolutely and in themselves but only the Romish doctrine about them and therein we are not to consider what the Church of Rome doth teach but what we apprehend they teach or what we judge of their doctrine i. e. that they invocate Saints as they doe God himself that Purgatory destroys the cross of Christ and warms the Popes Kitchin that Pardons are the Popes bills of Exchange whereby he discharges the debts of what sinners he pleases that they give proper divine worship to images and reliques all which he saith are impious doctrines and we doe well to condemn them So that it is not want of faith but want of wit this good man condemns us for which if we attain to any competent measure of whereby to understand their doctrine there is nothing but absolute peace and harmony between us This grand difficulty being thus happily removed all the rest is done with a wet finger for what though our Church Art 24. saith that it is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custome of the primitive Church to have publick prayer in the Church or to Minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understood of the people Yet what can hinder a Scotist from understanding by the Scripture not the doctrine or command of it but the delivery of it viz. that the Scripture was written in a known tongue nay he proves that our Church is for praying in Latin by this Article because that either is a known tongue or ought to be so it being publickly lickly taught every where and if it be not understood he saith it is not per se but per accidens that it is so I suppose he means the Latin Tongue is not to blame that the people do not understand it but they that they learned their lessons no better at School But what is to be said for Women who do not think themselves bound to go to School to learn Latin He answers very plainly that S. Paul never meant them for he speaks of those who were to say Amen at the Prayers but both S. Paul and the Canon Law he tells us forbid women to speak in the Church The case is then clear S. Paul never regarded what language the Women used and it was no great matter whether they understood their Prayers or not But what is to be said to the Council of Trent which pronounces an Anathema to those who say that Prayers are to be said only in a known Tongue This doth not touch our Church at all he thinks because in some Colledges the Prayers are said in Latin but although that be a known tongue there it is no matter as long as the Council of Trent hath put in the word only that clears our Church sufficiently Besides the Council of Trent speaks expresly of the Masse which our Article doth not mention but only publick Prayers and the Council of Trent speaks of those who condemns it as contrary to the institution of Christ but our Church only condemns it as contrary to the institution of the Apostle but all the commands of the Apostles are not the commands of Christ therefore our Church declares nothing against faith in this Article Are not we infinitely obliged to a man that uses so much subtlety to defend our Church from errrour in faith But that which is most considerable is what he cites from Canus that it is no Heresie to condemn a custome or Law of the Church if it be not of something necessary to salvation especially if it be a custome introduced since the Apostles times as most certainly this was For the five Sacraments rejected
by our Church Art 25. he saith they are not absolutely rejected as Sacraments but as Sacraments of the same Nature with Baptism and the Lords Supper which they yield to For Transubstantiation which is utterly denyed by our Church Art 28. he very subtilly interprets it of a carnal presence of Christs Body which he grants to be repugnant to Scripture and to destroy the nature of a Sacrament but they do believe Christs Body to be present after the manner of a Spirit and so our Church doth not condemn theirs As to communion in both kinds asserted by our Church Art 30. he saith it is not condemned by the Council of Trent therein which only Anathematizes those who make it necessary to Salvation which our Church mentions not and however we condemn communion in one kind Canus proves him not to be guilty of Heresie who should say that the Church hath erred therein The 31 Article condemns the Sacrifice of the Masse i.e. saith he independently on the Sacrifice of the Crosse which is propitiatory of it self and the other only by vertue of it The 32. of the lawfulness of Priests Marriage he understands of the Law of God in respect of which it is the most common opinion among them he saith that it is lawful The 34. about Traditions he interprets of those which are not Doctrinal The Book of Homilies approved Art 35. he understands as they do Books approved by their Church not of every sentence contained therein but the substance of the Doctrine and he grants there are many good things contained therein For the 36. of consecration of Bishops and Ministers he proves from Vasquez Conink Arcudius and Innocent 4. that our Church hath all the essentials of Ordination required in Scripture and if the difference of form of words did null our Ordinations it would do those of the Greek Church too The last Article he examins is Art 37. Of the Civil Magistrates power in opposition to the Popes Authority and he grants that the King may be allowed a Supermacy i.e. such as may not be taken away by any one as his Superiour and that by custome a sufficient right accrues to him over all Ecclesiastical causes and that by divine and natural right he hath jurisdiction over all Ecclesiastical persons so far as the publick good is concerned And withall he grants that we yield no spiritual jurisdiction to the King and no more than is contended for by the French and the Parliament of Paris That part which denyes the Popes jurisdiction in England he saith may be understood of the Popes challenging England to be a Fee of the Roman See but if it be otherwise understood he makes use of many Scholastick distinctions of actus signatus exercitus c. the sense of which is that it is in some cases lawful for a temporal Prince to withdraw his obedience from the Pope but leaves it to be discussed whether he had sufficient reason for doing it But there can be no Heresie in matter of fact it remains then according to the sense put upon our Articles by him with the help of his Scholastick subtleties we differ no more from them in points of faith than they do from one another For such kind of distinctions and senses are they forced to use and put upon each others opinions to excuse them from disagreeing in articles of faith and there is no reason that we should not enjoy the benefit of them as well as they so that either they must be guilty of differing in matters of faith or we are not § 16. 3. They plead that their differences are only confined to their Schools and do not disturb the peace of the Church But there is as little truth in this as there is Vnity in their Church as plainly appears by what hath been said already Was the Controversie about the Popes temporal power confined to the Schools did not that make for several Ages as great disturbances in the Church as were ever known in it upon any quarrel of Religion Were the Controversies between the Bishops and the Monks confined to their Schools about the extent of the Episcopal jurisdiction in former times or in the renewing of this Hierarchical Warr as one of the Iansenists calls it in France But these things are at large discovered already I shall only adde one thing more which seems more like a dispute of the Schools between the several Orders among them about the immaculate conception and it will easily appear that whereever that dispute began it did not rest in the Schools if we consider the tumults and disturbances which have been made only on the account of it This Controversie began in the Schools about the beginning of the 14 Century when Scotus set up for a new Sect in opposition to Thomas Aquinas and among other points of Controversie he made choice of this to distinguish his followers by but proposed it himself very timerously as appears by his resolution of it in his Book on the Sentences however his followers boast that in this blessed quarrel he was sent for from Oxford to Paris from Paris to Cologne to overthrow all Adversaries and that he did great wonders every where But however this were there were some not long after him who boldly asserted what he doubtfully proposed of whom Franciscus Mayronis is accounted the first after him Petrus Aureolus Occam and the whole order of Franciscans But the great strength of this opinion lay not in the wit and subtilty of the defenders of it nor in any arguments from Scripture or Antiquity but in that which they called the Piety of it i. e. that it tended to advance the honour of the B. Virgin For after the worship of her came to be so publick and solemn in their Church I do not in the least wonder that they were willing to believe her to be without sin I much rather admire they do not believe all their Canonized Saints to have been so too and I am sure the same reasons will hold for them all But this Opinion by degrees obtaining among the people it grew scandalous for any man to oppose it So Walsingham saith towards the latter end of this Century the Dominicans Preaching the contrary opinion against the command first of the Bishops in France and then of the King and Nobles they were out-lawed by the King and absolutely forbid to go out of their own Convents for fear of seducing the people and not only so but to receive any one more into their Order that so the whole Order might in a little time be extinguished The occasion of this persecution arose from a disturbance which happened in Paris upon this Controversie one Ioh. de Montesono publickly read against the immaculate conception at which so great offence was taken that he was convented before the Faculty of Sorbonne but he declared that he had done nothing but by advice of the chief of his Order
if a man confess his sins and but stumble into one of the 7. Churches it is a hard case if he doth not escape at least for one thousand years I need not reckon up what vast Pardons are to be had there at easie rates since they have been so kind at Rome to publish a Catalogue of them in several books an extract out of which is very lately set forth in our own language Those who have gone about to compute them have found that Indulgences for a million of years are to be had at Rome on no hard terms Bellarmin would seem to deny these pardons for so many years as far as he durst as though they were not delivered by Authentick writers but I desire no more than what Cnuphrius hath transcribed from the Archives of the Churches themselves and we may judge of the rest by what Caesar Rasponi a Canon of the Lateran Church and a present Cardinal hath written lately of that one Church in a book dedicated to Alexander 7. He tells us therefore there is so vast a bank of the Treasure of the Church laid up there that no one need goe any further to get full pardon of all his sins and that it is impossible for any one to reckon up the number of the benefits to be had there by it In the Feast of the Dedication of that Church at the first throw if a man be well confessed before he gets if he be a Roman a pardon of a 1000. years if a Tuscan 2000 but if he comes from beyond sea 3000. years this is well for the first time The like Lottery is again at that Church on Câ—ena Domini But Boniface 9. would never stand indenting with men for number of years but declares if men will come either for devotion or pilgrimage no matter which he shall be clear from all sin and what would a man have more But besides this there are other particular seasons of opening this Treasury and then one may take out as much as they can wish for As when the Image of our Saviour is shewn all that come thither have their sins pardoned infallibly and many other days in the year which the Author very punctually reckons up and are so many that a Canon of that Church may dispose of some thousands of years nay plenary remissions and yet escape Purgatory at last himself But besides what belongs to the Church it self there is a little Oratory or Chapple belonging to it called the Holy of Holies where it is impossible for any man to reckon up the number of Indulgences granted to it These vast numbers of years then are no fiction of Pardon-mongers as Bellarmin is sometimes ready to say unless he will have the Popes called by that name or charge the Holy Churches at Rome with so gross impostures § 6. But suppose it should be a mans fortune never to see Rome as it hath many a good mans must he be content to lye and rot in Purgatory or trust only to the kindness of his Friends no we that live at this distance have some comfort left there are sonne good prayers appointed for us to use which will help us at a need or else the book of the houres of the B. Virgin secundunm usum Sarum is strangely mistaken but herein I am likewise prevented by the authoâ—â— of the preface lately mention'd but my edition being elder than either of those mention'd by him seems to have something peculiar to it or at last omitted by him As when it saith of the Prayer Obsecro te Domina Sancta Maria c. Tho all them that be in the state of Grace that daily say devowteli this prayer before owre blessed Lady of pity she wolle showâ— them her blessed vysage and warn them the day and owre of deth and in there last end the Angells of God shall yield there sowles to heaven and he shall obtayn 5 hundreth yeres and soo many Lenttis of pardon graunted by 5 holy Fathers Popes of Rome That is pretty well for one prayer But this is nothing to what follows to a much shorter prayer than that Our Holy Father Sixtus 4. Pope hath graunted to all them that devoutly say this prayer before the Image of our Lady in the sone eleven thousand years of pardon A prayer said to good purpose I confess I can hardly stoop now to those that have only dayes of pardon promised them yet for the sake of the procurer I will mention one Our Holy Father Pope Sixtus hath graunted at the Instance of the highmost and excellent Princesse Elizabeth late Quéen of Englond and wyfe to our Soveraign liege Lord King Henry the 7th God have mercy on her sweet soull and all Cristen soulls that every day in the morning after 3 tollinges of the Ave â—ell say 3 times the hole salutation of our Lady Ave Maria gratiâ that is to say at 6 the klock in the morning 3 Ave Maria att 12 of the klock at none 4 Ave Maria and att 6 a klock at even for every time so doing is graunted of the spiritual treasour of holy Church 3 hundreth dayes of parden totiens quotiens To which is annexed the pardon of the two Arch-bishops and nine Bishops forty dayes a piece three times a day which begun A. D. 1492. the seventh year of Henry 7. And the summ of the Indulgence and pardon for every Ave Maria is 800 days totiens quotiens But if a man thinks himself well provided already and hath a mind to help his Friends there is nothing like the 15 O. s of St. Brigitt Thys be the 15 O. Os. the which the holy Uirgin S. Brygytta was woente to say dayle before the holy rode in S. Pauls Church at Rome who soe says this a yere he schall deliver 15 soulles out of Purgatory of his next kyndred and convert other 15 sinners to gode lyf and other 15 righteous men of his kynd shall persevere in gode lyf And wat ye desyre of God ye schall have it if yt be to the salvation of your sowle Not long after we find a better endowment with number of years than any we have yet met with To all them that before this Image of pytie devoutly say 5 Pater Noster and 5 Aves a Credo pityously beholding these Armes of Crystys passion are graunted thirty two thousand seven hundred and fifty years of pardon and Sixtus the 4. Pope of Rome hath made the 4 and the 5 prayer and hath doubled his foresaid pardon The Prayer with Boniface 6. his Indulgence of ten thousand years pardon will hardly down with me now much less that niggardly grant of Iohn 22. of a hundred dayes pardon What customers doth he hope to find at such sordid rates Sixtus 4. for my money witness this Indulgence Our holy Father Sixtus 4. graunted to all them that beyn in state of Grace sayeing this prayer following ymmediately
for the possibility of salvation allowed to any in their Church is built upon the supposition that they have all that is fundamentally necessary in order to it though there are many dangerous errours and corruptions in that Church whose communion they live in § 16. The Answers to the first Question being thus vindicated there remains little to be added concerning the second For he tells me that he agrees so far with me that every Christian is bound to choose the communion of the purest Church But which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles And to be even with him I thus far agree with him in the way of proof of a Churches purity viz. by agreement with the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles and that that Church is to be judged purest which shews the greatest evidence of that consent and that every one is bound to enquire which Church hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace the communion of it Being thus far agreed I must now enquire into what motives he offers on behalf of their Church and what method he prescribes for delivering ours For the former he produces a large Catalogue of Catholick Motives as he calls them in the words of Dr. Taylour Liberty of Prophecy Sect. 20. And I do not know a better way of answering them than in the words of the same eminent and learned Person which he uses upon a like occasion to his demonstrating Friend I. S. But now in my Conscience saith the Bishop this was unkindly done that when I had spoken for them what I could and more than I knew they had ever said for themselves and yet to save them harmless from the iron hands of a tyrant and unreasonable power to keep them from being persecuted for their errours and opinions that they should take the arms I had lent them for their defence and throw them at my head But the best of it is though I. S. be unthankful yet the Weapons themselves are but wooden Daggers intended only to represent how the poor men are couzened by themselves and that under fair and fraudulent pretences even pious well meaning men men wise enough in other things may be abused And though what I said was but tinsel and pretence imagery and whipt Cream yet I could not be blamed to use no better than the best their cause could bear yet if that be the best they have to say for themselves their probabilities will be soon out-ballanced by one Scripture-testimony urged by Protestants and thou shalt not Worship any graven Images will out-weigh all the best and fairest imaginations of their Church But then I. S. might if he had pleased have considered that I did not intend to make that harangue to represent that the Roman Religion had probabilities of being true but probabilities that the Religion might be tolerated or might be endured and if I was deceived it was but a well meant errour hereafter they shall speak for themselves only for their comfort this they might have also observed in that Book that there is not half so much excuse for the Papists as there is for the Anabaptists and yet it was but an excuse at the best But since from me saith he they borrow their light Armour which is not Pistol-proof from me if they please they may borrow a remedy to undeceive them and that in the same kind and way of arguing for which he referrs to a letter written by him to a Gentlewoman seduced to the Church of Rome out of which I shall transcribe so much as may over-ballance the probabilities produced elsewhere by him After directions given rather to enquire what her Religion is than what her Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be Heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old c. and shewing the unreasonablness of believing the Roman to be the Catholick Church he descends thus to particulars You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtlety and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your Promises to Men your Duty to your Parents in some cases a Church in which men Pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they Pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to Worship Images with the same Worship with which they Worship God or Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the Holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that Sacred mystery against the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the divine nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her Children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a human Invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Tradition to new pretences from Prayers which ye understood to Prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon Creatures from intire dependance upon inward-acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose Worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens Consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater than that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the Holy Scriptures from whence you sound instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that Fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacrament or Decrees of the Church or the messages of your
obedience to the will of God being agreed to be the condition of mans happiness no other way of Revelation is in it self necessary to that end than such whereby man may know what the will of God is 2. Man being framed a rational Creature capable of reflecting upon himself may antecedently to any external Revelation certainly know the Being of God and his dependence upon him and those things which are naturally pleasing unto him else there could be no such thing as a Law of Nature or any principles of Natural Religion 3. All supernatural and external Revelation must suppose the truth of natural Religion for unless we be antecedently certain that there is a God and that we are capable of knowing him it is impossible to be certain that God hath revealed his will to us by any supernatural means 4. Nothing ought to be admitted for Divine Revelation which overthrows the certainty of those Principles which must be antecedently supposed to all Divine Revelation For that were to overthrow the means whereby we are to Judge concerning the truth of any Divine Revelation 5. There can be no other means imagined whereby we are to judge of the truth of Divine Revelation but a Faculty in us of discerning truth and falshood in matters proposed to our belief which if we do not exercise in Judging the truth of Divine Revelation we must be imposed upon by every thing which pretends to be so 6. The pretence of Infallibility in any person or Society of men must be Judged in the same way that the truth of a Divine Revelation is for that Infallibility being challenged by vertue of a supernatural assistance and for that end to assure men what the will of God is the same means must be used for the trial of that as for any other supernatural way of Gods making known his Will to men 7. It being in the power of God to make choice of several wayes of revealing his will to us we ought not to dispute from the Attributes of God the necessity of one particular way to the Exclusion of all others but we ought to enquire what way God himself hath chosen and whatever he hath done we are sure cannot be repugnant to Infinite Justice Wisdome Goodness and Truth 8. Whatever way is capable of certainly conveying the will of God to us may be made choice of by him for the means of making known his will in order to the happiness of mankind so that no Argument can be sufficient a priori to prove that God cannot choose any particular way to reveal his mind by but such which evidently proves the insufficiency of that means for conveying the Will of God to us 9. There are several wayes conceivable by us how God may make known his Will to us either by immediate voice from Heaven or inward inspiration to every particular person or inspiring some to speak personally to others or assisting them with an infallible spirit in Writing such Books which shall contain the Will of God for the Benefit of distant Persons and future Ages 10. If the Will of God cannot be sufficiently declared to men by Writing it must either be because no Writing can be intelligible enough for that end or that it can never be known to be Written by men infallibly assisted the former is repugnant to common sense for words are equally capable of being understood spoken or written the latter overthrows the possibility of the Scriptures being known to be the Word of God 11. It is agreed among all Christians that although God in the first Ages of the World did reveal his mind to men immediately by a voice or secret inspirations yet afterwards he did communicate his mind to some immediately inspired to Write his Will in Books to be preserved for the benefit of future Ages and particularly that these Books of the New Testament which we now Receive were so Written by the Apostles and Disciples of Jesus Christ. 12. Such Writings having been received by the Christian Church of the first Ages as Divine and Infallible and being delivered down as such to us by an universal consent of all Ages since they ought to be owned by us as the certain rule of faith whereby we are to Judge what the Will of God is in order to our Salvation unless it appear with an evidence equal to that whereby we believe those Books to be the Word of God that they were never intended for that end because of their obscurity or imperfection 13. Although we cannot argue against any particular way of Revelation from the necessary Attributes of God yet such a way as writing being made choice of by him we may justly say that it is repugnant to the nature of the design and the Wisdom and Goodness of God to give infallible assurance to persons in Writing his Will for the benefit of Mankind if those Writings may not be understood by all persons who sincerely endeavour to know the meaning of them in all such things as are necessary for their salvation 14. To suppose the Books so Written to be imperfect i. e. that any things necessary to be believed or practised are not contained in them is either to charge the first Author of them with fraud and not delivering his whole mind or the Writers with insincerity in not setting it down and the whole Christian Church of the first Ages with folly in believing the Fulness and Prefection of the Scriptures in order to Salvation 15. These Writings being owned as containing in them the whole Will of God so plainly revealed that no sober enquirer can miss of what is necessary for salvation there can be no necessity supposed of any infallible society of men either to attest or explain these Writings among Christians any more than there was for some Ages before Christ of such a Body of men among the Iews to attest or explain to them the Writings of Moses or the Prophets 16. There can be no more intolerable usurpation upon the faith of Christians than for any Person or Society of men to pretend to an assistance as infallible in what they propose as was in Christ or his Apostles without giving an equal degree of evidence that they are so assisted as Christ and his Apostles did viz. by miracles as great publick and convincing as theirs were by which I mean such as are wrought by those very persons who challeng this infallibility and with a design for the conviction of those who doe not believe it 17. Nothing can be more absurd than to pretend the necessity of such an infallible commission and assistance to assure us of the truth of these writings and to interpret them and at the same time to prove that commission from those writings from which we are told nothing can be certainly deduced such an assistance not being supposed or to pretend that infallibility in a body of men is not as lyable to doubts and disputes as in those books from