the substance and nature of Bread and Wine The Schoolmen confess Transubstantiation is not Ancient And two of the most famous of them plainly deny it The Administring the Sacrament in One kind is no older than the Council of Constance as was noted before the practice of the whole Church and of Rome it self being otherwise till then Finally many things were never decreed and imposed as necessary to be believed till the late Council of Trent such as the equalling Apocryphal books and Traditions to the undoubted Canon of Scripture Justification by the merit of Good works c. Which Council of Trent was never fully owned by the Catholicks of France Nor was it ever received as a lawful Council by this English Nation It would be too tedious to run over all the rest of those Points wherein the Roman differs from the English Church or else it might be shewed that the Appeals to Rome and the Pope's Vniversal claim Veneration of Relicks Invocation of the Blessed Virgin Pilgrimages c. were wholly unknown to the three first Centuries as the ingenuous Romanists will confess and our Writers have largely proved By all which it appears that the Old Religion of Rome for the first three hundred years had no formal Invocation of Saints nor Angels no Purgatory nor Prayers to be delivered thence no Images no Transubstantiation no half Communion no Jubilees no Indulgences ' no constrained Coelibate no Prayers in an unknown Tongue no customary Auricular Confession no Apocrypha in her Canon of Scripture nor the rest Now if you strip your Church of these Doctrines she retains scarce any thing but the Protestant Articles of the Church of England But if you take Rome with these Additions her Religion is not so Old by far as the Religion of this Church Perhaps it will be pretended Though these Decrees were made in later Ages yet the Determinations were made by vertue of Apostolical Traditions preserved in the Roman Church from the very beginning and upon this Pretence your Late Writers of Controversie have generally laid aside all Arguments from Scripture and Ancient Fathers and resolve all into Oral Tradition and the Infallibility of the Roman Church But what is this but to confess that the Scriptures the Ancient Fathers and all written Records which are Impartial witnesses do make against them only these unknown Traditions which are only in their own keeping and may be of their own devising these they say bear witness for them which is to make themselves Judges in their own Cause and may justly occasion your enquiry whether the former Popes knew of these Traditions or no if not how then came the later Popes to the knowledge of them If they knew of them of old why did they let them sleep so long and suffer the Church to erre for so many years for want of them Did they discharge their Vniversal Headship well in this Concealment But in very truth it is Evident the first Popes knew of no such Traditions and the later Popes have invented them to support their New designs which appears by the Ancient Popes declaring directly contrary to these pretended Apostolical Traditions of which take a few Examples Pope Gaius writes That the Righteousness of the Saints avails nothing to our Pardon or Justification Pope Gelasius denies Transubstantiation as was noted just now The famous Gregory the Great saith He himself was the Emperors Servant and owed him obedience and declares That God had given the Emperor power over Priests as well as others The same Pope disowns the Title of Vniversal Bishop as unfit for him or any other He also determines that it is lawful for Priests who cannot contain to marry And he allows Images for History and Memory only A later than he also in the Canon Law Decrees that in such Diocess where there be people of Divers Languages The Bishop shall provide fit men to celebrate Divine offices and Minister the Sacraments of the Church according to the diversity of Rites and variety of their Languages Decretal Greg. l. 1. Tit. 31. cap. 14. The aforesaid Pope Gregory the First affirms that the Book of Maccabees is not Canonical And as well the Ordinary Gloss as the Old Editions of the Bibles which were allowed by the Roman Bishops and used in that Church before the Council of Trent do all distinguish between the Canonical Books and those which the Protestant Church now call Apocrypha Yet the contrary to all these hath been afterwards decreed upon pretence of being Apostolical Traditions By which account you may see if your Prejudices hinder not that the present Roman Church as it differs from the Church of England retains neither the Old Religion of the Scriptures nor that of the Primitive Church in general nay nor that of the Ancient Church of Rome for they have omitted some Points added others and altered so many that though Rome keep the Old Name it doth not keep the Old Faith We may now seek Rome in the midst of Rome as Juvencus Vitalis said Nor can it be denied saith Another but the Roman Church is not a little different from its Ancient beauty and splendor There is not the Faith the Manners nor the Worship of the Primitive Roman Church and therefore according to S. Ambrose They that have not Peter ' s Faith cannot succeed to Peter ' s Inheritance and as S. Hierome observes They are not the Sons of the Saints who possess their places but they which follow their Works And That only saith Lactantius is the Catholick Church which retains the true Worship of God You might have seen and heard in Rome of Old a Bishop without a Triple Crown or the Title of Vniversal Churches without Images Priests under no Vows of Single life Litanies without any names of Saints or Ora pro nobis the Mass celebrated in a known Tongue Bibles calling divers books Apocrypha which are now reckoned Canonical Scripture People not enslaved by Auricular Confession not debarred of the Cup not frighted with Purgatory nor impoverished with purchasing Prayers and Indulgences to save them from thence c. To conclude therefore Why may you not justly desert them who have in so many things departed from the Old Religion taught by Christ and his Apostles believed by the Ancient Fathers and received by the first and best Bishops of that same Church If you desire to be really of the Old Religion nay if you would hold the Faith of the Primitive Roman Church you may come much nearer to it by embracing the Religion of your own Country than by retaining the Opinions of the Modern Church of Rome which are most of them meer Innovations And though you have reverenced them while you supposed them Ancient and Apostolical yet we hope you will now renounce them when they are evidently discovered to be Gibeonites disguised on purpose to deceive and
to receive Appeals in a famous Council of Carthage An. 419. which Canons they pretended were made in the aforesaid Nicene Council but these Canons wholly differed from all the best Manuscripts of that Council then extant particularly from two eminent ones which the African Fathers sent for from Constantinople and Alexandria nor do they agree with those genuine Editions of the Nicene Council now extant and indeed the Council of Carthage received not these pretended Canons of Nice but esteemed them to have been corrupted as we do at this day Not long after to abet the Roman Supremacy Pope Leo writing to Theodosius the Emperor cites a Canon of a particular and dubious Council at Sardiâ—a of later Date and less Authority affirming it to be a Canon of the general Council at Nice The Edition of the Councils put out by Dionysius Exiguus about An. 520. being for a long time the sole approved Copy extant in these parts of the World doth in favour of the Popes Supremacy leave out divers Canons even of General Councils which seem to make against it though the said Canons are recorded in Zonaras and Balsamon and in this Age confessed to have been made in those Councils by the Romanists themselves but in the Time when the Supremacy was in hatching it was not thought expedient those Canons should be known It were endless to reckon up all the Additions Diminutions and Alterations which all the Roman Editions of the Councils since are guilty of and because an ingenious Essay hath been made that way by a late Author I shall refer my Reader thither and out of infinite Examples conclude with one Evident piece of Falsification The xxxv Canon of the Council of Laodicea Forbids the faithful to call on the name of Angels which being a condemnation of the Doctrine and Practice of Rome in Praying to Angels The Later Editions of this Council have impudently put in Angulos Angles or Corners instead of Angelos Angels though all the Greek Copies and Fathers read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the old Latin Exemplars have Angelos Yea Pope Adrian himself before this worship of Angels came up read it Angelos in that Epitome of Canons which he sent to Charles the Great An. 773. Thus they corrupt the Councils to suit them to their own Opinions Nor have single Fathers and Ancient Authors fared better S. Cyprian put out by Pamelius is altered in many places contrary to the Ancient Copies for Example where the Father saith the Church is founded Super Petram Pamelius changes it into Super Petrum upon Peter instead of upon a Rock And Ludovicus Vives a Romanist assures us that there are Ten or Twelve lines positively asserting Purgatory put into the Printed Copies of S. Aug. de Civitate Dei lib. 21. cap. 24. contrary to the Ancient Manuscripts Fulbertus Carnotensis quotes S. August saying of the Sacramental bread This then is a figure the Roman Editions put in As a Heretick will say when indeed S. Augustine says so and speaks his own sense Aimonius speaking of the Eighth Council saith They determined about Images otherwise than the Orthodox Fathers had Decreed and so Baronius reads But the Modern Printed Copies quite contrary put in according as the Orthodox Fathers had Decreed But why do I stand upon particular Instances This wickedness which all other men account the same Villany with suborning false Witnesses stopping the mouths of the True and counterfeiting Hands and Seals is owned by the present Church of Rome And Sixtus Senensis doth highly extol Pope Pius 5 th for his most holy Decree to burn all Books which were accounted Heretical To purge and cleanse all Catholick Authors and especially the Writings of the Fathers Now in what manner they effect this most holy work the Belâ—ick Inquisitors appointed by the Roman See shall tell you We strike out say they many Errors in other of the Ancients we extenuate and excuse them or by feigning a Commentitious gloss either deny or fix a commodious sense to their words Thus they served S. Ambrose his works cancelling and altering whole pages together contrary to all the Old Manuscripts as appeared by the Original Papers which Savarius the Stationer shewed to Francis Junius according to which the Inquisitors had ordered him to Print that Edition Lugdun An. 1559. Thus they left the story of Pope Joan out of the Copies of Anastasius Biblioth though the Manuscripts had the said story in them as Marquar Freherus testified who lent them the said Manuscripts And I might fill a Volume with Instances of like unjust dealings but I will only add the memorable account which Boxhornius one of your Divinity Professors at Lovain gives of himself viz. That he having been employed by the Inquisitors to strike out at least six hundred places of the Ancients which seemed to make against the Roman Doctrines was so troubled in mind upon it that it was an occasion of his turning Protestant and made him resolve to quit that Religion which could not defend it self without such manifest Impostures And I wish the consideration thereof might have the same effect upon you for the matter of Fact is so evident that the Index Expurgatorius the Book which directs these Falsifications is now come into Protestant hands to the eternal Infamy of the Roman Church whose people cannot rationally trust to any Author which comes through their Priests dishonest hands And since false Books are invented true and genuine Writers altered and corrupted or else wholly prohibited if they seem to make against them for which cause Clement 8 th puts the Bible into his Index of prohibited Books and all Editions but their own condemned and burnt by the Roman Church the people must needs be deluded into a perswasion that all these New Doctrines are Primitive Truths when indeed this abominable Forging evidently shews that the Pope and his Conclave think that both Scripture and Antiquity do make against these Innovations and would discover the Imposture if they were suffered to speak out to whom I may justly apply the words of Arnobius To intercept what is written and to design to smother published Records is not to defend the Gods but to fear the Testimony of the Truth And because Good men as S. Augustine saith will not deceive but neither good nor evil men would willingly be deceived I may suppose that the most Devoted Romanists cannot but discern how unsafe he is in believing as those men teach him who make no Conscience to invent impose and pretend things never so false provided they may thereby advance their Churches Interest or their own private ends They who dare write Lies will not be afraid to speak them and they who corrupt the Remains of the Holy Saints deceased are not to be trusted with the Souls of the living And whoever gives himself up to such Guides unnaturally
Master and the Servants the same in all outward expressions only differing in a nice School-distinction must needs be an affront to the King of Saints If you have any tenderness or zeal for the honour of Jesus it cannot but be offensive to you to observe how your Legends tell of greater miracles wrought by some of their fabulous Saints than ever Jesus wrought To hear one of your Church say That Christ did nothing which S. Francis did not do yea that he did more than Christ himself What is more injurious to the honour of the Divine Majesty than your S. Bonaventure's putting in the name of the Virgin Mary into Davids Psalms instead of the name of God To have her adored by the Heathenish Title of the Queen of Heaven and invocated by the impious name of Mother of the whole Trinity These things are rather Blasphemy than Devotion and as dishonourable to God as they are Dissonant from Antiquity Let none saith Epiphanius adore Mary but why do I mention a Woman nay not any Man this Reverence is due only to God nor are the Angels capable of such glorification Fifthly The supposing a necessity of superadding the Saints Merits and the daily Sacrifice of the Mass to the Merit of that one Offering for sin which Jesus made on the Cross Heb. ix 28. is an evident lessening the value and sufficiency of the Death of Christ Sixthly The calling of the Holy Scripture a Nose of Wax a Leaden Rule and an Inky Gospel The putting in the Apocryphal books wherein are some things wicked and others notoriously false into an equal rank with the Word of God indited by the Spirit own Traditions to be equal in value to it are palpable dishonours to God who writ the Holy Scripture These things my Friends can hardly be reckoned matters tending to the honour of God unless you can suppose the cancelling his Laws disparaging his Nature undervaluing the Merits the Mercies and the Miracles of Jesus by cheap and odious Comparisons the diminution of his worship and making him sharer with his Servants therein and the vilifying of his Divine word be no dishonour to him you pretend to serve Secondly Let us examine whether these Doctrines do assist you in the Devout worshipping of God It is very suspicious that Church doth not teach a right way of serving God which deceives you in the first Principle of Religion viz. That God alone is to be worshipped a Sentence so odious to the Roman Doctors that the Index Expurgatorius blots it out of the indices of S. Athanasius and S. Augustines Works and if they could do it undiscovered they would blot it out of the Bible also Matth. iv 10. But there it shall stand for ever to reprove those who divide Religious worship between God and his Creatures thereby diminishing that Devotion which intirely belongs to the Divine Majesty since affections are most vigorous when placed upon one Object and if they be dispersed among many grow weak and trifling whence we may conclude the Protestant who worships none but God is the greater lover of him and worships with a more united and servent Devotion As for your Publick worship it is attended with so many Ceremonies as must needs disturb the Devotion as well of the Priests as the People there is such frequent bowing crossing prostration sprinkling with Holy water beating the breast smoaking with Incense c. that the mind is taken off from a steady intention upon the inward and main part of the Duty while it is entertained with such variety of outward Rites For our mind saith Quintilian cannot sincerely intend its whole self upon many things at once whatever new object it looks upon it gives over the thoughts of that which it first propounded to it self And this is most evident where the Objects are so different as sensible and intellectual things are For where the Senses and their perceptions are vigorously employed there the Intellectual Powers cease to act as a great Philosopher observes So that it is your Passions and your Fancies that are wrought upon not your Mind nor the higher faculties of your Soul by these numerous Ceremonies and therefore that which you think Devotion I doubt is but a fantastical and false fire not kindled by the love of God nor warming your nobler Powers at all and those steady rational and spiritual desires which flow from an undisturbed contemplation of the Divine Goodness and are the very life of Prayer I fear you are strangers to being so often taken off and diverted by variety of sensible Representations Again the making all your Publick prayers in an Vnknown Tongue destroys all true Devotion in the People S. Clemens of Alex. tells us of some Heathens who thought those Prayers most effectual which were uttered in a barbarous Language But Christians know that Prayer is the desiring something of God and if the Mind be not exercised in this desire it avails nothing but where the words are not understood the mind cannot desire the things mentioned so that none can properly pray in an Vnknown Tongue nor so much as rationally say Amen 1 Cor. xiv 16. By this absurd Practice therefore you who are unlearned spend the time of the Publick offices in admiring and gazing not in joyning with the Priest or Praying And because the people have no employment while the Mass lasteth they spend the whole time usually in talking and laughing privately as those who Travel in Catholick Countries do inform us And it may occasion your wonder why the Roman Church should so obstinately refuse to reform so irrational a Custom which S. Paul hath written a whole Chapter to condemn 1 Cor. xiv The force of whose Arguments and Authority hath made your wisest Doctors declare against it By S. Paul ' s Doctrine saith Card. Cajetan it is better for the edifying of the Church that Publick prayers were made in the Vulgar Tongue than in Latin To the same purpose Lyra And your Rhemish Annotators say When a man prayeth in a strange Tongue which himself understandeth not it is not so fruitful for Instruction to him as if he knew particularly what he prayed Gabriel Biel also gives several Reasons why Prayers should be in a known Tongue saying It is better 1. For stirring up Devotion 2. for enlightning the Mind 3. for retaining the things in memory 4. for keeping the thoughts from wandring Yet your admired Church will oppose Reason and Scripture and deprive all the Common people that are of her Communion of the exercise of their Devotion in her Offices rather than so far seem to confess a fault as to amend it chusing rather to let you lose the benefit of worshipping God than to reform the most unjust Customes which she hath once espoused but if you be wise if that Church will not pray in such a Language as you can
joyn in you will go over to the Church of England where you may Pray with the Spirit and with understanding also In the next place your Private Prayers are not so good a way of worshipping God as other Christians have The Images and Pictures which the Heathens first taught your Doctors to call The books of the unlearned and which are placed before you in time of Prayer are no help but an hindrance to all true Devotion for while your lips are repeating your Oraisons your mind is taken up with the beauty colour lineaments and workmanship of the Image so that your own Conscience will tell you by these diversions you often draw near to God with your lips when your hearts are far from him which is a vain worship Matth. xv 8. And the Casuists of your Church foreseeing that Images would take off the attention have determined most impiously That it is not necessary to Prayer that the person praying should think of what he speaks A Doctrine suitable enough to that slight and formal worship which your Church appoints and the Ordinary people among you think they have prayed sufficiently when they have pattered over so many little Oraisons as agree to the number of their Beads A new Invention which came not into the Church till all serious Devotion was ceased it being a sign he minds his Prayers but little that needs a string of Beads to reckon them by yet these Beads saith one of your own Authors are now the chief Instruments of the hypocrites counterfeit Devotion I shall not ravel into the body of your Prayers since the Author of the Reflections on the Romish Devotions hath sufficiently done this but I cannot but remark that the repeating Ave Maria and the name of Jesus so many times over as in those fifteen little Prayers in the Psalter of Jesus where the name of Jesus is thrice mentioned in each Prayer and each Prayer is ordered to be said Ten times over and those numerous names of Saints repeated in your Litanies with no petition annexed but Ora pro nobis This way of Praying is so far from agreeing with the Primitive worship of God among the Christians that it is evidently derived from that Heathenish superstition of praying by repeating a hundred names of their Deities together interposing nothing but O hear us and in this manner Baals Priests are supposed to pray 1 Kings xviii 26. But to Christians Jesus saith When ye pray use not vain repetitions as the Heathens do for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking Matth. vi 7. Wherefore though you have admired this trifling way of worship when you knew no better yet if you would acquaint your selves with the solid and rational way of praying prescribed in the Church of England wherein Great things in an exact method in plain and proper phrases and in a known Language are asked of God alone in the name of Jesus Christ you would easily leave off those formal vain and superficial Devotions which can neither be acceptable to God nor profitable unto your selves Thirdly Let us pass to the last of these particulars and enquire If the Doctrines of Rome differing from those of England do tend to promote our imitating God by a holy life and conversation without which all our worship is in vain For it is a folly and miserable errour saith S. Augustine to humble your self before him in adoration to whom you chuse to be unlike in conversation and to give him religious worship whose Example you will not follow since the sum of all Religion is to imitate him you worship Now there are several Principles of the Roman Church which seem to hinder an holy life as first The custome of Confessing to a Priest weekly or monthly together with the Absolution following of course upon this Confession this is I fear a great hindrance to amendment of life at which it pretends to aim for while men relie on this remedy they go on without fear in those sins for which they have so easie a cure at hand like those who venture without scruple on dangerous Meats because they have their Physicians beside them 'T is true there is a Penance enjoyned sometimes but it is such a one as the rich may buy off and the poor may undergo and yet both retain the sin because the Penance is not its proper cure the going in Pilgrimages giving mony saying or reading over such proportions of Legends or little chiming prayers with others far more impertinent tend not to rectifie a vicious habit and a plaister on the Toe may as soon cure the Head-ach as these Penances effect a Reformation or obtain a pardon at Gods hands And yet all men see when the day of Confession is over and the Penance past that you are generally confident of a Pardon and fancy you begin upon a new score It is not easie to enumerate all the devices which your Church hath invented to convey pardon of Sins Holy water Relicks of Saints visiting some certain Churches saying some certain Prayers making Oblations of mony to such and such uses Indulgences and other such things so that he that hath mony need never want Pardon from Rome but alas these things can never really take away the guilt of one sin and yet they embolden men to commit many For the multitude of Sinners increaseth when hope is given that sin may be bought off and men easily fall into those sins for which Mony will purchase their pardon as Arnobius said to the Heathens who relied on such like fantastical means of Remission and we may say of the Guides of your Church as Seneca in a like case They sin more in such Absolutions than the Offender doth in the Crime For by perswading men they can have Remission on so easie Terms they make them secure before they are safe because Almighty God who only finally can Remit never promised Pardon on these Terms and it is only those who forsake as well as confess their sins to whom he will shew Mercy Prov. xxviii 13. And if either the Pope or any of his Substitutes pretend to have power to forgive sins on any other Terms they abuse those who are so weak to believe them and make them forfeit their Souls I doubt for the sad price of this Credulity S. Basil saith truly The power of Absolving was not absolutely given but upon condition of the Penitents Reformation And we tell our People more sincerely that if a Priest Absolve them a thousand times over and if they give ever so much mony without amendment of life they can have no pardon according as Scripture it self teaches and the Holy Fathers also If thou givest all that thou hast and dost not forsake thy sins thou art twice deceived both in losing thy Mony and thy Pardon also Again as if the Roman Church designed to make men think their own actual Holiness
consent thereto or confirmation thereof The Popes indeed about the latter end of the Saxon times began to degenerate in Manners and aim at high things in all the Western world but his Pride was checked here even as as we shewed before it was in other places for when that Insolent Pope Hildebrand who first presumed to depose an Emperour took the boldness to require Fealty of King William the Conqueror he answered him in this manner Fealty I neither have acknowledged nor will I do it because neither did I promise it nor do I find that my Predecessors ever did it to your Predecessors as appears by the Conqueror's Letter still extant And when by Policy and evil Arts he had made some encroachments here yet still his Power was esteemed no other than a Temporal Power permitted by the favour of our Kings not due by any Original Right Hence the Historian saith That King Henry the First having subdued all his Enemies feared none but the Pope and that not for his Spiritual but his Temporal Power And an Old Record affirms that King Henry the Second smartly asked the Bishop of Chichester How he durst argue for the Pope ' s Authority which was granted by Men against his Royal Power derived from God The turbulent and seditious Attempts of T. Becket and his faction about that time to subject the English Clergy to the Pope's Vniversal Supremacy are sufficiently known but if our Ancestors whom you call Roman Catholicks had been of your Opinion in this great Article of Faith they would not have made so stout an Opposition against the Pope's Supremacy as they did It being apparent that the whole body of the Nation then looked on it as an Encroachment and an Vsurpation for in the famous Statutes of Clarendon they condemn it Decreeing among other things That all the Clergy should bonâ fide swear to the King and none should Appeal but unto the Archbishop or from him finally to the King without particular License And to restrain his medling here the Kings of England declared they had a Right to forbid the Pope's Legates from entring into this Land and often did prohibite them even Qu. Mary her self exercising this Power yea it was adjudged in a Parliament 25 Ed. 3. To be Treason to bring in the Pope's Bulls here without the Kings consent Stat. de Provisor though the sending these be an Act of Spiritual Jurisdiction but it is plain they would not allow the Pope in those days to exercise Spiritual Jurisdiction here without the King's leave for his very Excommunicating certain English Bishops in a Parliament 16 of Rich. 2. is declared to tend To the open disherison of the Crown and the destruction of the King his Law and all his Realms and a little after it is affirmed there that the Popes attempts be clearly against the Kings Crown and Regality used and approved in the time of all his Progenitors finally therefore they all promise to stand with the King against all such Encroachments with their very lives And if you be well versed as becometh English-men in the Histories and Statutes of your own Country you must needs know that the Authority which the Pope once exercised here was gotten by taking advantages of the necessities of our Kings and the divisions among the People And in those Times which are accounted most Popish it was checked by Laws complained of in Parliament and thought an Oppression by the wisest and greatest Subjects so that the most Noble Hen. de Lacy Earl of Lincoln in his dying Speech to his Son in Law Thomas Earl of Lancaster said among other things That the Church of England heretofore Honourable and Free was now enslaved by Romish Oppressions charging him to stand up like a man for the Honour of God and the Church and the Redemption of his Country And the same Author tells us that it was debated in a Council at London An. 1408. Whether all Payments and Obedience to the Pope should not be taken away Which shews they thought it in the power of this Nation to take away his Authority here when they pleased And they retained it not as being necessarily or originally due to him but only in respect of his being a Bishop of an Ancient Apostolical Seat as is evident from those Instructions which King Henry the Fifth gave to his Embassadors sent to Pope Martin the Fifth bidding them if they perceived any delay in their affair to tell the Pope That their Master the King if he yielded not to his Demands would use his own power in these Particulars for he did not apply himself to Rome out of necessity but for Respect sake And therefore when this permissive Authority grew uneasie to those who had endured it for some time it was rejected much more Legally than ever it was introduced viz. by the Regal Power with the advice and consent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament And this is to be noted the Clergy and Laity of this Parliament did hold most of the Opinions of the Roman Church in other things and yet consented to the abolishing the Pope's Vsurped Power over England as believing it to be an unjust Encroachment And Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester a great Persecutor of the Protestants did then make a learned Oration De verâ obedientiâ shewing that the King was by Right and by God's Law the Supream Head of this Church of England And now that I may not only confute a false Opinion but establish the true let me intreat you impartially to consider that as it appears the Pope is not Dejure supream Head of this Church of England so it is as evident that the King of England is the Supream Head of the Churches in his own Dominions For indeed all Christian Princes are or ought to be so in their own Dominions whence it was that Constantine the Great did retain the Title of Pontifex Maximus without any blot to his Christianity saith Baronius And the highest Appeals in all Controversies Ecclesiastical even in matters of Faith were made to him though he used the assistance and Counsel of his Bishops for determining them And it is evident that he and his Successors as Cusanus before confesseth did call and Preside in all General Councils and ratified their Decrees which were no Laws till they were stamped with the Imperial Authority yea the Imperial Code sufficiently witnesses that the Emperour 's made Laws concerning Religion the whole Third book of Justinian's Basilicks being nothing else but Imperial Constitutions de Episcopis Clericis Sacris They also erected Patriarchates and gave them supream Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over such Provinces as they pleased as at Justinianopolis in Daeia and at Ravenna in Italy it self which had no dependence on Rome till the time of Constantinus Pogon And all Ecclesiastical affairs depended on the Emperors saith Socrates so that Pope Anastasius calls the