they saw good c. To be brief with you on this point if you speak here of particular Persons in our Church it is utterly false since they are all obliged to believe that to be the Canon of Scripture which is set down in the Articles of our Church and there is not one Man of our Church that is at liberty to believe which he pleases and to reject which he pleases from being Canonical Scripture to him and for Traditions received in the Church no particular Man hath any more power over them than over the number of the Canonical Books But if you speak of our Church it self here which your words without stretching will not bear it is as false of Her since she believes and delivers those Books onely as Canonical which the Primitive Church believed and delivered down to her as such She rejects none as Apocryphal which were not also rejected as such by the Primitive Church as the Famous and most Learned Bishop Cosin hath most incomparably proved it for her in that his excellent Scholastick History of the Canon of Scripture And for Traditions she rejects none but such as have no evidence nor probability of their ever having been of use in the Primitive Church or such as are of no moment in which case I never saw reason why the National Church of England hath not as much Authority herein to judge of these things as the Church of Rome her self who for example sake hath left off giving the Communion to Infants tho' a Tradition of the Catholick Church So that I cannot for my Life see what you would fain tho' most ridiculously deduce from hence that all with us resolved it self into the Judgment of a Private Spirit pag. 3. and must be I suppose you mean the Private Spirit must be tho' your words are far from bearing it the chief or rather onely support of your Protestant Faith c. Since it is so palpably false as I have just now shewn nothing as to matters of Faith Discipline or Church Communion among us being either left to or guided by or depending upon any Man how great or how learned soever his private Spirit and so ridiculous that I could not forgive it any Man that had not abstracted himself from his reason but to doe you right you have almost a mind to come off it with your Methought and I am content without being angry that it should pass for your thought the abstracted-no-Religion Man's You go on to shew that you could not persuade your self that Scripture alone could be the Judge of Controversies pag. 3. and resolve your doubts when the Private Spirit was made the Judge of Scripture c. Let the private Spirit be excluded will you admit it then will you allow the Representative Church of England to interpret in new Emergencies which fell not within the care of Antiquity and the Four General Councils If you admit this there need be no dispute since long before your doubts the Church of England hath by publick Authority interpreted the Scripture in all matters of Faith and Discipline and tied up all her Members hath in all the points of Controversie betwixt us and Rome determined that the sense of the Scripture is directly against them and for us If you will not admit it I should be glad to see one reason against it that would not as fully fly in the face of the Church of Rome As to the Mischief upon this Principle of the Private Spirit pag. 3 4. the Wars and Murders c. You ought to have remembred that that Principle was not set up by but against the Church of England and that it was not the Church but the direct and sworn Enemies thereof that committed all those outrages you cannot be ignorant that it was She only that suffered during that Rebellion and Schism and therefore it is most unjust in you to insinuate as if She was cause of all that distraction whereas nothing is more apparent than the contrary to it And as to your Tanrum Religio c. I challenge you to shew any one Principle of the Church of England that encourages or does but glance towards Rebellion Sedition or disturbance of either Church or State This I 'll promise you for every one I 'll shew you Ten of your new Church I 'll shew you Councils for it your own most famous of all the European Councils the Fourth of Lateran leading the Van. Your Popes deposing Princes pag. 84. giving away their Kingdoms as they have done ours more than once setting up in Rebellion Son against Father I 'll shew you the Rebellious Holy League in France one King most barbarously Murdered by it a Pope Sixtus Quintus in a set Speech commending the Paricide the Sorbone it self making Rebellious Decrees against the Two Harries of France both Massacred by their Catholick as they call themselves Subjects but enough of this wherein you know or at least should that we have infinitely the advantage of your new Church as to Principles of Loyalty The result it seems of your Inquiry and search among us was that you could not comply with common reason if you did not disclaim the Judgment of your own or any Man 's private Spirit c. pag. 4. I have upon this but one Question to ask you and that is how you came to be a Roman Catholick if you disclaimed your own reason or private Spirit pray who chose your guide or Church for you if you disclaimed every ones else pray tell us how any Body else could doe it for you But notwithstanding this your disclaiming we find you busie enough up and down the Book acting as if you never had done any such thing discovering judging complying contemplating searching and Forty such expressions which used to denote the exercise of a Man's private Judgment and Reason CHAP. V. His Method farther exposed and the ridiculous Fruits of it THE Fruit of all your search hitherto hath been onely to find pag. 4. or at least to mistrust the ground you stood upon somewhat unsure c. What ground it was you then stood upon I cannot guess since before this you had abstracted your self from Religion and supposed your self as of no Religion so most certainly of no Church But all this is assuredly but a figure to bring in the Rock the Rock you think you were got upon when once a Romanist If I might have had a word with you before you had mounted your Rock for now I am afraid there is no speaking with you I would onely have been informed by you whether there is but one Rock and whether I must give (a) Orig. Hom. 1. in Matth. Origen the lie who tells me that all the Apostles were Rocks as well as Peter and what I must say to (b) Prescript c. 32. 36. Edit Franck. 1597. Tertullian and others that tell me other Apostles planted Churches as well as Peter
them singly as for both together his most severe imposition of both Joh. 6.53 we can shew you herein the Obedience of the Catholick Church for above a thousand years who were so humble and so respectfull also as not to think themselves either wiser than our Saviour or above his express commands herein Afterwards indeed one part of the Catholick Church grew more knowing and the Council of Constance maugre our Saviour's express command to be seen in the Gospels and very particularly in St. Paul denied one half of the Communion 1 Cor. 11.24 25. the Cup to the Laity and so that Church continues ever since to do Among those several Arguments or Reasons mustered up by Gerson at the Command and for the Defence of this bold Council I do not remember one that is not either ridiculous in it self or highly reflecting upon our blessed and most wise Saviour's prudence or foresight But to pass by this and your Argument from the 6th of S. John which I shall remember when I come to that point in your Book methinks your assuring your self that if your former Faith was not right in this the Eucharist it was wrong in all controverted Particulars c. is none of the clearest Inductions and would have appeared something too bold had you not helped it out a little with what I suppose you have heard some of your new Church say that that Church hath the same Authorities and Traditions for them as for this c. which I think to be one of the greatest truths in your Book and I do assure you that I am perfectly of the same opinion that the Church of Rome hath the same neither better nor worse Authorities and Traditions for all the Points controverted betwixt the Church of England and her that she hath for Transubstantiation which I question not to shew when I come to that point to be either very bad or none at all Whether you have wrought in this your search according to the directions of the Church of England will be better seen when we come to your Proofs themselves I cannot pass the Canon of our Church you have quoted here without making two short Remarks from it The first of which is Imprimis vero videbunt ne quid unquam doceant pro Concione quod à populo religiose teneri credi velint nisi quod consentaneum sit Doctrinae veteris aut Novi Testamenti quodque ex illâ ipsâ Doctrinâ Catholici Patres Veteres Episcopi collegerint c. Liber Canon Disciplinae Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1571. Titulo Concionatores How little our Church is a favourer or encourager of the Private Spirit you talk so often about or of private Interpretations when she doth not allow the Guides of the Parochial Churches themselves to teach any thing for Faith in their Sermons which is not agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and the Interpretations of Catholick Antiquity 2. That it is a most false as well as a most ridiculous Assertion of your new Brethren of the Church of Rome who say our Church slights and rejects the Fathers because they are all against her and that she owns they are all against her for a clear Contradiction to which I would but desire of any Romanist to reade this short Canon of a Synod of ours in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth seriously over and to consider it and I do not question if he would but speak plainly herein as every ingenuous man ought that he would own such Assertours to be guilty of a downright Calumny For your Conditional Thanks that you seem willing to bestow on the Church of England for her Directions she can have no reason to expect any from you since I am pretty well assured that you have not observed her Directions and therefore can owe her none on that account and for your Conditional Prayers for the Teachers of her Communion c. I can assure you that they are by her Injunctions and without any conditions not behind-hand with you in such civilities since thrice a week at least they are commanded in the Litany to put up constantly a Petition for you and such as you Galatinus and his Rabbins I shall refer to their place in your Book to which I shall now pass finding nothing farther in your Preface that may not be better considered in the Answers to the Particulars of your Book CHAP. I. The Method of the Answer and a Consideration of Mr. Sclater's Reasons of doubting in our Communion BEfore I undertake the Particulars of your Book I cannot refrain the making a complaint to you that you have not put your writing into a Method becoming a Scholar but have managed your reasons so confusedly and passed so abruptly from one head to another that it is sometimes difficult to know which of your points you are then about Method and clearness and a fair transition from one part of a Discourse to another were never counted trifles nor ever thought unworthy the care of any one Writer that did desire either to instruct or to convince his Readers That I may avoid therefore my self what I am forc'd to rereprehend in another I shall in this my Expostulation confine my self to and direct my self by these Rules 1. To consider the Reasons of your doubting during your continuance in our Communion whether you were in the right way and of a true Church 2. The Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts 3. The Reason or Reasons that convinced you so far as to leave our Communion and to espouse that of the Church of Rome I do not believe I can wrong your Book in taking such a Method or disoblige you or any one else that may read this As to the first head then the Reasons of your doubting one might with reason have expected that you would a little more have enlarged your self in a thing the right managing of which was of so infinite concern or at the least that you would have afforded the World tho' but one Reason that might have given satisfaction That which you have put down I mean the Text from S. Paul Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall I am sure cannot since that Text may as well serve against the approaching Easter as it did against the last and you may as well use it now as you did then and should a giddy mind possess you and hurry you next to Socinianism then to the Anabaptists and herd you at last among the Quakers no body could refuse you your Motto and Let him that thinketh he standeth c. would serve you in as much stead for any of them as it did now Without any satisfaction at all therefore about the reasons of your doubt which I wish we had had faithfully set down that so the World might not take that leave it does now of judging what it pleases concerning the true reasons of your
leaving us I must follow you to that wherein you are more copious the Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts which you forgot to set down here CHAP. II. His Account of Education and Interest examined and Refuted BEfore you enter on your Method you tell us you had two very great things to conflict with which were like to prove great obstacles in this your inquiry after truth Education and Interest pag. 1. Through Education and Confidence in the Teachers you had been inured to you complain you had almost been hardened against the lissening to any thing contrary to those Precepts and Doctrines they had rooted in you c. To hear an old Man complain of Education cannot but be a little strange especially from one who hath been a Teacher himself as he disdainfully I must believe calls our Clergy perchance betwixt Thirty and Forty Years if Twenty nay Ten far too much sure for such a complaint and in a Church too which permits and encourages her Clergy in the perusing canvasing and examining all Books of Controversie betwixt her self and the Church of Rome and which is more obliges them to a perusal and diligent examination of the Primitive Fathers by that very Canon you your self quoted in your Preface which I have put down also pag. 2. 1. But this is the common voice of the Converts young or old and therefore whether to purpose or no you must for company use it tho' it be really ridiculous from one in your circumstances as I think I have made plain enough And truly the complaint would far the handsomer become you now when you are of a Church that teaches her Members the pretty knack of captivating their understanding stopping their ears and shutting their eyes against any thing that might convince them of the Errour they are in I must confess that your Church is not singular herein the Turks practise it as strictly as you that they may secure their Members in their excellent and most safe as they doubtless think it Communion and Religion of Mahomet But suppose Education might be a Prejudice and would give a man a great deal of trouble to rid himself of the Prepossessions it commonly instills into green heads yours could not give you any since Alexander like you cut the Knot that might have given you great trouble to unloose by abstracting your self when you entered on your Method from your self and Religion too which doubtless is both a quick and a sure way of ridding a mans self of the Prejudices from any Religion pag. 2. by abstracting himself from Religion and looking on himself as a Man of no Religion I cannot but applaud your Method of getting shut of the Prejudices of Education and cannot but admire it as the most clever sure short unerring way that any man could take to get rid of Education which I will now with you take leave of and pass on to Interest and see how you served it And here again you are as concise with Interest as you were before with Education if a man may credit you When I considered say you Solomon's Advice pag. 2. buy the Truth and sell it not I was easily persuaded to look upon Interest as a thing worth nothing c. And did you serve it so why then truly to give you your due you are an extraordinary Person among the Converts one to whom an Eye to worldly Interest cannot fairly be objected and I suppose you are very willing and desirous too that the World should have such an Opinion of you that you have fairly quitted all purely for Conscience sake that you had two Livings indeed but since you are convinced that you ought not to be any longer a Communicant with much less a Minister of the Church of England you have sacrificed them both to the Interest of your Immortal Soul that tho' as the World now goes it is the sure and only way to Preferments in Church or State to continue a Member at least outwardly of the Church of England so called yet you for your part have and do count all this worldly Interest as a thing worth nothing and are resolved to turn your back to it so that you may but provide for the Salvation of your Soul. This truly is the Picture of a very excellent Christian the only question to be asked now is whether it is Mr. Sclater's of Putney I am sorry that I must acquaint the World notwithstanding your speaking so contemptibly of Interest that really it is no more yours than the man 's in the Moon for to be more serious with you with what face could you write this when almost all the Kingdom knows that you hold both your Livings still tho' you disown your being so much as a Member of the Church of England and how briskly you hectored and quarrelled the Church of Worcester when they only desired to fill the Cure of Putney with a Minister of the Church of England which you denyed any longer to own your self to be A great many I am sure think you did very ill to hold those Livings in your present Condition and I do assure you it is infinitely worse to do it and yet by writing to insinuate to the World that you have not but have accounted all worldly Interest the Profits of two Livings may be so named I hope as a thing worth nothing You have not lost or delivered up any worldly concern that I can hear of on this account you stand I believe in as much probability as ever you did of getting more if this be the way of slighting and undervaluing Interest I do assure you that all the Covetous the Extortioners and the worldly Hypocrites do it as much as you CHAP. III. His Method shewn to be Vnreasonable LEaving then this false as well as disingenuous account of your setting aside and ridding your self of Interest I must begin the Examination of your Method of resolving your self in your Doubts which indeed is surprizing from a Minister and became Des Cartes as to matters of Philosophy a little better than it can do you or any one else in Matters of Religion Here say you as I had abstracted my self from my self and Religion too pag. 2. as a man of no Religion but contemplating all I must lay all before me and look studiously upon them c. If you mean by this account of your Method that you really put your self into an abstracted state and were really as of no Religion so of no Church at all during this your search for a Communion wherein you might be afterwards safe I must tell you that as your Method was most extravagant so it was of too short a duration for your looking studiously contemplating and comparing the two Communions of England and Rome together since it is as certain that you were at Mass last Easter Day 1686 as that you did give the Communion at Putney Church on Palm
since in the several Churches which they planted the Apostles ordained them Bishops delivering to them k Idem Ibidem suum ipsorum locum Magisterii their own place and power of Jurisdiction which certainly was for Discipline If they of your Party can invent any other business for their going thither I do not question but that any of our Writers will be able to refell it as soon as mentioned By this time you have taken leave of St. Peter and are got to that which you will begin again two pages hence to prove the Primacy did not dye with Peter for Method truly I cannot but admire you but must however take your Arguments as they come Well then you say of St. Clemens that under him a great dissention arising among the Corinthians pag. 11. He wrote powerfull Letters I wish you had told us how many Eusebius that had almost as good opportunities as you heard but of one and we commonly think it was but one that he wrote on this account to them compelling them to Peace repairing their Faith and declaring what Tradition they had lately received from the Apostles c. This Testimony to give it its due if it can but pass Muster will do your business this compelling looks as if a Generalissimo had to do about it and this repairing their Faith shews as clear as the Sun that the Bishops of Rome had the sole keeping of the Apostolical Faith and Tradition that so if any Church had lost it they might know whither to go to have it repaired a much nobler Province than that of conserving the ancient Decrees of General Councils But is all this certainly true why did you not then give us the passages where St. Clemens is so brisk upon the Corinthians no Sir if you had they must have been of your own making for I am pretty certain there is no such behaviour in that letter but the direct contrary I have particularly perused it upon this very occasion and can meet with nothing but suasory Arguments there such as might have become any other Bishop as well as him and therefore I must take the freedom to tell you that I do not believe you have read this Epistle over and that it was those you transcribed that imposed upon you as you have done upon your Reader and the same opinion I must have of your next Testimony from Tertullian for could any but one that is a stranger to that particular Book as well as to the rest of his Writings as I believe I shall find you quote him calling the Bishop of Rome Pontifex Maximus Bishop of Bishops bonus Pastor and benedictus Papa when the Bishop of Rome is not once mentioned in this Tract but granting him to be aimed at there is it not as plain that all these Titles are given purely in derision and therefore prove nothing to your purpose by Tertullian now a Heretick De Pudicitiâ and in this Tract ridiculing the discipline of the Catholick Church You might with as good a face have cited St. Cyprian and the African Bishops in Council with him calling the Bishop of Rome Bishop of Bishops for him I verily believe they meant there tho' they did not name him but that there was such a sting in the tail of these Bishops Preface to their Council as would have spoiled all your designs and have blown away all your groundless talk about a Supremacy for after they had resolved to give their own opinions concerning what they were met about without judging others or denying to communicate with those that might be of a different Judgment and had said that none of them made himself Bishop of Bishops or attempted to fright any of their Brother-Bishops into an Obedience or Submission to their Opinion by which expressions they more than seem to wipe the Bishop of Rome they give the reason of this their temper and moderation because every Bishop had his own Free-will Quando habeat omnis Episcopus pro licentiâ libertatis potestatis suae arbitrium proprium tamque judicari ab alio non possit quam nec ipse potest judicare Sed expectemus universi Judicium Domini nostri Jesu Christi qui unus solus habet potestatem praeponendi nos in Ecclesiae suae gubernatione de actu nostro judicandi Concil Carthag Episcoporum 87. A. D. 256. apud Cyprianum p. 229. Edit Oxon. and could no more be judged by another the Bishop of Rome himself not excepted than judge another Bishop and upon this conclude for themselves that they must all expect the Judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ who alone had the power as of making them Bishops for the Government of his Church so of calling them to an account for their discharge of the care and employment he had placed them in There is no one that hath read St. Cyprian and considered him that will not grant I might easily bring twenty places as evident as this for the Equality and Independency of Bishops But I must remember my task is to answer yours not to write a Book on this subject pag. 12. However this I could not omit thereby to obviate your quotation from him as if he should say the Church of Rome is the Mother and Root of the Catholick Church l Cypriani Epistola 45 Cornelio Edit Oxon Pamel 42. whereas his advice as he tells Cornelius here to those persons was upon his having communicated to them the Legality of Cornelius his Ordination about which there had been so much dissention to keep to Vnity the Mother and Root of the Catholick Church and therefore to communicate with Cornelius who was a Catholick Bishop and not with the Schismaticks who did not keep to the Vnity of the Church for the persuading of whom to such Unity he had sent among them Caldonius and Fortunatus A man would guess from your saying that Cyprian goes on and advises the Bishops of Numidia c. that this Epistle had been writ to them but this is but another touch of your skill and reading the Authours you quote But now you are returned to St. Peter again pag. 12. whom Eusebius you say calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Prince or Prolocutor c. which are betwixt you and me two very different things that he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for his virtue or zeal's sake was their Prolocutor I easily grant but this does not prove him their Prince or Supreme and you ought to remember that honourary Titles or Compellations are not to be rigidly taken or stretched too far As to your large Title and Testimony from the Epistle of Saint Athanasius to Marcus Bishop of Rome where again you have lest St. Peter upon which I suppose and that out of St. Bernard you ground your former Assertion that the Bishops of Rome are the Conservers of the ancient Decrees of General Councils pag. 12. I will be brief and tell you that
confuted YOU are next resolved to have a little fling at the Church of England about her Orders which you say pag. 19. they of that Church very much endeavour to prove and fain would have confest to be received from undoubted Bishops of the Church of Rome But here your heart failed you and this is all you have to say against our Orders which is nothing at all since we are much abler and as ready to prove the Legitimacy of our Orders as you can those of your Pope himself this is to bark when you dare not come near to fasten but if you have a mind to shew your parts upon this subject do but undertake and answer Arch-Bishop Bramhals Confutation of the Nags-head Ordination c. and I 'll do as I hear you have renounce my Orders But Alas Sir I might as well put you upon carrying Westminster Abby to Putney as upon the Answering that Vnanswerable Book After the civil hint that the Church of England hath no true Orders you are for making her amends out of Reverence to her by proving that she is a very Nonsensical foolish Church which you attempt by two small you have a kindness still for her or else we might have had four perhaps ten great Observations Your first is That this reduces the Catholick Church into a narrow corner of the World Toto divisos orbe Britannos 1 Obs pag. 19. and as small a handfull in that narrow Corner c. But pray Mr. Sclater how are we got hither What is this This that reduces the Catholick Church c. Hath the Church of England denied the foreign Reformed Churches to be true Churches Pray shew us where But suppose she had this will not prove that the Catholick Church is reduced into this narrow Corner of the World except you shew that she hath also denied the Church of Rome and those Churches that submit to her to be true Churches Nor this neither will not confirm your Observation supposing the Church of England had rejected both the foreign Reformed and Vnreformed Churches out of the Catholick Church since you have surely heard of such a Church as the Large Greek Church under the Four Patriarchs of the Russian Church of the vast Aethiopian Church of the Armenian and of the Nestorians to omit others Have you or can you prove that the Church of England hath excluded all these also from being Parts or Members of the Catholick Church If you cannot how doth she confine the Catholick Church here or what contradiction is she guilty of that abhors the thought of such a thing as you would fasten upon her I cannot refrain shewing a just resentment here and therefore must tell you that this your Observation is the most disingenuous and the most foolish that I ever met with in my Life and that I could never have suspected that any Man that had common sense and pretended to Conscience could have been guilty of so foul a thing had I not met with it in this Book And just such stuff as this is the Remark in this Observation upon our Church that she is pleased in order to avoid the Word Catholick to call it an Vniversal Church c. Who would expect that a Man that hath been a Minister in our Church these Thirty Years that hath used our Service perchance a Thousand times should make such a strange Remark hath our Church as you say she hath in order to avoid the Word Catholick struck it out of that Translation of the Apostles Creed which she appoints in her Liturgy Hath she struck it out and put in Vniversal in the Four places it used to occur in in the Creed of St. Athanasius Is it gone out of the Nicene Creed she appoints Pray get some Body to look those Three Creeds for you A Man would believe you had not seen a common-prayer-Common-Prayer-Book these Thirty Years or pass a much severer Sentence upon you Doth not the Church of England command its Daily Vse in the General Collect which we daily put up for the good Estate of the Catholick Church And further she is so far from altering or endeavouring to avoid as you most falsly would observe she doth the Word Catholick See Bishop Sparrows Collection of Canons c. that whereas in the Injunctions of King Edward the Sixth 1547. the Form of bidding the Common-Prayers before Sermon begun thus You shall Pray for the whole Congregation of Christ's Church and c. in those of Queen Elizabeth 1559 and in the 55th of the Canons Ecclesiastical of the Synod under King James the First 1604. the Word Catholick is put in and every Minister is commanded to begin his bidding of Prayer in these very words Ye shall Pray for Christs Holy Catholick Church c. Nay you your self used the term Catholick while you continued and as a Member of our Church on last Palm-Sunday at Putney Church or else you broke our Church Laws So that I cannot now avoid the asking you your self what you now think of this your Remark and whether you had not saved your self a disparagement had you had the good fortune not to have put it down You have a Second Remark much akin to the First in which you profess you can no more tell how she can be the Catholick Church than she is able to find her self in the innumerable huddle of ten times Ten more Dissenters Dissemblers and Indifferents pag. 19. than her number is able to make c. How you come to know the number of those that hold Communion with the Church of England to be so very small is matter of wonder to me but if I should say that your Calculation is most intolerably false I am sure you cannot disprove me since I am certain I have truth and the common Judgment of all unprejudiced Men on my side that Calculating the numbers of the several Parishes thro' England there are one with another Ten I may I believe safely say Twenty times more that hold Communion with the Church of England than dissent from it As for Dissemblers and Indifferents how you come to know Mens Hearts so well is owing more to your new than old Religion which would have taught you more Prudence about such things After you have come off so wretchedly with your first Observation no Body will expect wonders from your second which is 2 Obs pag. 20. That you should have had the better Opinion of this handfull as you ridiculously call the Church of England if their Faith had been conformable to the Faith of those Bishops from whom their Bishops had their Mission c. That our Bishops have their Mission from Rome is what we utterly deny that they were some of 'em in the beginning of the most necessary Reformation ordained by those that held with the Church of Rome in her corrupt Faith and Practices is what we do not deny This however we say cannot prejudice our Reformation since
if there were Errours fit to be thrown out of our Church you your self I am sure your Learned Men will grant that no Ordination can prejudice or hinder such a Rejection of Errours That there were such Errours crept in which ought to be cast out and were at our Reformation is what our Church-Men a Hundred times over have invincibly proved As to the Rule you bring from St. Ambrose that they enjoy not the Inheritance of Peter pag. 20. who receive not the Faith of Peter we are very ready to join issue with you or any of your Church upon it and I question not before you and I part on this subject to ruine the Papal and Roman Succession by your own Rule to wit by proving that they have receded from the Faith of Peter and the whole Primitive Church We readily own that a true and Apostolical Mission pag. 20. Commission and Ordination are considerable particulars and are as ready any time to assert that our Church hath them and to prove it against you at any time if you have a mind to undertake this point against her CHAP. XVI The Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Eucharist put down Mr. Scl. 's Reasons from Scripture for Transubstantiation answered HAving traced you hitherto and found all your Attempts vain and your Reasons to no purpose which you took so much pains to scrape together to have proved that our Saviour Christ left his Catholick Church in a Monarchical State under a Particular Vicegerent and that that Vicegerent was the Bishop of Rome and his Church the Catholick Church And having shewn all your Attacks against and Remarks upon the Church of England to be very vain extremely abusive and extravagantly ridiculous I have now onely your last your great Reason to examine wherein you make an effort to prove that her Faith concerning the Eucharist is contrary to that of the Catholick Church If you could have proved this I must confess your forsaking our Communion would have been much more reasonable and therefore I question not but that as you have mustered up abundance of Authorities so you have done all you can to make them speak and declare against us but to how little purpose you have made all this noise and ado about this point also is what I shall quickly see Before I enter on your particular proofs I have a fresh complaint to make that you have not used herein that Ingenuity that would have become a Scholar one might very rationally have expected that as your Intentions were to prove against the Church of England that her Faith was as to the Eucharist false and corrupt so you would have set down what that her Faith is This would have looked like fair and ingenuous dealing first to have put down her Faith about the Eucharist and then to have shewn how contrary it was to Scripture and to the unanimous Consent of Antiquity If you reply to this my Complaint that her Faith is so well known that you needed not put it down together but that you have occasionally done it up and down these Authorities I must tell you that by the account you give of it occasionally one would be persuaded that it is far from being so well known I am sure that slender account or rather hints that you so often intersperse about it are utterly false and very foolish so that if any one should take an account of our Churches Faith from you and whom can they better take it from than one that was so lately a Minister among us they must believe that we hold the Eucharist to be mere figures mere representations and bare signs for that is the most you allow us to make of it that I can meet with in your Book all which how far it is from Truth I shall quickly shew you Well then since you had not the Ingenuity to put down an Account of the Church of England's Faith about the Eucharist I must that so I may the better examine the Proofs you bring and any one may compare the Authorities you quote and our Faith together and thereby more impartially judge and more readily discover whether Antiquity fairly laid down speak for or against us Concerning this Sacrament the Church of England in her 28th Article of Religion delivers her Opinion thus The Supper of the Lord is not onely a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death Insomuch that to such as rightly worthily and with Faith receive the same the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Bloud of Christ After which having declared her self against Transubstantiation as repugnant to plain Scripture and to the nature of a Sacrament and against any Corporal Presence of Christ's Natural Flesh and Bloud in the Declaration about kneeling at the end of our Communion-Service in our Liturgy she goes on in this Article to declare that The Body of Christ is given taken and eaten in the Supper onely after an heavenly and spiritual manner and that the Mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith which last expressions exclude the wicked from partaking of Christ's Body and allow them barely the Sign or outward part of the Eucharist In the Publick Catechism in the Liturgy having taught her Catechumens that there are two things in each of the Sacraments the outward Sign and the inward spiritual Grace she teaches them to answer that the outward part of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is Bread and Wine and that the inward part or thing signified is the Body and Bloud of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the Faithfull in the Lord's Supper These passages are sufficient to shew that our Church holds a real but not carnal a Spiritual and Heavenly but not Corporal Participation of Christ's Body and Bloud which tho' locally and naturally in Heaven is yet after a Mystical and Supernatural way communicated to the Faithfull not by the mouth of the Body but by that of Faith. Thus much for her Sentiment concerning this Sacrament pag. 20. now I must try your Reasons against it You tell us that you had been a long time greatly concerned for the Interpretation of but five small words of our Saviour c. The result of your concern I suppose was that those five words I doubt we shall find more than five or double five concerned in this business are to be taken in a literal sense and that which you offer for proof of it is this First Because this Sacrament was his last Will and Testament which ought not to be worded obscurely or doubtfully to prevent quarrels and divisions Secondly Because this Will is repeated by so many of his Apostles without the least variation or caution against the
him say Let us take the Body and Blood of Christ whereas he hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and faith let us take to wit the consecrated Elements AS the Body and Blood of Christ which is a trick you played St. Justin Martyr as well as Cyril and then you from Grodecius translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by species a word unknown to the Primitive Christians in the sense you Transubstantiatours use it in witness b Non valebit Christi sermo ut Species mutet Elementorum p. 48. ex Arubrosio your own Quotations out of St. Ambrose when as any one that knows but a little Greek could tell you it means a Figure But to rescue Cyril clearly out of your hands had you but turned one leaf backward you might have read that which would if you had any ingenuity in you have hindred your bringing Cyril on the stage for a favourer or teacher of Transubstantiation there in his Mystigogical Catechism about Chrism having spoken of the use and vast benefit of it he thus addresses his Auditors but take heed that thou do not think that Chrism to be bare Oyl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyr. catechism Mystag 3. p. 235 Edit Paris 1640. for as the Encharistical Bread after the Invocation and illapse of the Holy Spirit is no longer ordinary Bread but the Body of Christ even so this holy Oyl is no longer bare or as one may say common Oyl after the Invocation of the Holy Spirit but Charisma Christi the Gift or Grace of Christ and a little after he sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem â—odem loco the Body is anointed with the Oyl that is seen by us but the Soul is sanctified by the Holy and Quickening Spirit Here we meet with as high and as strange Expressions about the Chrism as in the next Cathechism about the Eucharistical Bread and Wine as there the Bread upon Consecration is said to be no longer common Bread just so it is said here about the Chrism that it is not common Oyl after Consecration as he talks there of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which you would have us to believe is no more than the bare appearance of Bread so here of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which upon the same reason must be onely the appearance of Oyl without any Substance In a word if St. Cyril proves a Transubstantiation of the Bread and Wine there he as certainly proves a Transubstantiation of the Chrism-Oyl here if you say as all confess that he doth not prove this of the Oyl I must say upon equal grounds that he doth no more prove the other of the Bread and Wine so that St. Cyril is not for your purpose of proving Transubstantiation But before I pass to your next Author I have a question to ask you and that is why you put down the Text it self of Cyril here whereas your English if it be your own is word for word translated from Grodecius his Latin Translation of St. Cyril I appeal to your own Conscience whether what I say is not true but since you may be too peevish to tell me I will give an instance or two besides those already observed where you have both equally added to the Text of St. Cyril or grosly mistaken it St. Cyril sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which two last words you have altered into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this place you verbatim from c Aquam aliquando mutavit in vinum quod est sanguini propinquum in Cana Galilaeae sola voluntate Grodec Lat. Inter. Grodecius translate thus he sometimes changed Water into Wine which is neer to blood in Cana of Galilee by his onely Will whereas according to Grodecius his Greek there is not a Syllable of such an Expression as which is neer to blood and according to yours not a Syllable for by his onely Will and yet you two could nick it so exactly But that which is the pleasantest of all is that you not onely transcribe a Blunder of his but make it ten times worse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyril ex Luc. 5.34 Filiis Sponsi Grodecil Interpr Latina To the Sons of his Spouse Sclaters Engl. Translat Cyril in this Passage speaks of the Children of the Bride-chamber Grodecius hath made them the Children of the Bridegroom and you have made them the Children of the Bride when you call them the Sons of his Spouse by which you mean our Saviour's Spouse which I am sure is his Bride the Church This is translating with a witness and this it is to make a Man's self a slave to another Man's Translation which is guilty of such Blunders and Errours and yet by putting your Margin full of Greek to make the World believe you had been at the Fountain-head your self I must confess it is the first time I ever heard of a He-Bride or could have suspected that a Man that hath so much Greek and Hebrew in his head would have translated hic Sponsus our Saviour his Spouse I haue been so large upon these two Fathers St. Gregory Nyssen and St. Cyril not onely because they are always reckoned the chiefest Authors for Transubstantiation but because I might thereby very much shorten the Answers I am to make to your following Authorities which I shall consider if they speak any thing new if not refer to some of my Answers already made CHAP. XXIII Those from Epiphanius St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom answered YOur Testimony out of Epiphanius proves nothing more than your Infirmity in translating P. 42. for he that believeth not that he is true you have ridiculously made it who believeth it not to be his very true Body But such dealing is not strange to me to find in you this Talent runs almost through your whole book You are very copious in the next place from St. Ambrose P. 42. your first Testimony from him proves nothing against the Church of England nor your second since in our Liturgy we use in the distributing the Consecrated Bread the same Expressions used then the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ and our People are taught to say Amen P. 43. Nor your third fourth and those which follow wherein this Father uses so much of Allegory and therefore is not to be confined to a literal Sense P. 44 45 46 c. Your last from him is your best one which however proves no more than what we never deny that the Nature of the Elements are changed as to their Virtue and Quality but as to a change of their very substance we do deny it upon reasons from Scripture and purer Antiquity nor doth this Father attempt the Proof of any such a Change. He proves the contrary p. 43. when in your first Testimony from him he speaks of the Elements Continuing What they were that is as to their Substance or Essence and yet being changed into another thing Quanto magis Operatorius est