an argument than if he should prove that there have been no Jesuits in England of late years because though divers have been apprehended none have been brought to Tryal 50. Concerning the Franciscan at Bristol the oath of G. Cowlishaw Ironmonger in Bristol is upon record and printed in Mr. Pryns Quaker unmaskt edit. 2. p. 3. who p. 34 c. answers to what H. D. here objects to clear the Franciscan Besides him at Bristol I could tell Mr. Denne a strange story of his Father Whitebread saying Mass about London and of another disputing for the Quakers and presently proved a masked Papist at Wolverhampton but I had rather he should have these things from others who have more leisure When he shall have considered these and other like relations which will shortly be printed at large I will desire him to tell the world whether they be groundless and unproved calumnies 51. To the next words wherein he sayes No mans innocency will be able to protect him against suspition I answer That it is not fit any man should judge how hardly Mr. Denne shall be dealt with by any suspitions further then may appear by those propositions of his which are recollected in the close of this address 52. In the very next line H. D. saith that he for his part does very confidently assure himself that if an oath were tendred to ALL the Papists in this Nation they would willingly swear that neither they themselves nor any that they know did ever use any such practise or ever thought it lawful to dissemble their Religion Wherein H. D. expresses questionlesse a greater confidence in behalf of the Jesuits then either Clark or Watson would of Robert Parsons the Jesuite or the secular Priests at this day will for the body of that Society as appears by their books which for these sixty years they have writ one against another So that H. D. is a closer friend to the Jesuites then many Romish Priests be 53. This 15th begins thus we all know 't is a fallacious way of arguing to proceed a posse ad esse as they speak at Cambridge Do not they speak so at Doway and St. Omers too and yet no better is the Argument of the Papist's Adversaries in this case Here he blames some persons under the name of Popish Adversaries sure he means to exempt himself from the number And before he is gone to the middle of this page he falls again to undertaking for the Principles of Popery and passes his word that their principles contain nothing which allowes dissimulation in Religion 54. But in the last page he will needs have Mr. S. to be a Papist for asserting that we receive the Canon of Scripture upon the Authority of the Church of all Ages and the pure spouse of Christ I would fain be told by Mr. Denne what reason he can give to his brethren Anabaptists and the Quakers why the song of Solomon should be Canon and other usefull books which bare his name Apocrypha why the Revelation of St. John should be put into the Canon 300. years after Christ and some gospells bearing the Apostles names left out but the authority of the Jewish Church for the Old and of the Christian for the New Testament But I would have him remember that to talk of the pure spouse of Christ and the Church of all ages and exclude the 12. Apostles and the first Century out of it is a discourse not becoming Mr. Dennes profession 55. Sure H. D. never saw Dr. Cosin of the Canon of Scripture nor Hooker's Ecclesiastical policy nor heard of St. Augustines non Crederem Scripturis nisi me moveret Ecclestae authoritas If Mr. S. be a Papist for this he hath these and a multitude of such good Protestant-company Popish with him 56. You ask what other Church was there in all ages but the Roman I answer unless you and I agree now upon the terms of the question we must end where we should have begun therefore first I must desire you to tell me what you mean by the Roman Church Which I shall scarce know till you answer the 20. questions that Mr. T. S. puts in the close of his preface to Daille's apology But that you may not pass without one answer I pray tell me what other Church was there in all ages but the Greek Church and those that agree with her in all or most part of what she holds particularly in believing no infallibility or Soveraign jurisdiction over all in the Bishop of Rome for which among other good doctrines the present Roman Church refuseth her Communion 57. And here you mend all at last for you no sooner hear talk of a pure spouse of Christ the Church of all ages but you apprehend it can be understood of none but the Roman Church and say plainly that to talk of a pure spouse of Christ and the Catholick church in the creed the church of all ages for those are the words in the letter that you cite is doubtless in effect to justifie the church of Rome to be a pure church 58. Thus having examined Mr. Hen. Dennes new book and Religion I shall only recollect a few positions publisht by him and his friend George Whitehead the Quaker whom he would prove to be no Papist and therefore that no Papist is a Quaker and then leave Mr. D. to turn over his Aethiopick Testament all the books of Papists and ALL their histories and leave the Reader to judge how good Protestants this fit couple be H. D. and G. W. George Whitehead besides those particulars which are mentioned in the Queries hereto annexed especially p. 14. and 16. maintaines these seven following Romish doctrines 1. That justification is by inherent righteousness and so saith no Protestant but so saith Bellarmin l. 2. de justificat c. 3. 2ly That a man may perfectly keep the law without sin so saith not Protestants but Bell: l. 4. de justif. c. 11. 12. 13. 14. 3ly G. W. denies the imputed righteousness of Christ for justification so Bell: l. 2. de justif. c. 7. 4ly G. W. affirms that Scripture is not the supream rule for trial of spirits so Bell: l. 3. de verbo Dei c. 4. 5ly G. W. hath writ an whole book against Mr. Clapham to prove that the written word is but a dead letter and carnal So saith Costerus in enchyridio p. 44. 6ly G. W. pretends to immediate Revelations and pretended miracles see Clapham and the century of queries so do the Papists unchurching them who pretend not to them as triall of a Church 7ly G. W. and the Papist both alike place much of their holiness in their beggarly apparrell in going openly with sackcloath and barefooted which I find taxed by the ancient Fathers of the Church Thus far G. W. 59. Now for Mr. Hen. Denne I hope the Reader hath ere this observed that though this book of his before us be entituled for the Quakers as I am
by Bp. Bramhall and Dr. Heylin 't is very probable you shall receive Mr. S. his determination of your questions Till then he who thinks you have not vouchsafed to read that smal book which you pretend to answer profess magisterially to censure can not believe that you 'l find leisure to read his determinations of such questions And he hath not so much spare time as you to write and print books only for his own reading 6. Mean while I must tell you that one reason why I think you have not read over the Quaker disarmed is because you put a case and three queries in your 4th page which are answerd in the letter to Mr. E 35. Yet for your more abundant satisfaction I le answer them more particularly by asserting 1. That in your case the preaching of those shipwrackt men to pagans is no sin 2ly That in such extraordinary cases 't is lawfull for such a Congregation to choose their Teachers 3ly That such a Congregation may find fitting men full of faith to preach unto unbelievers especially if the shipwrackt men have recourse as soon as they can to the Church to ordein them as Frumentius and Aedesius did who are mentioned in the letter to Mr. E. afore-cited 7. But H. D. must give me leave to tell him that that man hath an ill mind who being in a ship well orderd usurpeth the Masters or Pilots place and takes to himself what portion of the fraight he pleases meerly because a vessell shipwrackt is sometimes thought a lawfull prey by the people on the shore And I wonder that these words should come from one that pretends to be a Minister of the Gospel unless he would imply that he hath an eager mind to shipwrack an entire vessell under faile 8. Whereas in your 5th page you fall foul upon Mr. S. for disputing with Quakers you must know that those your friends did not only challenge him and all the Clergy in England in print G. Fox's mystery in folio p. 19. preface but set up their bills of defiance upon the commencement and School doors Nay the Maiors Wife and divers other Quakers were importunate with Mr. S. to dispute who half an hour before the on set resolved to decline it and the Maior himself told Mr. S. that he was glad he would undertake them for he had oft said that they were so insolent because no man meddled with them And the case standing thus as Mr. James Alders and many others can witness I would gladly see your determination and what you have to say against S. Paul who saith 't is the duty of a Minister not only to exhort but to confute gainsayers Tit. 1. 9. 9. For the argument of three hees see p. 2. Mr. S. did not say that this was the only way of proof but that it was one He did not say that all three hee 's be three persons but that all hee s which be in Heaven are such You may see they were then speaking of the three that bear record in Heaven and I hope Mr. H. D. will stable none of his troop-horses in Heaven though they come into Pauls 10. In your 2d you would cleer G. W. from being a Papist because you say he would take no oath Ans. Others think that he will take an oath when 't is for his advantage as you may see in the queries and if that be true as Mr. S. hath reason to believe it I know no reason why he should refuse the oath unless he be a Papist Nor would Mr. S. I believe have mentioned that oath to him if he had not been assured that G. W. and H. D. are both alike bitter enemies to the old moderate way of tryal appointed by the Church of England and if you be so I am yet to learn what other way beside this oath he could have propounded 11. To your 3d. where you ask who can make sense of the story of the twelve Embassadours I answer any man but Mr. D. who is unwilling To the rest of this besides what you have been told before p. 2. l. 24. I reply that though the Father Son and H. Ghost are one essence and each of these three is every where yet that they may manifest the distinction of persons one having condescended to an incarnation whose human nature there appeared the other two did at his baptisme manifest themselves by sensible symbols Which three sensible manifestations Almighty God was pleased then to make unto mens senses in three distinct places though each of the three persons be in all places that we who are in divers places might have some apprehension of the distinct personalities 12. In your 4th you tell Mr. Smith of Luther Calvin Zuinglius as the Romanists are wont As if all those who protest against the Church of Rome for pretending to infallibilty were thereupon necessarily obliged to place the same infalibility in every Protestant Doctor And whereas you ought if you would say any thing pertinently to prove what the Protestants of the Church of England answered you tell us what the Papists in other Nations object whether truely or not I shall not now stand to examine 13. But I am glad to meet with a man that hath read ALL the books of Papists in those times and ALL their Histories I hope you would not cite them all as fitted with matter for your purpose unlesse you had read them all I entreat you to cite not all of them though the more the merrier but only one if you can in all your vast historical readings I say one Protestant of those many thousands that have defended the Church of England who hath made such an Enthusiastical answer as that of G. W. 14. In your 5th you fondly imagine T. S. stark mute divers times As first upon your saying that the first Protestant Bishops had no ordination but what they mutually gave themselves and one another Ans. If you mean by mutually as common sense requires that the Ordained did ordain the Ordainer Bishop I beseech you to prove it for 't is as false as 't is evidently known that the four Bishops-Ordeiners were Bishops before the beginning of Q. Elizabeths reign of which time onely you make this question and scruple 15. Secondly you fancy T. S. mute again upon your asking who gave them commission to make Math. Parker Arch-bishop of Canterbury Ans. The Bishops in King Edward VI's time did give them power and so commission for all Bishops have commission when fit occasion and due circumstances occur to make Mat. Parker Bishop and I doubt not but Mr. Smith as mute as you conceive him and impertinent in Manuscripts is both able and ready to show you in his own private library besides what he hath in the publick some antient records wherein you 'l find it evident that Mat. Parker was a true Bishop if you think there can any evidence arise from the testimony of a peevish adversary who lived in Matthew
Parkers dayes 16. Presently you add that T. S. dared not profess openly that they received their commission from Popish Bishops of K. Henry VIII's time Ans. true because he dares not speak a falsity for they received it in the time of Edw. VI Though what you suppose had been no impossible thing since good Protestants in the dayes of Edw. VI had received valid baptisme as all men do acknowledg in Henry the eights reign 17. In answer to the rest of this be pleased to know that the antient Church believed contrary to your Popish novelty that all Bishops had spiritual jurisdiction as being successors to the Apostles And 't is only the interest of the Pope to deny it who is wont to make titular Bishops without jurisdiction to serve himself in his pretended Councils 18. I hope I need not tell Mr. D. who tells others 15. how they speak at Cambridge that a Master and a Family an overseer and a charge are relata rise and fall together but I must tell him that Bishop Barlow and Miles Coverdale had the warrant of all their Ecclesiastical Superiors who then were over them to make Bishops in the diocess of London and that Bonner was not their superior 19. To what you speake at large of Q. Elizabeths being a Lay-person and not being able to give any power c. I answer What power that Queen had and ought to have in Ecclesiastical matters you may see in the Articles of the Church of England which no Papist nor Anabaptist H. D. or W. J. W. J. or H. D. was ever able to disprove or durst say one word against it 20. Reading forward I am at a stand and must plainly confesse I know not what you mean by what followes viz. your comparing the common people and Masters of Families with the Queen that then was I know not what your asserting that these have as much power as the Queen can drive at but casting off all authority like your brethren at Munster 21. To your 6th I answer that if there be any Churches beyond our seas who count it their glory to want a succession of Bishops yea to cry shame upon it and to reject it as a superstitious relique of Popery and mark of Antichrist we are no more engaged to defend such people then the Quaker is engaged to defend the Papist or the Papist a Quaker nor so much as appears by this Apology which I am now answering 22. This I know that not only the Reformed Churches in their Confession of Ausburg and again in their Apology for that Confession cap. de ordine ecclesiastico cap. de potestate eccles. and in their other colloquies at Wormes and Ratisbon and divers of their books beside but likewise Mr. Calvin who subscribed the Augustane confession in his book de necessitate reformandae ecclesiae to Cardinal Sadolet his old friend and in his epistles to Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley and in his Institutions l. 4. c. 4. 4. And with him Mr. Beza too in his book de diversis gradibus ministr. c. 21. 23. I say I know and am as sure as a man that believes his eyes can be that these and Zanchy Diodati Cappellus Pet. Moulin Daillé and others the most learned French-men now living believe episcopacy and the government by Bishops to be lawfull at least And I am sure that Mr. T. S. if H. D. be so well acquainted with him as he pretends but I am told he confessed he did not know him so much as by sight the same hour that he owned this printed book to him will at his request give him a larger list of reformed forraign Divines on this subject and proofes that other protestant churches beside the English have a successsion of Bishops which I saw in his chamber But there is so much already printed of the L. Viscount Falklands Bp. Carleton and others against your ungrounded assertion that I shall deferr sending you a larger catalogue until you or your friend Knot the Jesuit who also hath writ against Episcopacy shall have answered Dr. Hamonds dissertations against Blondel otherwise than by your sword and sequestration 23. Your 7th conteining nothing to the purpose but a bare assertion that T. S. 16. and great numbers even of Episcopall men PRESBYTERIANS Independents and ALL professors besides Papists do refuse to take the oath of abjuration is in my opinion answered sufficiently till it be proved by a bare negation Though some of them have much more cause to refuse it than you who have taken away the former trial of Popery viz. Recusancy common by the Law to Papists Anabaptists and other Sectaries which names I hope you 'l not be angry at while you take them to your self p. 16. l. 14. 16. 24. In your 8th you argue against the oath thus No man can safely swear that he believes no purgatory unlesse he be as sure that there is no purgatory as that there is a God Ans. This looks like the saying of Fa. Knot against Chillingworth who thinks that what ever he believes in religion he believes with the same certainty wherewith he receives the highest articles of the Christian faith When passion and prejudice is laid aside I hope you 'l find time to consider whether if you were now disputing in the Divinity Schools you might not safely affirm that to be true which is your opinion in any matter of Religion and not expect that any Caviller who stands by and is no way concerned in the Act should thence inferr and cry out that you are as sure of it as that there is a God who made the world If this Caviller should go further single this assertion perhaps being only argumentum ad hominem out of your whole dispute and print a book against it would not he be as you say Mr. S. is not a little ridiculous And would not you your self take as little notice of him as Mr. Smith doth of you I should enlarge upon this your acception of the word believe but that Mr. Chillingworth hath said enough of it in his answer to your Brother Knot and T. S. in his defense of Chillingworth 25. In the last lines of this 12th page you have these words what do I know whether purgatory be revealed in Scripture or no You seem here plainly to profess that you do not know whether Papists or Protestants be in the right so far as to Gods revelation in Scripture which Protestants have alwayes made their rule By which we may judge what a Protestant you are And that Anabaptists either deny the H. Scripture to be their rule or affirm that they know no error in purgatory 26. To the 9th whereof I can scarce make common sence I might tell you that no Parliament is in any sense that which is signified by the word person But I rather answer that no Parliament can free any person from any oath of beliefe which he hath taken For example if one Parliament propound an
faced Romanist Observe how he who professes to teach men to be disobedient and rebellious to all Bishops passionately and hastily takes part with him who hath usurped upon all Bishops in the Christian world and rather then loose his design calleth all who now professe not to obey the Church of Rome Rebells Disobedient and Apostates from Her Government sure he can not in good earnest suppose them to be disobedient unless in good earnest he believe they owe her obedience Then judge what a foul slander this is in Mr. D. to blame protestants for their not endeavouring to answer those things which have been answered an hundred times by Bishops unanswerably Judge what a crime it is for one who calls himself a Protestant to object against this and all other reformed Churches the most bitter calumnies that the most extream rigid peevish Papists have devised 34. You goe on thus supposing their ordination for which they so much contend to be of necessity and of Divine right and that they had it from the Church of Rome as most certainly they had Ans. Here you seem to contradict what you said in the 6th p. 9. l. 33. in these words nor could he in truth affirm it But if you mean by these words last cited out of the 12th as they seem to import that you esteem our ordination to be of divine right because it came in succession from the Church of Rome 't is a wide mistake In summ methinks you declare here openly in this paragraph that all who are baptized and ordained by any of the Church of Rome as 't is certain a great part of this nation was even in the time of Gregorius M. do therefore now and shall for all future ages owe obedience to the Pope of Rome or else they are all Rebells and Apostates Whereas we are not more ordained by those who were ordained by others from the Church of Rome then Mr. Denne himself was baptized by the hand of one of those who was baptized from others that were heretofore Romish Priests so that our Ordination is surely as divine as his baptisme As for his being rebaptized both the Church of Rome for whom he pleads and we and all the Christian World account him for that a Rebell and Apostate from the Universall Church 35. But because he sayes in good earnest he believes it can never be answered upon our principles he shall receive his answer in these three lines following challenging both the Jesuites and Anabaptists Mr. H. D. and N. N. to answer it if they can The Answer is this 36. The popes of the Church of Rome dare not deny themselves to have received Ordination from the Church of Jerusalem notwithstanding this they professe that they owe no subjection to the Bishop of Jerusalem Therefore it was not prelaticall but Anabaptistical I malice to tell all Bishops that have been ordained from Rome they are Apostates and Rebels from the Church of Rome in good earnest if they avouching ordination from the Clergy to be of necessity and Divine right do not obey the Pope 37. That which followes in your books about Mr. G. Mr. P. who disputed against the Romanists a fact which I believe Mr. Hen. Denne never was never will be guilty of all that know those Ministers know to be superfluous and frivolous However I to whom you in defense of the Quakers very pertinently do object this think fit to tell you that whereas the Romanist took a longer time only to put forth an edition of that which if he had dealt truely was all before done to his hand whereas he hath also so changed transposed added diminish't and made of it what he list that I believe it will be as soon owned for your I mean not J. S. but H. D's conference as Mr. Pearsons or Mr. Gunnings I must now tell you further what you have been oft enough told that that relation cannot expect to be regarded by Mr. P. or any sober person which is disclamed and disowned by three of the four who were disputants viz. by both the Protestants and half the Papists 38. But chiefly I must entreat you to consider whether the inserting of above 200. lines at a time as part of the conference which never was part of it besides all professed additions 2ly Whether the leaving out whole sheets of the Protestants which the Papists thought too hard to answer and 3ly the scarce suffering any one argument and answer of both to come together but casting usually parts of the same paper of Mr. G. many score leaves asunder one from the other be not a scandal that any Christian would desire might be covered with silence And I would gladly know from any ingenuous person whether this might not be answer enough to a book put out at the charge of the Romanists own purse and conscience a discourse by being mangled rendred so unintelligible that scarce any man ever read it over or will 39. One of your friends sent 3 copies of this conference between Mr. G. Mr. P. and the Jesuites to Mr. T. S. in Cambridge who being very desirous to hear what was in it and having not leasure to read it all himself gave two of them away upon condition that those learned persons on whom he bestowed them should read it but they both threw it aside before they had read a few leaves of it Reverend Mr. Will. Moor the deceased Library keeper was perswaded by Mr. T. S. to read one leaf but professed before many witnesses he would not read another if you would give him the whole impression because 't was so unintellegible for the causes above mentioned 40. As for your own book which you commend against the same Mr. G. of the same alloy If a tract as full of falshood as any pamphlet is wont to be fraught with may be believed against so many thousand witnesses as heard you both dispute two dayes at length the dispute interrupted by the Anabaptists themselves against all laws of dispute as you your self then there acknowledged If Mr. Gunnings giving the world satisfaction at the same place concerning the whole matter and the Universall Churches tradition concerning that question in a third discourse afterward at the request of the Moderator For the Moderator hearing both Mr. D. and Mr. G. appeal to the Churches tradition said that the Auditory was unsatisfied in that particular and therefore desired that one of them would take the pains to clear it Mr. Denne refusing Mr. G. did it to which Mr. Denne then durst not reply a word If I say all this cannot rescue Mr. G. from the expectation of a reply to a pamphlet in print because forsooth 't is in print we may expect his answer hereafter when he shall see fit with a relation of a former and of a later Jesuites dealing and Mr. Dennes collated 41. But in the mean while to give you and your friends employment which I perceive you want and