parts of mans body yet still that member wants other members to beare witnesse unto it that it is a part of mans body As if every particular member of mans body by its inherent proper motion were not a sufficient witnesse not onely to all the rest of the body that it is a living and true organicall body of man but also to it selfe that it is a true living member of this body Or as thus It is not the whole frame of heaven and earth that can assure us that we doe well to thinke that God made all the world for if any one Creature should give testimony to all the rest yet still that Creature would require another Creature to give testimony to it that it is one of Gods Creatures and so we should never come to any pawse to rest our assurance this way that God created the whole world heaven and earth and all the Creatures therein Now what is there besides the Creature that can assure us of this What The Authority of men or the Tradition of the whole world No for By Faith we come to understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were made of things which did not appeare Now whereupon is this Faith grounded Surely on the word of God and confirmed abundantly by the whole frame of heaven and earth and all the Creatures therein not one of them but having a stampe of the Creator upon it to assure us that it is his Creature And how doe we come to be assured that this word of God is contained in the Scripture By the Authority of the present Church Doth Hooker Say so Had you Said The Ancient Church as the Jewes in witnessing for the Old Testament and the Ancient Apostolick Church in witnessing for the New you had said Somthing As also if you had put the Ministry of the Word for the Authority of your present Church For as we said before the Ministry of the Word is Gods own voyce which commends unto us the Scripture as the word of God This is Gods owne ordinary meanes to bring men to Faith and not the Authority and Tradition of I wot not what present Church And now against Mr Hookers sensible Demonstration as you call it I will oppose another Demonstration which is not onely sensible but most true as proving that the testimony of Scripture to be the word of God is in the Scripture it selfe First Paul in the Epistle to the Romans witnesseth that unto the Iewes or Israeliets under the Old Testament were committed the Oracles of God those Oracles were contained in all the severall Bookes of the Old Testament which the Jewes kept intire and inviolate without the mixture of Profane Books And of this Scripture Paul speaketh and testifieth saying All Scripture is given by inspiration from God And Christ himselfe giveth testimony of the Old Testament saying to the Jewes Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternall life and they are they which testifie of me And what those Scriptures were the Jewes knew well enough for they were deposited with them and they kept them as their chiefest treasure And Peter also gives testimony to the Old Testament saying of it that Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost speaking of the Scripture expresly in that place in the former verse And To Him give all the Prophets witnesse Thus the New Testament gives testimony to the Old that it is the word of God And I hope you will not except against this testimony as insufficient Againe the New Testament gives witnesse to it selfe that it is the word of God Peter witnesseth of Pauls Epistles that Paul wrote them according to the wisdome given unto him that is the Holy Ghost And Christ said to Peter I have prayd for thee that thy Faith faile not Yea He sent the Holy Ghost to all his Apostles that should lead them into all truth Ergo what they preached and wrote was the Truth and word of God And Christ made all his Apostles his witnesses who in all their writings beare-witnesse of him both of what they saw and heard and so their record left in writing is true See Luk. 1.2 1 Joh. 1.3 3 Joh. 12. And none writ the New Testament but either Euangelists or Apostles all indued with the Holy Ghost And the Wisdome of Christ reserved his beloved Disciple Iohn as the last surviver of all the rest to write the Book of the Revelation and to conclude as the New Testament so the whole Bible with that Charge If any man adde to this Book or take away from it c. as shewing that the whole and intire Scripture was now compiled and consummate I might be copious in this point But I will summe up all this The New Testament gives testimony to the Old that it is the word of God also to it selfe one Book to another one Apostle to another who were all witnesses of Christ Christ and the Holy Ghost to all the Apostles all their writings being guided by the Spirit of Truth and giving joynt witnesse unto Christ and to the truth of the Gospell Yea and the severall parts beare witnes to themselvs As 1 Cor. 14.37 If any man think himselfe to be a Prophet or Spirituall let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the Commandements of the Lord. And 1 Pet. 5.12 I have written brieflly exhorting and testifying that this is the true Grace of God wherein ye stand And Joh. 20.31 These things are written that ye might beleeve that Iesus is the Christ the Son of God and that beleeving ye might have life through his Name So 1 Joh. 1.3 4. 2 Joh. 5. 3 Joh. 12. And we also â—eare record and ye know that our record is true And as the New Testament doth every where beare witnesse both to the Old and to it selfe both in the whole and every part even by the Spirit of God that speakes and breathes in the whole and every part So the Old Testament in like manner beares witnesse both to it selfe and to the New Testament and that by many Types and Prophecies all which are fulfilled in the New So as these two Testaments are as Ezechiels Wheeles one within another the New Testament being the Old revealed and the Old the New veiled Or they are like the two Cherubims both looking towards the Mercy-Seat which is Christ the Summe of them both the Old looking upon him as he was promised and to come the New as he is now exhibited and come Thus we have here a full true and evident Demonstration that the whole Scripture gives testimony to it selfe that it is the word of God And yet you Say That Truth it selfe cannot say that Scripture it selfe can doe it But you adde L. ibid. That Scripture cannot beare witnesse to it selfe nor any one part of it
same unchangable truth still and hath in it sufficient evidence both to reconcile those differences and to convince the gainsayer 'T is true Let no man presume upon his owne strength for the secret of the Lord is with them that feare him Whaâ— was the cause then that you have all along your Booke as in part hath been shewed so perverted the Scriptures was it not because you took not with you for your guide the Tradition of the present Church And was not this then a prusuming upon your own strength when you goe so solely and singly to worke But what meane you by going single without the Church The not consulting the Prelates Or because the Papists object as you The Scriptures are deep and darke therfore we must in all things take the present Church Tradition in our way where it may be bad and be guided by that as by Ariadnees Thread through those manyfold Meanders of that intricate Labyrinth the Scripture as you make it Or that you meane by Church Tradition the Authority of the present Church of England as one with that Church whereof none is and that this Authority must needs proceede and like a Candle before the Sun at noon-day as before shew us the way to know the Scripture to be the word of God if we be willing to shut our eyes and blindfold to be led by the Traditionall Authority of this your Church what know we but by such Authority you may tell us puting the â—ible clasped into our hands All that is cantained within those claspes is the word of God This you may be sure of you have Authority for it you need goe no further And all your Bibles of your present Church of England being by expresse Charge bound with the Apocrypha so as they are punished that doe it not all the Books forfeited which may breed an opinion in the people that those Bookes also are a part of the word of God If now one hereupon opening the Bible and lighting upon either that ridiculous tale of Tobies Dog or that of the Angel who tells Tobiaâ— that he is his kinsman and of the Smoke of the Fishes Liver that drives away the Devill or of Razis killing of himselfe and commended for it by the writer of the Books of the Maccabees or that of the same Authors doubting whether he hath done well or no in writing that Story and the like he may possibly by this meanes be brought to think meanely of the Scriptures and that they are not the word of God because he finds such things in the Bible so as it is bound as are ridiculous false vaine impious and uncertaine whether the rest be done as it should be c. And thus by your Apocrypha delivered into his hand by the Authority and Tradition of your present Church he is brought to beleeve that either the Scriptures of thaâ— Old and New Testament are not the word of God as wherwith those Apocryphall Books are equally bound in all Bibles or else that such Tradition of the present Church it little to be regarded while pretending to lead men to the beliefe of the Scriptures to be the word of God there is no more difference made between them and the Apocrypha so full of vain lyes and ridiculous tales And perhaps you may come in also as Time and Plaâ—e will permit with your Verbum Dei non scriptum to boot the word of God not written of which you tell us before agreeing therein with Bellarmine And at last when your Tradition and Authority hath sufficiently prepared the way you will perhaps bring in your Traditions Apostolicke accompanied with the Decretalls of Gratian which your Sister Church of Rome equall with the 4 Euangelists But however were it for nothing else but to maintaine the credit of your present Church Tradition and Authority in commending to men the Scripture to be the word of God you might doe well to take away your Apocrypha which your Zeale will have placed in the midst between the two Testaments not suffering any Bibles to be bound without it which is as one saith as a Blakamore placed between two pure unspotted Virgins Nor doe I think that your Lordship so placeth your Blackamore as Ladyes put a black patch upon their Cheek or Chin as a foyle to make them seem more fayre so you to make the Scriptures the more lovely and desireable or the better to be known as things by their contraries as white by blacke or the straight by the crooked or truth by error standing near it And though Hierome who excludes the Apocrypha out of the Canon of Scripture saith they may be read ad morum institutionem non ad confirmationem Fidei for instruction of manners and not for confirmation of faith yet considering both the fooleries and falsities and vanities and commended impieties and confessed uncertainties in them as aforesayd all these things put together might be me thinks of sufficient strength to thrust out that Blackamore by the head and shoulders from betweene those two fayre and unspotted Virgins L. ibid. It is most reasonable that Theology should be allowed to have some Principles as well as other Sciences which she proves not but presupposes And the chiefest of these is That the Scriptures are of Divine Authority P. How Is the chiefest of these Principles allowed to Theologie This That the Scriptures are of Divine Authority Doe you not forget Tradition now Doe you not reckon that for the first and so the chiefest as without which the other cannot be granted Or perhaps you doe not reckon your Tradition or Authority of the present Church to be a Principle of Theology What then Perhaps of Muthology the science of setting forth Fables Or of Buttologie the science of much babble to no purpose Or Argologie the science of vaine and frivolous talke Or Carphologie a gathering of Chaffe as if you would by the heape of Chaffe shew us where the Wheat is Onely your Tradition is no Principle of Theologie and therfore a heape of chaffe wherein there is not one grain of the pure corn But let us come to see what is most reasonable It is most reasonable say you that Theologie should be alowed to have some Prinâ—iples as well as other Sciences which she proves not but presupposes And what is Theologie but the Scripture it selfe and the Doctrines therein contained And however it be with other Sciences which in comparison of Theologie are but imperfect and beggerly so as they have need to begge their a'itemata some Principles to be granted them as grounds to worke upon as the Mathematicks c. yet you might have given that honour to Queen Theologie to which all other Sciences are but handmaids as to exempt her from being a begger yea and of that too which is her own and in her own possession namely That the Scripture is the word of God This is one of Theologies prime Principles which
for beliefe And you place the Authority of the Present Church in the forefront as a prime leader and inducer to this beliefe And this you inculcate very often and Say pag. 120 I confesse every where that Tradition introduces the knowledge of them And pag. 126. you tell the Jesuite A. C. saying Herein we goe the same way with you because we allow the Tradition of the present Church to be the First inducing Motive c. So as herein you jumpe with the Jesuite So then Authority of the present Church is the Prime Or as sometimes you call it Tradition or otherwhiles The voyce of the Present Church All comes to one reckoning Then to this Leader you muster up a troop of followers as here Ordinary Grace a mind morally induced and reasonably perswaded and before a mans owne Reason and humane Testimony morall perswasion Reason and Force of the present Church the Holy Ghost Conferring of the Scripture with it selfe and other writings And what then Then and not before the Scripture gives greater and higher Reasons of Credibility to it selfe then Tradition alone could give What No more effect for all this but a Credibility I expected you should with such a Troope under the command of such a Generall as the Authority Tradiâ—ion and voyce of the present Church have effected that Rockie Forâ— of mans heart to have yealded to open the Gates of his Infidelity to let in this Beliefe that Scripture is the word of God And can you obtaine no more then a Credibility Alas poore Scripture Can all Mans witty inventions advance thy credit which they have taken away no higher then to a Credibility But thus we may see the vanity of Mans wit when it hath cast away the truth This is right as the Preacher Saith Lâ—e this onely have I found That God made man upright but they have sought out many inventions So when men reject the word of the Lord what wisdome is in them Then they fall to their inventions like Michals stuffing her Image with Goates haire and laying it in the bed instead of David Or a right Embleme hereof we have in our First Parents when they had disrobed themselves of that plain simple seamelesse but glorious robe of their Innocencie having thus lost their uprightnesse wherein God made them presently they fall to their inventions they will supply the want of that robe with a many faire fresh Fig-leaves sowed together without either needle or thread vainly imagining that this would cover their shame when indeed it was a plain signe they had lost their Glory and yet could not hide their nakednesse So when a man hath lost the Truth he shall loose his wits in his manifold Inventions before he shal be able thereby to make up his losse Thus did the Church of Rome of old no sooner had they thrust out Gods word and the preaching of it out of their Temples but up goe their Images for Lay-mens Books and in comes crowding a multitude of Ceremonies the Inventions of man as if these would make amends with advantage instead of the holy Scriptures Just your practise in the Church of England at this day And just your like practise here When you have cast a black veile over the Scriptures native beauty and light disabling them as sufficient witnesses to prove themselves the word of God you invent here a number of things to stop our mouthes to make us beleeve that by these you will bring Mans naturall blindnesse to see and his infidelity to beleeve just nothing at all that the Scriptures are the word of God So as you deale with us here as some Parents doe with their Children take the piece of gold from them and please them with a handfull of deafe nuts Onely they doe it providently to preserve the Gold from being lost but you Popishly to destroy the Gold and to set up the painted dresse of your New-nothing Or you put out the Eyes of the Scripture and then light your Candle before it as after you tell us But let 's a little examine your words First I note here what a blind guide you commend to blind men to lead them to the beliefe of the Scriptures to be the word of God For what is it Certainty No Probabilty A man is probably led But of Probability we have spoken before And take this with you for a certaine truth Probability may beget an opinion but never a belief But by whom probably led By the Authority of the present Church What present Church Of the Prelates or Hierarchy ever But who gave you Authority to be a Church Or Suppose you were the true Church of Christ who gave you this Authority to take away from the Scriptures their sufficiencie of guiding men to the faith of them and to tie men to depend upon the Authority of the present Church thereby to be induced to beleeve the Scriptures And what 's your present Church Is it not the Same with that of Rome And is not this Authority which you arrogate Romish And what if your present Church with Rome shall induce us to beleeve the Apocryphall Bookes to be part of Scripture Or some word unwritten which you call Apostolick Traditions to be equall with the word written as you agree with Bellarmine in this Distinction of the word written and unwritten as before is touched And what if as you have given us too much proofe you should limit us in beleeving the Scripture what part to beleeve for Canonicall and what otherwise For as Hierome saith The Scripture consists more in the marrow of Sentences then in the barke of words more in the Sense then in the Syllables What say you then to the 4 th Commandement which your present Church denyes to be Morall for a Seventh day Sabbath and thereby overthrow the Sanctification of the Lords day What say you of the Doctrines of Grace which you have overthrowne by your Declaration before your Articles What of Altars and the like If herein you overthrow the Sense of Scripture doe you not proclaime to the world that such and such Scriptures are not Canonicall Or if the words be still holden for Canonicall yet it must be according to the Sense of your present Church As Paulus 4. the Pope in the End of the Councel of Trent tyes all Priests by oath to interpret the Scriptures no otherwise but according to the Sense of the Catholick Church the Summe whereof is the Decrees and Canons of Trent Is not thus the whole Scripture made voyd But come on let men be primely induced by the Authority of the present Church to wit of the Prelates or Hierarchy for no other Church you allow nor we you to be any other but of Antichrist by what Argument trow you is it likelyest they will be perswaded that the Scriptures are the word of God Will you give me leave to tell you my Opinion It is this in briefe When men upon
hath been an Old stickler for Images ever since her S. Gregory first set them up in Churches to become Laymens Books Wherein in processe of time the Laity was so well read and grew such profound Proficients that those dumb Masters had taught them to put no difference at all between the Images and the Saints themselves whom they represented For the Images were layd so thick on with beautifull and lively colours as the eyes of the simple Beholders being dazled therewiâ—h were not able to penetrate or pierce through them to discern the Saints themselves who were farre enough off Whereupon the Images grew prouder and prouder as taking all the honour done to themselves like the Asse that bore the Image of the god â—sâ—sâ— he imagined that the people adored him So as becoming every day more gay then other and to follow the fashions even the clergy also began to fall in love with them and so to doâ—e upon them as they not onely adored them and that as devoutly as you do your Altars and that which hangs over them but writ Books in commendation of them and found out a Mistery which the Heathen never knew nor acknowledged the learned of them at least That Images were to be adored with the same honour that was due to the Saints they represented as the Image of Christ and the Crucifix and the Crosse with Laâ—ria which is divine worship due to Christ and to God as they distinguish the Images of the Saints with Doulia such a worship as they have devised for the Saints and if you knew all no way inferiour to divine worship and the Image of the Virgin Mary with a certain worship which they call Huperdoulia which is proper say they to the Virgin Mary a worship I will warrant you if it were well examined above that worship which they give to God himselfe And all these worships they give to the very Images themselves respectively Nor are they any small â—ools that teach these things as no lesse then Aquinas among the School-men and Bonaventure both Saints for this their meriâ— and Bellarminâ— among the Jesuites besides many more of such lâ—arned Râ—bbiâ—s In so much as their golden Legends and other Authors report that the said S. Thomas coming into a Church in Naples a goodly Cruifix saluted him saying My good friend Thomas thâ—u hast written well of me what recompense dâ—st thou desire He answered the Crucifix None but your selfe Now pâ—rhaps iâ— was of good massy Gold or Silver But this by the way Thus we see those simple A. B. C. Books and scarce that which aâ— first were onely for simple Laicks became in time Books to teach those that were of the highest forme in their Schooles even their Angelicall and Seraphicall Doctors And thus even in them came Augustins words to be verified which he then spake of the Heathen Quâ—s intuetur simulacrum c. Who beholdeth an Image that is not so affected with it as to beleeve that to be God which he seeth and adoreth And againe Plus valeat â—imulacrâ— ad incurvandum in foelicem animam quod oculos habent c. quà m ad corrigendum quod â—on vident c. Images are of more force to crooke an unhappy soule that they have eyes and eares and mouth and nose and hands and feet then to correct it that they see not heare not speak not smell not handle not walke not As David saith They that make them are like unto them and so are all they that put their trust in them that is that adore them The Makers and worshipers learned and unlearned are even as blockish as the senselesse Images themselves as the Prophet Esay also saith chap. 44.19 Besides had not Rome a finger at least if not a whole hand in that Decree of the 7 th Generall Councel of the 2. of Nice for worship of Images though then they went not so farre as Divine worship in words at least untill the worship it selfe do prove it And how many good and Godly Emperours were most grievously vexed and troubled from time to time by the Bishops of Rome for causing the Idolatrous Images in Churches to be broken down and cast out But what more Moderne Rome is too like to Paganisme in the practise of Image-worship Too like Nay doth she not farre outstrip the Heathen in this her Idolatry Da veniam verbo pardon the word Idolatry as being too grosse a word to brand the Church of Rome withall in all your Booke and therfore I suppose more grosse then your tender Eares can well brooke to heare to be layd to Romes Charge or cast in her dish as being too bitter a sauce and able to put the good motion of Reconciliation quite out of taste And it seems it is Religion with you to call Image-worship Idolatry or an Image and Idol because that second Councel of Nice made a Decree Qui sacras Imagines Idola vocant Anathema They that call the sacred â—mages Idols let them be Anathema or such as alledge against them sentences of Scripture against Idols let them be Anathema So loth are you to come under that cursed Councels Anathema But a spade is a spade And if Modern Rome outstrip old Heathen Rome â—n the Idolatry of Image-worship and if the Heathen were Idolaters then let Rome passe for an Idolatresse But the old Heathen though they adored the Images yet when it was objected to them their usuall answere was that they worshiped not the Image it selfe but that which it represented as Lactantius and Augusâ—ine and others report of them But your Moderne Rome teacheth and professeth not onely practiseth that she gives the same honour to the Image which is due to that which it representeth and that the honour or worship of Chrisâ— is terminated in his Image or Crucifix or Crosse and doth not passe through it or beyond it that is reacheth not to Christ but is wholly intercepted and preoccupated by the Image So Atheistically impudent is that Whoâ—â— grown in her Idolatry of Images that â—he surpasseth all the Heathen that ever were But you cite a saying of Cassender That in this present case of the Adoration of Images the Church of Rome came full home to the superstition of the Heathen Full home that 's somwhat more like yet then too like But it seems you have Cassanders ancient Copy which hath not passed through the fire of Romes Index Expurgatorius which would never have suffered such an Heresy as this to escape a Deleatur And you know I suppose that Cassanders works are marked out in their Indices to be purged of all such stuffe as this is Then after sundry other passages out of Romish Authors bewraying their grâ—sse Idolatry but teaching it onely none I hope doth practise it tho say you wherein you shew that you have as good a hope of the learned Teachers of Idolatry as hereafter you shew charity to their simple Disciples for their salvation
A REPLIE TO A RELATION OF THE CONFERENCE BETWEEN WILLIAM LAUDE and Mr. FISHER the Jesuite By a Witnesse of JESUS CHRIST JOB 38.2 Who is this that darkeneth Councell by words without knowledge 1 KINGS 18.21 How long halt you between two opinions If the LORD be GOD follow him but if Baal then follow him CANT 2.15 Take us the Foxes the little Foxes that spoyle the Vines for our Vines have tender Grapes IMPRINTED Anno MDCXL A SAD AND SERIOVS CONSULTATION OF A DISCONSOLAE MOTHER CHRISTS VIRGIN-Spouse with twelve of her Children about her whose names are Faith Hope Charity Zeale Humility Prudence Piety Patience Iustice Mercy Verity Prayer whose severall judgements the Mother requireth in a doubtfull case MOTHER MY Deare Children how doth the very sight of you revive my dolefull spirits almost drowned in the Dragons flood You are to me as that twelve-starred Crowne upon my head But to the purpose for which I have called you together though indeed you are never asunder nor absent from me and it is this You have taken notice of a notorious Booke lately published by the Prime Prelate of England which he calls a Relation of a Conference c. And how to that Relation a Sonne of mine no lesse known to you all then assisted by you in the worke hath made here a Reply and presented it to me But now how to improve and dispose of it for the best is the doubt The Relator the Prelate ingageth the King in it by two bonds the one of Patronage the other of Command as if the King had first commanded it to be published and now did give it Patronage and protection which if true it puts me in a straight what to doe with this Reply For who so fit to take notice of it yea and to give it Protection too if both the matter and the consequence of it being of so high a nature be well and wisely weighed It hath much perplexed me Now therefore give me your best advice And first Faith what sayst thou Faith Deare Mother put away from you all such perplexed thoughts 'T is true If we looke on worldly meanes with a carnall eye we are all in a straight But this is our safety 'T is well the world hath never an object to allure our confidence to pitch upon it And best of all when all the world is banded against us and our Christ. Is not he alone sufficient to cope with them Doth he not laugh at their proud but vaine attempts which are no lesse against him then against us Is not the Cause then his And are not we his And is not he for us Who then shall be against us What though Principalities and Powers and Spirituall wickednesses in high places be with all the power and pollicie of the world with all the craft and cruelty of the Dragon and Devill armed against us why still Christ is for us That 's sufficient Therefore there be moe with us then against us We are a little flock against a world of Wolves and Foxes Lyons and Beares but we have a watchfull and powerfull Shepheard whose Legions of mighty Angels those heavenly Hosts doe pitch their tents round about us We are his Paradise on earth which he defends continually with his Cherubims flaming sword that proud Apostates cannot so invade us as to take one Tree of life from us Let the wild Beasts then rage and warre upon us let the Aegyptian troopes pursue us as with open mouth to devuore us but stand we still and see the salvation of the LORD He that led his people through the Sea never wants power to deliver his when in most desperate straights Mother Cheare up Not a haire of your head shall perish The faithfull and True hath said it As for outward meanes if we have them we use them as Gods ordinances if we have them not nay if all be against us yet our Faith in GOD is the same and ever greater stronger and nobler without and against meanes then with them And much more is our GOD the same and his glory most shineth where outward meanes are either least helpfull or most opposite My resolution then is this The Reply in my judgement is very necessary to be published and withall as most pertinent and important to be presented to the King But whether he will read it or no leave that to GOD. We shall neither loose our labour nor reward For great is the Truth and shall prevaile what ever opposition Men or Devils make against it And in this Reply the true Faith is defended against the Prelates false and counterfeit Faith I have said Mother Well Hope what sayst thou Hope Deare Mother I am of the same mind and spirit with my Sister Faith By all meanes cast away all anxious and perplexed thoughts and be of good comfort though our Shippe be shrewdly weather-beaten and shaken yet Christ is at the sterne And I have already cast Anchor in the Havens mouth on a firme ground within the Veile When Noahs Arke floated over the toppes of the highest Mountaines in that dreadfull Deluge when the world was a Sea what Pilot safely guided and steered its course that it should rest upon the Mount Ararat Even the same Pilot we have to conduct us through these Floods to the Haven where we would be Let the Reply for truth against falsehood be published under Christs Patronage and protection that 's sufficient As for Men the lesse we hope in them the lesse we feare them And while we doe our duty with the one hand we lay hold on the Crowne with the other I have sayd Mother Charity what sayst thou Charity Deare Mother as my Sister Hope is the Anchor both sure and stedfast So I am the three-fold Cable not easily broken and therefore be of good comfort For Love not all the floods can drowne it Now for the Relation were those many passages in it noted by the Replyer some common slips of ignorance or humane frailty I would cast my large mantle over them but being of a high nature and full of impiety against GOD and CHRITT and the Holy Ghost and the holy Scriptures and against your holy Spouse-ship and against Faith and against Charity and so against all true Religion yea proceeding also from a Prime Prelate pretending great learning and knowledge and professing such singular eminencie and dexterity of wit and judgement as being the onely able Champion of the Church of England to defend the truth against a Jesuite and all this under the faire white veile of hypocrisie onely his Black-moores skin too grosly appearing in his malignant practises in persecuting the Truth and in those malicious and impious passages in his Booke so as he is left altogether naked of all plea of ignorance therefore I hold it fit that his hypocrisie should be unmasqued his bold falcities confuted his insollencie suppressed his impiety rebuked and the Truth maintained against him
be heard among them And for us thy poore handmaids here humbly suppliant before thee let thy holy Spirit direct lead and assist us in the way which may be most acceptable to thy Majesty and profitable for thy People and comfortable to us all in our distressed estate And shew unto thy Servants what thou wouldst have us to doe in this difficult businesse about the presenting of this Reply to the King which with our selves and all thine we humbly commend to thy grace and blessing through Iesus Christ to whom with thee ô Father and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory now and ever Amen Mother Now my deare Children I will tell you what resolution GOD hath put into my heart upon the very close of this Prayer namely that we addresse our selves to the King with this Reply together with an humble Petition And because all of us perhaps would be too many let as many of you as are willing to attend me goe with me to the King the rest let them goe and be humble suiters at the Throne of Grace that our GOD would give us to find Grace in the eyes of the King so as hearkening to our Petition he may doe accordingly Such therefore of you as are willing to accompany me stand on this side and the rest stand on that side Well I see you are equally divided Six with me and Six for me With me Charity Humilty Prudence Piety Patience and Verity For me Faith Hope Zeale Iustice Mercy Prayer Now my Gracious Children be strong and of a good courage Our Cause is good and GOD is for us and though our enemies be great yet they shall not prevaile against us TO THE KINGS MOST EXCELLENT MAIESTY THE TRVE CHVRCH AND CHILDREN THE TRUE FAITH AND RELIGION OF JESUS CHRIST do humbly present their Petition of Right THAT whereas a Book intituled A Relation of a Conference between WILLIAM LAUDE and Mr. FISHER the Iesuite hath been by the said WILLIAM now of Canterbury lately republished and that under your Majesties Patronage and in the publishing whereof as he saith he hath obeyed your Majesty And whereas A Reply to the said Relation is now under the Patronage of JESUS CHRIST and in obedience to his Word and by assistance of his Grace here published and presented to your Majesty and before all the World in which Reply are detected and clearely evinced by manifold and infallible Testimonies sundry particular passages and Doctrines of the Relator which directly overthrow all true Christian Faith and Religion And whereas in this Reply is clearely proved that Prelaticall Government of the Church or the Hierarchy as they call it is meere Antichristianisme and the very Mistery of Iniquity branded by the Apostle and expresly forbidden by Christ himselfe to his Apostles whose Successors the Prelates falsely pretend to be and that all Prelates even as they are Prelates are both by their Profession and Practise so many Antiâ—hrists adversaries to CHRIST who as the Great Antichrist sit as Gods in the Temple of GOD Lording over the Faith Soule and Conscience of GODS People thrusting CHRIST out of his Throne And whereas notwithstanding the manifest truth hereof confirmed by most cleare Testimony and undeniable Proofes of Scripture the Relator or Prelate hath in his said Relation uttered sundry blasphemous Speeches belying the Wisedome Counsell and Providence of GOD and of CHRIST as making Him the Author and Ordainer of such a Hierarchicall Government of his Church which is to Father upon GOD and CHRIST a most notorious Lye and Falshood where he addes withall a blasphemous New Article of Belief of the Church of England that this is a truth And whereas the Holy Scriptures is and hath been in all Ages and by all Sound and Orthodox Divines both Ancient and Moderne both Forraigne and Domestick universally received held and constantly beleeved and maintained against all Adversaries of the Truth to be the Onely Rule of Faith and Iudge of Controversies in Divinity and alone Selfe-sufficient to give Testimony to it selfe that it is the undoubted Word of GOD as in this Reply also is fully prooved And whereas the Relator notwithstanding hath loded the Scripture with many intollerable reprâ—ohes and blasphemous words of disgrace censuring it as an insufficient witnesse to it selfe and an incompetent Iudge of Controversies in Faith as being both a blinde dumbe and dead Judge and that it hath no light in it selfe but is as a Candle in a box without light till Tradition of the present Church doe light it and the like the very ground of all Infidelity and Apostacie And whereas notwithstanding all such his blasphemies against the Scripture wherewith he hath stuffed some 30 leaves in Follio besides many other the like scattered all along his Book he the same Relator out of his grosse hypocrisie addeth this proud Blasphemy to all the rest That he hath given the Scripture all honour and ascribed unto it Sufficiencie more then enough And whereas also as appeareth in this Reply the Relator belyes and blasphemes the Holy Ghost himselfe making him the Author of most notorious lyes and vanity And whereas the Relator doth define a meere false and counterfeit Catholicke Church contrary to that Holy Catholick Church beleeved in the Creed whereby he overthrowes both that Article of Faith and with all the Communion of Saints teaching that his Catholicke Church though it cease to be holy yet is a true Church of CHRIST still And whereas of and in this his new Catholicke Church which the Relator beleeveth he makes the Church of England and of Rome to be one and the same Church and both to hold one and the same Faith of that his Catholicke Prelaticall Church which Faith is declared in the Reply not to be the true saving Faith and that they both do set up and professe one and the same Religion not different in which Faith and Religion of the Church of England and of Rome he saith as he hath lived so he resolves to dye as much to say as he will live and dye an English-Romish-Catholicke And whereas the Replyer proveth and which no Papist denyeth that the maine substance of the Romish Religion is the Masse And whereas the Relator confesseth that though a simple Papist may as he saith yet no Romanist as a Romanist living and dying in the Roman Faith can be saved and yet this Faith of Rome is the same with that of England wherein he will end his dayes So as the Church of England may hereby see in what a case she is and how highly she is preferred by her Primate as to be brought to be of the same Church the same Faith the same Religion with Rome enough to startle all your Majesties Subjects that till now thought themselves to bo Protestants and no Papists and to cause all zealous Christians to abandon all communion with such a Church as is the same Church of the same Faith and Religion with Rome And wheras
this Relator professeth and teacheth a blind Charity sutable to his Faith which he boldly affirmeth to be not a mistaken Charity in granting that a silly ignorant Papist so living and dying may be Saved by his Ignorance in that Religion conforming himselfe to his Religious life and on the contrary condemning such Protestants of stiffenesse and churlishnesse that are not of the same Charity with him though the Replyer proveth that there is no true Charity without true Faith and Verity And whereas the same Relator is shewed in this Reply to give much more liberty to your Majesties Protestant People to goâ— to the Romish Masse as being with him one and the same undiffering Religion with that of England then the Jesuite doth to his blind Romanist to come to the English Church And whereas the same Relator hath many passages wherein he makes a Generall Councell of Prelates Iudge in all Controversies of Faith ascribing unto them an Infallibility and in case they shall erre and that even in grosse things and points of Faith yet that all men are bound to yeeld obedience at least externall till another Generall Counsell equall to the former reverse those Errours whereupon by Consequence of this Prelaticall doctrine as the Replyer doth instance the Church of England it self is bound to observe the worship of Images and the forbearance of the Cup in the Sacrament c. decreed in Generall Councels and not yet reversed by other Generall Councels equall to those And whereas the Relator calls Transubstantiation Purgatory and the forbearance of the Cup but disputable and Improbable Questions the nature of which is to be taken indifferently Pro and Con And whereas he never once in all his Relation calls the Romish-worship of Images and of the Sacrament or any other Idolatry in all the Romish Church but onely by the name of Superstition abstaining altogether from the name of Idolatry as if with him the Roman Church were no Idolatresse And whereas he much lamenteth the Seperation and rent between the Protestants and Rome with the continuance of it although with the Iesuite he confesse that errour in Faith is just cause of separation And whereas he the same Relator doth cunningly yet palpably enough in sundry passages of his Booke as also he hath openly done viva voce at the High-Commission-Board exclude all the Reformed Protestant Churches beyond the Seaes as no Churches of Christ as not admitting the Hierarchy Finally also in his Book quipping Luther and in him all the Reformed Churches as having made a rent not onely from Rome with her corruptions but even from the Catholick Church it selfe which indeed in the Relators sense and difinition of the Catholicke Church is most true to wit from the universall Hierarchy And whereas he the Relator doth every where highly extoll his Ceremonies in Gods worship as without which he saith there is no light left to shine before men that they may see his Devotion and so glorify GOD therein most foulely and odiously perverting and abusing the holy Text of Scripture uttered by CHRIST to a cleane other purpose as the Replyer hath noted all which Ceremonies being a will-worship after the Tradition and Commandement of men the Apostle doth utterly condemn as wherby the very merits of Christs death are made of none effect who in his death destroyed All Ceremonies in Religion obliging the Conscience and not onely the Leviticâ—ll but all other whatsoever of humane Ordinance as the Replyer clearely proveth So as it is not left to any Power on Earth to impose the least Ceremony yea though it be of nature indifferent to bind the Conscience in the service of GOD seeing all such imposition is Antichristian Tyranny And whereas all Prelaticall Hereticall and Antichristian Faction erected by the Prince of darkenesse against Iesus Christ and his Kingdome as is apparent both by their profession and practice wherein they have nothing at all yea not any one thing to show wherein they resemble either Christ or any one of his Apostles except Iudas Christs Kingdome being altogether spirituall and not of this world but the Hierarchy a meere carnall and worldly Kingdome onely guilded over with the bare name of spirituall And whereas the Relator throughout his whole Booke bewrayeth his most palpable and profound ignorance and notorious blindnesse in the whole mystery of Faith and all true divinity in so much as when ever he Cites Scripture he still perverts it to a wrong sense and is not able to bring any proofe either from Scripture or Common Reason except from some of his Jesuiticall Authors for any of his Paradoxes and strange doctrines delivering all without Book tanquam è Cathedra as but of some Papall unerring Chaire upon the Authority of his bare word and upon meere trust And whereas the Relator saith That worth once misled is of all other the greatest misleader and who of greater worth in the Church of England and in the Esteem of Great ones too then the Great Primate himselfe whose very word with many is taken as a divine Oracle So as if the Church and State of England will but pin their soules upon this Leaders sleeve he will not fayle to lead them in that way the issue whereof seem it never so right in the eyes of credulity will certainly prove to be as Solomon saith the wayes of death And whereas by the Relator sundry occasions are ministred to the Replyer of instancing divers practises charged upon the Prelate as the principall Agent or Instrument of setting up sundry Innovations in Religion in the Church of England all which have been done under his Primacie as The republishing under your Majesties Name the Book for liberty of profane Sports on the Lords day with pressing Ministers to read the Sayd Book in their severall Congregations and upon refusall extreamely persecuting them and thrusting them from their Ministry and meanes with their poore wives and children The authorizing and licencing of some Doctors Books which cry down the Morality of the 4 th Commandement for the Sanctifying of the Lords Sabbath day The setting forth of a New Order to restraine Preachers from Preaching in the Afternoones on the Lords dayes much pressed by the Prelates and their Officers in all their visitations The setting forth of a Declaration in your Majesties Name prefixed to the Articles of Religion which the Prelates practises plainly interpret to be for the restraining and prohibiting altogether the Doctrines of Saving Grace to be preached and wherein the genuine sense of those Articles touching Grace which formerly were universally interpreted to have but one sence agreeable to the Scripture is confounded with the heterodox hereticall doctrines of the Pelagians and Arminians so as none can tell what to make of those Articles saving that by this meanes the Orthodox Ministers must not preach the truth and the Adverse party and Faction may find footing and countenance for their groundlesse and gracelesse heresies and all this to the manifest
dishonour of the Word of Grace the distraction of good Ministers and the destruction of many thousand soules The pressing and setting up of Altars attended with sundry adorations images crucifixes to the open Scandall of many and for non-admittance whereof with other Innovations or rather Renovations of old Popish Reliques many good Ministers and people of GOD have deeply suffered by all which practises and sundry more the Replyer hath plainly and particularly proved how the very Foundations of Faith and Christian Religion are not onely terribly shaken but razed and ruined so as the very Foundations of the earth doe tremble withall and more especially how not onely by unmoralizing of the 4 th Commandement whereby the Floodgates of all profanenesse are broken up and the uncannonizing as it were or making voyd of the doctrines of grace but by the setting up of Altars with all their Service and Ceremonies is an absolute denying and renouncing of Iesus Christ our onely Altar as the Replyer hath shewed at large And whereas notwithstanding terrible persecutions if it be lawfull to call a Spade a Spade have followed upon these Innovations which have fallen most heavy upon the faithfull Ministers and their Families yet the sayd Relator whether out of notorious hypocrisie or egregious malice or both is not afraid to abuse the Sacred Name of GOD nor ashamed to cast a myst before the open eyes of all the world saying * GOD forbid I should ever offer to perswade a Persecution in any kind or practise it in the least whereas if Persecution be Persecution whether he hath perswaded to it or diswaded perhaps your Majesty can tell and how little he hath practised it thousands have sufficiently felt And whereas the Replyer upon occasion by the Relator hath declared fully the Tragicall Story of the Cause Censuring and suffering of a late Minister of the Gospell depriving him of his Ministry and all worldly comforts and all for the meere discharge of his Ministeriall duty in admonishing his people of such dangerous Innovations as were then creeping yea and crowding into many Churches for the which he hath been so terribly censured and still suffereth both closse Imprisonment and Punishment with Divorcement and Seperation from wife and children and all friends whatsoever as a man buried quick in a Marble Tombe of perpetuall Calamity the very Image of hell such an Example as no age no history sacred or profane is able to parrallell that a man should be so terribly Censured and that upon this very ground that he would not do that whereby he should assent to the condemning of his Cause before the hearing his Answere in Court for Defence of his Cause being wholly precondemned by the two Judges as impertinent and Scandalous And whereas notwithstanding the Relator doth still insult trample upon and imbitter his inke with gall blacking the innocent with foule reproaches whom all the Court could not charge with the least offence or crime but that they said he was too bitter which he gave good reason for And whereas the cry of innocent blood both of that Servant of Christ and of his Companions is gone up to heaven against the whole Land pleading and clayming Iustice at that High and righteous Throne so as heaven and earth are troubled with the cry which will not be appeased till Iustice be done And whereas GOD hath put into your Majesties hand both the word of his Truth as the onely Rule whereby to reforme all errors and corruptions wherewith his worship is profaned and the Sword of Iustice to vindicate the Cause of the oppressed Innocents And whereas so great a worke as the Reformation of Religion is above the Spheere of any ordinary Court of your Kingdome so as even the Honourable Boord of Starre-Chamber disclaymed that Office where the sayd Innocent standing before them desired Justice in that behalfe yea and is too heavie a burthen to lye upon the Kings shoulders alone and much more as the case now stands in such a perplexity of things and universality of corruptions which as a leprosie hath overspread the whole body of the Land And seeing Christian Prudent Grave and Pious Princes use not upon the first sound or sight to slight or reject as fables or flashes of some brain-sick man such deepe charges as the Replyer here presenteth and presseth hard upon the Relator by such sound and demonstrative arguments and which do so nearely concerne the State of the whole Land which by reason of Prelaticall outrages seconded with the publication of the said Relation the very Portent of Confusion lies now a bleeding And whereas the contempt of just complaints and neglect of Iustice in such Cases of so high a nature would necessarily argue that men have sold themselves as having made a covenant with death as the Prophet speakes and an agreement with hell being justly given up of GOD to dâ—struction as in the case of Amasiah King of Iuda who threatning the Lords Prophet for reprooving him the Prophet replyed Now I know that God hath determined to destroy thee because thou hast not hearkened to my Counsell even as it came to passe a little after in the same Chapter Amasiah would not heare for it came of God that he might deliver them into the hand of their enemies because they sought after the Gods of Edom as the Prelate professeth for the Church of England one Faith and Religion with Rome And whereas the Hierarchy being an Antichristian Kingdome shall perish with Antichrist and all they together that support and confederate with it against Christs Kingdome his Gospell and Truth as the Relator doth in his Book So as to suffer such a Rebell against Christ as the Replyer hath proved him to be and much more to Patronize him and his worke were to maintain open warre against heaven and to make your Majesty guilty of all those blasphemies and heresies in it which GOD forbid And whereas to whom much is committed of him much shal be required and the Office of Kings is of all other highest on earth and therefore God will require the strictest account of them and the more where the light of the Gospell hath also clearely shined forth leaving no place for pleading ignorance it being lo the honour of Kings to search out a matter as Solomon saith throughly to inquire into the Cause brought before him and therein to do exact and impartiall justice much lesse committing the Cause to be judged by the Adversary or Party but to judge righteous judgement And whereas GOD hath sent of late sundry fearefull signes from heaven as warning-pieces to England to awaken the State thereof to a more deepe consideration of the condition wherein it stands obnoxious unto and naked before that dreadfull Judge for her most notorious and hideous crying sins iniquities transgressions and impieties in all kinds and in the highest degree and to lay down her high pride and selfe-confidence and gyant-like daring in lifting her selfe up
against Iesus Christ and his High-Throne in oppressing and trampling upon his sacred Word and Ministers and People least by standing out in open defiance against God and in the defence and maintenance of her Rebellion with a high hand God be provoked altogether to confound her So as if a more mature Reformation of such hideous enormities whereof the Relator is here by the Replyer convinced be not seriously thought of and speedily and effectually put in execution to be secure in looking for Peace or any Good not having thus made peace with God were but to bewray a mind desperate and past all hope of remedy And lastly whereas the Replyer to all these his high Charges upon the Relator hath for some speciall reasons to himselfe not set his Name it being neither out of any distrust of the goodnesse of his Cause nor yet feare of men by others Example when as your Majesty shal be pleased to send forth your Royall Edict commanding that the Repyer whoever he be come forth and appeare to make proofe of all his Allegations against the Relator assuring him of an equall just and faire unpartiall hearing in such a Court of Iustice as the Replyer himselfe shall nominate and appeale unto which is not cannot be lesse then the most High and Honourable Court of Parliament which the necessity of things so nearely concerning the whole Land doth with all importunity call for he the Replyer will then be ready God giving him life and health in all humble duty and allegeance to present himselfe and personally face to face before the Honourable Court by the assistance of that Grace which first set him aworke and inabled him to finish it make good his whole Reply against the Relator It would therefore please your most Excellent Majesty the waighty Premises seriously consiâ—ered and upon your mature Revisall of this Reply or at least of the brief contents thereof prefixed to the Reply with the eye of your soundest and sollidest judgement directed by the wisdome of Gods owne Spirit which hath the hearts of Kings in his all-swaying hand and for vindicating of Gods glory and your own honour so deeply suffering in the forenamed respects and for staying of Gods hand stretched out and the preventing of further calamities not onely to take to heart and into your Royall hand the speedy reformation of such things as have been done and all in your Majesties Name still for that must beare all the burthen since the Relators Primacy as namely in the first place to send forth your Royall Edict for the taking downe of all Altars which where ever they stand doe stand in open defiance against Christ another for the calling in of your Book for Sports on the Lords dayes a third for the calling in of your Declaration before the Articles of Religion a fourth for the calling in of all Orders for the restraint of Preaching a fift for the restoring in Integrum that is not onely to their Ministry and Charge but to their liberty in Christ from the bondage both of Prelates and Ceremonies all those godly Ministers who out of Coâ—scienâ—e and duty towards God and not out of any disrespect or mucâ— lesse disloyalty towards your Majesty for refusing to read the said Book have been by the Prelates thrust out of all a Sixt if not the First for the quite releasing and setting at full liberty your three poore banished Prisoners that the loud cry of their oppressions breake not through the walls and barres and roofes of their straight inclosure to the piercing of the heavens and the provoking of their wrath to dart downe the thunderbolt of Divine revenge to the blasting of the beauty of your State while as a tall Ceder or sturdy Oake it stoutly lifts it selfe up on high as if it would threaten heavens throne and lastly all this done without which what can prosper and that you may make your Peace with GOD as you have done with Scotland to Proclaime a Publick Fast with Prayer and Humiliation for the deprecating of Gods high displeasure for what is past and the procuring of his favour and blessing upon you and your Kingdome and thereupon send forth your Royall writs for the calling of a Parliament for the redressing and removing of the maine Causes of all the disorders and enormities in the Church and State So shall your Kingdome be established and your Crowne flourish in abundance of Peace and Prosperity to your Majesty and your Royall Posterity which the Petitioners the true Church and Children the true Faith and Religion of Iesus Christ will never be wanting to sollicite the throne of Grace for THE CONTENTS OF THE PRINCIPALL PASSAGES IN THIS INSUING REPLY AND first to the Relators Epistle Dedicatory The left-hand Figure notes the Page of the Relators Book the right-hand the Replyers L. page 1. HOw the Prelate by pinning his Booke upon the Kings Patronage doth thereby expose him to the perill of being guilty of patronizing all the blasspemies falsities therein page 2. 2. What Truth and how the Prelate seeks it ibid. 7. What use the Prelate makes of Gods restoring him from his Fever p. 3. 7. What he meanes by the Scandalous and Scurrilous pennes of some bitter men with a short Narration of their Cause and Tragicall suffering ibid. Notorious Hypocrisie of the Prelate and taking Gods name in vaine pag. 3 4.6.8 Prelates mercies exceed all Heathen cruelty 6. A strange Precedent without Precedent to censure a Man because he would not consent to the condemning of his Cause before the Hearing 7. The Prelate Shrewdly put to it for his blood-guiltinesse and shamelesse hypocrisie 7 8. A new-found Art under colour of Answering Jesuites to strike a leagve with Popery 9. 7. The Prelates notorious perverting of Scripture which is retorted upon himselfe by a true Application 10 11 12. 7. Gods Ministers for sharpe and particular reproving of sin and sinners proved not to be Libellous nor Scandalous by many examples 11 12 13. How Prelates with the High Priests and Pharisees are guilty of all the blood of the Saints shed from Abel hitherto 15 16. True marks of a Minister of Christ extraordinarily raysed up of God ibid. 7. What kind of Men the Prelates Divines of worth and Note be 16 17. How the Prelate publisheth his Booke to vindicate his Reputation and with whom ibid. 7. A Prosopopaeia representing the Prelates Divines speaking to him 17 18. 7. The Prelate selfe-deluded by the unanimous Councels of his Divines as Ahab was by his false Prophets 19. The Prelates Booke like Caesars sacrifice ibid. The Replyers Councel to the Prelate 19. The Prelates Booke how reprobate Silver 21. The Mystery of burning Salis his Devotions opened 20. How the Prelates Tract needs leading into the light 21. 11. Notorious hypocrisie of a most persecuting Prelate detected as most detestable 21 22. worse then that of Stephen Gardiner and Bonner ibid. The Prelate sore pressed with sundry Scriptures by the
in his innocent nakednesse then with his devised Fig-leaves how applyed to the Prelaticall Church 103 104. Prelates Service sensuall and heathenish as done to an unknown God fully displayed 104. Prelates pompous Ceremonies like the Cardinals Sumpter 105. No necessity of Prelates Ceremonies sith both Superstitious and Superfluous saving that they are all the Substance of their Religion 106 107. True Reformation ought to have no Ceremonies at all to bind the Conscience 107. Prelates Ceremonies strengthen Superstition and Idolatry and destroy true piety 108. What is that Substance of Religion which Prelates Ceremonies doe fence 106 107. And what strength they adde to his Religion how it is weaknesse not to see 108. Prelates Ceremonies are beggerly Rudiments yea Aegyptian bonds and Babilonish Chaines 108. How by the Prelates Ceremonies so eagrely urged the Jesuites win ground 108 109. Romes Reconciliation hastened by hossing up wodden Altars and hurling down golden Ministers 109. The Jesuites hale in Popery through the Prelates broad Gates he hath layd open ibid. 21. How the Prelate hath layd open the wider-gates of his Catholicke Church by pulling down the walls and bulwarks of Christs true Church 109. The Prelates wider-Gates whither they lead 110. The Prelate hath nothing to doe with the true Faith nor Communion with the true Saints ibid. He perverteth the Scripture Jude 3. falsely applying the Saints Faith to his boundlesse Catholicke Church 110. What Truth the Prelate professeth and with what singlenesse of heart 110 111. And his notorious hypocrisie in deluding the King 111. The Prelate puts all his Book upon the King as published in obedience to his Majesties command ibid. What we may expect from the Prelate who resolves to dye in that Faith wherein he hath lived ibid. And so what hope he can have of Gods favour 112. THE CONTENTS OF THE MAINE POINTS AND PASSAGES IN THIS insuing Reply to the Relation it selfe 2. WHat is that Church whose judgement the Prelate would have the people to depend upon 113. And not to be too busie with Seripture but moderately in things obvious 114. How the Prelate yeelds the Jesuite this that the Church of Rome is a true Church on whose judgement people must depend 115. The Prelate a Subtile underminer of the Truth 116. 4. The papall Church holds no one point of Saving Truth ibid. 23. How the Prelate vants himselfe for the great Champion of the Church of England 117. 29. How the Prelate overthrows Christ while he makes things not Fundamentall in the Faith necessary to some mens Salvation but tells us not who those be 117 118. 31. How the Prelate can bind all men to peace by his Churches Declaration yea though it be not the Churches 118. The dangerous Consequences hereof 119. 32. The Prelate selfe-condemned for adding things contrary and detracting things necessary 120. 35. How against the Prelate things considered in the manner of Beeing onely are fundamentall in the Faith Instanced in sundry particulars 120 121. The many absurd consequences of Popish Reall-presence ibid. 37. How the Prelate makes things which are fundamentall in the Faith not to be so to all men 122. See 117.118 If the Prelate doe at all discerne what the true Faith is what use he makes of it 122. 39. How the Prelate falsifies Lyrinencis and is loth to English some of his words 123. If the Church of Rome be Lupanar Errorum a Stews of Errours 't were good that all should know her in plain English to be so to avoyd her though the Prelate be loth English men should know it ibid. How the Prelate applauds the Iesuite Stapleton in a grosse point of Popery whom Dr. Whitakers in the Chaire at Chambridge confuted 124. How therein the Prelate prefers Stapleton before Bellarmine who comes nearer to the Truth ibid. 40. How the Prelate is justly as an Enemy to Assurance of Salvation and so of true Saving Faith 124. 43. How the Prelate makes it whether for a penny Beliefe of Scripture or the Creed hath the Precedencie of a Prime Principle of Faith 125. 44. The Prelate allows some Traditions for Apostolick though not fundamentall in the Faith ibid. 45. The Prelates Faith of Christs Descent into hell which Article is by the Replyer discussed 126 to 129. 47.48 For default of examining the Articles of the Creed by Scripture the Prelate overthrows two Articles The Catholicke Church and the Communion of Saints 129. 51. Notwithstanding the Prelate we ought boldly and publickly to affirme The Truth against errour 132. 53. The Prelate submits the Faith of the Church of England to the judgement of the Fathers whether her Articles be according to Scripture How by those Fathers he is condemned 132 133. With what limitation the Church within the first 400 or 500. yeares may be sayd to have been at the best 133 134. How the Replyer declines the occasion of entring into a comparison between the truly Reformed Protestant Churches and that within the first 500. years after the Apostles 134. Conformity to Popish Rites a Pretence to bring Papists to Church as the Christians anciently intertained Heathen manners to draw them to be Christians 134. Augustine complained of Ceremonies then when if the Prelate say true the Church was at the best ibid. 62. The Prelates false professed Faith concerning the Catholicke Church in the Creed which he defines to be the Society of all Christians 135. 66. How the Prelate jumpes with Bellarmine for a word of God as well unwritten as written 135 136 137. Baptisme of Infants a Doctrine of Scripture not an unwritten Tradition We ought to repaire to Scripture in all doubts of Faith 137. 72 73. How the Prelates words not well examined may make us beleeve he is no Arminian but Orthodox in the Doctrine of Grace while he abuses the Scripture most palpably and grosly 138 139. 75 76. What the place and office of naturall Reason is in judgeing of Scripture against the Prelate magnifying naturall Reason to the vilifying of Scripture the blindnesse and vanity thereof in judging of Divine things and matters of Faith 140 141 142 143. Vnsanctified Reason how it judges the Scripture to be false 143. How the Prelate is put to his naturall Reasons pregnancy in matters of Faith 1â—2 77. The Prelates extreme blindnesse or malice in saying The Scripture is strengthened with probable Arguments from the light of Nature and humane Testimony to convince men without which it is not so demonstratively evident of it selfe 144. At large confuted 14â— to 149. A secret power in Scripture convincing a naturall man in the reading or hearing of it preached that it is the very word of God 148 149 150. See also A motion of the Replyer to the Prelate how he shall make tryall of the Scriptures powerfull sufficiencie to convince him that it is the word of God 149. A comparison of the Scripture with the Sun 151. Gods word preached and not Church-Tradition the ordinary prime motive and instrument of Faith Illustrated
Church-Tradition to the morning Light detected and shewed to halt down-right of all foure 217 218. The Prelate still unreasonably inculcates his Church-Tradition 218 219. He is brought into a Circle 219. 121. The Prelates Whimsey suckt in from the Popish Schoole That Divinity hath a Science about it confuted 219 220. What true Divinity properly is ibid. 122. The Prelate selfe-condemned while his leaning too much upon Tradition may mislead Christians 221 The Prelate still prosecutes his Tradition ibid. His misapplying of his Schoole-distintion 222 223 224. Shoole-distinctions must be well examined by Scripture 224. 125. The Prelate calls the Protestants Seperation from Popery a miserable rent which he lamenteth with a bleeding heart 225 226. His vanity discovered ibid. A most shamefull or rather shamelesse lye of the Prelate detected 226. His blasphemous lye that he hath given the Scripture more then enough 227. The Prelate confesseth he goeth the same way with the Jesuite for Church-Tradition ibid. A subtile and sly insinuation of the Prelate detected of vanity ibid. The onely difference between the Prelate and Jesuite about Tradition noted 228. 128. The Prelate vaunting the Roman Church to be a true Church with his reasons confuted 229 2â—0 231 232 233 234. Rome holds neither Word nor Sacraments Ergo no true Church 131 132. The Prelates privy nipping and pretty quipping of Luther and in him all the Reformed Protestant Churches as seperating from Rome not onely as it was then false but as once formerly true 236. And so he shuts them out as Seperatists from the true Catholicke Church as â—e accounts â—t ibid 133. How tenderly the Prelate toucheth Rome for her Superstition and errour and not once in all his Book charging her with Idolatry 23â— Who be the Prelates best men who he saith most bemone his miserable rent ibid. Reconciliation of true Protestants with Rome impossible ibid. The vanity of the Prelates Apologie for the Protestants about the Rent 238. The Synagogue of Rome and her Corruptions are grown into one intire body ibid. 135. The Prelate no observer of his own Law in interpreting of words ibid. The Prelates vaine condition to the Jesuite about Reconciliation with Rome 238 239. Why the Prelate so names The Great Sacrament of the Eucharist 239. 136. True Protestants protest against such damnable Corruptions of Rome as the Prelate accounts essentiall parts of his Catholicke Church ibid. 138. Why the Replyer hath so sharpened his style against the Prelate 241 The Example of Irenaeus arguing with Victor declared and retorted upon the Prelate concerning Ceremonies 241 242 243. 140. The Prelate beleeves that though his whole Militant Church cease to be holy yet she is a Church of Christ still 245 confuted to 251. The Prelates Militant Church why so called It is the Malignant and Antichristian Church 251 252. The Prelate implyes his Militant Church may fall from the Foundation and cease to be holy and become Hereticall and an Assembly of Hereticks ibid. The true difference between the Prelates false Militant Church and of the onely True ibid. Christs true Militant Church connot fall from the Foundation A notable instance and demonstration shewing that denyers of the Christian Sabbath day to be commanded in the 4th Commandement is an overthrowing of a fundamentall point of Faith and consequently of the whole Faith 248 249. A cleare Declaration of the Sabbath day commanded in the 4th Commandement and applyed to us Christians 248 249 250. How farre in this and other points of faith the Prelates Church of England is fallen is put to the Prelates consideration 250. 141 142. Romes errours being dyed in graine cannot by the Prelates confession consist with holinesse 251 252. 142. A peremptory Speech of the Prelate 252. The Prelate plainly enough blameth the Protestants both for making and continuing the Separation and that most peremptâ—rily ibid. How Jesuites are by the Laws of England to be disputed with and where 253. The Prelates honesty wherein it consisteth 254. namely in excluding the Scripture as Iudge an disputation ibid. 148. The Prelates Faint confession that Romes errous doe onely indanger Salvation 254. The Prelates tender Heart loth to make the rent wider ibid. Not so tender to Christs Lambs as to the Romish wolfe 255. How by the Jesuites Confession alledged by the Prelate the Protestants can abandantly justifie their Seperation from Rome ibid. The Ten Tribes under Jeroboam how no true Church against the Prelate 255 compared with Rome 256. 153 154. The Prelates notorious hypocrisie detected in his calling Pelagianisme that great bewitching Heresie As also in naming sâ—me Councels as setting the Church right therein Retorted upon the Prelate 259 260 261. 1â—5 The Prelate confuted by those examples himselfe alledgeth about his Princes and Clergies power and direction for Reformation of Religion 261 262. Of Englands halfe-Reformation now made a whole Deformation 262. To whom Reformation of Religion belongs and how ib. The Replyer justifies his answering the Prelate by his own confession 262. 157. The Prelate still persists in his obstinacie not allowing the Scripture for Iudge in doubtfull Cases 263. 171. The Prelate glories in the Title of Patriarchate of the other world which the Pope gave to his Prdecessor Anselme 263 264. An honest Cobler to be preferred before all the Prelates Pontificall and pompous Titles 264. 175. Authority of Prelates over the Clergie no Calling from God 264 to 268. Of what known use and benefit they be for unity and peace Hieromes words omitted by the Prelate That Prelates were brought in by humane presumption and not by Divine Institution 264. Scripâ—ure hath no Diocesan Bishops 267 268. 2. but they are usurpers and Tyrants 177. Domination Prelaticall with Subjection thereto confessed by the Prelate to be grounded on Canon and Positive Law 267. How the Prelates are fallen between two Stooles 268. 2. They call themselves Princes 269. 2. What kind of Princes they be 270. And who be the true Princes 269 2. 183. The Prelates necessity of one Ordine Primus and confession that the Popes Principality was the very fountain of Papall Greatnes do prove that of necessity the Prelaticall Catholicke Church is the very Head and Body of Antichrist confederate against Christ and his true Church 268 269 270 271. 182. How and whereupon the Prelate would reduce all to Rome 272 273. Where his subtilty anent the Popes Supremacy and Infallibility iâ— detected He is selfe-condemened 274. 199. How by the Prelates confession the Pope and so other Prelates cannot prosper because they have no Authority from God 274. Proud Prelates are none of Christs privy Councel 276 277. 200. The Prelates blasphemy against Christ making him the Author of the Antichristian Hierarchy detected and confuted 275 to 289. Prelates Ecclesiasticall Government not Aristocraticall but Tyrannicall 275 276. How Prelates differ from true Bishops in Scripture 278 to 281. For Prelates to be Vice-Roys how impious and absurd 28â— to 286. How unlike they are to Christ 282. Their
Kingdome meerly Temporall 283. Their Government Oligarchicall ibid. Christs Congregations have no need of Prelates to visit them having their own lawfull Pastor to feed them 285. The Govenment of Christs Church is most perfect of all other as consisting of the 3 States of good Politie or Government to wit the Monarchiall the Aristocraticall and the Democraticall 286. Prelates Lordly Tyranny expresly condemned by Christ as Heathenish 287 to 290. 204. The Prelaticall Church in England no lesse Tryumphant then the Prelate taxeth Rome to be 290 291. 205. By the Prelates own allegation nor Kings nor Priests may doe any thing in Reformation of Religion besides Gods prescript Law 291 292. And so by his Confession implicitly where the foundation of Faith and Good Manners are shaken therein Magistrates are not to be obeyed in which respect the Prelate is shrewdly put to it in sundry instances 293 to 297. 210. The Prelate againe blasphemeth Gods Name as if a favourer of the Prelaticall practises in England 297. A blasphemous Article of Faith of the Prelates pinning upon the Church of England ibid. Prelaticall Canons yea and Papall too yoaked and equalled by the Prelate with Scriptures in Governing the Church We must not joyn in Prayer with notorious profane Hypocrites and Enemies of Christ and of his Truth 298. A speciall Prayer for the King in these perillous times ibid. King and State abused and indangered by the Prelates practises and putting forth of this his Booke ibid. The Prelate proves all his Speculations with his bare word 199. What a Polititiant he Ch. of Eng. is grown under such a Primate Prelates no visible Judges of Gods Institution proved at large against the Prelates Blasphemy 399 300 301. Prelates Canons such Law-books as wherewith Christs Law-book cannot consist but is made of none effect They are Antichristian bondage ibid. No more necessity of one Primate over all England then of one pope over All 302. A Speciall duty of Christian Magistrates ibid. 212. How uniny and certainty of Faith is preserved by the Prelates 303. 194. The Prelate makes the Scripture a blind dumb and dead Judge 303 304. Of Generall Councels sundry notable Passages scattered along his Booke and collected by the Replyer and detected to be some of them ridiculous and all of them most impious and detestable from 304 to 324. How by the Prelates Doctrine both himselfe and his Church of England are bound to worship Images and to forbeare the Cup in the Sacrament as being decreed by Generall Councels and not yet reversed by any other equall to those 312 313. The Apostles Assembly Act. 15. no Precedent for Generall Councels in after Ages to be Judges in Controversies of Faith 314 315. and therfore that example not prudently but surreptitiously taken up by the Prelaticall Church The Prelate confesseth that Generall Councels have no Authority by Christs Institution 312 313. How unlike Prelaticall Councels are to that Act. 15. whereof not only the Apostles but the Presbyters and the Brethren the People of God were the Body 313 314. How the Prelate holds the Difinitions of Generall Councels to be infallible and that there is no more question to be made of the assistance of the Holy Ghost in them then that the Holy Ghosts assistance is without errour 325 326. The Prelate boldly professeth that he absolutely maketh a Generall Councel Judge of Controversies 327. Wherein he is abolutely fallen from the Catholick Faith His sundy assertions some ridiculous some contradictorious some blasphemous some darke riddles which he propounds and leaves unresolved and can never Resolve 321 322. He is catcht fast in his own Net And the more he struggleth to unwind himselfe out the mâ—re he is intangled 213. Though the Councel of Trent were not Generall yet it is so Generall as the Decrees thereof do bind all Papists under Anathema 328. 227. Another Reason of the Prelates why a Generall Councel erring yet should stand in force namely for the peace of Christendome confuted He is content to forgoe the Truth for Peace sake 328. The Prelates Heresie in holding it a branch of Heresie to say The Church Militant is without spot or wrinckle according to Ephes. 5. confuted 329 330. The Prelate overthrows an Article of the Faith 331. The Prelates Key of Doctrine primely in the Church wherewith he shuts out Truth and lets in Errour 329. He makes it but a supposition for the Key of Doctrine to let in Truth ibid. The Prelates subtile but futile and vaine Distinction of Transubstantiation confuted 332. He makes Christs Institution not to be cleare against Transubstantiation as against Communion in one Kind Confuted fully 333 334. Romish Adoration of Images minced by the Prelate set forth by the Replyer in its full proportion and shewed to be more grosse Idolatry then that of the Heathen 334 335 336. 280. The Prelates notorious hypocrisie in confessing Images in Churches and other Romish Superstitions to have given great Scandall to many so as to drive them quite away from them detected and selfe-condemned by his practises 337 338. Will-worship in Altar-Service and the like a Service of the Devil 340 341. The Prelates hot zeale in pressing more of Romes Ceremonies makes the old justly suspected as smelling ranke 341. Ilustrated by a similitude ibid. The Prelates Ceremonies condemned by the Same Testimony which he alledgeth 343 344. the By beâ—ng put for the Maine See before 280. The Prelate stands stiffly in this That a silly ignorant Papist living and dying in the Romish Faith may thereby conforming himselfe to his Romish Religious life be saved with his Reasons his so learning of Christ and his Charity not mistaken confuted 345 to 350. That which the Prelate calls Churlishnesse in the Protestants is better then the Prelates Charity ibid. 294 295. The Prelates quoting of 3. Martyrs for the Name of Reall Presence which he would faine have to be brought in use answered 350 351 352 353. Reasons why we ought not to name the Reall Presence in the Sacrament 351. 297. The Prelate dallies with Transubstantiation Purgatory Forbearance of the Cup in saying they are Disputed or Disputable and Improbable Questions 353 354. Romes Tyranny confessed by the Prelate the Image whereof is proved to be in the Prelacy of England 356 357. How he dawbes with the Jesuites about their Salvation 357 358. 299. The Prelate contradicts himselfe and so overthrows his Faith and Charity concerning a silly Papists Salvation in Saying That as a Romanist he cannot be saved 357 358. The Prelates vaine ridiculous and absurd hope of the Salvation of some Papists living in the Church of Rome 358 to 363. The Prelates confession of the Romanists Faith crosseth his hope of their Salvation 372. The Prelate still hath a Reservation for the Salvation of his silly ignorant Papists 302. The Prelates worth misled the greatest misleader 363. The Prelates Rule 'T is safest to beleeve the Article of Christs Descent into hell as both the Churches of England
I find such wide gappes wherein you lye so open that you give me advantage to fasten at pleasure And I have unmasked such dark holes as your selfe have made with such artifice as through which men may easily passe thick and three-fold to Rome So as I feare you will rather complain of me as for being too busie in reading some of your dark and mysticall Riddles which perhaps you would not have had all men to have known L. p. 7. I fell into a most dangerous Fever but it pleased GOD beyond all hope to restore me to health P. This was as you there tell us upon your thoughts of giving A. C. an Answer But how ever surely your Fever was as well sent of GOD to admonish you to desist from such an Enterprise as you had then in hand which was under pretence to Answer a Jesuite to overthrow the truth and to reconcile the Church of England with that of Rome as your restoreing was to oblige you to walke more worthy of that mercy for the future and not to renue and prosecute this your Designe Or else it pleased GOD so to restore and reserve you to be not onely a scourge to his People for their further tryall and humiliation for a time untill he had as now he is in hand performed his whole worke upon his Sion but also to be a plague to that sinfull Land upon which since that your restoring you have been an Instrument to bring so many and grievous sins as open profanation of the Sabbath Altars sheding of much innocent blood both of soules and bodies and of terrible discontents and divisions in the State and the like and so at length that he might call you Magor Missabib Feare round-about making you a terrour to your selfe when you shall come to feele the fire of his fiery indignation to kindle upon you L. ibid. How of late I have been used by the Scandalous and Scurrilous Pennes of some bitter men whom I heartily beseech God to forgive the world knoweth little leasure and lesse incouragement given me to Answer a Iesuite or set upon other Services while I am under the Prophets affliction Psal. 50.19 20. P. And what those Scandalous and Scurrilous pennes are and who those some bitter men the marks you have set upon them are sufficient to shew the Scarres whereof they will carry to their graves to be a witnesse against you in the great day of doom And bitter men you may well call them as whose lives you have filled with all manner of bitternesse and that in a high degree as hell could invent Of these THREE Remarkable bitter men one was a Minister of your own Coat saving that his was not of the Scarlet couloured-Dye He preached against the Scarlet-sins of the Land especially in the Church which touched your Lordship not a little and therefore Bitter For this he was extraordinarily summoned to the Court of High-Commission from whence appealing to his Majesty he was notwithstanding proceeded against by suspension in the same Court his house violently broken open and searched his person neither flying nor resisting seased on and carryed away late in the night to prison and made a closse prisoner his very Wife debarred from him brought into the Starre-Chamber and there Censured to be degraded deprived of his living of his Liberty of his Eares on the Pillory fined in five thousand Pounds to the King and to indure perpetuall Closse imprisonment in Lancaster-Castle whence he was after 12. weeks imprisonment there in the base Common Goale where his Wife might not come to him nor any Physitian in his necessity closely conveyed to the Sea side and thence by a Sea-voyage of sixe weeks space in a stormy winter and dangerous Seas to be carryed to Guersosey Castle where ever since he hath indured Banishment in Closse prison where nor wife nor children nor any friend nor acquaintance are permitted to visit him and where he is not allowed the use of pen and inke and paper a little to deceive time withall in his solitary muse the solace of a Scholars life And what was the Cause of all this sharp and teerrible Censure In summe this He had put in his Answer to the Bill into Court and that by speciall Order of the Court where it was upon his Oath to be a true Answer admitted But about a week after the main body of his Answer which contained his defence of what he had confessed upon Oath to be his which was one onely Book intituled For GOD and the King containing the effect of his two Sermons preached in his own Church on November 5 th 1636. for which he was first questioned by the High Commission together with an Apology of an Appeale all in one Book which was by the two Lords Chiefe Iustices wholly expunged containing about foure-score sheets of paper as Impertinent and Scandalous and all this before the Interrogatories were brought to him in his Closse Prison to Answer the Answer whereunto was to be reckoned as a part of his Answer in Court such as now it was left So as the Interrogatories coming at length to be tendred to him for I have all circumstances by credible intelligence hee refused to make Answer to them alledging that his Answer which he had put into the Court being expunged as Impertinent and Scandalous he saw not himselfe any further bound to Answer Interrogatories for so doing he should assent to the condemning of his Cause before the heareing by assenting to the expunging of his true Answer as Impertinent and Scandalous Hereupon his Censure was drown up in black and white and concluded on before the Day of hearing came in which he tendred to the Court a Copy of his Intire Answer as it was fâ—rst put into the Court desiring the Court it might be there publickly read but it was refused then he tendred a Copy of his Reasons seaven in number of not Answering the Interrogatories desiring they might publickly be read in Court but that was also refused And in all the Kings Attourneys Pleading which was his Speciall Taske against BURTON hee could alledge or object nothing at all in his Book confessed against him but some Few Passages wherein they said hee was too bitter To which he Answered there was Cause for it and that he had not exceeded the Latitude or Liberty of a Minister in reprooving of Sinne and for any thing in his Book hee was there ready as he told the Court to make it good if hee might be heard But his Doom was already set downe in the blacke Booke before the Censure came which for all hee could say must not be reversed So he was Censured as before as one holding Seditious and Schismaticall opinions though none was or could be proved against him And the like censure had the other two with him the one a Physitian the other a Lawyer Now my Lord do not you well enough know all this to be true and
But wicked is a Generall word and perhaps it hath no reference here to you in particular Yes certainly you in particular the Holy Ghost doth in this Psalme point you out as it were with the finger How Note but the Title of the Psalme A Psalme for the Sabbath day But it may seem strange that David should heare speake of the wicked and of their flourishing estate What coherence hath this with the Sabbath day Surely hereby the Spirit of Prophesie notes out unto us a speciall time or age of the Church wherein ungodly men should most notoriously oppose themselves against the sanctification of the Sabbath day and wherein they should extraordinarily flourish and prosper even as the green and goodly bladed Grasse that groweth on high upon the house tops but in that their flourishing estate they should sodainly perish And of all other times and ages of the Church ever was this Prophesie so extraordinarily and remarkably verefied for ungodly and desperate offenders in this kind as in this present age and especially in the Church of England now since your springing up and flourishing upon the toppes of Canterbury Palace For shew us any age wherein the sanctification of the Sabbath or Lords day was by publike Edict dispensed with and by sundry Printed Books cryed down and you shal be excused from being of those men whom the Holy Ghost notes out here for wicked and ungodly But you cannot Therefore this Psalme for the Sabbath day speaks of you in speciall as being a professed enemy of the sanctification of the Sabbath and so of all true holinesse and yet you doe so flourish and prosper in this your wicked and impious opposition to all Godlinesse as never any have done more nor so much in mans memory But what 's the issue of this These wicked enemies of Godlinesse and of the sanctification of the Sabbath in speciall shal be destroyed for ever But when Even then when they are in the top of their flourishing estate But how shall we know this First GOD hath said it and therefore 't is sure enough and Secondly this their flourishing estate is an immediate both signe and cause of their utter ruine But doth your Lordship beleeve that this shall ever be verefied of you Why should you not For are not you the great Instrument and Agent in advancing the Edict for Sports to its full execution And why should you not then beleeve the rest that in the height of your present prosperity you shal be destroyed for evermore And why doe you not beleeve it For David saith A brutish man knoweth not neither doth a foole understand this to wit when he wicked spring as the Grasse and when all the workers of iniquity doe flourish it is that they shal be destroyed for ever And doe you not know do you not understand this Then you fill up the Prophesie to the full as verefied of you wholly L. p. ibid. But on the other side GOD forbid too that your Majesty should let both Lawes and Discipline sleep for feare of the name of Persecution and in the meane time Let Master Fisher and his fellowes angle in all parts of your Dominions for your Subjects c. P. Here I hope you speake it seriously GOD forbid At least in part For you name two things Lawes and Discipline Lawes against Jesuites as Fisher and his fellowes And herein it may be questioned perhaps by some whether you speake seriously GOD forbid that such Lawes should sleep For you know they have slept so long a time and so soundly that I feare your God forbid will not prove loud enough to awaken them And as for Discipline that 's for your Puritans And for that you need not trouble the King to breake his sleep your selfe I trow can look well enough to the keeping of that awake For in truth it can take no rest for you And therefore neither in this respect need your God forbid to be serious as being altogether superfluous Onely the best use that you can make of it as you know it better then I can tell you is is that your God forbid here may prove so happy for the vindicating of your Reputation as to perswade the misdeming world that if the Lawes against Iesuites do sleep you are not the cause of it who ever els God forbid and if Dissipline be over wakefull and too quick and exceed all bounds as having no Law to confine it alas you are not the Man God forbid For wake or sleep your God forbid your Maâ—esty should let them sleep argueth plainly that the keeping of the Discipline awake is his part whose it is not to let them sleep 'T is well my Lord you have so strong a back to lay your burthens upon as is touched before especially when they presse too hard upon you as in the clamours and outcryes against your outrages But what Doe you come here with your God forbid your Majesty should suffer Discipline to sleep when but a little before and almost with the same breath you said God forbid I should ever offer to perswade a Persecution in any kind Do we not know what the awakening of Discipline is Is it not like the awakening of a sleeping Lyon Doth not then the rigorous and incessant restlesse execution of Discipline so as it can never be suffered once to sleep trench upon Persecution at least as neare as you say at after sundry errours of the Church of Rome come neare the overthrowing of the Foundation or as their worshiping of Images comes too neare heathenish Idolatry But in your Close you apply your God forbid onely against the Jesuites That 's well that you presse it not with your Discipline upon your Puritans as you do the Lawes against Romes Fisher-men And I note here that for Jesuites you have Laws but for Puritans you have Discipline without Lawes or as it stands in opposition to Lawes But what followeth Alas what do I find saluting me in the very front of your next page L. p. 12. Now as I would humbly beseech your Majesty to keep a serious watch upon these Fisher-men which pretend S. Peters but fish not with his net so I would not have you neglect an other sort of Anglers in a shallower water P. Yet your words seem to import a greater zeale in you against the Iesuites then against your Puritans For touching those you humbly beseech but concerning these you onely would have And yet what you onely would have is somwhat and perhaps as prevailing especially when you set it on in private as your open humbly beseeching Yea being Primate of all England or Patriarcha Alterius Orbis I know not whether you may speake it in the Popes stile Volumus jubemus as much to say I would have and then by this reckoning it would surmount I humbly beseech But what 's this other sort of Fishers that you would not have his Majesty to neglect Or what these Anglers
to boot For then how easily and quickly may the Wolves and Foxes devoure all the Flocks in the Land when the faithfull Shepheards and wathmen as your Lordship knowes Leo-well are taken away and when those Fishers can show the people this your Book which as a vast net were able at one draught to inclose multitudes by exâ—rting them to be reconciled to Rome and that upon this one ground that the Church of England and of Rome is one and the same Church no doubt of that of which anon But yet me thinks I have not all this while dived deep enough to sound the bottome of this word Not neglect Somwhat of a moderate Speech in the smoothnesse of the barke Not neglect as if you should say I would not have your Majesty to be too rigorous against the Puritan Ministers good men but yet I would not have you to neglect them But we cannot better find out the full meaning of this word but by the large Commentary of your Practises which summed up together amount to thus much I would not have your Majesty to neglect that is I would not have your Majesty neglest means that can possibly be devised for the utter rooting out of these Puritans that do so pester your Kingdome And for that you must make your main aym at the suppressing of the Puritan Ministers For smite the Shepheard and the sheep wil be Scattered Now forasmuch as all Non-conformists are put to perpetuall silence wherein we have been helped by your good Lawes and we want Lawes to dealâ— with your Puritan Conformists therefore we must supply that with policie backed with your Royall Power Your Majesty must set forth Edicts laying a straight charge on us Prelates to see them executed For instance That all Ministers yea and that in their own Persons not by their Curates do read in their severall Congregations respectively your Book for Sports on Sundayes and Holy-dayes This will pack away a good many of them who I know will never read it Leâ— another be made for setting up of Altars in all Churches as that for S. GREGORIES under S. Pauls which would be pulished in Print although in the meane time it be safely kept among the Records of the Counsell Board and your Proclamation since enjoynes all Orders for Religion to be observed whether Publique or Private being made at the Counsell-Board A third to prohibit all Lectures on the week dayes and also preaching on the Afternoones on Sundayes A fourth prohibiting Controverted points to be preached on at all or Predestination c. which will mainly pinch the Puritans A fift That whatsoever Rites we Bishops doe or shall impose upon the Churches may be ratified under your Majesties Broad Seale both for the preventing of Premunires and suppressing Clamours of the People against the Prelates and enforceing Ministers to obey them A sixt That a Proclamation be published to inhibit all men from speaking or writing against the Religion of the Church of England As it is now established leaving out that other Phrase as it was in Queen Elizabeths time and turning into As it is Now established And to all these adde Vnder pain of your Majesties most heavy Displeasure not nominating any particular punishment because of the Lawes but leave that to us for so long as you doe but give us power we shall not want meanes and wayes to punish them so long as either the High Commission or Starre-Chamber doe stand And thus in short time there should not one Puritan be left in the Land And all this I meane by I would not have you neglest Thus we know your mind But in the meane time my Lord you might doe well to consider and consult what may be the Consequences of these things that you thus load the King withall What Thus to root out the Puritans and so by your Innovation of the State of Religion by Law established to make way for your Reconciliation with Rome Take heed what you doe Have you not learned that principle in the Politicks That Suddaine Changes in the Civill Government and most of all in Religion is full of perill And another notable point of prudence I have read of For a Prince how ever he may haply connive yet not to appeare the prime Author of such projects and practises as may breed a heart-burning in the people For as the Heathen Poet sung Invidia Siculi non invenere Tiranni Majus Tormentum And the Wise-man saith Who can stand before Envy Not Caesar himselfe And therefore if you tender the Kings honour and the peace and weale of his Kingdome doe not lay too great a burthen upon him Give way that some things may be imputed to your zeale so as if you should come to be questioned for it as you have no such feare so long as there is no Parliament which I hope you will look too well enough the King may have opportunity to show his favour in spreading his Royall wing over you But my Lord you professe great love to his Majesty and to the peace and prosperity of his Kingdome Will you now show how zealously and sincerely you love the King and his people at this time At this calamitous and dangerous time when you see a whole Kingdome even his Native Countrey fallen off at one clappe And for what cause Some say 'T is for Religion because they cannot injoy it in that purity nor their Consciences in that liberty as antiently they did before the Prelates came to be set over them but by that their meanes they are more and more pressed as they complain to bring them to a full conformity to your Church of England as now you have made it which you say is all one with the Church of Rome and which in your Booke you labour to reconcile to Rome And can there be any thing more offensive to true Christian Stomacks then the burthening of their Consciences with such things as are against Gods Word and Christs Kingdome and their Christian Liberty Or is it not for this Cause that they are thus fallen off But the Late Proclamation given at White-Hall Febru 27. 1639. seemes to intimate that one maine Cause of the Scots discontent is the Hierarchicall Government For there it is said We neither can nor will permit Episcopall Government established by many Acts of Parliament in that our Kingdome to be abolished And againe the Proclamation saith And further we thinke to declare unto you and to the Christian world that by our Intention of introducing the Service Booke into that Kingdome we had not the least thought of Innovation in Religion in this or that but meerely to have a conformity with that Worship of God which is observed within both our other Kingdomes though il-minded men have wrested some things in it to a Sinister Sense Thus it seems to me that the Scots are discontented with Episcopall Government and Ceremonies which usually go together Now were it not a worthy and admirable
in a Cloake-bag as most of the rest were was for them and favoured their side And the present Oracle of the Church of England Papa alterius Orbis hath so handled and hammered the matter in his forge that by a Declaration before the Articles of Religion he hath with no great difficulty made those Articles concerning Grace so to speak as to please both the dissenting parties Like to a Picture which each man in the room imagins looks upon him in particular Or as easily I say as if a man should take away the prick of a Hebrew Letter from the right side and place it on the left according to which variation a man pronounceth respectively the word Schiboleth or Sibboleth The false pronounciation of which word cost the Ephraimites their lives Lastly to end as I began The Church of England and of Rome are One and the same in turning Christs Kingdome which is altogether Spirituall and not of this world into an earthly and seculer Kingdome although Styled a Spiritualty and Hierarchy or holy Government and Kingdome whose Governours are temporall Lords calling themselves Christs viceroys whose kingdome glory pompe dignity riches is all earthly not heavenly carnall not spirituall verefying that of the Apostle They are the enemies of the Crosse of Christ whose end is destruction whose God is their belly whose glory is in their Shame which mind earthly things Here are particulars enough to be silent in the rest to prove your Speech true That the Church of England and the Church of Rome are in Substance one and the Same no doubt of that As for Romes corruptions as you account and call them they are neither so many nor so great So long as they overthrow not the foundation as you not say they doe but that the large Mantle of your Charity is broad enough to cover them So as that need not to break square or greatly hinder your so much desired and attempted Reconciliation wherein I know you will be ready to meet Rome the halfe way or three quarters and more rather then faile to give his Holinesse the kisse of peace so he will be content to leave your Patriarchate or Popedome in England while himselfe enjoyeth the Vicarship of the wider world and at his death leave you his Heir apparent of the triple Crown Yet perhaps for your Reputation sake you would require that some grossenes at least might be payred off the outsides of her fouler corruptions and they a little smoothed over and for your part I dare say you will not be behind hand to bring on the Church of England in such a faire forwardnesse and neernesse as possibly the time will permit to a just conformity in all things fecible But is the Church of England now come to this to be in Statu quo So as a man may find her just there where Rome is now Alas poore England Shall not now all thy brave Worthies that are for the most part dead and gone and Some yet surviving as brands out of the flame rise up and bring their Evidences as witnesses aganst Rome that Shee is a False Hereticall Idolatrous Apostatized Antichristian Church the very Whore of Babylon plainely described in the Revelation And one of the last Bookes written against her to purpose indeed Intituled BABEL no BETHEL which came forth in a good season somwhat before you came to sit in the Chaire of Canterbury and for which you may remember you convented the Author before your High Commission Board at London house out of Terme and committed him to prison Mr. BURTON I mean now a closse prisoner and Exile hath by many impregnable Arguments so strongly proved the Church of Rome to be no true Church of Christ but a meere Antichristian Apostacie from the Faith So as neither his two hot Antagonists your Brothers Champions nor any Jesuites since hath undertaken to Answer it as being indeed unanswerable And so it Stands his Adversaries giving him the Bucklers in the plain Field And yet now is the Case so altered that so suddainly the Church of England is become One and the Same with the Church of Rome So as She may find her selfe just there where Romes is now and that no doubt of that But how doth this appeare Surely you may take it for truth for the Primate and Metropolitan of all England hath so bestirred himselfe and playd his part in Chopping and Changing puting down truth and seting up errour and superstition in the Church of England that she is Sodainly so metamorphosed into another form and in a manner transubstantiated into a new Substance of a Church as now you may find her just there where Romes is now both one and the Same Church no doubt of that If then we may take your word for your Church of England in this Case and considering that the Church of Rome is that notorious Harlot how any true Christian as I said before that will not become the member of a Harlot can hold longer communion with you I cannot see And for my part I doe here ingenuously professe and protest against you againe and againe that I abhorre you and all such Churches as hold communion with Rome as one and the Same Church and doe utterly seperate from you till you seperate from all communion and conformity with that Babylon in all those particulars forementioned And so I have done with you thus farre in this point You proceed L. p. 17. According to Christs Institution the Scripture where 't is plaine should guide the Church and the Church where there 's doubt and difficulty should expound the Scripture P. How Where I pray hath Christ so instituted And who hath bewitched you to dare to utter such a notorious and pernicious untruth as this and to Father it upon Christ and that upon your bare word For What Scripture doe you or can you bring For this Nay if the Scripture Christs own voyce and wherein the Spirit of Christ breatheth be not sufficient to interpret it selfe and that in all more doubtfull and difficult places of it what Man or Men or Church shal be able to doe it For how can any interpret difficult places of Scripture especially such as concerne Faith and Salvation but by the Scripture it selfe But we shall speake more fully of this afterwards And you have told us what the Church is namely a Hierarchy or Kingdome of Prelates who generally Savour the things of the flesh and not of the Spirit And if youâ— Lordship should but stand for a proofe and Say in this Case and that all other Prelates would hazzard their credit upon your Ability in interpreting the Scripture it would quickly appeare what hope the world might have of Prelates helpe at a dead lift for the establishing of our Faith and Consciences in some perplexed Cases O then what brave Prelaticall Glosses should we have As for the purpose Some doubts of late are risen in England
about Altars Prelates Calling Ceremonies Now if they should consult your Lordship Siting in the Chaire of Canterbury to resolve them in these difficulties what would be your finall determination of them For the first would you not alledge Heb. 13.10 We have an Altar For the second Psal. 45.16 Princes in all Lands that is Prelates For the Third to wit Ceremonies 1 Cor. 14.40 Let all things be done decently and in Order Ergo what Ceremonies the Bishop shall injoyne you must observe These are your Glosses and such interpretations as these we must looke for of your Church Such as the Church of Rome is very dextrous and expert in As This is my body Ergo The Bread is transubstantiated into Christs very body I have prayed for thee Peter Ergo the Pope cannot erre Launch out into the deep Ergo the Pope may fish all the world Arise Peter Kill and eat Ergo the Pope may kill the Venetians As it were by fire Ergo there is a Purgatory Thus the Scripture where 't is plaine should guide the Church otherwise not but in doubt and difficulty the Church should expound the Scripture that is guide the Scripture Ergo the Church is above the Scripture because onely where 't is plaine it guides the Church but where difficult the Church must guide it interpret it In difficulties then the Scripture it must not guide the Church Ergo in difficulties and doubts the Church may interpret as She pleaseth No not so for you adde ibid. Saying Yet so as neither the the Scripture should be forced nor the Church so bound up as that upon just and further evidence She may not revise that which in any Case â—ath slipt by her P. Here be two things enterfeerinch each other First a Caution Secondly a Condition The Caution That the Scripture be not forced Take heed of that But who shall Judge of that Even the Same that forceth it the Church And who shall defend that Scripture from forcing if it be left to mens interpritation and those men in matters of doubt and difficulty are not guided by the Scripture but the Scripture by the Churches interpretation But in no Case let the Scripture be forced You will have a care of that But why then doe you show your selfe so expert in forcing and misapplying the Scripture and that most pittifully as both hath been shewed and will all along appeare But however the Condition will helpe all Forcing or not forcing the Church must not be bound but that upon just and further Evidence She may revise that which in any Case hath slipt by her Now what is this just and further Evidence Or what this Revising And what this Sliping by her I take the Sense and Summe of all to be this That here you lay your ground to make way for an Index expurgatorious to revise But is that all Nay 't is implyed that some thing els be done as to correct and expunge or at least more clearely interpret but indeed to expunge with a Deleatur let it be blotted out whatsoever in any Books formerly Printed by Authority in England hath in any Case slipped by her or if the maine Subject of the Book be not Catholick and consonant to the Doctrines of the present Church that they may be censured as Prohibited Bookes and so una Litura cancelled And withall whatsoever you find in any Books which you do not very well resent to declare which be the Doctrines of the Church of England and which private mens opinions And 't will be requisite in my judgement that you hasten this worke to dispatch it in your time least if you die such another Phoenix will hardly arise out of your Ashes that will have the courage to adventure upon these things But among all other things leave us not in that perplexed estate whereinto you have brought us by your Declaration before the Articles of Religion but make us a New Declaration to certifie us what to beleeve and rather resolve us plainly that the Articles are to be taken in that sense which agreeth with your own opinion then that they should give an uncertain sound for then who shall prepare himselfe to the battell And there may be great reason why we should preferre your Lordships opinion before the judgement of all other those learned men that have formerly lived in the Church of England because the Church may now see more and further into a Milstone then of old as a Dwarfe upon a Giants shoulders And so what slippes have formerly passed by the Church of England your Lordship with your Chapleins and Divines will so revise and repurg as there shal be nothing left upon record whereby it might appeare to Posterity that there is any such difference between the Church of England and of Rome as to hinder their most wished and desirable reconciliation And I think I am not in this farre wide of your Project The Wardens of the Company of STATIONERS can tell what you lately gave them in Charge about such a matter for the revising of Puritan Books that so when you have purged out the Puritanism there may be neither Purity nor Verity left As I remember the Orator said of a certaine Roman that he alwayes had his head and eye-browes Shaven that men might take him not to have one haire of a good man Thus when you have given such Books a dry shaving you will make them to appeare as ridiculous as Davids Messengers whom the young Ammonitish King took and caused halfe their beards to be Shaven off and their garments to be curtalled to their bare buttocks But herein you prudently follow both the example of Rome and the Counsell of Franciscus â S. Clara who commends you for seting afoot this Project But I hope the Stationers will look a little better to their tò méros â—rgasÃa the gaine of their Trade and that which is their Freehold and Livelyhood as well knowing that if the good Books be guelt of their masculine vertue and verity none will buy them except perhaps Chandlers to stop their Mustard pots and put about their Candles And then should the Company of Book sellers and their Posterity be deprived of the benefit of their Coppies which are as a Coppy-hold of Inheritance to them and theirs But time will try all things L. p. 18. And though I cannot prophesie yet I feare that Atheisme and Irreligion gather strength while the truth is thus weakened by an unworthy way of contending P. Cannot you prophesie being the High Priest of England as that High Priest did that it was necessary Christ should dye that the whole Nation perish not So cannot you prophesie That it is necessary that all Puritans Christs members should perish that the whole Generation and Hierarchy of Priests perish not But though you cannot no more then Balaam prophesie or bring an Inchantment against the Children of Israel that God should
curse them yet can you not doe as that wicked Prophet did in Counselling King Balack to put a stumbling block before the Children of Israel by inticing them to his Idols with his faire Damosels You can tell us that the Church of England and of Rome are one and the Same Church and that her worship of Images is but a trenching or coming neare Idolatry as at after so as none need fear communion with her so he be but ignorant of her Corruptions Of which more hereafter But though you cannot prophesie what is all your practise but a cleare Prognostication and that not onely foretelling but causing and haling in a Deluge of Atheisme and Irreligion flowing in upon you Yea witnesse this your Book which could not spring but from the root of Atheisme and Sourse of all Irreligion and which doth not onely prognosticate nor onely teach the way how Atheisme and Irreligion may gather strength but doth certainly presage and that by necessary consequence most terrible Judgements and Calamities to fall upon the Church of England I would say rather upon the Hierarchy of England and which you doe with both hands in writing and publishing this Book and by all other your practises pull upon your own heads But this your feare of Atheisme and Irreligion to gather strength is say you while the Truth is weakened by an unworthy way of contending What Truth Or what is that unworthy way of contending for the Truth Or what is your Atheisme and Irreligion For all these termes need your interpretation But your prudent modestly therein we will make bold as well as we can to Supply First for Truth it is much in your mouth I meane the name and word Truth But when you name Truth you alwayes mean Falshood as when you Speake of the Church you meane such a Church as is a false Church and when you Speake of Peace you meane such as is a false Peace when your Reconciliation with Rome is a Conspiracie against Christ and his true Church and when you name Priest you meane such as is a false Priest and when you name Devotion you meane such as is a false Devotion of humane devising and when you name Faith as the gift of God you meane not the true Saving Faith whereof the Apostle speakes where he Saith Faith is the gift of God As we shall see at after So as ever under the green leaves of such faire words as Truth Peace Church Devotion Faith c. we may ever Suspect and shal be ever sure to find a false Serpentine Sense to lurke Secondly your unworthy way of contending for the Truth what is it but that which the Apostle exhorts unto that Christians should earnestly contend for the Faith given to the Saints and Paul that we should sunathlein wrastle together as for Mastery or for a Crown for the Faith of the Gospell Now is not this that which you call an unworthy way of contending for the Truth No doubt of thâ—â— As to write Books or preach Sermons proving the Pope to be Antichrist and the Church of Rome to be a false Church or no Church of Christ and no Salvation to be hoped for in that Church and that all true Christians ought to have no Communion with that Church but to abhorre and abandon her as the Lord commandeth and that Prelates are not Jure divino but are Antichristian and their Hierarchy Tyrannicall and that Altars in Churches are a denying of Christ the Onely Altar and that all Ceremonies invented and imposed by men in the Service of God is a will-worship condemned by Christ and his Apostles and many such like This is that unworthy way of contending whereby you say the Truth is weakened No marvaile Thirdly what is that Atheisme and Irreligion which you feare will gather Strength while the Truth is weakened by such an unworthy way of contending This I take it may be taken two wayes Either that by Atheisme you meane the true Faith of Christ which is opposite to the Romish faith wherewith you hold such correspondence for whatsoever is contrary to Romes faith or which is all one your faith is with you branded for Atheisme Or Secondly Atheisme truely and properly taken gathers strength by such an unworthy way of labouring a Reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome which to make way for you are glad to say that these two Churches are for substance one and the Same Church Now before your time the Church of England though in many things it symbolized with Rome as hath been shewed yet still it renounced all communion with her as being a Strumpet and that great Whore whose Husband is the great Antichrist But now you have so turned the Cat in the pan by making way to bring the Church of England back againe to an union and communion with Rome that you put the people to a stand to a nonplus so as they know not what to beleeve or what to think but are ready to cast off all further thought of God as if there were no God because they see those to flourish and to goe on unpunished who overthrow the faith formerly professed in England seting up the Romish faith againe where it had been cast out and on the other side Preaching and Preachers to be put down and the true Professors to be persecuted and thrown out of all and forced to quit their native Countrey and the like Now where all this is do you but feare that Atheisme gathers Strength Nay is not the root of all your cruely in persecuting Christs Ministers and People meere Atheisme It is noted of the Sadduces that of all other Sects they were the most cruell in their judiciall Censures As Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 2. c. 14. out of Iosephus And no marvaile They denyed the Resurrection and the Last Iudgement So as they were Atheists This made them dare to practise all cruelty and injustice For Maxima peccandi illaecebra impunitatis Spes So how durst you be so unjust and cruell in your oppressions and persecutions did you certainly beleeve that there is a Resurrection and Last Judgement wherein you shall be Judged But this by the way 't is an Item And Irreligion also what 's that That 's soon resolved to wit Obstinacie in not admitting of Altars in some Churches Irreveverence in not bowing to Altars and worshiping towards the East and adoring the name Iesus and the like This is with you Irreligion because your whole Religion is placed in these things For so you tell us in the words following L. p. 19. The externall worship of God in his Church is the GREAT WITNESSE to the world that our hearts stand right in the Service of God Take this away or bring it into contempt and what light is there left to shine before men that they may see our Devotion and glorifie our Father which is in heaven P. Surely were it not
not see our inward Devotion towards God And say not you Our externall worship is that light without which men could not see our Devotion Iust as the Pharisees All they did was to be seen of men But you would perswade us you doe it to a higher end which is Gods glory For you Say Take this away and what Light is there left to shine before men that they may see our Devotion and glorifie our Father which is in heaven So here be two ends of all your externall worship and solemne service and great pompe and humble expressions of Devotion First that men may see your Devotion for els it were not worth a rush Secondly that they may glorifie God As I noted before these words of Christ you falsely apply to your blind Devotion which he Spake concerning the Light of faith shining forth in good workes to the glory of God Whereas your externall worship as it is a fruit of your blind Devotion so it is that whereby God is greatly dishonoured and that both actually in it selfe and effectuâ—lly in the beholders First Actually in it selfe all false worship or will-worship for both is one is a dishonour to God In vaine they worship me teaching for Doctrines the Precepts of Men. Now God is not glorified or honoured with any vain worship Nay on the contrary he is greatly dishonoured by it For such will-worship is a high presumption derogating from the Majesty of God who wil be worshiped no otherwise then as himselfe hath expresly commanded in his word As the Prophet saith And shalt honour him not doing thine owne wayes nor finding thine own pleasure And such is all will-worship Secondly God is greatly dishonoured by such externall will-worship effectively in the Beholders First because when they see such a great Prelate as your selfe use such gestures in Gods Service they are apt to imitate you and so to partake of your sinne as too many doe Secondly because in such false worship the neerer they think to approach to God in imitating of you the further off their hearts are from God as the Prophet Speaketh And they whose hearts are farre removed from God cannot glorifie God Now your will-worship which is taught by the Precepts of men though it seem to be very humble and so to draw neere unto God yet it drawes away mens hearts farre from God as there the Prophet sheweth And such as behold and affect and imitate your devises in externall worship they are as much puffed up with vaineglory that they imitate and so please such a great Man as your selfe as they never think of glorifying God And lastly God is not glorified by blind and Superstitious worshippers but by good works springing from the inward light of Faith Now your blind Devotion is not to be reckoned and ranked among good works For good works are such and so done as God hath commanded but your externall worship as you call it being a will-worship and so a false worship which God no where hath commanded but every where expressely forbidden are no good works but as Aug. Saith Splendida peccata a glaring false worship But it seemeth this your externall worship the fruit of your Devotion is all the good works you have to show that men thereby may See what Kind of light is in you which is not any true but a false light I proceed But how hath this ignis fatuus of yours carryed me so out of my way that I have over Skipt one Passage in the same Page a little before But yet coming in here it will the more fitly usher in the next which we shall note in the Same Page L. ibid. This I have observed further that no one thing hath made Conscientious men more wavering in their own minds or more apt and easie to be drawn aside from the Sincerity of Religion professed in the Church of England then the want of uniform and decent Order in too many Churches of the Kingdome P. A little before you commended unto us the Integrity of the Church in Doctrine and Manners and but now how right your hearts stand in the Service of God here you use a third word Sincerity of Religion and that professed in the Church of England By this time we are sufficiently acquainted with your Sincerity of Religion professed in the Church of England For we have your externall worship as the GREAT WITNESSE thereof of which your Sincerity so much is spoken as we have left a great hole in it And the nature of that your Sincerity of Religion professed in the Church of England duely considered can we marvaile if most mens minds in the Kingdome fall a wavering yea and if they be truely Conscientious men indeed not such as you meane to wit meere Formalists or Newters no marvaile if you find multitudes of them if multitudes of such be left to fall quite off from the Sincerity of your Religion professed in the Church of England But if any of your Conscientious men be drawn aside what 's the Cause Want of uniforme and decent Order in too many Churches in the Kingdome But doe you not see on the other side a whole Nation driven aside and that as they Say by your too much pressing upon them your uniforme and decent Order in all Churchs for the erecting of the Sincerity of Religion professed in the Church of England And yet you complain that you cannot set up your uniformity in too many Churches in England Surely ye might have done well first to have made all uniforme at home before you pressed too hard upon your Neighbour-Countrey And if too many Churches in England be not uniforme whose fault is that Not yours I dare say Have not you and your brother Prelates done pretty well to it in Suspending Silencing Excommunicating Casting out of their Ministry and Living so many Ministers Witnesse Norfolke Suffolke Essex Kent Surrey and other Diocesse and Shires Will not these Examples terrifie all other Churches in England But yet if nothing els will doe it the publishing of this your Book anew will certainly effect it or nothing And therfore you adde L. Ibid. To deale Clearly with your Majesty these thoughts are they and no other which have made me labour so much as I have done for Decencie and an Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church Now no externall action in the world can be uniform without some Ceremonies And these in Religion the ancienter they be the better so they may fit Time and Place Too many overburthen the Service of God and too few leave it naked c. Ceremonies are the hedge that fence the Substance of Religion from all the indignities which Profanesse and Sacriledge too commonly put upon it Weaknesse it is not to see the Strength which Ceremonies things weake enough in themselves God knows adde even to Religion it selfe but a farre greater to see it and yet to cry them down All
and without choyse by which their most hated Adversaries Climbe up and could not cry up themselves and their Cause as they doe but by them P. I shall have here occasion and that in sundry respects to be more large upon your words First for the Substance of the matter being of such moment Secondly for the Circumstance of the Person to whom you speak his Sacred Majesty which makes your matter of the greater Consequence and Lasty in respect of the Excellency of the Person Iesus Christ whose honour and regall Soveraignty is here undermined by you For when Kings are misinformed and miscounselled in matters of Religion especially and that by those whom they repose greatest confidence in and whose judgement they most rely upon and have that high opinion of both for Learning and Sanctity which they conceive to be in them 't is a matter full of weight And when we see the glory of Christ and of his Kingdome troden under foot it will ought to stirre up and kindle the Zeale of every true Servant of Christ to vindicate his Masters honour to the utmost of his power Now to your words And to deale truely with your Majesty What els Surely one of your honourable place and in whom such trust is reposed should deale clearely with Kings at all times and in all things But wherein doe you deale clearely with his Majesty In this as you say in telling him These thoughts are they and no other which have made me labour so much as I have done for Decencie and an Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church Is it so Why a little before if you remember you told his Majesty that you put forth this worke wherein you have bestowed so much paines for the vindicating of your Reputation And now you tell him that your thoughts for Decencie c. and no otherâ— made you thus to labour And no other then Then what 's become now of your Reputation Yea and pag. 9. before cited doe you not tell his Majesty expresly saying I have thus acquainted your Majesty with all occasions which both formerly and now againe have led this Tract into the Light All But how all where here is one more comes in the Reare not mentioned before which excludes all other Saying These thoughts are they and no other which have made me labour so much as I have done for Decencie and an Orderly Settlement c. And herein you say you deale Clearely with his Majesty Did you not then deale Clearely in the rest You have occasion now to cleare your selfe But to let this passe we can easily beleeve that setting your Reputation aside these thoughts of yours were of greatest force with you to set upon such a worke For I beleeve you have been no small time in hammering this Project how to beat and fashion it to such a Decencie and Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church of England as you speak of But what doe you call Decencie Certainly that onely is Decent in the worship of God which God himselfe approveth and that is onely That which himselfe commandeth in his word But you account and call that onely Decent in the worship of God which either your selfe or that Whore of Babylon hath devised for Decent as the seting up of her pompous Devotion and voluntary humility in Rites and Ceremonies in Gods worship as ye pretend And can you Say that your decencies are not just the Same with those of Rome Perhaps you cannot yet attain to all hers And if not hers how could they with you be Decent But She being That Whore and marked out for such even by her very attyre Rev. 17. Will Christ trow you aporove that for decent in his Spouse which is the Whores Fashion Is not this enough to provoke his jealousie and if he knew it not to suspect your Church of England for Scarce an honest Woman Yea an honest Woman for her Credit sake will not goe in gaudey and garish garbe proper and peculiâ—r to such as are notorious Strumpets and such too as whereby famous Whores are known from honest and vertuous Matrons But let it be the Decencie of your Church of England to be suited like her Sister Rome that so they may be the better known for Sisters and both of one House and to prove your words true both one and the Same Church But decencie is not all Your thoughts are also for an Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church Why what Settlement Were not all things sufficiently settled yea and upon the Lees too in the Church you speake of before you were settled in the Throne of Canterbury Was there not settled an universall conformity to those Ceremonies prescribed and limited by Act of Parliament Are not all Non-conformists Silenced and casheered Was not all quiet then Yea so quiet that the Church of England was fallen quietly asleep and so securely setled I say againe upon her Lees. What hath now then made the disturbance and unsetled the State of things Did not that begin with your Primacie How so For just then when you were Scarce warm in the Chaire began there not to be republished with an Addition that Edict to dispense with the due Sanctification of the Lords day by giving liberty for profane Sports wherein also Gods people whom you call Puritans were marked out as not worthy to be suffered in any Countrey Then also began there not to be published a Declaration with and before the Booke of your 39. Articles prohibing all Disputes about all the Controverted Points in those Articles and commanding to keep to the letter of the Text which yet as it saith might be taken either way So as was not this a most grosse unsettling of the Doctrines of your Church and a strowing of the way to Fr. a S. Clara his Booke wherein he goes about to prove that the Doctrines of England and Trent are one and the Same or with but small difference which Book coming forth was much Graced by you in Court And so that Declaration because also a Shelter to Shroud your Arminian Faction against a Storm if ever it should come yea and to defend their Heresies and defeat the truth had it no surer footing then your prevaricating Articles when once you could make your party good Began not then an Order to be a new set forth with an Inlargement of restraint reaching even to Deanes and Prelates and the greatest Rabbies of your Church not to meddle in their Sermons with those controverted points as of Predestination Election c. but strictly to observe the said Declaration Under your Primacie began there not a more remarkable restraint of writing or at least of Printing against the Pope and a larger licensing of most notorious Popish Books As Shelfords five Sermons or Treatises wherein among many other like things he indeavours to prove Iustification by Charity and the
Pope not to be Antichrist and no necessity of frequent Preaching and none to preach but Bishops and Deanes and that onely and especially at the three Solemn times in the yeare Also another Book intituled the Femall Glory as full fraught thoughout with the most grosse blasphemous Idolatrous Popish Stuffe as it can hold and this in plain English allowed by one of your Chapleins or of London house and for ought I heare not yet suppressed or call'd in Besides many other of the same branne some whereof are printed but kept up under deck not daring yet to peep forth till the Storm as in Starre Chamber you call'd it raysed by BURTON and others be over and least they should be made Popish Martyrs in Smithfield as Salis his Devotions were which for feare were burned as afore Under your Primacy hath there not been a mighty stirring and stickling for the seting up of Altars c. yea of Images too and Crucifixes and that in Collegiate Churches or Chappels both in Oxford you being Chauncellour and in Cambridge where you want not a Vice-Chauncellour and which you indeavour in all the Churches of England Under your Primacie have not your pregnantest wits and profoundest Divines been set aworke to write Books to unmorallize the 4th Commandement for the perpetuall keeping of the Lords Sabbath day and so unbind Christians from the sanctification of the Lords day and their Books allowed by your Authority and Dedicated to great ones and much applauded by your Faction Under your Primacie have not your Doctors also written stoutly for your Altars and that even unto blasphemy Saying that the use of the Altar is to sanctifie the Sacrifice and without an Altar the Sacrifice is not Sanctified or dedicated by the Bishop Under your Primacie began not Ministers to be Suspended Silenced Excommunicated put out of their Benefices and Cures of Soules for refusing to read the Book of Liberty for Sports on the Lords day and to set up Altars in their Churches at their Ordinaries Command These these my Lord being thus doe you complaine of unsettlednesse Who hath troubled the Fountain The Wolfe above at the Spring head or the Lamb below To recollect then and recapitulate these things When Profanation of the Lords day is by publick Edict allowed when the Articles of Religion are made as the Delphick Oracles to be taken two contrary wayes when the Doctrines of Gods Grace are universally restrained and forbid to be preached when Popish Books publickly allowed in Print and Orthodox Books against Popery restrained when Altars set up in all Churches where there was none before when Books published by Authority to disanull Gods Morall Law when Books allowed publickly to maintain the seting up of Altars in Churchs when Godly Ministers by multitudes put down for not yeelding to those things which are contrary to the Laws of God and man and all this in the State of England where from the first Reformation such as it was have been universally and constantly maintained both by writing and preaching the morality of the 4th Commandement for the sanctification of the Lords Day the Articles of Religion concerning Grace to have but one Orthodox sense the free and unrestrained preaching of Gods word and confuting of all opposite Errours that the Pope is that Antichrist that the Lords Supper was to be celebrated onely at the Lords Table that Ministers Conformity was extended no further then was limited by the Law all these things considered in the tumult of so many bold Innovations Innovation I cry you mercy Renovations I should say of old Popish ragges and outcast reliques for you disclaim Innovation against Gods law and Mans law what settlement what peace what tranquility can be expected and then again al these new Attempts for Uniformity and Conformity coming in under and with your Primacie can they vindicate your Reputation from a generall opinion of your being the most perillous and pernicious Instrument of unsettling and troubling the State oâ— the Land and of Religion and you may if you will take Scotland in to boot with generall discontents and heart burnings to see the State of Religion thus turned topsie turvie And doe you complain notwithstanding that you cannot attain to an Orderly Settlement Stay my Lord be not so eagre See Scotland first settled before you proceed further in the settlement of England least you unsettle all Be not deceived in the confidence of your own active brain and borrowed power And see also how your Booke will take For Certainly therein you have run your selfe upon the Pikes get off as you can Your Reputation if you meane it for the Repute to be a good Protestant unlesse you meane it that you would be accounted what you are a member of one and the Same Church with Rome is now bound to the Stake ready to be Sacrificed for a whole-burnt Offering For what your Ordinary practises proclaimed to the world of you now in your Book you stick not openly to professe that you desire for the Church and State of England to be reconciled to the Sea of Rome So as your Book besides the turbulent matter in it like the Trojan horse full of armed enemies could not possibly have been borne into the world in a more unhappy time then now when you see two Kingdomes all in a combustion which the Sprinkling of your Romes Holy water wil be so farre from quenching or allaying that it will prove rather as Oyle to increase and feed the flame But GOD give the King the Spirit of Wisedome and Iudgement to see into these things betimes both for the preventing of further mischiefes and for the reuniting of the great rent between his two Kingdomes But as Iehu said to Iehoram when he asked Is it peace Iehu What peace said he so long as the Whoredomes of thy Mother Iezabel and her Witchcrafts are so many So what peace can be expected in the Land where such an Uniformity and Settlement is required as is so repugnant to the Laws of Christs Kingdome and conformable to Antichrists Tyranny and conducible to a reconciliation with that old Iezabel of Rome Certainly the case being so as Deborah said in her Song They chose new gods then was warre in the gates So when a Nation falls to advance higher and higher a new and false Religion where it had been formerly in some good measure cast out to set up Idolatrous and Romish Altars whereby Christ the true and onely Altar of true Christians as hath been shewed is denyed and renounced and to cry down Gods holy Commandements and to oppresse Gods holy Word in the Ministry of it and to persecute Gods faithfull Ministers and People and like the Aegyptians to oppresse Gods People more and more with intolerable burthens of humane inventions to the great reproach of Christ and the throwing down of his incommunicable Royall Soveraignty over his Church and People in matters of Faith and the worship of God Can peace or settlement
of true piety and the power of true Religion in all those or the most part who are insnared by them Although you call this Weakenesse in those that cry them all down But I hope this weaknesse is So crying especially reaching up to heaven will in time so prevaile with God as to batter them down and to dismount your Canon that holds them up But such consider not Say you that by this meanes their most hated enemies the Jesuites I suppose you meane cry up their cause and not els but by them Surely By them here if rightly taken 't will prove very true you Say By them that is by your Ceremonies For what is there whereby the Jesuites doe more climbe and cry up themselves and their Cause then your crying up of your Ceromonies This they professe in their Bookes and English Pamphlets which they scatter among the People that the Church of England is coming amaine towards Rome as being weary of her Religion or ashamed of it And all this especially since you have climbed up to the top-pinnacle of Canterbury Church And well you Say Their most hated Adversaries You say not Your most hated Addversaries the Iesuites for then you should account Jesuites no better then Puritans Though I think your Lordship can give no great good reason why the Jesuites should be the Most hated enemies of those that most cry down your Ceremonies except you will give the Jesuites precedencie of you in persecuting those men But I say your Zeale for Ceremonies is a fiery Chariot to carry the Jesuites to that heaven of their happinesse to wit Englands Reconciliation with Rome which is hastened and advanced by nothing so much as by hoysing up of Altars and other Idolatrous Superstitions and puting downe of good Ministers and all true Religion This this is the Ladder by which Jesuites Climbe up not now to the top of Tyburne but to the top of their Mount Tabor beholding the Church of England transformed into the Church of Rome being also so exceedingly helped up and advanced by this your handy worke now published for that end L. p. 21. In this insuing Discourse I have indeavoured to lay open those wider Gates of the Catholick Church c. P. So you have indeed having set open Englands broad Gates that That Great Whore of Babylon with all her Train and Trinkets her Superstitions and Idolatries may have the more easie reentry without so much as the ruffling of her Ruffe Nay rather then fayle as the Trojans at the Subtile Counsell of their perjured Sinon brake downe a great part of their City-wall to let in the Trojan horse which unknown to them was full of armed Greeks their Enemies by which meanes their City was surprized sacked and burnt So you having been a great Instrument of not onely Seting open the broad Gates and making them wider then they were before but of pulling downe the Walls and Bulwarks of the Church of England to wit in Suppressing Gods Word and Supplanting the most Painefull and Godly Ministers as the Watchmen of the City yea the Chariots and Hose-men of Israel and having prepared it by the Setting up of your Altars and Superstitious Service and Devotion attending thereupon all conformable to Rome doe in this your Book now published as with open voyce proclaime how happy a thing it were that the Church of England and of Rome were perfectly reconciled and reunited Againe you have in this also layd open those wider gates of your Catholick Church in that therein you have in some respects made those broad Gates that lead to destruction wider then they were before For at after in your Booke you can find a broad way for the silly ignorant Papists to find Salvation in the Church of Rome and so to be Saved living and dying in the Roman Faith But of this in its due place Onely you have altogether shut the Gates of the Catholick Church against all Reformed Churches beyond the Seas as having no Prelates and therefore no Churches As hath been noted You adde The Catholicke Church confined to no Age Time or Place nor knowing any bounds but that Faith which was once and but once for all delivered to the Saints Jude 3. P. My Lord what have you to doe with the Saints faith except that you indeavour to destroy it Or with those Saints except to persecute and root them out Or would you make us beleeve that you are one of those Saints Certainly then you must become another-gates Man then as yet you have shewed yourselfe to be Your Tyranny your Hypocrisie your Superstitions your Persecutions your Reconciliation with Rome must be utterly abandoned Except by continuing in them you hope to be the next Canonized Saint to Ignatius the Father and Founder of the Jesuites Society Lately Canonized by his Holinesse at Rome for his good Service for the Catholick Cause and so may you haply after 100. yeares come to be Canonized for the notable Service you have done in the Church of England for the Church of Rome if ever you shall bring them to a perfect Reconciliation And as for that Faith you Speake of as the bound of the Catholicke Church which you say you and Rome doe both professe we shall have occasion hereafter to speake more largely of it L. p. 22. I have delivered with a single heart that truth which I professe P. What truth it is which you professe we have in part already discovered in this your Dedicatory and shall further and more fully in your insuing Discourse But with what singlenesse of heart you have done it that we leave to the Judge of all hearts Onely where we find your hypocrisie so palpable as that we cannot chuse but use it as a Perspective to see into the constitution of your heart as where we find your words so directly contradicting your deeds and practises the clearest Indexes of your mind expressed and written in Capitall Letters we doe not spare to informe you of it both because the heart is deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know it So as your own heart when you think it single may double with you and that others also taking warning by such a dangerous example as the greatest Prelate of England may not also be deceived and seduced by your deep dissimulations L. ibid. In the publishing whereof I have obeyed your Majesty discharged my duty to my power to the Church of England given account of the hope that is in me and so testified to the world that Faith in which I have lived and by Gods blessing and favour purpose to dye P. For your obedience to his Majesty we say no more having touched before how strong that backe had need to be that beares all your burthens so intolerable to be borne But is this the discharge of the duty of the Metropolitane of all England to the Church of England to compile and publish such a Booke to reconcile England with
Rome What thankes the Church of England may returne you I know not But thus did not any of your Predecessors ever And have you more Charity or more Devotion then they had And for the hope in you whereof you give account to the world and your faith testified wherein you have lived and resolve to dye I will say as Ierome said to the Pelagians Sententias vestras prodidisse Superasse est The discovery of your opinions is our victory So thus to give account of your hope and testifie your faith to all the world as that wherein you have lived and resolve to dye Let 's see by your own testimony now irrevocably upon Record what to judge of you formerly namely as of one Qui cum Lacte nutricis errorem Suxisse videatur who seemeth to have sucked in Errour with his Nurses Milke As the Orator Speakes of all naturall men and what to expect of you hereafter that as you have lived a most notorious Persecuter of the truth of Christ and of his Saints So we must look for it Still so long as you live And this is our victory that we have to deale with one who is not now any longer a disguised but unmasked Enemy of the true Faith and Religion of JESUS CHRIST And however you may flatter your selfe in regard of the World and favour in Court yet if you repent not of your former life but dye as you have lived you can have neither hope nor faith in expecting Gods blessing or favour And so I passe from your Dedicatory to your Discourse as followeth THE REPLIE TO THE RELATION OF THE CONFERENCE L. p. 2. IT is very fit the People should look to the Iudgement of the Church before they be too busie with particulars But yet neither the Scripture nor any good Authority denyes them some moderate use of their own understanding and judgement especially in things familiar and evident which even ordinary Capacities may as easily understand as read And therefore some particulars a Christian may judge without depending P. What you meane by Church you have told us before namely that wherein your Church of England and that of Rome are one and the same one Prelaticall and Hierarchicall Church out of which are excluded all those Reformed Churches which neither have nor acknowledge Prelates to be of divine Institution We have also made a Say of the difficulties So as it is no difficulty to divine what Christians we are like to prove in understanding and judgement in the mystery of Faith and Salvation when we must be limited to that narrow Scantling of some moderate use of our owne understanding and Iudgement and that but in things familiar and evident to every ordinary Capacity O poore Christians that for Understanding in the Scripture must be at the allowance of Antichristian Lords who would bring into bondage Gods people by Chaining them up in Darknesse and Ignorance and doe with them as Nahash the Ammonite answered the men of Iabeth Gilead On this condition will I make a Covenant with you that I may thrust out all your right eyes and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel But the Apostle exhorts Christians Saying Be not children in understanding howbeit in malice be children but in understanding Téleio ginesthe be perfect And Leaving the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ Let us goe on unto perfection And Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age even those who by reason of use have their Senses exercised to discerne both good and evill But you allow Christians onely some moderate use of their owne understanding and that in things familiar and evident which men of ordinary Capacities may as easily understand as read So as what they read except with the very reading they doe as easily understand it as they read it they must not meditate further of it but in what they presently upon the reading understand not they must depend upon your Churches judgement So as you would exclude your Christians from being of those blessed men of whom David Speakes which delight in the Law of the Lord and in his Law to meditate day and night You would not have them with use to exercise their wits and Senses to discerne 〈◊〉 good and evill Yea the Apostle useth a word very emphaticall diâ— tò exin by an habituall use or long custome have their Senses gegumnasmâ—na exercised the word properly signifieth such an exercise as Wrastlers or such as contend for victory doe use which is with all their might and strength being train'd up unto it by long exercise So as the Scripture doth not onely not forbid but Commands and exhorts Christians to all diligence in the Study of the Scriptures That their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the aknowledgement of the Mystery of God as the Apostle speakes And Let the word of God dwell in you richly in all wisedome teaching and admonishing one another c. And the Bereans are Said to be dugenésteroi more noble then those of Thesselonica in that they received the word with all readinesse of mind and searched the Scriptures dayly whether those things were so which Paul taught Loe â—ere they examined Pauls Doctrine by the Scriptures they depended not upon his bare word and therefore the Holy Ghost markes them forth for men of a more noble spirit But you would have your Christians to be poore and beggerly in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ and to be so base-minded as in all things which are not obvious to every Capacity to depend meerely upon your Church-Authority and Judgement So as what you meane hereby except to bring into your Church of England the Iesuiticall blind obedience captivating the peoples senses to your Dictates that they might pinne their Salvation and Faith upon your Priests Sleeve I cannot imagine Which will appeare yet more clearely at after Againe these words of yours are in Answere to the Jesuit's words namely That it was not for the Lady or any other unlearned Persons to take upon them to judge of Particulars without depending upon the Iudgement of the true Church To which all your Answere in full is as before Wherein you easily let the Jesuite slip and run away with this that the Church of Rome is that true Church on whose Iudgement for Particulars all unlearned Persons must depend But you understand the true Church to be that wherein you told us before your Church of England and of Rome are one and the Same And so for Rome to be a true Church you plainly confesse at after But your words here may stand you in very good Stead to be a faire Item to all the Readers of your Booke not to be too busie with the Particulars of it but first to look to the Iudgement of the Church of England whose mouth you seem to be in this
shall set forth to the contrary I must crave pardon if it be not of the same faith with you And thus farre you allow any in the Church of England this liberty for your words are Is it not lawfull for any in the Church of England to say I conceive thus or thus of it c Although you adde L. p. 51. It is one thing to hold an opinion privately within himselfe and another thing boldly and publickly to affirme it P. I doe I confesse boldly and publickly affirme this my faith concerning this Article which my faith I doe assure my selfe is true being grounded upon good and cleare evidence of the Scripture on which my faith is built and not upon any thing of humane Authority And in making open confession of this my faith I doe therin follow the Rule of Scripture which saith Bretheren if any of you doe erre from the Truth and one convert him Let him know that he which converteth a Sinner from the errour of his way shall save a Soule from death and shall hide â— multitude of Sinnes Now what know I that this Declaration of my Faith with Reasons from the Scripture may by Gods grace be a meanes to convert if not your Lordship from your errour yet others or may preserve them from falling into it being dangerously entred into it by such an example as your selfe And however if it be lawfull for you boldly and publickly to affirme such things of beliefe which are not found to be in Scripture why may it not be as lawfull for me boldly and publickly to affirme the Contrâ—ry But the Scope of your Speech as I conceive is to maintaine your practise in punishing in High Commission such as expound this Article by and according to the Scripture L p. 53. For that all the Positive Articles of the present Church of England are grounded upon Scripture we are content to be judged by the joynt and constant beliefe of the Fathers which lived within the first foure or five hundred yeares after CHRIST when the Church was at the best and by the Councels held within those times and to submit to them in all those points of Doctrine P. But first as is before noted as you give accasion why have you made your Articles to be DÃpsucoi of a double sense So as in that respect how can you call them Positive being so perplexed in themselves And againe Whom doe you meane here by Wee I suppose you and your church of England You are contented to be Judged by Fathers and Councels within the first 500. yeares whether your Church-Articles be grounded on Scripture or not Are you contented so indeed Then you must be contented to undergoe the Censure of departing both from the judgement of the Scriptures as disavowing them for the onely rule of Faith and Doctrines to be tryed by and also from the joynt and constant beliefe both of Fathers and Councels within the first 500. yeares For their joynt constant and unanimous beliefe was that nothing besides the Scripture is to be Judge in matters of Faith And if you want leasure to read the Fathers doe but peruse the learned Discourses and Disputes of the Divines of the Church of England before your being a Prelate as Dr. Carleton of the Church De Ecclesia Dr. Whitakers forementioned Dr. White his way to the true Church Dr. Bilson yea and all those that have written of these Controversies and they will abundantly show this that it was ever held as a Principle and therefore not to be denyed nor needfull to be proved and which Dr. Carleton in his said Book proves never to have been altered till in and by the Councel of Trent That the Scripture is the sole rule of Faith But thus you and your Church of England are contented to be one and the Same Church with Rome in refusing the Scripture as the Sole Iudge of your Doctrines But will you be judged by the joynt and constant beliefe of Fathers and Councels within the first 500. yeares whether your Articles about Grace Election Predestination c. bearing as you Declare a double and opposite sense in their Pelagian and Arminian sense be according to the Scriptures or no If I name onely Augustine who was Pelagionorum Malleus that Hammer to knock down the Pelagians both the Fathers and Councels within those first 500. yeares did joyntly and constantly professe that which he writ to be the Beliefe of the whole Church it was so clearely and fully proved out of Scripture In so much as you may read in the Histories of the Councels as in Binius how that some Councels and Bishops of Rome set downe Large Passages in Augustins Tracts against the Pelagians as the Jugement of the Catholick Church and the particular Decrees and Acts of such and such councels If then you will stand to the Judgement of those ancient Fathâ—rs and Councels then you must at their Barre hold up that hand which was a chiefe instrument in drawing up the said Declaration which hath so enigmatized and darkened the Articles as they have no other Light left but a kind of twilight which inclines rather to the night then to the day rather to favour the Pelagian Heresie then the Orthodox verity But this being your language all along that you put not onely your Articles and the Articles of the Creed but the Mysteries also of the Scriptures to the Iudgement of the Primitive Church Fathers Generall Councels we will Supersede from speaking more of it in this place Again where you say that the Church was then at the best if you understand it during the age and time of the Apostles 't is most true but if of the Succeding ages within 500. yeares we may doubt of it or rather resolve the contrary unlesse you meane it comparatively to the ages after that wherein Antichrist and the Mystery of Iniquity began more brightly to shine forth and display themselves in the Roman Sea both in corruption of doctrine and of Gods worship beyond all excesse For you may know that within the space of the first 500. yeares the Church was so overgrown and pestered with the heresie of Arius as the world groaned under it wondering it was become an Arian as Hierome speakes Totus ingemuit mundus miratus se factum esse Arianum And among many corruptions and much unsoundnesse in Doctrine what multitudes of Superstitious devises and heathenish Customes not onely crept but crowded into the service of God Which Heathenish Rites as we find in B. Rhenanus his Annotations upon Turtullian were by the Christians in a kind of carnall policie admitted both because many ancient men being converted to Christianity such as it was could not easily part with their old Customes as also that thereby they might draw other of the Gentiles to become Christians Just such a policie as our new Doctors I meane of your Church of England have used in a pretence at least making us beleeve
and so no title to Gods Grace either to accompany or assist it When Christ tooke his Farewell of the Apostles he left his Commission with them for the Ministry of his Word and Sacraments and thereupon gave a Promise of his continuall assisting grace to them and to all his faithfull true Ministers of his Word successively to the end of the world Goe Saith he and teach all nations baptizing them c. teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you And Loe I am with you alway even unto the end of the world Now 't is plaine as is both shewed before and will yet more that your present Church being Prelaticall and Hierarchicall is a false and Antichristian Church a Church of Priests of a strange Order not of Christs institution nor your Government of Christs ordinance and so your Church is of no Auhority nor doe you faithfully and truely preach the Word and administer the Sacraments but with the mixture of your owne Superstitious devises nor doe you teach men to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded in his word and hath left written in the Scripture but on the contrary you suppresse the preaching of his word and oppresse his faithfull Ministers and by publick Authority assumed make voyd Christs eternall Law as before So as Gods people have cause to take up that complaint and prayer of David It is time for thee Lord to worke for they have made voyd thy Law And therefore that promise of Christ to his Apostles and true Ministers of the Gospell pertaines not to you and so not to any of your usurped Authority and pretended Tradition of your present Church But you proceed L. p. 85. After the morall perswasion reason and force of the present Church there is ground enough to move any reasonable man that it is fit he should read the Scripture and esteeme very reverently and highly of it And this once done the Scripture hath then In and home Arguments enough to put a soule that hath but ordinary Grace out of doubt that the Scripture is the word of God infallible and Divine P. The same man Still But what if as with the Church of Rome and the Jesuites your present Church of England doth hold this Paradox so She should take up Romes practise and by your Authority forbid all men the reading of the Scriptures but such onely as shal be thought fit to be dispensed withall to read it We know not what you may doe if once you can obtain voyces in Convocation as what may not you doe to make this your bare assertion and Antichristian opinion an Irrefragable Canon of the present Church of England That men ought not to presume to read the Scriptures till the Authority of the present Church hath made way and her Tradition cleared their understanding and taught and informed their Soules and thereupon very reverently and highly esteeme of it For this is the Cleare Summe of your words here No reading of the Scriptures no esteeming highly and reverently of it no In and home Arguments enough to puâ— a soule out of doubt that Scripture is the word of God Infallible and Divine So as till he be perswaded hereof 't is but vaine and frivolous for a man to read the Scriptures and this perswasion he cannot have till after the morall perswasion reason and force of the present Church And here I note again how you put the Tradition of your present Church single and alone forgetting to Second it with Gods Grace which doth but confirme what I said before that Gods Grace Ordinary Grace when you doe mention it it is but when you stumble upon it and it stands but for a Stale it is your Tradition and Authority of the present Church that is all in all But you proceed L. p. 85 86. Thirdly you to wit A. C. pretend that we make the Scripture absolutely and fully knowne Lumine suo by the light and testimony which it hath in and giveth to it selfe c. We doe not Say that there is such a full light in Scripture as that every man upon the first sight must yeeld to it The Question is onely of such a light in Scripture as is of force to breed Faith not to make a perfect knowledge P. The pretence of A. C. herein was not without just cause onely he considered not what the present Church of England now under your Primacy doth hold So as you should or might have shaped your Answere thus A. C. Distingue tempora Distinguish the times Know you not who sits now in the Chaire of Canterbury True it is that formerly the Church of England or rather some private men all or most of the Divines thereof that have written of this Subject allthough very learned I confesse and of great note place and ranke in the Church in their time held and writ so against you but that was onely their private opinion though all their Bookes were published by Authority But what 's all this to the Church of England now Now you may heare and understand by me who am the voyce of the present Church of England that it is otherwise And what you doe pretend I doe thus interpret We doe not Say c. But what doe you not Say We doe not Say that there is such a full light in Scripture as that every man upon the first sight must yeeld to it How So perhaps not any hath Said Yet this all our Orthodox Divines before you have said That there is such a full light in Scripture as that every man by the thorow and serious reading over of the Scripture hath sufficient evidence therein to convince him as to yeeld it to be the very word of God And if he doe not therupon yeeld the defect is not in the Scripture but in himself But at first sight This is a miserable shift and poore put off to answere fully to the Jesuites pretence or rather true assertion For in this he saith true that we to wit all the Orthodox Divines of the Church of England as aforesaid do hold the Scripture absolutely and fully to be known lumine suo by the light and testimony which it hath in and gives to it self Only we do not make it so as you expresse the Jesuite but we find know and beleeve it to be so But they never said At first sight This is your owne Flam. But what our â—ormer Divines have written hereof they have with such Arguments confirmed as not you with all your Divines of note and worth of which you patch up your present Church of England are able to Answere oudè gru not one word or Syllable But come we to the Question as you State it The Question is say you onely of such a light in Scripture as is of force to breed faith not to make a perfect knowledge And what 's your resolution of this Question of your own Stating Do you yeeld thus much that there
the well-beeing of a Christian. A true Christians life is full of affliction more then other men For this he hath the greatest need of comfort Now wherein hath a Christian most solid comfort Surely in the Scriptures David a man of afflictions can tell us this by his own experience Remember Lord Saith he the word unto thy Servant wherein thou hast caused me to hope This is my Comfort in my affliction for thy word hath quickned me And v. 52. I remembred thy judgements of old ô Lord and have comforted my selfe And v. 54. Thy Statutes have been my Songs in the house of my pilgrimage Gods word is that which supports Faith in prayer to God in affliction As v. 76. Let I pray thee thy mercifull kindnesse be for my coâ—fort according to thy word unto thy Servant And v. 80. Let my heart be sound in thy Statutes that I be not ashamed And v. 92. Except thy Law had been my delights I should then have perished in my Affliction And that excellent Psalme which Aug. so much admires and not without cause calling it Magnificum Psalmum it is his own word is full of such meditations and consolations grounded upon Gods word And the Apostle also sheweth this where he saith Whaâ—soever things are written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope Now how could a Christian in affliction comfort himselfe in the Scriptures had he not a full demonstrative knowledge by Faith that the Scripture is Gods word and therefore all his promises therein are most true and in Christ yea and Amen I say a full demonstrative knowledge by Faith which is ' élenkos the demonstration of things not seen as before Not that this full demonstrative knowlâ—dge in â—aith hath in it the full perfection of Degrees which is not attained in this life but it is such a full demonstrative knowledge such a sure trust and confidence in God according to his word such a hope in his Promises in Christ that although his â—aith be sometimes assaulted with temptations of feares and doubtings arising either from infirmities and corruptions within or from Satans suggestions without yet the beleever sticks closse and will not let go his hold but as Iob saith though God kill him yet will he trust in him Then then being so your assertion is very bold and blasphemous in saying God in his Providence hath kindled in the Scripture no light for that namely full demonstrative knowledge wherof we have made sufficient demonstration to the contrary And your own next words will confute you for you say He requires our faith of it and such a certain demonstration as may fit that Doth he so And what is that faith but wherin there is such a certain and demonstrative knowledge as gives a man full assurance that the Scripture is the word of God And this is that faith which God especially râ—quireth in hiâ— people as without which they cannot beleeve unto righteousnes and confesse unto Salvation But this is not that faith with its certain demonstration which you mean For as you adde yours is such a faith as is begotten of Reason and ordinary Grace which is ever the burthen of your Song where the soule is morally prepared by the Tradition of the Church Of which enough before Neither can your morall faith probably perswaded by your Tradition ever become to be élegkos a demonstrative assurance that Scripture is Gods word So as hereby you overthrow both the beeing and well-beeing of a Christian and leave him stript of all means and hope of Salvation and consolation by the Scripture L. p. 88. Hooker gives a very sensible Demonstration It is not the word of God which doth or possibly can assure us that we doe well to think it is his word For if any one Book of Scripture did give testimony to it yet still the Scripture would require another to give credit unto it So that unlesse beside the Scripture there were some thing that might assure c. And this he acknowledgeth saith Buerly is the Authority of Gods Church Certainly Hooker gives a true and sensible Demonstration P. First for your Author here alledged he was we all know not onely a Creature but a Champion for your Hierarchy and Ceremonies And besides that his Book was guelt in some things before it could have its passeport to travaile abroad However as you say of Others so I of him he was but a private man And if you take his words to be the Doctrine of the Church of England you may seeing the Jesuite doth so approve of it as also your selfe doth Well let Hookers words be so as you alledge them yet give me leave to detect in them a mixture of some absurdity and some impiety together As in these words It is not the word which doth or possibly can assure us that we doe well to think it is his word And so in that sense which is the onely sense a sensible man and sound Christian can make 't is true that the Scripture neither doth nor possibly can assure us that we do well to think onely it is his word For as the Scripture cannot lye so it cannot assure us that we do well when we come short of our duty as in thinking which is but opinion when we should beleeve which is Faith For the Scripture requires a firme Faith in us and approveth not of thinking as sufficient But now for his sensible Demonstration which is this That if any one book of Scripture did give testimony to all yet still the Scripture would require another to give testimony to it and so we can never come to assurance this way I answere The Scripture is a compleat body in it selfe and every part of it an uniforme and homogeneall member to the making up of this body So as the Scripture is to be taken first in the whole lumpe or body as bearing full witnesse to it selfe and every part or Book of Scripture hath a witnesse in it selfe and for it selfe and for the rest too there being such a sweet and full harmony in the whole and all the parts Gods Spirit speaking and breathing in it as the Animall Spirits in mans body moving the whole and every part and shewing that it is Gods word And we must never in this notion fever the Spirit of God from the Scripture his owne word which it filleth in every part as the life-blood doth the veines So as there is not a Book of Scripture wherein the Majesty of GOD and his Wisdome and Goodnesse and Righteousnesse and Holinesse doe not in some degree more or lesse shine forth And Mr Hooker might as well have reasoned thus It is not the whole frame of mans body that can perswade us that we doe well to thinke that it is a mans body for though one member by its motion doth beare witnesse to the rest that they are
witnesse to it selfe But this Say you it hath not Ergo not the other Againe you Say pag. 81. Church-Authority must first light the Candle Ergo the Scripture hath no light of it selfe much lesse light enough for faith to beleeve But though it should though it be granted that Scripture had light enough for Faith to beleeve yet light enough it gives not to be a convincing Reason and proofe for knowledge As if you said Neither for Faith for we have proved before that faith and knowledge goe inseperably together true faith being a seeing and knowing faith and not a blind faith The Scripture teacheth no blind faith And why should not Scripture give light enough to be a convincing Reason and proofe for knowledge When it is a sufficient light to discover unto a man the secret thoughts and intents of his heart wherof man himselfe is thorowly convinced and thereby in himselfe condemned of his own Conscience But this knowledge you cannot away withall But you can never put out the eyes of your Conscience though you may for a time fold it or lull it fast asleep Much lesse shall you be able to put out the light of Scripture which is greater then the light of your Conscience As Saith the Apostle If our heart or Conscience condemnes us God is greater then our heart and knoweth all things If therfore the heart or Conscence that is in man be a sufficient witnesse of all his thoughts good and bad and layeth them before him as the Apostle saith much more is Gods word a sufficient witnesse and giveth light enough to be a convincing reason and proofe for knowledge And Solomon Saith The spirit of man is the Candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly If such then be mans spirit the Candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly that is all the secrets of mans heart how much more is the Spirit of God in the Scripture his Word such a searcher yea saith the Apostle The Spirit searcheth all things yea the deep things of God And these deep things of God he hath revealed unto us by his Spirit And where but in his word the Scripture is the voyce of this Spirit of God And it was the constant sentence of all the Ancient Fathers whom you would seem so much to adore which Augustine expresseth in these words In Scripturu sacris apertè continentur ea omnia quae necessaria sunt ad Sâ—lutem In the holy Scriptures are clearly contained all those things which are necessary to Salvation Now how should this be true if the Scripture doth not give light enough to be a convincing reason and proofe for knowledge L. p. 113. To prove the Scripture to be the word of God first cometh in the Tradition of the Church the present Church So 't is no Hereticall or Schismaticall beliefe Then the testimony of former Ages c. P. Here at length you come neere the winding up of the long thread of your endlesse Discourse in this your 16 th Section the summe wherof is to prove that the Scripture is of no selfe-credit and Authority And first and last your present Church Tradition must be the Prime hand to lead the blâ—nd to this beliefe that Scripture is the word of God For otherwise the beliefe thereof should be Hereticall or Schismaticall For thus you say To prove the Scripture to be the word of God First comes in the Tradition of the Church the present Church So 't is no Hereticall or Schismaticall beliefe Ergo Beliefe of Scripture to be Gods word comes by any other way as by the word of God it selfe read and heard in the preaching of it and by Gods Spirit speaking in it then wherein the Tradition of the Church the present Church hath been the Prime leader This beliefe is Hereticall and Scismaticall Ergo this beliefe in all the Apostles Martyrs Ancient Fathers and Doctors of the Primitive Ages who never knew any such Tradition of the present Church as whereon this beliefe should depend for its necessary prime inducement was Hereticall and Schismaticall They constantly held till Rome and you brought in this your blind guide to tread down under feet the light of the Scripture and to exalt the Authority of your Antichristian Hierarchy that the Scripture was of self-Authority and Sufficiency to prove it selfe to be the word of God and by the hearing of it preached and read to beget and confirme faith in al beleevers without any such inducement of Church Tradition as you speake of And therefore here you passe your sentence of condemnation of this beliefe in all those forementioned for Hereticall and Schismaticall But how justly may this sentence be retorted upon your selfe and your present Church as both Hereticall and Schismaticall Hereticall as in the maintenance of Doctrines of Devils as afore of the Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian Heresies under colour of your doubtfull Articles of Religion as you have made them by publik Edict and Declaration and flatly forbidding to preach of the Saving Doctrines of Grace as they are clearly layd down and taught in the Scripture and in seting up and maintaining of your Altars whereby the onely Altar Iesus Christ is denyed and in dâ—spensing with the 4 th Commandement yea destroying and unmoralizing of it and so overthrowing the Lords-day-Sabbath wherein you subvert the whole worke of Redemption with the Resurrection and the like thus your present Church is Hereticall as also in this in holding and stiffly maintaining by you a necessity of your present Church-Tradition for the inducing of beliefe of the Scripture to be Gods word as not sufficient and wanting light of it selfe to doe it and which otherwise is of no credit at all Thus I say you are damnably and desperately Hereticall Secondly your present Church is also Schismaticall being a Seperation from the true Church of Christ in your Hierarchy or Prelacy which being altogether â—ntichristian hath no communion in that respect with Christs Church and therfore is notoriously Schismaticall yea in this also Schismaticall that you account and brand that beliefe of Scripture to be Gods word for Hereticall and Schismaticall which is not first induced by your present Church-Tradition wherein you are Schismaticks from the Faith and so from the Church of the Apostles and Ancient Fathers and succeding Churches which never held any such Hereticalll opinion concerning any such insufficiencie of the Scriptures and Authority of the present Church as you most pertenaciously and pernitiously hold Therfore I Conclude that if the present Church of England approve of your Book and hold as you doe it is both Hereticall and Schismaticall But you conclude L. p. 115. So then the way lyeth thus as farre as it appeares to me The Credit of Scripture to be Divine reduces finally into that which we have touching God himselfe and in the same order For as that So this hath three main Grounds to which
Foundation being already layd For you say It is to build up the Truth for the benefit of the Church We have discovered before what the truth is you speak of through your Book which is as much to say as all that wherein you agree with the Church of Rome as one and the same Church for the benifit where of you have writ this Discourse to discredit the word of Truth So as by your building up of Truth is meant your pulling of it down with that hand that wrote this Book And for satisfaction of all men Christianly disposed that is of a peaceable Disposition and not perverse peevish and refractory but willing to meet Rome at least in the halfe way And in a word All your Labour is for Edification not for Destruction For Edification Wherin By rasing the Foundation of Faith the Scripture to build up the Tower of Babel againe in England And not for Destruction but onely of the Puritan Profession and Religion and the power of Godlinesse and the Purity of Gods worship and the sincere Preaching and Preachers of the word of God and in a word in rooting out the precise party where ever your Arme of flesh can reach them This being your practise too well known this must needs be your meaning and sense of these words of the Apostle For Edification and not for Destruction Which as you most wickedly pervert and abuse as you doe all other Scriptures to your false purposes so in this respect it is a Conclusion not unsutable to your whole Section while thus you make the word of God of no Authority by your Traditions And so here an end of this Section But not an end of the prosecution of the same subject still For it follows L. p. 118. You see neither Hooker nor I nor the Church of England for ought I know leave the Scripture alone to manifest it selfe by the light which it hath in it selfe No but when the present Church hath prepared and led the way like a preparing morning light to Sun-shine then indeed we settle for our Direction but not upon the first opening of the morning light but upon the Sun it selfe P. In the former Section 17. consisting of one page the Jesuite objecting your words The Bishop said That the Books of Scripture are Principles to be supposed and needed not to be proved your Answere is Did I say it needed no proofe at all to a naturall man or to a man newly entring upon the Faith yea or perhaps to a doubter or weakling in the Faith Can you think me so weake I doe but mention this by the way as taking notice with what a pretty slight you put off your recantation of that speech But the next passage will cleare this more fully Now this your Comparison of the morning light let us clearely see how weake and improper it is for your purpose For what is the morning light but a beame or beames of that Sun which as children of the Bridegroom doe usher him out of his Chamber signifying his neare approach These beames I say are of the very same nature of that light which is in the body of the Sun and do immediately issue and spring from it inlightning the Sky or that part of heaven above the Horizon which beames or morning light as the Sunne advanceth nearer to his Rising waxeth clearer and clearer unto the perfect day But now the Authority of the present Church which you compare to the morning light is no such beame of the Sun of Righteousnesse shining in the Scripture as in his Sphere as that it is of the same nature of the light of the Scripture For the Scripture light is Divine and Infallible but of Tradition you say I cannot find that the Tradition of the present Church is of Divine and Infallible Authority Which if you could by all the light in the Sky at noon day find you would be no Churle in hiding it from the world or puting it under a bushell But to hold you to the propriety of your Comparison which at first blush showes as faire as the first morning light you may know That the Sunne makes the beames to shine and not the beames the Sunne whereas you say The Authority of the present Church lights the Candle of Scriptures which otherwise gives no light and so makes it to shine Againe 2 dly The morning light is an Infallible Index or immediate foregoing token of the approach of the Sunne riâ—â—ng which it ushereth in but you dare not say yea you deny that the present Churches Testimony or Authority is infallible for the inducing of beliefe that Scripture is the word of God Thirdly the morning light so soon as ever it first peepeth or dawneth we say and that truly It is day but an Infiel or doubting or weake Christian upon the first hearing of the testimony of the present Church That the Scriptures are the word of God is not so infallibly Convinced and perswaded as therfore to beleeve it to be true Fourthly The morning light is alone a sufficient and infallible signe as being an immediate effect an essentiall quality issuing from the Sun of its neare rising but you confesse that though your present Church Authority be the Prime yet it is not the Sole Index or finger to point us out the Scripture to be the word of God but you joyne with it sundry other helps as before you tell us Thus no way can we find your Comparison proper or pertinent to your purpose being as a blind Horse that halts downright of aâ—l foure But this by way of application to the right purpose I conclude out of it That as the morning light which certainly and infallibly tells us of the approching of the Sun rising and which perswades every man whose eyes are awake of the truth therof is an immediate beame of that Sun and of the same nature and quality of its native and essentiall light So that which is both Prime and Sole in leading us Certainly and Infallibly to beleeve that the Scripture is the word yea and working also and begetting this Faith in us is the light or beame of the Scripture it selfe displayed by the Ministry or Preaching of the Word which is as the dawning of the day or the Day Stars first arising in our hearts as Peter speakes by meanes whereof we come actually not onely to beleeve without any other externall Cause that Scripture is the word of God but also to know and feele that the Sun of Righteousnesse hath now begun to shine in our hearts by the beame of his Spirit the immediate forerunner of his rising unto the perfect Day L. p. 120. A C. Cannot but perceive by that which I have clearly layd down before that when I said Scriptures were Principles to be supposed I did not I could not intend they were prius cognita known before Tradition since I confesse every where that
F 6 ly But since this Division say you nothing hath been done by you to discredit this Principle That the Scripture is the word of God No Nothing Not when you say The light which is in Scripture it selfe is not bright enough it cannot beare sufficient witnesse to it selfe Not when you say The Scripture is a light but as a Candle that yeelds no light till first it be lighted by Tradition of the present Church Not when you say That Scripture to be the word of God is not so demonstratively evident à priore that is of and by it selfe primarily as to inforce assent Not when you say Such a full light we doe neither say is nor require to be in Scripture as is in Prime Principles which carry a naturall light with them Is not this point blank against this Principle That Scripture is the word of God Not when you say God doth not require a full Demonstrative Knowledge in us that the Scripture is his word and therfore in his Providence hath kindled in it no light for that Not when you say That the Scripture cannot beare witnesse to it selfe nor one part of it to another And yet in all this and much more hath nothing been done by you to discredit this Principle That Scripture is the word of God Now let the Lord of the Scripture whose Word it is and all the Children of Truth be Judge in this matter against you G. 7 ly Yet you dare say more that you have given it all honour and ascribed unto it more sufficiencie as more then all even to the containing of all things necessary unto Salvation with satis superque enough and more then enough How enough and more then enough What A worke of Superarogation or superarrogancie rather Now fie for shame Will no bounds of Sober Speech contain your lawlesse spirit but that you must cast it in Gods dish That you had ascribed to his Word all honour and more sufficiencie and more then enough Had you yet turned Lyrinensis his word in the margent superque Abundantly it had been both more agreeable to reason and not lesse disagreeing with Grammer Certainly it had become you of all other to have qualified the construction of Satis superque better considering what palpable hand and harsh language you have dasht the Credit of Gods most holy Bible withall Extreames are not good And your Hypocrisie here is too grosly counterfeited Just as some Gentlewomans bad face for want of Art is daubed so much with laying on of Colours that it is ridiculous to every beholder And how say you in the truth of your heart were there any there that the Scripture containeth all things necessary to Salvation when it doth not containt tha assertion of yours That the Scripture is not known to be the word of God but by the Authority and Tradition of the present Church When yet this That the Scripture is the word of God is by your own expresse Confession one of the greatest Principles of beliefe H 8 ly For your going the same way with the Jesuites partly your whole Booke and partly all your practises doe Satis superque superabundantly witnesse Onely you say you cannot goe so farre in that way with them to make the present Tradition Alwaies an Infallible word of God unwritten No not Alwaies Infallible I hope Onely somtimes perhaps Infallible when you say the word of God And if your present Tradition be not alwaies an Infallible word of God unwritten I pray you is it at any time an unwritten word of God If it be then at such a time especially when its Infallibility is in Season is it not Infallible For Gods word is alwayes Infallible be it written or when he speaks it from heaven But when shall we se the time when you will prove your present Tradition to be a word of God unwritten or to have any Ground at all in written word of God the Scripture But if your present Church Tradition be not alwaies infallible but that somtimes at least it may deceive us certainly I conceive our safest course wil be alwayes to goe immediately and directly the shortest Cut to the Scripture it selfe which I am sure is alwaies Infallible and will never deceive us and not at any time to depend upon your present Tradition which is not alwaies an Infallible word of God unwritten But me thinks I heare you say That you make not the present Tradition An Infallible word of God unwritten No not absolutely not Alwaies We understand English But if you could prove This your present Tradition to be but somtimes an infallible word of God unwritten in the use at least you put it to it were no great Mastery to conclude it to be in that case Alwaies an Infallible word of God unwritten and so you should by this way of the Jesuites come full home to Rome But I hope you will more clearely and fully expresse your selfe in this grand point when to use your own words before It shall fit Time and Place In the meane time if this be not the genuine sense which I have picked but not stollen for the interpretation is Grammaticall and sensible out of your words then I confesse your meaning is more abstruse and mysticall then can be gathered from your manner of expression your words having a tang of that confusion of tongues at the building of that old Tower But the summe of it is Here is the grand difference between you and Rome She makes her Tradition alwayes a word of God unwritten unfallible you yours not Alwayes somtimes therfore and so it is blasphemy But at length pag. 127. the Lady calls you from the point of Church Tradition to heare what you will say of the Church of Rome whether you will Confesse it to be the Right Church And saith the Jesuite the Bishop granted that it was Now if the Lady were not dead as elswhere you tell us I should give her hearty thanks for being an occasion of delivering us out of this Purgatory-lake of your tedious irksome and endlesse Discourse of your present Tradition wherein otherwise it is to be feared you lye so long till you had been drowned in your own puddle or burnt up with your own hot zeale But let us heare your Answere to the Jesuites relation of what you granted L. p. 128. There is a great deale of difference between The Church and A Church and some between a True Church and a Right Church For the Church may import in our language The onely True Church and perhaps the root and ground of the Catholick And this I never did grant of the Roman Church nor never meane to doe But A Church can imply no more then that it is a member of the whole And this I never did nor never will deny if it fall not absolutely away from Christ. That it is a True Church I granted also but not a Right
as you imposed upon me So as No Right that is No Orthodox Church at Rome And yet no newes it is that I granted the Roman Church to be a true Church For so much very learned Protestants have acknowledged before me and the Truth cannot deny it For that Church which receives the Scripture as the Rule of Faith though but as a partiall and imperfect Rule and both the Sacraments as instrumentall Causes and seales of Grace though they adde more and infuse these yet cannot but be a True Church in Essence How it is in manners and Doctrine I would you would loâ—ke to it with a single eye P. Not Right then not Orthodox you hold the Church of Rome to be That 's somthing yet Yet True you ever have and will hold her to be unlesse she absolutely fall away from the Faith Well And yet I wot well you give absolutely falling away from the Faith So large bounds as it is to be feared you will never come to give her for absolutely gone and fallen away from the Faith so long as she can have but one bare thread or ragge of the profession of the Faith of the Creed nay if she can but say over her Creed though as you Confesse elsewhere she hath quite overthrown the sense of it And if the sense of it be destroyed surely the Faith of it also This will more fully appeare as we goe along We come to your Reasons why you hold Rome a True Church 1. For very learned Protestants which hold with you in this First we can set both as learned and double the number of of Protestants who will weigh down the Scale against those that seem to be of your opinion Secondly we could out of those very Protestant Authors whom you mean though I suppose you seldome read such Authors and in other things scarce name them Honoris causa collect more against this opinion That the Church of Rome is a true Church then you can for it As out of Iunius himselfe for Instance I mentioned before a laâ—e Book intituled Babel no Bethel never yet answered by any Jesuite or other Priest Romish or English where the Author hath cleared all or most of those Protestants which his Adversaries alledged and I suppose you meane from this opinion of yours And then also the Author proves by many concluding Arguments and in my opinion unanswerable that the Church of Rome is no true visible Church of Christ as having lost the very Essence of a true Church To which Booke I referre your Lordship could your patience but brook the Authors name or your Conscience not tremble at the mention of him To your Second Reason First I deny that the Church of Rome receives the Scriptures as A Rule of Faith For first The Rule of Faith must be in it selfe simply Divine and Infallible But such to the Church of Rome the Scripture is not For she makes the Infallibility and Divine Authority of the Scripture to depend upon the Church as you do upon Church Tradition which you confesse to be not simply Divine and Infallible Ergo Rome receives not the Scripture as A Rule of Faith Secondly Rome receives not holds not The Rule of Faith Ergo she is not a true Church As the late Dr Carleton of Chichester in his Book of the Church hath well and learnedly proved For not to hold the Rule of Faith is to deny and destroy the Faith and to fall absolutely away from the Foundation of Faith and to set up a new and false Faith upon a new and false Foundation Nor dare or doe you say that Rome receives the Scripture as The Rule of Faith but onely as A Rule of Faith to wit a partiall Rule as Bellarmine calls it But if the Scripture be as it is The onely Rule of Faith and ever hath been in all ages so held till Rome in the Councel of Trent changed this Rule then not to hold it so for The Rule that is the onely Rule but onely as a partiall Rule joyned with other Rules equall to it as her Traditions which Bellarmine in his Book de verbo Dei non scripto calls the word of God unwritten is to reject the onely Rule and so to fall absolutely away from the Faith And you confesse that the Church of Rome holds the Scripture but as a partiall and imperfect Rule And is this nothing with you What is this but to evacuate and utterly make voyd the Rule when for a perfect intire and absolute onely Rule it is made but a partiall imperfect and joynt Rule And when humane Authority is equalled with Divine Humane Traditions with Divine Scriptures as an equall Rule of Faith Nay and those her Traditions which she calls her word of God unwritten are such as teach things directly contrary to the Doctrines of Scripture as of Purgatory Invocation of Saints and the like Is not this a'kurosai as Christ saith to make voyd and of no Authority the Commandements of God by mens Tradition Yet this Camel you can easily swallow you slight this over as a matter of nothing as if it were all one thing in a manner to hold the Scripture The Rule of Faith and A Rule of Faith namely a part or piece of the Rule The whole Rule and a partiall Rule The onely perfect Rule and An imperfect Rule All this breakes no squares with you but that Rome for all this holds the Rule of Faith and therfore you hold her for a true Church of Christ. But yet in so saying you plainly imply That if Rome held not the Rule of Faith she is no true Church of Christ but is absolutely fallen away from Christ the Foundation For you give this for a Reason that Rome is a true Church because she holds the Rule of Faith Ergo If she hold not the Rule of Faith she is no true Church of Christ but is absolutely fallen away from the Faith Whereupon I argue thus That Church which denyeth the Scripture to be the onely Intire Absolute perfect Rule of Faith is fallen absolutely away from Christ and so ceaseth to be a true Church that is to have the very Essence and beeing of a true Church of Christ But the Church of Rome denyeth the Scripture to be the onely Intire Absolute Perfect Rule of Faith Ergo the Church of Rome is absoluely fallen away from Christ and so ceaseth to be a true Church that is to have the very Essence and beeing of a true Church of Christ. The Minor Proposition is confessed by your Lordship For you say The Church of Rome holds the Scripture but as A Rule a Partiall Rule an Imperfect Rule Thus she denyeth the Scripture to be the onely Intire Absolute Perfect Rule of Faith And for the Major Proposition you doe by necessary Consequence confesse it also to be true For you set it down as a Reason why you hold the Church of Rome to be a true Church because she holds the
Rule of Faith the Scripture Implying that to hold the Scriptures to be the Rule of Faith is one speciall note of A true Church But now you confesse againe that Rome holds not this Rule but as a partiall and imperfect Rule And therefore denying this Rule of Faith she ceaseth to be a pure Church of Christ And which is the more this the Church of Rome doth ex professo solemni Decreto professedly and by solemne Decrees ratified as irrefragable and that under Anathema to be received of all And this is farre more then to doe it by Practise onely And yet in Practise to destroy and overthrow but onely some speciall Doctrines of Scripture though otherwise the Scripture be professed and confessed in this or that particular Church to be the intire and onely Rule of Faith is de facto to disclaime the whole Scripture and to unmake it the perfect Rule of Faith and so thereby such a Church possessing such and such Errors as are Fundamentall that is against the Foundation is fallen from Christ as hath been formerly proved Now if but any one part of Scripture in this or that Doctrine of Christ be overthrown so as therein it is not made the Rule of Faith and this overthrowing such Doctrines being once professed and maintained generally in any one particular Church makes that Church to cease to be a true Church of Christ as not holding the Scripture intirely but professedly overthrowing it in such and such particulars then how much more the Church of Rome professing and maintaining gumne kephale with a whores forehead that the holy Scripture is not the onely Rule of Faith intire and perfect but partiall and imperfect as your Lordship confesseth doth thereby proclaime her selfe to all the world to be fallen away absolutely from Christ and so ceaseth to be a true Church of God And denying the Scriptures to be the Rule of Faith she denyeth the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Iesus Christ himselfe being the chiefe corner stone and so is fallen quite from the Foundation Nor onely thus by Addition of another Rule doth the Church of Rome overthrow the onely Rule of Faith the Scriptures but also by denying the selfe Authority of them as also you doe and withall by tying the sense of Scripture to the interpretation of the Church as also you doe at least in difficult places and by holding and maintaining false Doctrines against the Scriptures which overthrow Christ and wherein they will not be regulated by the Scriptures as you also doe in your Altars and forbidding the Doctrines of Grace to be Preached and other things which if the Church of England hold with the Church of Rome and with you you and both your Churches are fallen absolutely from Christ and so cease to be true Churches of God As also your very Hierarchy makes you to be no true Church of Christ were there nothing else as before is sufficiently proved And if you desire any further proofe that the Church of Rome is no true Church of Christ I still referre you to the forementioned Book Babel no Bethel And though you supprest the Book yet ten to one but one of your Hounds will hunt it out for you Next for the Sacraments which is your second Reason you say The Church of Rome holds both the Sacraments as instrumentall Causes and Seales of Grace though they adde more and misuse these Ergo she cannot but be a true Church in Essence For Answere First she holds them not absolutely to be Sacraments but dependently upon the Priests intention which you mention elsewhere And so hath the Councel of Trent defined of the Sacraments so Vega so Bellarmine Secondly if she be sure the Priests intention be not wanting or going a wool-gathering in his Consesecration then she makes the Sacraments to be not Instrumentall Causes of Graces but aitia kúria Principall and efficient working causes of Grace ex opere operato as they barbarously speake by the immediate vertue of the worke wrought So the Councel of Trent also So as they shut out the Holy Ghost from this worke as the Principall Efficient worker and sealer of Grace Thirdly For Baptisme which you make to be an Infallible Marke of that Church to be Christian besides their infinite corruptions of the Element of water which the Apostle calleth pure water with their spittle salt creame exorcismes or conjurations of the Devils insultations and the like they hang the very beeing not onely the vertue of this Sacrament upon the Priests intention which intention of the Priest is so uncertaine as Vega one of the prime Sticklers in the Councel of Trent as aforesaid in his Booke upon the Councel of Trent especially the sixt Session where he treateth of certainty of Faith in Iustification Confesseth that there can be no certainty of Salvation to a man because he cannot be certain whether he hath true Baptisme or no and that in regard of the Priests intention whereof he cannot be certaine So as by this their own Doctrine no one Papist can be sure that he is a Christian and so consequently neither can all the members of that Church severally nor conjunctly the whole Body it selfe be sure whether they or it be Christian or no and so the Church of Rome upon this very ground cannot resolve certainly whether she be a Church of Christ or no unlesse your Testimony will help her out at a dead lift And that not onely in regard of the Priests intention in the Sacrament of Baptisme but also in their Additionall Sacrament of Orders one of these more which they have added to the two So as for default of the Popes intention in ordering of Prelates or of the Prelates invention in ordering one another and in ordering of Priests and of Priests intention in Consecrating their Sacrament of Baptisme as themselves Vega and others do argue the case they are all put to the stagger whether they have in that Church either Priesthood or Sacraments For all hangs upon that weake pin or haire of the Priests intention So as another of their Primipili a Standard-bearer of the Dominicans in the same Councell Dominicus Soto forementioned in his Book de natura gratia saith that Deus in potestate Sacerdotis posuit Populi salutem GOD hath put the peoples Salvation in the Priests power Now all this considered and withall the time when this was made a Decree in the Councel of Trent a matter of 100 yeares agoe and when it was but new and the Pope and Prelates and Priests could not perhaps of a good while learne their lesson perfectly and so get a habit of it but that in all their Consecration of Prelates and Priests still intention was to seek and where it breakes off as in the Pope and Prelates in their Consecration of Orders there followes a meere nullity in succession of the whole Generation of Priests downwards and so through that whole body no Priesthood now no Sacraments
what evidence can the Church of Rome now give us or what assurance can she have besides the bare name That she is still a Christian Church Onely Vega helps it aswell as he can That in reason and Charity men are not to thinke that the Priest should be so carelesse at the Consecration as not to look to his Intention upon which the Salvation of all menâ— soules dependeth Fourthly for the Sacrament of the Eucharist or of the Altar as they call it First this is in the same Predicament with Baptisme for the Priests intention which if not present at the Consecration of the Host as they call it there is no Transubstantiation no body of Christ and so they worship a wafer instead of Christ and so by their owne Confession in that case they commit materiall Idolatry as a Jesuite confessed in Dispute with Dr Featly But Secondly by the very name of Sacrament of the Altar they destroy the Sacrament that Christ ordained in his last Supper called therfore the Supper of the Lord. For they have turned it from a Supper to a sacrifice yea and that from an Eucharisticall sacrifice as the Fathers called it to a Propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of quick and dead as is noted before And so this Sacrament they have Non sacramented and made of it a whole burnt sacrifice Secondly they have utterly destroyed the materialls or Element in this their Sacrament the bread and wine that no maâ— should so much as dreame or once take it for the Lords Supper For a Supper cannot be without bread and drinke and heâ—e is neither And so it is neither Supper nor Sacrament And thus they have taken away noâ— onely the cup from the people but the bread also altogether So as there is nothing in their Sacrament but a meere lye meere imaginations Phantasmes of Accidents without subject as we said before And so enough of this And lastly the Church of Rome having disanulled the Sacraments of Grace it hath withall disabled them from being seales of Grace For it is the property of a seale to give a sure and certain Impression and thereby a Confirmation of the Covenant But in Popish Sacraments all certainty is taken away as is shewed and so having lost the seales consequently the Covenant of Grace it selfe is of no force unto them And thus in denying the two Testaments to be the onely rule of Faith and overthrowing the two Sacraments the seales of Faith yea having lost and disclaimed the true Saving Faith it selfe what evidence hath Rome left her to shew and prove that she is now a true Church of Christ or hath the Essence of a true Church Let her shew her evidence As he said Let Baal if he be a god plead for himselfe Yet all this is of no Force to your Lordship but that like Ixion imbracing a cloud for Iuno as it is in that Fable so you imbrace but a cloud or rather the shadow of a cloud instead of the once faire Virgin Rome you must needs have her a true Church still She onely say you misuses the two Sacraments A small triviall trifle to speake of Misusing then is nothing with you What say you then to those wicked Princes and Priests of Israel that misused the Lords Prophets Was this nothing They so misused them that they stoned them to death And so the Church of Rome hath so misused the two Sacraments that they have stoned them them to death and left not one alive But they have made amends for it For say you they have added more even no lesse then five which are as the five wounds wherewith the Lord was crucified to death For those five have eaten out the other two of Christs own ordaining both expressing his death the one for ingrafting us into it the other for growth and strength by it as our spirituall food And these five Sacraments fo humane invention they must have their vertue of conferring Grace ex opere operato being all as they use them a meere evacuating of Christs me it s But time permits not a longer discourse of them Enough is said for Answer And for Conclusion the Church of Rome having taken away the Authority of Scripture and added her own Traditions and having taken away and misused the Lords Sacraments and added their own Sacraments what remaines to that Church but that which the Divine Iohn Concludeth the whole Bible withall I testifie unto every man that heareth the words of the Prophecie of this Book If any man shall adde unto these things God shall adde unto him the plagues that are written in this Book And if any man shall take away from the Book of this Prophecie God shall take away his part out of the Booke of life and out of the Holy City and from the things which are written in this Booke Out of the Holy City which is the Church of Christ. Here then in this holy City is no place for the Church of Rome L. p. 131.132 The Church of Rome both was and was not a right or Orthodox Church before Luther made a breach from it For in the Primitive times of it it was a most right and Orthodox Church but upon the immediate times before Luther or some Ages before that Rome was a corrupt and tainted Church farre from being right And yet both these times before Luther made his breach P. The Conclusion then of your speech here is this That Luther made his breach from the Church of Rome not onely as it was Corrupt and tainted immediately or in some Ages before but also as it was right and Orthodox in her Primitive Times For you say And yet both these times before Luther as well those wherein the Church of Rome was most right and Orthodox as those wherein after before Luther it was corrupt and tainted made his breach And thus you make the rent on the Protestant party to be not onely from the corrupt and tainted Church of Rome but from the most Right and Orthodox Church of Christ. A pestilent speech bewraying the speaker to be in the very gall of bitternesse and in the bond of iniquity and worhty to be abhorred and abandoned of all that beare the name of Protestants But this agreeth with that which we noted before how you exclude all the Protestant Reformed Churches beyond the Seas where your Prelacie and Hierarchy is not erected nor my Lord Bishops Chaire allowed from being any Churches of Christ or members of the true Catholick Church For here also in Luthers rent from the Church of Rome not onely as corrupt and tainted but as once Right and Orthodox you include all those Reformed present Churches and to exclude them out of the true Church of Christ. But as before we have shewed and proved and shall yet more upon fit occasion ministred upon the same cause for which you exclude all Reformed Protestant Churches beyond the Seas from being Churches of Christ
so fit as his own Day of Rest which he hath Commanded to be sanctified weekly of us if we be his people and he the Lord our God who hath redeemed us in his holy and eternall Law and in which day we resting do partake and communicate of his holy and eternall rest begun here by Christ and consummate in heaven in that pangúrei solemne Generall Assembly and Congregation of the first borne written in heaven Heb. 12.23 And to conclude if the ten Commandements belong to us Christians under the Covenant of Grace then certainly the 4 th Commandement which commands to keep the Sabbath of the Lord our God which is the Lords day Now by this which hath been spoken you may examine how farre you and your Church of England have erred in the foundation that is in this and other fundamentall points of Faith at least if those Acts â—dicts and Books that have been published against the aforesaid Doctrines shal be avowed for the Doctrines of the Church of England as they are pressed And if with Rome you be thus fallen holy you are not by your own confession nor onely so but Hereticall yea more then that Infidel For in the same page you say If the Church can erre quite from the Foundation then she is nor Holy nor Church but becomes an Infidell Now we have proved that to erre in one or more though not in all fundamentall points of Faith is to fall quite off from the foundation But if you thus cease to be holy how are you the Church of Christ still as you say For holinesse is essentiall unto and so is of the Difinition of the true Church of Christ I beleeve the Holy Catholicke Church And so of every particular Church if it be a true member of the true Catholicke it is holy For Eadem est ratio totius partium If the whole be holy so every member and part But the whole true Church is holy For 't is Christs body mysticall whereof he the Head he the root and we the Branches and if the root be holy so are the branches as the Apostle saith And he saith againe The Temple of God is holy which Temple ye are And I say Christ being the Head and the Church hâ—s body the spirit of holinesse and sanctification flows down from the Head to all the mâ—mbers as the Oyle powred on Aarons head went down to the skirts of his clothing which was a type of the holy anoynting oyle of Christs spirit powred on him which he communicates to all the members of his misticall body even as a mans head communicates of Animal spirits of motion to all the parts of his body as we touched before Except with Bellarmine you will have a dead member to be a true member Indeed a dead member of a dead body is a true member of that body And certainly if a Church cease to be holy it ceaseth to be a Church of Christ any moreâ— But I pray you what should move you to say thus Though the Church ceaseth to be Holy yet ceaseth not to be a Church of Christ. You have it not from the Schoole of Divinity not scarce can you rake it out of the puddle of the Iesuites themselves But haply you might suspect that the Church of Rome might be proved to be fallen quite from the Foundation as hath been already proved before and therfore your Charity would provide one refuge for it that though thus she ceaseth to be holy yet not to be a true Church still But you may doe well to study this point a little better how to make it good How a Church may cease to be Holy becoming Hereticall and yet be a Church of Christ still L. p. 141.142 Those Errors that are dyed in Graine cannot consist with holinesse of which Faith in Christ is the very Foundation And therfore if we will keep up our Creed the whole Militant Church must still be holy P. This confirmes what before I concluded of the Church of Rome as no Church of Chhist because by your own verdict not holy For her Errors and that in the fundamentall points of Faith are all dyed in graine so as they will never change colour nor looke of another hue For both they are of no small antiquity and since their first hatching they have been by sundry Councels confirmed and at last most irrefragably in the Councel of Trent as hath been shewed For as those things which you elswhere instance Worship of Images first erected in the 2 d Councel of Nice the seventh Generall Transubstantiation first Decreed in the Councel of Laterian under Innocent the third and the taking away of the Cup in the Sacrament first decreed in the Councel of Constance so the Title of Antichrist of Vniversall Bishop and Head of the Church obtained first by Boniface 3. above a thousand yeares agoe with many or most or all the Rest of Popery have been ever since their severall erections upon all occasions more and more ratified never any corrected and by generall practice upheld and against all opposition and conviction stiffly maintained Are they not dyed in graine then And if so you confesse they consist not of holinesse But say you if we will keep up our Creed the whole Melitant Church must still be Holy Here you enterfere againe For notwithstanding all that is said or I suppose can be said you will have the Church of Rome to be holy still as being a member of the Church Militant in despight of the Pope But let her be a member of your Church Militant is she therfore holy Say not you your Church Militant may fall into errors so as to cease to be holy And if the Church of Rome hath thus fallen hath she not for her part ceased to be holy But not if she keep up the Creed What call you that To hold the letter of the Creed and to deny the Faith of it so we have proved before She hath lost the Faith of Christ the foundation of Holinesse Ergo she hath lost Holinesse Ergo lost the Essence of a Church Ergo she is not in the compasse of your Creed I beleeve the Holy Catholicke Church L. p. 142. I say it and most true it is That it was ill done if those who ere they were that made the seperation P. It should be most true if you doe but say it Yet we find not all to be most true you say How true this is I know not yet Let us here I remember a little before you performed a thanklesse office for the Protestants in making an Apology for them as not the first in the fault of this seperation Which I answered And here you put the fault on those that made the seperation who ere they were which might be aswell the Protestants as the Papists But speake out L. p. 145. For my part I am of the same opinion for the continuing of the Schisme that I was for
to defend their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment and Laws they may not well be countod Rebells So he But this by the way But I have somthing more to say about the shaking of the Foundations of Faith and Good Manners though I mentioned it before but now upon this occasion And that is concerning Ceremonies of humane ordinance in Gods worship which being imposed upon mens Consciences is not onely a shaking of the Founâ—ation of Faith but an overthrowing of it for thereby Christ is denyed to be the onely King of his Church And therfore as the Kings of Israel did nothing in reforming of Religion and the worship of God but what was expresly commanded and prescribed in Gods Law so Christian Kings and Magistrates ought not to doe any thing no not to impose any one humane Ceremony or Ordinance in Gods service besides that which is written in Gods word otherwise the Foundations of Faith is overthrown Of such moment is the least Ceremony in Gods service that it is of the substance and Foundation of Faith L. p. 210. But 't is time to return For A.C. in this Passage hath been very carefull to tell us of a Parliament and of living Magistrates and Iudges besides the Law books Thirdly therfore The Church of England God be thanked shines happily under a Gratious Prince and well understands that a Parliament cannot be called at All times and that there are visible Iudges besides the law-Law-books and one supreme long may he be and be hapâ—y to settle all Temporall Differences which certainly he might much better perform if his Kingdome were well ridde of A. C. and his Fellows And she beleeves too that our Saviour Christ hath left in his Church besides his law-Law-books the Scripture Visible Magistrates and Iudges that is Arch-bishops and Bishops under a Gratious King to governe both for Truth and Peace according to the Scripture and her own Canons and Constitutions as also those of the Catholicke Church which Crosse not the Scripture and the Iust Laws of the Realme But she doth not beleeve there is any Necessity to have one Pope or Bishop over the whole Christian world more then to have one Emperour over the whole world P. It were time indeed for you to return from your Course when once there is mention of a Parliament For thriving If you mean that your Church of England hath of late dayes well thriven in her prevailing for the seting up of Images and Altars for bringing in more Superstitions into your Service for puting down sincerity Purity and power of the true Religion and of the Preaching of Gods word for suppressing the Doctrines of Grace forementioned for hampering the Puritans as you call them by puting down suspending and silencing of Godly and painfull Preachers and by crying down both the Doctrine and Practise of the sanctification of the Sabbath or Lords day and by smothering in the birth all sound and Orthodox Books against Popery and other Heresies not suffering them to be Printed and by licencing of Popish Books to be Printed and Publâ—shed and the like and if this be the way of the well thriving of your Church whomsover you have cause to thanke yet surely you have small cause to thanke God whose Name herein you doe abuse and blaspheme as perhaps your own Conscience may tell you as if he favoured such practises of yours because for a time he patiently suffers and winks at them and that in judgement to a sinfull Land and for tryall of his own servants and people and for a preparative to your certaine ruine if speedy repentance prevent it not For God is not mocked with such thanks though he be mocked but whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reape How then doth it concerne all Christian Magistrates to look to it least if they suffer Christs Kingdome to be betrayed into the hands of Antichristian Usurpers by giving way unto them to doe what they list while themselvs seem to sleep they provoke God too much For as Samuel sayd to the People If ye doe wickedly you shall perish both you and your King For my part though I will not joyne in Prayer with such a Profane Hypocrite as you are and an enemy of Iesus Christ and his Truth no more then the Apostle Iohn would be in the same Bath with that Heretick Cerinthus yet my dayly Prayer is and shall be that God would more and more let the King see how miserably he is abused and the Peace and safety of his Kingdome distracted and indangered both by the late violent practises which have been held in Church-affaires and now by the publishing of such a Book as this so notoriously perillous or rather most pernicious and so much the more in these times of troubles about Religion lately sprung up in the Iland of Great Britaine Which Book though it make many faire pretences for Peace yea Peace and Truth yet in truth it will prove the greatest troubler of Israel and the falsest friend to true Truth that the light hath seen these many yeares This I speake not by conjecture much lesse out of malice to the Authors Person but from the cleare evidence of the word of Prophecy in Scripture in such cases But how comes your Church of England to be so well seen in State-Mysteries I pray you as so well to understand that a Parliament cannot be called at all times Or by the Church of England doe you not meane the the Chaire of Catnterbury as the Church Collective or representative of England For you should better understand such State-matters especially for the not calling of Parliaments at all times or suppose it were at Notime or Nevermas least perhaps it might prove as a Frost to nippe your thriving and overforward spring then your Lordship For my part I am no States-man and so I leave State matters to States-men who should best understand them But if your A.C. and his Fellows be such troublesome fellows why doe you trouble your selves with them when a good honest Parliament might ease the King and Kingdome â—oo of that trouble provided that good Laws already enacted and by the next Parliament if ever there shal be any quickned by a new Law to put them in better execution there may be also a good season to bring forth such Visible Iudges as without straining the strings either of their Purses or Consciences coming clearly to their Benches and not making them as Banks but siting Rectè in Curia they may without feare of any Prepotent Prelate or Partiality in respect of Persons do Justice I passe now from the understanding of your Church of England to her Beliefe which you also tell us of She beleeves too What doth she beleeve That our Saviour Christ hath left in his Church besides his law-Law-books the Scriptures visible Magistrates and Iudges that is Arch-bishops and Bishops How Is this come already to be an Article of the Faith of the Church of
England because her Great Metropolitan a little before beleeves it Or because Ipse dixit he said Christ thought it fitter to governe his Church by Divers Vice-roys then by One Is there such an Infallibility in your bare word as for the Church of England to establish her beliefe upon Certainly this is an Addition to the Articles of the Faith of the Church of England which in her former dayes she was not acquainted with Well for your Arch-bishops and Bishops we have said I hope enough and perhaps you will say too much and desire no more to be troubled with them Yet I see we must whether we will or no. For first here againe you doe most impiously ne dicam impudenter ye blasphemously bely the Lord Iesus Christ as before you have done more then once or twice and are not yet ashamed but rather hardned in your Habit as being reserved to be confounded Secondly as before you would make Christ to be the Author of such Governours and Vice-Roys as Arch bishops and Bishops so here Besides his Law-Books the Scripture he hath you say made you visible Magistrates and Iudges Surely That is besides the Scripture indeed yea not onely praeter but contra not onely besides but against the expresse Scripture as is but a little before proved that Arch-bishops and Bishops though they have gotten a degenerate Beeing as Mules in Rerum natura yet should have any Beeing at all in the Church of Christ much lesse that they should be Iudges at all in spirituall matters being themselves altogether carnall And For Arch-Bishops it hath not so much as a Name in Scripture as your Bishops have usurped that Title from Scripture and you confesse the Apostles were all equall in what night then grew up this Mushrum And we have before given a touch and tryall what kind of Iudges you would prove would men but pin their faith on your White sleeve But except you can bring some better Authority then your own blasphemous speech that Christ hath left such visible iudges to his Church your Church of England will have but a cold pull of it when she shal be put to give a reason of this her beliefe that Christ did so Or what Or why For truth and peace These words are with you as Mel in ore verba lactis honey in the mouth words of milke but we can discerne by them Fel in Corde fraus in factis Gall in the heart and fraud in actions But by what means will you procure us truth and peace By governing How or by what Law or Rule According to the Scripture say you Stay there and govern according to that for that is the onely way were your Prâ—laticall Government according to the Scripture both to procure and preserve truth and peace But unlesse you can prove which you never can by the Scripture and not by your own single-soled bold affirmation that Christ hath made you Governours of his Church you shall never perswade us to beleeve or hope that you will ever Govern according to the Scriptures But yet is this all Will you be such honest Governours as you will not go beyond Christs law-Law-books the Scriptures Nothing lesse For there follows immediately a dangerous Conjunction Copulative And. According to the Scriptures And. And what I hope you have no other Law-books to adde to Christs Law-books Have you Produce them And her own Canons and Constitutions Nay then Farewell Christs Law-Books Christ may put up his Pipes as it is said When your Canons and Constitutions come in Place And then farewell Truth and Peace your own Canons and Constitutions can make no Room for them For he that shall hold the truth never so right and firm and shall transgresse but one of your Canons what peace He shal be put to read the Canon that is he shal be shattered to pieces with your shooting off of your Canon And he that comes under the command of your Canon is ipso facto brought under the Babylonian and Antichristian yoak so as not onely his peace is destroyed but the truth power and verture of Christs death which hath freed his people from the bondage of all humane ordinance as hath been shewed in Gods worship and service is overthrown As also your selfe elswhere saith That Peace and Truth are rent by superstitious deâ—iâ—es from which I hope all your Canons and Constitutions are not altogether free How much lesse can that Church be free from most miserable slavery that puts her neck under the yoak and her shoulders under the intollerable burthen of your Canons and Constitutions Nay I will say more If you be the visible Magistrates and Iudges of the Church as the High Priests and Pharisees were although the High-Priests office was grounâ—ed upon Divine Ordinance and Authority and had Christ himselfe to stand at your Barre to be judged though you had not as the Jews said they had a Law to put him to death yet you would find Church-Canons and Constitutions enough or some new devise though not to condemn him to be Crucified yet to Censure him to be Pillorified and to have his Eares closse cropt and his blood shed in a great measure and stript naked and perpetually Imprisoned and exiled as being the Arch-enemy of your Hierarchy Tyranny Hypocrisie and all Impiety And all this you would do by vertue of your Canons and Constitutions which yet were never ratified by any Law of the Land or Act of Parliament But yet seeing you must have your Church-Canons and Constitutions besides Christs Law-Books to govern by yet the Church of England may think her selfe well appayd and in some tolerable though intollerable case if she have but her own Canons such as her selfe hath constituted and assented to For volenti non fit injuria If the Church of England be willing to be an Asse to her Prelates as once she was to the Pope she may And so she hath her amends in her own hands If the yoak of Canons pinch her she may thank her selfe for putting her neck under I but this is not all There be other Canons besides that are not hers that she must be governed by What more Bonds and Fetters yet for thee poore Church of England Yes As well her own Canons and Constitutions as Those also of the Catholicke Church What are those Alas your Church of England is an Ignoramus in all such Canons as you call Catholicke And your Church Catholike you know and tell us doth Comprehend that of Rome and Rome hath innumerable Canons Consâ—itutions and Decretalls so as under the Canons of the Catholicke Church you may bring upon the Church of England all the Canons and Decrees of Trent all the Popes Decretalls and the whole body of the Popes Canon Law so large a field is your Canons and Constitutions of the Catholicke Church But you qualifie the matter in adding Which crosse not the Scripture and the just Laws of the Realme That 's somthing
But who shal be Judge of that Alas we are never the nearer if you Prelates be the visible Iudges For then what Canons or Constitutions shall crosse either Scripture or Positive Law of the Land which you shall define and determine to be fit for you to govern the Church by What Laws of the Realme shal be just which crosse one of your Canons Did not in a Cause pleaded in your High-Commission the Popes Canon aledged by the Advocate on the one party preponderate a Statute of Edw. 6. alledged by the Advocate of the adverse party so as the Popes Canon carryed the Cause So as while you will be the visible Iudges you will lead us all in a Circle and make us so turne round as we should not know where we are imagining that all the world went upon wheels Yea but there is yet one qualification may help at a pinch For you say Archbishops and Bishops under a Gratious Keng to governe c. 'T is true indeed that under the shadow of a Gracious King to you you are imboldened to do all you do Lastly you say the Church of England doth not beleeve there is any necessity to have one Pope or one Bishop over the whole Christian world And are there not trow you many thousands in the Church of England which doe not beleeve there is any necessâ—y of having One Pope or Arch-Prelate over the whole Church of England the other world as before And I beleeve there is no more necessity of the one then of the other but that they might be well spared as Christ will one day not spare them And as I said before the Pope by as good a Title may argue a necessity of his being uneversall Bishop over the whole Christian world as you can setting the Law of England aside for your being Pope over the whole Church of England And that upon your own Ground for you say The Church of England and the Church of Rome is one and the same Church no doubt of that and The Church of England may find her selfe where Romes is now just there then if so that both are one and the Popes Principality more powerfull then that of Canterbury and if there be a nccessity that Canterbury be over the whole Church of England which is but a part of the Catholicke and that for order and unity why not the like necessity for the Pope to be supreme over all for preserving order and unity seeing your Militant Church is but one and to make many heads many Vice-Roys is to divide the body and Kingdome and so make rents in it which you like not of But to conclude I beleeve and with me all true Beleevers who have their judgements rightly informed wherever they be in any part of the world that there is a necessity of duty lying upon all Christian Magistrates to exterminate and exterpate the whole Hierarchy and Prelacy as Antichristian enemies of Iesus Christ and of his Kingdome yea and the band of Civil States and people out of the world For so we read Rev. 17.16 17. A place worthy to be written in the hearts of all Kings Christian. And it is the duty of all true Christians to rowse up the Spirit of prayer in them and to stirre up the coals of zeale to flame forth in offring up of pure Incense of fervent Prayer especially in these times wherin Satan so rageth and his Instruments grow so malapert and mischievous that God would hasten the accomplishment of Antichrists Kingdome that so the Kingdome of Iesus Christ may be exalted and inlarged and he alone rule and raigne in his Church L. p. 212. Somwhat may be done by the Bishop and Governours of the Church to preserve the unity and certainty of Faith and to keep the Church from renting or for uniting it when it is rent And this pag. 198 one Pope cannot doe P. Somwhat Why you tell us immediately before that the Pope or a Bishop may perhaps despense in some cases with the Decrees of a Generall And this I hope is somwhat more then somwhat Or perhaps at least And we have shewed before how you Prelates do either preserve the Church from renting or when it is rent make up the breaches of it namely by an uniting and confederating against Christ and his true Church and by labouring tooth and nayle to support and keep safe and sound your Antichristian Hierarchy which is not truly and properly an unity but a conspiracie against Christ from whose true Mysticall body you have made the Great and unreconciliable Rent And therfore you to preserve the unity and certainty of Faith intire which even as you are Prelates you are altogether Apostates from and enemies unto Or is the spirit of Infallibility intayld to the Prelates Chaire For doth not this necessarily imply either an Infallibility or at least a greater dexterity and a more excellent and Divine spirit to be in Prelates qua Praelati Infulati as they are Mitred Bishops then in all those that are no Prelates when onely by Prelates though but somwhat to this purpose may be done But we have shewed before what ability or soundnesse of judgement in divine spiritual matters we may expect to be in Prelates in comparison of others who are both learned pious judicious Divines L. p. 194. To draw all together to settle Controversies in the Church there is a visible Iudge and Infallible but not living and that is the Scripture pronouncing by the Church and there is a visible and living Iudge and that is a Generall Councel P. Here I goe backe a little to fetch in this passage as fiâ— here to usher in a many other Passages scattered here and there in your Book which is hard to reduce to any order or forme But we must do as we may And I shall not wittingly offer violence to any part in the least though somtimes here and there I am faine to pull them in by the head and shoulders And here you doe with the Papists make the Scripture to be but a dead letter for say you it is not a living Iudge no nor yet a speaking Iudge but as it is pronounced by the Church Wheras the Apostle saith of it Zonâ—o lógos tou Theou The word of God is living or lively nor onely so but e'nergès effectuall as it is before noted And if you will apply this to the Word preached that 's true too Although you will not confesse preaching of Gods word to be the Scripture or yet the word of God But it must be pronounced by the Church as the onely mouth of Scripture and that must be also in the Churches sense Of which sufficiently before Yet this you adde to all your other indignities you put upon the Scripture that you make it a dead Iudge and so indeed no Iudge at all as before you plainly tell For if it be blind as wanting light and if it be mute or dumb
larger Commentary let him but read the words over againe To the Eighth I answere It is not in it selfe pride not to obey Councels Difinitions and much lesse when a man knows them to be erronious Nor is it against any Iust and Godly Government but onely against that which is Papall Antichristian Tyrannicall And is it not high and Antichristian pride to impose Difinitions of Generall Councels of Prelates yea even when they are erronious and known apparently to be so yet to be as Gods own holy Commandements necessarily obeyed of all This is the highest and most Diabolicall Tyranny in the world thus to bring into bondage the faith soule and conscience of men to a necessary subjection to errour and falshood Yea thus not to obey you call it also unlawfull Unlawfull By what Law Or what Law either of God or of any lawfull Authority of Man or of Civil state is here broken Are mens lufts a Law Or are your Prelaticall Councels any true Generall Councels Generall they may be in respect of Prelates but Generall they are not in respect of the true Catholicke Church of Christ the Body whereof is not represented in your Generall Councels as is shewed before No nor is your Generall Councel Generall in respect of the Catholicke Church whereof you call your selfe the representative body For the lay-people are not admitted into your Councel nor any to represent them therfore it is not Generall therfore not to obey the difinitions of it is it unlawfull And suppose the Councel were lawfull are the Decrees therof to be obeyed when erronious To the Ninth That Christ intended not to leave an Infallible certainty in his Church to satisfie either contentious or curious or presumptuous spirits Here is one thing expressed and another implyed the thing expressed is negative Christ intended not c. the thing implyed is affirmative That Christ intended to leave an Infallible certainty in his Church And sutable hereunto are your precedent words There is there can be no necessity of an infallible certainty in the whole Catholicke Church and much lesse in a Generall Councel of things not absolutely necessary in themselves Which words imply this Affirmative That there is a necessity of an infallible certainty in the whole Catholicke Church of things absolutely necessary in themselves So as here also it is all one as if you had said thus Christ intended to leave an infallible certainty in hiâ— Church but not to satisfie either contentious or curious or presumptuous spirits Oney you doe still in such things of this naâ—ure prudently avoyd the plainer and least deceitfull way of expressing your selfe Now what Christ intended he certainly performs and makes good But to that your Imaginary Catholicke Church Prelaticall I deny that Christ ever intended to leave an infallible certainty For to such he never made any such promise And therfore you cannot say and say truly That Christ intended that For you are no part of his true Church as having no calling from Christ as before is proved And you your selfe confesse in many places of your Booke that the Authority of your Church is not Divinely infallible And for instance you make your present Church Authority in inducing beliefe of Scripture to be Gods word to have a primâ— place in things absolutely necessary in themselves and yet you confesse that this Authority is not Divine and infallible So here is a Contradiction which I leave with you to reconcile Againe you tell us before that our Saviour Christ hath left in his Church besides his law-Law-books the Scripture visible Iudges to wit Arch-Bishops and Bishops And of such are made your Generall Councels Ergo of necessity Christ must intend to leave unto you an Infallible Certainty in judging Controversies of Faith For the Scripture you deny to be a compleat and sufficient Iudge in doubtfull cases and that in such cases the visible Iudges the Prelates in a Generall Councel are to determine Now if you have not certain infallibility of Judgement in what case is the Church Then it may be said as Bellarmine and other Jesuiâ—es say Christ hath provided very ill for his Church if he had not left a visible Iudge and withall a certaine infallibility unto him to determine controversies of Faith This he speakes of the Pope and upon the very same ground that you doe for all Prelates in a Generall Councel And the ground is that you and they both deny the Scripture to be sole Iudge in Controversies of Faith Well then what say you Doe you confesse this that you have this Infallible certainty If you say you have it not as you do and yet you will be the true Church of Christ then you bely Christ both here saying He intended to leave it and before in saying He hath left you to be visible Iudges For had he intended to leave such an Infallibility certain to such a Church as you speake of and to leave such to be visible Iudges as are Archbishops and Bishops then certainly he would have given you such an Infallible certainty as wherby you should have been qualified and furnished to be sufficient and competent Iudges whose Judgement should be such in matters of Faith as men might secretly and safely rely and rest their Faith upon For otherwise if you have not this Infallibility but that somtimes at least and that in weighty Controversies you might erre in Judgement then men should have no more ground whereon to settle their Faith then the Dove in the Deluge had to set her foot upon you have so covered the Scripture as with a Deluge of Criminations as to be no sufficient Judge in Controversies of Faith And you confesse ibid That a Generall Councel which is an Universall Assembly of Prelates and Grand Bench of visible Iudges is not of infallible credit but that they may erre yea and possibly manifestly too against fundamentall verity as pag. 226. So as if the Scripture be though Infalâ—ible yet not living but a dead Iudge that cannot speake or pronounce the sentence And if the Prelates the visible living Iudges have not infallible certainty nor a Generall Councel infallible credit in their Decrees you leave the Church in a most perplexed case Whither shall she goe in all her doubts To what Judge or Oracle for resolution To the Scriptures That 's dead and cannot say Mum· To a Generall Councel of Prelates That 's of no certain credit their Judgement is not infallible yea not in fundamentall Truths Alas poore Church what wilt thou doe What wilt thou doe Why surely beleeve none of all these false Prophets no not all of them together when assembled in a Generall Councel for they may and will miserably deceive and seduce you if you trust to their Judgement Whither then To the Scripture But it is dead say they They are false Prophets and blind guides beleeve them not follow them not Search the Scriptures as Christ bids you To the Law and
they renounce all such lords Aske them againe why they subject their Consciences soules and bodies to the will and lust of man in will-worship forbidden by the Apostle ô they answere they never knew that before and now that they know it they repent of it and from henceforth they renounce it and resolve to loose rather life and all then they will doe so any longer Thus even a good Christian through ignorance may for a time in a dangerous errour but so soon as he is convinced of it he will not for all the world continue in it So he that hath true saving faith in Christ resting on Christs merits alone for his justification he neither will nor can be brought to beleeve that he must be justified by his works For this is against the very nature of saving faith which rests onely on Christ renouncing all other respects So that 't is impossible that any true member of Christ should by any errour be so seduced as to be seperated from Christ for he is preserved by the spirit of Grace by the power of God through faith unto salvation So that as the whole body of the Church of Christ so every particular member of this body hath the certaine and infallible seale of the Spirit of Truth given him of Christ according to his promise purpose and intention for all truth absolutely necessary to salvation having both his Spirit and word to guide them into all truth Finally 't is very true being taken in a true sence that Christ never intended to leave an infallible certainty in his Church to satisfie either contentious or curious or presumptuous spirits And if not presumptuous spirits certainly not such spirits as usurpe a Prelaticall and Lordly Authority and to sit as visible Iudges of Scripture in Generall Councels imposing upon all men a servile yoake of obedience to their Decrees whether right or wrong true or false Nay to such presumptuous spirits God hath given eyes not to see and hath made their hearts fat not to understand the truth not to see the light that shineth in his word and therfore they say it is darke and speake disgracefully of it So as the presumptuous is properly yours As for the contentious and curious these are they that contend for the truth against your undermining and oppugning of it and are curious â—o search and sound the bottome of that Mystery of Iniquity which is cunningly yet grosly enough folded up in the voluminous leaves of this your Booke So as for these so contentious and curious Christ did intend to leave an Infallible certainty in his Church to satisfie them and to assure them of the Truth so as not all the opposition and contradiction in the world can beate them from it To the Tenth you make no matter of it if Generall Câ—uncels erre in one or a second or a third so it be not in things necessary In other cases it makes no matter if they erre And what matter is it then if there be none of your Generall Councel at all For you confesse that they may possibly though not easily erre in things necessary and in fundamentall points of Faith and yet obedience must be given If then it be no matter if in other things they erre onâ—e twice thrice yea or if you will in a hundred things take all these together and the world should be free from many dangers if it were rid of Generall Councels altogether But in the meane time you make no matter of it if in so erring they load the world with an intollerable burthen of errours which all men must bow their necks under till another Generall Councel doe free them and perhaps in stead of freeing them may lay as much more load upon them Truly my Lord if you had not a liberty to talk with your pen what you please and a strong opinion also that whatsoever you write or speake must needs be of every body highly applauded as if all you write were Oracles you would never have suffered such foule blots to have dropped from your pen. But 't is no matter If you erre in this and that and another c. aswell as your Generall Councels so as we knowing them may not in obeying or assenting erre with you To the Eleventh you say for necessary faith to salvation we have the Scriptures Creeds 4 first Generall Councels So then being furnisht of necessaries what need we any more I think the Apostles rule for temporall things may hold well in spirituall he saith having food and rayment let us therewith be content So Having all things necessary for faith to salvation let us use these well and bâ— content not affecting to be loaden with a multitudo of humane devises which Prelaticall Councels Courts and Canons put upon us And are Generall Councels so Cheape as that you should keep such a doe having no Necessaries to trouble them withall But it seems you have some other necessaries besides those of faith that will require a Generall Councel For you tell us pag 211. The setling of the Divisions of Christendome as the reconciling of England with Rome the making of Canons which must bind aâ—l particular Christians and Churches cannot be concluded 〈…〉 but there to wit in a Generall Councel Why but there For the Church of England you may doe what you please onely you desire perhaps a Generall Councel to conclude for Altars and other utensils and so ease your shoulders of the envy and crime of Innovation but for that also you have a sufficient put off as is shewed before But the reconciliation and setling of the Divisions of Christendome will conclude all But still the Scripture with you is not alone sufficient for necessary faith to salvation without the Creed and at least the 4 first Generall Councels Why was the Scripture before there were any either Creeds or Councels And was not the Scripture then alone sufficient for all things necessary to salvation The Creeds and Councels are not to be added to the Scripture as if without them it were not an absolute and compleat Rule As for the Creeds they were for the summe and substance of them extracted from Scripture and must still be reduced to Scripture for their true sense and interpretation as before And for the Decrees of the 4 Generall Councels we approve of them no further then the Scripture warrants them And therfore though Twelfthly you humbly submit to the Scripture as it is interpreted by the Primitive Church and Generall Councels and not els yet we submit our faith onely to the Scripture as it is interpreted by it selfe and by the spirit of Christ speaking and breathing in it which by the Scripture interprets the Scripture unto us as Augustine doth well observe in his Second Book de Doctrina Christiana And herein you shew your faith not to be Divine but humane as which you submit not meerly to the Scripture but unto the Iudgment of men as
And yet for all this doe you call such ignorant though perhaps well-meaning men that refuse to communicate with you in your Romish superstitious Idolatrous Altars and service I tell you who ever they be that doe so they are out of all question the deare Children of God And are they not warned by the Apostle to beware of all such will worship Ye cannot drinke saith he the cup of the Lord and the cup of Devils ye cannot be partakers of the Lords Table and the Table of Devils If then your Altars and Altar-service be a worship done to the Devil because it is of mans presumption in devising and imposing it whereby Christ and his true worship is overthrown call you such service a duty to God No God abhorres it as he did the Altars of Bethel set up for the Calves as he did Aarons Calfe though they said These are thy Gods ô Israel which brought thee out of Aegypt Even as you say Christ God Allmighties seat is there the Mercy-seat there the Sanctum Sanctorum there as in your Printed allowed Books Christ that redeemed Israel out of Aegipt there No surely as those by their false representations and Altars worshiped the Devils so doe you as before is shewed Ye have no shift for it So as when truly Religious Christians see you set up and use all your Popish Superstitions in that place which you call Gods house so your Altars Images Adorations Praying towards the East where your Altar standeth and a Crucifix over it and round about guarded with your Images have they not cause to be affraid even to step over your Church-threshold And may I not here justly and rightly apply to your now Church of Englands Altars and Images that which the Prophet Hosea doth to revolted Israel◠Israel is an empty vine he brought forth fruit unto himselfe to wit his own Devises in Religion according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the Altars according to the goodnesse of his land they have made goodly Images Their heart is divided now shall they be found faulty he shall breake down their Altars he shall spoyle their Images Ye◠by this meanes your hoysing up your Altars and Images well-minded Christians come now to be affraid of your old Ceremonies allowed by statute They now begin to find they smell ranke of Romish superstition and to appeare to be links of the same Chaine now made up with your Altars and other Superstitions whereby they see themselves bound and carryed captive backe to Babylon and Aegipt againe Wheras till your New came in their stomack did though with much difficulty digest the Old But now it is with many Christians as with Man who seeing a bare hand and foot and habit of one that is a notorious thiefe yet till they come to see his face clearly cannot by those judge whose parts and members they be whether an honest mans or a knaves so the Church of England having formerly seen but a hand as in signing with the Signe of the Crosse and a legge or foot as kneeling at the Sacrament and a habit as a Surplice and all these 3 being called by some of note The three innocent Ceremonies she generally took them to belong to some honest Matron but now Popery beginning to put off her maske and to shew her face more clearly then before as in hoysing up of Altars in all Churches setting up of Images in many and repayring of some old as in Pauls and other Cathedralls and Chappels Adorations before towards and to them Publication of Popish Pamphlets in English by Authority oppression of Gods word and Ministers open and allowed Profanation of the Lords day open and most terrible Persecution of Gods witnesses testifying against such notorious Innovations and the like And now that the Church of England openly professeth and proclaimeth to the world by you in this your Booke if indeed she have made you her mouth that she and the Church of Rome are one and the same Church no doubt of that Now I say men and even the most ignorant unlesse they be stone-blind begin to see that all those Ceremonies formerly so pressed by the Prelates whereby they held the poore peoples noses to the grindstone and yoaked their perhaps tender Consciences were but the hand legge foot habit of the whore of Babylon who durst never have shewed her impudent face so boldly in these dayes where the Gospell hath been so long professed and the beames thereof till now with such mysts out of the bottomlesse pit darkened had shinned forth so bright had not your Old Ceremonies ushered her in so as now as those Syrians with halters about their necks when Ahab said of Benhadad He is my brother catcht the word presently out of his mouth replying Thy brother Benhadad so the Church of Rome being styled by you a sister of England and you being in all things suited Sister-like in Romes Rites and Reliques dare and doth quickly catch the word out of your mouth Thy sister if not Thy mother Rome so as the Proverb may come to be in all other things verified Like Mother like Daughter if you may prove the Father Again One thing I cannot well passe over which seems to me very ridiculous where you say that by the judgement of godly and learned men those former Ceremonies have continued in the practise of this Church Now who knoweth not that these Ceremonies have so continued even by the judgement of profane and ignorant men And what needs then the judgement of godly and learned men for the matter as to testifie this Except you meane by the judgement of godly and learned men that godly and learned men have had most cause to know it by undergoing the severe judgement of Censure of suspension and silencing and other vexations onely for not conforming to the practise of your Old Ceremonies as many doe now for not conforming to your New Or els you so shuffle these words in and so packe them together that when they meet with a Reader that weighs your words more by the sound then by the sense or rather want of sense he may run away with this apprehension as if godly and learned men had in their judgement approved of those Ceremonies whereas few godly and learned but rather wished them all long agoe at Rome again from whence they came But to come to your Conclusion out of Rhenanus which by puting it down with approbation you make to be your own Doubtlesse Ceremonies doe not hurt the people but profit them Doubtlesse How prove you that Nay doubtlesse we have already proved that both they doe hurt and no way profit the people they are good for nothing for no body unlesse for you Prelates to uphold and exercise your Tyranny over Gods people and to bring Fees into your Courts And Beatus Rhenanus spake according to the Time and Place and Church he lived in although he was a
Protestants except not against it For this difference de Modo of the manner of the Presence of Christs naturall Body in the Sacrament we have spoken before at large And was this Difference trow you so small that cost both Ridley and Cranmer and Frith their lives For you cite them all 3 in one Page calling them the learned of those zealous in Queen Maries dayes Martyrs you do not call them beware of that So as times kà rin for honour sake you mention them not So you cite Calvin a little before whom in the High Commission you honoured with the Title of Rascall And these Martyrs are they whom one of your Divines of note and worth Dr. Heylin in a Booke licensed by your Chaplein stiles with the Honourable Title of Schismaticall Hereticks But to let this passe for currant with you The summe of your whole passage touching this point from pag. 292. to 296. is to perswade us to acknowledge a reall presence of Christs naturall body in the Sacrament onely differing from the Papists quoad moaum as touching the manner of presence Now I confesse this is a very pretty and ready way to lead to your Reconciliation But let me tell you even words and names and verball expressions are of no small force many times to lead men into great errours although at first they meant no harme that used them For instance The Primitive Fathers when they began to call the Lords Table an Altar they little dreamed what an Altar it would prove afterwards as wheron to offer up in sacrifice Christs naturall body So when they called Ministers Priests they imagined not that those Priests would prove afterwards such sacrificing Priests as now are in the Church of Rome And when they called the Lords supper a sacrifice which they meant to be Eucharisticall of thanksgiving they never suspected that this would become afterwards a corporall sacrifice of Christs very body and bâ—ood And yet these very Names so taken up gave occasion afterwards of setting up the greatest Idol that ever was in the world as we see at this day So dangerous is it to expresse Divine matters by any other Name then what the Scripture hath given them Seeing then that in Scripture we find no such words as Reall Presence of Christs naturall body in the Sacrament it is not safe for Christians to take them up And so much the more because we see by experience the mischiefes that this reall presence so called and so understood as the Papists doe hath done in the Church of God How many Martyrs hath it made How much innocent blood hath it spilt So as it hath gotten and that deservedly a very bad Name And it is the Name or Word wherby the Romanists expresse their Great Idol in the Masse And David saith Their Drinke offerings of Blood will I not offer nor take up their Names into my lips So as Christians ought not to use the Names of Idols invented by man to expresse Divine things of Scripture by Yea K. Hezechiah when the Brazen Serpent which God himselfe had commanded to be made for the present occasion in the Wildernesse though he commanded it not to be kept for a Monument began to be abused unto Idolatry he brake it to pieces And so in this case though these words The Reall Presence may beare a good sense yet being and that of long time abused to the setting up and upholding of most grosse Idolatry we are to stamp it to powder and never use it more And we have as little reason to be perswaded hereto by your Lordship as by any For as this word Reall presence is very suspicious in it selfe and much more in regard of the Papists abusing of it so it wants not suspicion that you so commend it unto us First in regard of the whole matter of your Book which generally complyes with Popery Secondly in regard of the main scope of your Booke which is to bring on a Reconciliation with Rome And Thirdly and more especially in regard of some speeches which have now and then dropped from you in publick Court where speaking of Altars-placing you said you would have none to sit above God-Allmighty which must needs imply as before is noted that either your Altar is your God Allmighty or els God Allmighty hath a locall presence and residence there upon your Altar And so Fourthly your eager zeale in promoting of Altars makes us much to suspect your Reall Presence as fearing all will not be well when once we have taken up and let down this Reall presence of God Allmighty into our bellies And so also Fiftly your Priests by that Name doe increase the suspition And Sixtly because you tell us before of a Transubstantiation taken properly and improperly And Seventhly Because you tell us by and by that Transubstantiation Purgatory Forbearance of the Cup are but Disputed and Improbable Opinions Lastly it is used to Idolatry and so to be broken in pieces as the Brazen Serpent was And therfore for all these Reasons we desire not to be troubled with your Reall presence but leave it to the Papists or to you to restore it where you had it or if you like it so well to use it let it be to your selfe or Chappell at Lambeth trouble not the Church of England with it any more which desireth not more matter for a new Booke of Martyrs Now to come to the Martyrs First for Ioh. Friths words Not to make it an Article of Faith but leave it Indifferent First However the words sound we must weigh them by the sense And the best Commentary of his words is his death which he suffered even therfore because he made it an Article of his faith to beleeve that Christ was not Really Present in the Sacrament as the Papists do hold and therfore on the contrary he held it as an Article of his faith That Christ was onely vertually and spiritually present to the Faith of the Receiver according to the true meaning of those Sacramentall words This is my body as a little before we shewed Secondly to take Friths words in your sense doth overthrow a Christians faith as touching the Sacrament wherein the beleever receives and applyes by faith the merits of Christs death to the comforting nourishing and strengthning of his soule And a man is bound to beleeve aright concerning the Sacrament and to put a maine difference between truth and erroâ—â— therein And is it not an Article of Faith to beleeve Christs body not to be corporally present in the Sacrament seeing he saith Me have you not alwayes It is expedient for you that I goe away who sits at Gods right hand whom the heavens must receive till his coming againe And lastly admit his words may be stretched to the full bredth of your sense which is erronious wee must measure all mens words by the Rule of Scripture in divin matters If they dissent or come short or goe
Church of Rome and of the Church of England And that the greatest too And I am perswaded the Church of England since it professed the Gospell never had such a monstrous and Bayeyard-like bold misleader as this Great worth of Canterbury hath proved to be or will certainly proove in effect if it find as blind Disciples to deale witthall as it selfe is a Master Although it is much hoped that if any Man hath conceived such an high Opinion of your worth as to account you for the most Profound Divine the most Pregnant Politician and the most potent Champion of the Church of England the very Reading of this your Book with a corrected judgement will either convert him from this errour or at least prevent that this errour of your Doctorship shall not Commence or Proceed to the degree of Heresie L. p. 303. 'T is safest to beleeue the Article of Christs Descent into hell as both the Churches of England and of Rome do agree upon that is That he descended into the place of the damned And this is the truth P. Surely if this be the truth that Christ descended locally into hell the place of the damned it were safest to beleeve it whether you and Rome consent in the beliefe of it or no. But because you beleeve as the Church of Rome beleeves will you thereupon conclude This is the truth Certainly we have the more cause to suspect that truth for a falshood wherein you and Rome doe both agree But how true your beliefe with Rome is and how true this Truth we have before sufficiently discovered But will this hold for a good Rule that in what you and Rome agree it is safest to beleeve it You agree in Altars Priests Sacrifice all manner of wil-worship Antichristianisme and many things more forespecified Ergo is 't safest to beleeve these things Or for whom safest safest for all those that affect to be of your Church Tryumphant here and would not come under your persecution But how agrees this with that which you adde ibid. that Rome will not indure this that Christ descended into the place of the damned but onely in Limbum Patrum a Region in the upper part of Hell Ergo rather then faile if Rome will not beleeve as you doe That Christ discended into the place of the damned you will beleeve as she beleeves that he dâ—scended in Limbum Patrum For agree you must and that 's the safest beliefe L. p. 307. I my selfe have heard some Iesuites confesse that in the Liturgie of the Church of England ther 's no positive errour P. 'T is a signe then your Liturgie agrees pretty well with the Romish Messal as is noted by the way before For surely such a Testimony from a Jesuites mouth gives us the more cause of suspicion that all is not so well in your Liturgie as it should be As Diogenes sayd when the people applauded him he began to suspect himselfe that he had committed some absurdity or other saying Wherein have I miscarryed my selfe that this people doth so commend me L. p. 318. Though Dr. White late Bishop of Ely was more able to answere for himselfe yet since he is now dead and is thus drawn into this Discourse I shall as well as I can doe him the right which his learning and paines for the Church deserved And I grant as well as he that there must be some one Church or other continually visible P. First for Dr. White he being now dead which he was long before I will say no more but this For his deserving pains for the Church the Church of England you meane as now it stands the same Church with that of Rome and of the same Faith with her and of which Faith he also declared himselfe to be when he told a Minister that the Difference between the Church of Rome and of England in the Doctrines of the sixt Session of Trent and by name of Grace and Justification was little or nothing how great it was his Works extant can witnesse as namely his Approbation prefixed to your now Brother of Chichester his Appeale to Caesar wherein is maintained the whole Body of your Arminian Heresie together in all or most of the grossest points of Popery as worship of Images at least with Doulia and the like and assaying to prove the Pope not to be Antichrist as if he would solem è coelo tollere also Dr. Whites Book of the Sabbath to prove no Sabbath to Christians and the fourth Commandement not to be Morall for the keeping of one day in the weeke as the Lords Day allowing also of vaine sports and profane pastimes on that Day and commending of praying towards the East where your Altar is placed and such like stuffe in all which he so well deserved of your Church of England as he scarce had his fellow onely if he were now living againe he would yeeld the Bucklers to your Lordship as the bravest Champion of the now Chuch of England that hath risen up in this latter Age or yet succeeding times may hope to produce But let us now heare the right which your Lordship does him and which his paines for the Church deserved But first let me tell you you forget here to give him his Title of Lord Bishop which you indeed gave him in the very first page of your Booke But now his Lordship is dead let not Lord and Bishop be separated in any case no not by death it selfe For indeed Lord-Bishop is a peculiar Title differencing you from all true Bishops indeed as the Scripture commendeth for the onely Bishops as is shewed before yet I know not how it is come to passe that in the best Reformed Churches beyound the Seas the Pastors are never called Bishops I suppose it is because as Kings of old were stiled Tyranni and that in meliorâ—m partem untill degenerating into Lawlesse Tyrants indeed good Kings would thereupon never after be called Tiranni but Kings so the Reformed Churches seeing how the name of Bishop grâ—w to be odious the Office and Calling of it being changed 〈◊〉 that of a Parochiall Pastor into a Diocesan Lordship and so 〈◊〉 have for this cause layd aside the Name of Bishop though otherwise the Name is good as it pertaines to the true 〈◊〉 and Presbyters over particular Congregations as is before shâ—wed so as the Reformed Churches doe herein as the Ancient Romans did who when their Kings turned Tyrants the lâ—st wheâ—of was Tarquinius surnamed Superâ—us for his extreme 〈◊〉 they for ever banished both the name of Kings and 〈◊〉 out of their Commonweale But let us see how you recompense the omission of this Lordly Title in this place to such a well deserving man You adde And I grant as well as he that there 〈◊〉 be some one Church or other continually visible Aâ— well aâ— he This then may seem to be some recompense by way of honour and 〈◊〉 some doing of him Right for indeed his main
whatsoever faith is requisite and necessary to salvation as the beliefe of Scripture to be the word of God as is shewed before And this saving faith is the faith of all them that are heires of salvation to wit of all Gods Elect and all the Saints But it seems with Father Bellarmine you have an Implicit faith for your ignorants and an Explicit for you that are great Clerks or the letter of the Creed for those and the sense for these But I handled this also before Onely you propound a Paradox which is no worke for your pen wherein you are the wiser not to take upon you to read or expound such riddles had you been so wise as not to have propounded â— And yet it is the worke of every good Minister of Chrâ—â—t to teach the people what to beleeve and to exhort them to grow in Grace and knowledge and Faith and so declare unto them the whole Counâ—el of God and to keep nothing backe and to build men up in knowledge more and more unto perfection As the Preacher saith Because the Preacher was wise he still taught the people knowledge yea he gave good heed and sought out and set in Order many Proverbs The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words and that which was written was upright even words of truth The words of the wise are aâ— Goads and Nayles fastened by the Masters of Assemblies which are given from one shepheard But this is not a patterne for you to follow neither by your tongue nor pen. You have other imployment for them But though we cannot set a bound to faith in respect of perfection of degrees yet we ought to teach the people all the parts of saving faith and knowledge striving unto perfection And besides it is the duty of every good Minister of Christ to limit and set bounds to all the negatives of faith in discovering all manner of sins and errours which are all contrary and enemies to faith and salvation For which end they must open all the ten Commandements as Christ did Mat. 5. and all other points of saving Doctrine in the Scriptures Now though you have not the skill or will to set bounds how farre men shall beleeve yet you want no will nor power to inhibit and restraine Preachers shewing them how little a way they must goe in teaching the people and so consequently how little a way the people must goe in beleeving and saving knowledge as in restraining and forbidding to preach the Doctrines of Grace as before forbidding Lectures and especially all Sermonâ— on the Lords day afternoon forbidding long Preaching at any time forbidding expounding of the Catethisme as many of your Prelates doe and the like Thus you can finely set men bounds how little thy shall beleeve or know of God to their salvation That 's a worke if not for your pen or hand yet for your head and not unlikely of your hand and pen too L. p. 327. The Romanists dare not beleeve but as the Roman Church beleeves And the Roman Church at this day doth not beleeve the Scripture and the Creeds in the sense in the which the ancient Primitive Church received them P Dare they not How then say you there is possibility of salvation in the Roman Church for any when it condemneth and accurseth saving faith and justification thereby with other saving truths For if the Papists dare not beleeve but as their Church beleeves then they are bound to good behaviour they dare not beleeve to their salvation And if they dare not beleeve to their salvation then they cannot be saved And if they cannot be saved what possibility of salvation for them living and dying in that faith And here Why do you noâ— say in the sense of the Scriptures themselves and not of the Primitive Church But you doe not like the Scripture sense except the Church interpret it You allow not Scriptures to speake for or testifie for themselves You are the same man still And as we sayd before you doe wisely in that to stoppe the mouth of Scripture as Ahab did Michaiahs for it never speaks good of you but evil alwayes L. p. 232. I will acknowledge every fundamentall point of faith as proveable out of the Canon as we account it as if the Apochryphall were added unto it P. As if Apocryphalls were any divine proofe at all of the fundamentall points of faith in Scripture or ought any way in that respect to be so much as named with the Scripture Apocryphalls saith Ierome may be read for instruction of manners but not for confirmation of faith as before L. p. 336. I have lived and shall God-willing dye in that faith of Christ as it was professed in the ancient Primitive Church and as it is professed in the present Church of England P. As you handle the matter ther 's a vast difference between the faith of Christ professed in the ancient Primitive Church and that which is now professed in the present Church of England For the Ancient Primitive Church taken properly and strictly as somtime in your Booke as before you put it was that wherein the Apostles lived Now will ye be tryed by the Ancient Primitive Church of the Apostles held and professed What say you my Lord for your faith in this case Will you put your faith and Religion to the tryall of the most intire and upright Jâ—ry the Twelve Apostles Certainly if you decline this tryall 't is a shrewd suspicion that the faith of yours wherein you are so resolute to live and dye is not right Therfore for shame of the world you must at least professe or pretend that you wil be tryed by the the Faith and Religion which the Apostles and the true Church of God in their time as being the most Pure Prime Ancient Primitive Church held and professed First then That Primitive Church neither held nor professed nor practised any Hierarchicall government of Prelates or Bishops but have câ—ndemned it in their writings the Scriptures of the New Testament And yet I are say you resolve to live and dye Primate of Canterbury and Metropolitan of all England Secondly The Apostles and the ancient Primitive Church in their Age and time had no Altars but onely the Lord Iesus Christ Heb. 13.10 as it is formerly proved but you and your Church of England both set up and worship Altars and â—each the people both by your Books and practise to do so too and force Ministers to erect Altars or force them out of their Churches And this Faith and Religion also I dare say you resolve to live and dye in Thirdly The Apostles and the anciciâ—nt Primitiâ—e Church in their time celebrated and sanctified every Lords day in holy duties onely and in preaching as well in the afternoon as in the fâ—â—enoon never forbidding but still exhorting to preach in season and out of season giving no liberty to vaine and profane sports and Pastimes either upon
But Thirdly you say These are a great scandall of Christianity No more Why sure they are the very badges and proper markes of the whore of Babylon and the Doctrines of Antichristianity For they are spirituall whoredome And as for true Christianity it so abhorres them and that whore that uses them that it is not easily scandalized with them as you are that would so faine be â—econciâ—ed to Rome For what communion hath the Temple of God with Idolls Or Christ with Beliall Or true Christianity with Antichristianity L. p ibid. Transubstantiation taken properly cannot stand with the ground of Christan Religion P. Why is there some other taking of Transustantiation then properly Is there a Transubstantiation improperly taken shew it us I pray you Is not Transubstantiation Transubstantiation To 〈◊〉 a Câ—anging of one substance into another As the changing of the substance of water into the substance of wine which Christ truly did miraculously As the changing of waters into blood which Moses did miraculousâ—y As the changing of the breaâ— into Christs body and of the wine into Christs blood which the Papists falsly teach and beleeve as if done miraculously when no Miracle at all doth appeare Or they say it is done by verture of pronouncing the words of Consecration Hoc est corpus meum This is my body whereas the Text plainly sheweth that these were not the words of Consecration as also some Schoolmen confesse for Christ had Consecrated before in his blessing or giving of thanks after which and after he had broken the bread giving it to his Disciples he uttered these words This is my body But what is your Transubstantiation improperly taken Indeed some of the Ancient Fathers speaking of the Sacramentall Elements after Consecration being then set apart from common use called it a Mutation saying that the Elements were changed into another Nature but withall they expresse their meaning to be not the changing of their substance but of their use from being common bread and wine to become Sacramentall or Sacred But for Transubstantiation they never so much as dreamed of any such kind of Metamorphosis or MetousÃosis or monstrous Paradox as Transubstantiation But this your Distinction of properly and improperly may perhaps prove usefull for to make a Reconciliation with Româ— in this matter and so to remove this mégakásma so as both you and the Church of Rome may hold Transubstantiation onely with this difference or rather verball distinction Rome holding it properly and you improperly L. ibid. As for communion in one kind Christs Institution to cleare against that P. And is not Christs institution as cleare against Trâ—nsubstantiation upon which you immediately adde this And first even naturall Reason or the blind light of Nature is against it For the Heathen man can tell you who is so madde or vaine as to beleeve or imagine that to be God which he eateth Although saith he we call Bread by the name of the Goddesse Ceres and Winâ— by the name of Bacchus c. Againe to beleeve Transubstantiation is against those very words of institution This is my body For these words are an usuall Sacramentall Phrase or manner of speech which the Scripture useth in all the Sacraments both of the old Testament and of the new As in all of them to call the outword visible signes by the name of the thing signified As Circumsition was called the Covenant Gen. 17.10 though but a signe of it vers 11. And a seale of it also Rom. 4.11 so the eating of the Paschall Lambe it was a memoriall or commemorative signe and sacrifice of the Passover and yet it is called the Passover So Baptisme succeeding Circumcision though it be a visible signe and Sacrament of the washing of Christs bloud to remission of sinnes And so as Circumcision a signe and seale of the Covenant yet it is called râ—generation beâ—ng but a signe of it And so also the Lords supper the Elements theâ—ein bread and wine Consecrated being signes to remember and seales by Faith to apply Christs death the one is called his body the other his blood And thus Christs institution is as cleare against Transubstantiation as it is against communion in one kind Thirdly Transubstantiation is against the Article of our Faith of Christs incarnation of the Virgin and of his sitting at Gods right hand whom the heavens must receive till his coming againe And so against our Faith of his coming againe as before seeing Transubstantiation makes him Corporally present every day And as for communion in one kind though it be commonly so called yet both improperly and untruly For it is not communion so much as in one kind Transubstantiation being admitted as Papists beleeve it for they destroy the very substance of the Element of bread by their Transubstantiation and how then is it a communion in one kind They have left nothing of the bread but the bare Accidents And Accidents we know do not constituere speciem do not constitute any species or kind of things Nay according to the Rule of Philosophy the Papists have by taking away the substance of bread not left so much as the Accidents of Bread but in a meeer Phantasme or Apparition For Philosophy and Logicke teacheth that Accidentis Esse est messe The Beeing of an Accident iâ— its immediate In-beeing in its proper subject Now the substance of bread is the proper subject of the Accidents of bread which are no longer the Accidents of Bread then they inhere in the bread so as the Bread being destroyed the Accidents are destroyed And if as they say the substance of Bread is vanished in Transubstantiation then certainly the Accidents And lesse proper is it that accidents proper to bread should have their inherence in humane flesh as they say Christs flesh is under the accidents of bread as if it were coloured over with the accidents of bread which yet cannot subsist but in some body yea and in their naturall and proper body which is bread Againe wheras you say Transubstantiation was never heard of till the Councel of Lateran 't is true that â—s was never decreed to be beleeved and publiâ—kly received as a Doctrine of the Church of Rome till in the Councel of Lateran under Innocent 3 as before is touched But it was hatched before and was privately crope into the bosome of many mens beliefe and there fostered as a tender Chicke before it came to get spurres and so to be made a Cocke of the Game in that Councel So also Communion under one Kind as you call it secundum Apparentiam grew into use in sundry places through â—egligence of the Priest or otherwise before it came to be Decreed in the Councel of Constance to be of necessity universally received L. p. 277. For Adoration of Images the modern Church of Rome is too likâ— to Paganisme in the Practise of it P. The Moderne say you Nay the Church of Rome
moderate man and saw more then he durst speake of And the same Rhenanus as was before touched in his Annotations upon Tâ—rtullian and I take it in that Book out which you cite this sentence De Corona Militis observes how sundry Heathen Ceremonies crope into the Church by occasion of many old men newly converted to Christianity whom it was hard to waine from their old Heathenish fashions which therfore were thought fit to be admitted as not hurting but profiting those old Heathen new Christians But godly and learned men as I said before could tell you what infinite dammage your tyrannicall pressing of your Ceremonies upon mens Consciences hath brought to the Gospell and so to the soules of men by depriving them of so many worthy Ministers onely for Non-conformity But this is one speciall end for which you so presse your Ceremonies to suppresse Godly and learned Preachers and so the sincere Preaching of the word of God that the people being brought up in ignorance and profanesse might be the lesse sensible of bearing the yoake of your Antichristian Tyranny over them But as for your Carnall Ceremonies which the Apostle saith are good for nothing pròs plesmonen in comparison of satisfying the flesh the carnall pride of will-worshipers we have spoken sufficiently before But Rhenanus addes a qualification so there be a meane kept I think you might have done well to have omitted this till you had been better acquainted with this meane of which before And the Author might have expressed this Meane a little more fully thus So there be either no Ceremonies at all or if any those very few and those few not pressed with rigor or necessity upon mens Consciences but left free to every one to use them or not according to the Christian liberty which Christ hath purchased for them as is said before Whereas you are not satisfied with a few Ceremonies nor with the Old but you must have New added with a Tot quot and all of them you presse so hard upon the Conscience as you wring blood And this is all the Meane you keep Lastly So the By be not put for the Maine that is say you so we place not the principall part of our Piety in them And doe not you so For you put your Altar and all the solemn Service and Ceremonies of Devotions and Adorations attending upon it even all your humane Inuentions and Will worship for the very Maine of all your Religion Do you not I know you willingly confesse it And what 's the By but Gods-word and the sincere Preaching thereof which you put By and by seting up your Altar-service do thrust out of the Church by the head and shoulders as is noted before And I say The Maine the All and some of all your Religion is your Altar On this your Goddesse all your other Devotions and Ceremonies as so many Hand-mayds give their devout attendance Your face prayeth towards your Altar your body boweth towards your Altar your second solemn service as the secundae Mensae for your daintier Cates must be served up upon your Altar which the maine Body of the Church must not tast of your Third service which is instead of the Preachers concluding prayer blessing after his halfe-houres Sermon must be served by your Priest at your Altar when with his blessing he dismisses the people with an Ite Missa est And all the while of your solemn Second and Third service your Serving men in their Liveries or Rich Copes stand and give their Attendance about your Altar your Crucifixes and Images like the Cherubims have their aspect and respect upon your Altar All must come and offer at your Altar while for joy your Organs merrily play Thus as the Romish Altar-service as Bellarmine tells us is the maine substance of all their Religion just so is yours That 's the Maine But What 's the By then Namely all the Intralls or Inwards of externall Devotion and worship these are the appurtinances these are the By. What are those Inwards The Inwards of True Externall worship are Faith Feare of God Love of God Zeale of Gods Glory sincerity of heart in spirit and Truth Now these with you are altogether the By for these you have layd quite By as before L. p. 280. F. Fisher reports After this we all rising the Lady asked the Bishop whether she might be saved in the Romain Faith He answered she might L. What Not one Answere perfectly related My Answere to this was Generall for the ignorant that could not discerne the errours of that Church so they held the foundation and conformed themselves to a Religious life Pag. 285. We have not so learned Christ as to deny salvation to some ignorant silly soules whose humble peaceable obedience makes them safe among any part of men that professe the foundation Christ. And pag. 288. some Protestants there be which doe as stiffly and as churlishly deny All Papists salvation as they doe us And 283. In this Our Charity is not mistaken and if it be mistaken Charity is better then none at all P. From all these words together we observe this one Maine That silly ignorant Papists living and dying in the Romish Faith may be saved with these conditions 1. If they discerne not the errour of that Church 2. So they profes the foundation Christ 3. So they conforme to a Religious life in an humble and peaceable obedience The second Maine I observe is That we ought not to deny to such in that case salvation And that upon these Reasons 1. Because we have not so learned Christ. 2. Because it is stiffnesse and Churlishnesse in Protestants to deny all Papists salvation 3. That in granting them salvation it is true Charity not mistaken 4. That if Charity herein be mistaken 't is better then none at all Of all these brefly First then I Answere That the Roman Faith being Infidelity it selfe 't is impossible that any living and dying in that faith can be saved And we have before proved it to be flat Infidelity and Apostacy Nor will it excuse any Ignorant that he discerneth not this Infidelity and Apostacy For ignorance though it excuse à Tanto as the Schoolmen speake from the muchnessâ— of sinne yet not à Toto from the Maine of sinne A man that is blind and knows not the danger of the way he walkes in doth as well fall into the pit as he that seeing runs headlong into it The Heathen knew not that they lived and dyed in Idolatry and Infidelity yet they were damned for all their ignorance Secondly for their Professing the foundation Christ Is Profession sufficient Many sayth the Apostle professe Christ that in works doe deny him being abominable disobedient and unto â—very worke Reprobate Is it enough then to professe all that is in the Creed did ignorant silly Papists know what their Latin-Creed meaneth and yet want faith Againe they professe as they are taught How is that