who have been favoured with so many Blessings of God who have had an Holy and Vertuous Education and have a thousand Obligations to your Illustrious Lady Mother whose days are likely now to be shortned with anguish and sorrow God hath given to Your Grace in this City * Sedan a Faithful People heartily devoted to your Service which have built your Town and fortified it with their hard Labour and have not been sparing of their Lives and means to defend this State when it was in danger They are a People whom God hath gathered from many places and sheltered under your shadow committing them to your keeping The Subsistence of this little State of yours compassed about with Mighty States depends next to God upon the Fidelity of the Inhabitants and their Love to their Sovereign Think you what Heart-breaking Sorrow it will be to that poor People when they see Your Grace going to Mass What Dissipation what Desolation shall you see ere long in your City when the Holy Scripture shall be banish'd from your House when instead of the pure Service of God the Service of Images shall be established Beads Agnus Dei's and sprinklings of Holy Water When instead of a Few Pastors you shall have Herds of Fryars sowing Discord continually among your Subjects When Ecclesiastical Goods shall be no more in your disposing and the Roman Clergy must have again that which your Predecessors had justly taken from them whereby your Revenues shall suffer a great Diminution When all the Ecclesiastical and Matrimonial Causes shall be no more under the Jurisdiction of your Officers but must be tried at Chalons or Rheims so that you shall be no more Master at home When instead of Subjects altogether depending upon your Authority you shall have Jesuits and Capucins about you having a strict Intelligence with those of Bruxels whence Jealousies and Fears will arise greatly noisome to your State I could represent to Your Grace many Considerations to make you apprehend that by this Action you will ruin your Affairs even in this World and lose the Love of those that have been your principal Honour and Support that hereby you will pull up the roots of your Reputation Honour and Greatness fill with Grief and Confusion your dearest Relations and draw upon you the Contempt of Persons of both Religions For even the greatest men of the Roman Church in France that govern themselves by Humane Prudence say that you take your Measures amiss and cannot believe that ever you will take that Resolution But the worst consequence of it is that thereby you will lose your Soul For you have a great Account to give unto God who knoweth the Hearts who is just and terrible and will not dally with those that dally with him I have poured forth and pour still for your Grace Prayers before God Sighs without number neither am I without hope that God will be merciful unto you One thing at least My Lord let me crave at your hands that if you have any Scruples Doubts about your Religion you will be pleased to defer your final Resolution till being come to this Town you may hear the two Parties and till we may speak to some Doctors of the Roman Church in your Presence And I may be bold to promise to Your Grace to make you acknowledge that you have been possess'd with Calumnies against us that both the Tenets of the Roman Church and Ours have been mis-represented to Your Grace and that Gaultiers Passages are false and forged This if I cannot obtain of Your Grace by my most humble Request yet so much comfort at least I shall have that I â—ave discharged my Conscience But if I be so unfortunate as to lose your Grace's Favour for speaking the truth to you it will be well for me that I have but few days to live in this World which I will pass away in sorrow tho' in hope to have them ended by Death when it shall please God to receive me into his rest And what Sorrow soever may exercise me in my Life I will never leave praying for your Prosperity and Salvation as resolved to be as long as I live My Lord Your Grace's most humble c. A SECOND LETTER OF Dr. DV MOVLIN TO THE DUKE of BOVILLON In Answer to a Letter of the Duke 's to his Sister Mademoiselle de Bouillon MY LORD MAdemoiselle de Bouillon your Sister hath done me the Honour to impart unto me Your Grace's Letters to her about the Causes that disquiet your Conscience Upon which I hope that your Goodness will not take it ill that I make some Reflections and try whether God will make Use of me to contribute something towards the Quiet of your Soul and to turn you from the way which I see you take contrary to the Doctrine of the Gospel You begin by expressing your Design not to separate your self from my Lady Dutchess your Wife neither in this World nor in the other Whereby you declare that you had resolved to be of your Ladies Religion before you knew whether it was good or evil and that your Enquiries about Matters of Religion were made after you had formed that Design and taken that Resolution Concerning which I could say many things but Respect stops me being unwilling to be offensive to Your Grace You say next that you have not sought the Grounds of the Religion of My Lady Dutchess any where but in the Holy Scripture And yet in your whole Letter you allegde not any one Text of it You say next that it is a point in controversie which are the Holy Scriptures in which Question we have great Advantages For the Books of Tobit Judith Maccabees c. are Books not extant in the Hebrew which is the Original Tongue of the Scriptures of the Old Testament Jesus Christ and his Apostles cite the Books of Moses the Psalms the Prophets c. but never cite any of those Apocryphal Books The Jewish Church before Christs coming never did acknowledge those Books * As we learn of Josephus and Philo. And those Books are stuffed with Fables as I have fully shewed in my Book against Cardinal du Perron Book 1. chap. 61. And whereas you appeal for the grounds of your Religion to the Fathers we have for us the Councel of Laodicea Melito Origen Eusebius Athanasius Cyril of Jerusalem Gregory Nazianzen Amphilochius Epiphanius Tertullian Hierom Ruffin Hilary Philastrius Gregory I. Bishop of Rome and many more all which to alledge might be tedious to your Grace Yet if you shall command it I will send you a full List of them St. Austin in this Point doth contradict himself and the Third Council of Carthage which is objected to us is otherwise in the Greek Copies than in the Latin Of the Interpretation of Scripture You add that there is a Controversie about the Interpretation of Scripture The Pope and the Roman Church boast themselves to be the infallible Interpreters
of Pardon ch 28. There is no middle place so that he that dwelleth not with Christ can be any where else than with the Devil The fifth Book of the Hypognosticks speaks thus The Catholick Faith grounded upon Divine Authority is that the first place is the Kingdom of Heaven and the second is Hell We believe no third place and find none in the holy Scriptures In the Book of the Vanity of the World chap. 1. Know ye that when the Soul separates from the Body it is at the same Instant placed in Paradise for its good Works or cast down into the Gulf of Hell for its Sins I could bring Your Grace Passages by hundreds out of the Fathers which express that the Souls of the godly are presently after Death carried into Paradise or into Hell I will content my self with one or two Cyprian in the Book against Demetrian speaks thus This temporal Life being ended we are sequestred either in the Habitation of Death or in that of eternal Life And in the same place When men are gone from hence there is no place left for Penitence no Fruit no effect of Satisfaction and in Death it self they pass to Immortality The Fathers were so far from believing that Souls were burnt in Purgatory that many of them believed not that the Souls could be tormented without the Bodies Thus Tertullian in the 48 Chap. of his Apologetick The Soul saith he cannot suffer without solid Matter that is without Flesh And Gregory in the Oration of the Lords Resurrection The Fire can never work upon the separate Soul and Darkness cannot be grievous to it because it hath no Eyes Ambrose in the first book of Penitence Chap. 17. The Soul without the Body and the Body without the Soul cannot be Partakers of Punishment or Reward Chrysostom in the 39 Homily upon the first Epistle to the Corinthians The Soul without the Flesh shall not receive her hiden Goods as likewise she shall not be punisht without the Flesh The Truth is so strong on our side that many of our Adversaries freely confess that the Fathers speak little or not at all of Purgatory Navarrus the Popes Penitentiary in the beginning of the year of Jubile saith No Orthodox doubteth that there is a Purgatory Yet the Ancients make no mention of it or very seldom and that he saith after Roffensis otherwise the Cardinal of Rochester whom he alledgeth Alphonsus de Castro one of the Doctors of the Councel of Trent in his eight Book against Heresies upon the Word Indulgentia speaks thus In the ancient Writers the mention of the Transubstantiation of the Body of Christ is very rare of the Procession of the Holy Ghost more rare yet of the Purgatory they make almost no mention at all especially the Greek Authors as also to this day the Greeks have not believed Purgatory One may see in the Dialogues of Gregory the First That Satan in his time was brewing that Mystery by Visions and Apparitions of Souls some of which said that they purged themselves at the Smoak of Baths others in the Wind others in Rivers and this was already in the year of our Lord 595. But the Popes that came after found out another kind of Purgatory wonderfully gainful whereby they have heaped up to themselves and their Clergy infinite Riches For the Pope by Bulls and Indulgences fetcheth Souls out of Purgatory at the Suit of those that will come to his Price to buy them and particular Masses whose number is infinite are bought very dear and none of them is sung with particular Application to beggers or those that have given nothing Yet they hold one Age to be exempted from Purgatory for say they when Jesus Christ cometh to judge the World then all that live in the World shall be exempted from that Torment In the mean while one may wonder that whilst Jesus Christ is interceding for the Souls that are burning in that Fire for he intercedeth for all the faithful those Souls come not out by this Intercession but by the Popes Indulgence By all that has been said here Your Grace may perceive how much you are mistaken in the Fathers and indeed by your manner of alledging them it is easie to see that you have not read them but that some ignorant men furnish you with Passages which have quite another Sense than that which they put upon them If forsaking what you know from the holy Scripture which as St. Paul saith is able to make us wise upon Salvation you take those things upon Trust which others tell you out of the Fathers and if you greedily embrace all that shall be presented unto you of this kind you will find enough to help your Resolution not to be separated neither in this World nor in the other from my Lady your Dutchess You say that you would know the Grounds of her Religion whilst her Grace did not trouble her self to know the Grounds of yours My Lord how could that Thought come into your Mind to believe Purgatory upon two or three Passages of Fathers distored from their right Sense and to shut your Eyes against all that the Word of God speaks against it Apoc. 14.13 Out of that good Word you might have learned that Blessed are they that dye in the Lord that they rest from their Labours and that their Works follow them Isa 57.1 2. that when the righteous dyeth he shall enter into Peace that we must make to our selves Friends by Alms Luke 16.9 which when we fail may recieve us into everlasting Habitations That Jesus Christ said to the repenting Thief crucified with him Luke 23.43 This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise And yet by the Doctrine of the Roman Church he had need of great Purgation 1 John 1.7 That the Blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanseth us from all Sin This is our true Purgatory God who is all just and all good would he take two Payments for the same Debt when the first Payment which is the death of Christ is sufficient would he delight to torment his Children for many Ages in an internal fire for Sins which he hath freely pardoned as we learn of St. Paul Eph. 4.32 Col. 2.13 that God for Christs sake hath forgiven us all our Trespasses Every Father that chastiseth his Children unless he be altogether unnatural doth it to make them better but the Roman Church will have God to burn his Children not to make them more righteous for by their Doctrine they are perfectly righteous before they enter into Purgatory but to content himself and satisfie his Justice Let them find if they can one example in Scripture of any Soul that was sent to Purgatory It is very considerable that in the Levitical Law there are Sacrifices prescribed for all sorts of Sin and Pollution even of Leprosie and the touching of a dead body but that law prescribes no Sacrifice for the dead nor any
Agobio whether at Constantinople or Regio they have the same Dignity and Authority Power and Wealth or Meanness and Poverty do not make one greater or lower than another By their Place they are all Successors of the Apostles And because some alledged the Example of the Roman Church for preferring the Deacon before the Priest he answereth Why doest thou alledge to me the Custom of one City shewing that that was not to be a Rule to the Universal Church His Custom is to call Rome Babylon and the Harlot and to exhort devout Persons to come out of her And in his Preface upon the Book of Didymus of the Holy Ghost he speaks thus When I was in Babylon and was an Inhabitant of the Harlot clad in Purple and lived after the Laws of the Roman Citizens I would prate somewhat about the Holy Ghost and dedicate my Work to the Bishop of the City But behold that Pot which is seen in Jeremiah after the Staff on the North-side begins to boyl and the Senate of the Pharisees begins to cry out meaning by the Senate of the Pharisees the Ecclesiastical Roman Senate And in the Epistle to Marcella under the name of Paula and Eustochium exhorting Marcella to come out of Rome and to retire to Bethlehem I esteem saith he that this place of Bethlehem is holier than the Tarpeian Rock meaning the Roman Capitol which having so often been struck with Lightning from Heaven sheweth that it is displeasing unto God Read St. Johns Revelation and see what is foretold of the Hatlot clad with Purple and of the Blasphemy written on her forehead and of the seven Mountains and of the many Waters fly from her my People and be not Partaker of her Sins least you receive of her Plagues It is fallen it is fallen c. But being gone from Rome into Syria and living there in perpetual Quarrels with the Clergy of that Country he was constrained to have Recourse unto his old Master Damasus for he had been his Secretary and to write to him those kind Letters which you alledge After Hierom you bring St. Austin in these words Shall we doubt whether we must rest in the Churches Lap which by Succession hath always had Sovereign Authority in the Apostolick Chair That Passage is found in the Book de utilitate credendi in the 17 Chapter but otherwise set down than Your Grace alledgeth Disputing against the Manicheans with whom Scripture had no Authority he useth humane and probable Proofs to exhort men to embrace the Christian Religion He saith then We seeing such a great Assistance of God and so great Proficiency Improvement advance shall we doubt to enter into the Lap of that Church not the Roman but Catholick Church which even to the Confession of Mankind from the Apostolick See by the Successions of Bishops while the Hereticks in vain barked about her c. hath arrived at the height of Authority that is to be the establisht Religion In this Passage St. Austin neither mentioneth nor appears to have thought of the Roman Church And although the Chair of Rome had been named in it yet this would avail nothing for the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Universal Church For the Primacy of the Apostolick Chairs is attributed by the Ancients no less to the Church of Alexandria of Antioch of Jerusalem c. than to the Church of Rome Sozomen speaks thus of the Council of Nice Soz. hist lib. 1. c. 16. There met among the Bishops that held Apostolick Sees Macarius Bishop of Jerusalem Eustathius Bishop of Antioch upon the River Orontes and Alexander near the Mareotid Marshes And again idem 4.24 of the Ephesine Council Cyrillus Prelate of the Apostolick See meaning Jerusalem Ruffinus in the second Book chap. 21. In Alexandria Timothy in Jerusalem John restored the Apostolick Sees Theodoret in the fifth Book of his History chap. 9. calls Antioch the most ancient Church and wholly Apostolick St. Austin in his 162 Epistle speaks of the Apostolick Sees in the plural saying that Cecilian might have reserved his Cause to the Judgment of the Apostolick Sees We have alledged Basil before saying that St. Ambrose Bishop of Milan had the Apostolick Preheminence and Hierom saying that all Bishops are Successors of the Apostles Sidonius in the first Epistle of the 6. Book saith that Lupus Bishop of Troyes had already set nine times five years in the Apostolick See They do then abuse your Grace that make you believe that Austin speaks only of the Apostolick See of the Roman Bishop seeing that the Primacy of the Apostolick See belonged to so many other Bishops And though in that place St. Austin had spoken of the Bishop of Rome only he had not thereby excluded the other Bishops from the same Dignity He that saith the King of France enjoyeth the Royal Preeminence doth not thereby deny to the Kings of England and Spain their Authority in their own Countries Here it is observable that St. Austin was never subject to the Bishop of Rome that he never took an Oath of Fidelity to him that when he was admitted Bishop he took no Letters of Investiture from him and paid him no Annates for his Entry He was one of those that made the Canons of the Milevitan Council which forbad the Appeals from Africa to Rome and one of those that made that Remonstrance to Celestin Bishop of Rome that he should for the time to come abstain from sending Legats into Africa and medling with their Businesses and using Supposititious Canons to advance his Authority The Bishops of Africa were of the same Faith with the Bishop of Rome and spake to him in respectful Terms because of the Dignity of the Imperial City and because they believed that St. Peter died at Rome and had founded that Chair among many others But if the Bishops of Rome had taken upon them the Title of God and boasted that they could not err if they had taken upon them to canonize Saints to give Indulgences to draw Souls out of Purgatory to alter the Commandments of God and to add unto the Creed those African Bishops would have bestowed their Censures upon him as freely as they did upon any other who fell into Heresie Of the Sacrifice of the Mass For the Sacrifice of the Mass Your Grace alledgeth two Passages out of St. Austin The one saith That the Catholick Faith suffers not that the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Lord be offered for those that are not baptized In the other speaking of his dead Mother he saith that the Sacrifice of our Ransom was offered for her when her Body was upon the Brink of the Grave There is nothing more easie than to deceive one that will be deceived and hath no Knowledge in the Fathers St. Austin declareth his Mind upon this point very often and tells us that the Eucharist is called the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ because it