device of entertaining the people with Images which they call the Books of the Ignorant and are the means of keeping them in ignorance instead of the holy Scriptures which are able to make men wise to salvation For all which the holy and reverend Name of the Church and its infallibility is used for a colour By which they mean only the Roman Church which being but a particular Church not the universal is become Judg in her own Cause and maintains she does well nay cannot erre because she says she cannot do otherwise There is no man who will take the liberty to consider that can think this the way of salvation No it is the manifest method of perishing without remedy for any thing that the people of that Church can know For they being taught simply to believe in the Church of Rome and to depend wholly upon its authority without any other enquiry can never be satisfied whether this Church wherein they believe teaches the true and pure Doctrine of Christ Jesus the Lord and Spouse of the Church For they are deprived of all means to find this out being forbidden to look into the holy Scriptures where Christ hath delivered his mind unto us All the Faith therefore of the poor people of the Roman Church is no other than a humane Faith being grounded wholly on the authority of men and of all humane Testimony they rely upon the most uncertain viz. that which they give of themselves For they believe their Church to be good merely because She says so that is make her judge in her own case which is like to produce the most partial Judgment of all other But it is time to leave the consideration of their faults in this thing and as the duty of this Day requires to reflect seriously and impartially upon our own Which we shall the better do when I have a little opened the second general part of my Text wherein we shall see how happy we of this Church might have been if we had held fast that which we have received II. For that follows you see in the Charge given to the Church of Sardis Remember what thou hast received and heard and HOLD FAST or keep to it observe it and take care to do accordingly For that 's the end of calling things to mind that we may not depart from them if they be of consequence to our happiness Such was the Doctrine at first delivered by Christ and his Apostles and to apply it wholly to our selves such is that which we have received being the very same as you have heard with that at first delivered Which we ought therefore to keep most sacredly and to stick to it stedfastly never in the least warping from it nor turning aside either to the right hand or to the left from the principles and rules of a Religion which is so well grounded that it stands upon the undoubted word of God our Saviour For as I have shewn you the Religion which we have received and heard is no other than what the holy Scriptures which all acknowledg to be the word of Truth teach us to believe and practise And is a Religion so sincere that it teaches the people to read the holy Scriptures because it is not afraid they should therein read its condemnation And for that end propounds the Scriptures to them in their own Language because it is not in the least ashamed of any thing it bids them believe nor unwilling to be laid to that rule of righteousness and examined by it A Religion also which in reading the holy Scriptures bids the people content themselves with that which they find there clearly and evidently delivered for that it assures them is sufficient for their salvation leaving things obscure for the exercise of the learned and things not drawn from thence but from uncertain Traditions or private Inspiration to superstitious and fantastical Persons A Religion which doth not make Faith consist in ignorance but in knowledge and yet to keep this knowledge within the bounds of sobriety directs and enjoyns all private persons to take heed to the publick Ministry of the Church and all publick Ministers to study the Scriptures diligently and to teach nothing to be religiously held and believed as one of our ancient Canons is * 1571. Tit. Concionatores but what is agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and which the Catholick-Fathers and the ancient Bishops have collected out of that very Doctrine It is a Religion also which doth not teach us to rely upon Faith alone but presses the necessity of good works far more than the Roman Church doth whatsoever they falsely pretend only it teaches that God rewards all the good we do out of his own free mercy without any desert And therefore instead of framing and fashioning Wood and Stone into the Images of men and setting them up for the people to worship it exhorts men by all means possible to study to frame themselves after the Image of God in righteousness and true holiness and to conform themselves to those excellent patterns of Vertue which the Saints have left us for imitation Instead also of worshipping the Sacrament it teaches us to worship the Lord Jesus Christ in the holy and reverend use of the Sacrament not using it to make Jesus Christ but to honour Him not to make His Body descend from Heaven to us but to lift up our hearts to Him in Heaven not to turn the Bread and Wine into the natural Body and Blood of Christ but into the spiritual nourishment of our Souls For it doth not think that Christ and the Devil both entred into Judas together or that our Saviour did eat Himself or hath ordered matters so that He may be carried away by a Mouse and eaten by his greatest enemies It teaches none of these or any such like absurd and incredible things nor doth it intrench upon any man's civil Rights But though it bid men reverence and obey their spiritual Pastors yet doth not place any of them above Kings nor exempt them from their jurisdiction much less ascribe a power to them of deposing them from their Thrones giving away their Kingdoms and exposing them to be murthered which the proud Bishop of Rome challenges but humbly and meekly declares as St Paul doth That every Soul even the greatest Apostle as St. Chrysostome interprets him must be subject to the higher Powers What shall I say more It is a Religion which acknowledges no other supreme Head of the Church but Jesus Christ no other rule of Faith but his Word no propitiatory Sacrifice but his Death no Purgatory but his Blood nor any merits but his obedience to God in all things A Religion therefore which hath little of outward pomp and show but much of inward substance life and power which ordaineth few Ceremonies but ministers abundant instructions and consolations which attributeth little to distinction of meats but prescribes fasting and
Christs Counsel TO HIS CHURCH IN TWO SERMONS Preached at the Two Last Fasts ONE APRIL xi MDCLXXIX THE OTHER DECEMBER xxii MDCLXXX By SYMON PATRICK D. D. DEAN of PETERBVRGH and Chaplain in Ordinary to His MAJESTY LONDON Printed by J. Macock for R. Royston Bookseller to His Most Sacred Majesty 1681. TO THE Right Honourable WILLIAM EARL of BEDFORD Knight of the Most Noble Order of the GARTER c. My very good LORD and PATRON MY LORD BEing desired by some in my Parish to print the Sermon I preached on the last Fast-day I found it necessary to prefix to it the Sermon I preacht the Fast before because this depends on that and have presumed to prefix Your Lordships Name to both because it is by Your Favour and Patronage that I preached either the one or the other in that Place The matter of them is suitable to the occasion For in the First I have chiefly pressed the General Remedy of all the evils under which we labour in the Second one Particular Remedy and in both exposed the wickedness of Popery But I have shown withal that all we say against it will not keep it out unless we will so duly prize our own Religion as to live according to it Which being in the general allowed even by those who continue to live quite contrary I see no reason why any Body should quarrel with what I have said about one particular Duty of our Religion unless they think that we have nothing to answer for upon the account of our contempt of Christs Ministers and of that Order which He hath appointed in His Church which seems to me such a dangerous sin that I could not think I discharged a good Conscience if at such a time and such an occasion I took no notice of it Wherein I do not plead our own Cause as some are wont to object to such Discourses but the Cause of Christ and of His Religion which now lyes a bleeding and we fear a dying by the wounds we give it our selves through the subtile Contrivance of our Romish Adversaries Whose Plots have been many and horrid but their first and greatest strength as appears by the directions given to their Emissaries lay in this To bring the whole Ministry of the Church of England into contempt and to divide the People from their established Pastors into a great many little Bodies under no Government but what they themselves pleased And it is apparent that by the same Popish artifice this poysonous conceit is industriously infused into the peoples mind that we are looking towards Rome if we do but tell them that they ought not to form opinions as they think good but guide themselves in their judgment by our direction But I hope the better sort are not ignorant by this time of their devices and that though there be some in the Ministry who are not so fit as they should be to direct and guide their Flocks yet they will consider that the men who most complain of it are such as will be guided by none at all no not by those whose ability and honesty cannot be suspected And it is a very great Truth also that their intemperate Speeches against the Clergy is the thing that hath frighted the weaker sort of them into such an apprehension of danger from those men as hath made them guilty of the follies which have done great injury to us all This My Lord is the grief of all good Men among us who consider the state we are in and desine the safety or have any love for the honour of our Religion For we seem now to be in such a condition as Gregory Nyssen describes in his days when things were come to such a pass that the people neither understood themselves from their own inward sense what was fit for them nor would believe those that rightly informed them No saith he * Tom. 2. p. 745. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We are exceeding angry at our Teachers and very hardly bear their admonitions their counsels are a grievance and their instruction in good things we nauseate as sick men do the medicines which their Physicians exhibite to them If a reproof be given we take it heavily if we hear a rougher word we fall into a rage if we be thrust out of the Church we blaspheme This is not the disposition of Learners nor the obedience of Disciples but the ambitious contention of seditious and rebellious people For a Scholar who desires to learn any common Art or Science ought to be like a little Child much more ought he to be like a sucking Infant who would be instructed in Christian piety because our Lord hath honoured that Age as apt to receive impressions with his commendation Now no Child rises up against the Characters and the Lineaments that his Master makes for him in Wax nor devises new Elements by a frantick Licence innovating about making Letters but exercises his hand after his Masters Copy and both in word and deed imitates what his Director delivers to him c. But a Christian doth not thus though he hath heard That except ye be converted and become like little Children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but when the Priest severely corrects his errour openly contradicts and mutters between his teeth and going round the Streets and the places of publick concourse rails and reviles and as it follows a little after sits judging even me the Bishop in the Chair of the Scorner Now what can the end of such things be but utter confusion Which necessarily follows when the unity that ought to be between the Pastors and people is quite dissolved or the people some upon one account some upon another lose all their respect for them and love to them for their works sake There hath been much speech Your Lordship knows of a Prophecy as it is called of Bishop Usher late Primate of Armagh which hath very much startled many and made them fear dreadful things Though the certainty of it hath not been so publickly attested as that which I have been bold to set down in the first of these Sermons Where Your Lordship will find something that looks like a sad Prediction which an excellent Divine and holy Man of this Church published long ago in a Book of his upon the Creed Which I wish were diligently heeded and laid to heart because it directs to the way whereby the threatning may be avoided pointing to the very sin that deserves the Judgment he denounces Which if it be slighted when we are told of it it will be one of the worst signs that can be his Prognostication will prove true and be fulfilled But they who are appointed to stand on the Watch-Tower and give notice of danger have delivered their own Souls when they have faithfully declared the mind of Christ in this matter Which was the greatest motive I had both to preach and to print these Sermons which I am
the work of Reformation out of any desire of novelty but merely to discharge our duty to God in avoiding all things contrary to his Word and doing all according to it Which made our Reformers for the preservation as much as was possible of peace and unity which the holy Scriptures so much commend and enjoyn to take great care not to depart any further from any practice of the Church than it had departed from Christ the Founder of it and from the holy Scriptures whereby it ought to have governed it self Thus I have in as few words as I could told you what it is that we have received From whence we may learn both how happy we should have been had we always stuck to it and never deviated from it so happy that we should neither have had the Divisions that are among us nor any thing else which we come this day to bewail And also how foully the Roman Church hath prevaricated and departed from the simplicity of the Christian Religion First By adding many other Articles of Faith to those which were at first received and Secondly By forbidding the people to look into the holy Scriptures which contain the foundation and rule of Christian belief Let me touch a little upon these two leaving the consideration of our own condition till afterward First I say It is apparent they have highly offended God and abused his people by making a new Creed and that contrary to a known Decree of the third General Council that at Ephesus which they pretend to reverence For It ordained that it should not be lawful for any person to bring forth write or compose any other Faith than that which was defined by the holy Fathers gathered together in the Holy Ghost at the City of Nice and that whosoever should dare to compose or offer another Faith or propound it to such as were desirous to be converted to the knowledge of the Truth either from among the Gentiles or the Jews or from any Hereticks they should if they were Bishops or Clergy-men be deposed from their Office if Lay-men be anathematiz'd And yet they of Rome have not feared to violate this Decree by making a new Faith not in words merely but in sense about the adoration of Images of Saints of the Eucharist and concerning the Authority of the Pope the Doctrine of Purgatory and the rest of the Articles of the new Creed presumptuously made by the Council of Trent Some of which are of such dangerous practice that learned men among themselves Gerson Espencaeus and others have confessed it among the vulgar to be no less than Idololatrical and others doubt not to adde that it is no better among the learned And others again are so far from being Articles of Faith that for ought we can find in the Scriptures or true Antiquity they are not so much as probable opinions For instance the Authority of the Pope and the Monarchy as now they fear not to call it which he pretends to over the whole Church is founded merely in pride and ambition and as it was acquired so it hath been supported and enlarged and is still maintained by rebellion treason murthering of Princes wars dispensing with perjuries and incestuous marriages spoils and robberies of Churches and Kingdoms worldly craft and policy force and falshood forgery lying dissimulation and gross hypocrisie as may easily be made good in every particular to the satisfaction of all those who have not their eyes blinded by the God of this World Who by such villainies hath mightily disgraced Christianity which for many Ages was wholly unacquainted with any such Faith And there are also common opinions that pass among them uncontradicted as strongly believed as any Article of Faith which notwithstanding their seeming zeal for good works utterly overthrow any necessity of them For it is the avowed Doctrine of the greatest Teachers in that Church That though a man live and dye without the practice of any Christian Vertue and with the habit of many damnable sins unmortified yet if he have sorrow for sin and joyn Confession with it and receive absolution in the last moment of his life he shall certainly be saved And accordingly we see that if the lewdest persons among us will but be reconciled to the Roman Church on their death-bed they abuse them with the hope of salvation telling them there is no salvation in our Church though they were never so good but in theirs there is though they are never so bad Which is a clear demonstration That all their discourse about good Works is a mere show and that Faith alone among them is thought sufficient to do the business and that it is their Priests not Ours who teach men to rely upon a naked Faith and presume to be saved by it The cause of all which is their neglect of the rule of Faith the holy Scriptures which are so much against them that they dare not trust the people with them Secondly That 's the second thing I noted as a manifest declaration of the corruption of the Roman Church that they will by no means consent the people should look into those Books which contain the Doctrine at first received but upon the severest penalties forbid without a special Licence obtained their perusal of them as if these were the most suspected or dangerous of all other Books or as if it were reason the people should believe the Church without knowing what the Church ought to believe There is not a more evident token of their guilt than this For that it is done on purpose to keep the people in ignorance not to preserve them within the bounds of sobriety which may be done by other means is apparent from hence that even those select portions of Scripture which they have chosen to be read in the Church publickly they will not let the people hear in a language which they understand For which no reason can be alledged but that now mentioned they are loth the people should be acquainted with any thing that may enlighten their eyes to see the errours of that Church For Latine Prayers indeed wherein they speak to God they have this excuse That God understands all languages but for Latine Chapters of the Bible wherein God speaks to men there is nothing to be said the end of speaking to others being that we may be understood Why then should God be as a Barbarian to his people speaking to them in an unknown tongue And why should those things which in other cases would be held ridiculous and contrary to common sense be esteemed good and convenient in Religion Without all doubt such things as these are the sport of the Devil who hereby hath exposed Christianity to scorn and both kept the people from being instructed by God their Saviour and delivered them up to be most grosly abused by evil men For this mischief is not single but hath bred and brought forth another they having set up the